Escape to Perdition--a gripping thriller!

by James Silvester

  He grinned his big, cheery grin at Peter, who smiled back and raised his full again glass, chinking it against his friend’s. Finally pausing to acknowledge the cavalcade of missed calls and text messages that had buzzed away since he switched his phone back on, Peter briefly rattled off a one word affirmative to the ordered meeting atop the clock tower later that day. Until then, Peter had neither the need nor the inclination to think either about his mission nor his impending chastisement for jeopardising it. Instead, he proposed to confine his thoughts to the fullness of his glass and conversation of his friend. Downing the next shot prepared for him, Peter slammed the glass to the table and grinned across at the Czech chef opposite.

  “Fill her up, Rasti,” he said.

  He very quickly lost track of the number of hours he sat there, knocking back glass after glass of spirit, chased with the occasional half litre of cold, strong Czech beer and plates of hot wings for sustenance. He only knew he’d been there long enough not to care about where he had to be next; any lingering throb of worry killed along with a raft of other sensations by an afternoon’s hard drinking. Even Rasti, normally stoic as an ox in his capacity for alcohol, was beginning to slur and staggered up, mid sentence, to announce his mission to fetch coffee.

  Almost at once, the familiar buzz began to sound against Peter’s leg, eventually becoming incessant, latching onto his remaining senses and stubbornly refusing to let go. He knew he couldn’t ignore it any more. Rasti had told him to wait for the coffee, but the intoxicated Englishman was in no mood to follow instructions, even those of his closest friend. He was tired of being told what to do. Fuck sobriety and fuck Deprez.

  Peter just about retained humility enough to raise his hand in apology, first to Tom, the pianist, for missing his set, and secondly to Rasti, before throwing a crumpled note down on the table and scurrying to the exit to avoid the big Czech’s remonstrations.

  He knew Rasti would head outside to stop him, so Peter ducked down one of the many side streets that stretched over this labyrinthine part of Old Town, theorising, as best a drunk man could, that the chef would not be able to check them all. Swaying rather than sliding into a convenient stone porch, Peter focussed his blurry eyes back towards Jakubská, waiting to see which direction Rasti would search for him. The buzzing against his leg still penetrating his dulled senses, he slipped the phone from his pocket and switched it off, allowing his head to rest against the graffiti coated wall. Just a few seconds later, Peter saw his friend wearing a scowl fierce enough to subdue the Golem himself and muttering a quite spectacular range of Czech swear words, stomping back to the sanctity of Smokin’ Hot, a coffee pot still grasped in his hand.

  Levering himself from the doorway, Peter lurched back in the direction of the Square, his brain busy inventing alcohol induced scripts for him to recite to the bastard awaiting him in the tower.

  Climbing the stone steps to the top of the tower took a sizeable chunk of Peter’s remaining energy and he was breathless and exhausted by the time he reached the top. Finding it deserted, Peter leant against the stone arches overlooking the Old Town Square from high above.

  The rain which had started falling as Peter had walked from the restaurant was getting heavier, some driving through the gaps and biting Peter’s face. Finally losing what little patience he had, he threw his head back and shouted, “Where are you, you bastard?!”

  The echo distorted by the rain, Peter spun around to find Remy Deprez stood before him, a look of undisguised pity on his face.

  “Bastard?” The voice was as smooth and calm as ever. “I suppose I should listen to Svobodova’s Hero of the hour.”

  Peter stood still, silent, fully expecting a barrage and reluctant to defend himself from it.

  “I need hardly remind you Peter that the Institute does not welcome undue scrutiny, even when encouraged by such noble actions as yours.”

  Peter said nothing, remaining rooted upright at an unstable attention, his mind not working quite fast enough to produce a response while Deprez spat his condemnations.

  “I knew you were getting soft and I certainly knew you spent most of your days drunk, but I thought even you would have held off inebriation long enough to realise that a trip down the Tatra mountainside might just have been advantageous to the cause. If you had kept your hands to yourself you might even have prevented getting them dirtier.”

  Rolling the keys in his pocket in his hand, Peter finally mouthed a response. “You bloody monster.”

  Deprez’s face contorted; his contempt for Peter mixing with the palpable strain etched permanently onto his features. He stepped closer and spoke with bitter distaste.

  “There is only one monster standing here Peter. I have never ordered you to kill; I have never had to because I understand your nature. I am only an administrator, I co-ordinate the requirements of Brussels. The Child gives me the script and I direct my players, players like you.” He made no attempt to mask the disgust in his eyes as he looked at Peter. “My days of bloody hands and sleepless nights are many years passed, but yours?” He made a tutting noise and shook his head in a mocking sadness. “You are just a drunken dog, who howls his repentance to the moonlight and goes back to his vomit in the morning.”

  Peter quietly and forcefully exhaled, his eyes closed and his face twitched in resentment, the fight to keep control of his anger made painful by the slivovice still pulsing through his head. Damn it! How much had he drunk? Peter barely had time to swallow his inebriated rage before Deprez continued.

  “As I said,” his tone now one of patronising understanding, “some people write the scripts, some direct the play and others play the parts.” The Frenchman’s faux sympathy drilled into Peter. “You’ll let me know if you have trouble reading the lines?”

  The rain had surpassed torrential now, hammering against the clock tower and sweeping through the stone window arches beside the two men, soaking them on one side as they stood in antagonistic stillness. They remained motionless as the few tourists who had ascended after Peter, oblivious to the intrigues only feet away from them, hurried down the stone stairwell, joining those scurrying for the intoxicating warmth of the bars below.

  The Frenchman gave the slightest of laughs at the impotent frustration on Peter’s face. He turned away towards the steps. “I’ll wait to hear from you Peter,” he said, raising the collar of his overcoat against his neck, “I’m sure I won’t be waiting long.”

  The charming condescension in the Frenchman’s voice thumped Peter back to sobriety and he realised, belatedly, that this was a man who had lost his fear. All those years ago Peter knew how scared Deprez had been of him, how he had waited months before assigning Peter a target in the hope that extended, expensed vacation would purge him of the desire for revenge. When that had failed, Deprez had relied on the unseen apparatus of the Institute to deter Peter’s wrath, but the fear, the weakness, had still been in his eyes. Not any more. Deprez was more confident around him than before; still wary, still cautious of arousing the beast, but definitely more confident. Peter had pushed the thought back to the shadows alongside his guilt and ordered another drink. This was the result. He himself had allowed his betrayer’s fear of retribution to evolve into a contemptuous pity for the drunkard Peter had become. And Deprez was right to feel that way. The hunter had become irrelevant; an aging murderer able to wear a suit and maintain a slender cover, but for the most part lost in a bottle of plum spirit waiting to be given permission to kill.

  The sobering punch knocked Peter to the ropes and he stood in solitude, head bowed like a shamed child. His mouth hung open in mute objection, his hollow shell somehow held upright in the stinging rain. It was over Peter thought. Deprez had called his bluff and laid open what he was; a drunken thug, prepared and able to kill whichever target he was pointed at, regardless of whether he received a formal order or not.

  The self analysis battered at Peter’s senses bringing with them the return of his aggressive frustration. He looked with pu
re hatred at his superior’s back. As if sensing the fury being silently directed at him, Deprez stopped at the top of the steps and glanced back at his chastened subordinate, a look of emancipated amusement on his face. He raised a hand in sarcastic farewell and shouted to Peter. “Say goodbye to your girlfriend from me.”

  The sentence which began in arrogance ended trailing in uncertainty as Deprez realised the enormity of his mistake. He had Peter beaten, if he had simply carried on down the stairs and resisted the sweet seduction of torment, then he would have won the day. Instead, he had kicked the dog just a little too hard, and Deprez knew it was about to bite.

  Peter knew it too. The sudden weakness in Deprez’s voice after the verbal barrage Peter had endured was telling and Peter’s senses, dulled but not deadened, sparked to life. The Frenchman’s tone had changed so quickly from assurance to uncertainty that Peter knew his superior’s fear had been buried in the shallowest of graves. With this feeling came a return of the ferocious anger in Peter’s soul. A powerful anger at himself, at Deprez and at the entire world for tolerating the filth that had driven him through the slurry of his profession for decades and led him to debating morality with a ghoul in a Prague clock tower.

  Homing in on Deprez, Peter grabbed the startled man by his soaking lapels and slamming his body against the hard stone wall.

  “You fucking hypocrite!” Peter snarled. “You think that if you don’t say the words it keeps you clean. You just shout to the wind ‘who will rid me of this turbulent priest?’ and scum like me say ‘I will.’ You think because its not you doing the killing you’re some kind of bloody innocent; that you’re as pure as the driven snow.”

  It was Deprez’s turn to submit to a verbal barrage and he squirmed under Peter’s tight grip.

  “Are they all like me? Is everyone you command the same kind of scum who don’t need ordering when there’s killing to be done? I bet they are you coward. I bet you’ve got a room full of people somewhere all willing to stab, shoot, throttle and slash until the cows come home if you walk past saying ‘if only something could be done.’ Anything so you don’t have to get your pretty little hands dirty, so that you don’t have to give the order to kill. You’re just a politician sitting in an office writing out death warrants for soldiers whose arses you’re not fit to wipe!”

  If ever Peter saw a man’s spirit drain from his eyes it was then. Deprez had been so sure of himself, so secure in the safety of his public surroundings, but now the dog had growled and Deprez found himself back in the familiar hold of nervous fear.

  “You’re every bit the murderer I am. You’re murdering a piece of me every single day. Your hands have been round my throat for years and every time you speak to me, every time you look at me, you’re squeezing that little bit tighter.”

  Peter heaved the eurocrat away from the wall, spun him around and, operating on raging instinct, forced his frame through the stone arch so that the Frenchman’s head and shoulders hung over the brightness of the Old Town Square below. Peter saw the nervousness in Deprez’s eyes turn into the terror of a man who knew he had avoided revenge for nearly twenty five years and could see no escape now it had finally caught up with him.

  “Well those days are over Deprez; if I have to live every day knowing there’s shit in the street with more of a right to life than me then so do you! If you want me to kill that woman then order me! Be an honest murderer and order me to kill her! Tell me how you want me to do it, tell me how much you want her to suffer. Do you want her humiliated first? Should she scream for her mother before I slit her throat? Tell me you bastard!”

  Deprez’s face was turning paler with each word, Peter’s head so close to his he could smell the stale alcohol on his breath. The rain was beating directly onto his head, forcing him to clench his eyes tight from the freezing bullets and the cold made him gasp desperately for air.

  “Or how about a quick kill so she never even knows who’s hit her or why? So quick she doesn’t even have time to think of her family or say a prayer or whatever it is you do when you know you’re dead?” Peter allowed the images to play in front of Deprez’s uncertain, panicking eyes. “What would you do Deprez? What would you do if I dropped you now onto the square? Would you pray on the way down?”

  The Frenchman stuttered before managing a reply, “For God’s sake, the people!” Deprez shouted the words, vainly hoping to snap Peter out of his assault or even to be saved by the few scattered tourists who had not yet sheltered from the rain.

  “Fuck the people!” Peter spat. “You’ll order me to kill that girl here and now Deprez or they’ll be scraping you off the cobbles with the horse shit. Or maybe you can go and tell The Child that you’ve got a rogue killer on your hands; that your authority’s been compromised and the naughty little Brit won’t do as he’s told?”

  Peter saw the fear in his superior’s face turn to dread and smiled cruelly. “You don’t want that do you Remy?” Peter taunted. “You know what that’ll mean don’t you?”

  Peter grinned in malicious pleasure as he watched Deprez contemplating the prospect of The Child inspecting his affairs as an alternative to ending up as pigeon food smeared across the centre of a tourist spot. The failure of Deprez to keep the firmest control over his players, particularly the British with their inherent ability to sour EU milk, would spell an instant end to his own usefulness. Peter knew about Deprez’s fear of The Child, it was a fear that he and many others shared.

  “Alright!” The French accent was now robbed entirely of its customary charm and elegance. “Alright, for God’s sake!” The words were shouted at Peter who instantly pulled Deprez back through the hole in the wall and let go of his dripping lapels.

  “Alright,” Deprez said again, this time almost whispered. He breathed heavily and irregularly, like an infant trying to stop itself weeping. Finally, he lifted his head and ashamedly, without looking into Peter’s eyes, opened his mouth.

  “I order you to kill Miroslava Svobodova. I want it done by the end of the week.” The Frenchman’s voice was faint and cracking, the rain water that dripped from his hair disguising the salt water in his eyes. “It should look suspicious, so as to harbour mistrust and cause as much resentment and ill-feeling as possible.”

  Even after all the bitterness Peter had felt towards this man every day since ’92, he was embarrassed to be the architect of his humiliation – the man was breaking down in front of him. Deprez spoke again, his brow furrowed and his eyes searching for a place to focus on the wall behind Peter. “I don’t care how you do it.”

  It was clear to Peter that each word Deprez spoke was another slash at his conscience and he stared in disgust at the man in front of him. However hard it had been for Deprez to say the words, for Peter each syllable had brought a curious freedom and he stood apart from his enemy, both men breathing deeply, aching from drained emotions.

  Peter straightened up and nodded his acceptance of the order. “Yes Sir,” he said calmly before turning on his heel and walking towards the stone stairwell where Deprez had stood only moments before. Just as Deprez had done, Peter turned at the top of the steps and looked back at his adversary, now sitting cross legged and head sunk under the window arch, rain splashing around him. A flutter of pity entered Peter’s heart. Despite everything, Peter was amazed to find himself wanting to offer comfort to this man, his former friend whose betrayal ensured he stayed steeped in filth every day of his life. Despite all that, he wanted suddenly to offer some words to ease the turmoil going through this man’s head.

  Peter opened his mouth to offer something, anything to help.

  “Welcome to Hell Remy,” were the only words that would come.

  CHAPTER 11

  AN ACTUAL DATE. After leaving Deprez to his despair and stepping into the rain-soaked square without so much as a backward glance, Peter had rattled off a text to Mirushka asking her out the following evening for dinner, partly with Deprez’s order still fresh in his ears, but mostly for an excuse to see her
. Not that he actually thought she would or could agree; every second of these last precious days before the election were already double booked – triple booked at some points. All the better, Peter thought as he mopped the sobering rain from his furrowed brow. Her refusal would spare him from making his choice, at least for the moment.

  Satisfied with his impending rejection, Peter ducked down the alleyway leading back to Smokin’ Hot, his mobile’s message alert sounding twice before he noticed it. Slipping it from his pocket he cursed as the rain thwarted his finger’s attempt to slide the screen open. Eventually it relented, revealing the message contents to Peter; just two letters, ‘Ok’.

  An actual date. Peter knew that he owed her that much at least.

  The nervous excitement that consumed him for much of the next day was a shock to Peter, culminating in him standing in the cold outside Smokin’ Hot, dressed in fresh paisley shirt, black trousers and black velvet jacket awaiting the arrival of Mirushka’s car.

  As it eventually negotiated the tricky, narrow street and pulled up outside, Peter waved a quick acknowledgement to Ivan in the driver’s seat and moved to open the door for Mirushka. She stepped out beaming at him, every facet of her beauty and individuality accentuated for the evening. A black, open necked shirt sat beneath a designer waistcoat patterned with many colours in dark shades, while high quality jeans, brown knee length boots and a long, ankle length and feux-fur collared black coat completed the ensemble.

  “Is this the place?”

  Her voice betrayed her own nerves and Peter leant forward to give the awkward, obligatory kiss that such occasions demanded, thankful that the unannounced change in her schedule had resulted in the absence of paparazzi.

  “Certainly is,” he said. “I didn’t think there was any way I could top the kind of places you’re used to so I figured I’d bring you home.”

  Peter put his arm around her waist and guided her inside, while, from nowhere, black suited security men appeared to stand by the door, Rado disappearing inside to take up his own post.