by Tom Palmer
Danny retched. He thought he was being sick, but it was just a nervous reaction. He stood up, knowing he didn’t have enough oxygen in his blood to really run. The staircase had shattered him.
But he had no choice.
He turned. What were his options?
He had only one. Cross the road. To the other side. To a big red ‘M’. A Metro station. The underground.
Danny could hear the men on the steps now. Their footsteps pounding.
He wanted to cry. He couldn’t go forward. The traffic was horrific. He couldn’t go backwards or sideways or stay where he was.
He racked his brain for something. Some novel where the character had escaped over six lanes of traffic. But that was ridiculous: he could remember no such scene. What did come into his mind was a computer game he’d played when he was a kid. A very little kid. Frogger. You had to move a frog across a stream, jumping him on to logs. Then get it across a road without it being flattened by articulated lorries. All you had to do was judge the gaps – and go for it.
So he did.
The first three lanes were OK. He found gaps quite easily.
It was the fourth lane that threw him. And the dozens of horns being sounded at him. This wasn’t rush-hour traffic going at ten miles an hour. This was high-speed traffic. And all of it switching lanes at random.
Danny had three lanes left to cross. But he was paralysed in the middle. He looked ahead. St Basil’s Cathedral. He longed to be able to walk up to it like he’d had the chance before. He looked back. There were the two men laughing. And pointing at him.
They think I’m dead, Danny thought. They think I can’t do this and a car’s going to run me over.
So Danny put his arms up. Like the traffic cop. He stared the drivers in the eyes and held both palms out like he was supposed to be here stopping the traffic. The car in the fourth lane slowed. Danny walked in front of it. The car in the fifth lane slowed. Danny walked in front of that too. But the next car in the sixth lane – a red car – did not stop. Or slow down. And it was coming at him fast. So Danny dived through the air, lifting off. It was all he could do.
He expected to be hit by the car. And when the pain came he knew he had, until he looked down to see he had actually made it. He had hit the pavement. The fast red car was long gone.
Danny got up.
What were the men in black doing?
They were still on the other side of the road. One was trying to dodge across the first lane, but kept running back, unable even to make it to the second lane. The other was on his mobile phone.
Danny knew what that meant.
Reinforcements. Another black people-carrier full of men.
He had to get away. And he knew exactly where.
JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH
Danny had been on the tube in London – and in Newcastle – back home. If Moscow’s tube was anything like London’s, it’d be a mass of people rushing to and fro. Impossible to follow people because of all the bodies and confusion. He hoped.
Danny ran to the tube station he’d seen from the other side of the road. The building didn’t look like a tube station. It was more like the entrance to a museum or a library.
Danny hesitated and looked over his shoulder.
Were the men coming? Had they made it over the road?
Yes.
And they were coming his way. They’d seen him too. One of them pointed.
So he ran. Through the heavy wooden doors into the underground station. Past a small crowd of Muscovites. Vaulting the turnstiles, ignoring the shouts of a woman. Something in Russian. Stop, he imagined. Then down the escalator. More shouts. But he was going fast now. And he wasn’t going to stop.
The escalator was a shock, difficult not to stop and admire. It was seriously long and seriously steep. Not like a small escalator in a shopping centre at home, carrying you up from one floor to the next, this one was at least four hundred metres down, a journey to the centre of the earth.
But he kept on running. Hoping he wouldn’t turn his ankle. Or break his leg. Or just fall.
What Danny needed was a train waiting for him.
And there was.
He was a lucky man.
He headed left and dashed on to the train just as the doors shut. Danny stood and waited. He almost expected something to happen now. Something involving the men chasing him. Or the people who’d shouted at him as he ran – without paying – through the underground station.
Then he felt the train accelerate away from the station. He’d got away. Only now did he notice what the underground station was like.
It had a huge arched ceiling. It had statues. It had oil paintings. And – most strangely of all – it had dozens of chandeliers hanging down from the ceiling.
Danny blinked. This had to be a dream. Underground stations weren’t supposed to look like this. They were supposed to be filthy and dark and full of adverts.
Then the outside of the train was plunged into darkness and Danny noticed the reflection of dozens of people all staring at him.
When the train arrived in the next station Danny had got his breath back. He decided it was best to get off the train as soon as he could. Then on to another.
He followed hundreds of people through a series of tunnels. This tube station was even more spectacular than the other. Beautiful statues. Stained-glass windows. Massive marble columns. He had to be dreaming. Or maybe he was dead – and this was the afterlife.
For Danny it didn’t matter if he was dead or dreaming or neither: he wanted to get out of here. Find somewhere safe. If he could.
He reached another platform, waited a minute, then jumped on to another train.
He had no idea where he was or where he was going. All the words on the tube maps and guides were in Russian script. They meant nothing to him. He wouldn’t have been able to decipher them even if he’d heard of the place they were describing. He just needed to be going. Moving. Running away.
THE KREMLIN
‘Everything is in place, Sir Richard?’ Dmitri Tupolev asked.
‘Almost,’ the Englishman replied.
‘Almost?’
The two men were sitting in a large and elaborately decorated room at the top of a tower overlooking a high wall from which they could gaze down into Red Square.
Sir Richard stared down at the square before he answered. The people looked so small out there. He wondered which leaders of Russia had stared out through this window. And on to what great moments in history?
‘Is there something that displeases you, Sir Richard?’
‘The boy.’
‘Ah, the boy my men chased?’ Tupolev almost laughed. ‘He was just a boy. He ran so fast he must have been scared very much. He will say nothing. And if he does, no one will believe him. What did he see? An accident?’
Sir Richard frowned. He never expected to think this: but he felt Tupolev was being naïve.
Tupolev spoke again. ‘The important facts are: McGee has agreed to accept our offer. And Skatie is unable to take part.’ Tupolev smiled. ‘All we have to do is sit back and enjoy the game.’
Sir Richard nodded.
‘You’re not having second thoughts, are you, my friend?’ Tupolev said. ‘Not becoming all patriotic, wanting England to win?’
Sir Richard smiled. ‘No. That is the last of my worries.’
‘Then it is the boy?’
‘Yes, the boy.’
Tupolev just looked at Sir Richard. He was waiting for an explanation.
Sir Richard looked around the room. This had to be the finest room he had ever seen – and he had seen some serious rooms. The walls were gold. Sir Richard didn’t doubt for a minute that it was real gold. The ceiling was decorated like an enormous oil painting. Beautiful. And there was a series of large ornaments on a shelf around the wall. Eggs. Small, medium and large eggs. Each was painted or bejewelled. Sir Richard knew that these were Fabergé eggs, each probably worth thousands of pounds. Some maybe
more.
‘There is something I have not told you about England,’ he said. ‘About my… difficulties.’
Tupolev nodded, but said nothing.
Sir Richard knew he should go on. ‘When the Roberts affair came out…’
‘Yes?’
‘The main reason I… failed… was that boy.’
‘That boy?’
‘Yes, that boy. Although you will have read about other things, it was a boy – that boy – who got in my way.’
‘How can a boy…?’
‘He’s a special boy.’
‘But he was lucky? He found out your plans?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I think he worked everything out. Then tried to stop me.’
‘A boy, Sir Richard? Maybe once he was lucky. But now he is no threat. Not against me and my… people. And you, of course.’
‘I hope not, Dmitri. But it is important you should know about him.’
Tupolev picked up a phone. ‘Do you want him captured or simply dead?’ he enquired.
‘Sorry?’
‘The boy? I will send out my best men today and tonight. It will be just a matter of time. My men know the city and all its ways.’ Tupolev paused. ‘Dead or alive?’
Sir Richard knew he shouldn’t stall or appear weak. He needed Tupolev to see that he was a decisive and strong man.
‘Dead,’ he said.
Tupolev began to dial, his expression completely unchanged.
If the two men had looked down into Red Square at that moment they might have seen a small figure walking briskly from left to right, across the front of the famous GUM department store, a building that looked more like a cathedral.
Danny had emerged from the Metro and was heading for the swirling towers of St Basil’s Cathedral.
Sanctuary.
When Holt had told him the story about how the cathedral had played its part in history, he had listened with some interest. But now the story meant everything to him. This cathedral was to be his sanctuary, his hiding-place, the place he could feel safe, away from the men in black, the guns under their jackets that he had been so terrified by earlier.
He walked quickly across the square, not looking up at the Kremlin. Nor at the mausoleum that seemed so trivial to him now. Now that he felt his life was in danger.
He needed time to think. Time to work out what he had seen and what it meant. McGee. Skatie. The men in black. Sir Richard. Had it really been him? Then he needed to call to ask for Holt’s help.
As Danny approached the cathedral he looked back.
What he saw terrified him.
Through a large fortified gate at the near end of the square, a group of eight men, all dressed in black, had emerged. One of them finished a phone conversation and snapped his phone shut. Danny could see him issuing orders to the other men.
The men split into pairs. Heading off in different directions.
Danny knew who they were. He recognized the one giving orders. And he was pretty sure who they were looking for.
Him.
He moved quickly into the cathedral, buying a ticket at the entrance. Could he find somewhere to hide? Or someone to help him? Or would he be thrown out, back on to the street where the men in black would find him in no time?
It was – without doubt – the strangest cathedral he’d been in. Not huge echoing space, but a honeycomb of rooms and narrow passages. Everything was decorated: the walls, the ceilings, the floors. Danny was awestruck. He’d never seen anything like this before.
Inside, Danny decided to walk round the cathedral as if admiring it. But this was a reconnaissance. He had to clear his head and think. He stopped every minute or so to gaze at a panel or a ceiling. But as he looked, he saw nothing. His fear of capture was so overwhelming that he felt like his senses weren’t working. His heart was going so fast he felt sick.
So, where to hide?
Behind a massive painting that was leaning against the wall of the cathedral? No, he’d be seen there.
In one of the rooms that were part of the strange labyrinth? No, there was no place to hide.
Through a door, maybe leading downstairs to the cellars? But all the doorways were locked or blocked by glass panels. And anyway, it was too risky. He could end up locked down there all night.
Then he saw it. Back at the entrance. Somewhere he could lie down. A tomb. It looked like a four-poster bed. It was decorated with images and gold, metal pots hanging down. It was the tomb of St Basil. And, behind it, there was a gap, just big enough for him to slip behind.
Perfect, Danny thought.
It was a place to hide in case the men in black came searching for him. And very possibly a place to spend the night.
Danny climbed round the tomb and crouched. Then, after a minute, lay down and breathed out, closing his eyes.
He had a million questions.
Why would Matt McGee attack Robert Skatie?
Was he sure he’d seen Sir Richard Gawthorpe?
And, if so, what was he doing on the steps by the river?
And would the team of men come looking for him in here?
Every question begged another question.
When Danny opened his eyes he was stunned to see the inside of a tower above him. At the top of the tower, staring down at him, a massive painting of Jesus.
At first it surprised him. But then it made him feel better. Somehow. Like it meant he was going to be safe.
Once Danny was settled – and was sure that there were no people nearby – he took out his phone and called Holt. Holt would get him out of this situation.
Danny dialled his number. He put his ear to the phone, hoping to hear Holt’s familiar voice. Even leaving a message would be OK.
But the line beeped in a way Danny hadn’t heard it beep before and then a woman’s voice started babbling Russian at him. Danny listened, hoping for some miracle. But there was nothing.
Danny tried Holt again.
Silence.
Then he tried it with the UK dialling code. Maybe he needed to do that.
Nothing again.
Now Danny had only one option. To stay in the cathedral. There was no way he would dare go out on the street again.
It was getting dark. It looked like this was where he was going to spend the night.
WEDNESDAY
THE LONGEST NIGHT
It was dark and – if Danny was honest with himself – scary in the cathedral. He had hunkered down. No security guard had see him behind the tomb. He was definitely safe. So long as there weren’t any ghosts.
Danny frowned. He had enough to cope with – security guards, private armies, homicidal ex-football chairmen and spies – without imagining ghosts.
The cathedral was eerie. But Danny tried not to think about it. About the fact that he was alone in a centuries-old building. About the fact that he was lying metres away from the dead body in the tomb. About the men he believed would be out there, looking for him, maybe even waiting for him.
Knowing that he was here for the night, Danny got as comfortable as he could, using his rolled-up jacket for a pillow. It was still dark. Very dark. He was exhausted – and soon fell asleep.
Danny woke some hours later, his phone buzzing.
He had two texts. One from Charlotte. One from his sister.
He surprised himself by opening the one from his sister first.
Hey runt – how’s it going? Hope England win 2morrow. Not. Em xxx
Danny rested his head on his jacket and smiled. What was that all about? This was as close his sister could get to being nice. He paused before looking at Charlotte’s text. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling about his sister. But it was something like missing her.
Danny grimaced and opened Charlotte’s text:
D. Text me now. RU ok? Need to hear from U. C xxxxxx
Danny texted back immediately:
Am fine. Sleeping in a cathedral. V nice. Don’t worry. I’ll txt a.m. from stadium. D xxxxxx
T
hen Danny heard what he thought were footsteps. He opened his eyes and lifted his head very slightly above the rim of the tomb. Had he given himself away somehow by texting?
Nobody there.
It was 3 a.m. Who would be looking round the cathedral now? There was barely any light coming in through the entrance.
No one. Not even Jesus’s face gazing down at him.
He must be hearing things.
The guards had locked the doors at 5 p.m. All of them slamming like they were never going to be opened again. Leaving Danny in the cathedral alone, he was sure.
More footsteps. Danny looked again.
No one.
Danny was terrified. He was alone in a strange church in a strange city. He was possibly being hunted down by the private army of a billionaire with a reputation for murder and his only friend in the city was too busy to help him and oblivious to where he was. And now he was hearing things. And he was hungry. And thirsty.
He looked over the top of the tomb.
Nothing.
Nobody.
They can’t have been footsteps, he decided.
He settled back to rest – aware he’d probably not get any more sleep.
‘Daaaaa-nnyyyyy?’
Danny woke.
Where was he?
Then he remembered. Of course, how could he forget: behind a tomb in a cathedral in the middle of the night! He was confused. And scared.
Had he really heard someone call his name?
He waited. Nothing more. He must have dreamed it.
‘Daaaaa-nnyyyyyy.’
Danny stopped breathing. Utter terror. Was it whoever had been making the footsteps? Or was it the men in black? They were the only ones who might know his name. Or was it… Sir Richard? Come for revenge. And whoever it was, why were they doing it at four – was it? – in the morning?
Danny looked at his watch. It was eleven. Eleven a.m.! Where had the time gone? It wasn’t the middle of the night. Light was flooding the cathedral, with Jesus fully illuminated gazing down at him.
He kept his head low, but peeped over the side of the tomb.
He saw the figure of a man standing alone in the entrance, light streaming in through the door behind him.