66 Metres (10 page)

‘Full body massage. One hour. Pretty girl,' he said in fluent German.

A young girl in a short white skirt and purple tie-dyed tee shirt arrived and led him to the back of the parlour into a small room with a cushioned massage table, a padded oval hole at one end for his face. He inhaled the comforting smell of lavender body oil. Soft Chinese music tinkled from a cheap CD player. She left him while he stripped naked and lay face down. She returned and began massaging his back, commenting only once on the scars, picking up that he wasn't in the mood for conversation. Sammy's screams still echoed inside his brain. Sammy had been in the wrong team at the wrong time; crappy luck. For the girl too, when he found her.

The masseuse asked him to turn over, and he lay on his back. She massaged his thighs, her fingers occasionally nudging his balls. He hardened. She massaged him some more, her deft fingers ‘accidentally' touching his penis, making his breathing deepen. She paused, leaned closer to his closed eyes.

‘You want happy ending?'

He nodded.

‘Fifty?' she said, testing the water.

He nodded again. Today she could have asked five hundred. She went to work on him. When he was about to come, she placed her left hand firmly over his mouth, quietening his groans of ecstasy.

Adamson lay panting while she fetched hot water and towels. He relaxed. The screams were gone. He wouldn't have to see Danton again – ever – if all went to plan. His mind drifted to his wife Sandy back in DC, and to Arnie, not doing so well in school. Attention Deficit Disorder. Adamson knew his being away so often didn't help Arnie. He'd call later. They'd be waking up and having breakfast in a few hours.

The girl arrived and cleaned him up. Adamson chatted a little with her, got dressed and slipped her a hundred, watched her eyes light up.

The airport was busy, but he was fast-tracked through customs with German efficiency using a fake passport, and went straight to the Exec Lounge. He called home. Sandy was in a tizz.
Arnie hadn't wanted to get up this morning. Everything was running late. She asked him how the meeting went, and he said the deal was looking promising, his boss was pleased, there might be a bonus in it.

Lies trickled off his tongue like honey.

He talked to Arnie, told him to be good, that he loved him, was proud of him, and to forget the nasty kids at school. There are always bullies, don't let them get to you, they always get what's coming to them, even if it takes a while. After Sandy rang off, Adamson hung his head. A pair of stockinged legs atop shiny black leather shoes appeared in front of him, and he looked up to see the stewardess.

‘Mr Parks, your flight is boarding now.'

He got up, overcoat draped over his shoulders while he tugged the Samsonite rolling luggage along, and headed to the gate. His Blackberry twitched, and while in the line he checked his encrypted mail. Jorgenson. Nadia was in St. Mary's, Scilly Isles. Not Land's End. Adamson was impressed. Sammy had lied to cover for her, all through the interrogation, right to the very end. But Ms Laksheva had had her passport checked by the local customs officials on a Navy patrol boat. Sloppy. Disappointing. He flicked the phone into silent mode. If she still had the device, he would retrieve it and retire her. No messy interrogations with the likes of Danton.

On the plane they served champagne and flakes of smoked salmon with tired lettuce and a single cherry tomato. Business Class wasn't what it used to be. He'd hire a car at Heathrow, make the four-hour drive to Penzance and take the helicopter across in the morning. Gazing out at the blanket of puffy clouds, he wondered whether he might find a present for Arnie in Cornwall, and fell asleep.

***

Danton returned from the gym. Not one of those pansy tekky shitholes filled with whores in leotards and poufs with pacemakers. No, a real fucking gym where men sweated and grunted and lifted weights, spotting each other on the bench press. He'd lifted two-ten today, pretty good for a guy his height and age, just like he used to when he was eighteen, when he'd had a shot at the championships, before he'd had his collarbone broken and a rib snapped in a fight. Most people didn't know when their lives went wrong. Danton fucking knew.

As soon as he got through his apartment front door and threw his coat onto the sofa, he sensed something was different. He spun around, flick-knife drawn, then a grin trawled across his battered face.

‘Lazarus, you prick, I could'a killed you!'

He closed the switchblade and went over to the swarthy Russian, a head taller and three times
Danton's weight, thick black shoulder-length hair shrouding his mottled face and deadpan eyes. Lazarus smiled confidently, brandishing two golden lower teeth, and gave Danton a bear hug. Danton fetched a dozen bottles of Romer Pilsener while Lazarus lit two Havanas.

They smoked, laughed, talked shit and caught up on their exploits since a dozen years earlier when they'd done a few jobs for the same Russian family. After an hour Danton, always sober even when drunk, fixed Lazarus' eye. Danton smiled broadly, completely at ease. An almost perfect day.

‘So, what's the deal?'

Lazarus had been leaning back in the armchair like a beached whale. With a grunt he eased forward, trying to crease his barrel-shaped torso. He stubbed the expired cigar into the overfull ash tray. ‘This is the part I hate,' he said.

Danton's smile crumbled. He began recalling where his weapons were stashed around his apartment. The closest was the Glock: cabinet drawer behind the sofa he was sitting on. The Kalashnikov was in the kitchen. The sofa wasn't in line of sight of either the neighbouring apartments or those across the boulevard, but the cabinet was.
If
Lazarus had a sniper as back-up. Of course he did. Danton's front door, the only entrance, was reinforced iron, dead-bolted. But that hadn't stopped Lazarus.

‘My old friend.' Lazarus paused, a pained smile masking deathly seriousness.

Danton wondered if he'd survive a night-time leap from his second-floor apartment window. He reckoned he would. If he could get past Lazarus. Which wasn't likely.

‘Information.' Lazarus sat up, his eyes suddenly ablaze, in complete contrast to his weary-of-life voice. ‘That's all I need. Then I'll make it quick.'

Danton knew when his life had turned for the worst, when he'd gone from a potential Olympic contender, to a complete fucking nobody. But he'd clawed his way back up, and had a life now, such as it was. Friends at the gym, guys down the bar, a couple of whores he hung out with, and serious money from suits like Adamson every few months for a few hours' work. It didn't amount to a heap of crap, but he wasn't ready to call it quits. He stalled.

‘You never told me why they call you Lazarus.'

The Russian's eyes glowed, then dulled, as he looked away. He leaned forward again then heaved himself up, a man mountain, still in his buttoned coat despite the humid summer city air. He walked a few paces to the left of Danton, and stood with his back to the window, obliterating the streetlights outside. ‘I was nineteen.' He smiled, a real one, like Danton hadn't seen from Lazarus in a long time. ‘Her name was Sasha. We were driving in Moscow down by the frozen Moskva, you know, where the road winds along its banks.'

Lazarus left the window and drifted behind Danton, between the sofa and the pine cabinet. Danton heard a drawer slide open, something lifted. He mentally ran through options – the window, the Kalashnikov in the kitchen… He wouldn't make it. Lazarus was big and heavy, but
he'd seen him wrestle years earlier. The man could move fast when he needed to. And then there was the sniper; for sure Lazarus had another one covering the kitchen.

Lazarus continued as he came back around to the armchair, Glock hanging from his right hand. ‘I had my hand between her legs, her tongue was in my ear. Christ, I was nineteen, you remember being that young, don't you?'

Danton did. Most of it was in hospital, catching the German weightlifting finals on TV while he coughed up blood, the rib having punctured his lung, everything made worse by a botched facial reconstruction op. But a year earlier, at eighteen, was a different matter, he'd been on top of the world.

‘Yeah,' he said, ‘I do.'

Lazarus remained standing. ‘Well, I took my eyes off the road to take a good look at her, you know,' he waved the matt black Glock. ‘And drove straight through the barrier where some idiot had plunged into the river the week before. Just temporary plastic, not metal. Went through it at sixty, like it was paper.' He frowned, then smiled, almost laughed to himself. ‘You know in those Hollywood movies, when cars go sailing through the air?'

Danton nodded.

‘Well, it was just like that. For a moment, both of us were caught by the sheer exhilaration. We were flying, I mean really flying! Instead of screaming like any normal person, you know what she did?'

Danton looked up into that large mottled face, wondering if Lazarus could really kill him. Of course he could. ‘No,' he said.

‘She kissed me. I swear to God she kissed me. I'll never forget that kiss.'

Danton for the last time wondered if he could rush Lazarus, but the bear of a man was standing right in front of him, whereas he was sitting in a crummy sofa that he'd never get out of fast enough.

‘We hit the ice, front bumper first, rammed it, then the rear wheels smacked down behind. We skidded maybe fifty metres, the car spun twice, and all the time that hissing sound like when you're skiing on fresh snow. Then we came to a stop. For a moment we held our breath, couldn't believe our luck. Sasha and I burst out laughing, kissed again, and then… the sound of ice cracking, deep, like you hear when someone snaps a bone in your own body. We froze, looked each other in the eyes the way – well, you of all people know – and slowly opened the car doors. But there was another crack, like a whip. We sank into the river. So cold, the water was so unbe-fucking-lievably cold.'

Danton almost smiled. Symmetry. He was extracting a confession of sorts from Lazarus, and there would be a death. He nursed the last can of beer in clammy hands, downed it, wiped his lips. ‘She died, right?'

Lazarus stared down at him a long time before answering. ‘Sasha saved me. She was a
swimmer from one of the provinces, used to Siberian lakes. She hauled me onto the ice. I was much lighter then. A police car had seen it all, helped her. I was dead already. But the cold preserved me. They resuscitated me, brought me back. Hence the nickname.'

‘And Sasha?'

Lazarus' eyes glinted again. ‘Married her of course.' His face hardened. ‘She died three years later. Leukaemia.'

‘Fuck,' Danton said.

Lazarus sat down, the Glock pointing at Danton. ‘I'd rather not call in the others. We've known each other a long time. They're young, eager. Like we used to be. But they don't know shit, and they don't show respect.'

Danton had often wondered what his own victims thought about once they knew what was going down. Did their lives flash before their eyes? His didn't. He watched the Glock.

‘The Rose has disappeared. I was due to meet Sammy this morning, but he disappeared too. What did he tell you?'

Danton wanted to keep this professional – no, respectful – and he knew his job.

‘Janssen tried to double-cross Kadinsky – who I guess you're working for?'

Lazarus didn't deny it.

‘Sammy and the girl, Nadia, killed Janssen and the other two, Toby and Kilroy. She has the Rose, most likely in Land's End, the Cornish coast. She'll wait there for extraction.'

Lazarus fished out a small pad with a pencil attached. ‘The name of the CIA guy you're working for?'

‘Adamson. Bill Adamson.'

Lazarus wrote the name down and then put the pad away. Like it was Danton's death certificate. He wouldn't meet Danton's eyes.

Danton knew he had to say something, anything, to make himself still seem relevant, useful.

‘I don't think he's acting for the CIA on this one.'

Lazarus looked up. ‘Why?'

‘Different phone number, more cash than usual, he was just acting kind of nervous. The whole time. I asked a couple of questions and he cut me off. Besides, this Rose, it's too big to use me on the case. And Sammy would have cracked using less extreme measures.'

Lazarus pursed his lips a moment. ‘You think Adamson's gone rogue?'

Danton nodded. He waited a while, then added what he'd been thinking, shifting from useful informant to advisor.

‘Come to think of it, this one's too big for Kadinsky, isn't it? I even thought the Kremlin might come knocking.'

Lazarus stared down at the space between them. ‘The man has ambitions.'

Danton left it there, the seed, hoping it would take root fast.

But Lazarus heaved himself upright, and Danton knew it hadn't been enough.

The big man walked around behind him again, picking up a cushion on the way. Danton knew the Glock made no sound just before it fired, no giveaway click that the end was coming,
now
.

‘What about you?' Lazarus asked. ‘Anyone special in all your years?'

Danton's neck hairs were going haywire. Lazarus was right behind him. Danton could almost sense the short barrel aiming toward the back of his head, behind the cushion that would act as a crude silencer. He'd loaded the gun himself with dum-dums. At this range it would blow his face off. All that money spent on facial reconstruction, all for nothing. Everything had all been for nothing. A joke, just like that Jimi Hendrix song he could never remember the name of.

He thought about Lazarus' question. Any loves? Not really. There'd been a hooker, an English girl, Gloria she'd said her name was, though he never knew for sure. There'd been something there between the two of them for a while. It wasn't much, but it would have to do. ‘Gloria,' he said, closing his eyes, trying to remember her face from that one morning after he'd stayed the night and seen beneath the make-up.