The Black Shepherd

by Steven Savile

The figure disappeared through one of the other doors in the hallway. It didn’t take long for the house to fall silent again.

  And still Frankie didn’t dare move.

  She waited until she was sure whoever it was had settled down for the night and wasn’t about to appear in the doorway if the staircase creaked beneath her weight.

  Taking each step one at a time, testing her weight on them to be sure they wouldn’t betray her, she reached the bottom.

  Taking no risks, Frankie moved cautiously, not towards the kitchen as she’d initially intended, but towards the door the shadowy figure had emerged from.

  Curiosity killed more than cats.

  IN THE DARKNESS …

  She had no idea of how long it had been since the man had last come to visit her.

  For ever.

  She was breaking.

  Her mind struggled to fix onto the code. She was failing the test. She wasn’t worthy of his love. She wasn’t good enough. She had never been good enough.

  ‘Water, please. Food. Anything. I can’t think. Please.’

  She didn’t know if they could hear her.

  She felt the rats against her skin.

  They didn’t care.

  She reached out into the darkness, letting one of them curl its back against her hand.

  It wouldn’t take much to raise it to her lips.

  This was never going to end.

  She cradled the rat in her hands.

  She thought about what it would feel like to bite down on its spine.

  And she wept.

  She couldn’t do it.

  She would die here in this darkness.

  She almost missed the sound of the door opening up above.

  They hadn’t forsaken her.

  Her breathing was fast. Heavy. She wanted to beg. To say help me. Save me.

  The footsteps moved closer. The iron lid was heaved back. She couldn’t see who was up there.

  ‘Hello?’ she called softly, or imagined she did, her head was so messed up.

  The man knelt and peered down into the darkness. The stark light made it impossible to see his face for shadow. She didn’t know him. It wasn’t the brute. It wasn’t Tomas, the driver. It wasn’t John. He truly had abandoned her in her need.

  ‘Do you have the answer?’ came the reply, barely more than a whisper.

  ‘Please. I need … water.’

  ‘Do you have the answer?’

  ‘Yes,’ she lied. ‘Yes. How much longer do I have to stay down here?’

  The man didn’t answer the question. ‘John has given you to me,’ he told her. ‘You are my reward. All you have to do is tell me the answer, and then your new life can begin.’

  ‘We are … one family,’ she said.

  ‘I will be your world,’ he promised her. ‘I have to go now, but I will be back. Tell me, my love, what is your name?’

  But there was only confusion and turmoil in her head as she tried to find herself in that panicked darkness. But there was no past. And that was where her name lived. She couldn’t fail this final test. Not when freedom was so close to hand.

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  He left her, closing the iron lid on the hole. But his voice was still there. She heard him call out, full of rage …

  SIXTY-FOUR

  ‘What the fuck do you think you are doing?’ the guard in the doorway demanded, the business end of a Glock pointing in Frankie’s face. It took her a second to register that it was her running buddy. She tried a smile, hoping to put him at his ease.

  ‘I was looking for something to eat,’ she said, sticking with the lie even though she was obviously going anywhere but the kitchen.

  A moment later she heard the clatter of feet coming down the stairs.

  Kask.

  ‘Well, well, well, Ceska Volk,’ Kask said as he walked past the guard. He had his own gun, a police-issue Walther P99Q in his hand. ‘You have a strange idea of loyalty. Of course, when you said you would give everything for One World, I naturally assumed that included your life. You might have John fooled – he likes to see the best in people, but I don’t. I’m good at what I do, Ceska. Or should I call you Francesca Varg? Did you think I didn’t recognize you? Volk. Varg. You’re not even trying. A wolf in Swedish is a wolf in English and a wolf in Russian. Did you think you could play games with us like your namesake toying with its food? I have news for you, woman, we aren’t prey. Some of us do our due diligence. We investigate the people in our way. We learn all about them. Your name is seared into my soul, your face burned into my mind, and has been ever since you darkened my door. Oh yes, I have taken a great deal of interest in you.’

  The gun didn’t move.

  One shot and it was all over, nothing she could do about it. No amount of fancy talking or fancier footwork would save her if Kask pulled the trigger – and it was plain as day on his twisted face, he wanted nothing more than to serve her corpse up to John and say, look, I did this for you … I killed the rat in our house.

  She had no clue if Peter Ash was close enough to hear the gunshot – and even if he was, it would be too late for her.

  She tried to think, adapt. Come up with a believable lie. But it wasn’t there. It wasn’t on her tongue.

  ‘You are going to die here. You understand that, don’t you? This place might not be as isolated as the forest, but it is a controlled environment. Once you set foot inside here you were doomed. They won’t even find your body. That’s just the reality of it. No one is coming to save you.’

  Frankie shook her head. ‘I walked away from that life, Maksim,’ she said, deliberately using his first name, trying to connect. ‘I couldn’t stand it … the way they treated me … I’m good at what I do, but they had me doing shit work, wasting my life. I’m angry. They made me that way. They took everything from me. Everything. But I can still help One World. That hasn’t changed, even if I’m not who I said I was. I know things. People. I have connections. I can make a difference. I can be what John needs me to be. Let me talk to The Shepherd. Let me prove my loyalty. He’ll understand the value of what’s inside my head. He’s a smart man. There are so many things I can tell you, you say you know who I am, then you know I worked on the Anglemark case in Sweden. I was chosen by the Prime Minister himself. I’m worth more to One World alive than dead.’

  Kask hesitated. The gambit was desperate, naming John, pushing Kask’s insecurities by implying: do you really have the authority to kill me without your leader’s nod?

  He didn’t pull the trigger. ‘Back to your room, now!’

  There was a split second when Frankie considered making a move, turning defence into attack and grabbing for the brute’s arm to turn his Glock on Kask. But the space was tight, and her running buddy was in the way. There was no guarantee she’d not come out on the wrong side of the gambit. Better to retreat, and use Peter’s phone to summon the cavalry.

  She nodded.

  Kask pushed her back along the hallway, bullying her towards the stairs with the barrel of the Walther. Her running buddy side-stepped to allow Frankie to climb first. He wasn’t dumb. Neither was Kask. He stayed far enough behind her to be sure she couldn’t try anything equally dumb, like trying to wrest the gun from him.

  Maybe she could use him later? She’d seen the way he looked at her in the forest.

  She had no more than ten seconds to the room; that wasn’t a lot of thinking time.

  She still didn’t have confirmation Irma was here, or what, if anything, was behind that closed door.

  It was all about time. Buying it. A few seconds became a few minutes, became long enough for Peter to make a difference.

  But she couldn’t just sit and wait to be rescued, either.

  She wasn’t some weak simpering Penelope Pitstop crying, ‘Help! Help!’ while she waited for the Ant Hill Mob to save her.

  She knew Kask didn’t believe her. So, what was his move? Talk to John, get the OK to pull the trigger? Would The Shepherd give him the wo
rd, or would Kask be her final challenge? Because that was what John wanted, wasn’t it? To turn her into a killer. How else did you test someone’s willingness to kill than to make them pull the trigger?

  She walked up, shoulder to shoulder with the photographs of John’s vanity.

  Could that be an angle?

  Maybe it wasn’t a foregone conclusion after all?

  She tried to rein in her racing thoughts.

  But there was no Zen-like calm to be found. Peter had talked about compromising material to control people. She knew how John would look to control her, she realized. Irma. She was going to be Frankie’s test, wasn’t she? Was she willing and capable of taking a life for them? A bullet in the head. Ballistic evidence, maybe even filmed footage on a mobile phone. Enough to hold it over her and make her their Protector.

  She’d fucked up badly.

  She didn’t have time to think about it. Kask shoved her into the room.

  ‘Where’s your bag?’

  Her running buddy remained in the doorway.

  There was no easy way past him.

  ‘My bag?’

  ‘Don’t piss me off, Francesca. Get your fucking bag and empty it out on the bed. Now.’

  She opened the wardrobe door. Her holdall nestled at the bottom. She hadn’t unpacked.

  Frankie stood slowly, holding the bag. The gun in her face made it obvious she had no choice. She unzipped the holdall. She thought about trying to stop the phone from falling out when she upended the contents onto the bed, but there was no way of hiding it.

  She did as she was told.

  The clothes fell in a heap. It was a pathetic collection of stuff that represented all this version of Frankie Varg had in the world.

  She saw the phone half-hidden by her underwear.

  ‘Away from the bed. Up against the wall. Go. Now.’ Kask motioned her away, using the Walther like a conductor’s baton. He stood over her things, poking through them with the barrel, then held up Peter’s phone like he’d just discovered the unholy grail. His face remained utterly impassive as he turned around with it in his hand.

  ‘You just lost your lifeline, Francesca.’ He closed the distance between them. She didn’t say a word as he pushed it up into her face. ‘Want to phone a friend? No. Is that your final answer?’

  Her silence was answered by the brutal impact of the Walther slamming into her temple.

  Pain exploded behind her eyes.

  The world turned black.

  And she went down.

  Hitting the floor was blessed relief.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  ‘We’ve got a problem,’ Laura Byrne said.

  He didn’t doubt her for a second; the edge of panic in her voice was enough to have him moving. The clock on the display flashed up one in the morning. Peter Ash lay on a hotel-room bed less than a kilometre from Frankie. He hadn’t wanted to leave Lossi Plats but couldn’t exactly sleep in the car in the middle of town without raising major eyebrows.

  Without knowing what was going on behind closed doors there was no chance he was storming the place like a one-man Iranian Embassy assault.

  At least not without the go from Frankie.

  He was still dressed. He didn’t smell good, but that was the least of his worries. Grabbing his shoes, he demanded, ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘We’ve lost the signal from your phone.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘One of two possibilities, she’s telling us to move, or they’ve found the phone and she’s compromised.’

  ‘Either way we’re getting her out.’

  ‘Amen to that.’

  There was no discussion beyond that.

  If he told her what he was going to do there was zero chance she’d sanction it. So, silence saved him the luxury of ignoring her.

  It wasn’t like he could just walk up those steps and doorstep them. He needed back-up.

  And right now he had a coincidence of wants with a certain Estonian detective, meaning he didn’t have to go in there alone.

  He made a second call, this one to the cavalry.

  ‘I know where Kask is,’ he said, ‘Lossi Plats, right in the centre of town. Blue building facing the German ambassador’s place.’

  ‘I know it,’ she said. ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes, just don’t go in without me.’

  ‘Ten minutes. No more. We’re not losing this bastard.’

  He could have walked there in that time, the hotel was so close to the square, but he wasn’t leaving the car behind. The cavalry didn’t charge in on foot, after all, that was the infantry. If the enemy bolted, the cavalry rode them down.

  He pulled up on the street a couple of buildings away from the house One World built.

  Mirjam Rebane was already in place.

  She climbed out of her car. He saw the bullet-proof vest under her jacket, the grip of her police-issue Walther P99Q visible under her arm.

  All Peter had was an extra T-shirt under his shirt, which wasn’t going to stop any flying bullets.

  ‘You sure about this?’ Mirjam asked.

  She reached back inside the car and produced another weapon for him. ‘You really should start carrying,’ she said.

  ‘Not a fan. You pull the trigger, you’ve already lost.’

  ‘Well, don’t let Kask know that.’ She looked up at the shuttered windows. ‘He’s in there?’

  Peter nodded.

  ‘Do I need to know how you know?’

  ‘My partner’s in there.’

  ‘Again, do I need to know what’s going on here?’

  ‘I think she’s been made.’

  ‘There’s a whole part of this I’m not following, Pete. What is your partner doing with Kask?’

  ‘We really don’t have time to stand around discussing this. Long story short, she’s looking for her cousin, Irma Lutz, Annja’s roommate. She went undercover, infiltrating One World. If we’re right, Irma’s in that building. Or she was.’

  ‘And Kask?’

  ‘He hasn’t left. We’ve had eyes on it.’ He looked back towards the ambassador’s building. ‘All day. There’s no way he slipped past Laura. Trust me.’

  Mirjam nodded. She’d responded to his distress call without a moment’s hesitation. But, looking around the square, he couldn’t help but wonder where the back-up was. At home they’d have gone in mob-handed, a dozen armed-response officers, battering ram to the door, and stormed the barricades.

  ‘Have you called it in?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘They’re on standby, two streets away.’ She gestured vaguely to her right, the same side he’d entered the square from. ‘Didn’t want to risk spooking Kask while we waited for you to show.’ He hadn’t seen any SWAT trucks on the way over. ‘Then let’s do this,’ Mirjam said.

  She didn’t wait for him.

  She set off across the road, walking right up to the front door like she owned the place.

  He saw her incline her head, leaning forwards, like she was talking into her radio: calling in her approach.

  He couldn’t hear what she said.

  Peter followed Mirjam Rebane up the stairs as she took her badge from her pocket and rang the doorbell.

  ‘And you’re sure this is the right place?’ she asked again, when there was no immediate response.

  ‘They’re in there.’

  ‘In which case,’ she leaned on the doorbell, the buzzer ringing incessantly, and didn’t let go, ‘better wake the bastard up.’

  SIXTY-SIX

  The ringing wouldn’t stop.

  Frankie clutched at her skull, trying to silence it.

  It wouldn’t end. It just demanded … demanded … demanded …

  She lay in a foetal ball, trying to gather her wits. The entire right side of her head hurt like a bastard. The flesh was tender. The bone felt solid beneath her fingers as she tried to feel out the damage. From the pain she’d have guessed the hammer blow from the gun had split her skull in two, but everything felt solid when she press
ed it, even if it was tender.

  She didn’t want to get hit again in a hurry, so beyond a few tentative touches she didn’t dare move. If they knew she was conscious there would only be more pain. She could live without that.

  The ringing was insistent. Incessant.

  It wasn’t concussion.

  The door.

  Peter.

  It had to be Peter.

  John wouldn’t ring the doorbell, surely? He was their messiah. You didn’t make someone like that bang on the door to come into their own place.

  ‘Go and shut that fucking thing up,’ Kask demanded. ‘I’m going out of my mind. Shoot them if you have to.’

  She waited until she heard her running buddy’s footsteps heavy on the stairs.

  She was alone with Kask.

  Frankie opened one eye, just a fraction, enough to see the shattered remains of Peter Ash’s phone a few feet from her face, the plastic and glass ground into the carpet.

  If it wasn’t Peter she was screwed.

  She needed a way to hurt Kask.

  She looked again at the shards of glass and plastic from the broken phone. There wasn’t anything there that would make an effective weapon against a Walther P99Q.

  Her heart sank when she heard a woman’s voice.

  It wasn’t Peter.

  No white knight. No rescue.

  But there was a distraction, even if it was only a few seconds’ worth of one.

  Kask stood in the doorway listening to what was happening downstairs.

  He wasn’t watching her.

  It was a lapse. A tiny, tiny mistake, but on such mistakes life and death pivoted every day.

  Frankie had one chance.

  She gathered herself, like a sprinter coming out of the blocks, and hurled herself at Kask, but everything about that desperate charge was fucked up; her legs didn’t receive the flurry of commands from her brain.

  She lurched sideways, and for one sickening heartbeat thought she’d fucked up so badly she was going to slam into the wall and miss him completely, but her leg buckled and saved her life, as her fall threw her full weight into Kask’s back. There was nothing graceful about it.

  She went down hard, taking him with her as he swung the gun wildly. His hand smashed into the door frame, a shriek of rage-pain tearing from his lips.