Silencer

by Andy McNab

  Maybe she’d stolen from her employers and her boyfriends; maybe she’d even been to prison. So: leave, make a fresh start; build on her personal skill-set. She must have been a really attractive girl, because she still was now, and made it work for her. Proud of where she was and the graft she’d put in to get there; clearly didn’t even think of it as bending the rules. A self-made woman.

  I couldn’t help it, I had to admire that kind of dedication, whichever way it had taken her to the stripy towels and the boats and the ruby rings. She was a girl who’d done good, and was in no hurry to hide it. But that was as far as it went for her. She wasn’t carved from the same granite as my mate in Peredelkino.

  The size of Frank’s watch, and the message it broadcast to the planet had very little to do with money and everything to do with power. Frank and his kind had no time for the Sophies of this world, because all people like her craved was money, thinking it brought them some kind of protection; thinking that the close proximity of the powerful meant that their power somehow rubbed off on you. I’d spent enough time at the bottom of the food chain to see a whole lot of people make that mistake, and it always ended in tears.

  Sophie’s pitch had been good, without a doubt. Who cared if the thing about her husband was true? There was a load of stuff going on behind that mega-watt smile: she’d been checking me out, checking out Anna – where we both came from, the blood thing, trying to establish whether I was the genuine article. Fine. That suited me.

  My phone vibrated in my jeans. It would have to wait. My eyes couldn’t leave the exit route.

  Another ten minutes and another twenty HKD – and a vehicle was approaching, right to left.

  ‘OK, mate. In a minute, let’s go. No lights. Nice and slow.’

  It was too far away for me to tell whether Sophie was on board, but it was definitely the MPV. Its main VDMs – visual distinguishing marks – the two plates, were clear to see, even at this distance.

  The brake lights glowed red in the semi-darkness as it slowed to turn the sharp left and climb up to the barrier. I passed over another twenty HKD for luck and got out my Visa. ‘Stop just short of the corner, mate.’

  I wound down my window and heard the Toyota ticking over at the barrier. As the metal arm started to rise, I tapped the cabbie on the shoulder. ‘All right, nice and slow …’

  The MPV’s engine roared in the confined space as it took on the uphill start.

  ‘Here we go, mate, here we go.’ I thrust my Visa card into the outstretched hand in front of me. ‘Double six double eight.’

  I pinged the PRC sticker on the Toyota’s tailgate as it emerged into the daylight and hung a left. My guy slapped the Visa card into the slot and tapped away on the keyboard. The barrier went up. ‘Go left, mate.’ I tapped him on the shoulder again and pointed the way I wanted him to go.

  ‘OK, left.’

  We both slid our gigs back on as we bounced out onto the tarmac. We were on a mission from God. The MPV was about two hundred in front of us. ‘Close up a bit.’

  He checked his meter. ‘This your wife?’

  ‘I think so. We need to get a bit closer to make sure.’

  A bus exited from the terminal, making the narrow road narrower still. The MPV had to slow down.

  ‘She not good woman?’

  ‘I’m trying to find out, mate. But don’t get too close …’ It was feast or famine with this boy, and I didn’t want to get right up the MPV’s arse in case Sophie was checking her mirrors.

  ‘She not good woman …’ He was really getting into the zone. This might have been a quaint old shanty town when they’d filmed Enter the Dragon, but now all I could see was lots of glass and cream rendering. We passed a stretch of development land surrounded by a high wooden hoarding, plastered with pictures of shiny buildings of the future, so you couldn’t see the crap that had to be chopped down or scooped up in the present. The vegetation was already rampant enough to peek over the top of it.

  ‘That’s close enough, mate. That’ll do. I’ve got her.’ I could see her hair brushing the passenger headrest.

  He continued shaking his head and tutting, getting all upset for me.

  The MPV indicated and slowed, then turned right across the traffic towards a cream apartment block. A gate opened and closed, but not before I’d had time to see Bruce behind the wheel and a concrete driveway disappearing beneath the building.

  My driver had gone from being quite pissed off with my wife’s behaviour to being outraged about the whole situation. ‘Wife not good. She no good …’

  I motioned for him to pull over. ‘Drop me off, mate. And you wait here, yeah?’

  He checked his meter; it was ticking along nicely. I exited the car and tapped on his window. ‘I’ll be no more than ten minutes.’

  I went through the pedestrian gate and up the driveway. The lawns on either side had been trimmed with nail-scissors and were fringed with palms and all that sort of landscaping stuff. I came to a feng shui doorway, a glass conservatory at a weird and wonderful angle. The young woman at the reception desk inside was smiling away but looking at me quizzically.

  ‘Sophie Derry? Have I got the right place? Does she live here?’

  A panel of CCTV screens blinked alongside her. Two of them showed crisp black-and-white images of the underground garage. I could see the MPV parking up. Bruce knew exactly where he was going. He wasn’t cruising round looking for a spot.

  The girl ran a finger down a list. ‘Sophie? No Sophie …’

  Sophie closed her door and Bruce came round to join her. A few strides from the vehicle she hit the key fob. The lights blinked as they headed for the lift.

  ‘Sorry to bother you. I must have the wrong place. Thank you anyway.’

  I could have stalled to see what floor the lift went to, but didn’t want to risk it only going to the ground floor for security, as it did in our Moscow block.

  My driver was steaming with rage when I got back. I thought I might have to warn Sophie and Bruce never to get into his cab.

  I asked him to take me to the Upper House, but he wasn’t impressed. He was still very pissed off with my wife.

  I pulled out my phone as we swung back past the marina club and headed for the tunnel.

  Another hard night, but now all OK. Don’t worry. Call me when you can. xx

  I texted back: Will call soon as I get to hotel. Within the hour. xx

  20

  The Upper House

  15.38 hrs

  The hotel phone only rang twice before Anna answered. She sounded tired. ‘His respiration rate was really low. Too low. At one stage I thought I was going to lose him.’

  I knew she was struggling to hold herself together.

  ‘How is he now?’

  ‘Stable. His rate is up. And he’s put on a couple more grams.’

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’

  I heard her swallow. ‘They say his chances are about seventy per cent. But I guess that’s what you’d expect with him being so early …’

  She was silent for a few seconds, maybe waiting for it to soak in. I didn’t need that long.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘The guys are still here. They’re doing shifts. So I don’t feel threatened. I just feel … helpless. I can’t seem to do a thing for him, except watch and wait.’

  ‘You want me to come back?’

  ‘No, Nicholas. You’ve got to see this through. And right now Katya needs your help more than I do.’

  We exchanged slightly strained small-talk for a minute or two longer, then I put down the phone. The truth was, I didn’t know what the fuck to say. Me being worried about our boy at long distance wasn’t going to make the situation any better for either of them. The last thing Anna needed was an extra helping of my pain – she already had enough of her own.

  I fixed the alarm for a few minutes before five, but ended up thinking about going to sleep instead of actually doing it. I decided to do a couple of laps around the bath. Wit
h so much frou-frou, it was like floating in the Dead Sea. My mind was whirring. I kept thinking about what would happen if our boy didn’t make it, what that would do to Anna … what it would do to me.

  The phone vibrated.

  Call me ASAP.

  I jumped out of the bath.

  She picked up immediately.

  ‘Is he …?’

  She brushed my question aside. ‘I’ve just had a call from someone offering me the chance to be part of a new diabetes drug trial. She asked loads of questions – if I had type one or two, that sort of thing, and would I take part.’

  ‘Female?’

  ‘Yes. I couldn’t place the accent. And the number came up blocked. She wanted to know my history, ethnic background, that sort of thing. I told her I wasn’t interested because I had my diabetes under control. She asked if I had any family members who might be interested, and if I had any problems with my kidneys. She was good, Nick.’

  ‘She sure is. They both are. How did you leave it?’

  ‘I told her I had CKD, so it was a thanks-but-no-thanks.’

  ‘Perfect. I’m about to drop off the sample. I’ll call you when I get back.’

  I dried myself off and pulled on some clothes. I poured some fancy mineral water out of a bottle from the minibar and replaced it with a little more than 150ml of my blood. The rest of the bag went back into the fridge, and I headed outside with the bottle in my pocket. The Lawn would have to wait. I had to go to the bank to max out my cards with USD, then the Starbucks by the hotel.

  And I was looking for something more than a cappuccino and a sticky bun.

  21

  The sun dipped below skyscraper level as I sat by the Starbucks window with my brew, eyes on the hotel turning circle. Taxi passengers were treated to the full Aussie welcome. Private cars were whisked away by valets to the underground parking area the far side of the Pacific Place Mall.

  Kitty arrived three minutes before we were due to meet: same kit, white on blue, monster sun-gigs and red bag. I watched her disappear into Reception while I finished my brew, making sure nobody was shadowing her.

  I stayed another five minutes, then crossed the turning circle into the air-conditioned lobby. I could hear the buzz as I walked up the white stone steps. The Lawn was heaving with HK’s movers and shakers, knocking back cocktails under the darkening sky, telling each other how fantastic they’d been that day. I saw Kitty in the far corner, tucked in by the wall that stood between us and the street forty floors below, giving the full Cantonese cat-fighting routine to whoever was on the receiving end of her mobile. Her body language wasn’t pretty. She paced a metre or two back and forth, then spotted me and stopped in her tracks, but carried on ranting.

  I couldn’t see much of her face, but I knew she wasn’t impressed with me being five minutes late. In her book, the customer definitely wasn’t always right. She tapped her foot as I closed in on her. ‘You got money?’

  ‘Sure. Blood as well.’ I grinned. ‘Thought I’d save you the trouble.’

  She turned into the shadow of the wall, slid a hand into the bag and started to count the cash. I leaned back and watched the cream of HK’s business community loosen its collar and let its hair down, but kept a weather eye on Kitty. She pushed the blood sample to one side. It wasn’t difficult to spot where her priorities lay.

  She looked up, satisfied. ‘OK. Now we go.’

  I caught up with her halfway to the steps. ‘Where to?’

  She turned and nodded in the direction of two young men at a nearby table. ‘If you do not come, they will kill you.’

  I believed her. They were early twenties and looked keen to prove themselves.

  Kitty was still worried that I hadn’t got the message. ‘Come, guy. Come now or you get fucked up.’

  She was almost at the steps. Her two mates never took their eyes off me. They were dull and hollow and a uniform brown; their pupils were opiate-induced pinpricks. The nearest reached between his jacket and shirt to make sure I saw his pistol grip.

  I started walking.

  I caught up with Kitty as she reached the bottom of the steps. Two women joined us on our way to the lift, totally fixated on their BlackBerrys. We all kept very quiet and stood stock still, eyes front, until the door shushed open.

  I followed the tap of Kitty’s heels through Reception and out towards the car park. She didn’t head for the glass lift that had taken us underground, but to the lay-by at the mall exit where shoppers stood in line surrounded by mountains of very smart bags. Cars swooped like vultures to pick them up as soon as a space fell vacant.

  The Toyota waited at the head of the queue, engine purring and air-con keeping the heat and humidity at bay. Sophie’s blonde hair brushed the top of the steering wheel; Bruce was now in the passenger seat. As soon as they saw us, he leaped out and opened the back door. He’d changed out of boaty kit into a smart short-sleeved shirt with a couple of pens clipped in the pocket and belted jeans. The deck shoes had been jettisoned for espadrilles.

  Kitty was still doing all the talking. ‘You! Get in. Get in!’

  Sophie’s happy-teddy face had slipped. I checked behind me: the two heavies were still well within firing distance. I climbed into the rear of the wagon, and Bruce punched my right leg as soon as I’d sat down. As the needle penetrated, and its contents were emptied into my thigh, I felt a golf ball growing under my skin.

  I resisted at first, but knew it was useless. The auto-jet was already doing what it said on the tin: rapid heartbeat, dry mouth, vision hazy. Everything was going into slow motion. The drug had kicked in good style, depressing my central nervous system. I started to get that horrible drunk feeling. I felt myself drift away and there wasn’t a fucking thing I could do about it. The urge to sleep was just too strong.

  Bruce gripped my arms as I slipped down the seat. I hated it when I lost control.

  PART FIVE

  1

  My throat was painfully dry and somebody was operating a pneumatic drill in my head. How long had I been out? No idea. I remembered the auto-jet, being dragged out of a vehicle, no more than that.

  I tried to sit up, but I was too out of it.

  Everything was blurred. I was curled up in a dark space, and incredibly hot. My clothes were soaked with sweat and I was fighting for air. My hands were cuffed tightly behind my back. I must have been lying on them. I arched my back to make space to work them loose, but my wrists were raw and swollen to the size of melons. I felt the agony of blood trying to pump them back to life.

  I could hear the grinding of an axle and the shriek of rubber, then the whine of an automatic transmission as my head sank and my feet rose. We were moving uphill. I scrambled into a sitting position and straightened my spine. The back of my head banged against a sheet of light-gauge metal.

  I was in some kind of container.

  My chest heaved. I had to stay calm. There must be oxygen; otherwise I’d be dead by now. I was still breathing, so I was still winning.

  I tried to wriggle my toes.

  I had to keep some kind of control over what I was doing: I couldn’t afford to miss a single detail. Like the fact that a stream of vehicles was overtaking us on the left.

  We were driving on the right-hand side of the road.

  That meant the PRC.

  I had some idea of where I was; it made me feel like I wasn’t completely in the shit.

  There was no room to turn round. I scrunched my knees up to my chest. I had to keep still, control my breathing, control my body; I had no control of anything else.

  I felt a sudden vice-like grip on the back of my calves. I stretched my legs as far as I could until my boots hit the far wall of the box, then tried to press the balls of my feet against it to alleviate the cramp. It didn’t work. I had to take the pain.

  I had a flashback to when I was an eight-year-old kid. I used to have cramp in my legs so badly it made me cry out. My stepdad would storm into my room and tell me they were just growing pains,
so shut the fuck up and go to sleep. I remembered thinking, If this is growing, count me out.

  Short, sharp breaths … that was all I could do … and try as hard as possible to tense and release every muscle; try to pump my body; try to fight this shit.

  I was worried about my hands. I had no sensation whatsoever in the fingers, not even pain. I could feel nothing beyond the wrists, where the cuffs had dug so deeply into my flesh that I could feel the stickiness of blood.

  We stopped.

  I heard the sound of electric shutters.

  The engine ticked over.

  We rolled forward. The new road surface was a lot smoother, but we weren’t on it for long. The vehicle slowed again, went over a bump, and all the noises became muffled. I could hear the rattle of shutters. We stopped. The engine idled for a moment, then died.

  There was no waffle from whoever opened the back of whatever I was being transported in, only the incessant, high-pitched warning beep these things made when keys were still in the ignition or lights left on.

  Then the top of the container opened and watery light poured in. Without warning, two pairs of hands followed. They gripped my arms and grabbed me under my armpits.

  There was still no talking as they lifted me out. I gave them no resistance: my body was too busy trying to stretch itself out to relieve the pain.

  2

  We were inside a huge air-conditioned warehouse. I tried my best to get some idea of the layout, to start looking for a way of getting myself out of there, but my head was still hazy; details weren’t being processed quickly enough.

  They dragged me past two dark Merc vans and – bizarrely – a small silver people-carrier with a baby seat in the back crammed with cuddly toys. Bruce led the way. A pair of hands still gripped each of my arms. My legs were working like a new-born foal’s but, fuck it, they were moving and that was good enough for me.

  We were heading for a row of four white double-decker Portakabins. Sophie, now in jeans and a shirt, was halfway up a metal staircase that led to the upper storey. She was too busy on her mobile to pay any attention to the scene unfolding below.