Nemesis

by Tim Stevens

  Purkiss hauled himself up to a standing position, lifting Donovan with him so that the man hung straight in front of him. The security guard held his aim, squinting down the sight of his gun, the barrel trained on Purkiss’s eye.

  Purkiss said, ‘If you shoot, I’ll know it. In the instant before you pull the trigger, you’ll give yourself away. I’ll move your boss’s head a fraction to the right, and you’ll put a bullet through his head. Don’t risk it. Don’t.’

  Without waiting for the guard to reply, Purkiss hissed in Donovan’s ear: ‘How many outside?’

  Donovan emitted a choked noise, half cry, half cough, and Purkiss eased the pressure a couple of millimetres. He saw the guard’s expression shift just a degree, saw the lifting of the face from the line along the gun barrel.

  He felt Donovan go rigid in his grip. Felt the limbs shaking.

  ‘He’s sick,’ said the guard, without lowering the gun. ‘Heart.’

  ‘Drop the gun,’ Purkiss said.

  Against his front, Donovan’s entire torso was convulsing now. The sounds rasping from his throat were like the death rattle of a beast in an abattoir after its throat has been cut.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ the guard yelled. ‘He’s having a heart attack.’

  The second guard kept his gun locked on Asher in a Mexican stand-off. But he was glancing over, his face taut.

  Another single shot outside echoed across the gravel forecourt.

  Purkiss thought: are they firing at Saburova?

  He said, again, very precisely: ‘Put down your weapons and I’ll release your boss.’

  Donovan’s hands were clawing feebly at Purkiss’s arm now. Purkiss felt the wetness of the man’s drool on his wrist.

  Two seconds slouched by.

  The two guards, as if obeying some invisible signal, lowered their guns simultaneously.

  ‘On the floor,’ Asher called.

  The guards knelt, then lay prone, their hands behind their heads.

  Asher was across at them in a moment, ducking to keep below the level of the front window, kicking their guns away, crouching behind them.

  Purkiss lowered Donovan to the carpet and turned him at the same time so that he was on his back. He saw the eyelids fluttering, the spittle white in the corners of the mouth, one hand gripping the chest.

  ‘Medication?’ said Purkiss.

  One of the guards raised his head. ‘In the sideboard over there. The top drawer.’

  Asher moved quickly over and pulled open the drawer.

  Purkiss registered his mistake even as Donovan’s knee came up and connected with his groin.

  The man’s face had been pink, and healthy looking, with no pallor or cyanosis, no sheen of sweat.

  Asher spun and raised the 9 mm but the guard nearest to him was fast and already lunging across the carpeted floor and seizing his own gun. The guard fired blindly, without aiming, the shot smashing into the base of the sideboard but causing Asher to leap aside.

  The sick punch of nausea in Purkiss’s lower abdomen was rising, filling his chest and his throat. He fought not to vomit, waves of dull agony blurring his vision, and bore down on Donovan, but the older man was already slipping out from under him and pulling free.

  Purkiss rose from his knees, staggering, and managed to put up an arm as Donovan’s kick snapped at his jaw, deflecting the foot to one side, not smartly enough to throw the older man off-balance.

  Somehow, Purkiss found his feet once again. He grabbed at Donovan but the man darted out of his way and stooped and picked up the gun belonging to the second guard and aimed it at Purkiss.

  Donovan said, ‘Wait.’

  It wasn’t clear whom he was speaking to - nothing was clear - and the tableau assumed a slowed-down, dream-like quality.

  Purkiss took in Donovan, six feet away and with the gun trained on him. He saw both guards on their feet, one starting to run towards Donovan and Purkiss, the other taking a bead on Asher, who was aiming back at him.

  The door to the living room, which had hung ajar, swung into the room again as someone - Saburova - came through.

  The guard with the gun pivoted and brought his pistol to bear on Saburova, his mouth contorted in a yell.

  Behind him, Asher fired, the flash from the muzzle of his gun preceding the roar of the shot by a hair’s breadth of time.

  The armed guard jerked forward as the bullet met its mark in his back.

  Saburova dived, lifting off her feet, and cannoned into the other guard, knocking him across the floor.

  Donovan turned, his gun arm angled across at Asher.

  Asher shot him, twice, a double tap, both hits squarely in the chest so that the crimson duo of the exit wounds bloomed on the white of his shirt where it covered his back.

  In his head, Purkiss screamed: No.

  The pain in his groin and his belly roiled and twitched like a snake.

  He stumbled forwards, over Donovan’s body where it lay sprawled and twisted, because Saburova was on the floor and the second guard was on top of her and straddling her and he had his hands around her throat and was leaning his full weight down and a move like that was usually fatal within seconds, ten at the most.

  Purkiss slammed his knee into the side of the man’s head, the force of the blow weakened by the pain in his crotch but the effect enough to rock the man sideways and to release his grip on the woman’s throat. He seized the guard’s short hair and wrenched him completely off Saburova and drove his head, face-first, into the thinly carpeted floor, twice, three times, until the man slumped and stopped moving.

  Purkiss stood up. He looked round at Saburova, who was hauling herself into a sitting position, coughing, her hands rubbing at her throat as if to erase the feeling of the hands pressing down on her windpipe.

  He looked at the bodies on the floor. The unconscious guard closest to him. The bloodied corpses of the other guard and of Donovan.

  He looked at Asher, who stood, his gun raised vertically with his other hand gripping that wrist, his face impassive.

  *

  ‘How many outside?’

  They were moving swiftly around the room, Purkiss at the shattered window, peering out into the night, Asher and Saburova searching the bodies on the floor.

  ‘Two men,’ Saburova said, without pausing. ‘I came to the gate after you had gone inside. I saw them, which is when I called you. I climbed over the gate and advanced. One of them saw me and opened up. I returned fire. One of them I dropped. The other disappeared round the side. I came in through the front door.’

  ‘So there’s at least one still out there.’ Purkiss said, ‘We need to move fast. Anything on them?’

  Asher said. ‘No ID.’

  Saburova stood up from Donovan’s body, a handset in her fist. ‘His phone.’

  ‘That’ll be useful.’ Purkiss picked up the laptop from the desk. He wondered, briefly, whether to wait for the police to arrive. He couldn’t hear any sirens, yet, but gunfire in an area like Richmond would attract attention sooner rather than later.

  His instincts overrode the thought.

  He said: ‘Let’s go.’

  They emerged into the brightness of the forecourt, the spotlights still blazing, and ran down the driveway towards the gates. Asher was at the rear, his gun pointed back at the house, but nobody appeared.

  They clambered over more quickly than it would have taken to activate the electronic mechanism to open the gates, and were at the car in the lay by in less than two minutes since they’d left the house.

  Purkiss dropped into the driver’s seat, for no reason other than that he’d reached the car first.

  He sat for a couple of seconds, aware of a gnawing sense of unease. Of things being not quite right.

  At the corner of his eye, Asher’s face loomed, pale in the darkness.

  ‘That was a good kill,’ Asher said. His accent wasn’t quite American again, but it had slipped.

  Purkiss turned his head to look at him.

 
‘Donovan,’ said Asher. ‘He would have shot me. I had no option. You know it.’

  Purkiss thought of Donovan’s last word.

  Wait.

  At that point, Donovan had the upper hand.

  It was, therefore, an odd thing to say.

  The distant whine of sirens was by now making itself heard.

  Purkiss fired the ignition and pulled out.

  Sixteen

  Rossiter stood on the lip of the broch, the Iron Age round tower which was such a characteristic sight in the Shetland Islands, and gazed out across the dark sea towards the mainland.

  It was a precarious spot, and he had to adjust his balance continually, correcting for the wind that buffeted him in periodic squalls from the Atlantic to the west. But he’d been up here before, as a boy and later as a man, and he had a love for the location which time and bitter experience had failed to dim.

  By turning his head a few degrees to the left, he could see the lights below, and the movement. He wasn’t particularly high up, but the hill sloped to create an effect of significant distance.

  He’d worked relentlessly, mercilessly, for the last two hours, and now, as the final preparations were being put into place, he’d allowed himself the indulgence of wandering up here alone.

  The mainland was invisible from here, and would remain so even with the use of a powerful telescope. But it was there, whether or not it could be seen, and somehow the fact that it was hidden from view made it all the more present.

  My country.

  Most people who claimed to be patriots, in Rossiter’s experience, didn’t have the remotest understanding of the meaning of the word. Whether British, or Irish, or American, when asked to explain their professed love for their nation, they tended to cite values such as liberty, or justice, or, God forbid, democracy.

  Ideals, ways of organising society, came and went. But Rossiter had long ago understood that his bond with his land, the force that connected him to it through his very blood, was forged by nothing less than history.

  He didn’t believe that any nation could inspire loyalty, genuine, visceral passion, if it was a new nation. The United States was a new nation, by any reasonable definition, and although it had more overtly patriotic people than any other he’d encountered, the whole thing had an ersatz feel, as fashionable and disposable as so much of the rest of the culture.

  Now, gazing south-west from this spot at the very edge of the Arctic, Rossiter was almost overwhelmed by the weight of the life his country had lived.

  It was, perhaps, the reason he had such strong feelings about Russia. She, too, was a land steeped in ancient stories, a nation which had the scarred and battered character of one of mankind’s original habitations on earth.

  Russia and Britannia: two old, weary titans, preparing to do battle once again while other, lesser entities scurried and peeped about between their feet.

  Rossiter raised his head to the sky. The cloud had thinned to a skein, and he could make out the North Star. Hundreds of miles to the south, dawn would be breaking soon over his country. Here, the sun would be later in making its appearance.

  It occurred to Rossiter, at moments like this, that he was perhaps deranged. At the same time, he wasn’t troubled by the realisation. History required men who were not like others. Sometimes it took the upheaval of madness to change the world.

  He saw a figure approaching up the slope: his second-in-command, McCammon. The man had done well, coordinating the operation from outside and now keeping it running.

  Rossiter knew McCammon disagreed with much of what his superior was doing. Not with the goals, but with Rossiter’s methods. McCammon believed the operation could be carried out far more easily, and of course he was right. Rossiter’s way introduced a level of complexity which added to the risk. But Rossiter had explained his reasons to McCammon, and the other man appeared to understand, and to accept that this was how it was going to be.

  ‘Fifteen minutes,’ McCammon called, while he was still ten yards away.

  Rossiter checked his watch. They were running ahead of time.

  It was good.

  ‘You’ve done first-class work,’ Rossiter said, as McCammon reached him. ‘Thank you.’

  He extended his hand, and McCammon shook.

  ‘The weather’s looking rough,’ said McCammon. ‘It may delay us an hour or two along the way.’

  ‘That’s an acceptable margin.’

  They discussed final points, but it was really a matter of checking that the screws were all fully tightened, the moving parts properly oiled.

  Rossiter walked down the slope with McCammon, back to the base. The rooms had been cut deep into the rock of the island many years earlier, building on caves which had already been in use during the Iron Age. The people of that era, too, had shaped the world.

  In the distance, the Eurocopter sat idle. It had been refuelled from reserves kept within the underground caverns, but it wouldn’t need to be used for a while yet.

  In the opposite direction, on the edge of the island in a small, shallow cove, the outline of the boat was just visible against the still-black skyline. Men moved around the boat, carrying out last-minute checks.

  In fifteen minutes – less than that, now – the boat would launch, and with it would go McCammon and two others. Plus their cargo.

  The boat would travel around the northern coast of Scotland, through the Atlantic waters and down past the western shore. At some point – a number of factors would influence when this was, including the weather conditions that McCammon had mentioned – the boat would be met by a cargo ship. McCammon and one of the men would transfer across to the ship, along with their cargo.

  And the ship would head for its destination, to the south. The penultimate part of the operation would be completed.

  While in parallel, a second expedition would be launched.

  For what he promised himself would be the last time in a while, Rossiter consulted his watch.

  Five twenty in the morning.

  In a little more than twelve hours, history – and the world – would be changed forever.

  Seventeen

  The hotel was in Pimlico. Asher had suggested a safe house nearby, but Purkiss said, ‘No,’ without explanation, and Asher seemed to understand.

  Purkiss didn’t need the CIA listening in on them.

  Asher reserved the room, Purkiss and Saburova slipping upstairs separately afterwards. The hotel was part of a Georgian terrace, with a quiet residential street in front.

  In the car on the way, Purkiss had called Vale. He’d told him about the events at Donovan’s house.

  ‘A mess,’ Vale said matter-of-factly.

  ‘Yes. I need you to throw smoke over it.’

  ‘Waring-Jones will need to be informed.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Purkiss. ‘But keep him off my back, Quentin. I need to maintain the momentum. No obstructions.’

  ‘Understood.’

  Vale hesitated, and Purkiss could tell he was waiting for Purkiss to say more. He would have been thinking about the implications, just as Purkiss had.

  About Asher, and the fact that he’d killed Donovan. In obvious self-defence, yes, but there was a certain... convenience about the whole business.

  About the second armed man outside, whom Saburova had driven away and who hadn’t reappeared.

  And about the nature of the device which had been implanted in Rossiter’s arm.

  That last point was one Purkiss felt safe discussing with Asher and Saburova in earshot. He said, ‘It makes sense now. We were going to hand over Rossiter, and then kill him by activating the neurotoxin once we had Mossberg. A win-win situation.’

  ‘It looks that way,’ said Vale.

  ‘Maybe the Russians had similar plans for Mossberg,’ said Purkiss. ‘Maybe he’s already dead.’

  ‘Do you believe that?’

  ‘No.’

  Vale said, ‘I’d better get to work.’

  Purkiss put
away the phone and concentrated on driving. He saw Asher’s face, reflected in the windscreen, blurred by a light rain.

  In the rear view mirror, he caught Saburova’s dark eyes.

  He picked up the phone again. Thumbed a speed-dial key he didn’t use very often.

  Asher turned his head to glance curiously at Purkiss.

  The ringing tone at the other end was cut off abruptly: ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Tony, it’s me.’

  ‘Shit, Purkiss.’ He heard rustling in the background, as if bedsheets were being tossed aside. ‘It’s the middle of the night.’

  ‘No it isn’t. It’s half past ten.’

  ‘Yeah?’ The word was swallowed in a yawn. ‘Body clock’s all screwed up these days. What you want?’

  ‘I need you for backup.’

  ‘Where?’ The voice was more alert now. ‘Tell me it’s somewhere warm. Spain, maybe.’

  ‘Here in London. Can you meet me in an hour?’

  ‘Pissing down out there.’ But it didn’t sound like a refusal. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Rossiter.’

  Beside Purkiss, he sensed Asher stiffen. Saburova’s eyes widened a fraction in the mirror.

  At the other end of the line, Kendrick said: ‘You’re shitting me.’

  ‘He’s on the loose.’

  ‘Purkiss, tell me you’re not joking –’

  ‘Get yourself together, get mobile, and I’ll give you a ring when I know exactly where we’re meeting. Okay?’

  Purkiss put the phone down once more.

  Asher said, ‘Who was that?’

  ‘A colleague.’

  Tony Kendrick was former military, a paratrooper whom Purkiss had met in Iraq and had employed on a freelance basis over the last few years. Kendrick had been there in Tallinn, three autumns ago, and had seen Abby Holt, his friend and Purkiss’s, gunned down by Rossiter’s associates.

  And, since then, Kendrick had never let Purkiss forget that he’d had a chance to kill Rossiter, and had chosen not to take it.

  From the back seat, Saburova said, ‘Bringing others in is unwise.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Purkiss. ‘On the other hand, I don’t trust either of you. Call it insurance.’