by Steve Cole
‘I read that you’d died.’ Kalashnikov looked at him sharply. ‘No way out for me then, eh? They used Anya’s talent as cover: to fulfil her dream of dancing in London – that was the reason for my being in London, so far as SIS knew!’ His voice was growing louder. ‘So they smiled, those investigating agents at the Russian Embassy, and they said how proud I must be, and let me build and create and prepare for the killing . . . prepare for the river of blood that is coming.’
‘I’m sorry.’ James raised his hands, trying to calm Kalashnikov, feeling badly out of his depth. The man seemed lost in a world of his own pain, and James hadn’t grasped enough of the situation to help him navigate it. He rose and went to the window, parted the curtains and looked down into the private courtyard, hoping that no one had overheard Kalashnikov’s outbursts. The old woman who’d harangued James earlier, and her husband with the poker – they were both sitting on a bench now, taking the evening air. Another couple sat on the bench opposite, leaning against each other. No one seemed disturbed; perhaps it was safer to keep your eyes and ears shut in Soviet Moscow.
James turned back to Kalashnikov. ‘I think it would help to talk things through from the beginning.’
‘Help.’ Kalashnikov stared at him for a few seconds, then burst into laughter. ‘I begged you for help. “Trust me,” you said. And you hurried away, and you never returned . . .’ The smiled faded as he hugged himself feebly. ‘I was so afraid. I’d thought of a way to stop their plan, but I was so afraid they would discover it, afraid of what they would do . . .’
‘What way?’ James urged him. ‘How can it be stopped?’
‘So afraid.’ Kalashnikov didn’t seem to hear him. ‘And so I did it. I crippled my own daughter so we could escape.’
James stared. ‘Anya . . .?’
‘She couldn’t stay dancing in London with her leg mangled, could she? It would have seemed suspicious had we stayed, so we were allowed to return to Russia . . . Soviet doctors are the best in the world, they say, and I had hope, but . . .’ He was weeping now, tears as thin and grey as his hair. ‘Some things cannot be fixed, eh?’
‘No.’ James remembered the hurt in Anya’s eyes, her hands clutching the cane, and felt sick. ‘No, I suppose they can’t.’
‘I thought it was over. I had destroyed Anya’s dreams, but we still had each other. I remember how you spoke of your boy – John, was it . . .?’
‘James.’ He closed his eyes, not trusting his voice to hold. ‘My . . . son’s name is James.’
‘I hope you tell him you love him. There is so much we keep silent. So much we would rather not share . . .’ Kalashnikov’s voice was hushed now. ‘I think they knew that somebody had talked to you, Bond. A project like this requires many hands, many nervous men, and it only takes one to talk. A security risk, you know? Well, the lady with the veil, she can’t have that, can she!’ He shook his head fiercely. ‘When the secret police came for me, they used the handcuffs. American handcuffs – do you know them? They flick onto your wrist and the little ratchet teeth, they lock in place. If you do not double-lock them, the little teeth will tighten with each movement . . . and tighten . . .’ He was rocking gently, staring into space. ‘As they pulled out my hair and beat my feet with brass rods . . . I watched the skin on my hands burst . . . the blood flow from underneath my fingernails. I could never draw again. I, who have pinned down palaces on paper . . .’ He smiled, shrugged. ‘They must have believed me innocent in the end, but by then . . .’
‘I’m sorry,’ James mumbled. He’d been so hungry for answers but, by God, now he’d heard some hard ones. If Andrew Bond had lived, then SIS would have rescued this terrified little man, Anya would still be able to walk and dance, and the Project would be a distant memory, a failure. Instead . . .
Kalashnikov has spat out the gristle of things, James thought, but I need the meat of what happened, before he loses his mind altogether. He placed a hand on Kalashnikov’s arm – but the old man snatched it away with a shout as if woken from a nightmare, backed away and crashed against a sideboard. The decanters and glasses within rattled and shook, and so did Kalashnikov.
The brass knob of the door to the landing jumped suddenly. Instantly alert, James jerked round to face the newcomer, arms raised in a fighting stance.
It was the girl, Anya, leaning on her cane in the doorway, her string bag barely bulging with a tiny loaf of black bread. Her blue eyes flicked between James and her father; her face was hard and closed.
Anya put down the bag and pulled a knife from her pocket, the blade crusted with blood.
14
Death Has Many Voices
JAMES EYED THE knife and raised an eyebrow. ‘Straight to the point?’
Anya’s face didn’t flicker. ‘I warned you to stay away.’
‘I’m only here to talk to your father,’ James told her. ‘Isn’t that right, Ivan? I don’t mean you any harm.’
‘Of course.’ Kalashnikov gave a wheezing laugh. ‘They said Bond was dead. How can the dead harm the living?’
‘Papa becomes confused sometimes. I do not.’ Anya kept the knife pointing at James. ‘You see this?’
James nodded. He could see that her arm was straight and steady. She wasn’t afraid. She was prepared.
‘A man tried to steal my bread in the street,’ Anya went on. ‘I persuaded him to leave me alone, but his hand will stay split for a week. Do I have to convince you in the same way?’
‘Anya, please,’ Kalashnikov said. ‘Bond and I have finished our talk now.’
The hell we have, thought James. ‘Well, actually, sir, I still need to—’
‘Papa needs to rest.’ With a cold look at James she put the knife back in her trouser pocket, then put an arm around her father, patient and dutiful, cooing to him in Russian.
‘You think Bond will disappear?’ Kalashnikov seemed to consider this. ‘Or is it only the living made to disappear these days? And yet, we must forgive. Forgiveness is so important, Anya. I . . . I’ve always taught you that . . .’
‘Yes, Papa. You’ve taught me that.’ Anya sounded bored, distant, detached, but helped her father through the inner door. It led on to what might once have been a dining room; now a single bed, made up fussily with crimson bedclothes, stood against one wall, incongruous amongst the wooden furniture and the modernist paintings of skyscrapers. Anya sat her father down in an old green velvet wing-backed armchair that faced the window. She lit an oil lamp, replaced the glass chimney, and placed it on the windowsill where its flickering light played over Kalashnikov’s palsied face. He was smiling like a child now, and seemed to have forgotten his visitor already.
Anya, however, had not. She limped over to James and pulled him through the door, back into the study. ‘How dare you!’ she hissed. ‘How dare you make him relive those times, after all he’s been through!’
‘All I want to know is—’ James broke off as he saw her reach for her knife, closed his hand on her wrist and shook his head. ‘I need to know what your father told mine about this secret Project of his in London. Andrew Bond was my father. My name is James.’
‘Then if you have come to gloat over your father’s work, James Bond, you may leave content.’ She pulled away from him, crossed to the door and opened it. ‘Leave now.’
‘Listen to me.’ James’s frustration was close to igniting into anger. ‘A lot of lives may hinge on my finding out what’s been happening. I’m here with the British Secret Intelligence Service.’
‘Those liars and devils hire children now, do they?’
‘I don’t know what propaganda you’ve heard—’
‘Just get away from us.’ Furious, she limped through the door to the stairs leading up to the next floor. ‘What little space we have left in life I will not share with the likes of you.’
‘No. I’m damned if I’ll go.’ James followed her as she climbed awkwardly up the stairs. ‘I’ve had enough of riddles and half-answers. I don’t understand what your father was cau
ght up in or what exactly he did to you—’
‘Papa only ever wanted to protect me, you know.’ Anya turned and sneered into James’s face as she reached her door. ‘He cannot see that I protect us both now. I have ever since . . . since the police gave up on extracting confessions and let him go.’
James nodded. ‘It sounds like it was a terrible ordeal.’
She pushed out a deep breath and opened the door. ‘They came for him one Thursday morning. I was left alone for five weeks. When he came back . . . his body was broken and his mind worse.’
As she went inside, James looked into her room. Damp speckled the old pink and cream wallpaper and the bare floorboards. A pair of ballet shoes hung by their ribbons from a post at the end of the narrow bed – each slashed all over, he noticed, as if by a sharp knife or razor.
She saw him looking, and something like shame flitted across her face. ‘You will leave now,’ she said. ‘Please, before you make things worse, before the others talk to the police of this. I have seen them eyeing our space up here. They would not hesitate to betray us . . .’ Anya parted the curtain, looking down, her face bleached of all colour in the sunlight. ‘That is strange. Everyone is outside.’
‘Having a house meeting without you?’ James joined her in looking down into the courtyard, where three further people had appeared, now sitting on a third bench between the other two. He felt suddenly uneasy. ‘Things seem very quiet out there . . .’
There was a loud thump from somewhere downstairs, and a familiar shout: ‘Bond?’
James jumped, felt almost dizzy with pure relief. ‘Elmhirst!’ he shouted. ‘I don’t believe it!’
‘Who is this?’ Anya rounded on him, eyes narrowed. ‘Who have you brought here?’
‘It’s all right. He’s with British Intelligence. I don’t know how he found me, but—’
‘To hell with you both!’ As James left the room, Anya slammed the door shut behind him.
‘Elmhirst?’ In a couple of seconds James was down on the landing below, but his call, again, went unanswered. He ventured down the next flight of stairs. ‘Hallo?’
‘In here!’ Elmhirst’s voice rang out from upstairs now; he must have got into Kalashnikov’s rooms.
James ran back up the stairs, puzzled, and entered the old man’s study.
‘There is so much we keep silent.’ On the other side of the door Kalashnikov’s voice sounded muffled. ‘So much.’
James opened the door to the makeshift bedchamber. ‘Elmhirst?’
There was no sign of the SIS man. Only Kalashnikov, propped up in the high-backed armchair, facing the window with his back to James. ‘There is so much we would rather not share.’
Then James saw the body lying face up beside the bed. His heart jumped as he saw that here was Ivan Kalashnikov, his sightless eyes fixed on the ceiling, a gory smile carved into his throat, his white shirtfront now soaked crimson with blood. He’s dead, James realized, feeling sick. But I heard him speak from the chair . . .?
‘He’s slow on the uptake. Still, don’t take a chance.’ Impossibly, it was Elmhirst’s gruff voice coming from the chair – but the figure that rose from the old patched velvet seat wasn’t the British agent. It was a boy with taut skin as black as his cotton suit, and a shaved head, his oddly delicate features more beautiful than handsome.
It was the boy from the Mechta Academy on Millbank: the boy who’d been checking the explosives, who’d attacked him in the cellar and knocked him out cold. He must have come out here with Karachan, James realized.
White teeth shone in the boy’s smile as he gestured to the corpse on the floor and opened his mouth. A short, horrible gasp burst from his lips to die out in bubbles. James’s stomach turned: it could only have been an echo of Kalashnikov’s dying breath.
The boy met James’s horrified gaze and went on smiling.
‘What are you doing here, you sick . . .’ James couldn’t find a word strong enough and simply stared at him in loathing. He was glad Anya had stayed upstairs, that she hadn’t been confronted with this – not yet, at least. ‘Who are you?’
The boy spoke back in a voice James knew and hated: ‘Yo soy Imitador.’
It was the voice of La Velada. This freak knows her, then. ‘Shut up,’ James snapped. ‘I asked for your name.’
‘Mimic.’ The boy suddenly sounded young, fragile. ‘I . . . am . . . Mimic.’
‘Mimic? What kind of a name is—’
‘I have a boy your age.’ Mimic’s voice grew deeper, with a kindly Scottish burr. ‘His name is James.’
James couldn’t breathe. That was his father’s voice. The imitation was perfect: the accent, the intonation, everything. Mimic must have met my father, heard him speak.
‘His name is James.’
And stolen his voice.
‘Don’t you dare,’ James hissed at last.
Mimic only grinned and continued. ‘I have a boy.’
‘Stop.’ It sounded as if his father were here, in the room, and after all he’d heard, James couldn’t suppress an emotional reaction. ‘When . . . when did you meet him?’
‘His name is James.’
He’s getting inside your head. James gritted his teeth. Keep him out.
‘James! James!’ Mimic stabbed the air with the knife, froth speckling the corners of his mouth as he kept calling James’s name again and again. ‘His name is James!’
James couldn’t take any more. A once-brilliant man, broken and lost, lay dead between them, and now this son of a bitch stood here mocking James’s father. James started forward, eyes on the knife. Mimic slashed at him as he approached, but James brought up his left hand, flattened it to a hard edge and chopped into the boy’s wrist, then windmilled his other arm into a judo strike against his neck. Mimic staggered, threw back his head and dropped the knife. James kicked the weapon away and it skittered under the bed like a rat fleeing light. Before Mimic could recover, James punched him hard in the stomach, knocking him back against a dark-wood cabinet. The glass panels cracked and shattered; the belongings inside rocked and fell.
James was distracted by their motion for just a fraction of a second, but it was all Mimic needed. The boy threw himself forward, one arm striking up and the other down, the technique James had himself just demonstrated. Almost before he knew it, James found himself being driven back across the room. He brought up his arms to protect himself from the blows and cuffs raining down on him, but stumbled and put his hands out automatically to break his fall against the dining table. A dark fist struck his face. James felt heat as his nose gushed blood, saw sparks as the other fist struck his cheek. Head spinning, James tried to marshal a coherent attack, but Mimic was one step ahead now, anticipating his moves and performing them first. For every gasp or cry James uttered, Mimic returned a perfect copy, and the psychotic smile grew wider.
Finally James came up hard against the study door. Propping himself back against it, he kicked out savagely at Mimic’s shin and scored a hit, then followed it up with a solid punch to the heart before striking again under the chin. Mimic tumbled to the floor, but immediately he kicked James’s legs out from under him.
Now it was James’s turn to go down. A dizzy blink later and Mimic was on top of him, knees squeezing at James’s ribs, wiry hands around his neck.
15
House on Fire
DESPERATELY JAMES TWISTED and bucked and managed to jolt Mimic clear. The boy rolled with the momentum and was back on his feet, his eyes shining murder.
But before he could resume his attack the door behind him burst open, slamming into his back.
‘No!’ It was Anya, pushing through, her blue eyes fixed upon her papa’s grisly body.
The impact of the door threw Mimic forward, off-guard. James took full advantage and raked his knuckles along the boy’s jugular vein. The effect upon this pressure point was decisive: Mimic fell like a dead weight, and as he tumbled, his fingers tangled in a lacy tablecloth and knocked over the oil lamp. In
a moment, with a fierce kerosene whoosh, flames had taken hold of the old lace.
‘Papa!’ Anya tried to reach the crumpled, bloodied body on the floor, but was stopped by a rug in front of her, which erupted in flame as if it had longed to for years. Body smarting from the blows he’d taken, James pulled Anya away as the peeling wallpaper caught alight. Mimic lay sprawled in the corner beside the man he’d murdered.
Anya tore her arm from James’s grip, tears squeezing from her narrowed eyes. ‘I told you. I knew you would make things worse!’
‘There’s no time for this,’ James said hoarsely. The draught through the window gave the fire fresh and vicious fuel, the heat driving James back, the smoke choking him. ‘We’ve got to get out.’ He retreated into the other room, picked up his father’s backpack and started struggling into the straps.
So he was caught off-guard when Andrei Karachan thundered into the room. Not you too! James thought, no time to get clear as the man’s steel-grip fingers closed on his throat and drove him back against the bookcase.
‘Anya . . .!’ James rasped, hoping for her help and yet fearing for her life.
Karachan shook his head smugly. ‘So kind of you to tell us at last who was our traitor . . .’
Lights flashed behind James’s eyes as the chokehold tightened. In desperation he groped wildly for a makeshift weapon amid the debris on Kalashnikov’s desk. He found a dusty bottle of vodka and swung it against the back of Karachan’s head. The bottle cracked and Karachan gave a high-pitched cry, his knees sagging. James propelled himself forward but couldn’t break the man’s grip; locked together, the two of them pitched into an awkward stagger that carried them out through the door and onto the smoky landing before finally both went crashing down the stairs. James gasped as the wooden edges of the risers bit into his body.
The Russian’s stranglehold was broken as he and James struck the floor, but Karachan’s big hand closed around James’s ankle to stop him getting away. James kicked and struggled, but his throat was stripped raw, his lungs ached, his head was spinning, and he couldn’t shake this damn grip on his leg . . .