by Tim Stevens
They’d discussed what to do. Nonetheless, it was a tense moment. Nikola left the trolley and went forward alone, pushing through one of the sets of ward doors.
A porter came past with another patient on a trolley. He glanced incuriously at Calvary, on his own in the corridor.
She was back in e wothunder a minute.
‘Our man.’
‘Dubrovsky?’
‘Yes. His name is marked on the wall chart. He is in a side room.’
That would help. ‘Any guards?’
‘Two policemen. At the nurses’ station.
He considered.
It was a plan of such immense risk, to her as well as to him, that he almost rejected it out of hand. Almost.
‘Okay. This is what we do.’
*
Krupina was put through just as she was pulling the door of the Audi closed.
A bright young female voice said, ‘Yes, Mr Dubrovsky’s in recovery now. He’s doing well.’
Lev drove, swiftly but not at breakneck speed. Behind him Arkady watched Krupina’s eyes in the mirror, caught the relief, smiled.
‘Thank you. Please tell him that Krupina is on her way.’
‘Are you a relative?’
‘I’m a colleague.’
‘From the Russian Embassy?’
‘No.’ Had Gleb spun them a story? ‘Were you expecting an Embassy person?’
‘Well, the gentleman earlier said he was going to send someone down.’
‘Which gentleman?’
‘The one from the Embassy,’ the girl said patiently.
Krupina rubbed her face in confusion. ‘Did he give a name?’
‘I think so. It was Dr Grossman who took the call. I don’t know if he wrote the name down.’ There was the sound of rummaging through paper. ‘No, doesn’t seem to have.’
Krupina’s first call had established that Gleb had been operated on for a gunshot to the abdomen and another to the tibial bone in the right leg. She hadn’t been able to find out any further details.
While Lev drove she made another call, this time to an acquaintance at the Embassy. No, nobody at his end was aware of Tamarkin’s having been injured, nor had they been in contact with the hospital.
Arkady said, ‘What’s wrong, boss?’
For a moment she didn’t answer, trying to piece it together. She couldn’t.
‘Lev, step on it. Gleb’s in danger.’
*
The doors opened into a warm, brightly lit area saturated with the aroma of coffee and antiseptic. From his supine position Calvary glimpsed a flow of people in scrubs or white coats on either side. Standing at the nurses’ station were the two uniformed men, one of whom looked over his shoulder at them before turning back to his conversation. Calvary took in the pistols at their belts.
Nikola wheeled the trolley straight past the desk and further into the ward. From where he lay Calvary saw a whiteboard with names. Dubrovsky, M. Side room C, by the looks of it.
A nurse glanced across, called something out. Nikola replied, and Calvary caught the name they’d agreed on for him: Peter Farber.
The nurse came over, a stern matronly type. Nikola said, ‘Please, can we use Russian? The patient does not speak Czech.’
The nurse — her name badge identified her as Sister Anna Jelinek — stared at Calvary. ‘Why have you brought him here? We haven’t been notified.’ Her Russian was thickly accented.
Nikola ran a hand through her long hair, gave a harassed sigh. ‘He’s for surgery. They were supposed to let you know down in casualty.’
‘Where are his notes?’
Nikola made a pretence of looking on the rack under the trolley, then straightened, burying her face in her hands. ‘They’re not here. Oh God, they haven’t put the notes on.’ When she took her hands away Calvary saw she was actually weeping. ‘I’ll have to go and get them.’ She turned away.
Sister Jelinek said, ‘You can’t leave him here.’
Damn, thought Calvary.
Nikola swallowed. She put a thumb to her mouth, bit the nail. Her hand shook.
‘Sister,’ she said. Her voice had the edge in it Calvary had noticed before in fellow soldiers after several hours of waiting for the enemy to show its hand. ‘Let me tell you something. I came on duty at one p.m. yesterday. It’s now ten a.m. I haven’t slept. I’ve had a sandwich and a bottle of water. That’s all. I’ve been forced to bring this bloody patient up here myself because there aren’t enough porters around. And now you have the gall, the — ’
‘Control yourself, doctor.’ Sister Jelinek’s voice was like a bullwhip.
Nikola cut across the last syllable: ‘The nerve to tell me to take the patient away with me, as though it’s a pet of mine, a toy.’ Her voice rose to a shriek. ‘You know what? I’ve had enough. Of your attitude and those like you. Of this hospital. Of this job.’
‘Doctor. Get a grip on yourself. Now.’
Nikola backed towards the door, still shouting. A small crowd gathered at the nurses’ station, staf st
‘I won’t be responsible, sister,’ she yelled. ‘I won’t be. For what happens next.’
He saw her turn and run, barging past the policemen. Calvary saw one of them start after her.
God bless you, Nikola, he thought. Now run. Just run.
Sister Jelinek shook her head, disgust etched into her face.
As quietly as he could, Calvary swung his legs off the trolley, acutely conscious of his booted feet and how out of place they’d look beneath the hospital gown. To a young nurse who was staring at the door, mouth agape, he said, ‘Toilet?’ She pointed vaguely down the passage separating the dormitories from the individual rooms.
He lifted the saline bag off the hook and carried it, moving unhurriedly down the passage, closing his ears to the shouts that would come after him. There was room C, on the left. He pushed open the door and went in.
*
Tamarkin had asked the nurse who seemed to be in charge of attending him for a phone. She’d said she would see what she could do, but so far she hadn’t come back.
Krupina would find him eventually, but if possible he wanted to get in contact sooner rather than later. He’d asked the nurse for a clock as well and she’d put a small digital display on the bedside table. Ten oh-nine. A little over three hours since the rooftop battle. Calvary might be working his way into the safe house where Gaines was being kept; might even have him by now.
A morphine pump in his arm allowed him to self administer pain relief. He’d used it sparingly until now, wanting to keep a clear head. But the screeching message from his leg in particular was overwhelming. He clicked the button. Sweet relief poured into his veins, his mind, almost immediately. For the first time he felt some sympathy — no, empathy was the word — for the raddled junkies he saw crawling around the edges of Gorky Park back home in Moscow.
Something slipped through the balm of warmth induced by the morphia. A scratchiness. He attended to it in a detached manner. A sound, was it? Yes. Not pain; definitely an aural stimulus.
Shouting. A woman’s fishwife shriek. Not the wails of the post-surgery patients in the ward outside his room, the ones he’d learned to accept as wallpaper noise in the short time he’d been conscious. Other voices: one of the nurses’, one he recognised from afar; a man’s, authoritative.
In his left hand the morphine trigger whispered: love me. Use me.
For the moment he didn’t need comfort. Pain would be more useful.
Tamarkin dropped the trigger. With his right hand hs ridn’t e groped at the plastic water jug on the table beside the digital clock. Using both hands he snapped the jug, pulled a splinter free, a jagged length with a fat end tapering to a point. He writhed so that he could wrap the thick end in the blanket. He buried the weapon beneath the covers, and waited.
*
Lev dropped them at the entrance. Krupina and Arkady navigated the front doors of the hospital and the reception area, found the directions on th
e wall. Took the lift to the first floor.
When they stepped out, a young woman raced past them and down the stairs beside the lift, a doctor by the look of her: white coat, stethoscope draped over the neck.
She was screaming, yelling.
A uniformed police officer followed her at a run. Darya realised the doctor was speaking German. She didn’t understand the words but could tell the woman was both distressed and saying things that were perturbing the policeman.
Krupina peered down the stairs after them and caught a glimpse of the woman’s face as she looked back. Very pretty, long dark hair. In hysterics.
It was a ruse. Her eyes connected with Arkady’s. He’d reached the same conclusion.
She had her phone out and was calling Lev, saying, ‘Watch out for a young woman escaping, slim, dark hair,’ as Arkady went through the doors of the ward, the Makarov still inside his jacket. By the time Krupina entered the ward he was peering into the dormitories off to the right even as a battleaxe of a nursing sister clutched at his arm and shouted at him. A second policeman stood at the nurses’ station looking nonplussed.
A Babel of confusion rose and dipped around her but she ignored it and stared at the whiteboard on the wall. Saw the room where Dubrovsky, M. was being cared for.
She headed down the passage after Arkady, ignoring the angry sister. Said, ‘This one,’ and indicated the door of the side room.
TWENTY
The first thing Tamarkin noticed was the saline drip bag, held aloft, and he relaxed a fraction. It was another patient who’d wandered into the wrong room.
Then the man dropped the bag, ripped the cannula from his arm and pulled a chair over to the door, tipping it so that the back was under the handle, jamming it.
In two strides he was beside the bed.
Tamarkin watched through the slits between his lids, keeping his breathing even. It was Calvary. Last seen a second before the muzzle flash.
He was doing something to the infusion set linking the drip bag to Tamarkin’s own cannula. Tamarkin made his move.
*
If he’d been stooped a couple of inches lower the plastic shard would have gone into his neck, the jugular or the carotid. As it was the point pierced Calvary’s pectoral muscle through the cloth of the gown and through his shirt. He raised his elbow, tearing the shard out of the man’s hand, and tugged the point free. It had penetrated half an inch.
Tamarkin slumped back on the pillow. There was no fight in him, Calvary could see. He’d played his only card, a surprise attack, and he had nothing left.
Calvary heard the handle of the door being jiggled. Then the banging began.
He worked swiftly, drawing back the plunger of the syringe he’d palmed on his way to the room, fitting the needle to the end. Holding Tamarkin’s arm down with one hand he slipped the tip of the needle into the rubber stopper that sealed the projection from the infusion set, the one that allowed injections to be given using the same cannula.
Tamarkin’s eyes took in Calvary’s movements. He tried to pull his arm free but Calvary had it in a vice grip.
‘What are you doing?’ It was a whisper. His throat would be sore from the tube the anaesthetist had put down it.
‘Air embolus,’ said Calvary. ‘Fifty CCs of air to the heart. It’ll be relatively quick, don’t worry.’
The banging at the door was becoming frantic. Calvary heard the first of the kicks.
‘I’ll tell you — ’
‘I didn’t come here for information. I came here to dispatch you.’ Calvary began to depress the plunger with his thumb.
‘For God’s sake.’ The more Tamarkin tried to raise his voice the more quietly it emerged. ‘I can give it to you. All of it. I know where Gaines is.’
‘As I said, I’m not really that interested.’
The kicks were coming hard, now. Calvary heard something splinter.
Always start an interrogation hard. Never cajole, never build up slowly. Go in at the extreme. He’d found it useful advice in the past.
Tamarkin gave him Gaines’s location.
Calvary memorised it, hoping he’d grasped the pronunciation.
He had what he needed. He looked down at Tamarkin.
There was no justification for it. Except that if he didn’t do it, Tamarkin would alert Blazek as soon as he was able. And Blazek would immediately move Gaines to a new hiding place.
Calvary had no option.
He pressed down on the plunger.
The single opening window in the room s inont size="wung on a horizontal hinge at the top. He pushed it. As expected it opened only a few inches, not enough to fit a human body.
Calvary jumped onto the bedside table, kicked the window out so that it snapped off its hinges. He peered down. A short drop on to a grass verge.
He was airborne as the chair wedged under the door handle finally gave way behind him and the door was flung open.
*
Krupina yelled, ‘Lev, he’s out the window, it’s Calvary, get round the back,’ into her phone as Arkady slipped out after him. The policeman stood in the middle of the room, staring at Gleb in the bed, at the second man disappearing through the window. The nursing sister and one or two other staff were trying to peer into the room. Nearby a patient had started to scream.
Krupina barged past into the room, shouldered even the policeman aside. Looked down at Gleb.
Then hurried to the window and gazed out.
*
The drop felt further than Calvary had been expecting, and the air was cold and sharp after the controlled temperature of the ward. He landed on his feet, his knees bent to absorb the impact, and he rolled on his shoulder and let the momentum carry him down the grass verge until it levelled out. With a fluid continuation of the movement he was on his feet and running.
He had a sense that if he followed the wall to the left he would arrive eventually at the area where the trolleys had been left, not far from where they’d parked the car. It was possible — unlikely, but possible nonetheless — that Nikola had already got out of the building. More plausible was that she’d either been caught, or was roaming somewhere inside, trying to evade capture.
Calvary felt the exhilaration in his belly like an accelerated pregnancy. Wherever she was, he’d find her. Make her safe. He had what he needed: Gaines’s whereabouts. All else was detail.
Something batted at his heel and he looked over his shoulder and suddenly he was tumbling, rolling over his shoulder again, this time on the hard concrete of the pavement. He’d been kicked, a low blow at his foot, expert, and it had sent him spinning. Through the blur of movement he saw the man, young, lean, coming in fast. Calvary extended a leg, rigid, and his boot caught the man in the stomach and jackknifed him, but he’d been ready and had tensed his abdominal muscles and so the blow wasn’t incapacitating. His extended knuckles raked at Calvary’s throat. Calvary parried with a sweep of his own fist, followed up with a jab at the man’s face. He fell short but the man jerked his head back and lost some of his impetus. Calvary heaved with his leg, threw the younger man off and was up again and running.
He came through the window after you. You should have been expecting that.
He rounded a corner into a blaze of sunlight, but that wasn’t why he recoiled. A car was he. A afading towards him, breaking the rules, riding across pavement and chipping flint off bollards. He dodged left, finding himself hard up against the cold of the wall. The car slammed to a stop behind him and he ran on, aware of two presences at his back now, the lean man and whoever had come out of the car.
Nikola, he thought. Where are you? Did you get out?
He had the address where Gaines was being held. It was what he’d been seeking ever since the job had started to go wrong. He was close, he was so close. It couldn’t play out like this. He refused to let it.
Ahead he fancied saw the car park where they’d left the rental VW. It was unlocked with the keys tucked above the driver’s mirror. He just had to
reach it, climb in, grab the keys and take off. Lose them, then circle back, find Nikola.
Then get Gaines.
The first blow crashed into the backs of his legs, dropping him into a kneeling position on the pavement. The second lashed across the back of his head, knocking the world into a grey, sickly haze. At some point he turned, felt his head crack the concrete. Saw two faces swimming over him. He punched out, hit something soft, saw one of the faces rock away. Then fists, battering his visual fields, crowding all else out.
It wasn’t supposed to play out like this.
The final blow landed and the daylight reversed itself into night.
*
Krupina reeled away from the window. She’d lost them, Calvary and Arkady, round the corner.
To the policeman’s confounded and terrified face, she said, for show: ‘My Embassy will expect a full explanation of how this was allowed to happen.’
She stormed out of the ward into the corridor. Gripped her phone, stared at the screen.
Calvary. Slipped away like quicksilver.
As though responding to some psychic communication of hers, the phone vibrated. Arkady.
‘We’ve got him.’
She closed her eyes.
*
The kid was scared, no question about it. But he hadn’t pissed himself yet.
Bartos brought his face close. This one wouldn’t spit.
‘You heard the shot.’
The kid tried to avoid his gaze, but couldn’t.
‘Your friend — Jakub, was it? Yesb, an›
Bartos had barged through the door a few minutes earlier. He’d noted Miklos’s quick shake of the head and had known the young man — Max, he’d admitted to — hadn’t said anything.
‘Brainy guy, that Jakub. And how do I know this? Because his brains, lots of them, are painting the walls of the room next door.’
For a moment Bartos wished Janos was there. His deadbeat son hadn’t been good for much, but he shared his father’s sense of humour and knew when to appreciate a joke.