‘No, why not?’ said Dmitry. ‘Have a look for me.’
‘Okay, I’ll try and get it done for you in the next day or two.’
Dmitry returned upstairs. He didn’t expect anything to come of it; he dismissed it from his mind. He went into his office and gathered up some papers; he had a meeting at eleven. Hilde was on the phone. He could hear her saying, ‘He’s just going to a meeting. No, he’ll be here this afternoon. I’ll be gone by then, but you could try. Can I take your name so he can call you back?’
Dmitry mouthed at her, ‘Who is it?’
Hilde put the phone down. ‘He didn’t say… just said he’ll call you back.’
‘Look,’ said Dmitry, shortly, ‘You are not to go giving unknown people details of my movements. Next time make sure you get their name. Was it an internal or an external call?’
‘Internal.’ Hilde looked pained; she sat down at her desk. She was clearly beginning to find Dmitry impossible. She was still sulky later on that afternoon when she put some letters on his desk for him to sign. ‘I’m going now,’ she said, ‘Is that all right?’ It wasn’t quite five o’clock.
‘Yes, that’s fine.’ Dmitry was expecting Boris at half past five. Half an hour to kill. The phone rang; somebody wanted some information. He answered the question and put the phone down; almost instantly it rang again. He picked it up; it was Katie. Her voice sounded timid, hesitant.
‘I’m in the building. I thought I could come up and talk to you. Are you busy? Can I come and see you now?’
Dmitry hesitated. He didn’t know what to say; he didn’t see how he could give a flat ‘No.’ He said, ‘I can see you, but I am rather busy. There’s someone coming to see me shortly.’
Katie said, angry, distressed, ‘I don’t want to see you if you can only squeeze me in for five minutes. I want to talk to you properly.’
He softened at once; after all, none of this was her fault. ‘Then come. It’s all right; I’ll make time.’ He could always ask Boris to wait. He hung up; he tapped his fingers on the pile of papers on his desk; he was nervous about seeing Katie. He could tell from the tone of her voice that there were going to be tears and remonstrations, and he didn’t know how he could cope with them just now. And then – he was not sure whether it was his imagination – he thought he heard a very faint movement in Hilde’s room, a slight metallic sound. He wondered whether he should get up and investigate it, but realised he was afraid to. He shifted his weight slightly forward in his chair and reached his hand out towards the phone.
The door opened, a man stepped into the room and shut it behind him in one quick movement. For an instant the man hesitated, perhaps because the main lights in the office were turned off and Dmitry was in shadow, illuminated only by the faint blue glow from the computer screen and the light of the desk-lamp. Then he lifted a gun with casual grace, bringing it up to aim at Dmitry’s head. He wasted no time, he clearly did not intend to hang about. But Dmitry did a most unexpected thing. The moment the assassin entered the room, in the split second before he saw the gun, Dmitry knew he had come to kill him; it was something about the way that the assassin looked right through him, as if he had already ceased to exist. Most men would have frozen, ducked, or drawn backwards, and the assassin would have been prepared for any of these responses; but Dmitry suddenly stood up.
The first bullet caught him full in the chest as he rose, and not the head; he staggered back against the window, his right arm flung up in front of his face to shield his eyes from the horror of what was happening. The assassin gave him not an instant’s grace before he fired again, two shots close together into the broad target of his chest. Dmitry collapsed behind the desk, falling hard on his back, one arm flung out. The assassin crossed the room and knelt down by his head, putting out his hand to loosen the tie and feel for the pulse in his neck.
The delicate touch of the fingers brought Dmitry out of shock; he thought for an instant someone had come to help him. He opened his eyes and took a deep, gasping breath. He and the assassin looked straight into one another’s eyes for a second. Probably the assassin had no doubt in his mind that his target was dying, that most likely he only had a few minutes to live, but he would have wanted to be sure; he turned Dmitry’s head away and transferred the gun back to his right hand to execute him with a shot to the base of the skull.
There was a sharp knock on the door and the handle turned. The assassin spun round and aimed the gun, backing away; as a figure stepped forward into the doorway he fired, twice. Dmitry was only dimly aware of what was happening but he saw the assassin toss his gun on top of the body by the door, take off his gloves and throw them down and then, without another glance at his victims, go out, closing the door behind him.
Dmitry lay on his back on the floor as he had fallen. One thought filled his head with unbearable clarity: ‘I have been killed.’ This thought did not seem to upset him; it just seemed strange; it surprised him that he could still think at all. He had been expecting one shot, then oblivion; when he heard the muffled shots he could not understand what was going on. But now something else was happening to him. He had begun to feel pain. It hurt him dreadfully to breathe; no matter how hard he tried, there did not seem to be enough air. He would have liked to have stopped, but he had no choice, he had to go on struggling.
A shudder went through him. He was cold; it was as if the angel of death had come and perched on his shoulder. He coughed involuntarily and swallowed a throatful of warm blood. He felt sick, but still detached, almost curious; he thought, so this is what it feels like to die. Then the telephone on his desk rang. It rang four times and was silent. The familiar sound seemed to bring him back to reality for a moment; he thought, if I could reach it, I could call for help. He raised his arm and started to try to roll onto his side but a pain so violent and terrible seized him that he nearly fainted.
Then he thought, Katie, Katie will come. Or Boris. Unless he has killed one of them; oh God, perhaps he has killed Katie. He turned his head and saw between the legs of the desk, lying in the half darkness by the door, the figure of a man and a dark stain of blood spreading over the carpet. Then he thought, it was Katie on the phone. She is not coming. If only I could breathe properly; if I could just get some air, if I could get to the phone…
Katie took the lift up to the twentieth floor. She was agitated; she didn’t know what she was going to say to Dmitry, she thought perhaps it was a mistake to go and see him at all. As she stepped out of the lift she passed a man in a grey suit. She was vaguely aware that someone had stepped in as she got out, but she paid no attention to him; she hurried along the corridor and paused outside Dmitry’s room; she knocked, there was no reply, she knocked again. Then she opened the door.
The first thing she saw was the dead man lying face-down on the floor, his head covered with blood, and the gun lying next to him. She was stunned, but she neither screamed nor ran away; she knew as soon as she saw him that this was not Dmitry. Then where was he? She looked up and saw a hand emerging from behind the desk. Very slowly, as if dreaming, she walked across the room, round the desk, and saw him spread out on the floor, his skin very pale and blood soaking into his shirt. She stood for an instant frozen with terror; she thought at first that he must also be dead; then she saw and heard that he was breathing.
‘Oh, no,’ she said, ‘No, no,’ and he turned his head towards her. His lips moved, she heard him whisper, ‘Help me,’ and then, ‘Can’t breathe’; she saw fear and pain in his eyes, but she did not know what to do; she was afraid to touch him, afraid to see the damage that was done, afraid he would die or somehow fall apart in her hands. Seized with panic, she started to shout and scream for help, then, coming to her senses, scrambled to the telephone on the desk and dialled the emergency number for the UN medical service which was in the building.
A woman with an American accent answered immediately. Katie said, amazed that she could speak clearly, ‘Room 2075, please come quickly, somebody has been shot.’
The voice on the phone said, astonished, ‘Shot?’ and she half shouted, ‘Please, hurry, just come, I’m going to call an ambulance.’
‘Where has he been hit?’ asked the voice, calm, insistent. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘In the chest, in the lung, just please come quickly.’ She slammed down the phone and then lifted the receiver again, dialled for an outside line, and then the emergency number. This time it took longer to get through; she asked for an ambulance and was clear-headed enough to tell them they could drive right up to the main concourse and stop at the revolving doors near the ‘A’ tower on the left. While she was talking she heard a man come to the door, exclaim with horror and then run off down the corridor. For the second time she hung up and then, her hands shaking, she turned back to Dmitry.
She thought, I must do something to try to stop the bleeding. She knelt beside him, clumsily pulled out her shawl from under her coat, rolled it into a ball and unbuttoned Dmitry’s shirt to see where he had been wounded. There were three small holes close together in the chest from which blood and air were bubbling and gurgling with each agonised breath. The lung must be punctured, she thought, all the bleeding is inside, oh God, he is going to die. Not knowing what else to do, she pressed the shawl over the wounds. As she did so he cried out and shuddered, making feeble movements to push her away with his right hand.
‘It’s all right Mitya, I’m trying to help you,’ said Katie in anguish and turned to look into his face. He was deathly pale and damp with sweat; his eyes were half open but did not seem to see her. He kept turning his head restlessly from side to side, as if by doing so he could escape the pain for an instant. Someone else had come to the door now; she could hear two or three voices outside. A man came and leant over her. ‘I’ve called the doctor; they say they know, they’re on their way down,’ he said. ‘Can I do anything?’
‘Yes, please do something, I don’t know what to do, I think he is dying,’ said Katie; her voice broke and she laid her head on Dmitry’s chest in a gesture of despair, not caring that the blood stained her cheek and soaked into her hair. The man did not do anything; he watched her helplessly. ‘Why don’t they come, oh why don’t they hurry up and come,’ said Katie, lifting herself up and rocking herself back and forth; Dmitry was worsening by the moment, she could feel him slipping away from her. She did not dare let go of him or take her eyes from his face; she wanted to be with him, holding him, at the moment of death. She stayed as she was, pressing the blood-soaked shawl against Dmitry’s chest, watching his face grow still paler, almost blue in colour, his eyes drift shut, and hearing the terrible sound of his distressed breathing.
The man beside her left abruptly; she heard footsteps running and the nurse appeared. She bent over the dead man and Katie cried, ‘Please, come here.’ She did not care about the other man; but the nurse had already left him, saying in a shocked voice, ‘He’s already dead. There’s someone else…?’
The nurse knelt down beside her. She assessed Dmitry quickly, looking for any other injuries. She asked, ‘Does he speak English okay?’ and when Katie nodded, started to talk to Dmitry in a low voice, dispassionately, explaining what she was doing. First she put dressings over the wounds in the chest, taping them in place to make an airtight seal. Then she took Dmitry’s left arm and folded it across his chest, holding it in place with a bandage. ‘I’m going to lift him up a little and turn him onto the injured side,’ she said to Katie, ‘He’s going to choke like that. Can you help me?’ Katie nodded; as they rolled him onto his side Dmitry started to yell, a terrible, deep, anguished sound; a sort of convulsion went through him and he struggled to breathe; blood was gurgling in his throat. ‘Cough that up and spit it out,’ ordered the nurse; Dmitry must have heard her and did so, and Katie watched aghast as a quantity of bright red, frothy blood issued from his mouth. She thought for a moment that this was the end, there was a moment of complete stillness; but after a brief pause Dmitry went on breathing, even more rapidly than before.
When they turned him over both Katie and the nurse saw that he was also bleeding, more copiously, from his back. Katie could not bear it; she must have exclaimed at this outrage, but the nurse said, as if reading her thoughts, ‘It’s an exit wound.’ She tore the shirt away, covered this wound too and then asked Katie to support his head and shoulders to raise them from the floor. Katie did this, kneeling in the blood and resting his head in her lap; she would have done anything to help him live. The nurse smiled at her reassuringly as she reached for the oxygen cylinder.
But Dmitry coughed again and retched violently; he flung back his head, his lips pulled back in a dreadful grimace, the teeth gleaming grotesquely through the blood. The nurse put the oxygen mask over his face and said, ‘This will help you breathe. Take deep breaths, more slowly. That’s right, you’re doing well.’ Her voice was soothing, calm. ‘Try to keep still now, we’re doing what we can, the ambulance is on its way. We’ll get you to a surgeon very quickly now.’ She looked up at Katie, with no expression on her face; she did not try to reassure either of them that he would be all right, and Katie did not dare to ask. Then the doctor came in, with another man. He paused by the body for an instant; the nurse said, ‘This one is still alive. He’s been shot several times in the chest; I’ve sealed the wounds, he’s breathing a little better now. I’ll take his blood pressure; can you set up the drip?’
The doctor came over, putting some equipment down on the floor. He turned to Katie and said, ‘Please, let us take over now,’ but she relinquished her hold on Dmitry only reluctantly, moving back against the wall. She felt dizzy; she thought she was going to faint; she leaned against the wall and shut her eyes for a moment, but she had to open them again and keep on looking, as if only by her watching and willing him to be all right could he be kept alive.
Dmitry’s breathing seemed to have steadied now. The doctor held his right hand; Katie was struck by the care, almost tenderness, with which he stroked the inside of his arm, looking for a vein in which to insert a line and set up a drip. He had trouble getting the needle in; gentleness gave way to brute force, he was swearing to himself; finally he had to take a scalpel and cut down to a deep vein. The nurse talked to Dmitry while it was being done in her low, gentle voice. The doctor bandaged the arm and stood up, holding the bag of serum in one hand, and with the other picked up the telephone and dialled a number. After a moment or two Katie realised he was phoning the hospital; he was asking whether they had a surgeon available. He would have to be there immediately, she heard him say; there wasn’t much time. Then she heard him saying, good, good. He hung up and turned to the nurse. ‘He’ll go to the Lorenz Böhler, they have a cardio-thoracic surgeon there right now,’ he said. ‘The ambulance will be here in a few minutes. How is his blood pressure?’
The nurse muttered some figure, then added, ‘It’s still falling.’ She pumped the bulb up again; Dmitry suddenly coughed again, moaned and shuddered. She took his hand. She asked quietly, ‘Morphine?’ but the doctor shook his head. He said, ‘It won’t be long. He’s coping all right, better not to give him anything. He’ll be at the hospital in ten or fifteen minutes.’
A silence fell over the room. It seemed nothing more could be done; Dmitry seemed to be drifting into unconsciousness now, his eyes were shut, he was quite still. Though this frightened Katie, she thought at least there would be no more pain. The nurse asked gently, ‘Can you hear me?’ and his eyelids fluttered. Katie heard a familiar voice outside in the corridor; it was the DG, Seppo Kaisler. He came into the room. He said, ‘The police have been called. No-one is to touch anything here. Who is it that’s been killed? How is Mitya Gavrilov?’ And then the question Katie had been afraid to ask, ‘Will he live?’
The doctor made a gesture with his hand as if to say that it was touch and go. Kaisler said, ‘Do everything you can,’ and went to the door where a group of people had gathered. ‘Go home or get back to your desks,’ he said. ‘You can’t do anything. Please move away now. Anil, come with me; I wa
nt to agree a statement for the press.’ He turned back to the doctor. ‘Tell the hospital I want to be kept informed; they can ring me any time, even at three in the morning. Where are they taking him?’
They continued to talk in low voices, but Katie didn’t hear any more; she was suddenly overcome with fear. It occurred to her that Dmitry might never regain consciousness; she felt as if she had lost him already. It seemed an eternity, but could only have been a few minutes, before she heard more footsteps and the ambulance crew appeared. After a brief exchange with the doctor, they lifted Dmitry carefully onto the stretcher, lying on his left side, and carried him towards the lifts.
Despite Kaisler’s efforts, a small crowd of people were still standing in the corridor, watching with astonishment and disbelief. Katie stayed beside the stretcher as they negotiated it into the lift. She clung to one of the ambulance men, terrified that they might leave her behind and take Dmitry away from her. They emerged from the building into the rain; the ambulance stood on the bleak circular concourse, its headlamps shining into their eyes and the blue light flashing on the wet ground. Katie pleaded, ‘I have to stay with him, please let me come,’ and while no-one replied to her then, once the stretcher was safely stowed they helped her wordlessly into the ambulance. The doctor came in with her; the doors slammed shut and in seconds they were moving rapidly through the night, the vehicle swaying around the corners, the siren sounding.
She felt the vehicle accelerate as they swung onto the motorway; she knew the hospital was little more than a five-minute journey away. Katie clung to the seat, watching the two men check Dmitry’s pulse, blood pressure, breathing rate. Her eyes were fixed on Dmitry’s bloody chest, watching it rise and fall almost imperceptibly. Suddenly the phrase, ‘Dead on arrival,’ came into her head; she could not shake it out again, it repeated itself over and over in her head. The doctor and the ambulance men were watchful, tense; she watched them putting another bag of clear fluid on the drip-stand.
The Rocket Man Page 16