Cold Warriors (16 page)

"Oh my lord," Belle said, when she saw the destruction outside. "What happened here?"

As Anya shrugged a pair of guards ambled into the corridor, stopping to stare in bemusement at the shattered windows. Anya grabbed Belle, pulling her towards the left-hand exit before they could start asking awkward questions.

She almost tripped over the first body. When she'd regained her balance, she saw that there were two black-clothed men on the floor, one curled into a foetal ball, the other propped against the door of the toilet. Blood had pooled around him, a dark stain on the grey carpet.

"Scheisse!" Anya said.

Belle looked around, wide-eyed. "Where are Tomas and Morgan? Do you think they've been caught?"

"Maybe. There must be more of these guys. Every window in that corridor was broken." Anya knelt down to hook her hands under the shoulders of the nearest man. "Open the door and take a look," she said to Belle. "Tell me if the guards are heading our way."

The man was a dead weight, pulling painfully at Anya's back as she heaved him upright, though she could see his chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. He wasn't quite gone yet.

Belle remained where she was, eyeing Anya warily. "What the heck are you doing?"

"Cleaning up. At the moment, as far as anyone knows it's just vandalism. If they find these bodies there'll be all kinds of questions. Go on - I need you to keep watch."

Belle did as Anya asked, and Anya began laboriously dragging the first man to the outer door. It had an old-fashioned lock, thank god, the sort you could open even when the train was moving. Warm air blasted in along with the strangely comforting noise of wheels clattering over sleepers.

Anya braced herself against the doorframe as she hooked a foot under the man's body, looking away when he finally flopped out and down to whatever lay below. There wasn't much chance he'd survive the fall, but she'd been hardened to this work a long time ago.

The next man was already dead. He was nearer to the door and upright so it took less effort to drag him the last few feet. Just as well; she was already panting with exertion. Typical bloody men, she thought, leaving the women to clear up their messes behind them.

"They're coming!" Belle hissed suddenly, and Anya only just had time to kick the black-clothed body into the night before the guards arrived.

They looked at her then at the open door, and she slammed it before they could say anything. One of them, an older, greying man with the spidery red traces of alcohol abuse on his nose, growled something at her in Hungarian. She held her hands outspread in a gesture intended to convey both innocence and incomprehension. The guard shook his head, obviously not buying it, but his companion said something and after a brief, whispered conference, they moved away, towards the back of the train.

Anya sagged with relief.

"What now?" Belle asked.

"See what further trouble Tomas and Morgan have landed themselves in, I suppose." Anya rolled her shoulders, trying to ease the ache in her muscles.

She'd started massaging her bicep when the door to the toilet swung open in front of her. She stared in mute astonishment at the black-clothed figure and the shattered window behind him.

The moment of immobility thawed into action, the figure reaching inside his clothing, almost certainly for a weapon. Anya took a step back, bringing her level with Belle. The little girl slipped her hand inside Anya's as a spike of a knife appeared in the man's hand, reflecting nothing back but the blackness of his clothing.

Even with his face covered, Anya thought she could read his body language. It was dark in the little antechamber between carriages, and he was still disoriented. He wasn't one hundred per cent sure they were his targets. And if they weren't, he'd be killing an innocent woman and a little girl. But they
were
his targets, and Anya didn't think his indecision would last long.

Anya had never been much of a fighter, and she wasn't armed. Belle and her strange abilities were their only hope. She snatched a glance at the girl.

Belle returned it with a look of desperation. "I can't. I can't. I can't do it if I can't see their eyes."

The words seemed to finally end their opponent's indecision. His knife slashed a silver arc through the air. Anya dropped to her knees, feeling the blade pass so close to the top of her head that it must have cut through hair. The weapon reached the apex of its swing and slowed, and Anya used the second's grace it gave her to run for the door, pulling Belle behind her.

Tomas only knew he'd reached the end of the train when he ran straight into it. His body rebounded from the door that wouldn't open and barrelled into the man he'd been pursuing, who'd stopped in time to avoid his own collision with the wall.

There was a brief tussle, fierce and silent, until Tomas used his superior weight to pin his opponent to the floor. The assassin instantly changed tack, scrabbling inside his black robes for a weapon. Tomas had been waiting for that. The knife that came out left a jagged tear in Tomas's chest and then he'd trapped both his opponent's hands in one of his own, bending back on the wrists until the black-clad man cried out and let the weapon drop.

The man's mask shifted, revealing the outline of a smile. "End of the line," he said. His accent was American. More than that, it was startlingly familiar.

Tomas used his free hand to snatch the black cloth from his opponent's head. The face underneath had aged twenty years since he'd last seen it. The sandy hair was flecked with grey and the long, thin face seamed with wrinkles that radiated from his eyes and mouth with geometric precision. He was still recognisable, though, as the man who'd been his partner for the last five years of his life.

"Richard," he said.

The other man wasn't smiling any more. He looked thoughtful and a little sad. Tomas suddenly felt absurd, with Richard's hands and body pinned beneath him. He rolled off and to his feet, stooping to pick up the knife on the way. There was no point searching for the book; it was clear Richard didn't have it. No concealment was possible beneath the tight black clothing.

Richard rose more awkwardly, with an audible popping of joints. "Tomas," he said, "I was hoping to avoid you."

"Jesus, Richard, what are you doing here? What
happened
to you?"

"I wised up."

"What did the Japanese offer you?"

"You think I'd do this for money? You know me better."

"What am I supposed to think? Two days ago your allies tried to kill me. Did they tell you that?"

Richard hesitated, and Tomas realised with a sick jolt that Richard
had
known. How was that possible? He'd been an usher at Richard's wedding. He'd thought they were friends.

"I'm sorry, Tomas, but I didn't have any choice - not while you're working for him."

"Giles? He's just a pen-pusher."

"I meant Nicholson."

"Nicholson's dead."

Richard laughed, and after a moment Tomas couldn't help smiling too. He could see the irony. "Actually dead," Tomas said. "Or have I been misinformed?"

"Probably, but not about that. I was there when they cut him down."

"From what?"

"The big oak crossbeam in his kitchen." There was a pause, then Richard added, more uncertainly, "He hung himself hours after they buried you. Did no one tell you?"

Tomas shook his head. He couldn't begin to imagine it. The Nicholson he knew liked life far too much to voluntarily end it. Nicholson had liked himself too much. "But what did Nicholson ever do to you?" he asked. "You were his blue-eyed boy!"

The other man shook his head. "I want to tell you. I want to believe you aren't hip deep in this yourself. But I can't take the risk."

"For God's sake, what's this about?"

Richard kept his mouth stubbornly shut.

"Then at least tell me which side you're on," Tomas said. "Don't you owe me that?"

Richard took a moment to consider the question. It was something Tomas had always liked about him, the way he never resorted to an easy answer. "It's pretty simple," he said finally. "I'm on the side of anyone who
won't
use the book."

He'd started moving before he stopped speaking. Tomas had expected him to move away, maybe try a dive through the half-open window. He hadn't expected Richard to run straight for him.

After a startled second Tomas made a grab for him. His fingers grasped nothing but air. Richard had fallen to the floor, a rolling dive that took him between Tomas's braced legs and through the door he'd been guarding.

Tomas flung himself after, but the door was already closing. His arm went through and stuck at the shoulder, wedged tight. On the other side he saw Richard draw back his fist and drive it into the electronic board. It hissed and sparked, and Tomas felt the two halves of the door closing on his bicep like metal jaws.

He wrenched his arm once, twice, and the third time he pulled it free. But the door snapped shut with Tomas on the wrong side of it, and Richard long gone.

Morgan knew there were men behind him as well as in front, the same black-clothed assassins he'd confronted in Budapest and only survived thanks to Tomas. It wasn't entirely clear whether he was fleeing or pursuing, but the adrenaline fuelling him didn't care.

He wove from side to side as he ran, bouncing from one wooden wall to the other. But it slowed him down, and when he didn't hear gunfire after a few seconds he stopped doing it - only for the sharp streak of a throwing knife to graze his cheek as it passed. They did want to kill him, they just wanted to do it quietly.

He could smell blood, an unpleasant counterpoint to his sour sweat. The wound in his side had opened again, oozing wetly. Occasionally people emerged from their cabins, sleepy-eyed in the dead of night. Morgan shouldered them aside, ignoring their grunts of protest.

There were three black-clothed figures in front of him, so identical they could have been clones, but he still knew which of them had the book. It was the way his head bobbed as he ran, the rock of his stride heel to instep, as individual as a fingerprint. Morgan kept his eyes fixed on the thief and tried not to think about anything else.

The assassins did their best to confuse him, swapping sides as they ran, slipping between each other with the grace of dancers.
Find the queen
, Morgan thought as his quarry swapped places again, remembering street hustlers near Brixton Market. The trick was to follow the cards and not their hands. It was almost like a game. That figure slipping left then dodging right was the thief, and again when he ran forward only to fall back.

Another switch, one of them dropped back, and this time Morgan's reaching fingers grasped his black t-shirt. It was only the loosest hold but it was enough to make the man lose his rhythm and his footing. He stumbled forward, fell to his knees, half rolled - and then groaned and collapsed, limbs thumping down to the carpet.

His own shuriken was embedded in his forehead, slicing clean between his eyes. There was no way the fall should have done that, and Morgan thought of Giles' words -
you emit mortality
- as he stooped to frisk the motionless body. Nothing, and then Morgan was up and running again, just two men ahead of him now.

Then the rules changed. The thief veered to the left and Morgan kept going straight, sure he'd move to the right again, the card that had to be concealed. But while the other assassin ran on, through the antechamber between carriages, the thief didn't follow.

For a baffled second Morgan thought he'd vanished - a real piece of magic mixed with the trickery. Then he saw a slither of movement outside the train, black against black, and he realised that the window was gaping wide open. The thief had climbed through it.

Morgan knew it was too small a hole for him to fit through. He wrenched the whole door open instead, staggering back as the train swerved and nearly threw him into the night. Then he braced himself against the doorframe and leaned out as far as he dared. Metal rungs led from beside the door to the roof above, and he knew which way the thief must have gone.

His heart lurched as he grasped the handholds. He knew he was going to have to let his feet swing free and pull himself up the first few rungs using his arms. He could do it, just like a bloody assault course. Only those had never been on a moving train and when he was already injured.

No point worrying about it. Either he'd succeed or he'd fall.

He released his hold on the doorframe and there was a second of wobbling uncertainly, then he was hanging limply from the first metal bar above. The pain in his side squeezed a groan out of him, but his arms weren't injured and he forced them to flex and pull. Another groan of mingled pain and effort, and he grabbed the rung above, then the next, the fire in his side burning hotter with each movement. One more and then - finally - his feet found purchase.

He scrambled up the remaining rungs as fast as he could, and tried not to worry about how he was going to get back inside, or whether they were likely to pass under any low bridges before he did.

The wind on top of the train was overwhelming. Morgan fell to his hands and knees, terrified it would sweep him off and onto the ground he could see rushing by below. They were in a city now, its houses dark as residents slept but a scattering of office blocks still lit up in geometric patterns that flickered their reflection on the train.

It was in one of those brief squares of light that he saw the thief, sitting cross-legged on the roof only twenty feet ahead of him. He must have thought he'd be safe, intending to wait out the pursuit up here.

Morgan slid to his stomach, suppressing a hiss of pain as his injured side met the cold metal of the train's roof. This was familiar territory, suddenly - stalking prey that didn't yet know you were there. Morgan's breathing was ragged and loud, but the wind snatched it and carried it away from the thief's ears.

He crawled forward one foot, then another. Three feet, and there was still no sign he'd been spotted. His attention narrowed to nothing but the man ahead of him, sitting as still and calm as a statue of Buddha.