Jon Grimwood - End of the World Blues

Shutting his eyes, Kit tried to work things through. Four dice, a hundred throws, surely he had to hit four sixes soon?

What should I do?

“If you don’t know,” said the Brigadier, “I can’t tell you.”

So Kit told her about his history of wrong calls. He really didn’t mean to, it just happened. He started with the difference between an M24 weapons system and the earlier M21; both being bolt action, five shots in the magazine and one in the chamber.

The M24 came with a choice of sights, a night scope, and the one he’d been issued, the basic 10x42 Leupold M3A, with adjustment dials for elevation, focus, and wind. Kit’s voice was so matter of fact he could have been discussing the man mowing the lawns outside.

“There are only a few things I’m good at,” said Kit, “and running a bar and hitting targets top the list. I can take out a man’s brain stem at five hundred paces, while he’s still scratching his balls. Take out a child’s too…”

“A child?”

Kit nodded, then described his tenth kill. Exactly half way down his second clip, ten hits in three days and not a shot wasted. A burning truck, with a boy at the wheel and the clown-faced corpse of a small girl beside him. Clown faced because fire does that, it pulls back the face into a rictus grin.

He talked about the flames, the acrid smoke that hugged itself to a dip in the dunes and closed his throat. How a two-man patrol had found him blackened and voiceless, trying to pull corpses from the truck. It wasn’t their fault they thought he was Iraqi.

“Were they British?” Amy asked.

Kit shook his head.

“American?” The Brigadier sounded worried.

“Not that either,” said Kit. “I don’t know what they were…” He shrugged. “Azeri, maybe; perhaps Georgian.” Kit felt ashamed, as if he should have known the nationality of the soldiers he killed.

Brigadier Miles sighed. “Could have been worse,” she said. “Much worse. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were Iraqi. In fact, I’m sure they were. Almost captured by Iraqis,” said the old woman, trying the words aloud. “Sent home, cracked up, went missing. Sounds convincing to me.”

Outside the window the mowing of the lawn had finally finished. Someone had brought fresh tea and biscuits and left them on the Brigadier’s desk. All of the cups had been used and one sat empty next to Kit’s hand, so he guessed he must have drunk it.

“We’ll get Neku back for you,” promised Amy.

“All you have to do,” said Brigadier Miles, “is trust us.”

The first photograph showed a thin man in his early thirties. Curling black hair fell over the high collar of a leather coat that was cut like the jacket of a suit. He looked vaguely Arab, maybe southern European. “This,” said Amy, “is Armand de Valois.”

“French?”

“Originally Russian,” the Brigadier said. “Well…half Russian. His father was Sergei Akhyrov, a Colonel in the Red Army. His mother came from Chechnya. She was the one who named him Armed.”

“I thought—”

“He changed it,” the Brigadier said. “And that wasn’t all.” Fanning out three photographs, she pushed them across the desk. “This is Armand in Bucharest, in Berlin, and in Paris…”

It was easy to see the progression, because it involved more than just clothes or the cost of Armand’s haircut, though these changed as well. His eyes got less wild, his smile more confident. Somewhere between Berlin and Paris he had rhinoplasty and his lips became fuller. The change was subtle, but it was definitely there.

“American surgeon,” said Brigadier Miles.

“De Valois flew to the US?”

“Too risky. The surgeon came to him. Armand switched nationalities around this time. He’s currently using a passport issued in Rome and we’ve checked, it’s genuine.”

“Really?” asked Amy.

“His notario had the right proofs. A Parisian birth certificate, marriage papers from Milan showing his mother was French and his father Sicilian. Also evidence of land holdings near Palermo, once owned by a great-grandfather. It’s easy enough, particularly in Italy.”

“I know drug smuggling was big business,” Kit said, “but this is still…” He swallowed the rest of that sentence because he’d just realised the obvious. “This isn’t about drugs, is it?”

The Lutyens mansion, with its rolls of discreetly coloured razor wire, all those soldiers wandering around in flack jackets. He’d been right about the size of the budget and wrong about where it was aimed. What commanded this kind of money? What was the world’s biggest growth industry on both sides of the fence…

“He’s a terrorist,” Kit said.

Amy looked up from a photograph.

“This isn’t about heroin,” said Kit. “At least, not directly.” Reaching for the folder, he fanned its contents across the untidy desk. At least fifty shots of Armand de Valois in a dozen different countries. Hair-style and clothes changed, but the man and the woman at his side remained the same. In some de Valois smoked and in others he held a brandy glass. In one, the woman was absent and de Valois wore an astrakhan hat and smoked a small cigar through a very long ivory holder. The office block behind him was ugly, half derelict, and brutal enough to speak of decades of Soviet planning.

“Grozny,” said Brigadier Miles, lighting up a cigarette of her own. “Before Russia flattened it for the second time. He was buying plastic explosives.”

“Why don’t you just arrest him?”

“We lack sufficient proof.”

“Then kill him.”

“It’s been tried,” said the Brigadier. “About eight months ago. On a section of the B1 between Tegel and Tempelhof…Airports in Berlin,” she added, seeing Kit’s face. “A motorcyclist and pillion, both Colombian. They killed his driver, his bodyguard, and his son. Armand let it be known that he was also dead.”

“Which was when Ben Flyte’s troubles began,” Amy said. “He failed to pay for a consignment of heroin, thinking Armand wouldn’t be around to collect the debt.”

“Only Armand was alive,” said Brigadier Miles. “Busily arranging the death of an entire Colombian drug family, right down to the family pets. Those are photographs you definitely don’t want to see.”

“Why not just do the job yourselves?”

“That’s been suggested,” said the Brigadier. “Unfortunately the Attorney General takes the view that as it’s been suggested we can’t do it. Apparently, had we just done it, that would be entirely different.”

“Then sub-contract the job to someone else.”

“Don’t think we haven’t considered it,” she said. “Unfortunately life is not that simple. Moscow have decided Mr. de Valois might make a good next President for Chechnya, and Russia is our friend.”

“And the Americans?”

“Reserving judgement,” said Brigadier Miles, sounding tired. “As are the French. Which still leaves us with today’s problem.”

“Why?” asked Kit, looking at the women opposite. One reminded him, in some weird way, of an older, better-dressed version of Kate O’Mally. The other had trouble meeting his eyes.

Amy scowled. “What do you mean, why ?”

“Why would a man like de Valois waste time with this? I mean, what’s one missing consignment of drugs to a future President?”

“Ah,” said the Brigadier. She glanced at Amy, as if about to say something and then changed her mind. What she wanted to say, Kit reckoned, was this friend of yours is less stupid than I thought.

“You noticed the woman?” asked Brigadier Miles.

Kit nodded.

“Ivana de Valois. Ambitious, ruthless, and highly intelligent. Currently sulking in Bucharest. Armand and his wife share the first two of those qualities, but not the third.”