The Ninth Circle

by Dominic Adler

  I gulped the hot coffee, the warm liquid running down my chin. My face ached, a sharp pain in my teeth and jaw. “You are Fyodor Volk.” I said “and in Dante the Seventh Circle is Violence? The Eighth is Fraud.”

  “You are correct on all counts, and Sergei Belov is a fraud and a betrayer. Pieter told me that you and the SVR woman had figured out my identity. This intrigues me. I am flattered that anybody remembers my antics, I thought I was a relic of a time when things were done … differently.”

  “The Commandant at the FSB school at Makhachkala was an aficionado of Dante,” I said.

  “Indeed he was,” said Volk, “you see? What an intriguing footnote. How did you know that?”

  “One of the FSB men, the man you tried to crucify, told me.”

  “Ah, so he went to the school too? Yes, I remember the knuckle-dragging morons of the Spetzgruppa trying to learn the art. Your rescue of him was audacious and amusing, but pointless. My people bashed his head into a paste with their rifle butts when we captured you.”

  “He was brave.”

  “Perhaps he was. The Inferno has many lessons. Perhaps the best lesson I learnt at that place.”

  My eyes began to focus. I was in a dimly-lit hospital operating theatre. It was dirty, with mildewed walls, trash littering the floor. I looked at the radiators and plug sockets, which were of the sort you get in Britain. I was still in the UK. In the background I heard the chugging of a solitary vehicle engine. “Colonel Turov knows of you. She thought you were working for the FSB.”

  “The FSB?” said Volk lightly, “ah, those were the days. We parted amicably, but they couldn’t keep up with me, or my … techniques. Their tame psychiatrist deemed me insane, you see. Such a diagnosis is just an opinion which I took exception to, naturally. I still work for the FSB occasionally, if the mark suits my purpose and their fee is generous enough. I am their creation, after all.”

  “Can I ask a question?” I said.

  “Of course, I am an open book. But then you will answer my questions, as a simple courtesy.”

  “What do you mean when you say this is all because of love? And how did you do it, get those people to fight for you?”

  He laughed as he pulled off the mask, running a gloved hand through thick, raven-black hair. “That is two questions, Captain Winter.” Fyodor Volk was beautiful. I was man enough to admit it. His face was like one of those tortured, alabaster angels from a Michelangelo. He smiled, those green eyes burning into mine, “Love? I am in love with Pieter, of course.”

  “How did that happen?” I said.

  “We met in South Africa, when I was between operations. He had heard rumours about me from his research, from leaked documents and the like. Pieter is a genius, a natural detective if you will. He hired me to kill Sergei Belov, but we fell in love. This is why he has never leaked the truth about me. Later on, when a whistle-blower from the FSB leaked the file to Pieter I found out more about The Betrayer, Belov. It is something that justifies any action to destroy him.”

  “So Pieter gets to choose who gets exposed on his website and who doesn’t? He’s the judge?”

  “Yes,” grinned Volk, pleased with the simplicity of his answer. “Information is a weapon, you must realise that. It has taken me time to persuade Pieter of this, but now he accepts the truth. It’s no different than a rifle or a knife – you use it against your enemy. Governments once had that monopoly, now they don’t. I’m going to use that data to topple governments, create chaos. Information is a viral weapon, unstoppable once unleashed.”

  Now I knew who the leak in Sergei’s camp was, “but what about those crazy bastards fighting for you?”

  Fyodor Volk gently slid the tubes from the IV out of my arm, carefully dabbing at the bloody puncture marks with a piece of cotton wool. “I have simply shown them how to achieve what they always wanted: inchoate anger became something else. Some of them are simply human detritus, consumed by anger and hatred. Those are the veterans of your ridiculous wars. Some are political nihilists, sick of your society and its pointless obsession with wealth and celebrity. And some of them simply adore violence, they are always the easiest to turn. I have spent almost two years showing them the way. My techniques are very persuasive, but they are predicated on getting people to do things they already desire, unlocking inhibition.”

  “You’ll get caught,” I said.

  “No, I won’t” he laughed, genuinely amused by the remark, “your excellent Scotland Yard experts will discover a fully-formed and plausible domestic terror group, the quintessence of political frustration with your system. I have seeded the evidence from day one, and your country now hates the rich in a way that puts twentieth century Russia to shame. Their targets were shameless bordello capitalists like Belov and Sands. I am not linked to it. The mysterious Svengali they speak of, their leader, will be assumed to be one of the dead.”

  “It sounds too good to be true” I slurred, a wave of nausea washing through me.

  Volk took the coffee cup from me and smiled, “it worked when I manipulated the Chechen mujahedeen into bombing the Moscow metro, and it was successful when I persuaded a dozen homeless kids in Odessa that I was a vampire. I directed them to murder a government minister and drink his blood. In America I set up an extreme Evangelical sect that went on to bomb the Israeli consulate. My piece de resistance was the Nazi suicide bomber, the one that blew up the mosque in Amsterdam. So I would appreciate if you didn’t lecture me on the feasibility of my operations. Captain Winter, you are an agreeable brute, but still a drooling primate staring at something of which you have no understanding.”

  There was a tap on the frosted-glass door. “Wait,” said Volk impatiently. He fastened the strap on my wrist.

  “The Russian, she’s fitting again” said a young woman’s voice, “and choking.”

  “I’ll be there in a moment,” he called, picking up a leather bag. “Colonel Turov is struggling to tolerate her medicine, poor girl. She’ll probably end up as a cabbage after the treatment. She is very stubborn, letting her SVR training trump common sense.”

  “You know the FSB shrink was right, you are insane.”

  Volk’s smile was serene “yes, you are probably correct, but I am quietly confident that love will cure me. But I cannot love fully until Pieter is free of Sergei Belov. On this point Pieter is very certain.”

  “And I thought I was nuts,” I said quietly to myself, as Volk glided out of the room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  I managed to sit up. My head was groggy from the drugs Volk had given me, my body covered in livid welts and bruises, stabs of pain pulsing through my face. I’d had some brutal comedowns from LSD in my bad old days, but this was something else. I tested the leather straps on the old steel gurney, flexing my aching body and limbs. It creaked but I was held fast, except for some give in the strap holding my left ankle. I wriggled it, the leather bond straining on its rickety metal buckle.

  Alisa was nearby. She was alive.

  “Stay still,” said a voice. It was a scruffy, hard-faced young woman in her twenties. She wore a black field jacket over stained denim dungarees, feet stuffed into mud-caked boots. Slung over her shoulder was one of our suppressed Heckler-Koch submachineguns.

  “I’m sorry” I coughed, “my leg hurts.”

  “You’re lucky to be alive,” she spat. Her accent was middle-class, English. Her eyes were painted with heavy kohl, spots of blood on her cheek. “I’d have killed you already if it were down to me.”

  “That might be why you’re not in charge, love” I sneered.

  “You’re the mercenary” she said walking towards me, “the hired thug. Not so hard now, are you? I suppose killing civilians in Iraq for the Americans was easier than this.”

  “You haven’t got a clue,” I said.

  “I’ve seen the truth,” she replied, “watched the videos online, read the reports.”

  The girl punched me, her fist dislodging a tooth in my battered jaw. I shout
ed out in pain and arched my back, my left foot straining against the strap. I felt the buckle give slightly. I spat out the tooth, a trail of mauve gloop dribbling onto my dirty hospital gown. “Aren’t you meant to guard me, so I can’t escape?” I snorted “so why not just shut the fuck up and do that?”

  Her pale lips curled into a smile, dark eyes gleaming with hate, “I saw you in the woods, crying in the snow like a baby. I laughed when your fascist friend and the millionaire blew up. I laughed when I stamped on your head. I’m going to laugh when we cut you from throat to groin and watch you bleed to death, taste some of your own medicine.”

  “Try it, bitch” I laughed, “I bet you’re from Surrey. I bet your dad’s a stock-broker and bought you a pony. I bet you’ve never had an opinion you couldn’t-fucking-afford.”

  “Really? I think I’ll start now,” she whispered, eyes wide. She pulled a black-bladed, cruelly-serrated knife from her belt. She put the MP5 on a table behind her and smiled.

  “Come on then,” I goaded, “and the ‘fascist’ you laughed at when the bomb went off? His name was Andrew Wright. He was born in a Manchester slum, voted Labour and read the Daily Mirror. He was a soldier. He served his country with distinction in a way you could never even begin to understand. Sir Evan Sands? He gave ten million quid to charity last year. Seriously, fuck off, you bat-shit crazy witch.”

  She pushed the tip of the knife into my neck, drawing blood. She smelt of joss-sticks, booze and stale sweat as she got closer, her hair tickling my face. “I’m going to cut you” she breathed. Her smile was cold as she walked slowly towards the end of the gurney, the tip of the blade screeching along the surface. She held the knife loosely in one hand while the other lifted my robe. I was naked underneath, my flesh pale in the cold operating theatre. The girl sneered as she lifted the robe, “if I can find it, I’ll cut it.”

  Wrenching my foot free of the strap, I kicked her in the head with all the force I could muster. I twisted my bulk on the gurney, flipping it over and onto the tiled floor. The bottom end of the metal table hit her ankle, making her shriek with pain. She scrambled for the knife.

  I writhed like I was electrocuted, lashing out with my foot. The strap securing my other foot came undone, allowing me to wrap my legs around the girl’s neck, pushing myself down the steel table and yanking my arms to weaken the bonds around my wrists. Grunting, she wriggled free, ramming her elbow into my groin, narrowly missing my balls. I howled in pain, doubling up, the force snapping my left hand free from the ageing leather strap. I pivoted, punching her in the side of the head. She fell towards me in an obscene embrace, snarling as she scratched my face with long black fingernails. Her knee jabbed at my genitals, but I was too numbed by drugs and hate to care.

  We wrestled. It was my bulk and rage pitted against her fitness and speed. She slipped on the blood-stained tiles, her forehead connecting with my bruised nose, sharp spikes of pain filling my head. With my free hand I pushed her face to one side and sank my teeth into her neck, biting as hard as I could. She tried to pull away, hands clawing at my head and neck, but I bit harder until my canine teeth met, warm salty blood flooding my mouth. I pushed her head towards my jaws, shaking like a dog to make the wound bigger.

  She shook, screeching in agony. “No” she groaned, “please.”

  But it was too late. She’d rolled the dice.

  I opened my mouth and bit again, my free hand sliding across the floor until I felt the knife. Grasping it, I pushed it into the back of her neck, near the base of her skull. Holding her head in place with my teeth, I sawed the serrated blade back and forth with all the strength I had left, mashing her cerebellum and spinal cord. I watched her eyes roll into her head as she died.

  Finally, her body limp, she rolled off of me. I was painted red, like a woad-covered savage. I slid the blood-wet knife under the last strap and slit it.

  I staggered to my feet, grabbing the MP5 and checking the magazine. The girl had another clip in her pocket, which I picked up but had nowhere to put. I walked barefoot, across the freezing tiles, to the door. In the distance I could hear music, heavy bass thumping and banging. I staggered into a dingy corridor. Yellowing posters warned of the hazards posed by smoking and unprotected sex as I padded to the next set of doors, leaving bloody footprints behind me.

  The music got louder, tribal drums and synthesisers bleeping and roaring. I thumbed the fire selector on the MP5 to automatic as I pushed the fire door open with my shoulder. Three men sat around an electric fire, drinking cider from plastic bottles and listening to music. Their weapons were by their feet as I gunned them down with the suppressed carbine, muzzle flash lighting up the room. They clawed at bullet wounds as they crashed to the ground, lifeless bodies staring at me as the music reached a hellish crescendo.

  Shivering, I found a filthy fleece jacket, which I zipped up as far as it would go. My stomach churned. I vomited, falling to my knees as the poisonous drugs spilled from my guts, black puke splashing onto a corpse.

  A door on the other side of the room opened.

  “Winter?” said Pieter Van Basten. He was unarmed, face pale.

  I scrambled for the submachinegun as he stepped back from the door. I fired, a burst splintering the door and frosted glass windows. Then I heard the ‘dead man’s click,’ the bolt snapping forward as I emptied the weapon.

  Van Basten darted back around the corner. I dropped the MP5 and grabbed at a pump-action shotgun half-tucked under a dead body. It was an old Remington 870, sawn-off at the stock and barrel. The weapon was coated with blood. I tried to find a clean part of my robe to wipe my hands on, but failed.

  The next corridor split left and right. I saw the double-doors to my left still swinging where someone had barged through them. Shotgun pushed in front of me, I jogged bare-foot down the rubber-floored corridor and listened at the door. I heard groaning and whispering, the metallic snap of weapons being readied.

  I heard Volk’s voice, calm and measured, “her heart rate is racing.”

  “Has she told you enough?” said another voice. In the background I heard the crackle of personal radios and the sound of tinny voices over a net, “do we leave her?” said the voice urgently, in English. It wasn’t Van Basten.

  “No, I have more questions. Go and look after Pieter, can you do that for me?”

  “Yes, of course” said the other voice deferentially.

  “Thank you” said Volk, “your kindness is a source of great comfort to me. I will go and deal with the other one.”

  “Take care, while I get the truck ready.”

  “Don’t worry, go to Pieter and find the others” said Volk, “I have planned for this. Move the woman. I will meet you outside.”

  I jogged back up the corridor, looking for a window. My feet left bloody footprints behind me as I flipped the light switch off. I found myself in a small ground floor office, the windows covered up with chipboard panelling. Candles flickered on the shelves, a sleeping bag unrolled on the floor next to opened food containers. Lying on a desk was a waxed jacket and a woollen hat. I put them on and began pulling at the board covering the window, my hands scrabbling for a handle or lock.

  The board slid off of rotting brackets, the metal handle of the window freezing cold. I opened it, cold air buffeting me as I climbed outside. I knew I would have only minutes before my bare feet would be frostbitten.

  I followed the building line to the front of the old hospital. A faded sign read:

  Royal Army Medical Corps / Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps

  LAVERICK FIELD TRAINING AREA

  MILITARY HOSPITAL

  KEEP OUT

  Other signs declared that the building was unsafe, prepared for demolition and patrolled by service dogs. I knew that Laverick Field, a transit camp, had been closed for at least five years as part of the defence cuts. I guessed that it was only five miles from Croll House.

  Feet numb, I ran barefoot through the snow. At the front of the hospital I heard the
sound of a vehicle idling. Parked outside was an old Bedford army truck. The suspension was jacked up high, giant tyres shod in heavy-duty snow chains. The engine throbbed and chugged, diesel smoke billowing from the exhaust. The canvass-topped truck was colourfully painted with what looked like Aboriginal patterns and graffiti.

  A man in dark clothing sat in the cab, the amber light of a cigarette bobbing around in the dark. I crept along the side of the truck and stepped up on the metal foot-plate near the passenger door and knocked on it. As the door swung open, I pointed the sawn-off Remington into the cab and fired.

  Pulling myself into the blood-warm cab with ice-cold hands, I collapsed next to the dead driver, his head chewed off by the deadly blast of a twelve gauge shell. The inside of the cab behind him was painted dark red with the insides of his skull. The passenger door handle was slick as I opened it, and I pushed the driver’s body into the snow.

  The engine roared as I revved the accelerator and rumbled along the side of the building, back past where I’d jumped out of the window. The chain-clad tyres crunched as they bit into the deep snow, the powerful diesel engine pushing the Bedford forwards. I fought with the steering wheel as I bellied around the corner, lining up the front of the van with the pebble-dashed wall of the room where I’d heard voices.

  Hissing and swearing at the pain, I mashed my frozen feet into the accelerator. The engine rattled, rear wheels spinning as I released the clutch, the four-ton truck lurching forwards, ramming the wall nearest the window. The brickwork collapsed inwards, glass shattering as the cab rumbled from side to side. I gripped the steering wheel, revving the engine, forcing the Bedford onwards. Bricks bashed against the roof of the cab, the chassis shaking as rubble jammed into the axles of the truck. In the headlights I saw figures darting towards the door, dust and snow glittering against the single-bulb lighting the room. Bullets splintered the windscreen as I ducked down behind the dashboard, my gore-stained hands clutching for the sawn-off.