Steven Savile - Silver

He still didn’t know their names. They were just the woman and the man. It kept it impersonal, stopped him from thinking of them as friends. If he had been running the interrogation, the first thing he would have done was make it personal. Sometimes he did not understand the logic of these people. If they wanted him to trust them, surely they should be using every trick at their disposal to convince him there were bonds between them. They couldn’t bring in the torturer, so what else could they do?

This time when they came for him it was different.

They weren’t alone.

There were six other men with them. Konstantin watched them file into the cell. It was like the tiled wall had been replaced with muscle. The muscle didn’t talk. They didn’t acknowledge his nod. I was as if he didn’t exist to them. That suited Konstantin.

“Get up,” the man said.

He didn’t move.

“I said get up.”

Konstantin placed his hands flat on the table and pushed the chair back, dragging the metal legs across the floor so they grated. He stood up slowly.

“What’s going on?” he asked the woman.

She didn’t answer him. She looked at the man.

“You’re being moved.”

He looked at the woman. “How many days has it been?”

This time she answered him. “Eight.”

He had been out of touch with reality for eight days. Eight days. Anything could have happened in that time. Akim Caspi could be dead. Mabus could be dead. A third of the world’s population could be dead. He wouldn’t have known. All he did know was that tomorrow the novemdiales would be over.

If the Sicarii were going to strike tomorrow, it would be the perfect moment. For nine days the world would have mourned Peter II, and the victims of Rome and Berlin along with him, and each new dawn would be a day further away from the tragedies. Nine days was enough for the numbness to have receded. Nine days was enough for the world to think that final attack wasn’t coming. Nine days was enough to make a fool out of everyone.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Russia, Italy, London? Does it matter? One cell looks pretty much the same as another wherever it is,” the man said.

“I’d like to know.”

“Berlin,” the m “The fun stuff’s over. You’re going to be held accountable for what you’ve done, and then we’re going to bury you way down deep. And when the world has forgotten about you we’ll whisper in the right ear and someone will find you in the showers or shiv you in the yard. It won’t matter to us. But I am sure we’ll find someone who really wants to hurt you; maybe an ex-countryman of yours? Or maybe someone who isn’t enlightened enough to turn the other cheek. It doesn’t matter one way or the other to me. Justice will have had its way, and the world will have its blood, so everyone is happy.”

“Except for me,” Konstantin said, as they came around the table and grabbed his arms. Two men forced them behind his back and cuffed him. They cuffed his ankles and ran a chain from one cuff to the other, meaning he could barely shuffle more than a foot at a time.

“And who the hell cares if you’re happy?” the man asked.

The muscle bundledhim into the back of an SUV and drove.

They left the man and the woman outside the BKA offices in Wiesbaden. They didn’t talk until they were more than thirty minutes outside of the city, then the driver switched on his blinkers and followed the traffic off the next exit ramp, leaving the Autobahn. This wasn’t the way to Berlin.

For a moment Konstantin thought that perhaps they had decided to do it the Russian way, drive him somewhere remote then finish him, cleaning up the problem he posed. He licked his lips.

The driver pulled over to the side of the road.

It was a remote spot, far enough away for his body not to be found quickly. Remote enough the local wildlife might take care of that problem altogether.

There was little in the way of passing traffic. No one would accidentally see anything from the side of the road.

It was a good place to kill a man.

The driver leaned forward, opening the glove box.

Konstantin was suddenly aware of his breathing. It was hard. A regular push in, out, in, out. He looked at his options. There wasn’t a lot he could do. He couldn’t very well fight from the back seat of an SUV with six other slabs of solid muscle surrounding him. Well, he could, but he wouldn’t win. He wasn’t Superman. He couldn’t run. The back doors would be child-locked to prevent him from opening them from the inside. So, he did the only thing he could do: nothing.

The driver pulled a padded envelope from the glove box. It didn’t look bulky enough, or heavy enough in his hand, to contain a service revolver, and they wouldn’t have risked a close-combat weapon like a Korshun knife or a SARO machete. He turned in his seat and looked straight at Konstantin. “We’ve got a message for the old man from Control,” the driver said in a coarse Manchester accent. “This is it, all debts paid in full. He’s kept up his end of the bargain, but this is the end of the road. You’re cut off, as of now. You understand?”

He handed Konstantin the envelope.

It contained a passport with his picture on it in the name of John Smith, just about as English as names came, and a plane ticket from Frankfurt Main back to Heathrow, leaving in six hours. There was also a billfold with about 300 Euros in it.

“You get yourself caught, you’re on your own.”

“How are you going to explain this?” Konstantin said, meaning the plane ticket. “They’re expecting me in Berlin.”

“Yours is not to reason why, soldier. Yours is to get your ass home. End of story.”

He nodded. He knew enough not to ask operational details. No doubt the real wall of muscle was arriving right about now at the BKA building and the man and woman were scratching their heads, wondering who the hell they’d just turned him over to if it wasn’t the good guys. Or maybe only one of them was scratching his head. The woman had said she wanted to believe him. Maybe that had been enough to convince her to make the call? Had the simple act of telling the truth set this entire chain of events into action like the first domino going over?

One thing Six could do was paperwork. This crew would have presented every necessary piece of paper, with every i dotted and every t crossed. In and out, no one any the wiser until the real prisoner transport team arrived, hence the thirty minutes of driving rather than taking him straight to Frankfurt Main or the military airport at Wiesbaden. Six didn’t want the Germans knowing it was Her Majesty who’d sprung their suspected papal assassin. It wasn’t exactly good form for a monarch to be getting her royal hands dirty like that, even if she didn’t know what was actually being done in her name.

Konstantin pocketed the passport and the ticket.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Don’t thank me, mate. I’m only doing what I’m told. Thank the old man for calling in every favor he had with every man, woman and child from here to Timbuktu. Without him you’d be rotting away in Berlin for the rest of your natural, pal.”

He broke one of the smaller Euro notes at a kiosk, buying a phone card.

It took him the best part of an hour to find a working pay phone.

He called in to Nonesuch.

Lethe answered on the first ring. It took a moment for the line to connect and then both of them were talking without the other hearing. Then the line opened. Konstantin started again, “I am on the evening flight from Frankfurt Main to Heathrow. When I land I am going to call again. By then I want you to have found Miles Devere for me.”

He hung up before Lethe could get a word in.