Absolute Zero

by James Patterson

  ‘Who’s that?’ says Thurston.

  Terri rolls her eyes. ‘Sheriff Riggs.’ She takes a sip of beer and runs her fingers through her hair.

  ‘He seems to like you,’ says Thurston.

  ‘Yeah, well. That’s as maybe. The feeling ain’t mutual. The guy gives me the creeps if you want to know the honest truth of it.’ She sits back and regards Thurston. ‘Y’know, if I was a gambling woman – which is a great name for a country song, right? – I’d bet you was some sort of cop.’

  Thurston shrugs.

  ‘Real estate?’ says Terri. ‘I can’t see that. But you’ve got some cop thing.’

  ‘I was in the military,’ he says. He’s aware he’s stepping out further than he wants to, like a man inching onto a frozen lake. ‘Maybe that’s it.’

  ‘Maybe. You in the military for long?’

  ‘Let’s change the subject. Is that OK?’ Thurston smiles to let Terri know there’s no offence taken. ‘I did a few years.’

  ‘And you don’t like talking about it?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  The conversation seems to signal a shift in the atmosphere between them.

  ‘Listen,’ says Terri. ‘I better go. I got a shift in the morning and I don’t want to get there in bad shape.’

  She stands and puts on her coat. Thurston scratches his head.

  ‘Something I said?’ he asks. He notices Riggs look up from his conversation with the bar owner and smirk. Thurston gets the idea that Riggs is not unhappy Terri’s given him the brush-off.

  Terri smiles. ‘Goodnight, Mike.’

  When she has gone, Thurston can’t help but feel disappointed. Not that he was expecting anything exactly, but things looked to be going well. He likes Terri and he thought she liked him.

  You’re losing your touch, buddy, says a voice in his head. Like you ever had it, comes the response.

  Thurston waits ten minutes before leaving himself. He doesn’t want to look as if he’s chasing Terri.

  He walks back to the motel through four inches of snow piled on the sidewalk. The cold sobers him up although, truth be told, he hasn’t had much. And he got some useful information about Isle de Rousse at Frenchie’s. About how there is one road in and one road out. About the way ‘the folks’ up there don’t come into town much and when they do they don’t leave a real good impression. Nothing concrete, but Thurston is building a picture of what he’s up against.

  The Top o’ the Lake Motel is mostly dark when he gets back. He lets himself in the lobby door and heads past the empty desk towards 205.

  He is at the door, key in hand, when he freezes. He looks down and bends to pick up an object off the thin corridor carpet.

  The sliver of match he placed in the door jamb earlier.

  Thurston pulls the hunting knife from his belt and places an ear softly against the thin veneer of his room door.

  Nothing.

  He glances up and down the deserted corridor. The place is like a morgue.

  He pads the few steps to room 206 and puts his ear to the door.

  Again, he hears nothing. He bends to the lock and, using the knife as a lever, pops it with a soft snick. He waits a few seconds but hears nothing from inside.

  As Lou told him, the room is empty. Thurston moves silently to the window and slides it open. A cold wind slices through the opening and he steps out onto the small balcony, trying to force back memories of stepping out onto the balcony at the V. This one is separated from the balcony outside 205 by nothing more than a chest-high piece of blockwork.

  He puts one foot on the icy rail and hauls himself up and over the wall and drops onto the neighbouring balcony. He presses his back up against the stucco and peeps into 205 through a narrow gap in the curtains.

  He’s sees nothing except darkness.

  Feeling a little foolish, and more than a little cold, Thurston’s mind replays the number of ways the match fragment may have dropped clear of the door. He slides the blade of his knife into the gap between window and frame and lifts the latch. Growing more confident by the second, he slips into 205.

  He’s taken one step inside when he senses movement to his left and turns as someone smashes a table lamp across the back of his neck.

  CHAPTER 32

  MILLER’S PHONE RINGS twice and then goes dead.

  He puts down the beer he’s working on, looks up from the Canadian ice hockey game on TV and sighs. Even though two rings is what he agreed to with the guy on the other end of the line, it still bugs him when he has to do this James Bond secret code shit.

  Miller digits a number and waits for the connection.

  ‘It’s me,’ he says and then listens awhile. ‘Tell me what Frenchie said about this guy’s accent again,’ he says. ‘In detail.’

  When he hangs up he stands for a minute looking at the figures on the ice and then dials another number.

  Viktor needs to know about this.

  CHAPTER 33

  THURSTON GETS HIS forearm up quick enough to take some of the sting out of the attack. Even so, the heavy base of the lamp drops him to his knees. Before the next blow lands he manages to twist and scissor-kicks the legs from under his attacker. He hears a body land on the carpet. He flips over to straddle his opponent and brings his knife up—

  The table lamp blinks on and Thurston finds himself looking down at a naked Terri Greening, her mouth set in an animal snarl.

  ‘What the fuck?’ he says.

  Terri twists out from under him and grabs a sheet from the bed.

  ‘You always come in through the fucking window?’ she snarls. ‘And what’s with the knife?’

  ‘You break into everyone’s hotel room?’ says Thurston. ‘And you’re lucky I didn’t have a gun.’ He rubs the back of his neck. ‘You pack a wallop.’

  ‘Good,’ says Terri. ‘I hope it fucking hurts.’ She groans and rubs her leg. ‘I think you broke my leg.’

  Thurston gets to his feet and holds up his palms in a conciliatory way. ‘Let’s start over, OK?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘How did you get in?’ he says, and then holds up a hand again. ‘Wait. You work at the motel. You have keys. Dumb question, right?’

  ‘About as dumb as it gets.’

  ‘OK. Next one. Why are you here?’

  Terri Greening raises her eyebrows. ‘That’s possibly even dumber. Maybe I did hit you too hard.’

  She steps off the bed and lets the sheet drop.

  ‘Ah,’ says Thurston.

  ‘Right,’ says Terri. ‘Ah.’

  CHAPTER 34

  VIKTOR DELAMENKO DRIVES carefully out of Southie – no sense in getting pulled over when the trunk of the Range Rover’s rattling with enough hardware to invade Canada. It’s an easy four-hour pull up to Isle de Rousse, even in the snow. Miller told them to take it easy, no panic. So long as the job is done in the next twenty-four hours everything will be hunky-dory.

  And Viktor’s inclined to drag the thing out a little – make Miller sweat.

  The simple fact of Miller bringing in Viktor and his boys in the first place is a little victory in itself. Viktor wouldn’t necessarily say it to Nate Miller’s face, but subcontracting this wet work, even to a sub who’s a business partner, isn’t a good look when his own boys are right there. Miller can justify it all he wants about not shitting in your own back yard, but it’s all Delamenko can do to keep the smile off his face.

  ‘They say why?’ asks the man in the passenger seat, Dmitri Puli, Viktor’s second-in-command.

  Puli is ex-Spetsgruppa A – Alpha Group – a Kremlin true believer who, after one too many blood-and-shit details in Chechnya, stopped believing and swapped sides. Seeing his old colleagues back in Moscow cleaning up while he had his ass on the line in the North Caucasus tipped him into this line of work. Puli’s a thin man who looks like a civil servant.

  In the back seat, looking at his phone, is the youngest of the three, Boris Spetzen, a classic Moscow ‘bull’ cleaned up and
put into a suit. Delamenko still checks Spetzen isn’t wearing running shoes every time they go out on a job. Spetzen’s there if they need any heavy lifting done but has about as much class as you’d expect from someone who’s fended for himself from the age of eight.

  Delamenko shrugs. ‘Miller doesn’t want anything traced back to his place. Says this guy might be connected.’

  ‘To who?’

  ‘He didn’t say. Does it matter?’

  Now it’s Puli’s turn to shrug. ‘No, I guess not.’

  Delamenko takes the ramp onto 93 and settles back.

  CHAPTER 35

  IT’S BEEN A while.

  Two months to be exact. With Sofi, one night after they both had a few too many shots. It was Lenin’s birthday and a lock-in at the V after hours.

  Thurston sinks back into the bed and crooks an arm behind his head. He lets out a long, slow breath. Next to him, Terri does the same and runs a hand through her hair.

  She gets up and walks towards the bathroom. Thurston watches her. They left the broken lamp lying on the floor and it makes her shadow dance across the ceiling. At the door, aware of his gaze, she flicks out a hip like a showgirl exiting the stage.

  Two months.

  Sofi Girsdóttir. Thurston lets the name run through his mind and doesn’t like where it takes him.

  Terri comes back into the room and slides back into bed.

  ‘You gonna tell me?’ she says.

  ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘What you’re really doing here.’ She props herself up on an elbow and looks Thurston straight in the eye. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame you for spinning me a line. All the stuff back at Frenchie’s about working in a bar and travelling around—’

  ‘All true,’ says Thurston, cutting across her.

  ‘Yeah, OK, maybe I can buy that. But you being here, in East Talbot for Chrissakes. Nobody comes to East Talbot.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Hmm. Kind of my point.’ She rolls onto her back. ‘Jeez, I wish I smoked at times like this.’

  There’s a silence.

  ‘It’s the place out on the lake, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘Up at Isle de Rousse. Talbot Chemical. That’s why you’re here.’

  Thurston doesn’t reply and rolls over on his side.

  He’s not doing the strong silent routine but he doesn’t trust himself not to spill it all to Terri. It’s been a long time since he talked properly to a woman – to anyone – and the temptation is strong. She’s one of the good ones, Thurston knows simply by being here next to her. If he told her everything she’d understand. It would be fine. He could leave this thing with Miller, see how it plays out with Terri. Start again.

  Instead he says nothing and the silence grows.

  After a couple of minutes Terri gets dressed and leaves without another word. As the door closes behind her Thurston rolls onto his back and looks up at the ceiling.

  ‘Shit.’

  CHAPTER 36

  WHEN THURSTON WAKES, East Talbot sits under a blanket of freezing fog. He showers and dresses quickly before heading downstairs. Lou’s back on reception and gives him the frost. He wonders if she’s pissed because he slept with Terri, or because Terri’s spilled about what a sneaky lying bastard he is.

  Outside it’s colder than a hockey puck’s belly. He hurries across the ghostly parking lot and into the diner for breakfast. He’s working on a second pot of coffee when Sheriff Riggs comes in.

  There are about half a dozen customers in the joint but Riggs makes a beeline for Thurston’s booth.

  Shit.

  He knows he should play nice but there’s something about Riggs that rubs him up the wrong way. He feels like Riggs could be from the same cop tree as Hall back in London.

  ‘You mind?’ says Riggs. He looms over Thurston and jerks a thumb at the bench opposite.

  Thurston looks up. ‘Does it matter?’

  Riggs smiles without warmth. ‘Not really. Cold as all hell outside. I need coffee.’

  He slides his sizeable ass onto the vinyl and scoots along the bench until he’s facing Thurston. Riggs looks across to the counter and raises a finger. Vinegar Face behind the counter must speak Riggs’s sign language because he gets busy right away.

  ‘Riggs,’ says the cop. He doesn’t offer a hand, which is fine with Thurston because he flat out doesn’t like Riggs. He’s seen these guys before.

  ‘Flanagan,’ says Thurston.

  Riggs smiles. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘Flanagan.’

  Vinegar Face arrives with coffee and a Danish pastry. He gives Riggs a microscopic glance and treats Thurston as though he’s got leprosy.

  Thurston drinks his coffee and waits. Riggs doesn’t say anything and Thurston sits there. He knows this bullshit drill backwards. Riggs has that look on his face cops have – the kind of look that suggests they know everything about you and don’t like it. It wouldn’t matter a crap whether or not Thurston is polite. Riggs wants this conversation to be a warning – Thurston can see it in his eyes. The thing is, Thurston’s not the type to respond. He runs a piece of toast around the egg on his plate and eats. He can do silence.

  Riggs raises his eyebrows. ‘You’ve talked to cops before, right?’

  ‘I’ve met ’em.’

  ‘You got the look.’

  Thurston drains his coffee cup and reaches into his pocket. He pulls out a ten and puts it on the table. One thing about being way out in the middle of nowhere: it’s cheap.

  He slides across the bench seat. As he makes to get up Riggs leans forward and puts a hand on Thurston’s arm. Thurston looks down at Riggs’s pudgy hands.

  ‘No offence, sweetheart,’ he says, ‘but I don’t swing that way.’

  ‘You were talking to Terri last night,’ says Riggs.

  Thurston shrugs his arm free of Riggs’s grip. He stands and puts on his jacket.

  ‘I said—’ begins Riggs.

  ‘I heard,’ says Thurston. ‘I just didn’t reply.’

  ‘You need t—’

  Thurston walks away from the table as Riggs is talking. He exits the diner and walks down the steps onto the lot. Behind him Riggs clatters through the doors and slips on the snow. Thurston watches the cop pirouette, his arms windmilling through the air before he lands heavily flat on his ass. Riggs scrabbles to his feet with some difficulty, shoots a look of pure loathing at Thurston and slithers towards his patrol car.

  As Thurston walks away he glances up and sees Vinegar Face laughing so much he’s wiping tears from his eyes.

  CHAPTER 37

  THURSTON DRIVES TO Montpelier through the fog along a more or less deserted interstate. Every now and again the back of a big truck looms up out of the murk, the tail lights blurring as Thurston passes. Outside Barre he sees the flash of emergency vehicles and a towtruck winching a car onto a flatbed. Before he gets to Montpelier he sees two more crashes. It’s a day to stay put but there aren’t any big enough stores of the kind Thurston wants nearer East Talbot.

  After an hour and a half he reaches his destination unscathed. At a hardware store he buys a cordless Grex nail gun operating off nothing more than a couple of AAA batteries. He throws in a box of two-inch nails and an Estwing double-headed axe with a rubberised grip. He could have picked up guns in New York, or maybe even nearer to East Talbot, but Thurston’s decided he doesn’t want to risk stumbling into some kind of ongoing anti-gun initiative. Based on what he saw at Gullfoss, he reckons on picking up more conventional weapons when he picks off the perimeter guys at Miller’s compound.

  At an electronics store he buys a Nikon with a decent zoom lens and a weatherproof casing. He stocks up on winter gear and various outdoor essentials at a sporting goods place next door. He shells out almost a grand for an ultra-lite TenPoint Shadow crossbow and five boxes of aluminium bolts. A pair of Sightmark Ghost Hunter night vision binoculars and a lightweight pair of Zeiss regular binoculars add to the bill. The Mozambique money is coming in damn useful.

  Heading b
ack from Montpelier, Thurston takes the long way round and winds towards Isle de Rousse from the east. This side of the ridge the road hasn’t been cleared as well as it has on the western side, so Thurston’s glad of the Jeep’s winter rig. Coming this way means he won’t be seen heading out of East Talbot in the direction of Isle de Rousse.

  Two miles from Miller’s compound, he pulls the Jeep onto a fire trail and bumps along through deep snow for fifty yards before parking under a low branch. He puts on his winter gear and stows the Nikon and crossbow in the backpack. Today is strictly recon but Thurston’s not going to take any chances.

  CHAPTER 38

  THE RUSSIANS GET to East Talbot around three and head up to Isle de Rousse as darkness creeps in. The fog hasn’t lifted all day.

  Delamenko turns off the highway down an unmarked road that cuts back down towards the eastern edge of Lake Carlson. About half a mile in, he slows as he approaches a gatehouse with a red-and-white-striped rising barrier across the road. As the Range Rover’s tyres crunch across the snow, two men wearing jeans, sheepskin jackets and Stetsons step out of the gatehouse, both carrying semi-automatic rifles. Puli, who hasn’t been here before, reaches into his jacket.

  ‘Easy, brother,’ says Delamenko, putting out a hand. ‘Relax.’

  ‘They might as well advertise “we supply drugs”,’ replies Puli. ‘Jesus, what’s the point of a cover story if they don’t make an effort? At least look like a fucking chemical feed place. Put a sign up, wear a security guard uniform.’

  ‘I know,’ says Delamenko. ‘I’ve talked with Miller about this before. He says he has the territory taken care of.’ The big Russian shrugs. ‘Americans. You know what they’re like.’

  ‘Hey,’ says Spetzen, leaning forward and pointing at the approaching men. ‘Cowboys!’

  Delamenko stops the car and lowers the window. One of the men peers inside. Spetzen holds up his hands in mock terror. ‘Don’t shoot,’ he says with a heavy Russian accent and smiles.