Safe from Harm

by RJ Bailey

  ‘In some countries, like Serbia, if a woman was unfaithful, the husband was allowed by village elders to make two cuts in her. Cuts that the public could see, you understand. Most men opted for here. And here.’ He used the index finger of his left hand to show lines running from each corner of the mouth. ‘Some made the strokes up, so the wife would always seem as if she was grinning. Hence the name of the punishment. Others went down, for the sadder option. The Cuckold’s Frown. Perhaps we will go for both options. One side up, one side down. Then you can decide which will be your best profile.’

  The strike came on the final word, an old, tired trick that almost worked. I sidestepped and the knife flashed by. I pushed it away with my padding and brought down the dumbbell, but it seemed to bounce off his wrist. No knife clattered to the floor.

  I heard the lift behind him whine into action. He read my mind. ‘Mitval. Time to wrap this up.’

  As he readied himself to spring on me, I put the jacket across my chest and charged, swinging the weight at his head. As I careered into him, the Eickhorn swept into the jacket and I felt it snag on something. The mesh, I hoped. I pulled the dumbbell across my left shoulder and brought it across his face, making lucky contact with his nose. But then I heard and felt the knife rip free. I tried to back away, but knew I simply wasn’t fast enough. I was still in easy range for a thrust up into the abdomen, the lungs. I had been wrong when I said to Tom he wouldn’t kill me. That was exactly what he wanted to do.

  I allowed myself to lean back into the run, teetering on the edge of losing balance, almost stumbling as I came to the end of the mat. In the end, it was my height that once more saved me. I was aware of a shadow over my head and I dropped the dumbbell, reached and grabbed the pull-up bars that I had used when Mitval put me through my paces. Gripping with the left wasn’t easy, but I was tall enough to hook my wrist over it, without using those damaged fingers. It wouldn’t last long, but I didn’t need long. I felt something tear in the gash in my side as I pulled myself off the ground, brought my legs up to my chest and straightened them as explosively as I could.

  I wasn’t lucky this time. Luck had nothing to do with it. I saw him twist his head away and corrected, getting him under the jawline with a satisfying crack of neck vertebrae. He caught his heels on the mat perimeter and he went down.

  I let myself drop into a crouch and scooped up the weight again, waiting for the inevitable spring back up. I knew I was pretty far gone. Like that phone in my jacket, I was probably down to about 20 per cent. Little flares of pain were firing off all the way down my left side and my throat and lungs felt as if they had been blowtorched. My left hand looked as if it had been inflated with helium.

  The lift pinged its arrival at the gym/pool floor. I pulled myself up to my full height, ready for one last push. But, as I had already discovered that day, everything changes when a man with a pistol comes into play.

  FORTY-SIX

  The Eickhorn had gone in right up to the hilt. Blood, thick and claret-coloured, welled around what was left showing of the blade. As well as the sharp tang of the blood I could smell something else, sharp and faecal. I reckoned some part of the intestine had been punctured. I fetched some of the towels and put them under Bojan’s head. He was a pallid shade of grey and it was his turn for shallow and painful breathing. He looked down at the knife in his gut and said the only possible thing in the circumstances. ‘Fuck.’

  I glanced up at Elliott, the new arrival with the gun. He had lost his jacket and had rolled up his shirtsleeves as if he meant business. Perhaps he did, but I could tell he wasn’t used to firearms. ‘What happened to Swincoe?’ I asked.

  ‘He has a bump on the head.’ I didn’t ask the question but he answered it anyway. ‘I always hated these bastards,’ he muttered, indicating the wounded – possibly dying – man. ‘Right from day one.’

  Of course, it had been Elliott who had told Asparov what they had been up to in the gym the first time I had taken on Bojan. Perhaps he was one of the good guys.

  ‘They had Greta locked up,’ he said. Greta? He must mean Svetlana with the cheekbones. ‘To keep me in line. I managed to free her . . . and here I am.’

  ‘Good job,’ I said. Although not that good. He had picked up the air pistol, not the Glock. How was he to know? The Colt looked real enough. But it was a toy, really.

  ‘Listen, Bojan, that is a bad, bad wound. You are going to die unless I get help. I can only do that by making a call. Is there an outside line here?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Where’s the numbrella?’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  I crouched and grabbed the handle of the knife with my good hand. ‘I don’t have to twist this and torture you. All I have to do is pull it out. You noticed the serrated edge? Designed to cause maximum damage as you extract. I’d guess you’d bleed out in two, three minutes. If we can get a proper medical team here, you might live. But otherwise . . .’

  I applied the tiniest force on the handle, moving it maybe a millimetre. He saw sense. Or maybe he saw a big black hole waiting for him. ‘By the car garage, outside. Master there, two slaves either side of house. Turn off the master, you’ll get a signal. Jesus.’ He grimaced and said something in his native language. ‘Hurry up.’

  I wanted that knife, wanted it very badly, but what I was telling him was more or less the truth. There was a lot of blood now. I searched and found a pressure point that seemed to stem some of the flow. ‘Elliott, you are going to have to press here. I am going to go and get my daughter. I’ll make the call on the way.’

  ‘What about the . . . what about the girl you brought? Asha, was it?’

  I closed my eyes for a second. Protect the Principal. And their family.

  What about my own fucking family?

  ‘Asma,’ I corrected. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Round the corner. Holding the lift door open.’

  ‘Isn’t there a fire escape? I mean, stairs? The manual option?’

  ‘There was, but they were bricked up when they did the mural. Mr Asparov asked who ever heard of a swimming pool catching fire?’

  Fucking idiot.

  ‘She’s not in a good way,’ Elliott said. ‘Swincoe was rough.’

  But Asma would slow me down. Get me embroiled. I needed to get to Jess. ‘You’ll have to look after her.’

  Elliott groaned.

  ‘Come on, she won’t be any trouble.’

  ‘Not that. That.’ He nodded towards the computer desk. Above it, the monitors showing the outside of the house were displaying a Range Rover Evoque parking up, and men getting out. Lawrence. Christ, and two other men. Reinforcements.

  ‘If you take the lift down to the garage level, the large car elevator comes up outside the house. Then maybe you can outflank them and disable this numbrella.’

  He offered me the gun. I went to reach for it, but he pulled it away. ‘Take the girl with you. Don’t leave her here.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Who notices the butler? I’ll take my chances. And it wasn’t me who stabbed him.’

  It wasn’t me either. He’d stabbed himself as he fell – but I let that pass. I fetched more towels and Elliott mopped up some of the blood.

  ‘I’ll take the girl with me.’

  Sorry, Jess, I promise it won’t cost me too much time. I’m coming, darling. I felt a sickly stab of guilt. But, I reminded myself, I had no idea if Jess was in any immediate danger. But right here, right now, men were going to come for us.

  Elliott handed the Colt over. It might just buy me some time later. Besides, it felt good. I pulled on my slashed jacket, winced as the material brushed my damaged fingers, and slipped it in the pocket. I checked the phone again, just in case. Nothing, of course. Fifteen per cent.

  ‘You’d better hope I get through,’ I said to Bojan.

  He tried a smile, but it didn’t quite come off. ‘I’ll say a little prayer.’ Elliott accepted another clean towel from me. ‘The code to
open the panic room is 5879, hash.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I’d almost forgotten about Tom. He must have come to by now. It was probably a different kind of anguish he was going through up there. But I had enough extra bodies to fret about and I put him to the back of my mind.

  I was almost turning the corner to the lift when Bojan shouted. ‘Hey.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You were good.’

  ‘Yeah. I was, wasn’t I?’

  Asma was wearing Elliott’s jacket, which came down to her knees. She looked to be naked underneath. ‘You OK?’ I asked.

  ‘Why did you bring me here?’ Asma half-sobbed. ‘Why?’

  ‘I thought it was safe,’ I said, entering the lift.

  ‘I hate you,’ she hissed. ‘I hate all of you.’

  ‘I know. I don’t blame you.’ I put an arm round her. ‘Let go of the doors.’

  She stepped away from them and they slid shut. I hoped nobody had called the lift upstairs. I pressed G for garage, one floor down. It seemed like a lot of heartbeats before the button illuminated and the machinery began to turn.

  I had only been in the garage once, when I drove the Porsche Cayman out. When we stepped into it, nothing had changed. Still the carousel of cars, the workshop area, the flashy bicycles. I ignored it all, apart from one of the bikes, which I used to make sure the lift door wouldn’t close. I didn’t want anyone coming down after us.

  I guided Asma through the garage to the other elevator, the industrial-sized one large enough to take a car up to the ground-floor garage – located outside the house – and pressed the ‘call’ button.

  Nothing happened.

  It occurred to me after punching it three more times that I’d got us trapped.

  Then the power went out.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  There is a man coming to hurt us. Probably more than one man. Two or three, perhaps. Not four. They won’t need four to deal with us. After all, we are trapped. There is no way out from this cold, concrete shell. We are crouched in the dark, dozens of feet below ground. The power to this level has been cut. There is no phone signal. Which is mostly irrelevant because my phone is almost out of battery. What I do have is two broken fingers on my left hand and the pain is making me sweat.

  I slide my good hand into my T-shirt and find the knife wound I have picked up. It is long and shallow and oozing along its length. The blade cut through the fabric and has almost severed my bra. I think that was the idea. I give it a tug. The remaining nylon and Kevlar webbing seems to be holding. It should do, it’s a ProTex, standard issue for female Secret Service agents in the US who also don’t want their tits falling out at inconvenient times. They cost a small fortune. Right now, it feels like money well spent.

  It can’t be long now. I reach out with my right arm and touch warm skin, trying to reassure, but she recoils at my touch. Asma blames me for all this. She’s right. I was meant to keep her safe from harm. It’s my fault we ended up down here.

  In the army they told me about controlling the battle space. That firefights had to be undertaken on your own terms, not the enemy’s. I had to admit, I’d lost control of the battle space. I’d lost control of everything.

  SIT-REP, as we used to say, AGTOS. Situation Report: All Gone To Shit.

  I can hear voices now, echoing down the enormous lift shaft that will bring the men to us. Then the whoosh of air, the ding of a bell, a muffled warning (‘Doors closing’), the soft whirr of very expensive, very well-maintained machinery, with its own power supply, as the industrial-sized lift descends.

  The whining of the lift has stopped. I hear a distant, disembodied woman say that the doors are opening. But it isn’t on our floor. There is an intermediate one, a full-sized automatic car wash. More voices creep down the shaft, all male. A laugh. Not a very nice laugh, either, more one of disbelief at how easy this was going to be for them. And how hard it would go with me.

  ‘Are they going to kill us?’ Asma asks from the darkness, a crack in her voice.

  ‘Not if I have anything to do with it.’

  That, apparently, is not too reassuring, because she begins to sob, great heart-breaking catches in the throat. I pull her close. ‘It’ll be OK. They’re only angry with me.’

  I step away into the blackness.

  ‘Don’t go.’ Brittle and afraid.

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To get something to fight with.’

  It sounds as pathetic as it felt. My left arm is burning up now, as if someone had held a lighted candle to the fingertips and was now playing it up over my arm and forearm. It hurts enough to make my breathing dangerously shallow. I make the effort to fill my lungs, wincing as it stretched the knife wound open. I check it again. There is more blood than the last time. I need the SwiftKlot in my RTG bag. It will have to wait.

  A bell pings.

  ‘I won’t be a second.’

  The machinery whirrs, the cables take up the slack.

  Colour: beyond Red.

  I use the torch in the phone to scan the garage for car keys. Maybe one of the vehicles could be a weapon. I find the safe on the wall and guess it is probably crammed with electronic key fobs. It has a numeric keypad. My heart leaps as I remember that everyone uses the same codes, over and over again. I punch in the numbers Elliott had given me and press hash. Nothing.

  I hammer at the safe with the butt of the Colt, but it is made of stronger stuff than the gun. The side panels on the butt splinter. The safe stares at me, imperiously. I drop the useless weapon to the floor.

  I walk back towards Asma, stopping off at a workbench. A hammer. A hammer and a long screwdriver. That is the sum total of what I have managed to find to save us. I struggle to raise the screwdriver with my left hand. Trying to make a fist, even with the good fingers, causes me to gasp. Fire shoots up my arm. I had to face it: I was single-handed in every sense of the word.

  How long do I have? Seconds.

  I place the hammer under my left armpit and try the phone one last time. Still useless.

  The doors of the elevator part to bleed out a vertical bar of white-hot light. Within a second, the whole garage is flooded with it, and I see the blurred outline of the men within, standing in the glow like aliens in a spaceship from a sci-fi movie. Then another, unmistakable, noise.

  That of a round being chambered into the barrel of a gun.

  I look at the mute vehicles. Bloody technology. If only cars could be hotwired like in the old days. One-Eyed Jack taught me how to do that . . . and he had told me something else . . .

  ‘It’s like a phone app. Remote Security and Control App. You key in a code, then you can lock the car, open it, immobilise it, start it up, put the bleedin’ radio on, some of them even have a “come to Daddy” feature. Or Mummy in your case.’

  I scan the carousel of cars, now illuminated by the light from the elevator. There is a Ferrari on the lower tier, facing the garage doors. I scroll the phone’s display until I find a car symbol. Three per cent now, please, please hold on, battery.

  I see it on the second swipe. RSCA. The remote activation for cars that Jack was so disparaging about. Keyed to Bluetooth. Great, playing to my strengths. For once, I had to put my inner Luddite on hold.

  I press the button and the screen gives me a log-in option.

  Enter Pin. Shit. I try the 5879, hash. Nothing.

  I hear Jack’s voice chiding me in my head. The owner’s name is the default code. I try Asparov. Nothing. The figures are moving from the garage now, cautiously in case I have a trick up my sleeve. Do I? Asma snakes her arms around me, her body rippling with fear.

  Asparov 5879, hash.

  Still nothing.

  ‘I love my wife.’

  He loves his wife? I try Katya 5879 and press hash.

  I am in.

  Now a real voice, not one inside my cranium. ‘Just bring us the girl. Nobody need get hurt.’ Swincoe. Good.

  I scroll down the
list of cars on the phone display, find the Ferrari and select it. It gives me yet more bloody options. Start car, turn on radio, put on heater . . .

  There it is: E-Evac. Emergency evacuation. I stab at it, twice, and for a moment I think nothing has happened. Then a click and I hear the car roar into life, a deep, primal growl.

  I crouch, as if bowling, and then throw the phone underarm, so that it skids along the ground and into the lift.

  Come to Mummy.

  It is at that point I remember that I can’t tell one Ferrari from another.

  It was a Ferrari on the upper level of the spinning-wheel storage system that responded, not the one on the ground floor. Of course Asparov had more than one Ferrari. The Xenon lights flashed on to full dazzling beam, that beautiful engine screamed, and it leaped forward. I watched it in horror as it wheel-spun off its base into thin air. There seemed to be a Loony Tunes eternity before it crashed to the concrete with a brittle explosion of metal, glass and exotic carbon-fibre compounds. Then, those fat rear tyres gripped and it accelerated towards the elevator, fishtailing as it went.

  I knew what should happen next. The auto-stop beams would detect people ahead and apply the brakes. It would buy me a little time, not much more. Except that the leap from a great height must have jarred something loose or smashed the sensors located in the front spoiler, because the Ferrari kept going, until it rammed into the rear of the elevator with another shriek of bodywork and glass, and I heard the screams over the still-revving engine.

  Before I could react, the lift’s sensors detected the weight of a car and it began to rise.

  ‘Doors closing.’

  Asma and I said nothing for a second as darkness returned, just breathed in air full of rubber and exhaust fumes. I wondered how many of the men were dead or injured in that lift. Lots, I hoped. I had to take a chance that most of the opposition had been in there and it would take time for them to recover. I had just the one way out now – the way we came in, the smaller elevator.