The men walked to another part of the building, leaving the remaining men to rest. They would have their own duties to attend to the next day.
“Carry her to the place I told you about. No torches. Do it as I showed you and she will be gone. I need her to leave now. She has overstayed her welcome. Take as long as you need. I have things to do.”
The four young men divided their labour, two picked up Cynthia Bell, the other two carried what items they needed. It was a walk of about half a mile, beyond reach of the van, marshy in places, but if they stuck to the footpath, they would be fine. All the way to the river.
In Bucharest McCall was ready. He had been an accomplished actor since his schooldays and playing a drunk was second nature to him, partly due to his skills and mainly due to his experience. Service life had taught him how to fight and how to drink. Everything else was a close second.
His slightly dishevelled appearance, staggered walk and distant look was familiar to the other footpath dwellers that shuffled home later on a frigid January night in the Medical District. Three steps forward and two back.
Byzantin was noisier than normal – must be the cold, driving everyone in, or free drinks. The posters said free drinks, with admission. The sound told him that there must be at least a hundred customers beyond the main doors. The party that the Jackdaw had planned was yet to flourish, but it was building in tempo. Time yet, the city was just coming to life. When Alex Stefanescu threw a party, people came, people even paid to enter.
It had been a long time since they had been turned away in their hundreds. And he knew it. Those days needed to return, or soon, there would be another king to wear the crown.
Tweedledee and his counterpart Tweedledum, or to give them their operational names, The Incisors, were pacing around on the pavement, theatrically pressing their ears and checking their watches, like they knew what they were doing in their cheap Armani replicas. Amateurs.
In the observation post across the road, Vasile was awake and pressing buttons – one on his camera, the other on the radio. Kicking his mate awake with his left foot.
“Vasile to Andre!” This was more urgent than the last time he had called in. The words came through with an aura of excitement draped around them. He repeated the message.
“Vasile to Andre.”
“Go ahead.” Grig had been about to stand his men down after days of fruitless activity.
“Boss. Tourist One is back!”
“OK. Give me a sitrep. All units stand by to strike.”
“Boss Tourist One is in the club. The staff entrance door. He looked drunk, but the two local targets have gone in after him and haven’t exited. Do you receive?”
He received. Loud and clear and the bastard tourist wasn’t, was he? It was his stance. The way he held himself. His confidence. Even the way he dressed. He should have gone with his instinct and had him taken out on the street. But why was he in his city, who was he and critically, was he a friend or a foe?
As experienced as he was Capitan Andre Grigorescu was regretting the decision to halve his manpower for the night.
“Vasile, you are the closest team. Break cover and get to the club. We are on the way.”
McCall took the first two steps, bumped into Tweedledee, apologised in a broad Australasian accent, laughed, smiled inanely, then apologised again, before spinning him around and staggering towards the side door of the club, trying to shake his hand.
“No boys, seriously, she’ll be right. It’s all sweet. Trust me, I’m a doctor. No, really, I am. I saved a pretty girl once. You should have seen her. Stunning…”
Tweedledum, the larger of the two tried to grab hold of McCall’s arm but he was quick, quicker than his foe. To an onlooker he was yet another drunken tourist, staggering, trying to get into the club, to meet other tourists or pick up one of the pretty local escorts.
“Oh, do me a favour boys. Can’t a man just get a bloody beer when he wants in this…” He laughed, waving his arms around like an enthusiastic tour guide, “…beautiful city of Budapest?”
“It’s Bucharest, and you are not welcome cowboy. Go before we hurt you.”
“Fair dinkum. Just let me go for a piss and I’ll be on my way. Don’t want to get on the wrong side of the law or you fellas do we?”
He started to unzip his fly.
Then took two more steps and was through the door, falling forwards and into the main hallway. His hope was that team two, The Molars, as he had labelled them, were having a break. He spun around, as a drunk would. It gave him seconds to scan his new environs, up, down and sideways. He was in.
It was his lucky night – The Molars were elsewhere.
Target Dee, as he was now known in McCall’s electric mind, was through the door in seconds, panicking that the boss might be watching on the closed circuit system that safeguarded every corner of the business. Target Dum was metres behind.
In the main club a remix of a popular euro track was pulsing, causing the fittings to vibrate lightly. A girl in a dress that really didn’t qualify as such walked into the hallway, letting the sound drift in behind her, looking for the bathrooms. She took one look at the doormen and turned, giggling, her miniscule silver-spangled dress enough to draw their attention for a second. That was all he needed.
The first strike was a straight arm into the right upper quarter of Dum’s slightly overweight frame. The pressure wave was immense. It was the same blow that had felled Cade only days before in the altogether more peaceful Whitsunday Islands, but the effect was the same. In Dum’s case, calculated to be a whole lot worse. His organs had collided, smashing into one another. It was a dense, animal, biological collision, absorbing the shock but reacting as only a human body can. Before he had even slumped to his knees, he was bleeding internally. He wouldn’t get up again in a hurry. For all his size, bulging sleeves and snarling expression, he had lasted only long enough to be a nuisance.
McCall turned, light on his feet, balletic, cracking the back of Dee’s right knee with his foot, causing him to buckle, lower now, target in sight. He drove his balled fist onto the top of his collarbone. The electric shock that ran through his stocky but overweight body was impressive. It was one of McCall’s party pieces.
A hundredth of a second later, he had wrapped his arm around Dee’s throat and was applying pressure to the carotid artery. McCall’s face was so close to Dee’s that he could smell what he had eaten an hour earlier. Dee thrashed about, an ocean predator jigging for his life on board a charter boat, down among the heady mix of blood and seawater, gasping for air.
He was down. McCall drove his foot through the side of Dee’s kneecap, immobilising him with a ligament-snapping crunch, then turned to follow up on Dum. It was pointless; he was also immobile, and out cold. The decision not to kill both men was premeditated.
They were not soldiers. This was not a battlefield.
It was pointless trying to drag them to a store cupboard or secrete them in some way. If the cameras that he had observed were working, then someone was watching, it was just a matter of time. He had made the leap of faith.
He checked his watch. Two minutes. Time flew when you were having fun. He ran his hand over his cargo pocket. Documents still there. Time to move on.
Vasile and his partner Tomas, both in their twenties and fit and fast were bailing out of the OP as quickly as they could, but they needed to secure it first, then get down a fire escape, out of the grounds and over a wall before running across the street. Their dark-coloured jackets were doing their best to hide the body armour which was slowing them down, standing out like a beacon under their plain clothes.
It was the sight of the men running that caught the Jackdaw’s keen eye. He missed nothing. A man on the run and with that many enemies never missed a beat. You needed eyes, in the eyes in the back of your head if you played in the same sandpit as Europe’s finest criminals. If you didn’t, you died.
Police or a fierce competitor? He went for the former. H
is competitors walked to a fight.
This was the moment the fortune teller had warned him about, many years ago. If you believed such things. He did. He had been sent to see the Drabadi – the fortune teller, when he was a young man. She hoped for luck and good health and the benchmark things that those that future-gazed hoped for, and skilfully blended the truth to suit her agenda, which was to keep the young man in front of her happy.
However, with the boy they had started to call the Jackdaw, she knew she had to be truthful. He had once been rumoured to be the next Gypsy King. He had an air about him that concerned her, even frightened her and that meant she had to respect him or end up somewhere in an unpleasant situation and cast out.
“Beware.” Her first words made him smile. He feared no one. Foolish old woman. Less of the drama and more of the facts. However, he listened, for equally he feared what she might say next.
Divination, or fortune telling, is as old as Roma themselves. More than an art form, it is woven into their way of life, practiced by most Roma, but almost entirely frequented by the females of the group and only ever for profit when practiced with non-Roma – or Gadje as they were called.
The middle-aged woman ran her eyes over the tarot cards. It was an unconventional method of fortune telling for her – however; she was far from conventional. Moved on by her own, she had travelled across Europe before eventually finding a home near Craiova.
“You have drawn the Seven of Swords.” She shuddered theatrically, looking around, gathering momentum and hoping for a greater reward in the form of her social standing. Jackdaw was young, but he was already wealthy and influential and with any luck he would be charitable in some way.
“Beware the Seven of Swords, Alex. In the picture we see a man carrying five swords, running from a place, a place where he should not be. You are this man.” She fixed her gaze upon his and did not yield until he looked away.
“He enjoys the feeling of getting away with this, of not being caught. But look, on the horizon, a soldier waits, he too has a sword, and somewhere, another man, also armed.”
“You have my attention, my dear. But I am scared of no one. Only God.”
“There will come a day.” She gazed soulfully into the future. “A day when you will need to face your enemies. You cannot run away from the truth anymore. You will become a victim.”
“Of what?” His arrogance was building.
“Of deception. Of betrayal. And of treachery. Someone has an agenda Alex. Someone you thought you could trust. Trust no one. The Seven of Swords is not a card to ignore. You need to be vigilant.”
“For how long?”
“Until the day comes.”
Something triggered this memory as he had stood at the full height window – the observation post at the epicentre of his business empire where he often stood and watched the world go by. Perhaps the old woman was right after all.
Grig and his team were also out of their buildings. Two were running, four in a car. Another car was en route, ploughing through night time traffic and avoiding the drunks. This was not how it was planned.
Chapter Thirty-One
Alex moved away from the tinted window. His speed caught his younger brother by surprise. He was making for the kitchen.
“Something I need to know, brother?” He was rapid now, pacing as a caged animal would, paranoia setting in. Stefan recognised the symptoms. They had been here so many times before, always on the run, a crick in the neck from looking over his shoulder. When would it ever end?
For Stefan, it had all been a lie. The past decade, longer, since his bastard of a brother had killed their parents. Always doing what his brother wanted, when he said, without question, yes Alex, no Alex.
He had lived a very nice lifestyle – but he was living a lie. He had waited for the day, allowing the business empire to expand, to stink of money and allow its very name to have such a viral reputation that no one would ever challenge him. He could live that sort of a life, couldn’t he?
However, he also had his other master to appease – the British. The life of a double agent. Sounded glamourous. In his words, it was utter horse shit. A puppet with two sets of strings, and occasionally they tangled. It was dangerous beyond your wildest dreams. People wondered if it was glamourous. ‘Please, do not insult me’ he would say to the limited number of people he trusted. It was a game and one which ultimately he knew he would never win, slashed across the throat by his big brother or stabbed in the back by the British government. But it seemed that they were his only ally for they wanted Alex dead as much as he did.
“What is it to be Stefan?”
He paused. The words sinking in, through the mental haze that had quickly descended.
Alex was looking at him, a razor-sharp kitchen knife in his hand. He always preferred the knife. Firearms were too quick. He liked to hear the wound he was inflicting.
He was looking into his little brother’s eyes now. People were fascinated by them, each a different shade. He’d like to cut them out one by one and force them down his throat. How could he betray him, to the Bulgarians was one thing, but to the British of all people, why them? They both had a chance to put hundreds of millions into their bank and the British wouldn’t even ask for it back as long as they had kept their side of the bargain – keep quiet, tell no one. For what Alex was asking, it was a deal worth striking and all he had to do was hand over some scraps of paper.
But no, Stefan had to be honourable.
Alex turned his back on him, making towards the panelled wall where he knew he could begin his escape. The police were coming for him, on a charge that had no substance, but Alex held no sway over the judges anymore. There was a time, when he had all of the local judges in his back pocket in one way or another, but those days had long gone. Now, it seemed that judges had integrity. He spun and mid-turn launched the knife at his brother, then began to sprint towards him.
The knife hit him in the upper left bicep and flapped around like a harpoon in the back of a whale. He had missed.
It was a sign that the Jackdaw was still hung over. As the upright wooden beam in his grand apartment, with its myriad entry wounds could testify, Alex never missed. He was a master with the knife. Now he had to get it back or twist it where it remained, trying to tear open the brachial artery.
He leapt onto Stefan, who had fought the urge to pull the blade from his arm. They collapsed backwards, his head almost striking the hearth that surrounded the impressive log fire which spluttered now, flames of green and yellow, fiery tendrils desperate for more fuel.
On one side of the hearth were a few weapons of opportunity; a fork and a poker, forged from iron, hanging on a hook. On the other side the forlorn polar bear’s head, sat with its black eyes mirroring Alex’s – deep holes of coal-black that spoke only one word – predator.
The Jackdaw was crowing. Grabbing at the knife, he pulled it swiftly from the wound, which now began to bleed more profusely. He raised it up, ready to strike again. His brother was quicker and stronger, pushing him backwards, knocking the bear, or what was left of him, to one side. Droplets of glass scattered from within the head, across the hearth. Fifty or a hundred, maybe more, it was difficult to tell. To an experienced eye they were more than glass beads, they were diamonds and beautiful ones too. Stolen years before from Hatton Garden in London during an operation that was supposed to be a roaring success but had ended like the spluttering fire in Alex’s apartment, warm but no inferno.
That night had been the start of his demise. The night he learned who to trust and who not to. Who to hate and who to kill. It left him with few friends and fewer family members. He had lived underground, in isolation or in prison ever since.
Stefan couldn’t help being distracted by the cascade of sparkling colours, blue and green and red, silver and white, attracting light and answering a question he had long harboured.
“So that’s where you have been hiding them.”
Stefan glanced down. “Th
ose were half mine you thief!”
Alex laughed. “Me, a thief?” He looked genuinely shocked. “No, nothing is half yours. Everything is all mine. You should know I don’t do things by halves, my dear.” He was smiling, actually enjoying the moment. The sociopath versus the traitor.
Stefan picked up the poker and walked towards his brother, who was rubbing the back of his head. Fresh blood, but not enough to worry about. “Now we are even.”
A patch of bright red blood was forming on Stefan’s shirt, but the wound was not bleeding enough to worry him. He had experienced a lot worse. They both had, from their childhood days when they fought like cat and dog and more latterly, when they fought like pack animals, often together for what appeared to be a common cause.
“The police will be here any second, brother. Let me run. If you love me you would.”
“But you see, I don’t. They can take you for all I care. You are no brother to me. I will happily turn the key on you. You murdered our parents, for God’s sake. What are you?”
Alex stepped backwards towards the kitchen – an arsenal of opportunities.
“All this time? You have born a grudge all this time. You have had many opportunities to kill me, smother me whilst I was drunk, slit my throat as I slept.”
“I should have done.”
“I am the Jackdaw – King of the Gypsies. People look up to me, worship me, women throw themselves at me, men cower at my feet. There is nothing or no one I cannot have. And you are jealous.”
The first knife left the wooden block and struck against the poker as Stefan swiftly raised it in defence, sparks flew. Another was drawn from the block, longer, less accurate, but thrown nonetheless. And another. It seemed that Stefan was riding his luck. The next was a broad-bladed carving knife. Too big to throw. He needed to be closer.
“And you even killed your daughter. What sort of animal does that?”
Seven of Swords (The Seventh Wave Trilogy Book 3) Page 30