66 Metres (23 page)

***

Nadia stood in the night-time shadows, in the entrance of a closed jewellers. She'd waited a while then seen the CIA man exit the
Grande
. He was good, and she'd had to hang back a long way, but luck was in her favour for once, and her instinct had proven correct. There were two massage parlours in Hugh Town, but this one was on a deserted street, closest to the hotel and furthest from the police station.

She checked her watch. 11:35pm. In theory the parlour closed at midnight. She backed into the shadows. CIA man walked past the parlour, glanced both ways down the street, even looked in her direction once, though she was hidden well enough, and then turned back to the parlour. The door tinkled as he went in. She glimpsed inside the garish pink reception. The legal part of the financial transaction was over pretty quickly, and he disappeared from the front of the shop.

Nadia stayed put. She recalled when Kadinsky had invited some Chinese guests, and brought in some Russian-speaking Chinese prostitutes in case they didn't fancy the local girls. One of them, a translator, befriended Katya and Nadia after the business negotiations, and told them how it worked in China, but also in massage parlours around Europe. The first ten to fifteen minutes was usually straight massage, then the girl would edge closer to genital territory, and see how the guy reacted. She'd gone into a lot of detail. Katya devoured it all, wanting to know special massage techniques for speeding up, sustaining or slowing down a man's desire, or getting his dick up in the first place if things weren't working properly. Nadia had excused herself from the more graphic episodes.

She glanced at her watch. Eight minutes. It was late, so the girl might start teasing him early, or the guy might just come right out and ask her, and Nadia didn't particularly want to see his dick. She came out of the shadows and walked over to the shop.

The door tinkled again as she entered, and Nadia took a look around. A lacquered wooden counter, a full-length fake porcelain mannequin with all the meridians and acupuncture points inscribed from head to toe in red and black ink, some posters of Chinese landscapes, and a price list. A woman appeared from a back room on the other side of the counter, her heavily made-up face smiling, a question mark hidden beneath her wrinkles. Nadia didn't smile back, instead looked pissed off and bored as she flashed an official-looking card written in German with the word INTERPOL in large letters, her photo to one side. She'd never used it before, one of the stocks in trade in her survival pack, a graduation present from Kadinsky's training camp. The woman's smile shrank into a thin straight line.

‘I'll make this quick,' Nadia said. ‘I can shut this place down, or I can go and have a discussion with the last client who came in. I'm not interested in the other guys currently having their dicks oiled.'

The woman gaped a moment, then spoke. ‘Number four.'

Nadia walked through the bead curtain and passed through a heavy swing door into a narrow corridor. Dim light bulbs inside red paper lanterns barely lit the bamboo-pattern wallpaper and plush carpet. Six wooden doors, each one numbered. As she passed door number two, she heard a man moaning, a girl whispering, then giggling. She moved on and stood outside door number four. Beyond were two more facing doors, and a light glaring from a bathroom with a washing machine churning away quietly. To its right a small child appeared, big eyes poking around the corner before his mother's head and arm appeared, smiling briefly before the child was snatched out of view. Good, a rear exit.

Nadia listened. No sound. Still in the straight massage stage. She checked her Beretta, then opened the door a sliver so she could see. The guy was on his stomach, butt-naked. His head was supported by a towelled ring, and faced the floor. He was flabby, out of shape, middle-aged spread taken hold. A youngish girl was working hard on his lower back, but also occasionally caressing his buttocks with her finger-tips. As she did so, he made a soft encouraging noise. The girl giggled. ‘You like?'

Nadia stole into the room as the guy replied, ‘Oh yeah,' in an American accent.

The girl's head jerked in Nadia's direction with a startled look. She wasn't particularly pretty, but Nadia guessed most men coming here didn't care.

Nadia put her finger across her lips, and gestured for the girl to continue. The girl's eyes went large when she noticed the Beretta in Nadia's other hand.

‘Can I turn over yet?' the guy asked.

The girl looked to Nadia who shook her head.

‘Not yet,' the girl said.

The girl carried on massaging, but her hands stayed well out of the erotic zone. Nadia crept forwards, picked up a towel and put it over the end of the nozzle of her Beretta, then manoeuvred it into position, between his buttocks.

He flinched, then relaxed. ‘That's different,' he said.

Nadia kept her voice level. ‘Actually there's a Beretta pointing straight up your ass. If you move, I'll pull the trigger.'

His muscles came alive for a moment – not so flabby after all – then he relaxed again. He didn't try to get up.

Nadia glared at the terrified girl who had backed against a wall. ‘Get out,' she said.

The girl fled.

‘If that's really a Beretta, you'll blow my brains out,' he said.

‘Too much gristle. Bullet should make it to your heart, though.'

‘What do you want, Nadia?'

He was good. Smart and cool, not such a frequent combination. But she needed to keep control of the situation, ask the questions. ‘There's another guy –'

‘Danton. Mean. Sadistic. Tortured your buddy Sammy, then smashed his skull in with a hammer.'

Nadia's trigger finger tensed. So, he already knew. She noticed his left hand twitch, a small grey ring around his little finger.

Nadia pushed the gun a little further to remind him who was in control. ‘I said don't move.'

The hand stilled. Was there something inside it?

‘Again, Nadia, what do you want?'

Dammit, he was taking charge, even with a gun up his ass. ‘To live. That's top goal on my list.'

‘It's not mine,' he said.

Tricky answer. For a moment she considered she might have picked the wrong one out of the two. She could kill him now. But she'd not been able to kill Janssen even when he'd been shooting at her. In any case, she had no silencer, and there were now two witnesses. She'd have to kill them, then the other one around the corner, and then the kid… A bloodbath. Never going to happen. Anyway, the police would descend on her, and she'd spend a short spell in prison until one of Kadinsky's goons got to an inmate and soon afterwards she'd have an unfortunate accident. And Katya would already be long dead by then.

But what if she killed this CIA agent afterwards, on the way back to his hotel? Plan B. But she wouldn't. Or couldn't. At least not yet. Maybe in self-defence, if the situation arose again, she could pull the trigger. But not in cold blood, not assassin-style, not like…

She pulled back the gun. Plan A, then. ‘Take him – Danton – out of the equation.'

‘That
is
on my list, believe me.'

She did, because he must have been the one who'd ratted out Danton.

‘I mean kill him
before
I retrieve the Rose.'

Silence. Then: ‘You don't like to kill, do you Nadia? Does it occur to you you're in the wrong business?'

‘Don't profile me. Besides, don't like and don't do aren't the same thing.'

‘How did it feel when you shot Janssen in the face, Nadia?'

Nadia did a double-take. So, he'd been there during Sammy's interrogation. And Sammy had lied, to protect her, to make out that she was stronger than she seemed, whether to this guy or to Kadinsky. It couldn't have been easy.
Thank you, Sammy
. But then anger flooded in.

‘How did it feel watching Sammy being tortured, asshole?'

‘There you go again. Unprofessional. It's just business, Nadia. Enough, I'm starting to get cold. Retrieve the device tomorrow, I'll take care of Danton.'

And then it would be just the two of them.

She asked the next question, knowing she wouldn't be able to trust the answer. ‘Is killing me on your list?'

‘No. But I'd bet good money it's on Danton's. But I will do whatever it takes to get the device.' He lifted his head for the first time, and turned to face her. ‘Will you?'

She thought about it, and about Plan B. ‘What are you holding in your left hand?'

‘Insurance,' he said. ‘And if you're thinking of waiting for me outside, or entering my hotel, don't. There's a lot more to killing than being a good shot. Besides, I'm betting only one of us has a silencer.'

She wasn't winning this, at best she was breaking even. This guy probably had twenty-five years in the field, a seasoned pro. If she had a serious amount of money, she'd ask him to kill Kadinsky. This one might be able to pull it off.

‘You know my name. What do I call you?' she asked.

‘Bill.'

She turned and walked to the door.

‘Send the girl back in here, please,' Bill said, turning his head back. ‘It'll be best all round, trust me.'

Nadia closed the door behind her, walked back to the reception, and found the girl there with the older woman.

‘He'd like you to finish the massage,' Nadia said to the girl. ‘Thank you for your co-operation,' she said to the older one, then left.

Outside, she wondered what more she could have expected. She was an amateur compared to Bill. She'd actually kidded herself she could frighten the guy. Anyway, at least she'd gotten the measure of one of her opponents. Definitely freelance, otherwise he would have threatened her with how his CIA buddies would track her to the four corners of the globe if she harmed him, that kind of crap. No, a lone wolf, razor teeth. Also, she now knew the name of the other one, though not what he looked like.

She began walking, considering scenarios. Number one was that Jake had shopped her, and SAS or whoever would descend on the Scillies in the morning. But she was sure that if he'd done that, police would have been scouring Hugh Town for her right now. What she hoped was that he'd help her retrieve it, for his own reasons. And then… well, then it would get difficult.

Back to the other scenarios. Even if Bill killed Danton, he would try to take the Rose from her, and that meant killing her. But she had no idea of what her alternative might be, no strategy. It occurred to her that she was bringing others into this deadly game. Pete, Ben, even Elise. She had no right to do so. Jake, yes. But only him.

She got up and headed back to the inn.

She had found Bill, so maybe she should go find Danton, take the game to him. But that meant walking into his lair, the torturer with his hammer… She shivered, imagining Sammy's last moments, before his beautiful head of hair was caved in. Could she kill Danton in cold blood? She thought of Sammy, those pictures on the news, and walked on, arriving at her temporary home. Maybe she finally could. She'd got the measure of Bill, to an extent. She didn't really want to try the same with Danton. She had a feeling that if he got near enough to her, it would all be over. He was a torturer. He liked things up close and personal. If she could keep distance between them, she had a chance. And then a thought occurred.

She wondered if Danton could shoot.

Chapter Thirteen

Danton's leg hurt like hell. He shifted his weight, though he knew that when it was like this, changing position made no difference. Trying not to clench his teeth, he took a sip of whiskey from his hip flask, savouring it as it warmed the back of his throat. He closed his eyes and remembered. A headline car crash fifteen years ago: he'd bet his younger brother Paul that he could top 250 kmh on the autobahn. He'd won the bet, but some fucking asshole, high on coke, a prick who never even saw what hit him, entered the motorway going the wrong way. Paul had time to scream once. Danton had woken up on an operating table, an enthusiastic surgeon beaming at him.

‘You were dead,' the surgeon said. ‘Four minutes. It's a miracle!'

Danton glanced around, but Paul wasn't anywhere to be seen; Death had claimed him. That was when the pain kicked in.

Eighteen months with his leg in a stainless steel scaffold, twenty pins piercing his skin, running all the way through his calf and upper thigh, trying to re-establish the form of a shattered leg that by rights should have been amputated. The surgeon had been a reconstruction specialist, Danton's luck the guy had been working at the hospital that night. So now he could walk – run even – and lift weights, but the pain resurfaced every now and again with a vengeance, as if Death knew he'd been cheated and exacted a heavy price.

Drugs didn't work, except morphine, and then he couldn't function. In any case the docs wouldn't prescribe it any more. But he knew how to get hold of it, and had a stash just in case. Five years earlier one of the docs concluded the pain was more in Danton's head than real. Danton had thought a lot about killing that particular doctor. He fantasised about it when his leg hurt, like right now: he'd strap the guy down, and begin sawing the doc's leg off just above the knee, and through the guy's screaming, would ask in a calm voice if the doc could truly feel anything, if it was real, or was only in his head.

Danton took another swig and pocketed the flask. Trouble was, he knew the doc had been partly right, because there was one foolproof way to make the pain disappear. When Danton killed, the pain vanished. Sammy had kept him good for a few days. But the pain had returned quicker this time. He needed another fix – Nadia, Adamson – they would keep him good for weeks. With the very thought of it, the pain eased off a little, and he opened his eyes.

His surroundings were homey: faded wallpaper peppered with old photos of people long dead; beaten-up sofa; scratched wooden table with a stained tablecloth; and a teak desk marred by chips knocked out of it over the years. Everything was old, decaying, like Mrs Higgs, the widowed white-haired owner, though she stood pretty straight and was no pushover, as evidenced by her short speech outlining her conditions when he'd phoned her after finding the small ad in a local newsagent.