Haven (2 page)

The town was a marvel, Purkiss couldn’t help noticing; a compact warren of Norman and Baroque splendour. The crowds made surreptitious surveillance relatively straightforward. Again Motruk walked with purpose, as though familiar with his surroundings.

The Ukrainian stopped by an archway beyond which a shadowed, narrow flight of stairs led upwards. He checked his watch, then headed up the steps. Once More Purkiss gave it three seconds, then crossed the street and peered up the steps. At the top was the faux-ancient oak door of a restaurant.

His options were limited. Either he watched the archway, taking note of everybody who came and went, in the hope of later identifying someone who might be meeting Motruk for purposes unknown. Or – the brazen approach – he could stroll into the restaurant himself, hoping Motruk wouldn’t somehow recognise him, and get a table as close as he could to Motruk’s.

No contest.

Purkiss mounted the steps and pushed the door open, the temporary cool of the stairway giving way to the kitchen heat beyond. The place was crowded with late lunchers. Waiters bustled about, none yet free to offer Purkiss a table, which gave him a chance to survey the room.

He stepped back as swiftly an surreptitiously as he could, back through the door, letting it swing shut behind him, his instincts driving him before his forebrain had time to process what he’d seen.

In a booth in the far corner of the restaurant, his profile visible, was Motruk. Across the table from him sat another man.

Leon Silverman, the SIS agent Purkiss had met in Valletta.

Purkiss had time to register that he’d been sloppy, unforgivably so, as the hand on his shoulder jerked him roughly forwards without letting go its grip.

There were two of them, so close he could smell aftershave and minty breath. The man on his right had hold of his shoulder. The one on the left pressed a hard metallic object into his flank. Purkiss didn’t need to glance down because all he’d gain was possibly to identify the make of the gun, and that was an irrelevance.

After descending the steps he’d stood in the bright afternoon street, considering. There was now no question of going into the restaurant and trying to get close to Motruk; Silverman would recognise him immediately. Purkiss couldn’t call Silverman’s colleague, Cass, because she too might have dealings with Motruk.

What was certain was that if Purkiss had been straying outside his jurisdiction earlier, this was most definitely his business now. An SIS agent fraternising with a known enemy.

He decided to set up watch outside the restaurant and resume his tagging of Motruk when he emerged. Silverman would be the harder man to follow because he was trained in countersurveillance. Purkiss walked down the street, looking for a suitable vantage point, when the two men moved in from behind him.

They marched him in the same direction he’d been heading. By turning his head a fraction he was able to make out some of the details of the man to his right. Dark hair, tanned. Young, probably in his twenties, and wearing a suit with no tie.

‘What’s going on?’ Purkiss murmured.

The gun barrel twisted into his flank. He was fishing for data: languages, accents. The men said nothing.

Ahead and to the left, a broad piazza opened up, leading to an impressive domed building. A noticeboard announced that this was St Paul’s Cathedral. Tourists milled across the piazza, snapping photographs, consulting maps and guidebooks.

It was a cliché beloved of fiction, Purkiss knew, that a true professional fighter feared a knife more than a gun. This was in his experience only the case if the person with the weapon was in fact a professional himself. Even an amateur with a handgun could do enormous damage inadvertently. And when the gun was pressed up against you as this one was, you didn’t take foolish risks, because there was no chance at all that the gunman would miss, whether or not he was a pro.

Unless he had qualms about pulling the trigger in the first place.

Whoever these men were, Purkiss doubted they were prepared to kill him in public, otherwise they could have easily done so already. They were crossing a busy square in a small town, with a visible police presence, he’d noticed, and the points of exit from the town were restricted.

With a twist and a shrug of his shoulder Purkiss freed himself from the man’s grip and at the same time he pivoted to his left and stepped away from the gun barrel and began striding across the piazza towards the cathedral.

The adrenaline surge made him catch his breath because it was possible the gunman would fire as a reflex, was possible that Purkiss had miscalculated and the man was taking a bead on him now and was going to gun him down, execution-style, but the moment passed and he heard muttered shouts behind him. He picked up the pace, dodging stationary clumps of tourists, heading straight for the cathedral doors. No hands grabbed at his collar. As he’d suspected, they didn’t want to attract attention.

Inside, the cathedral was cool and echoing. More tourists strolled about, their voices low. High above, the vault showed scenes from a life; St Paul’s, Purkiss assumed. He made his way up the central aisle towards the altar.

He didn’t know if the men were local Maltese; but he’d heard the saying that the only way to cross a road in Rome without the slightest chance of being run over was to be accompanied by a nun. Perhaps the men were similarly God fearing and would avoid entering a holy place for underhand purposes.

No such luck. At the front pew he turned and looked back. The men had entered and were standing one on either side of the doors, watching him. Feet apart, hands crossed in front of them. Gangster poses. They both wore suits, and looked so alike they might have been brothers, or cousins at least.

He faced them fully. They stared back across the length of the cathedral. Clearly they were willing to wait. At some point, in an hour or two, the cathedral would close to the public and Purkiss would be forced to leave. The men would then take possession of him again.

He needed to force their hand.

Purkiss pulled out his phone and muttered nonsensical words into it, holding the men’s gaze. They didn’t quite glance at one another, but there was a subtle shift in their demeanour. Reinforcements might make life difficult for them.

They began to advance, one coming up the centre aisle and one up the side where the tourists were fewest. The logical step would be for Purkiss to head down the other side, but the man in the centre would then easily be able to slip sideways between the pews and intercept him.

Instead Purkiss waited.

The man coming up the middle – the man who’d had the gun earlier, though Purkiss assumed they were both armed – reached him first. Purkiss extended his hand.

‘Let’s talk.’

The man stopped, looking momentarily bewildered by Purkiss’s approach. Purkiss smiled and at the same time kicked the man in the shin, a hard pistoning drive of the instep of his loafer against the unpadded strip of bone. It was hardly an incapacitating injury but it produced a sudden shock of pain, always. The man winced and leaped back and Purkiss moved in quickly, ramming the stiffened extended fingers of his hand underneath the man’s breastbone. He grabbed him under the arms as he sagged and lowered him to the pew.

The second man was almost on him but Purkiss yelled, ‘Somebody help, please. I think he’s having a heart attack,’ and immediately the crowd began closing in and the second man was jostled aside. Sprawled on the pew, the first man was half-conscious, his eyelids fluttering, his face mushroom-grey and waxy.

Purkiss kept up a stream of patter –
I don’t know him, he just collapsed, can anyone do CPR
– while he manoeuvred himself towards the periphery of the crowd gathering at the front of the cathedral, putting distance between himself and the second man. The man moved back and started heading down the side again. At the doors of the cathedral Purkiss looked back and saw the man running after him, gaining ground, barging people.

Purkiss stepped through the doors and waited against the wall on one side of them, blinking in the sudden brightness. A young family stepped back in surprise as the man shoved through the doors. Purkiss hooked the man’s ankle with his foot and the man launched forwards, landing heavily in the dust. Pushing himself away from the wall, Purkiss kicked the man in the head, not a killing blow but an incapacitating one. Without breaking stride he set off rapidly across the piazza.

*

He moved at random through the streets, letting the adrenaline burn itself out, checking methodically for tags and then rechecking. In the shelter of a doorway he stopped and took out the phone he’d lifted from inside the jacket of the man he’d dropped in the cathedral.

The contact folder was full of Italian names. Purkiss opened the ‘recent calls’ list. The last call had been made at 4.05 p.m. Half an hour ago. There was no name attached to the number.

Purkiss dialled it, waited.

On the second ring it was answered.

‘Si?’

Purkiss said nothing.

‘Quello che sta succedendo?’

What’s going on?
Except that wasn’t quite right. Purkiss was fluent in Italian, but the words the man at the other end was using were a little different.

Purkiss rang off. He recognised the dialect. It was Sicilian.

*

Dusk brought a drop in the heat, but the air was still balmy. In the marina below, the sea shifted and glittered. Across from Purkiss the crenellated walls of Valletta towered against the evening sky. The streets on this side of the peninsula overlooking the bay were crowded and raucous, the seafood restaurants and pubs packed to spilling.

Purkiss stood in the shadows ten yards from the door of the British High Commission and waited.

A phone call half an hour ago had established that Paula Cass was still in the building. He had hung up before he could be put through. There’d been little point going back to the restaurant in Mdina and waiting for either Motruk or Silverman to emerge. It was a small town, and the Sicilians would have backup, possibly on their way already. Purkiss had headed immediately back to the car park outside the entrance to the town and made his way back to Valletta.

He’d been watching the High Commission for three hours.

At a little after eight p.m. she came through the doors, in a lightweight summer jacket and carrying a briefcase. She looked tired, harassed. She was alone.

Purkiss pressed back into his doorway to let her pass, then stepped out after her. As she drew level with an alley between a restaurant and a block of flats he closed in and brought the edge of his hand against her neck, aiming for the carotids.

It was a blow designed for use from the side or the front and instinct made her turn slightly and bring her shoulder up so that his knife-hand caught the trapezius muscle between her neck and shoulder. She pivoted, jabbing an elbow into his abdomen, but he tightened in time, simultaneously getting an arm across her throat and bringing his other fist in a hammerblow against her forehead. She sagged, and he supported her.

A group of passersby turned to stare and Purkiss said, ‘Whoops. One too many,’ and hoisted her across his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. Down the alley and behind the block of flats was his rental car in a pool of darkness. He opened the boot and lowered her into it. Her pulse was there, weak but steady, and she was breathing normally. With a roll of duct tape he bound her wrists and ankles. He left her mouth unsealed. She was a professional; she’d know that calling out wouldn’t work.

*

Purkiss drove southwest, heading vaguely in the direction of the megaliths he’d visited a couple of days earlier, where the roads were rough and potholed and rocky scrubland predominated. When it felt isolated enough he pulled the car in and opened the boot. Cass glared up at him, dishevelled, her face streaked with sweat.

He hauled her out and tore free the tape around her ankles, then pushed her stumbling down a slope to a stone wall on the edge of a field. At the wall he turned her to face him. The implications of the remote setting were clear.

‘What are you doing?’ she said. Her voice was surprisingly steady.

‘Silverman’s working with Motruk,’ Purkiss said. ‘I saw them in a restaurant in Mdina this afternoon. Right before I was ambushed by two armed Sicilians.’

‘What did you –’ It came out quickly. She had diplomatic responsibilities, Purkiss supposed. He shook his head.

‘They’ll live. But Motruk’s clearly involved with them. He met a group of them at the Freeport Terminal before he went to Mdina.’ He began to roll his sleeves up. ‘Neither you nor Silverman seemed interested when I mentioned Motruk was in Malta. You didn’t seem all that surprised, either. I thought perhaps that was because you’d already spotted him. But you’ve got no surveillance on him. And then I catch Silverman breaking bread with the man.’

She stared at his eyes. There was calculation going on there. Was she planning a move of some kind? With her hands taped together behind her? Purkiss thought perhaps she was considering what to tell him.

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘But not in the way you think. Silverman did go to meet Motruk, and I knew about it. I’ve met Motruk. And he is dealing with the Sicilians.’

‘But?’

‘But he’s one of ours. Motruk is an SIS agent.’

‘Have you heard of the
kaw kaw
?’

Cass was rubbing the circulation back into her chafed wrists, flexing her fingers. On the road above them a car slowed for a moment, then drove on.

Purkiss shook his head.

‘Local legend. The
kaw kaw
,’ she said, ‘takes different forms according to different versions of the story. Some say it’s a grey, slug-like creature, others a giant that strides across Malta and the other islands in the archipelago. Either way, it has the ability to detect the presence of guilt wherever it goes, and to force its way into the houses of the guilty.’