by Greg Wilson
There was a doorway to the garage near the place where it connected to the main house. He moved across to it, trying it quietly, grimacing as the turn of his wrist met the resistance of the lock, looked around again, weighing options, then started edging forward, tracking towards the house, working his way along the length of the veranda, softly climbing the five front steps.
The door lay ajar. He eased it inwards slowly onto an empty hall. A spacious living area extending beyond, timber floors and rugs, sofas and sideboards mounted with framed photographs, a dining table laid for four, empty glasses neatly bordering the settings. The scent of cooking hung in the air: the rich thick aroma of roasting meat. Nikolai paused to glance down at the pistol, checking that the safety was off, then started forward again, moving forward quietly, stepping through the doorway into the kitchen.
A steady stream of smoke was curling upward from the vent above the oven. The bite of the fumes caught the back of his throat and his lungs erupted in a sudden, violent cough. He threw a hand across his mouth to choke it back as a tense, sharp voice rose from somewhere below.
“Yuri? Yuri, is that you?”
The voice spoke American English but beneath the veneer it was Russian, there was no doubt about that. Nikolai drew upright, tightening his grip on the pistol. His brain processed options faster than he could think, his instincts in control. He called back, muffling his voice through his cupped hand, the inflection and phrasing as close a copy of Yuri’s as he could remember.
“Yeah. It’s me. Something’s burning up here. I can hardly breathe. Where the fuck are you?”
It worked. The response came back without hesitation.
“Down here. The staircase in the corner.” The voice stopped a second then called again. “Where’s Aven?”
Nikolai played for time, pretended to cough. The voice came again. Impatient. Demanding. “I said… where is Aven?”
Nikolai sidestepped to the oven, flicking the thermostat back to zero, flinging open the door. A cloud of blue-black smoke filled the room. “In the car. Dead,” he called back. “He knew something wasn’t right. I had to shoot him.” He could see the balustrade in the corner now. A staircase leading down to the voice that rose from below. It paused then started again.
“Alright. My hands are full here. You’ll need to get the body downstairs by yourself. And make sure you bring the weapon down as well. They need to find it with the bodies… And the gasoline.”
Nikolai froze, thinking. “Okay,” he called. “I need a minute. I can’t do it all at once.”
He stood for a moment, his heart pounding in his chest, then spun around, re-tracing his steps to the entry. At the bottom of the veranda he propped, trying to think.
What the hell was happening here?
The sign at the gate… HARTMAN.
This house belonged to Jack Hartman. There was just no other possibility. Jack Hartman: the man he was certain had betrayed him. But who was it down there in the basement and what the hell was going on? His brain stumbled through the maze, grappling for answers.
This was Hartman’s house. And they – whoever they were – had wanted Nikolai Aven here at this precise moment. Dead or alive, Yuri had confessed. It made no difference which.
…Why?
His eyes fell to the side as the pieces fell into place.
Someone wanted Hartman dead – maybe he was dead already – and he, Nikolai Aven, was to be the scapegoat. They would find him at the scene. Find his passport, his fingerprints in the stolen car, his body, and it would all make sense. The man Hartman had betrayed – imprisoned for treason, his life and family lost, his wife dead – a hardened murderer who had escaped then somehow found his way here to track down his betrayer and exact his revenge.
The train was whirling around the track again, passing everything by in a crazy blur. Was he on it? Was he a passenger or something more? He willed himself to concentrate. To slow everything down. Slow it all down so he could see it. Where he had been and where he was going and the faces of the silent figures that lined the platform.
Ivankov and Kolbasov. Vari Vlasenko, his partner and friend, smoothing the way. The ease of his escape from prison and the course of events since. Larisa delivered back to him. The inevitability that he would have to escape Russia. The seamless way he had been eased onto the track, passed from one set of hands to the next, barely feeling their touch.
The anger inside him rose to a crescendo then settled back slowly into a liquid white rage.
35
Nikolai slewed the Jaguar to a stop in the gravel at the foot of the steps, flinging the door open and racing back to the trunk, springing it, hauling the still limp body over the edge and dragging it up the stairs to the door. At the threshold he rolled Yuri over, his hands working rapidly through the other man’s pockets, taking the cell phone. The cigarette lighter rolled free with it and tumbled onto the painted timber planks. He looked at it for a moment then scooped it up as well, rolling the body back again, hauling it through the house. He had already circled the building from outside to look for another way into the basement. If there was one he couldn’t find it, so this was his only chance. He could have left. Could have taken the car and found his way back to Brighton Beach and Larisa but where did he go from there? Besides – he dragged the body across the threshold into the kitchen, dumping it at the top of the stairs – there was unfinished business here. Questions to be answered. Answers required for the settling of accounts.
He peered down the staircase, calling out to whoever it was, waiting below, “I’ve got the body. I just need to go back for the gas.”
The voice answered, sharp with impatience. “Hurry up, for Christ’s sake. I’ve had problems down here. We need to get this finished. Fast!”
Nikolai hesitated. “Okay, okay,” he called. “Don’t panic.”
He hurried back to the car and hauled the gasoline can from the passenger seat where he had dumped it, hoisting it up to the veranda, carrying it back inside. What had been Yuri’s response when Nikolai had asked him who they were to meet? No one I know. The fewer people I know the better. So was that the truth or wasn’t it? In all probability his life now hung on the balance of the answer. At the top of the stairs he paused again.
“Okay. I’m coming down.”
If whoever was waiting downstairs had never seen Yuri before, then maybe he had a chance. He checked the pistol, slipped it into his belt, hoisted the gas can and started forward into the stairwell.
At the bottom there was a vestibule finished in tile, the steel door that led from it hanging open. Beyond it there was a second foyer, another door. Nikolai steadied his grasp on the can and edged forward from the first lobby to the second. Beyond it a soft light glowed from the space ahead, cool conditioned air pumping through the doorway. It was as he stepped through the second doorway that he noticed the blood. It occurred to him that the floor wasn’t level or otherwise it would have pooled. Instead it had run backwards, forming a dark, gleaming lake that spanned the threshold. He went to step across it but the weight of the gasoline can broke his balance and his heel skidded through it, streaking the tiles. He caught himself and stopped, moving aside carefully, glancing down at the figure that lay sprawled across the floor at his feet. One leg was straight, the other buckled, one arm folded beneath the torso, the other outstretched, fingertips extended towards the edge of a patterned rug, as if reaching it had seemed, in the instant before death, some final act of consequence. The head was twisted to one side, the mouth pressed open, the single blue eye turned towards Nikolai, opaque and lifeless. The man’s chest rested in a dark liquid sea that trailed backwards to the door, the front and side of his white cotton shirt soaked red where the fibers had swelled to saturation.
‘So, you are Yuri?”
Nikolai’s head spun around, searching for the woman’s voice.
She was standing on the far side of the room propped against a set of steel shelves, one hand lifted across to the opposite
shoulder, her fingers wrapped around the heel of a black automatic. Her head tipped aside as she inspected him, the crisp, upturned collar of her shirt snagging her hair. Her expression was blank. Unsurprised by what she saw.
Nikolai nodded.
So she didn’t know Yuri. At least he had that to his advantage.
In front of the woman, seated at a desk behind a computer, a silver-haired man sat motionless. His wrists were bound with cord to the arms of the chair. A trail of dried blood traced around his left eyebrow and down to his jaw, but his shoulders were square and he sat erect, his eyes clear and alert. Gray eyes. Eyes Nikolai remembered comparing to the color of the Moskva at dawn. Impenetrable but for the slightest hint of recognition as they stared back at him across the room. Then they slid aside just a fraction and Nikolai followed them to the other figure. The other woman was lying on her side on the floor, propped against a bookcase at the edge of the rug, her ankles and wrists bound with the same thin cord. Her shirt was torn open down the front, one striped sleeve ripped away from the shoulder and used to gag her, stretched between her parted lips then knotted so tight at the back of her head that her entire face was drawn back in a grotesque distortion. The woman with the gun regarded her as well. Added her observation without emotion.
“Stupid fucking suka wouldn’t stop screaming.”
Nikolai’s eyes traced back to the bound woman. Her chest heaved sharply, rising and falling against her shirt. Her shoulder-length brown hair fell forward across her face. She tried to toss it away to look at him but it fell back again and she gave up, staring instead through the strands.
Where did she fit in? Was she Hartman’s wife?
Then through the twisted maze of her hair he noticed her eyes. The same gray as Hartman’s. The only difference the unconcealed fear that flickered openly across their surface as the light played against their movement. Nikolai turned back to the woman with the gun, his eyes glancing past Hartman’s as they tracked their course.
“Who are they?”
The woman tilted her head back a fraction. “Why should it matter to you?”
Nikolai set down the gasoline can and eased upright, glancing at Hartman again, then back to the body at his feet. He shrugged. “It doesn’t.”
The woman with the gun took a step sideways, following Nikolai’s gaze to the body sprawled at his feet.
“That one was a surprise,” she mused. She reached across to the desk beside Hartman, her hand settling on a second pistol, lifting it to the light. “He came expecting trouble. What I don’t know is, why?” She pondered her own question for a moment then snapped back to business.
“Let’s get on with this and get the hell out of here.”
She nodded at the weapon in Nikolai’s belt. “That’s the gun you used on Aven?” Nikolai glanced down. Nodded. The woman tucked the second weapon into her belt and extended her hand across Hartman’s shoulder. “Give it to me.”
Nikolai’s mind weighed opportunity and risk. Whether by chance or calculation the woman had placed Hartman between them. Even at this close range there was no possibility of a clear shot. He let the moment pass; eased the pistol from his belt and stepped forward, passing it, grip first, towards her, his eyes tracking across the open black purse at the corner of the desk, the cell phone lying beside it. The woman leaned forward and took the gun, her eyes never leaving his. Her head tipped aside towards the can of gasoline.
“You go and get Aven. I’ll fix everything here.”
Nikolai nodded cautiously, his gaze tracing past Hartman again as he turned. For the first time he noticed the cork-lined wall behind him: the maze of pinned documents linked together with colored twine, interspersed with grainy blown-up images, the clearest of them all at the end… Marat Ivankov. His face dressed with the same complacent smile Nikolai had seen in the photograph he had seen in the gallery at Prechistenka a few days before. His brow furrowed as he turned away, stepping over the dark crimson lake that marked the threshold to the basement room, his own blood pounding relentlessly in his temples.
Had he convinced the woman that he was Yuri?
His hands closed to fists at his side as he started up the stairs. But what did it matter, anyway? The gun had been his only chance and she had it now, along with the others. He moved forward, his mind racing. Behind him he could hear the sound of metal being dragged across tile.
He had said he’s killed Nikolai Aven. Given her the gun he had claimed to have used and he could see her plan now. Every detail. She would clean the weapon of prints and place it in Hartman’s hand. But not while he was still alive. First she would kill Hartman with the weapon she had used already and then she would kill Hartman’s daughter – if that was who the other woman was – then she would place the weapon she had used in Nikolai Aven’s hand and the equation would be complete.
The sharp smell of gasoline fumes rolled through the air behind him, carried upwards through the stairwell bringing clarity to the next scene.
…And after that she would set the house on fire and it would be left for the police to link the facts with their own assumptions.
But there were two extra wild cards in play now. The first was the other apparently unexpected arrival who now lay dead at the foot of the stairs. Who was he and where did he fit in? And the second more immediate problem, for Nikolai, anyway, was that if the woman checked Yuri’s gun she was going to find it hadn’t been fired. So how could Nikolai Aven be dead?
He was at the top of the landing now, Yuri’s motionless body crumpled at his feet. From the basement the woman’s terse voice called up to him again.
“What the hell’s taking you so long?”
…And the walls? The trails of diagrams and the photographs of Ivankov and all the others. Nikolai shook his head. What was that all about?
He could walk away now. Walk outside, get in the car and go, but if he did he would never know the answers. If he left now there was no doubt Hartman would be killed and not just Hartman, his daughter, as well. Another innocent victim sacrificed in whatever incomprehensible game was being played out here. From somewhere within himself Nikolai felt the cool fusion of determination taking hold, a pillar as hard as granite growing at his core. Kill or be killed. He was in familiar territory now: a world he had come to understand.
“I’m bringing him down now,” he called back, stalling for time. Pulled Yuri’s cell phone from his pocket and started frantically working the dial.
A risk and a guess. There was no way he could be certain whose number Yuri had called when he had stopped the car but if he was right – if it had been her – the moment of distraction might be enough.
He dragged Yuri’s body backwards, his forearms locked under the armpits, the heels bouncing from one tread to the next as Nikolai edged his way down the stairs. At the bottom he paused to rearrange his grasp, taking the body with one arm now, so that the other hung free. He didn’t bother trying to step across the blood this time, just stepped through it, pulling Yuri’s unconscious form behind. As he looked back his eyes touched Hartman’s daughter’s. The fear that he had seen in them had subsided, replaced by a still resignation, then for the briefest second they flickered, responding to something they must have seen in his own.
At the other side of the room the woman was using her free hand to empty the last of the gasoline across one of the bookcases that lined the far wall. So far, at least, she mustn’t have checked Yuri’s gun. She finished and tossed the empty metal can aside, wiping her hand against her slacks, nodding across the room.
“Put him there. Where I was standing when I shot their friend.”
Nikolai nodded. She had the three guns now: one in her hand, one at either side of her belt. He started hauling the body backwards again, his free hand, obscured from her view, sliding the cell phone from his pocket and down to his side, feeling across the keypad with his thumb. Hartman was watching him, a questioning frown tracing his eyes. Nikolai ignored him. Found the redial button and dipped it. The
woman had been following his path back across the room. When the shrill tone bit the air she stopped in her tracks, distracted, staring towards the open purse at the edge of the desk. She reached forward for her phone and as she did Nikolai let go of the slumped body and tossed Yuri’s phone aside, sending it skittering across the floor. The woman stalled at the unexpected movement, spinning towards Nikolai with a look of surprise. Yuri’s phone was gone from his hand now, the long, slender black torch locked in its place. In the second that it took for the woman’s brain to assess and respond he was already behind her, the wrist that held the weapon locked in his grasp, driving it down against the edge of the desk, his other arm wheeling in an arc, plunging backwards towards her, gouging the end of the torch into her left eye. She screamed in agony as the metal tube drove home, her head snapping back, crashing against his jaw with the force of the blow, the pistol bursting free from her grasp and bouncing to the floor as the cell phone shrieked again. He had her left wrist as well now. He wrenched it behind her and brought the other arm back to meet it, pinning them together then slamming her forward, smashing her head down against the desk, dragging her upright and slamming her down again. He felt her body fall limp in his grasp. He held her long enough to drag the two pistols from her belt then cast her aside, sending her sprawling backwards across Yuri, her face turned up towards him, blood streaming from the dark socket of her eye. Nikolai fell against the desk, propping himself with his hands, gasping for breath, his head rising slowly, his eyes meeting Hartman’s across the space that separated them, remembering… The night in Mira. The taut upturned face staring back at him from the window of the dark sedan as it rushed past. His shoulders heaved with exertion as he drew the gasoline-drenched breath into his lungs, weighing the judgment of betrayal.