The lovers came back, slipped through the door off the patio. Daniel Steyn nudged his friend, whose jealousy had become a deal more acute. There was straw on the girl’s back and in her hair.
Anders said, ‘It’s because of what they put in the water. I might just take up your offer of the seat.’
Another day, another start. Dawn broke over a sleeping hotel where a boy lay in a young woman’s arms and the first light reflected off the river and fell on them.
The same sunlight spread easily over fields of corn, and a farmer was already up, checking his crop and the sunflowers. He decided that within the next week he would begin the harvest. He saw a fox edge past him and stay close to the riverbank, but he didn’t know if it was the vixen still hunting her buried cubs or if a new life had reached that territory on the Vuka river.
The same light came into the rooms where a former electrician stirred and where a man who might have fired an anti-armour wire-guided missile slept alone because his wife had gone nineteen years before. It lay on a man who had been a brilliant sniper and now had only one leg, and on the man who was divorced from the inner clan because he had run from his home as the war had come closer.
The day would start when the storks screamed on their nests, flapped and took off to forage, but until then there was quiet.
And the same sunlight pierced a dull window and fell on the whitened face of a woman lying on a bed … and light, also, was reflected up from the metal roofing of a fifteen-carriage sleeper train that was south of Ulm, north of Augsburg, and heading, slow and noisy, towards Munich.
He finished his coffee and there was a knock on his door. He was fully dressed or he would not have called for the attendant to enter. He was given back his passport and slipped a tip to the man. Gratitude was expressed and it was hoped he would have a pleasant day. He was told the train would reach its destination in seven minutes.
15
Robbie Cairns was on the bench in the station and had been there through the night. The concourse had crawled with police and railway-security people. After midnight there had been light music over the loudspeakers and no train movements between one and four. He didn’t know what the great London stations – Waterloo, Victoria, King’s Cross, St Pancras or Euston – were like through the night, had never experienced them. One coffee outlet had remained open, and the toilets, but the place had been quiet.
After six, it had woken.
After seven, the pace of a new day was around him. The first commuters – suits, briefcases, severe skirts, laptop bags – powered past him. The food stalls were opening. Other than to go to the toilets, and take a fast shower, he had been on the bench. The loudspeakers bayed cheerful instructions – on train arrivals, he assumed, and departures: the big boards flickered new information. If Vern had been collecting him from the address in the short cul-de-sac street below the Albion Estate and they had been going to work, to a hit, then he would not have eaten or drunk anything. He thought food and drink before a hit would dull his sharpness.
Most of the night he’d had only his own company. Worse, then, because her face lived with him. Better later: a vagrant had sat near to him and indicated he wanted money. Robbie had gazed into the man’s unshaven, scarred face, and he had taken flight. After him, a stream of people had used the bench, sometimes crowded close to him and sometimes giving him space. He had learned, as the pace of the station quickened, that the trains came on time, to the minute. Nothing chaotic about the movements at Munich station. He saw which platform would be used by the train bringing in the sleeper traffic from Paris and knew where he would stand, and for how long he would wait after leaving the bench.
While he had had the bench to himself, when the area around him was deserted and there were gaps in the patrols, he’d kept the sports bag, Charlton Athletic, on his knee. He did it by touch, hands inside the bag. Robbie Cairns had screwed the silencer to the barrel, emptied one of the magazines into the bottom of the bag and refilled it. He had been told by the armourer that jams came from dirt and from bullets left too long in a magazine. Always, he had been drilled, he should empty a magazine, then reload it. He inserted it back into the Walther’s stock, looked again at the board, saw how long till the train came in and, finally, stood.
His legs were stiff so he stretched. His muscles cracked and his joints loosened.
He couldn’t avoid the cameras. A railway station would be covered by camera angles and lenses would have picked him up, discarded him, found him again, handed him on like postal baggage to the view of an adjacent lens. He was used to cameras, expected them. He walked to the news stand and bought a paper, the Suddeutsche Zeitung. He didn’t understand any of the words printed on the front page, or recognise any of the men photographed. He dropped it into the top of his bag. He was poorly equipped, and accepted it. He didn’t have overalls, gloves, lighter fuel and subsequent access to a wash-house. He didn’t have Leanne spotting for him or Vern to drive him away. He walked out of the station. Disjointed feelings of self-preservation were alive in him, and the whipcrack voice – hoarse, sneering and angry – of his grandfather shared space in his mind with the sight of her, the whiteness and the cold.
The instinct for self-preservation led him outside the station and he pressed himself into the angle of a great supporting buttress of stone. He shed his coat, stuffed it into the bag and took out the wide-brimmed baseball cap and dark glasses. He put them on, placed the Walther inside the folded newspaper and draped a shirt – seemingly carelessly – over the bag to hide its colour and logo. He was ready.
The crowds welled past him and he slipped among them and was almost propelled by the weight of movement into the station, on to the concourse. He checked again – last time – saw that the train was not delayed and noted again – last time – the platform it would come into. He sidled towards a doorway set back in a wall that would be level with the back of the engine. From the sign above it, he thought it was the entrance to the station’s chapel. From there, he could see up the tracks that merged, separated and came into the platforms.
He had the pistol gripped in his hand and hidden in the newspaper. He could find the safety and eased it off.
The big clock on the platform, digital figures, told him how long he must wait.
He had on a jacket, lightweight, from Bond Street, because it was easier to wear than to hold, and his shirt was outside his trousers and bulged. The train had slowed, now crawled.
He didn’t know exactly what he would do at his journey’s end but had an idea – couldn’t be certain because he had no comprehension of what he would find, except that a path had led through cornfields. Couldn’t say whether there was still a path and cornfields. Better to let his mind rest on other matters – the armoured cars for the great, the good and those who feared shadows. He had decided, after the train had pulled noisily clear of the siding and hammered through Augsburg, that Baghdad and Kabul would be awash with armoured-car salesmen and had determined that the better market was where careful men and women took precautions, what they called in the trade ‘event insurance’: a businessman in Ireland, an actress in Italy, a politician in Greece, anyone who could fork out the money in Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guatemala. No shortage of clients, and the prospects put jauntiness into his step. He could see the outskirts of the station, the marshalling yards, and did a final check around the cabin to make sure he had left nothing.
A shudder, a lurch. The train stopped.
He unlocked and opened his door. The corridor was filled with the Americans, the floor space wedged high with their luggage. He had more than ninety minutes until his connection and would get some coffee to pass the time. Harvey Gillot had been here once, flying into the old airport, had carried bags for Solly Lieberman. The old American had met up with Germans of his own age and they had talked in that language, which cut out the young guy, and later – past four in the morning when the veterans were showing no sign of exhaustion and Harvey’s head was lolling – he
had been given numbers to note on the pad, and hands had been shaken. He had hoped for bed, but it was denied. A car had taken them to a shapeless modern block of flats and the sign had said Connollystrasse. The Germans and his mentor had lectured him on the attack by Palestinians in 1972 at the Olympic-fest, and had pointed out the Israeli house. They had walked past it, and he had ceased to understand the significance. They had been brought to the airport – no sleep – for the day’s first flight, and Solly Lieberman had chirped: They allowed others to take responsibility for their security: mistake. A lesson in life, young man, is that you look after yourself: no one else will. The Israelis died because of that mistake and faith had been put in the Germans who fucked up, fucked up big. In your own hands, remember it. He’d slept all the way back on the flight to Heathrow but reckoned Solly Lieberman had done checks on balance sheets.
The train was halted and the excitement of the young people round him was infectious. None of them had time, or inclination, to look at the sturdy man among them and wonder what was his business and why he travelled.
Harvey Gillot was the last off his carriage. Far ahead of him stretched the lines of marching passengers as they headed down the platform for the centre of the station.
He had forgotten Solly Lieberman, and pretty much the question of which brand of armoured car was suitable for which damn market. He had almost forgotten where he was and why when he seemed to see his dog.
He missed it. He’d been gone twenty-four hours – a day and a night – and already he missed the dog and its wet tongue. His bag swung loosely on his shoulder and in it was what he had brought from the floor safe under the living-room carpet and the solicitor’s strong room. Yes, he missed the dog, and maybe – already – the open land of the island, the bare brown fields, the shallow cliffs, the storms on the rocks and … There was a board ahead of him, but it was too early for his connection to have reached the display.
He would get the Herald Tribune and maybe Time, and they would see him through. He would have nine hours on the EuroCity Mimara to work at the detail of the village and the people, to remember Zagreb, a man he had met there, and the start of what Benjie Arbuthnot called ‘Blowback’ and— An announcement was in mid-stream: the platform from which the ICE express to Berlin would leave. He walked briskly, not because he needed to hurry but because of the crowd in front of and behind him. Squadrons of wheeled bags snagged at his ankles and – he nearly fell.
A blow struck him. He had an image of a metal pipe, heavy, against his back on the line of his spine. It caught Harvey Gillot unawares and he spiralled forward, staggering. He flailed to keep his balance.
The second impact hit him, again in the back, lower than the first, and a little to the left where he knew his kidneys lodged. A huge blow and a massive impact. He felt himself collapsing and realised he had been shot, twice. He tried to get hold of a woman’s shoulder but she swatted him away. He was going down faster, had lost control at the knees.
He scrabbled for a grip on a case pulled along on its wheels, but its owner, wearing a fine suit and polished shoes, glanced at him and jerked it forward.
He was sprawled on the platform.
They didn’t break their stride. They went to the right of him and to the left. They charged past him. No hand reached down to help him. Two women came out of a door that had a cross above it, would have been the station’s chapel, but neither paused to bend over him.
Did they think he was drunk or had overdosed?
He was prone and helpless. He waited for the third shot … and waited.
Shock first made numbess, then pain in his spine and over his kidneys. He could do sums: a pistol bullet had a muzzle velocity when fired of around 800 feet per second. Maybe the two shots had been fired at a range of five feet. He had heard nothing above the sound of a woman’s voice telling him in what cities, towns, the ICE express to Berlin would stop. It was the Helene Weigel and he heard when it would reach Nuremberg and Leipzig … and the gears of his mind crashed at a bullet taking 0.00125 – madness, fucking madness – of a second to go from the barrel and impact into the bulletproof vest.
It didn’t come.
He was helpless, on the ground, his eyes closed.
It wasn’t that people laughed or swore at him. They fucking ignored him. They didn’t disapprove of, criticise or mock him. They didn’t fucking see him.
He didn’t hear the beat of feet and the squeal of little wheels pass his head – and the announcer had given the arrival time in Berlin, Zoologischer Garten, and was quiet. Harvey Gillot felt a moment of emptiness and dared to look.
He saw nothing except the closed door to what would be the chapel and the emptiness ahead. He dragged himself to his knees.
He turned his head slowly, expecting that a man, with or without a balaclava, slight built, would come into his peripheral vision and take a firing stance.
There was no man and no pistol.
He hadn’t thought it could happen here. He hadn’t reckoned on danger beyond the island and his home – had thought himself rid of it when he’d left the armed police and strode off to get the Eurostar. He hadn’t believed that danger had survived while he travelled. He had to use all his strength to prevent himself subsiding on to the dirt left by thousands of shoes.
His target was a trolley. He reached and hung on to it. At first, from each shot, there had been the sledge-hammer shock wave and the numbness. The pain racked him.
He moved, unseen and unwatched, along the remaining length of the platform, using the trolley, twice, to turn the full three-sixty and look for the man. He failed to find him. He pushed the trolley far to the left on the concourse, past the row of platforms and past the great trains, and saw the white-painted ICE express nudge from its berth and start on the run to Berlin. Ahead a flight of steps led down to the toilets. He had to leave the trolley.
There was a handrail to cling to. He went down the steps. He gave the attendant money and saw the guy look curiously at him, but he would have been a Turk or an Albanian and wouldn’t push his interest to impertinence.
He went into a cubicle – couldn’t imagine that the goddamn head with or without the balaclava would poke over the door – and sagged on to the seat. It was agony to get the coat off, then the shirt. There were holes in the coat, two, neat but for the mess of singed material round them. He put his index finger through each one, waggled the tip and was almost stupefied, then did the same with the shirt. The holes were the same size as those in the jacket but had no burn marks. He undid the stays that held the bulletproof vest close and shrugged out of it. So heavy, and so strong: there were two deep dents in the material that held the plates in place and he could see where the soft-heads had disintegrated, sending the shock waves that the plates had absorbed. The worst pain was when he twisted his hand behind him and groped for the places where the strikes had come. He felt bruising but there was no blood.
He was hunched on the seat.
In his mind Harvey Gillot began to compose a text message. He wouldn’t send it on his own mobile, but would find a pay-phone in the station.
Hi, Monty – Think u shd know that bpv fantastic, brill. Have tested & no angst. Works. What chance me for franchise? Best Harv
Had lost the pain, and had the salesman’s smile, felt the patter melting on his tongue. ‘Would I try to sell you something, sir, that is crap? I know about this product and I can tell you, with utter sincerity, that it does the business. Look, sir, at this jacket – now look at this shirt. Neither washed from the day it happened. I never saw him but I estimate the range was five feet, and he used a silencer. Now look at the vest. Damaged but not holed … Can’t say the same about old Titanic, can we, sir? I was wearing it. Believe me? Nearly knocked me over but I wasn’t punctured. What I’m saying, sir, I’m not one of those flash lads in a West End security company who knows damn-all about a real situation. I’ve been there. The bruising has gone, but I can strip off, if you like, and show you how it was worn and yo
u can see for yourself that I wasn’t punctured. Frankly, sir, if I was in a situation of possible or potential danger to life and limb – or if any of my employees were – I would, with complete confidence, recommend this model. New, we’re talking about a range between five hundred and six hundred sterling. Second-hand, police castoffs, would be a hundred sterling – but I don’t believe, sir, that this is an area where used items are appropriate. I think my life’s worth a fair bit, sir, and yours is worth a great deal more. Not a matter you’d want to hang about on, sir, and you’ve seen the evidence and met a man who can vouch for this product. I look forward to hearing from you.’ He was laughing, couldn’t help it.
Harvey Gillot dressed again, and reckoned he hacked the pain. He put the damn thing back on, let himself out, walked awkwardly but reached the steps, and went in search of a coffee.
He needed them and didn’t have them. There was no elder brother or younger sister. But he reckoned he’d done well and hadn’t panicked. Could have done, too damn easy. It was only afterwards that he had understood. The taxi dropped him at Departures. All the time, during the journey, walking into the travel agent and out and going to the taxi rank, he had waited to hear sirens, then a command in a language he didn’t know but which would have its authority big in the shout, and to see guns pointed. There had been no noise and no aimed weapons … but there had been no blood.
The target had stumbled, almost fallen, and the drilled hole was in his jacket, and his head was ducked, as if his chin was against his chest, and the double tap had had to be into the back. He had fired the second time and the impact had pushed the target forward and prone – but there had been no blood. The target had not screamed, writhed, twitched, but had lain still. There had been a babble from the big speakers and crowds hurrying, coming from behind and surging away, and they’d seemed not to notice the target … maybe because there was no blood.
The Dealer and the Dead Page 35