In the darkness, listening to them edge closer, he swept his hand across the ledge for a stone. He found only paper. He shuffled back to the cave on his buttocks, groped around and felt only the empty plastic bags. There was nothing he could hold in a clenched fist and use to protect himself.
Only his foot.
The path came up from the Villa Paraiso and joined the one that led out of the garden at the Villa del Aguila. They merged at the foot of the rockface. There was one set of foot- and finger-holds and a few stretches where a man might scramble on hands and knees, then the last stretch where the crevices were shallow and the drop vertical. The torch was nearer.
He waited.
His eyes caught his watch face. Almost time to be gone but, first, there was business to be done.
Jonno didn’t know if he would look into their eyes when they came. There was another pistol shot and another answering burst of automatic firing.
As Izzy Jacobs wanted it. He was back and in shadow, and Myrtle was behind him. They had gone precariously into the ditch.
Each time he fired a single shot the response was a burst of unaimed sprayed bullets. He had shaken and angered the men. He doubted anyone else had achieved that in recent memory. Now he used the new mobile, pay-as-you-go and untraceable, to call UDyCO in the town. There was always a duty officer in their headquarters on the Avenida Arias de Velasco. They would have heard the gunfire because he’d held the phone away from his mouth. He had given no name but spoke good foreigner’s Spanish: a gun battle was being fought at the Villa del Aguila, a gangster conflict. He cut the call, and imagined young policemen running to their cars in the basement.
‘Excuse me, Myrtle, I think we’ve fucked them. What that girl does is her business. What we’ve done, I reckon, would appeal to old Mikey, bless him. Where I’ve always operated, it’s me – that’s us – first, second and third. The girl has to take her chance. Time to be on our way, my dear.’
‘Well done, Izzy.’
Down the track, he would lose the pistol where the scrub grew thickest. Further down he would bury the little plastic bag with the cigarette ends under foliage, and the phone elsewhere in the undergrowth. He’d peel off the gloves and Myrtle would tuck them into her knickers for disposal in a bin far away. She’d also – it was inbred – wipe each item on the tissues in her bag before it was dumped.
They went down the hill. Twice, without pausing, they had a sip from the flask. Izzy set the pace, hurried as best he could. He wanted to be at the junction below the urbanisation before the sirens and lights filled the road.
Alex had seen the lights. Marko had heard the sirens.
What to take and what to leave? There was money on the hill and identification documents. Since his first months in Marbella, Pavel Ivanov – still living the life of the Tractor – had kept a bag packed in the wardrobe. None of the clothing in it would fit now. He threw down the bag, ran to his office and scrabbled for the key to his safe, then for a plastic bag from the bin. He scooped up documents, computer disks and sticks – no time to filter them. He had called Rafael and told him of the Major’s flight, but the bastard now had his phone switched off. Ivanov had been clean, but not now. Scattered in front of the safe was the debris of his empire. He didn’t know what he should take, what he would need to access his accounts abroad.
It had been a dream and it had ended. He couldn’t have policemen searching his home and finding weapons – not those for personal protection. The spotlight would fall on him . . .
The Major climbed, his warrant officer behind him, the master sergeant as back marker. One of them had the torch, he didn’t know which. It wavered and swayed, and he would demand that the rockface was lit. He was the pacemaker, always had been. The bastards relied on him, always would – and leeched off him. The sirens spurred him.
There was a line above him, which he thought was the ledge that had been spoken of. The route was off to the right, a goat track, then a road and the lawyer. He needed four or five more handholds to get to the ledge. His fingers ached, and his right-hand grip was poor. He cursed. The torch beam was off the rockface. It came back and he searched for the small shadow lines where he could insert his fist. His breath came in gasps. Shreds of paper floated in the light and one fell onto his moustache, where it stuck, tickling. He couldn’t free a hand to swat it. Why was all this paper here? He felt the head coming up behind him knock the soles of his feet, almost dislodging him. He swore again, lowered his head and hissed an insult.
And was sworn back at. That had never happened before. They walked a pace behind him. They spoke when he invited them to and were secondary to him, not equals. More paper came down and the beam highlighted it. It was caught in the crevices where he put his fingers and shoe tips. Tiredness ripped through him.
He had only his foot for a weapon.
He was back from the edge and had disturbed the carpet of paper. He waited. A last glimpse of his watch: the window was still open.
The light came up and flickered on the higher rockface. Birds were disturbed and screamed. He heard the curse and the response, and waited.
The head came above the rim.
He had seen it in the photograph and had seen it when the man strode out on to the grass. He had seen it also when its owner was bent low over the dog, and in the chaotics moments before the flight. It came slowly and Jonno could hear heavy breathing. The light below showed the hair, then the ear and a little of the mouth. A piece of a dollar bill was wedged between the moustache and the nose. The head rocked. Jonno realised he had been seen. A question was asked – not in any language Jonno knew.
A hand stretched on to the ledge. The torch beam wavered and threw light off the rockface. The fingers struggled for grip, snatched at paper and had a handful of torn passport pages and banknotes. Their eyes met. The Major gabbled words that Jonno didn’t understand. He said nothing. The hand was in deep shadow but a mutilated finger lay against the paper. The target had no grip.
Another shout came from below, incomprehensible. Jonno understood that two more were on the rockface and had precarious holds and needed to press higher. They couldn’t hold on when the momentum of the climb died. The eyes widened. They seemed to ask spasms of questions. Who was he? Why did he not wear a uniform and carry a weapon? Why was he not barking a commentary into a radio?
Confusion slashed the target’s face.
His target would have realised he didn’t face a special forces trooper, or an intelligence veteran, but a young man who might have worked in the haulage department of a retailer and shifted flow charts on gasoline consumption, and the target would have seen – as the beam traversed – the hint of a smile.
Jonno understood that Sparky’s claims were true. He was changed, altered, addicted and infected. He kept the smile and swung back his foot. He kicked at the head, and the target swayed to the side. Jonno had loathed football and the proof was that he had missed the face twisting away to avoid him.
But he had dislodged the man. He was holding on now with one hand.
The light below flitted between them. It showed Jonno and his target. Beneath the Major his men were bawling, showering him with abuse. Jonno heard the sirens closing.
The hand that held up the target was the one that lacked an index finger.
Jonno saw anger, not fear. He was close to the edge and raised his foot. He’d heard it said that when a man had been asked why he had climbed a mountain, he had answered, ‘Because it’s there.’ Why would he stamp on a hand and break the bones? Because it was there. He felt a terrible shivering coldness, and the fun of it.
He didn’t know himself.
His gaze was on the hand and its loosening grip on the paper and the rock. He readied himself.
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He stamped.
He was in the glare of the torch beam and his shadow would have been thrown up grotesquely huge on the rockface above the cave. The movement loosed a cascade of the torn paper, which swirled round his leg and o
nto the hand and face of his target.
It was a gnarled, used hand, weathered, sun-blotched and misshapen. The veins stood erect on it. He felt it underneath his sole. To Jonno, at that moment, the hand was no more than a crushed mess of twigs that might have been in his path as he went through any woodland. He stamped on the hand as if it was debris.
It stayed put. He saw blood ooze from under the nails of three fingers, and from the thumb.
The target didn’t scream. The shouts came from below, as the target’s body heaved and swayed. Jonno thought those behind him were trying to lift him up – and he was obstructing them. He was a man, Jonno knew, who would never plead. The eyes below him blinked hard, and behind them the Major would have been working, racetrack speed, on a solution to a problem: the big problem that was wrecking him.
Jonno was a new man. The damaged marksman had told him that he would be changed.
Jonno had heard the story of the Security Service officer’s death in Budapest and had borrowed it as justification for what he had done now. He regretted that. It had had nothing to do with vengeance and everything to do with exhilaration. Kids caught on CCTV playing football on a pavement with the head of a kid from a rival gang had been wheeled into court where their actions were condemned. Shrinks had queued to talk of deprivation and disadvantage. Now Jonno knew the drug, the power it gave.
He brought his foot a little higher.
The other hand was up and searching for a grip. A shot came from below. The crack went past his face, and there was the wail of the bullet’s deflection off stone. He was in the torch beam. The shouting crescendoed, and he understood none of it. He stamped – not to flatten twigs but to break a man’s hold on a ledge of a rockface.
Stamped again.
Heard the gasp.
Saw the hand slide away as he eased his weight off it.
He felt elation, no shame, and understood all that Sparky had said.
The hand slipped back, the face dropped below the ridge line. The target never called out.
Jonno did not know how many there were below his target. The torch beam was the first casualty and plunged away. There were shouts and oaths, then the buffeting of bodies. The target took them down.
The torch, for part of the fall, was tangled among arms and legs, then free of them. The way up the rockface, easy enough in daylight, moderate at dusk and difficult in darkness had been possible for Jonno who knew a route. Not for those men . . .
And the window? Not long. There were groans below him. Dislodged stone and earth still dribbled into the scrub at the bottom of the sheer rock wall. The sirens were clearer.
He had done what he could.
He should have felt good. He started to come down.
He knew the foot- and handholds. His target and those who’d followed him up had plunged off the rockface and into the scrub. They were back at a start point beside the entrance to the garden at the Villa del Aguila. The torchbeam showed them to Jonno.
He had to catch the window, be through it before it slammed . . .
They’d left him, the bastards.
He could hear them above him, and the stones in free fall.
The Major remembered the football, playing the game. The torch was underneath him or they would have taken it. He didn’t cry out because that would have shown weakness. Pain racked him – his ankle was probably broken. He had the torch in his fist and the beam was weak. He saw his men climbing, and another shape, loose and indistinct, that seemed to pass them as it came down. It moved easily, with smooth balance, and was lost in the undergrowth. There was silence.
He pulled himself up on the stile, and clutched the torch. They had played football in a lay-by on the road out of Pskov – they had stopped the car because Ruslan needed to piss . . . or it might have been Grigoriy. The Gecko had been left in the back of the vehicle. Either Ruslan or Grigoriy had found the mannequin, broken and dumped, but with the head on it. The Major could not have said what had started the game that afternoon but they had laughed and acted stupid. Either Ruslan or Grigoriy had recalled it that evening on the hill above Budapest. And the little goluboy – it was obvious what he was from the moment they’d started watching him – had fought to protect the bag chained to his wrist. There had been nothing effeminate about him. They had kicked him to put an end to his struggles. They had kicked men in Afghanistan – would have kicked men in Chechnya if they’d been there. They’d kicked his head because he was too fucking slippery to hold. They’d kicked him hard. Sympathy? No. Shame? No. Anger? Yes: they had kicked him, silenced him, battered the fight out of him, but couldn’t open the case. They had sawn off his arm – then found the key at his neck. And the case had been empty.
There had been no blow-back. He had heard no more of the matter. There had been no quiet calls from the apparatchiks, or from old colleagues now at desks in FSB. He had seen the face confronting him as he struggled for the last heave on to the ledge: a young face. He understood, as he had groped towards it, that he was accused because of the football game. He did not know who had stamped on his hand . . . All around him was the quiet.
His warrant officer and his master sergeant had abandoned him. They had gone into the night. He couldn’t see Pavel Ivanov or the Serbs, who were wanted for murder. He could see the dog. It wouldn’t desert him. He didn’t know its name so he whistled, and saw the ears come up.
He started to crawl down the path that led through the undergrowth and went towards the hut. Beyond it were the lawn, the dog and the light. The pain came in rivers.
She stood behind him and leaned across his shoulder. Her arms were outstretched, one hand covering his, and she steadied the main body of the Dragunov ahead of the telescopic sight. Her right hand was over his fist and touched the finger that rested on the guard.
Under her hands there was faint movement and she knew the sight followed the man. He was on his stomach. She thought his left ankle was askew, which meant he had broken it, but he had not shouted or screamed.
He was past the hut. Her breast was against Sparky’s ear. Nothing was said. The cross-hairs would be tracking him.
Her hands covered his loosely. She thought Sparky was in torment.
He was in the garden, skirting the shrubs that the flight lieutenant (ret’d) had not pruned, and was near the cat’s grave when he heard the shot.
There was a crack. It kicked the quiet, then was gone. He thought the sirens were closer and that little time remained before the window slammed.
He ran to the kitchen door. He didn’t switch on any lights but groped his way into the hall. His bag was there, with Posie’s and Sparky’s, in a neat little line close to the front door. Posie was coming down, carrying the rifle. She was rubbing at it vigorously with a hand towel. Between her fingers there was a small sack of ammunition. Jonno took it all from her.
He went back through the kitchen, out into the garden, crossed the long grass and slipped under the trees and shrubs between the properties. It had all been planned. He did not argue with the instructions Posie had brought back from the telephone call. Ahead of him he saw the lights that burned high and bright over that garden. He would never see it again. He might remember it when he was unable to sleep at night, what had happened there.
He threw the rifle over the wall, heard the clatter as it landed, then tossed the ammunition after it. He kept hold of the towel as he doubled back.
He passed the little grave for the last time.
Inside the kitchen, he locked the back door, put the key on the hook where they had found it a lifetime ago. The others were at the door and held it open for him. Jonno closed it, locked it and put the key under the same plant pot where it had been left for him. He took a deep breath and turned.
They went down the path, Jonno leading, Sparky sandwiched between them, and slipped away in shadow to the left when they hit the chippings. There were three or four police wagons with the lights turning in front of the big wall. Some were working with a crowbar to ope
n the locked front gates.
They were in the shadows, wraiths and ghosts. Opposite the empty villa’s gates was the short-cut track that kids staying might have used, or staff. It plunged down the steep slope where the road had been cut out for the development, and they were in thorn, scrub and bramble. Some of the ground beneath their feet was still loose from the excavations. They slid and stumbled but kept the pace. Jonno thought Sparky had Posie’s arm, and when he hesitated and looked into the blackness for a route out it was Sparky who, without ceremony, pushed him on. He would never forget them, ever: he reckoned the conspiracy had bonded them. They crossed a ditch filled with cardboard boxes, compacted, rubbish bags and builders’ waste. Jonno was on his hands and knees going up the far side and into the light of a streetlamp, Sparky hauling Posie after him. They were on tarmac.
The pavement was wide enough.
Jonno organised it: Sparky was between them, his arms locked through Jonno’s and Posie’s – he was fitter than either of them. They jogged. More police vehicles went by them, sirens blaring, and an ambulance. It was a clean street, with lanes running off it and through the mass of small white-painted homes. Sparky set the pace.
Across the road were the bus station and the taxi rank. They ran to a cab, climbed in and Posie did the business.
Distance: thirty-six miles. Journey duration: around thirty minutes. Price: negotiable. A ripple of euros made the young driver’s eyes water. They filled the back seat and the rucksacks were on their knees as they made their strategic withdrawal, fast.
Few would have seen him because he kept to the shadows at the side of the building, but the entrance was well lit and he had a good view of it and of the car park.
Many would have heard him. The family of Gonsalvo, officer of the state’s internal intelligence-gathering organisation and occasionally managing matters of organised crime, had pleaded with him to reduce his nicotine intake. To have demanded that he give up and sign a pledge not to go back to it would have been hopeless. He was gaunt and thin but his brain worked well. He was able to make judgements as to what was in the ultimate interests of his country, and what was not. Such a judgement had caused him to call his colleague, Dawson, from the capital’s airport and brief him. Such a judgement, also, had brought him far south to the backwater of La Linea and its Customs and emigration building. As he started to cough the headlights caught him. There was the squeal of tyres on a turn, then the scream of brakes.
The Outsiders Page 40