Tim Stevens - Severance Kill

For the moment he didn’t need comfort. Pain would be more useful.

Tamarkin dropped the trigger. With his right hand hs ridn’t e groped at the plastic water jug on the table beside the digital clock. Using both hands he snapped the jug, pulled a splinter free, a jagged length with a fat end tapering to a point. He writhed so that he could wrap the thick end in the blanket. He buried the weapon beneath the covers, and waited.

*

Lev dropped them at the entrance. Krupina and Arkady navigated the front doors of the hospital and the reception area, found the directions on the wall. Took the lift to the first floor.

When they stepped out, a young woman raced past them and down the stairs beside the lift, a doctor by the look of her: white coat, stethoscope draped over the neck.

She was screaming, yelling.

A uniformed police officer followed her at a run. Darya realised the doctor was speaking German. She didn’t understand the words but could tell the woman was both distressed and saying things that were perturbing the policeman.

Krupina peered down the stairs after them and caught a glimpse of the woman’s face as she looked back. Very pretty, long dark hair. In hysterics.

It was a ruse. Her eyes connected with Arkady’s. He’d reached the same conclusion.

She had her phone out and was calling Lev, saying, ‘Watch out for a young woman escaping, slim, dark hair,’ as Arkady went through the doors of the ward, the Makarov still inside his jacket. By the time Krupina entered the ward he was peering into the dormitories off to the right even as a battleaxe of a nursing sister clutched at his arm and shouted at him. A second policeman stood at the nurses’ station looking nonplussed.

A Babel of confusion rose and dipped around her but she ignored it and stared at the whiteboard on the wall. Saw the room where Dubrovsky, M. was being cared for.

She headed down the passage after Arkady, ignoring the angry sister. Said, ‘This one,’ and indicated the door of the side room.

The first thing Tamarkin noticed was the saline drip bag, held aloft, and he relaxed a fraction. It was another patient who’d wandered into the wrong room.

Then the man dropped the bag, ripped the cannula from his arm and pulled a chair over to the door, tipping it so that the back was under the handle, jamming it.

In two strides he was beside the bed.

Tamarkin watched through the slits between his lids, keeping his breathing even. It was Calvary. Last seen a second before the muzzle flash.

He was doing something to the infusion set linking the drip bag to Tamarkin’s own cannula. Tamarkin made his move.

*

If he’d been stooped a couple of inches lower the plastic shard would have gone into his neck, the jugular or the carotid. As it was the point pierced Calvary’s pectoral muscle through the cloth of the gown and through his shirt. He raised his elbow, tearing the shard out of the man’s hand, and tugged the point free. It had penetrated half an inch.

Tamarkin slumped back on the pillow. There was no fight in him, Calvary could see. He’d played his only card, a surprise attack, and he had nothing left.

Calvary heard the handle of the door being jiggled. Then the banging began.

He worked swiftly, drawing back the plunger of the syringe he’d palmed on his way to the room, fitting the needle to the end. Holding Tamarkin’s arm down with one hand he slipped the tip of the needle into the rubber stopper that sealed the projection from the infusion set, the one that allowed injections to be given using the same cannula.

Tamarkin’s eyes took in Calvary’s movements. He tried to pull his arm free but Calvary had it in a vice grip.

‘What are you doing?’ It was a whisper. His throat would be sore from the tube the anaesthetist had put down it.

‘Air embolus,’ said Calvary. ‘Fifty CCs of air to the heart. It’ll be relatively quick, don’t worry.’

The banging at the door was becoming frantic. Calvary heard the first of the kicks.

‘I’ll tell you — ’

‘I didn’t come here for information. I came here to dispatch you.’ Calvary began to depress the plunger with his thumb.

‘ For God’s sake. ’ The more Tamarkin tried to raise his voice the more quietly it emerged. ‘ I can give it to you. All of it. I know where Gaines is. ’

‘As I said, I’m not really that interested.’

The kicks were coming hard, now. Calvary heard something splinter.

Always start an interrogation hard. Never cajole, never build up slowly. Go in at the extreme. He’d found it useful advice in the past.

Tamarkin gave him Gaines’s location.

Calvary memorised it, hoping he’d grasped the pronunciation.

He had what he needed. He looked down at Tamarkin.

There was no justification for it. Except that if he didn’t do it, Tamarkin would alert Blazek as soon as he was able. And Blazek would immediately move Gaines to a new hiding place.

Calvary had no option.

He pressed down on the plunger.

The single opening window in the room s inont size="wung on a horizontal hinge at the top. He pushed it. As expected it opened only a few inches, not enough to fit a human body.

Calvary jumped onto the bedside table, kicked the window out so that it snapped off its hinges. He peered down. A short drop on to a grass verge.

He was airborne as the chair wedged under the door handle finally gave way behind him and the door was flung open.

*

Krupina yelled, ‘Lev, he’s out the window, it’s Calvary, get round the back,’ into her phone as Arkady slipped out after him. The policeman stood in the middle of the room, staring at Gleb in the bed, at the second man disappearing through the window. The nursing sister and one or two other staff were trying to peer into the room. Nearby a patient had started to scream.

Krupina barged past into the room, shouldered even the policeman aside. Looked down at Gleb.

Then hurried to the window and gazed out.

*

The drop felt further than Calvary had been expecting, and the air was cold and sharp after the controlled temperature of the ward. He landed on his feet, his knees bent to absorb the impact, and he rolled on his shoulder and let the momentum carry him down the grass verge until it levelled out. With a fluid continuation of the movement he was on his feet and running.

He had a sense that if he followed the wall to the left he would arrive eventually at the area where the trolleys had been left, not far from where they’d parked the car. It was possible — unlikely, but possible nonetheless — that Nikola had already got out of the building. More plausible was that she’d either been caught, or was roaming somewhere inside, trying to evade capture.

Calvary felt the exhilaration in his belly like an accelerated pregnancy. Wherever she was, he’d find her. Make her safe. He had what he needed: Gaines’s whereabouts. All else was detail.

Something batted at his heel and he looked over his shoulder and suddenly he was tumbling, rolling over his shoulder again, this time on the hard concrete of the pavement. He’d been kicked, a low blow at his foot, expert, and it had sent him spinning. Through the blur of movement he saw the man, young, lean, coming in fast. Calvary extended a leg, rigid, and his boot caught the man in the stomach and jackknifed him, but he’d been ready and had tensed his abdominal muscles and so the blow wasn’t incapacitating. His extended knuckles raked at Calvary’s throat. Calvary parried with a sweep of his own fist, followed up with a jab at the man’s face. He fell short but the man jerked his head back and lost some of his impetus. Calvary heaved with his leg, threw the younger man off and was up again and running.