Tim Stevens - Severance Kill

She shoved the thought away. She was a professional, and as such she couldn’t let personal considerations influence what had to be done.

Not for the moment, anyway.

*

Calvary wiped his hands and dropped the filthy cloth on the flagstones. They’d brought him a bucket of water which he’d used to wash his face and neck. Arkady had cleaned his forehead with antiseptic and packed a gauze pad against it, winding a bandage tight around his head. A spare shirt had been found, d b Arkadtoo, and a packet of ibuprofen tablets. He swallowed half a dozen.

The other man, Lev, had removed the table with the bloodied drill and brought another to Calvary’s right side. On it he placed a mobile phone.

Krupina said, ‘Make the call.’

She’d changed to Russian.

Calvary replied in kind. ‘Where do I say we meet?’

‘We’re still working on a location.’

‘The more advance warning we give Blazek, the more opportunity he’ll have to call up reinforcements.’

‘Granted. But I want you to hook Blazek now, before he decides he’s had enough of waiting and kills your associates.’

It made sense. Calvary picked up the handset, switched the speakerphone on, dialled Max’s number from memory. He punched the numbers in slowly, letting them hear that he was dialling an eleven-digit mobile phone number rather than sending a secret text message or something. Placed the phone back on the table and waited.

Three rings. Four. Then an urgent voice, not Max’s: ‘ Ano? ’

In Russian Calvary said: ‘This is Martin Calvary. The man you’re looking for. I want to speak to Bartos Blazek. No-one else.’

‘One moment.’

He heard confused shouting and footsteps in the background. After about a minute a voice close to the mouthpiece bellowed: ‘Where are you?’

‘Bartos Blazek?’

‘Yes. Where — ’

‘Listen, don’t talk. You have my friends?’

‘Fuck you, you murdering — ’

‘This is a once-only offer, Blazek. I’m not going to tell you again to shut up.’ He paused, but the man had stopped. ‘Okay. The deal is, we do a straight swap. You get me in return for them.’

‘Where?’

‘I’ll let you know the time and place. Stay near this phone.’ Calvary glanced at Krupina. ‘First, I need proof that my friends are still alive.’

Footsteps in the background again, then Blazek said, ‘Here’s the kid.’

A second later Max’s voice came through the speaker in English, sounding dazed. ‘Hello?’

‘Max, it’s me. Calvary.’

‘Calvary?’ The voice shook. ‘He killed Jakub, man.’

Not looking at Krupina now, Calvary said, ‘Put Blazek back on.’

When he heard the big man’s grunt he said, ‘You killed the other man. Jakub.’

‘No. I just told the kid that to spook him. I’ll put him on.’

A few seconds passed before Jakub came on, in another room, Calvary assumed. His voice sounded swollen.

Calvary said, ‘Are you in one piece?’

‘Nothing this pig can do to me.’

‘All right. I’m going to get you out of there.’

Blazek’s voice cut across. ‘You satisfied now?’

‘Make sure they stay intact, Blazek.’

‘You killed my son.’ The man’s voice was quieter, shot through with a thread of rage. Rage was good. It led to mistakes in planning.

‘I did, yes. It was no more than he deserved. And you’re next.’

Calvary reached over with his good hand and killed the call.

They converged on Bartos’s home from both sides of the Vltava River. Hard men who’d earned his respect through unflinching service, or undisciplined psychopaths who’d earned his coin for their breathtaking viciousness. From the cities of Ostrava and Pardubice they came, too, men based in the colonies of Bartos’s empire, called into service of the motherland. Of the emperor.

Including the ones with whom Bartos surrounded himself, there were twenty-eight men in all. Twenty-eight, to take down one man. However professional he was, and whatever rag-tag outfit he’d associated himself with — and from Bartos’s experience of the two he’d taken captive, he wasn’t impressed — there was no way the Brit, Calvary, could win against those odds.

Bartos stood in the turret at the peak of his mansion, the tower at the top of his castle, and stared out over the growing lights of the city.

His city.

Twenty-four hours earlier he’d been in control. A petty thief had dared to pick the pocket of one of his men and he’d pulled the boy’s face apart, before breaking his neck. He hadn’t had to care where the body was dumped. Nobody would find it, and even if they did, the police would never link it to him.

He’d had a grown-up son. A putrid waste of space, a whoremongering cokehead, but a son nevertheless. His son. Someone whose fate it was his to decide.

And this stranger, this strutting cock of a Brit, had breezed into his city and taken over. Had made him and his men look like prissy, mincing fairies. Had raped his empire and plundered his authority and made him a laughing stock.

And murdered his kin. The worst offence of all.

*

The night glimmered off the immense shifting bulk of the river, the castle towering on the opposite bank. The Audi headed south, Krupina driving, unusually. Lev was in the passenger seat, his arm across the back, his Makarov pointed at the Englishman. Arkady sat next to Calvary in the back seat, his own gun jammed into Calvary’s side.

The dashboard clock said it was 11.35 pm.

Yevgenia had come through with the location an hour earlier and Krupina had immediately agreed. Vysehrad Park, alongside the river south of the city centre. It was open late at night, a spot with enough hiding places for all her men, and unlikely to be riddled with tourists at this late hour. The dozen men sent from Moscow were already in position, placed strategically through the park.

In the mirror Krupina watched Calvary. The wound was seeping through the dressings. His face was pallid, waxy, his eyes half closed. She wondered if she’d pushed him too far.

*

There’d been a lot of sitting about in the cellar. Calvary had asked if he might stretch his legs and he’d been permitted to. At once he’d regretted it, each step sending a spike of pain through his head. But he persisted. There’d be running later, and he needed to acclimatise to the discomfort.

Krupina and Arkady appeared and disappeared, only Lev remaining with him at all times. Habit made Calvary size up the man, looking for weak points, but he knew there’d be no point in trying to jump him. The man was too professional, and Calvary too weakened at the moment. Instead he forced himself to breathe in to the pain and the nausea, accepting them as part of his being.

Once, when Krupina returned, Calvary said, ‘Any news on the location?’ They were conversing exclusively in Russian now.

‘Yes, we have identified one.’

‘And?’

‘You’ll be apprised of it in good time.’

‘Oh, for crying out loud.’ Giddiness made him sway. ‘You don’t have to be so cagey. You might as well tell me. This swap will work best if I know as much about the environment as possible. Otherwise Blazek might just pick me off before you even get close to him.’

‘All right.’ She called for Arkady. He came down the cellar steps with a laptop computer. Krupina opened it on the table beside Calvary’s chair. He sat down, grateful for the excuse.

It was a panoramic, Google Earth view outside some sort of battlement wall.

Krupina said, ‘Vysehrad Park. The birthplace of Prague, according to legend. It contains the remains of the city’s second castle. Have a look round.’