by WOOD TOM
He didn’t respond because his first thought was that she was complaining, but then he saw her face and understood she was joking. For a moment it seemed as if she was enjoying herself, but he understood the humour to be a distraction; a front because she was nervous. She believed her life was in danger, but she didn’t want to believe it. Anything that eased the reality was a welcome diversion. If he could keep her safe while Norimov solved the problem, she might never have to know anything beyond that.
‘I’ll think of it like we’re going camping,’ she said, looking around. ‘Only without the scenery.’
‘Don’t be scared,’ he said.
‘Well, I wasn’t until you said that.’
Victor frowned. He wasn’t sure if he had been wrong in his assessment or if she was still joking. But this time, he remained silent. He let her in through the glass door next to the huge steel gate. He drew the pistol because he heard voices other than Dmitri’s and Yigor’s, but tucked it away again when he realised they belonged to more of Norimov’s men, newly arrived from Russia.
‘This way,’ he said to Gisele and took her up the stairs to the first floor of the office annexe.
‘When do we eat around here? I’m getting a little peckish. These hips won’t grow themselves, you know?’
‘Dmitri or Yigor might have some food, or they can go and pick something up.’
‘What are you, their boss?’
‘No. But I’m not leaving your side. So they’ll have to do the grunt work.’
‘You said you weren’t a bodyguard.’
‘I can’t protect you if I’m not with you, can I?’
She looked him over. ‘No offence, but you’re not exactly massive.’
He took no offence. ‘You’ll have to take my word that in keeping you safe my body mass will be the least important factor.’
‘Gisele,’ Dmitri roared when they reached the boardroom.
He leapt to his feet and rushed her way. Victor moved to block his path but she stepped around him and embraced the big Russian, who lifted her up as he hugged her.
‘Ugh, don’t crush me.’
He was grinning as he gently lowered her down. Also in the room was Yigor along with three other of Norimov’s men. Victor recognised them all from the bar. The two he’d disabled outside the rear entrance were there, the smaller one sporting a nose splint and the larger one a scowling expression. The third man was Sergei. His scarred ear was bright red in the cold.
‘You found her,’ he said to Victor, who nodded.
The Russians all looked at him for an explanation but didn’t press when he failed to present one. Some knew Gisele. Others did not. They spent a few minutes introducing themselves or catching up. Victor pretended not to notice the stares he was getting from Aleksei and Ivan – the two he’d dropped outside the bar. Yigor was the only one of the five Russians Victor had not fought. He was glad to have avoided that. Yigor was the biggest of them all, and the one Victor saw knew how best to handle himself.
There were lots of happy faces and back-slapping. Gisele looked uncomfortable being the centre of attention.
He took the opportunity to ask her: ‘Why do you want to be a lawyer?’
Apparently relieved to be lured away from the jovial Russians, she said, ‘Because I believe in the law and I want to be part of it.’
‘But why?’
‘Oh, look at you, wanting to find out how I tick. I’m flattered. Nay, humbled.’
‘That’s not answering the question.’
‘You’re a pushy one when you want to be, aren’t you? Wish I hadn’t let you off the hook so easily beforehand, but fine, I’ll justify myself to you if that’s what you want. Everyone hates lawyers, don’t they? That makes no sense to me. Sure, there are some sharks out there, but aren’t there in any profession? And how many of those professions are more essential? Not many, I’ll tell you that. We need lawyers to ensure the law is followed, because the law is the very definition of society’s morality. It should be formidable and scary and vengeful, but also understanding and gentle when required. It doesn’t always work and it almost never achieves true justice, but it’s all we have and it’s better than the alternative.’
‘Which is?’
‘Barbarism.’
‘Very articulate.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Are you being sarcastic?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Okay. Good. Thank you, then. I think.’ After a pause, she grinned. ‘Also, you can earn a decent living. Which is useful because I like nice things. I’m not all about the altruism, you know. Let’s call that Alex’s influence. I’m trying to shake it off. Might take a few more years. What about you? You said your name is Vasily, yes?’
He nodded. He felt the accusation in her tone.
She affirmed it when she said, ‘But you’re not Russian.’
‘It’s the name your father knows me by.’
‘So what’s your real name?’
He didn’t answer.
‘What? You’re joking, right? I come here with you, trusting you, and you won’t tell me your name? That’s ridiculous.’
‘I don’t expect you to trust me. I said I hope that eventually you will. It’s safer for you if you don’t know who I am.’
‘That’s a lie.’
He said, ‘It’s as close to the truth as either of us needs.’
She frowned, open-mouthed, trying to decipher the comment. He was spared further interrogation because she heard Sergei say to Yigor, ‘We’ll take her back in the morning. No one will get to her between the five of us.’
‘Hey, hold on a minute,’ she said. ‘Who’s this you’re taking back? If by “her” you mean me, then I hate to rain on your parade but there isn’t a snowball’s chance of my going to Russia with you.’
‘Gisele, please,’ Sergei pleaded. ‘You have to come with us. We’re going to keep you safe. Okay?’
She pointed a thumb at Victor. ‘I thought that was his job.’
Sergei said, ‘He’s done his job. Now, it’s our turn. You don’t need him any more. You have us. Your father wants you at his side. It’s safer there.’
‘He’s not my father. And if you try to take me to Russia I will scream all the way through passport control. Try it. Let’s see if I’m joking.’
Sergei turned to the other Russians for backup. They looked away or shrugged. They were well used to beating cooperation out of people, but had no clue how to handle their boss’s rebellious stepdaughter.
She turned to Victor. ‘Are you going to back me up, or what?’
He realised he didn’t know how to handle her either. He said, ‘We can discuss the particulars tomorrow,’ to put a halt to further discussion or potential argument. He wasn’t yet sure of his next move. He had to rest and recharge.
Gisele said, ‘Whatever. But I’m not going anywhere, just so you know.’
‘I’ll go get food,’ Yigor announced with a clap of his hands. ‘We should celebrate, yes? Eat lots of bad food and drink lots of good vodka, yes?’
‘No one drinks alcohol,’ Victor said, ‘until this is over.’
Gisele looked at him. ‘Wow, you’re a party animal, aren’t you? Personally, I could use a few shots to help forget all this life-and-death stuff. It’s getting a bit old.’
‘When this is over,’ he insisted.
‘I’ll hold you to that. You can buy me a cocktail.’
Yigor sneered at him as he put on his coat. ‘Yes, Mr Bad Man. You the boss.’ He saluted. ‘Just the food.’
THIRTY-THREE
Victor left Gisele with the Russians and performed a circuit of the warehouse. It was a huge space but almost entirely empty. He took his time, searching for anything out of place; any signs of intruders or danger. He didn’t envision Norimov’s enemies launching an attack, but he couldn’t rule out that they were aware of the warehouse. He was confident he had not been followed since his arrival in London, but he couldn’t say the same for Norimov’s men.
He cleared the first floor of the office annexe, and then the floor below and finally the warehouse proper. As expected, there were no signs of any forced entry.
Upstairs again, he found Gisele sitting in the darkness on an old office chair.
‘Where have you been?’ she asked.
‘Checking the perimeter.’
‘Why?’
He stopped himself from launching into an explanation of the dangers of operational complicity, and instead responded: ‘Habit. Why aren’t you with the others?’
She shrugged. ‘Needed some me time. Those guys can be pretty intense. Are you going to join us?’
‘I have to call your father.’
‘Stepfather. Tell him to go to hell from me.’
He waited until she had gone back into the boardroom, then called Norimov.
‘She’s safe,’ Victor said.
For a moment, there was silence on the line. He pictured Norimov holding the phone away from his face, perhaps pressed against his chest, while he controlled his emotions.
When Norimov spoke, his voice was full of happiness. ‘I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘You don’t need to. I did this for Eleanor, not you.’
‘I understand. I do. Regardless, you will for ever have my gratitude.’
‘Keep your gratitude,’ Victor said. ‘It’s worthless.’
Norimov sighed. ‘I guess I deserve that. Put Gisele on the phone, please.’
‘She doesn’t want to talk to you. She doesn’t like you very much. Can’t say that I blame her.’
There was a long pause. ‘This horrible business will push her even further away from me.’
‘No doubt.’
‘Thank you for not placating me.’
‘I wouldn’t begin to know how to,’ Victor said.
‘I know I have wronged you, my boy, and when you return to St Petersburg with Gisele I will do my very best to get back into your good books.’
Victor said. ‘I’m not coming with her.’
‘Right,’ Norimov breathed. ‘Of course. Your task is over. She’s safe now. So I guess this is goodbye.’
‘It is,’ Victor said.
He hung up before Norimov could say another word and stood in the semi-darkness of the room. His reason for being in London was over. Norimov’s men could take over from here. He could hear laughter coming from the boardroom at the end of the corridor. One of the Russians was telling a story about when Gisele had been a child. Victor stood, looking at the closed door framed by lines of light.
He turned away and approached the nearest staircase. Within a couple of hours he would be on a flight to mainland Europe. By tomorrow, he could be anywhere in the world. He pictured a tastefully decorated hotel room, crisp white sheets, far away from anyone who knew anything about him.
Behind him, the boardroom door opened. Dmitri.
The Russian caught up with him. ‘There’s something you need to see.’
He waited.
‘The electrical box,’ Dmitri explained. ‘I think it’s been tampered with.’
Victor didn’t hesitate. He wanted no reason to stay, but he was not prepared to leave Gisele if anything was unaccounted for.
‘Show me.’
Dmitri led him to the far end of the corridor and into a room full of pipes and cables.
‘Over there,’ he said.
The box was fixed to a wall, two metres from the ground. Victor opened it up. It took him a second to realise it hadn’t been tampered with. A second later he heard the three other Russians enter the room behind Dmitri.
He faced them. Dmitri stood a little ahead of the rest. They occupied the other half of the room with their combined massive bulk, forming an impenetrable wall of muscle by virtue of just standing there, side by side. The door was behind them. Yigor was the only Russian not present, but he hadn’t returned yet with food.
They were silent, but words could not have added to what their body language told him. Victor knew he should have seen this coming, but he’d believed they cared more about Norimov and his daughter than their pride. He realised he should have known that a wound to a Russian’s pride took far longer to heal than any physical injury.
‘We don’t need to do this. I’m on the next plane out of here.’
Dmitri said, ‘Not until we’ve settled our differences.’
‘This is a bad idea.’
There was a vicious smile. Russian pride.
Dmitri shook his head. ‘No, it’s not. We have Gisele. She’s safe.’
‘Okay,’ Victor said. ‘Let’s work this out.’
‘There’s nothing to work out. We’re going to beat the shit out of you.’
‘I don’t think so.’
Dmitri laughed. The others didn’t join in. They were too pumped up and focused on violence to find any humour in the situation. ‘Don’t worry. We’re not going to kill you. Just hurt you like you hurt us. Make things right.’
‘I understand,’ Victor said. ‘But I didn’t know you were so selfless.’
Dmitri smiled, then frowned. He hesitated for a moment, then asked – as he had to – for an explanation. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘There’s four of you,’ Victor said. ‘And you’re all a lot bigger than me, so we all know you are going to win.’
‘Yes…’ Dmitri said.
‘And you almost must know that the first of you to enter my reach is the one I’ll be able to kill before the other three put me on the floor.’
Dmitri said nothing.
Victor continued: ‘As you orchestrated this little revenge mission, these guys will expect you to make the first move. So you must be prepared to sacrifice your life in order to let the others have their revenge. Like I said: I didn’t know you were so selfless, Dmitri.’
He said, ‘You won’t have time to kill me.’
‘There’s only one way to find out.’ Victor turned his attention to the other three men. ‘Unless there is someone else who wishes to die in your place?’
He held their gaze, one at a time, until each had looked away. Then he stared back at Dmitri.
‘Well?’
The door opened. Gisele entered the room, saying, ‘There you all are. What are you guys doing in here without me? I thought I was supposed to be the guest of honour.’
Everyone looked at her. No one responded. She read the tension in the air. ‘What the fuck is going on?’
Before anyone could answer, the lights went out.
THIRTY-FOUR
A single small window let in some ambient light from the streetlamps outside. The Russians were slow to react, faces a mix of shadow and orange glow, looking to one another for an explanation; for someone to take the lead. Victor pushed through them and dragged Gisele to the floor, below the level of the window.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘What are you doing? You’re hurting me.’
Victor stayed quiet for a moment, to listen. He heard nothing.
Gisele pulled her hand free of Victor.
‘Stay down,’ he said.
‘Okay, okay. You could have simply asked, you know?’
Dmitri said, ‘What’s happening?’
Victor gestured at the window and the orange glow filtering between the aluminium blind slats. ‘We’re the only ones who have lost power.’
‘Then it’s a circuit breaker,’ Dmitri said, but without conviction. He stepped closer to Victor – further away from the window – and squatted.
‘Please,’ Gisele said. ‘What’s going on? Why are we on the floor? What does it matter if we’ve had a power cut?’
Victor didn’t answer. He didn’t yet know. Maybe it was nothing, but he didn’t believe in coincidences.
One of the Russians – Ivan – stepped towards the window, curious; investigating. No tactical sense.
Victor said, ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’
He glanced back, an incredulous expression contorting his face for a second before it exploded.
Blood and tissue splattered against the far wall. Shattered glass from the window flew across the space and rained down over the floor, pelting Victor as he shielded Gisele. The shot Russian dropped into a heap, the left side of his face missing, blood quickly pooling around him.
Gisele gasped and some of the other Russians yelled in surprise or horror. Victor paid no attention as he concentrated on listening for the sound of the shot, to work out how far away the shooter was positioned. It never came.
A suppressed rifle then, shooting subsonic ammunition from enough distance for the city to swallow up the noise, but with a heavy round to inflict that kind of damage. Victor pictured the shooter across the street, maybe one hundred metres away, on the roof of the building on account of the difference in height between the hole in the window and where it had struck the target. Any further, and the slow round’s inaccuracy would have made such a shot too problematic to take.
Regardless, the sniper was an excellent marksman to have made a headshot from a cold bore with a slow round when the target had only just appeared and had been partially concealed by blind slats.
Dmitri and the others dropped to the floor to join Victor and Gisele. She kept her palm over her mouth as she breathed in huge, panicked breaths. Victor avoided the growing pool of blood draining from the exit wound in the dead Russian’s head and took the pistol from his coat along with the spare magazines.
‘What do we do?’ Dmitri asked, eyes wide in the darkness; a brave man but one succumbing to panic.
‘First thing: calm down. Second: we have to defend the staircase outside this room. That’s the best place to assault. Come on. We don’t have long.’
Still in a crouch, he opened the door and stepped out of the room, Dmitri and the other Russians following him, making more noise than he would like but there wasn’t time to instruct them on better operational procedure. The warehouse was vast, but mostly open on the ground level. The first-floor office section was narrow, located on the building’s west side, accessible via two sets of stairs.
Victor whispered to the Russians, instructing them on the best positions to take to cover the nearest staircase. They nodded and spread out as they were told.