by A P Bateman
“We’ll see,” said The Runt. He nodded for Shrek to cover him, then produced a pair of handcuffs from his pocket. “But until then, we will still have our fun, no?”
23
St. Petersburg, Russia
King watched as the man approached. He was unhurried, a little unstable on his feet. He stopped, uninterested in people in the street around him and he leaned against a lamppost twenty feet from him, took out a pouch of tobacco and rolled a cigarette. He seemed drunk, but King knew it was merely part of his act. The man was a pro, and MI5 had invested thousands in him. Ramsay had told King that when he was no longer useful, or if he lived long enough without his cover being blown, there was a quaint stone cottage in the Lake District with his name on it.
King turned his attention to the woman outside the club across the street. She wore a leather miniskirt and stockings, with the tiniest amount of suspender belt visible when she moved, which was generally every few seconds to balance on the four-inch heels of the knee-length leather boots. Her legs were both long and shapely, and her hips swelled before pinching in at her waist. The warm late summer evening meant she could wear a silk top that showed most of her midriff, which was flat and firm and showed her pierced navel, which was adorned with a simple diamond stud.
King watched her as she waited outside the bar, phone in hand and looking to be seriously annoyed by something. She had turned down a couple of propositions from men as they passed, and he was sure there would be more. He certainly hoped so, at least.
Then he watched the man pause at the top steps of the club. King studied him, had a feeling this was his man. Something about the over-confidence, the arrogance of the man told him that he thought he was untouchable. The bar was one of Romanovitch’s enterprises and was an exclusive caviar and vodka bar but served far more besides. A less than salubrious list of services. It had become popular with the so-called St. Petersburg elite, and offered a series of private rooms where high-stakes gambling took place, as well as transactions of the flesh which could be made with some of the hostesses. Nothing was truly off-limits and several of the barmen were casual ‘acquaintances’ of some of the regulars, both men and women alike. Romanovitch kept many of his more attractive, and somewhat more attentive women for this place and regular complimentary visits from the corrupt chief of police kept the facility and its much-coveted licence in place.
King looked back at the man leaning against the lamppost. He had barely started to smoke his cigarette, but he flicked it into the road. King watched the cigarette spark on the tarmac. The man walked away. Job done. He’d identified the target for King.
Vasyli lit a cigar at the top of the steps and exchanged a few words with the tough looking doorman. He nodded as if in agreement with something the man had said, then both men watched the woman talking animatedly on the phone, her suspenders showing as she paced around. Vasyli laughed at something the doorman said, and then tossed his match to the side and dropped down the three steps to the pavement.
King studied the man’s body language. The big Russian hesitated for a moment, then approached her. King tensed. Vasyli asked the woman something, then nodded. The two of them talked for a few minutes, then he touched her on the shoulder. The woman laughed and he moved his hand towards her pert breast. She smiled, touched his waist and then the two of them turned around and Vasyli guided her towards his Bentley, which was parked twenty metres further up the street, under the watch of the doorman. King waited for them to get into the car, then started the engine of the Land Rover Defender 110. He watched the Bentley pull out, then drove steadily behind them, allowing a couple of vehicles to get between them, then he settled in at thirty-miles-per-hour and dropped far enough back to become invisible. Or at least insignificant. The Bentley’s windows were heavily tinted, so he could not see inside, but he imagined what the Russian would be asking her. Or now that she was in the vehicle, ordering her to do.
The Bentley turned without an indicator and the street was lined with parked cars. No opportunity to stop. King flicked off dips and onto sidelights, which would give the impression he was a long way behind. He kept the turbo diesel V5 engine at medium revs in third gear, because timing would be everything and he wanted a good surge of acceleration if he was to do this right. The Bentley turned again, no indicators. King made the turn, too. He could see the luxury grand tourer slowing, the driver hesitant. Vasyli was clearly assessing where to do the deed, he wanted no streetlights, a quiet spot. King could see the best place for an illicit assignation up ahead on the right. He watched the Bentley pull across the crown of the road as the Russian saw it, too. King hit the accelerator and moved his thumbs to the edge of the wheel to avoid breaking them upon impact. The Land Rover’s revs climbed as it surged forwards and he hoped that Alaina had remembered to wear her seatbelt. The Russians were without any reasonable doubt the worst drivers in the world, and he couldn’t stress to her enough, that she should be buckled in from the moment she entered his vehicle.
The solid metal bumpers of the Defender tore into the Bentley’s door and the two-and-a-half-ton beast was slammed into the kerb by the force of the impact. King reversed out a few feet, then got out and raised the pistol, firing three shots down through the Bentley’s bonnet and into the engine bay. He aimed the weapon and shot out the front tyre, then the rear, and then fired through the glass beside the B pillar, missing Vasyli’s head by a few inches and deflating the side airbag, as the dazed and confused Russian wondered what had just happened to his world. King jammed the pistol through the broken window and pressed the scalding muzzle against the man’s temple.
“Get out,” he said, coldly. “Slowly…” He looked at Alaina, who was looking just as dazed and confused as the driver. “Are you okay?”
“Y… Yes…” she managed, reaching for the door handle. She was covered in white residue from the resin in the deployed airbags, and the main airbag was deflating in her lap. King could see it had bloodied her nose when it had deployed.
King tried to get the door open, but it was jammed shut by the impact. He signalled for the Russian to climb over the centre console. He jabbed the man with the pistol again. Vasyli struggled to clamber out, scraping the leather and falling into the gutter the other side of the vehicle. King was already around the other side and he gave the man a kick in the ribs and side of the head to keep control of him, then dropped onto the man’s back, his knees digging into him as he positioned his hands and attached two pairs of heavy duty cable ties to his wrists. He then reached inside the man’s jacket pocket, retrieved a Makarov pistol, and tucked it into his own back pocket.
“Get up!” King shouted as he stood to the side. He pulled him to his feet and jabbed the gun into the man’s ribs as he frog-marched him around the ruined Bentley and into the back of the Land Rover. He used another two cable-ties to fasten him to the door handle, then waited for Alaina to get into the passenger seat.
“You are making a mistake…” Vasyli spluttered, his mouth bloody, his lips swollen. “You are signing your own death warrant…”
“Shut up!” King snapped at him, and punched him in the side of the head, rocking him on the spot and causing his head to loll as he battled unconsciousness.
Alaina got inside and closed the door. She was ashen and detached. She reached into the footwell and took out a bag, pulling items of clothing out as King started the Land Rover and pulled back out onto the street. “I need to get out of these stupid clothes!” she announced. “What kind of idiot goes for all this?” she smiled at King. “But it worked.”
King dropped the .45 Heckler and Koch USP into the door pocket and looked across at her. “Well done,” he said.
“I wasn’t expecting it,” she said. “I mean, I knew it was coming at some point, but holy shit!”
Alaina undid the skirt and pulled it down, then untangled the suspenders and stockings and ripped them off. “I feel ridiculous in these things.”
King glanced and saw she was wearing only a
pair of skimpy black knickers. He averted his eyes but caught the Russian sneering at him in the rear-view mirror. He turned his eyes back to the road and sensed she was pulling on her jeans, her pelvis pressed into the air to button them up. She pulled on her trainers and then set about tearing off the silk blouse and replacing it with a thin cashmere sweater. She bundled up the clothes and stuffed them into the bag, then pulled the seatbelt back over her.
“What do you want from me?” Vasyli asked defiantly. “You are foolish. My boss will cut you into tiny pieces and use you as bait when he goes fishing next. He holds records for pike in the Baltic.”
“Pike are a freshwater fish,” replied King nonchalantly.
Vasyli chuckled. “There is much you do not know. Like the Baltic Sea is the only sea in the world to contain pike, that also return to the rivers. And they grow to twice the normal size because of their life in the sea. Much like barracuda, who enjoy eating tiny pieces of human flesh.” He paused. “And the fact that my boss will not only kill you for this, but your families, too.”
“He’s already killed my sister!” Alaina snapped. “That’s why I’m here!”
Vasyli looked at her, then smiled as it dawned on him. Perhaps the plainer clothes helped. “You’re the maid…” he said in Russian. “Oh, Romanovitch is going to like this very much!”
King was conversational in the spoken Russian language but would not indulge him. Instead he said in English, “Not as much as he when he realises you were instrumental in me ripping him off. Maybe he’ll take you fishing, too.”
Vasyli cursed him in Russian, and Alaina sneered at him over her shoulder. He looked at her and smirked. “You suited the clothes you wore back there. Maybe before this is over you will be working in one of Romanovitch’s whore houses.”
“Ignore him,” said King, sensing her tense beside him.
“So, he killed your sister and you want revenge? That would make sense. Even a worthless peasant means something to someone. But not Romanovitch. If he couldn’t get an income out of her, then what was she worth? Just another filthy bitch from the Ukraine.” He sighed. “What a place? All farm labourers with rough hands and tired bones. Your sister could pick flowers or cabbages all day long, but she couldn’t make her sex convincing. Shame…” He paused. “I recognise her in you, now. The stuck-up bitch who wanted to succeed in business. The one who thought she was important enough, valued enough to turn down Romanovitch’s advances and remain his personal assistant. Like it was a regular business. Silly bitch! That’s why she fed the bears. But not before she did what she had never wanted to do all along. And when the boss had finished, we all had a go. Now, something like that will happen to you. Bears in the Urals, pike in the Baltic. You will simply disappear without trace,” he smiled.
Alaina spun in her seat and tried to hit out, but her seatbelt tugged her back in place. She struggled against it, then undid her belt and rained her fists upon him. Vasyli ducked his head and laughed. “That’s it, silly bitch! Put some spirit into it, like your sister could not!”
King slowed to a stop, pulled the handbrake, and put the gearstick into neutral. He picked up the USP, pushed Alaina aside, then calmly jabbed the pistol into the man’s mouth. Vasyli recoiled and spluttered and spat out chips of teeth into his lap. King jabbed the pistol again, this time into the man’s ribs and he wheezed. King heard the crack of breaking ribs. He turned around in his seat and placed the pistol back into the door pocket. He looked at Alaina, who was breathing hard and staring at the Russian, her eyes full of hate and malice. King recognised the look in her eyes. She wanted to kill the man in the seat behind her, wanted to kill anybody who stood in her way. She was dangerous to be around, like a caged animal wanting to escape. But he could see the spark of intelligence in her eyes, the resolve behind them. She had risked a great deal on her quest for a vendetta. She had infiltrated the Russian mafia, walked in the same footsteps as her sister, but she was still here. Even with the knowledge of what had happened to her, Alaina still hadn’t been scared off.
King ignored Vasyli’s groaning behind him and carried on driving until they reached the train terminal, then skirted the access road until he arrived at a dimly lit industrial complex. There were multiple compounds, each with the name of the company in Cyrillic lettering, many having no English translation. King could speak Russian, but he couldn’t read it very well and Alaina was squinting through the gloom at the signs.
“You’ll never get it open.” Vasyli said thickly, his lips swollen, and teeth chipped and sore. “I will never help you get what you want.”
King shrugged. “I think you will.”
“I am not scared of you, Englishman. I have known tougher men than you.” He paused. “Nothing you threaten me with or do to me will make me do anything for you. I am loyal to my boss.”
“Then, you have a distinct lack of imagination,” replied King. “As we shall soon see.”
Alaina directed King through the maze of access roads, and they drove slowly past a security hut, but the guard on duty was busy watching a small portable television and drinking something from a mug. King glanced at Vasyli and could already see the doubt in the man’s eyes. They would turn to fear soon enough. Nobody reacted well to the threat of pain and the unknown. Not when they were as vulnerable as the tethered Russian in the back seat. King had seen it before, and he had felt it, too.
King pulled the Land Rover to a halt under a row of trees, across the carpark belonging to a large warehouse. He switched off the engine and killed the lights. He opened the window a crack, not enjoying the feeling of being isolated from the outside sounds. The heavy semi-automatic pistol was threaded for a suppressor, which King now screwed into the muzzle. He dropped the magazine, took a handful of .45 bullets out of his pocket and replaced the six rounds he had fired back at the ambush. Back there, time had been of the essence and he had not wanted to wield the weapon with the heavy suppressor, nor take the chance of the weapon failing to cycle and suffer a stoppage because of the decrease in gas blowback. However, silence was of the essence now, and he already had the Russian mafia enforcer under his control. He glanced at Vasyli, noticing the man’s apparent interest in the weapon. People tended to take a silenced weapon more seriously somehow. As if the threat of noise – and the .45 certainly made a great deal of that – would somehow offer an element of protection, whereas a silenced weapon lessened the threat of the user being caught and made the weapon altogether more useable. King wasn’t sure what the theory was exactly, but he had found that screwing a suppressor into a weapon offered a sense of drama and threat that was inescapable. People stared at it, and they generally started talking.
“How do you know about this place?” Vasyli asked, his eyes still on the weapon in King’s hands.
“We have our ways.”
“Who?”
“We.”
“Who’s we?” Vasyli asked, then shrugged as he looked at Alaina. “Apart from a vengeful maid seeking retribution for a tragic whore.”
King watched Alaina clench her fist and shook his head at her. “Plenty of time for that,” he said, opening the door. He walked around the Land Rover and opened the rear passenger door, pressing the muzzle of the suppressor right up against the Russian’s eyeball. The man gritted his teeth together tightly and flinched. “If you make a sound, try to alert anybody, then I will break your thoracic vertebrae. You’ll spend the rest of your days in a chair and pissing into a bag at the very least.” He let up on the man’s eye, taking the pistol away and watching him blink profusely. Even in the gloom King could see the tears and redness. The man would be seeing white stars for a while, which would make him think twice about running. If he couldn’t see, then he couldn’t escape. King took out his knife, thumbed it open and sliced through the cable ties securing him to the door handle. If the Russian was going to try anything then it would surely be now, so King stepped back and held the pistol close to his ribs. Close enough to get off a couple of shots, but far enou
gh away that he would not be able to kick the weapon from him or make a lunge with his tethered hands.
“There is nothing here,” Vasyli said quietly. “You are wasting your time.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
The Russian shook his head. “You will not get away with this.”
“We’ll see.” King shoved him forwards. The man’s legs were unsteady, and he rolled along the side of the vehicle. King remained at a distance, the weapon aimed from his waist. “Make a sound and I’ll put a bullet in you.” Alaina followed them as they made for the door of the building. It was a brick-built factory, or at least had been once. King guessed it had been repurposed decades ago, and now modern purpose-built buildings had sprung up around it, like industrial estates the world over. King kept his distance and said to Vasyli when he reached the door, “Open it.”
“No.”
King reached out and grabbed a handful of the man’s hair. He pushed him forwards and snatched his hand backwards, tearing out a sizeable patch. Vasyli howled, then turned and spat in King’s face.
“You pull my hair like a bitch?”
King shrugged, wiped the spit away, then dried his fingers on his trousers. He glanced around him, the gloom emitted from the streetlamps not giving him the darkness he would have preferred. “I said, open it.”
“And I said, no.”
King studied the keypad and screen of the entry unit. “Fingerprint recognition?” He paused, taking his knife out from his pocket. He had the Russian’s attention, and as he beckoned Alaina forwards, Vasyli frowned. King held out the pistol for her. “Cover him while I cut his thumb off,” he said.
“Okay,” she replied and took the pistol off him.
“No, wait!” Vasyli said quickly. King ignored him, kicked out the man’s feet and pushed him against the door as he fell. He stepped into the back of the man’s knee, grinding the kneecap into the tread of the step, and pinning him in place. King opened the blade and caught hold of the man’s wrist. “No!”