by Stevens, Tim
The tram, modern looking in sleek red and white, slid into position at the kerb with a hydraulic wheeze. Gaines joined the short queue stepping up between the sliding doors in the side.
Calvary strode straight past, almost barging Squat. For an instant he felt the man’s gaze at his back.
*
Krupina was doing what pacing she could in the confines of the office when Oleg’s voice came through.
‘I’m on board a tram with the target. The other party didn’t get on. Walked past.’
She thought about this. ‘Did he make you?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’
‘Where’s he now?’
‘Can’t see him.’
She breathed slowly, through pursed lips. She didn’t like this.
‘How close are you to the target?’
‘Visual contact. Not close enough to drop a spider on him, if that’s what you mean.’
Krupina thought for a moment.
‘Arkady, where are you?’
‘On foot, on the other side of the road. Tram’s disappearing.’
Oleg was on his own with the target, then.
She heard him muttering in the background, in Czech. Then: ‘Tram’s heading for Nádraží Braník.’
‘Okay. He might not be going all the way. Gleb?’
‘Yes.’ Tamarkin. He was still in the car, the floater on standby.
‘Head for the terminus. It’s this side of the river. Be prepared to drive back along the route, in case he gets off earlier.’
‘Got you.’
Time for another Belomorkanal. The last one. Krupina tossed the empty pack in the trash bin.
The foreigner, the maybe-Englishman. Disappeared.
She didn’t like it at all.
*
By waiting until the tram had set off, then stepping on to the road behind it and running at a moderate clip, Calvary was able to keep near enough to close the distance when it slowed for the next stop. He hoped Squat would be looking for him on the pavement, rather than on the road behind, and that he’d be hidden from Parka’s view by the intervening traffic. One or two people laughed as he trotted by: poor guy missed his tram.
He almost didn’t make it, drawing alongside the tram as it was about to pull away once more. Not good: he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. Luckily a couple of backpackers were stuck halfway through the doors, and the driver stopped to let them board. Calvary was able to slip in behind them.
All the seats were taken, and there was little standing room left. Calvary grasped the rail above his head. He saw that he was directly behind Squat, who was also standing, facing forward. Only if the man turned round would he spot Calvary. Gaines had found a seat near the front, but was in the process of rising to allow an elderly woman to sit down.
For an instant, quite by chance, Gaines glanced in Calvary’s direction. Their eyes met. Calvary fought the urge to look away immediately, instead breaking eye contact at what seemed a natural interval. Had he seen something in the small man’s expression? Unease?
Squat turned his head a fraction to the right to look out the window. Calvary saw the earpiece, like a tiny grey bead of flattened wax. The lips murmured. Calvary turned his own right ear towards the sound, leant in as close as he dared.
No words were distinguishable. But the intonation, the sense that the speech was being formed thickly at the back of the mouth, told him that the language was Russian. As he’d suspected.
He looked at the legend on the wall of the tram, trying to make sense of the route. It was more complicated than that of the Metro trains. Near the front, Gaines was checking his watch. Biting his lip. Calvary thought he had an appointment to keep, had dawdled in the beginning, walking instead of taking public transport, and was now running late.
An appointment meant other people. He had to make his move before then.
The problem was Squat. He’d successfully ‘lost’ him, but couldn’t approach the target without immediately making himself known once more to the Russian. On the other hand, the Russian was alone on the tram. Calvary was fairly certain of that. The younger man, Parka, was far behind them in the street, and even if Squat had other colleagues, there was no way they could be keeping up closely enough to be able to come to his assistance quickly. If the hit on Gaines meant a confrontation with the Russian, then so be it.
Five seconds, it would take, barging past Squat, shoving through the standing passengers, then the umbrella up, the point out and driven up into Gaines’s belly – he’d have to be turned a little first, one hand on the shoulder – and the driver would brake when he heard the screams. Calvary would force the doors open with the shaft of the umbrella and step out. The tram was moving at ten miles an hour, tops, and the brakes would have slowed it, so there’d be little risk in exiting. Then away, trailing chaos and screaming in his wake.
The driver yelled something and the tram slammed to a halt. The passengers lurched as one organism. Calvary was sent sprawling into Squat, who staggered in turn against the woman in front of him. Squat turned and stared Calvary full in the face.
Calvary looked past him because beyond the startled yells of the scattered passengers there was something happening at the front of the tram. The doors adjacent to the driver hissed open and men, their heads obscured by stocking masks, began to pour aboard.
SIX
‘What the hell’s going on...’
The explosion of static and noise made Krupina flinch and knock a pile of papers off the desk with her flailing arm. Down the line there was shouting, female screams.
Oleg yelled one word, that didn’t make sense – hijacking – and then he was drowned out.
Krupina snarled, ‘Everyone. Find that tram. Go, go.’
*
There were three of them. Tracksuits, black stockings like cauls across their faces. Handguns drawn.
The driver cowered, arms raised across his face. The screaming spread through the tram like flames. The crowd was beginning to turn, to press towards the back. Away from the guns.
Gaines was blinking, dazed. One of the invaders grabbed him by the shoulder, jammed the gun against the side of his head.
The surge of the crowd was going to reach critical mass in a moment, creating a wave Calvary wouldn’t be able to breach.
With his right hand he jerked the nylon of the umbrella downwards so that the honed tip of the shaft burst through the gauze and flashed beneath the internal lighting of the tram. With his left he seized the horizontal handrail overhead. He contracted his abdominal muscles and jackknifed his legs and launched himself forwards, treading on the hunched backs of the passengers in front as they crawled towards the rear of the tram, using them as stepping stones. He brought the umbrella shaft down in a stabbing motion as the nearest of the invaders began bringing his gun hand up.
The point caught the man in the shoulder, pinning him off-centre like a butterfly mounted by a clumsy novice collector. He shrieked and stumbled backwards, the gun whipping out of his splayed hand and against the windscreen. The shaft hadn’t gone in far enough to include the barbs, and Calvary pulled it back as his feet landed on the floor of the tram. His kick sent the wounded man slamming back against the windscreen, which cracked and starred under the impact.
The nearer of the other two men brought his gun so close Calvary could stare into the black of the barrel, smell the oil. He ducked and at the same time chopped the side of his hand against the wrist, knocking it aside. He thrust the umbrella shaft at the exposed torso but the man was quick and danced aside.
Behind him, the third man was backing down the steps through the open doors, one arm across Gaines’s throat, the pistol still pressed against his head. Gaines’s heels dragged, his arms flailing.
The second man hadn’t dropped his gun and was taking a bead again in the confined space, even as the first man sat against the dashboard, clutching his bloody shoulder and roaring.
Calvary rammed the umbrella shaf
t upwards, at an angle, pivoting from the hip. The point pierced the gunman’s throat at the angle of the cartilage and the soft underside of the jaw. Calvary’s fist felt the resistance as the tip jarred against bone.
At the same moment the man fired.
*
She grabbed her sparse hair in both fists, pressing the heels of her hands against her temples.
The gunshot had been loud. The scream was louder. As though from some beast living in Krupina’s ear.
‘Oleg.’
Something horrible was coming across the line now. A noise, made by something that didn’t sound human. A staccato sucking, like a hog’s snort.
Then a wheeze.
‘Shot.’
‘Oleg. Talk to me.’
‘Tovarischch.’
Even the background screaming was muffled, after that.
*
Something flicked against Calvary’s face, something hot and wet. Out of the corner of his right eye he saw it was blood. He glanced at his shoulder, but there was nothing there. No wound. And he felt no pain.
Disregard it.
The second man had fallen back through the door and his upended legs jerked on the steps. Gouts from his throat had sprayed the walls and the seats in arterial crimson.
Beyond the throat-stabbed man, through the doors, the third one was dragging Gaines along the pavement.
Calvary glanced once behind him. Saw, as well as the moaning man with the shoulder wound, a body on the floor of the tram. The passengers, their yelling having subsided into shocked whimpering, were drawing back from the body like a tide from a beached boat. The face was tilted towards him. It was Squat, the Russian. Eyes glazed.
He’d taken the gunman’s bullet, in the chest, by the look of it.
Calvary leaped over the dead man supine on the steps and his feet hit the pavement, where passersby had left a huge bare crescent. He saw immediately the reason for the driver’s having braked. A large car, a Mercedes station wagon, had pulled across the road into the tram’s path. Behind the wheel was another masked figure. The third invader was at the rear door, bundling Gaines in, planting a hand on his head and shoving down like a cop in an American film.
By Calvary’s foot was Gaines’s trilby, looking forlorn on the pavement.
The driver gunned the engine. Gaines was already in, his door still open. The man who’d pushed him in leaped aside and the car rocked up on to the kerb. Calvary rolled on the pavement, to the right, rolling and rolling to take himself out of the path of the vehicle. It veered past him and continued along the pavement, sending pedestrians spinning and tumbling in terror. For a second Calvary caught sight of Gaines through the flapping rear door, his bewildered white face turned towards Calvary. Then the car was fishtailing round the back of the tram and U-turning back on to the road in a flood of horns.
The car arced round and appeared at the front of the tram again. Calvary was already sprinting towards it as it slowed by the kerb to let the other man climb in. He took a flying leap at an acute angle from behind and got his torso across the windscreen just after the man slammed the passenger door shut.
The Mercedes took off into the traffic, causing cars to slew aside, jarring against the side panel of one vehicle that didn’t escape in time. The impact nearly shook Calvary off but he clung on, hauling himself across the bonnet so that he covered the entire windscreen. Through the glass he could see frantic movement as the driver tried to peer round him.
There’d be guns – yes, there was the man in the passenger seat, not aiming through the windscreen but instead cracking his door open and hooking his gun arm out and around. A mistake. Calvary lashed out with his boot, his heel connecting with the wrist and sending the gun spinning into the slipstream. The car lurched, the driver trying to keep to a straight path as he craned to see round. Buffeting Calvary were torrents of sensation and noise: cold, blasting air, the roar of traffic.
The front passenger wheel rocked over something solid, possibly a kerb, and Calvary’s right hand was shaken free. For an instant he almost cartwheeled away from the bonnet but he managed to brace the toes of one boot against the edge where the windscreen met its metal frame. He pivoted up so that he was kneeling on the bonnet facing through the windscreen, left hand sliding up to grip the end of one side of the car’s roof rack, right hand punching the windscreen in front of the driver’s face to try and star it.
The driver slammed on the brakes.
Calvary was flung up and across the roof, tumbling in a semi-somersault. His free hand scrabbled for purchase but there was none. He bounced off the raised back of the station wagon and smashed into the road surface, the impact winding him. He rolled twice on the tarmac, wondering vaguely why he was on fire, realising the stinking plumes of rubbery smoke were from the car’s tyres.
He’d been trained to roll and to recover quickly from an unexpected tumble, and he found his feet, stumbling a little. The Mercedes was hurtling away already. He caught his breath and braced his legs to run after it – there might be a chance, even now…
The tram hit him from behind.
*
‘Tram’s still sitting there,’ Arkady was saying. His voice was measured but he couldn’t keep the urgency entirely under control. ‘Hell of a scene. Panicking crowd. And you heard the shot. Some kind of disturbance after that, a car driving away.’
Krupina was shrugging on her coat. ‘The rest of you. How far away?’
Lev answered: ‘Few blocks. A couple of minutes.’
‘Gleb?’
‘There in five. Do we have any idea –’
‘No.’ She sat in her coat and hat, not wanting to lose contact with them just yet. ‘We have to assume the target is no longer in the locale. Priority is to find out what happened to Oleg, get him out of there if possible.’
Sirens were beginning to warble in the background, both down the line and through the open window of her office. She pinched the bridge of her nose, closed her eyes.
*
‘Stop it,’ she shrieked, delighted and alarmed.
Bartos lowered her to her feet, kept one arm round her waist. Put the phone back to his ear.
‘Janos, you’re on my okay list. Right up there at the top.’ He grinned down at Magda, released her. She recognised the sign. He needed privacy.
Smiling, she disappeared into the kitchen.
Bartos listened as Janos confirmed the delivery of the package to the appointed venue. They spoke in code. It was unlikely the police had either of their numbers – pay-as-you-go disposable mobiles were the only phones Bartos permitted in his outfit – but there was no point taking unnecessary risks.
He gazed out the living room window, the view different from the one from his office. This one faced west, took in the broad sweep of the Vltava River.
He wondered why Janos had stopped speaking.
‘Anything else?’ he asked.
‘There were… complications.’
Bartos felt the red rising up his shoulders, his neck.
‘Tell me.’
‘One down.’
‘How bad?’
‘As bad as it gets.’
Bartos ground the handset in his paw. Fucking Russians.
‘Just the one?’
‘A few bumps and scrapes for the rest of us.’
‘Jesus Christ.’ Bartos began to prowl around the living room, fiddling with the godawful tacky bric a brac Magda insisted on littering every free surface with. ‘Just how many of the bastards were there?’
A pause. Bartos thought he could hear the click of a dry throat swallowing. ‘One.’
‘One.’
‘A pro. A killer, I’d say.’
‘One Russian. And he kicked the shit out of you.’
‘He didn’t –’ Janos caught himself before he went too far. ‘He wasn’t Russian. I don’t think so.’
Bartos clamped his teeth until the roots hurt. Then he hurled the phone to the marble floor, smashing his heel down on it again
and again as shards of metal and plastic spun and scattered. He stretched his arms wide, fists clenched, flung his head back and roared, the bay window vibrating with the shock.
*
Calvary loped through the streets, automatically lapsing into the two lefts, one right pattern he normally used when departing a scene. Around him, over him, dark turreted buildings crowded, medieval and leering. Exotic aromas of pickled foods, spiced bakery and beer beckoned him like sirens. He had a sense of the river, cold and vast, looming nearby.
You let him get away, and you’ll never find him again.
As he strode, he plucked a forgotten dishcloth from a café table and wiped the blood off his face and neck. The Russian, Squat’s, blood. He turned the collar of his jacket up to hide the stain.
Didn’t even get close to him. Not even within striking distance.
Pathetic.
The tram had been braking and had hit him at perhaps eight miles an hour. It presented no sharp edge, and he’d started moving in the same direction so the impact hadn’t been as damaging as it might have been. Still, it had sent him sprawling, the breath knocked from him for the second time. By the time he’d rolled clear and got over the shock, he couldn’t see the Mercedes anywhere.
Round a corner the bridge stretched before him, steep and majestic. The Charles Bridge, one of the city’s landmarks. In either direction beneath it the black river’s massive bulk shifted restlessly. Across the river, high above, the towers of the castle stared down at him. A beautiful city. It stirred nothing in him.
He made his way across the bridge, which was as crowded as the streets. Dawdling tourists interwove with accordion-wielding buskers and puppeteers manipulating sinister-looking marionettes. All ignored him.