by Andy Maslen
Rifles swinging left and right, fingers crooked round the triggers, Erin and Guy walked through the ground floor of the château, kicking at doors and knocking huge Chinese vases from their pedestals to shatter on the tiled floor.
A slam from the upper storey. Somebody had just locked themselves into a bedroom.
Looking at each other and nodding, Erin and Guy raced up the two separate wings of the curving, iron-railed staircase before meeting at the top in a hallway hung with oil paintings of ruffed noblemen and uniformed soldiers. From under the door of the second room along the darkened passageway, light was seeping out, fanning across the dragons woven into the deep-red carpet.
They took up positions each side of the door. Then Guy drew a pistol from his belt and fired three rounds into the lock.
His shots were answered by a fusillade from the other side, the rounds smashing through the oak, leaving thin beams of light spearing across the hall that illuminated the far wall like miniature spotlights.
Guy fired again, and again received an answer. He pointed at the door and mouthed to Erin, “Nine.”
A third time he fired, and a third time the wood of the door was splintered with shots from inside the room.
With the air around them thick with the smell of burnt propellant, and the noise from the shots still reverberating in his ears, Guy looked down. Fifteen holes.
He cocked his head. Yes! There it was. The sound of a pistol magazine being ejected.
“Now!” he yelled, and burst into the room.
Veshkov was crouching by a double bed, fumbling with a magazine, trying to jam it home into the butt of a pistol. Guy thought it might be a Glock 19. That would fit with the fifteen shots fired. But at that point he didn’t care.
He leapt forward and knocked the pistol from Veshkov’s hands.
Erin came in behind him, rifle pointing at Veshkov’s head.
“You have five hundred thousand euros of mine. Where is it?”
Veshkov put his hands up. He was white-faced and shaking. He pointed to a pine dressing table.
“In there,” he said.
Guy moved to the other side of the room and opened the top drawer of the cabinet. Bundles of high-denomination banknotes were jammed in behind socks and underwear. He turned and nodded at Erin.
Erin stepped back a few paces, then shot Veshkov in the face. He died instantly, leaving most of the contents of his skull on the wall behind him.
Half an hour later, as the burning château lit the horizon, Erin and Guy were sitting in the local town’s only restaurant, eating steaks and drinking the local red wine. She was laughing and telling him another story about her father.
The taxi driver’s voice roused him from his daydream.
“Yes, sir? We are here?”
Guy paid the man, careful to calculate the tip to just below what would be considered acceptable in the city, and got out.
The uniformed doorman nodded. Guy nodded back, and went inside. He walked past the receptionist – another curt nod – and down to the bank of elevators.
Inside the vast, white space, he looked around, wrinkling his nose as he did every time he took in Erin’s art collection. Brâncuşi, Giacometti, De Kooning, Lichtenstein: she’d told him the names – Jew names, he’d thought at the time – and explained why they were so good; but to him the sculptures looked like tourist tat from some African market. And the paintings – Jesus! Crappy daubs that looked like they’d been done by a mental patient or a kid with a comic book fixation.
The cleaning crew had obviously been in that morning. The place smelled of lemon, and every surface, from the stainless-steel kitchen surfaces to the white marble floor, sparkled under halogen downlighters. What Guy really wanted to do was sink his frame into one of the squashy, white, leather sofas, or maybe the luxurious-looking swivelling recliner chair in matching white hide. Then he saw his boss through the plate glass windows overlooking Central Park.
Erin beckoned him to the terrace. Even though it was still only March, it was warm outside, and Guy inhaled deeply, catching the scent of spring: pollen, he supposed, or sap rising.
“Have you eaten?” she asked him, greeting him with kisses on both cheeks. To her, this was merely a social greeting. To him, it was both unimaginably pleasurable, and a reminder of her unattainability.
“I’m not hungry, boss.”
“Thirsty, then?”
“A beer would be good. Please.”
When she returned from the kitchen with two beers – some fancy Japanese brand – and had taken a long pull on her own bottle, she gestured for him to take one of the two transparent Perspex chairs facing each other across a matching table.
“You get what I asked you to?”
“Everything. He couldn’t stop blabbing about his pals in the SAS, all his friends, his childhood teacher, his woman. I got it all, boss. Your briefing gave me exactly the right questions to ask. It was too easy.”
“Good. I’ll email Sasha. Your eye all right? That’s a proper shiner you’ve got there.”
He touched the purplish-green bruise that encircled his right eye, as bright and colourful as stage makeup. He winced.
“I went down early, like you said. But that fuck still used a cosh on me. I gave him a good kick before I ran, brought that peasant to his knees.”
“Sorry, Guy. But it had to look realistic. I don’t want to tip Wolfe off. Or,” she smiled, “not yet, anyway. What about him?”
“Oh, I think he got a solid beating. I counted at least ten of them.”
Her brow furrowed.
“He’s alive, though?”
Jaager nodded.
“I called the hotel from Frankfurt. Wolfe got back in one piece.”
She smiled.
Inside, Guy boiled with rage at Wolfe. It was clear to him that Erin admired the man. Maybe more than she cared for Guy. Well, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. That’s what that old Prussian, von Moltke, said, wasn’t it? Maybe Erin’s plan could be adjusted.
No Regrets
LONDON
THREE days after his trip with Carl to Kazakhstan was aborted, Gabriel was sitting opposite his psychiatrist. Today, she was wearing a lime-green hijab above a well-cut, black, silk suit. He looked around the office, at the abstract painting on the wall, at the row of medical and psychiatric diplomas on the wall, at the bookshelf, stuffed with textbooks on psychiatry, psychology and philosophy. Then back at her. He crossed his arms, then remembered reading somewhere that this was a defensive body posture, and uncrossed them.
Her brown eyes were smiling as Gabriel adjusted his position in the chair, his eyes tightening as one of the bruised muscles in his back cramped momentarily.
“Still not completely relaxed about visiting a trick-cyclist, Gabriel?” she asked. She was referring to a slip of the tongue he’d made on his first visit.
“It’s not that,” he said, smiling back. “I just ran into a bit of trouble on a trip to Astana. Gangsters after my client.”
“Astana. That’s Kazakhstan’s new capital, isn’t it?”
He nodded, marvelling, once again, at her ability to remain unflappable whatever he told her. Mind you, he thought, a shrink who had the vapours every time you swore or told her a hair-raising story wouldn’t exactly be fit for purpose, would she?
“Since 1998. It used to be Almaty.”
“What took you to Astana? And this ‘trouble’?”
“A client. He said he wanted protection. From bandits.”
Gabriel paused, frowning.
“But you’re not sure?” she prompted.
He rubbed a palm across his face and shrugged.
“I don’t know. He got hit, too, then he managed to get away. I ended up playing the Good Samaritan for a woman who took me in.”
“Then what is it? What’s troubling you?”
“Honestly? I’m not sure. He was pleasant enough, then, when we got attacked, he just took off. Literally. Left me probably the tersest no
te I’ve ever received that basically told me to sue him for the balance of my fee.”
“And will you?”
“Sue him? No. What would be the point? He’s a tycoon. Probably has lawyers check his Starbucks bills for him. No, I’ll chalk it up to experience.”
“Tell me about being a Good Samaritan.”
Gabriel related the story of his helping Alina. Throughout, Fariyah remained very still, occasionally writing in the black-covered notebook perched on her knee.
When he finished, she looked at him. No smile this time.
“You took her word for it? That he was abusive?”
“Well, yes, of course. Why would she lie?”
“I don’t know. But I know people do tell lies. All the time. Did he hit her, this man?”
“She said he did.”
“Did you see him hit her?”
He paused before answering. Not to recall the scene as Kaliyev buckled before him. But because he was beginning to doubt he had acted as he should have done.
“No, I didn’t. I got my retaliation in first.”
“Then you tied him to a chair and hypnotised him, and planted a posthypnotic suggestion in his subconscious. A very frightening suggestion at that. How do you feel about the way you acted?”
“It was justified. He was a violent, powerful man who was terrorising his wife and daughter.”
“According to her.”
“What are you trying to say? That she was lying so I’d beat up her husband? He was banging on the door late at night. Threatening her.”
“In English?”
“No. No, of course not. In Kazakh.”
“Do you speak Kazakh?”
Gabriel clamped his lips together, which had the effect of forcing him to breathe, noisily, through his nose. He could feel his pulse speeding up, and he didn’t like the sensation.
“No. I don’t. But he called her a bitch. She told me that word.”
“And on the strength of a single shouted word, you knocked a man unconscious, bound him and messed around in his head. Was that the action of a Good Samaritan, do you think?”
“Look. I thought you were supposed to be my friend. To be helping me. Why the cross-examination?”
Fariyah closed her notebook, and put it on the desk beside her. She leaned forward and reached for his hands, which he reluctantly gave her.
“Gabriel,” she said, softly. “I am your psychiatrist. My job is to help you recover from your PTSD. Not to be your friend. Friends might buoy you up, whatever you’ve done. My job, as you know, is to understand the stories you tell about yourself and add a story of my own that helps you to relocate yourself inside yourself, rather than outside yourself.”
“I don’t know what that means. ‘Inside’ myself. Isn’t that where I am?”
“Let me try to explain. When we are psychically integrated, that is to say, when our emotions do not trouble us, when we feel in control of our own minds and behaviours, able to function without the help of stimulants, or depressants, or psychoactive substances of any kind, whether prescribed by our doctors or not, we exist inside ourselves. We understand that we are in control. That also means we are responsible. For our actions, our thoughts, feelings and beliefs.
“But when we have experienced some form of trauma, we can become detached from ourselves. To a greater or lesser degree we are psychically disintegrated. You see how the word has both meanings? To disintegrate is to come apart. Go to pieces. It isn’t just buildings or enemy tanks that can disintegrate. We, ourselves, can, too. And when that happens, when we feel out of control, ruled by emotions like fear or anger, we can be said to be living outside ourselves.”
“So what are you saying? That I’m psychically disintegrated? Mad?”
She smiled and shook her head.
“You are very, very far from mad, Gabriel, as I think you know. But my questioning made you defensive, angry even, did it not?”
Gabriel wanted her to let go of his hands, but felt that she’d take it as a sign of rejection. Not of her, but of her role. He stayed still, though he could feel his palms sweating inside her grip.
“Honestly, yes it did. He was pushing her around. Frightening her. And Nadya. I just redressed the balance.”
Now, finally, Fariyah released his hands. She leaned back in her chair, turning to retrieve her notebook.
“Let’s say you did. Let’s say you performed a good act. If he’d gone to the police, which, frankly, he would have been well within his rights to do, you might have been arrested. Thrown into jail. Charged with assault. Unlawful imprisonment. Who knows what the Kazakh penal code allows for situations of forced hypnosis? Was it worth the risk? To help Alina and Nadya?”
“Yes.” Gabriel answered without hesitating, even for a second. “Yes, it was. And I’d do it again.”
“Our time is almost up,” she said then. “I want you to come and see me next month. I want to talk about your sense of justice in a little more detail. Perhaps we can unravel its beginnings.”
Item One
SALISBURY
WHILE Gabriel was settling into a comfortable armchair in a consulting room at the Ravenswood hospital in Mayfair, Sasha Beck was out walking. Not for fun. She never walked for fun. For physical exercise she preferred lengthy martial arts sessions with one of her teachers around the world. Or sex. An onlooker might conclude that Sasha liked rough sex, and in a way, they’d be right. Although the person who felt the roughness was usually the man, or occasionally woman, she’d chosen as her partner. A gondolier in Venice still nursed a black eye and a set of eight long, deep scratches in the skin of his back and shoulders from his own recent encounter with the assassin. Ask him whether he’d go back for a second bout, though, and he would nod vigorously before begging for her current whereabouts.
No, not for fun. Sasha was walking to a job. Nevertheless, she still had time to look around and take in the view. Before her, rolling hills, cross-hatched with fields of pale-green, brown and the startling, acid-yellow of oilseed rape. She shook her head and spoke aloud.
“It may be pretty, but rape? Really? Time for a rebrand, darling.”
She thought back to her conversation the previous night in a pub outside the village from which she was now walking away.
“You asthmatic, are you, dear?” the landlady had asked, as she dropped a slice of lime into Sasha’s gin and tonic. Sasha had just sneezed.
“No. Though I am allergic to dogs,” she said, pointing at a large, fat and smelly yellow Labrador that lay by the fire, its flank heaving up and down in its sleep.
“Lot of folks are, though. Allergic,” the woman continued. “I blame the rape. Down here, leastways.”
“You get a lot of rape, do you?” Sasha asked, pointedly looking around at the collection of mostly male drinkers.
The woman laughed, a liquid, throaty sound that spoke of nicotine addiction.
“Not that kind of rape! Oilseed. In the fields. It’s in full flower now. Causes all kind of breathing problems. Hey, Phil!” she called across to a middle-aged man in a ratty brown jumper and jeans, who was nursing a pint of beer and studying a tabloid newspaper. “Which paper did that story about rape giving folks asthma?”
“Mail, weren’t it?” he said in a thick rural accent that made his words sound like Mow-wernert to Sasha’s ears.
The landlady nodded, resting her large breasts on the bar top. “That’s right. The Mail. Don’t know why they call it rape, mind. Nasty name for such a pretty plant.”
“It’s Latin,” Sasha said, then took a sip of her gin and tonic. “For turnip. Rapum. In Italy, they serve a lovely green vegetable called cima di rappa – turnip tops.”
“Well,” the landlady said. “You live and learn, don’t you?”
The thick, oily fumes emitted by the plants clogged the back of Sasha’s throat, but as she wasn’t allergic to them, they caused her no more problems than a gluey sensation on her tongue. The sun was out, in any case, and she was enjoying the
sensation of its rays warming her back through her Sasta Kauris camouflage stalking jacket. Slung across her back was a matching nylon gun bag containing a Remington Modular Sniper Rifle. For urban contracts, Sasha favoured a McMillan CS5 that she could disassemble and carry in a backpack. Out here in the country, long guns were a part of life, and, in any case, she had a way of looking at people that tended to make them veer off or pass by quickly with a muttered, “good morning.”
She consulted her map, then turned left along a hawthorn hedge, its pale-green-and-white buds waiting for some temperature or chemical signal to open. The field climbed up the side of a hill and ahead, its topmost branches shrouded in a few remaining wisps of mist, was a fat-trunked oak tree. Her nest. She’d picked it out on her reconnaissance, during which she’d observed the target walking a regular route around the fields. The tree gave an excellent field of fire; cover, should she need it; and some protection from the rain.
Julia Angell pulled on her Dubarry knee-length boots, a fiftieth-birthday present from her husband. She knew the Irish firm’s boots weren’t the sensible option, and at almost three hundred and thirty pounds a pair, they certainly weren’t the cheap option. Wellingtons were better for repelling rain, and wouldn’t melt the corners of your credit card. But she’d coveted a pair of Dubarry boots ever since she’d seen them in a window of the local gunsmith. The tan-and-tobacco colour scheme, the laces that encircled the tops, the sheer romance of them made her desperate to own a pair. She anointed the leather parts with dubbin after every walk as an article of faith, and she kept them straight with the cedar boot trees that ever-thoughtful Mike had also given her.
While she dressed for the walk, Scout bustled around her feet, erect tail wagging from side to side like a hyperactive metronome. The ginger-coloured dog could barely contain himself, and encouraged his mistress by skipping in increasingly impatient circles around her.
“Right, mischief,” she said, straightening, and clipping lead onto collar. “Let’s go. See if you can flush out a rabbit.”