by Zoe Sharp
Big serving hatches had been knocked through between the two rooms, so it wasn’t difficult to get a view of what was going on in there. What I saw didn’t exactly reassure me.
Two more men with Uzis were holding the Manor’s cooks and domestic staff spread out along one side of the room. They’d been forced to their knees facing the wall, far enough apart not to be able to communicate in whispers, their hands on their heads. Judging from the way they were drooping, they’d been in that position for some time.
One of their guards stood up on the dais, while the other patrolled along the backs of them, walking with measured footsteps, occasionally pausing behind one or another. It was a move designed to play on their nerves, keep them frightened and on edge. These men were not just professionals, I realised, they were experts at intimidation too.
Carefully, I backed away and returned to the main hallway, with my brain turning over furiously. If they were holding the staff hostage, surely the men couldn’t be working for the Major. In that case, alerting Todd, O’Neill and Figgis was probably a damned good idea, particularly if any of them happened to be carrying the keys for the armoury.
Footsteps coming from the corridor opposite the dining hall snapped me into action. I leapt for the nearest doorway, only to find the door itself was locked. The footsteps were growing louder every moment. Cursing under my breath, I flattened myself against the door, gripping the knife in my pocket.
I didn’t even have time to extend any of its array of useful blades before the man appeared. He passed within inches of my doorway, but fortunately his back was towards me and I remained unseen. He was wearing a good quality dark brown leather jacket and his hair was long, tied back into a ponytail with an elastic band.
He paused, and for a second I thought the game was up. My heart bounced, I stopped breathing, but all he did was tuck something under his armpit so he had both hands free to light a cigarette.
My first thought, whimsically enough, was that the Major would strenuously object. My second, with some amazement, was that the object under his arm was the barrel of a handgun. He’d momentarily let go of it to work his lighter.
I knew I wasn’t going to get another chance like this.
I stepped forwards and silently jammed the cold hard end of the folded knife against the back of the man’s neck, just under the base of his skull where his hair was pulled back. I was close enough to see the dusting of dandruff on his collar.
He tensed instinctively, then froze, too much of a pro to even attempt to outmanoeuvre the gun he clearly believed I was holding on him. I suppose I was just lucky I wasn’t dealing with an amateur.
Still without speaking I reached for his gun. He thought about clamping his arm down tight onto it, but when I jerked the handle of the knife a little harder into his neck he capitulated. It dropped heavily into my hand.
The sight of it made me swallow. The damned thing was enormous, a .50 calibre chromed Desert Eagle with the optional ten-inch barrel. It was a gangster’s trophy piece – and a rich gangster, at that. Not quite what I was expecting from the urban commandos who’d apparently taken over the rest of the Manor.
I slipped the knife back into my pocket and stepped back away from the man, covering him with the captured Desert Eagle. I could feel the pull as my biceps flexed with the effort of keeping the muzzle up. He risked turning his head to look at me then, revealing razored sideburns cut to emphasise the line of his cheekbones.
The surprise and anger flared briefly in his eyes, then died, replaced by a cold blankness that almost made me shiver. This man was a killer without doubt, and would be only too willing to prove it when I gave him the opportunity. There was no “if” about it.
He wasn’t a bulky man. In fact, he was surprisingly slender under that big coat, which gave me the impression he was higher up the food chain than just hired muscle.
Not taking my eyes off him for a second, I indicated with the Desert Eagle that he should retreat a little way back down the corridor he’d just come out of. I was acutely aware that I’d been standing with my back to the dining hall doorway and was terribly exposed. If either of the men in there chose this moment to answer a call of nature and search for the bathroom, I was going to become the filling in a bad guy sandwich.
I gripped the huge gun in both hands, my left wedged to support my right, keeping it high enough to bring into position fast if Sideburns made a move I didn’t like the look of. As he backed away from the hall he never took his eyes off me once. The intensity of his gaze was unnerving. He was totally focused on me, waiting for that moment of weakness that he knew would come.
“OK sunshine,” I said when we were out of earshot of the dining hall. “Just what the hell are you up to?”
His contempt was palpable. If I was important, it said, I would obviously know exactly what the game was. He shrugged, and spat out what could have been total gibberish in something that sounded a little like Russian. He might have been pretending that he didn’t understand English, but the gleam in his eye told me a different story.
I raised my eyebrow and let the barrel of the gun drop a little.
“OK, if you insist on doing this the hard way,” I said, conversationally so there was no way he could pick up the meaning just from my tone. “If I have to ask you again I’m going to put a bullet into your right thigh. With this cannon I’m almost certain to hit your femoral artery, in which case you will bleed out within minutes. Does that make things any clearer for you?”
Just for a fraction of a second, he hesitated. Whether it was because he genuinely believed I might carry out my threat, I wasn’t sure. With a gun this big he must have known that if I did he’d most likely either die from the shock of losing his leg in the blast, or at best he’d face amputation. It seemed that his comprehension of both my words and their meaning was excellent. The reason he hesitated was because neither option appealed to him much.
“We’re here to find the boy,” he said reluctantly, his English heavily accented, but perfectly idiomatic.
Of course, the Russian kid.
“Where’s the Major?”
He flicked his eyes back further along the corridor, in the direction of Gilby’s study.
“OK,” I said. “After you.”
He balked at that, getting his second wind. After all, his courage had faltered for a moment and because of it he’d let himself be captured by a mere woman. Now his pride was goading him towards some reckless action to compensate. By my reckoning, it made him roughly twice as dangerous.
I smiled at him, a thin smile, full of ice. “I know you will kill me if you can,” I said, my voice low and strangely detached, so that it didn’t sound like it belonged to me at all. “If stopping you from doing that means I have to kill you first, I won’t hesitate, I promise you.”
For a moment we eyed each other, then his gaze dropped away. I don’t know whether it was the words or the smile that convinced him, but one or the other must have done the trick. He led me right up to the study door without trying any form of evasion.
We both paused there for a moment. Behind the door I could hear a mixture of voices I didn’t recognise until Gilby’s clipped tones filtered through.
“Who’s armed in there?” I whispered to Sideburns. The contemptuous look he threw at me told me I should know better than to ask.
“OK,” I murmured, “in a moment you’re going to open the door and walk in.” I returned that cool gaze with one of my own, raked him with it. “Let’s just hope you’re not expendable – for both our sakes.”
Again he thought about resisting, but I kept the gun aimed at his spine. He turned the handle and gave the study door a nudge to swing it open.
We stepped into the room with me staying as close up behind Sideburns as I dared. My eyes instantly tracked the first person who reacted. He was off by the fireplace to my right. Bigger than Sideburns, and slower for the extra weight. I brought the gun out into plain sight as he reached for his own weapon.
He was carrying an Uzi dangling by its shoulder strap and it took him a second to go for it. The sheer size of the Desert Eagle’s distinctive, slightly triangular barrel made him falter.
Sideburns took advantage of my distraction to try and make a grab for the gun himself. I could have punched him, but the jacket he was wearing was heavy enough to cushion the blow. Besides, I was badly positioned to deliver anything that would have been effective, particularly considering the delicate state of my ribcage.
Instead I chose a move that required little more than balance and accuracy. I twisted out of his reach and stamped down sideways onto the outside of his right knee. Something structural inside the joint gave way with an audible crack.
The knee joint is a straightforward two-directional hinge mechanism. It has almost no lateral stability and that makes it especially vulnerable.
I knew I’d pulled a dirty move, one that owed more to streetfighting than to martial arts, but I needed to do something that was guaranteed to drop him in a hurry. Even if it didn’t, I could always outrun him afterwards. In the event, he went down faster than a South American football player, but letting out a genuine grunt of pain.
After the action came silence and immobility.
I stood there, breathing hard, with the gun up and steady, centred on the second bodyguard. He flicked his eyes to one of the other men in the room, but I didn’t see what signal he received. It must have been in my favour, though, because he reluctantly surrendered the Uzi.
“That’s probably a wise decision,” Gilby said calmly. “I have no doubts that Miss Fox is more than capable of pulling the trigger. And she’s certainly an excellent shot.”
I flicked a glance in his direction, briefly taking in the whole scene. He and the two other men in the study were sitting around the desk and hadn’t stirred during my arrival. The Major was showing little emotion on his lean face beyond the slightest hint of a smile.
To his left was a grey-haired man in thin wire-rimmed glasses and a good suit that he appeared to have slept in. He was staring at me with horrified disbelief. I knew his face, but momentarily couldn’t place him.
I wasn’t too surprised to find that the Major wasn’t the one in the position of authority in the leather swivel chair behind the desk. That honour had been taken by a new player.
He was a big broad man with the look of a wrestler about him. His pinned-down shirt collar strained around a neck thick with muscle, and his face, with its full lips and heavily hooded eyes, was unreadable.
“OK boys,” I said to the two thugs, “let’s have you two kneeling down facing the wall over there, feet crossed at the ankles, hands on your heads.”
They did as they were told without enthusiasm. Sideburns showed a distinct reluctance for the idea until I persuaded him it was in his best interests. He ended up hunched sideways on the floor, trying to keep the weight off the knee I’d kicked.
When they were down I checked the Uzi, finding it fully stocked and ready to go. My hands worked automatically without a fumble, even though I barely glanced at them. I made sure I had everyone covered with the machine pistol while I took the magazine out of the Desert Eagle and checked that, too. It was filled with hollowpoints. As if something that calibre wasn’t enough. Nice people I was dealing with.
The man behind the desk watched me do all this without speaking, keeping his hands still and in view. He didn’t fidget and at no time did he show surprise or anger at my intrusion. When I was done he turned to Gilby.
“Very impressive, Major,” he said, ignoring me completely. “I was not aware that you had any women on your staff.” His deep voice rumbled up from somewhere in his chest, and he had a thick accent straight out of a Cold War thriller. He had a particular way of saying “women”, like he usually regarded them as a commodity, something to be bought and sold.
Gilby smiled thinly, and now there was a touch of smugness about him. “Oh Miss Fox isn’t staff,” he said. “She’s a pupil here, but her hidden talents are proving a constant source of surprise, as I’m sure you’ll agree.”
He put his hands on the arms of his chair to start to rise, but froze when I brought the Uzi up sharply.
“Sit down, Major,” I said. “Nobody is going anywhere until I get some answers about what’s going on here.”
He stilled, affronted. “And what makes you think we’re going to give you any?” he snapped back in that clipped voice he reserved for dressing downs and lectures.
I hefted my expanded arsenal. “I can think of a couple of reasons,” I said. “But before we start I think you should at least introduce me to everyone. Herr Krauss I already recognise, of course,” I added, motioning to the man in the rumpled suit.
It had finally clicked who he was and where I’d seen his picture before. Elsa had brought in photographs of Heidi Krauss and her father, Dieter for her presentation about the girl’s kidnapping. So what was he doing here?
I flicked my attention to the third man. I remembered Sideburns’s admission that they were here to find the boy, and Sean’s briefing about the young Russian who’d been grabbed. The boy’s bodyguard, I recalled, had to be identified from his dental records. That probably accounted for the artillery. Was this man his father?
“Let me guess,” I went on when nobody spoke. “You are another grieving parent here to reclaim your child – by force if necessary.”
The man behind the desk inclined his head, allowing his heavy eyelids to close briefly as he did so. “You are very astute,” he said. “I can see that you are someone who might be able to help me in this matter. Miss Fox, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right,” I agreed. “And you are?”
The man smiled, a white bright smile. “My name is Gregor Venko,” he said. “And the good Major here has kidnapped my son.”
Twenty
I let out a low whistle and raised my eyebrow in Gilby’s direction. “You are either a very brave or a very stupid man, Major,” I said, “but right now I’m not sure which.”
Having subsided back into his chair, the Major had gone still again. The kind of stillness only rage produces. I had a feeling my only possible ally in the room was changing his mind about who he would choose to shoot first if it came to it.
I glanced at Dieter Krauss, who was visibly unravelling in front of me.
“So what’s your story, Herr Krauss?”
“Please,” he said. He twisted his hands together in his lap, sounding close to tears. His high forehead was shiny with sweat. “You don’t know what you’re doing. He will kill my daughter!”
“I see,” I said. I waited half a beat before asking, “Who will?”
He floundered for a moment, then folded into himself and closed his mouth with a snap, as though he realised that he’d already said far too much, but just hadn’t been able to help himself. Fear jumped in his eyes. Flames behind glass. Gilby and Venko, meanwhile, were trying to outdo each other with the Sphinx impersonations.
“I don’t suppose you’d care to enlighten me?” I said to Venko.
He considered my request, weighed it up carefully. The fact that I had a gun on him was of no consequence. “I am a businessman, Miss Fox,” he rumbled at last. His voice had the projection of a Shakespearean actor, designed to be clearly audible even in the cheapest seats. “Let us just say that we each of us have a product which the other desires. I am here to propose a simple exchange.”
Out of the corner of my eye I caught Sideburns’s companion shifting stealthily. Without taking my eyes away from Venko’s, I stepped sideways far enough to prod the bodyguard in the back of his head with the barrel of the Desert Eagle. I made sure I did it just hard enough to bump his nose against the wall.
“Ah, ah,” I said. “No cheating.”
I moved back to my original position again. “I hear what you’re saying,” I told Venko, “but I’m afraid I’m inclined to believe that you were intending to leave without paying up your half of the bargain.” I tilted my head towards the t
wo men kneeling. “For a businessman you travel with unusual associates.”
Venko shrugged, momentarily causing his neck to disappear entirely. “My line of business often takes me to dangerous places,” he said. He still had his hands flat on the desk in front of him. Not a coward, but too experienced to want to make me nervous, either. There were heavyweight gold rings on three fingers. “These men are simply my insurance. To enable me to arrive and depart without hindrance.”
I stared at him without blinking for several seconds then said, “Not very good, are they?”
He laughed. A deep belly laugh, a burst of genuine amusement despite the tension, or maybe because of it. “No, you are quite right,” he said. “But this is something that will be remedied very shortly, I assure you.”
I had the feeling that when a man like Gregor Venko terminated your employment, your cards came pinned to a wreath.