by Andy Maslen
Lucian stood up and rolled his neck and shoulders to ease the tension that had been building all morning. He’d spent the previous three hours scrutinising insect larvae through a high-powered microscope, and his eyes felt like marbles that had been rolled in glue, then sand. He turned away from his desk and headed for the door.
“Where are you off to?” a woman at the next desk asked him. “If you’re going to the canteen you couldn’t get me some cheese and onion crisps, a pork pie and a strawberry and kiwi Fanta, could you?”
He smiled. Julie was pregnant and brought her food cravings to work.
“Sorry, Jules. I’ve been sent down to the garage by our glorious leader. It’s welder’s gloves and angle-grinder time.”
She grinned.
“Which you should love, what with you being so butch and everything.”
He poked his tongue out and headed through the door, which whuffed shut behind him on its pneumatic closer.
The garage echoed to the sound of air hissing from impact wrenches as they spun the wheel nuts free of cars, vans and trucks, pop music from the radio, and the good-natured banter of people who enjoyed working with their hands, especially if the subject material had four wheels and an internal combustion engine.
Lucian found a face mask and zipped himself into a spare Tyvek forensic suit. He looked down. White Gucci loafers would attract grease and swarf, not to mention well-earned jabs of caustic wit from the mechanics and forensics officers working on the cars and bikes parked in a long row on the oil-stained concrete. He stashed them in an empty locker and replaced them with a pair of shin-high leather work boots with steel glinting through the ripped toecaps like bone beneath skin.
A young guy with sandy hair and a wide streak of grease across his forehead wandered over.
“All right, Lucian? Don’t often see you down here?”
“Hi, Terry. I’m looking for the Merc SUV that came in the other day. Callie sent me down to have a go at it.”
“It’s been swept cleaner than a suite at the Paddington Hilton. You won’t find anything.”
Lucian compressed his lips and frowned.
“Yeah, I don’t think sweeping was what she had in mind.”
Terry pointed to the end of the row of vehicles.
“It’s at the far end. Keys are on the rack. Knock yourself out.”
Lucian collected the keys, labelled with a brown paper tag on a loop of string, and stopped off at the rack of heavy-duty equipment stacked on industrial racking on the long wall of the garage. He selected a set of huge pneumatic shears commonly known as the Jaws of Life.
He lugged the tool over to the Mercedes and screwed the brass coupling onto the nearest air supply. First, he did a walkaround.
“AMG GLS. Nice.”
He pulled on a pair of leather work gloves and ran his hand along one gleaming flank, now glittering with grey fingerprint powder. He opened the driver’s door and inserted the key to switch on the electronics. Then he pressed the button to drop all the windows. He turned the key to the OFF position.
The heavy cutters hissing, he manoeuvred the massive jaws around the driver’s side windscreen pillar and hit the green CUT button. The compressor behind him deepened its hum to a more purposeful note. He watched with satisfaction as the cutting edges closed around the A-pillar, which emitted a jagged, metallic squeal, then severed it as if it were made of cheese. He repeated the process five times. The B/C and D pillars took more bites to cut through, but each parted with the same sudden bang as the final cut chomped through the steel. Finally, he cut through the supports for the rear tailgate.
“Hey, Terry,” he called. “Give us a hand with this, would you?”
Terry trotted over and together they pushed the entire roof off, shattering the front and rear screens, which crashed inwards with a hiss of crazing safety glass. The roof, looking like a monstrous, flat-bodied insect, fell onto the far side of the car with a bang that raised heads the length of the garage. A mocking cheer went up, as if someone had dropped a plate in the canteen.
Next, Lucian opened all four doors. The blades made short work of the hinges and corrugated rubber cable sleeves connecting the doors’ inboard electronics to the battery.
Four hours later, what remained of the Mercedes was a sorry picture far removed from the triumph of engineering and styling its manufacturer had shipped from the factory. The car itself resembled a stripped-out dune buggy. All the body panels were stacked in a pile ten feet from the rear. Lucian had dismantled each door into outer skin, inner frame and door cards holding the arm rests and switchgear. The bonnet and tailgate were propped against a wall. The seats were lined up as if for an impromptu film show. And the boot floor, spare wheel and toolkit were pushed well back into the corner of the garage where Lucian had been working.
Wiping sweat from his forehead, he bent to examine the floor-mounted rails to which the sumptuously padded leather seats had so recently been bolted. Beneath the driver’s seat he found a single penny. 2015. Moving across to the front passenger seat, he added the cap of a ballpoint pen. Black. Then he clambered into the rear passenger compartment, lay down on his front across the transmission tunnel and stuck his face close to the floor pan. A structural member ran transversely across the space. He curled his fingers beneath it and tried to feel his way along, but the thick leather gloves were too stiff. He pulled them off with his teeth in frustration and tried again. He felt thick smears of grease, a few specks of grit and … nothing.
“No!” he muttered. “Not after all this. Nobody’s this clean.”
Twisting onto his side to increase his reach by a few precious inches, he poked his index and middle fingers into the furthest corner where the seat squab would have met the back rest. In family cars, it was the spot where he usually found chocolate buttons, white with age, or half-sucked boiled sweets, melted into blobs of jewel-coloured sugar. The tip of his index finger encountered something flexible. A piece of plastic perhaps. No. Too flexible to be plastic. He pushed his fingers harder into the gap, wincing as a sharp metal edge dragged across the first knuckle of his middle finger.
“Fuck!”
With a scissoring action, he closed his fingers around the thin, flat object, pad of middle finger on top of nail of index. Clamping them together as tightly as he could, he withdrew his hand. His fingers slipped off. He tried again. This time, the object stayed put inside in his improvised pincer-grip.
He sighed with relief and brought it all the way out. Sucking at the jagged tear across the top of his middle finger and tasting the iron tang of his own blood, he looked at what he held in his fingers.
It was a business card. The paper was coated in a silky finish, and was creased and oily with his own finger marks. But it was perfectly legible.
Max Novgorodsky
Kuznitsa
F765/TRF.maxN
“Hello, Max,” Lucian said with a smile. “Is this your car?
Callie phoned Don the moment Lucian had left her office with the single piece of hard evidence that might be worth a damn.
“We’ve got something. A business card.”
“And I’m guessing you’re not calling to tell me it belongs to Paula in Mercedes Corporate Sales?”
“Nope. It says Max Novgorodsky. Kuznitsa. And then this code. Foxtrot seven-six-five forwards slash Tango Romeo Foxtrot dot Mike Alpha X-ray – those three in lower case by the way – November.”
“Callie, that’s absolutely fantastic! Where was this business card?”
“Under the rear seat. Looks like it might have slipped down there out of someone’s back pocket. One of my forensics officers pretty well tore the car to pieces to find it.”
“Please extend my personal thanks to him or her.”
“It’s a he, and yes I will. Thank you.”
“Any idea what the code means?”
“Not yet. But my forensics guy’s also an IT expert when he’s not cutting up cars into tiny pieces. He’s on it now. And yes, I w
ill let you know the moment he has anything.”
Room Service
TEHRAN
Back at the hotel, Eli launched the tracker app on her phone and tapped the icon for Gabriel. She’d designated her partner with a simple white G in a blue circle. The map rendered itself in a few seconds and Eli found she was looking at a section of Tehran. The blue-and-white spot was pulsing once a second over the Avis branch, which was indicated with orange text.
She picked up the room phone and ordered two club sandwiches, a Coke and a coffee on room service.
“Certainly, madam,” came the courteous reply. “It will be with you in about ten minutes.”
Eli returned her gaze to her phone. No movement. Her suitcase was resting on the straps of a wooden foldout stand. She unzipped the case and began packing. Every few items, she paused and check the phone’s screen.
Hope they’ve got aircon over there.
A soft knocking at the door interrupted her thoughts.
“Room service!” said a female voice.
She crossed to the door and placed her eye to the spyhole. A young woman stood waiting, holding a tray with a glass of Coke and a coffee, and two plates covered by gleaming metal domes. Five-star fancy! she thought as she turned the chromed knob a foot below the peep-hole.
She opened the door, smiling, ready with a folded bill to tip the waitress.
But the woman had gone. In her place stood a heavily built man in a bottle-green uniform. He shoved her hard in the chest with both hands and stepped into the room as she stumbled backwards. A second man, dressed in a grey suit and white shirt, followed him in and slammed the door shut behind him.
Uniform was reaching for the pistol at his belt. He should have had it already drawn before shoving Eli. Underestimating their target was their first – and last – mistake. In the act of stumbling, she’d twisted round and righted herself with an extra-long step towards the desk. In a single movement, she swept the striker pen from her pocket and closed with him. His gun arm was on its way up so Eli stepped inside his reach and helped it on its way, knocking his wrist wide with her left hand where it collided with his accomplice’s face.
Her knee came up, smashing into his groin. Not once, but twice. And she smacked the point of the striker into the centre of his forehead. He dropped like a demolished tower block. Straight down into a tangled heap of bent limbs. She turned to the plainclothesman, who’d drawn his own pistol from a shoulder holster. A stubby suppressor lengthened its barrel by a few inches. He hadn’t been able to shoot for fear of hitting his partner. As the man fell back, he had a clear shot, but Eli had one too.
She grabbed his gun hand and twisted violently, turning his arm outwards and exposing the soft tissue on the underside of his wrist. Down flew the striker pen, puncturing the skin and ripping through the blood vessels serving the hand. He screamed with pain and dropped the pistol. But Eli wasn’t finished. She pushed him away and leant way back before kicking up and breaking his lower jaw with a loud snap. He moaned in pain, a deep lowing sound like a cow, clutching his ruined face with both hands. Still in motion, Eli swept her foot round against his left knee, delivering a punch to his throat at the same time. He fell back onto the bed. She stooped to grab the pistol then straightened.
Grabbing a pillow, she stuffed it down hard over his face, jammed the suppressor against it and fired twice. The pillow exploded, releasing a sickening smell of burnt feathers.
Behind her, she heard the uniformed man move. She turned to see him clawing his way upright, using the door handle for support. Blood was streaming from the deep hole in his forehead, blinding him. He’d found his pistol and was trying to clear the blood from his eyes with his right sleeve.
She covered the distance from the bed to the door in three fast paces, pistol gripped in her right hand. But as she reached him, he dropped a foot or two and scythed out his right boot, catching her below the knee and sending her to the carpet. She lost her grip on the pistol and dropped it.
He’d cleared blood from a stripe of skin across his eyes giving him the look of a monstrous bandit. Teeth bared, he drew down on Eli.
One Out, All Out
The blow Eli had dealt to her attacker’s head had opened a fast-bleeding wound, but it had also knocked his perceptions seriously askew. The barrel of the gun was pointing off by a few degrees. Not much. And at point-blank range not enough to matter. But at six feet – the distance from the muzzle to Eli’s torso – too much. He fired. The sound was deafening in the enclosed space. The round went wide, hitting the wall and gouging out a chunk of plaster. He may have spent his last few moments drawing breath trying to figure out what had gone wrong with his first shot. But he didn’t get a chance for a second.
Eli flipped herself upright like a gymnast, which she had once been as a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, and launched a ferocious attack. His eyes were masked in blood again, but still presented an excellent target. In a sequence of stabbing moves, her clawed fingers destroyed them utterly. To prevent his screaming, she jabbed her straight fingers hard into the soft place between his Adam’s apple and the supra-sternal notch where his collarbones met. He coughed and wheezed, struggling to drag air into his lungs. Then it was over. Eli took his pistol and hit him on the side of the head so hard the crack as the thin plate of the temporal bone shattered was clearly audible. He fell back, his head thumping on the carpet. She reached under the bed for the suppressed pistol, curled her hand round the grip and dragged another pillow off the bed.
After killing the second man, she sat on the bed and called Gabriel.
“Hey, has my food arrived yet?” he asked. “I’m still ten minutes from the front of the queue and the clerk’s clearly been—”
“Shut up!” she said, panting, her knee jiggling from the adrenaline now that the fighting was done. “I’ve been blown. We’ve been blown. Two heavies just burst in here. They’re both dead. I’m getting to the embassy. You should do the same.”
“That’s very interesting Melina. Do they have my contact details?”
“What? Of course they do!”
“Well, not to worry. I’ll just have to go to the meeting on my own. I’m sure I’ll manage even if you do have to go back to the office.”
“Gabriel, wait. You can’t go alone. It’s too dangerous.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. We’re just talking about a contract, after all. I have to go. Ciao, darling. See you at the airport.”
And he ended the call.
Eli stared at the little white and red phone icon. Then the screen grew tired of her scrutiny and faded to black.
“Fuck!” she muttered. “Just do the job and get yourself to the embassy.”
She went into the bathroom and examined herself in the mirror. Her face was spattered with blood and her hair had come loose. She pulled out the scrunchie now only hanging from a single hank of hair and refastened her bun. A scrub with a cold flannel took care of the blood spatters, though her cheeks were flushed. Two minutes later she’d concealed the evidence behind freshly reapplied foundation and lipstick.
“Time to go,” she said to her mirror-self. “I hope to God you’ll be OK, Wolfe.”
Back in the bedroom, she collected her phone and slid it into her inside pocket beside her passport. She shoved the suppressed pistol into her document case. Then she dragged the body of the plainclothesman away from the door and left, hanging a “Please do not disturb” sign on the polished handle. Nobody was running towards her. She suspected MOIS had instructed the hotel management to keep clear and tell their guests likewise.
Turning away from the sign for the lifts, restaurant and reception, she walked fast down the corridor to the far end, where the fire escape door beckoned. Once through, she raced down the concrete steps, taking them two at a time, and reached the ground floor without encountering another soul. The door from the stairwell was tucked away in a corridor between the kitchen and the lobby. Eli emerged into the marble-floored space at the opposite end
from the reception desk. Turning her back, she left through a set of plate glass doors that led out onto Mansour Street. Her mind was working in overdrive as she weighed up her options.
Taxi or walk?
Three-quarters of an hour or ten minutes?
Freedom to move or concealment?
Walk.
The direct route would take her left onto Shahid Motahari Street then right onto Larestan Street. Eli turned right then left onto Valiasr Street. A longer walk but if MOIS agents were waiting they’d more likely be two blocks to the east.
Her document case was snug against her front. She kept her right hand inside, gripping the butt on the pistol. Knowing her cover was blown, she had no illusions about what awaited her, an Israeli, a Jew and a woman, if she was caught by the Iranian secret police. Anyone trying to stop her reaching the British Embassy would be dead before they hit the ground.
The pistol was an ageing Sig Sauer P226. She’d checked the magazine on the way down the back staircase: a 20-round model, which meant it was chambered for 9 x 19mm Parabellum rounds. Assuming the MOIS man had arrived with a full mag, she had seventeen left. Sixteen ought to be enough to get her clear. And if not? She wouldn’t allow herself to be captured.
Walking purposefully, but not so fast as to draw attention to herself, Eli made her way steadily down Valiasr Street. A wide boulevard, it was lined with drab concrete apartment blocks in shades of rose pink and beige, car dealerships, cafes, department stores, banks and office buildings. Plenty of people milled about or sat outside cafes, chatting and drinking coffee or mint tea.
The traffic was heavy and loud, car horns adding to the clamour. Eli crossed and recrossed the street, being careful to wait for the green signal or the officious white-gloved wave of a traffic cop on duty at the centre of the busier junctions. Aiming for the interested look of a tourist, she swivelled her head every few seconds, as if to take in another of Tehran’s architectural wonders. Each time she brought her gaze down and to the front, she scanned the pavement behind and beside her. Nobody was following her, on either side of the street.