Tim Stevens - Severance Kill

A small group of people outside the lift stepped aside and Nikola smiled her thanks, easing the stretcher through them. Calvary kept his expression set, his eyelids fluttering.

By twisting his head Calvary managed to scan the corridor. Double doors ahead were marked with the legend OPERACNI SALY. Operating theatres. Another pair of doors on either side of the corridor halfway down appeared to open into wards.

They’d discussed what to do. Nonetheless, it was a tense moment. Nikola left the trolley and went forward alone, pushing through one of the sets of ward doors.

A porter came past with another patient on a trolley. He glanced incuriously at Calvary, on his own in the corridor.

She was back in e wothunder a minute.

‘Our man.’

‘Dubrovsky?’

‘Yes. His name is marked on the wall chart. He is in a side room.’

That would help. ‘Any guards?’

‘Two policemen. At the nurses’ station.

He considered.

It was a plan of such immense risk, to her as well as to him, that he almost rejected it out of hand. Almost.

‘Okay. This is what we do.’

*

Krupina was put through just as she was pulling the door of the Audi closed.

A bright young female voice said, ‘Yes, Mr Dubrovsky’s in recovery now. He’s doing well.’

Lev drove, swiftly but not at breakneck speed. Behind him Arkady watched Krupina’s eyes in the mirror, caught the relief, smiled.

‘Thank you. Please tell him that Krupina is on her way.’

‘Are you a relative?’

‘I’m a colleague.’

‘From the Russian Embassy?’

‘No.’ Had Gleb spun them a story? ‘Were you expecting an Embassy person?’

‘Well, the gentleman earlier said he was going to send someone down.’

‘Which gentleman?’

‘The one from the Embassy,’ the girl said patiently.

Krupina rubbed her face in confusion. ‘Did he give a name?’

‘I think so. It was Dr Grossman who took the call. I don’t know if he wrote the name down.’ There was the sound of rummaging through paper. ‘No, doesn’t seem to have.’

Krupina’s first call had established that Gleb had been operated on for a gunshot to the abdomen and another to the tibial bone in the right leg. She hadn’t been able to find out any further details.

While Lev drove she made another call, this time to an acquaintance at the Embassy. No, nobody at his end was aware of Tamarkin’s having been injured, nor had they been in contact with the hospital.

Arkady said, ‘What’s wrong, boss?’

For a moment she didn’t answer, trying to piece it together. She couldn’t.

‘Lev, step on it. Gleb’s in danger.’

*

The doors opened into a warm, brightly lit area saturated with the aroma of coffee and antiseptic. From his supine position Calvary glimpsed a flow of people in scrubs or white coats on either side. Standing at the nurses’ station were the two uniformed men, one of whom looked over his shoulder at them before turning back to his conversation. Calvary took in the pistols at their belts.

Nikola wheeled the trolley straight past the desk and further into the ward. From where he lay Calvary saw a whiteboard with names. Dubrovsky, M. Side room C, by the looks of it.

A nurse glanced across, called something out. Nikola replied, and Calvary caught the name they’d agreed on for him: Peter Farber.

The nurse came over, a stern matronly type. Nikola said, ‘Please, can we use Russian? The patient does not speak Czech.’

The nurse — her name badge identified her as Sister Anna Jelinek — stared at Calvary. ‘Why have you brought him here? We haven’t been notified.’ Her Russian was thickly accented.

Nikola ran a hand through her long hair, gave a harassed sigh. ‘He’s for surgery. They were supposed to let you know down in casualty.’

‘Where are his notes?’

Nikola made a pretence of looking on the rack under the trolley, then straightened, burying her face in her hands. ‘They’re not here. Oh God, they haven’t put the notes on.’ When she took her hands away Calvary saw she was actually weeping. ‘I’ll have to go and get them.’ She turned away.

Sister Jelinek said, ‘You can’t leave him here.’

Damn , thought Calvary.

Nikola swallowed. She put a thumb to her mouth, bit the nail. Her hand shook.

‘Sister,’ she said. Her voice had the edge in it Calvary had noticed before in fellow soldiers after several hours of waiting for the enemy to show its hand. ‘Let me tell you something. I came on duty at one p.m. yesterday. It’s now ten a.m. I haven’t slept. I’ve had a sandwich and a bottle of water. That’s all. I’ve been forced to bring this bloody patient up here myself because there aren’t enough porters around. And now you have the gall, the — ’

‘ Control yourself, doctor. ’ Sister Jelinek’s voice was like a bullwhip.

Nikola cut across the last syllable: ‘The nerve to tell me to take the patient away with me, as though it’s a pet of mine, a toy.’ Her voice rose to a shriek. ‘You know what? I’ve had enough. Of your attitude and those like you. Of this hospital. Of this job.’

‘ Doctor. Get a grip on yourself. Now. ’

Nikola backed towards the door, still shouting. A small crowd gathered at the nurses’ station, staf st

‘I won’t be responsible, sister,’ she yelled. ‘I won’t be. For what happens next.’

He saw her turn and run, barging past the policemen. Calvary saw one of them start after her.

God bless you, Nikola , he thought. Now run. Just run.

Sister Jelinek shook her head, disgust etched into her face.

As quietly as he could, Calvary swung his legs off the trolley, acutely conscious of his booted feet and how out of place they’d look beneath the hospital gown. To a young nurse who was staring at the door, mouth agape, he said, ‘Toilet?’ She pointed vaguely down the passage separating the dormitories from the individual rooms.

He lifted the saline bag off the hook and carried it, moving unhurriedly down the passage, closing his ears to the shouts that would come after him. There was room C, on the left. He pushed open the door and went in.

*

Tamarkin had asked the nurse who seemed to be in charge of attending him for a phone. She’d said she would see what she could do, but so far she hadn’t come back.

Krupina would find him eventually, but if possible he wanted to get in contact sooner rather than later. He’d asked the nurse for a clock as well and she’d put a small digital display on the bedside table. Ten oh-nine. A little over three hours since the rooftop battle. Calvary might be working his way into the safe house where Gaines was being kept; might even have him by now.

A morphine pump in his arm allowed him to self administer pain relief. He’d used it sparingly until now, wanting to keep a clear head. But the screeching message from his leg in particular was overwhelming. He clicked the button. Sweet relief poured into his veins, his mind, almost immediately. For the first time he felt some sympathy — no, empathy was the word — for the raddled junkies he saw crawling around the edges of Gorky Park back home in Moscow.

Something slipped through the balm of warmth induced by the morphia. A scratchiness. He attended to it in a detached manner. A sound, was it? Yes. Not pain; definitely an aural stimulus.

Shouting. A woman’s fishwife shriek. Not the wails of the post-surgery patients in the ward outside his room, the ones he’d learned to accept as wallpaper noise in the short time he’d been conscious. Other voices: one of the nurses’, one he recognised from afar; a man’s, authoritative.

In his left hand the morphine trigger whispered: love me. Use me .