SEVERANCE KILL (17 page)

The girl was waving a piece of paper at her. She grabbed it. It was a printed-out email. Krupina thought Yevgenia might have been about to slip it under the door of the lavatory.

Reinforcements authorised. Six men arriving in two lots, noon and six pm. Boy do you owe me.

It was something, at least. 

*

Scant light came in through the crack in the curtains. It could have been almost any time of the day or the evening, but Calvary’s watch said it was nearly nine a.m.

Beside him Nikola breathed steadily, eyes closed, though he knew she was awake. Her hair spilled across her face and his arm.

‘I didn’t say thanks,’ he murmured.

She lifted her head.

‘For saving my life up on the roof.’

‘No. You did not.’ Her lips smiled against his shoulder. ‘Well, maybe you just did.’

She pressed closer to him. He felt her breast against his side.

‘So. No wife?’

‘No.’

‘Girlfriend?’

‘Not right now.’

She raised herself onto her elbow, traced a finger along a scar on his chest. ‘A soldier.’

‘I was.’

‘Why?’

‘Why did I become a soldier?’ He tilted his head. ‘On a whim. I was at college, studying mechanics. A friend had joined the army and persuaded me to do the same.’

‘And now you are – some sort of agent?’

‘No. Not quite.’ He let out a long breath. ‘In any case, that’s also past. Once I’ve found Gaines, I’m through with all this.’ He felt the shutters coming down, the withdrawal into the shadows that was automatic every time anybody touched on what he did for a living. ‘What about you? What’s your story?’

‘I studied journalism here at Charles University. I was going to go into television, I had some contacts and a possible job at a junior level. I met Jakub at a party. His father had got into debt, had become involved with Blažek’s loan sharks. He turned to drink, abandoned the family, was found dead under a bridge one winter morning.’ She shrugged. ‘His story moved me.’

‘You and Jakub...’

She smiled. ‘No. We were only ever friends. He was married. She left him because she could not compete with his commitment to the cause, to the bringing down of Blažek. Now Jakub is alone. With us, but alone.’ She ran her palm up his chest once more. ‘Like you.’

When she fell silent he glanced down, saw she was weeping again. He moved his arm to embrace her.

‘I am sorry. I was just thinking of Jakub, of Max… just a boy. Tied down somewhere, being hurt.’

Hurt…

Tightness creased the spot between his brows. He sat up, reached across to the bedside table for the remote, turned on the television. Nikola blinked in surprise.

Calvary flicked past a blur of commercials and cartoons until he reached a news channel. Jerking cameras roved about the streets surrounding the multi-storey car park. Police uniforms were everywhere, sometimes barging the cameras aside.

A reporter was shouting to make herself heard, pointing back at the parkhouse. Calvary looked at Nikola.

She shook her head. ‘She says very little. There has been shooting in the parking lot, ambulances have been removing bodies.’ She sat up, pulling the covers over her. ‘For what are you looking?’

He said nothing for a few seconds, staring at the screen. Then he pointed: ‘There.’

The time signature in the corner indicated that earlier footage, an hour and a half old, was being shown. One of the cameras was aiming up at the roof, where a helicopter was taking off. The helicopter bore a red cross, the unmistakeable mark of hospital transport, not of a police vehicle.

‘Someone’s being airlifted out. It means they’re alive.’ He looked at her. ‘Not one of Janos’s men. They were stone cold dead. The Russian.’

She watched him, unsure.

Calvary swung his legs out of bed, started pulling on his clothes. ‘I have an idea.’

EIGHTEEN

Llewellyn’s cheery voice made him want to hurl the phone at the window.

‘Sorry I missed you earlier. No network coverage.’

Calvary had tried twice more, eventually getting a reply fifteen minutes after he’d risen from the bed. He didn’t say hello, just: ‘Any information on those Russians from last night?’

‘Yes, as it happens.’ Llewellyn rustled some paper. ‘The woman sounds like Darya Krupina. An old KGB member, too young to have seen much action before the Soviet Union collapsed. She’s had postings in Bratislava and Vienna. Interestingly she’s not on the list of staff at the Russian Embassy there in Prague, which means she’s there in an unofficial role. Assuming it’s her, of course. The picture you sent wasn’t the best.’

‘What about the others? The younger men?’

‘The fair-haired one is Gleb Tamarkin. Up-and-coming SVR chappie, likely being groomed for great things. He’s been on the radar for the past three years, mostly in the Central European field, though he cropped up in Paris once. Again, no record of him at the Embassy. We don’t recognise the others.’

‘And you were going to let me know this information when, exactly?’ Calvary tweaked the curtains, saw nothing but desultory traffic on the road.

‘I rather assumed you’d be in touch when you needed to be.’ Llewellyn sounded playfully hurt. ‘Didn’t want to ring you at an inconvenient time.’

Not looking at Nikola, Calvary said, ‘What about the other information I asked you for?’

‘Those journalist friends of yours? Nothing. No connection with Blažek or the Russians. They seem to be who they say they are. Unusual in our line of work.’ A soft chuckle. ‘The young lady’s rather attractive, isn’t she? I’ve seen her picture.’

‘Shut up and listen.’ Calvary told him about the events at the parkhouse.

When he had finished Llewellyn said, ‘Well. That’s a turn up, if this young hoodlum Janos was telling the truth. A turncoat SVR officer, working for organised crime.’

‘It’s possible the Russian knows where Gaines is being kept. The trouble is I shot him, and I don’t know if he’s in any condition to talk, or if he’s still alive, even. I’ve got to try the hospitals.’ Another quick peek through the curtains. Force of habit. ‘I need you to tell me about this Tamarkin. Any aliases he might go under.’

‘I can enquire.’

‘Quickly, Llewellyn. And be as exhaustive as you can. I’m only going to get one shot at this.’

Nikola was perched on the edge of the bed, watching him. Calvary said to her, ‘I’ll tell you what I have in mind as soon as I get a reply.’

Llewellyn rang back in five minutes.

*

It took Nikola a fraction of that time to search the internet on her phone for the hospital served by the air ambulance. She gave Calvary the number.

The switchboard operator put him through to the trauma unit. He waited, on hold, before a harassed-sounding staff member of unspecified rank diverted him to the operating theatre. From there he was transferred to the post-op surgical ward.

Each time he repeated the litany, in glottic Russian.
My name is Valery Petrov and I’m calling from the Embassy of the Russian Federation. I am urgently trying to determine the whereabouts of a Russian citizen who I understand was shot this morning and may have undergone emergency surgery. His given name is Gleb Tamarkin but he may be using another.

At last a young female voice called off into the background and he heard the receiver being laid down. Footsteps, then a middle-aged male growl. ‘
Da?
’

Calvary got to the part about the whereabouts of the Russian citizen when the voice cut in: ‘Name again?’

‘My name? Valery Petrov, senior public liaison officer. My staff ID number is 83774. My immediate superior is Mr Konstantin Churyenko, contact telephone number –’

‘All right, yes.’ The voice was gruff. Calvary had pulled all of it out of the air – title, number, names. Sound confident enough and you can get away with a great deal, he’d learned.

‘I’m Dr Grossman. An hour ago I operated on a man who gave a Russian name.’

Calvary felt a clutch of elation. He realised the surgeon was waiting for him to speak.

‘Doctor, the man I’m looking for is called Gleb Tamarkin. However, he may be using an alias.’ He lowered his tone, making it grave, though not conspiratorial; he didn’t want to overdo it. ‘This man occupies rather a sensitive position at our embassy.’

If the surgeon was impressed he didn’t let it show in his voice. ‘What alias?’

‘Possibly one of the following.’ He ran through the list Llewellyn had provided. ‘Adam Livschitz. Mikhail Dubrovsky. Gennady –’

‘Dubrovsky. That’s your man.’ Calvary heard the rasp of a stubbled cheek against the receiver. ‘Got himself shot in the belly and the leg with a handgun. My job was the easy part. The abdominal shot missed all the vitals, passed through the muscles in his flank. The orthopaedics team are working on his leg now. It’s messy.’

‘He’s still in theatre?’

‘That’s what I said.’ The surgeon sounded testy now.

‘Thank you. We’ll be sending a representative down as soon as possible.’

‘No questions for him, for a while. A few hours, at least. I’ve put the police off as well.’

Calvary said, ‘Dr Grossman, you’ve been extremely helpful. My country is grateful.’

‘Sure.’ The surgeon put the phone down even before finishing the syllable.

Calvary crammed the phone in his pocket, picked up the Browning. Checked the magazine. Five bullets fired, eight left.

To Nikola he said, ‘How far to the hospital?’

*

The man’s head rocked back, the guy with the hooded eyes. He blew snot and blood and fragments of teeth on to the floor.

Bartos stepped away, breathing heavily, shaking his dripping fists. The guy’s face was a mess, one eye swollen closed, but still he glared at Bartos with that lizard look.

No respect.

Beside Bartos, Pavel cracked his knuckles. He was limping a little. Bartos knew the sign: he’d been kicked in the balls, though he wasn’t admitting it.

Bartos’s throat was sore. For an hour he’d screamed himself hoarse. The bellowing storm of rage that normally battered its terrified targets into obedience hadn’t worked.

In a moment he’d go next door, see how Miklos was getting on with the other one, the skinny kid with the stupid hair.

He let Pavel have a go, watched him wade in with fists and boots. The man toppled time and again in his chair and was pulled upright. He never looked at Pavel; always his stare came back to Bartos.

Pavel was moving in again when Bartos said, ‘Wait.’ He strode forward, bent his head so that his ear was near the man’s moving lips.

The sound was barely a whisper. Bartos turned his head to try to decipher the words the lips were forming.

‘Pig,’ hissed the man, and he spat in Bartos’s face. Laughed.

Bartos straightened. His self control was, he thought, remarkable. He turned, walked slowly back towards the wall. Three paces, four.

He drew the pistol from his belt, a CZ-TT nine millimetre. Good Czech workmanship. Bartos was nothing if not patriotic.

*

‘No answer at his flat.’

Arkady stood in the doorway. Krupina waved him in. The nausea had passed; she’d managed to keep down some tea. Felt better.

‘You didn’t force your way in, by any chance?’

‘Of course.’ A faint smile. ‘Unobtrusively. No sign of him, no evidence of any struggle.’

‘And you last spoke to him when?’

‘The same time as you, boss. Just before we all left for the night.’

A missing operative. Krupina should go to the Embassy to report it. Endure their scorn, their laughter. Their jokes about milk cartons.

Failing that, she should contact her superior at SVR headquarters in Moscow. Face his quiet, slow-burning anger. She’d already had to call him twice, once to make arrangements for Oleg’s body to be repatriated, the second time to ask for more men.

She thought of her father, the scarred stumps of his legs that he’d brandished like trophies. His proof of having lived in the service of his country. Where was hers?

She got up, left her office. Arkady followed. At her desk Yevgenia looked up expectantly.

‘Can you get a GPS trace on Gleb’s phone?’

‘Yes, of course.’ The young woman set to work.

Krupina prowled about the larger office, reluctant to return to the stuffy confines of her own room. Also, she acknowledged to herself, she wanted to demonstrate to the others, Yevgenia and Arkady and Lev, that she was fit and well. Or at least ambulant.

In less than ten minutes Yevgenia said, ‘I have it.’

Krupina peered at the screen. The girl homed in. Identified the cross streets, entered the details into a search engine.

‘It’s a hospital.’

*

The man was leaning against the wall of the alley beside two enormous wheeled dumpster-like containers almost overflowing with linen. He wore overalls with the hospital’s name stencilled across the chest, and was smoking a cigarette. He glanced at Calvary as he approached, then looked away again.

In Russian Calvary said: ‘You work here?’

‘Have a guess.’ The man concentrated on his cigarette.

‘I’m a doctor. I left my pager in my scrubs and they’ve been thrown in the waste. Mind if I take a look?’

The man laughed, glanced at the linen containers. ‘Needles and haystacks. But knock yourself out.’

Calvary found a crate and climbed up on it, peering down into the container. They’d circled the hospital in the rented VW to get a feel for the layout, and had spotted the bay round the back where loading and offloading was done. The hospital wasn’t the one Calvary had approached earlier, where he’d been ambushed by Janos and his men. This one looked bigger, sleeker, more modern.

The container was a riot of cloth, bloodied or stained or merely grubby. He rummaged, careful not to tip too far forward and fall in. Sheets, towels, hospital gowns. He found a gown with only a smear of blood on it.

He rolled the garment up as tightly as he could and stuffed it under his jacket, which he zipped up. He found the upper half of a pair of scrubs but not the lower. Eventually he tugged out a white coat, unstained. It looked about the right size. This too he crammed under his jacket.

He stepped down, said over his shoulder to the smoking man, ‘There’s no chance I’ll find it in there. Don’t know what I was thinking.’

Another laugh. ‘Told you so. Hope it doesn’t get you into too much trouble, pal.’

Round the corner, on the other side of a grassy verge, Nikola sat in the car. He climbed in and unzipped his jacket.

She pulled on the white coat – it was a size too big, but that added authenticity if anything – while Calvary slipped out of his jacket and wrapped the gown across his torso, arching to tie the knot at the back. He kept the rest of his clothes on under the gown, and his boots. Rolled his sleeves up.

Calvary glanced in the wing mirror, saw a police car turning up the road running along the side of the hospital and heading towards them.

He grabbed Nikola and clamped his mouth over hers. She stiffened, startled; then he saw her eye, close up, swivel to the back window and she understood. She responded, winding her arms round his neck. Over her head Calvary saw the police car cruise past, the man in the passenger seat gazing at them, grinning and saying something.

‘They’re past now,’ Calvary managed to say, but Nikola continued a while longer. Eventually she broke away.

They cruised the perimeter of the hospital again until Calvary spotted what he was looking for and pointed. Outside another service door a carelessly scattered fleet of stretchers had been left unattended, like trolleys in a supermarket car park. One or two had blankets piled haphazardly on them.

Nikola pulled into one of the public car parking areas and while Calvary waited in the passenger seat, she trotted over to the trolleys and purloined one, together with some blankets. Back at the car they peered around. Cars were arriving and departing but everybody appeared too preoccupied with their own problems to notice a white-coated woman helping an apparently bleeding man out of a car and onto a gurney.

It was better they played it this way round, Calvary had decided. That Nikola be the doctor and he the patient. Anyone such as a security guard or policeman who might have grounds to be looking out for an intruder would notice Nikola first and unconsciously discount her as a threat; her patient would probably not warrant a second glance, as long as he didn’t ham up his performance too much.

They left both guns in the car, the Browning under the seat and the Glock in the glove compartment. He’d thought about bringing one of them in but decided the risk of discovery was too great.

Nikola pushed him at a brisk pace around to the main entrance. The automatic doors slid open with futuristic speed and they were inside. From his supine position Calvary saw the emergency room waiting area was much like the ones in hospitals of similar size in London: a few people dotted about on the seats, sleeping or muttering while supporting bleeding hands, the floor stinking of sour drink and scrubbed-away vomit, the bins overflowing with wrappers and soft-drink cans. Behind a desk a desultory pair of clerks ate and drank and listened to a radio.