Exit Wound (28 page)

101

We walked into the lobby through a set of wooden doors with Victorian-wired glass panels. The harsh white light from the overhead fluorescents did the cleaners no favours. Hastily swished mop marks showed as plain as day across the black marble floor.

Sweet, flowery disinfectant did battle with the stench of boiled cabbage. There was no lift, so we climbed the stairs to the first floor. Anna pointed down the corridor. I counted four doors. ‘Last one on the right.’

I signalled to her to carry her wheelie. It was making too much noise.

None of the doors had a bell or a knocker. They didn’t even have numbers. Each was just a plain sheet of veneered plywood with a fake brass knob, dulled from decades of use.

We reached Semyon’s apartment. Anna’s hand was poised to rap against the veneer. I heard a dull thud inside and knew exactly what it was. I pushed Anna clear as the lock turned.

I rammed my full weight against the opening door. It only travelled a foot. I burst through to see the body behind it stumbling back into the hallway. Tattoo’s mate staggered to his feet, one hand tugging his leather jacket away from his waist. I focused on the other and jumped on him, pinning him to the floor. I grabbed his fingers a nanosecond before they could make contact with the pistol-grip in his waistband. His cologne matched the building’s disinfectant. I felt my eyes water and my throat constrict. With him in the room, the boiled cabbage didn’t stand a chance.

He bucked and kicked, trying to head-butt me off him. His stubble rasped at my neck and face.

I pushed my hands down on his, determined to keep the weapon where it was. My knuckles sank into his stomach. I felt the hammer of the revolver and found my way to its grip. We rolled about on the carpet, each scrabbling for some kind of advantage. His fist thumped into the side of my head. I tried to sink my teeth into his face or neck to cause him enough pain to disorient him.

I thrust my right hand between the weapon and his skin, searching for the trigger. At the precise moment my middle finger found the guard he raised his knee to push me away. I used the distance between us to jab my finger onto the trigger.

There was a dull thud.

The suppressed barrel put a round into his lower gut, bollocks, cock or leg. I didn’t know which and didn’t much care. I shoved my left hand over his mouth to muffle the scream.

I suddenly had enough space to draw down the weapon. I jammed the long fat barrel against his head and fired again.

I rolled off his corpse and allowed myself a couple of deep breaths before moving on. I knew there wasn’t time for more. ‘Anna?’ I got up and closed the front door.

Low-level bookcases ran the length of the corridor. Books and magazines lay strewn across the floor. The brown, swirly-patterned carpet at the entrance to the living room was wet with blood. Anna knelt, sobbing, beside Semyon’s body. He lay half in, half out of the doorway, still in his raincoat and scarf. He’d thrown up his right arm in a vain attempt to protect himself. He must have known what was coming. There was no mistaking the exit wound on the left side of his forehead, slap in the middle of his frontal lobe. It wasn’t the only one. His left arm and both legs were stained crimson where he had taken rounds.

I checked the weapon. The chamber was empty. I ran my hands over the second loadie’s body for spares. He was carrying no extra ammunition. I guess he must have brought just enough to torture and kill an old man.

I ran into the kitchen and grabbed a bread knife. Two sets of bike gear lay on the floor, along with the rest of the room’s contents. They were old waxies, 1980s-style jackets. The pockets had been turned out.

The kettle had boiled dry on the stove. Semyon must have put it on as soon as he came in. The loadie had been waiting for him, or maybe he’d just knocked on the door. Semyon had known we were due any minute.

If anybody else had been here, they’d have done their stuff by now. All the same, I had to make sure. I cleared the two bedrooms, living room and bathroom. They’d all been ransacked. Drawers had been emptied, stuff torn apart – even in Grisha’s room, another shrine, still with his teenage football teams and pop-star posters on the wall.

I checked the loadie’s pockets and pulled off his fashionably pointed shoes. I couldn’t stop thinking about Red Ken lying on the tarmac, having taken a mag from this man. It made me feel good that the front of the bastard’s head now looked like Semyon’s. I just wished I’d been able to cause him the same amount of pain.

He had nothing on him at all. He’d come to the job sterile, and there was no sign of whatever he’d hoped to find in Semyon’s apartment.

The old boy must have kept whatever he was going to tell us in his head. That was why he’d been tortured. The leg wounds were kneecappings. The one in his arm had gone through his elbow. The grey woollen scarf that hung loosely round his neck was soaked with saliva. The loadie must have shoved it against his mouth to muffle the screams as he pumped in another round.

There was more blood on the living-room sofa and two or three separate trails across the floor. Semyon had been one hell of a guy: he must have used every ounce of his dwindling strength trying to crawl into the hallway and warn us. The loadie had head-jobbed him on his way to the front door.

Semyon had probably been pinged at M3C as he’d tried to find out where the targets were staying – or to get details of tomorrow’s test firing. He must have held out and said jack shit. The loadie had decided to sit tight and wait for us to arrive.

Anna’s car was now a no-no. They’d see us coming a mile off.

I snatched the jackets, leggings, gloves and helmets off the kitchen floor. The keys were by the cooker.

I went back to Anna. Her sobs were turning into a wail and it was getting far too loud. I grabbed her under the arm and pulled. ‘There’s nothing we can do for him.’

‘No, not yet . . .’ She stroked what was left of his head.

‘Anna.’ I bent down and took her face in my hands, trying to get eye contact. ‘Anna, I need you to get me to the proving ground.’

She turned and grabbed me. She pulled me into a desperate hug, sobbing into my shoulder. I held her for a while, stroking her hair, comforting her. I knew it didn’t mean anything. She was just clinging to the wreckage. The muffled sobs continued as I gently prised her away from me. ‘Anna, you can’t help him here.’

She nodded slowly and her body sagged. Her arms fell away from me.

I helped her to her feet and we both stood there, knowing there was nothing we could do for Semyon but not wanting to leave him untended. I looked again at his head wound, the outstretched arm. My eyes were drawn to the magazine beneath his pointing hand.

I suddenly realized what he’d been trying to do.

He hadn’t crawled into the corridor to warn us, or thrown out his arm in a last vain attempt to protect himself. He’d been giving us another kind of message.

The magazine cover shot was a group photo, a row of suits in front of a shiny new glass building. I picked it up and jammed it into the bike jacket. I’d try to make sense of it later. Right now we had to get as far away from here as possible. ‘Let’s go.’

I grabbed her case under my arm and closed the front door behind us.

102

Friday, 8 May
0053 hrs

We drove along the not-so-deserted streets. Anna was riding. I was in the sidecar. She knew the bike and she knew the city. I couldn’t stop thinking about Semyon. I knew I should cut away – I’d always managed to do that in the past. Sometimes my survival had depended on it. Sometimes I’d just used it as an excuse not to look at myself too carefully in the mirror. Whatever, it wasn’t working any more.

I finally managed to grip myself. Even if I did know why he’d got zapped, it didn’t change anything. I still had no control over what Altun and Brin and the Taliban did or didn’t know. The most important thing was that they didn’t have us. I was still moving on. I still had a job to do. I still had my mission.

After ten minutes we were a good tactical bound away from the flat. I tapped her leg and pointed down a side-street. Two or three clapped-out cars parked in front of a line of locked-up Spar-type shops were intermittently floodlit by a flashing neon bar sign. She pulled in and stopped and I passed her the magazine.

She took off the black full-face helmet and shook her head to unstick her hair from her skin. She was still in a bad way, but comfort wasn’t what either of us needed right now. We needed to crack on.

I hoisted myself out of the sidecar and we examined the magazine cover together. Semyon was on the far right, in the back row. I pointed at the egg-shaped guy in the centre of the group.

Her face turned to stone. ‘That’s Brin.’

‘First name Vladislav? Is he Vladislav Brin?’

The wind was getting up. She wrapped the waxed jacket more tightly around her. It must have been Grisha’s: it was in far better condition than mine.

‘Yes,’ she said finally. ‘He is the CEO of M3C.’ She cupped her hands to light a cigarette, took a deep drag and, without taking it out of her mouth, pulled her wheelie-case from between my legs. She undid it and retrieved a pashmina, which she wrapped round her neck. I’d been cold in the sidecar; she must have been freezing.

She stared at the magazine cover, transfixed. I couldn’t tell whose face she was concentrating on. The one she hated or the one she loved.

‘I know Brin.’ I zipped the case up and shoved it back into the footwell. ‘The last time I saw him was in ’eighty-eight. He was selling technology to the US in East Germany.’

She jerked her head round. ‘
What?
’ Her eyes blazed.

There was no need to bullshit her any longer. We had less than a day to do what we needed to do. I told her everything I’d been keeping from her. I told her who I was. I told her about how Dex, Red Ken and I had lifted the gold. I told her what had happened when we were loading it. I told her about Tenny, Altun and Spag. I told her why I’d been in Iran, working for Julian, and about getting binned from the job as soon as I knew that Spag was involved, and that he was still CIA. I told her who had killed Semyon. And finally I told her I was there for one reason and one reason only – to avenge my mates’ deaths.

She stared at me, taking it all in as I continued.

‘I still don’t understand where the four of us fitted in. I know Altun is the middleman between Brin and the Taliban. I know the Taliban can pay for the missiles with heroin or heroin money – it doesn’t really matter which. I can’t understand how Spag and the gold are involved. Or what cements him to Altun and Brin.’

‘Nick?’ She thought for a while. ‘I don’t know, and I don’t care.’

That was good enough for me. ‘You’re right. The story, the pictures, so what? They won’t bring Grisha or Semyon back. These people –’ I pointed at the magazine ‘– these people will survive anything you do and then they’ll kill you for it. It’s just the way of the world. So fuck ’em. I’m going to kill them. I don’t care that the CIA are involved and I don’t care about the gold, the heroin or any of that shit. I’m here for Red Ken, Dex and Tenny. They were all I had left. And now I’m here for Semyon and Grisha too. I’m here for revenge. What about you? You want some?’

Her whole demeanour had changed. ‘Yes – no more story. I want revenge.’

‘Good – you get me to the proving ground and I’ll do the rest.’

She took the cigarette from her mouth, flicked away the ash, and considered the burning tip. ‘How?’

‘I don’t know yet. We’ll share the riding – get us both out of the city and I’ll work something out.’

103

Outskirts of Vologda
0648 hrs

The night ride along the endless ribbon of pitted tarmac had been dank and miserable, and so was the truckers’ stop we’d pulled into. A strip of ancient wooden shacks was attached to each side of a filling station. Poor-quality light spilled from their windows and dribbled away into the forest. Power lines drooped between their poles and branched off over the parking area. If it hadn’t been for the Cyrillic signs, I could almost have been in the American Midwest.

I sat on Cuckoo, wet, cold and hungry – all the things I hated – waiting for Anna to come back.

A convoy of military trucks made their way down the other side of the road. Each set of headlights caught the rooster tail of spray thrown up by the one in front. As they drew closer, they slowed and stopped. I heard boots on tarmac before I saw soldiers run into the shops.

I made myself look busy, double-checking all our gear was well strapped down. The first filling station we’d come to must have thought they’d won the state lottery. Besides fuel cans, a small bubble compass and a roll of Sellotape, we’d bought them out of food, water and maps, and even their stock of towing kits.

The maps had been OK for getting us here, but the training area was just shown as a massive stretch of grey. No roads, buildings or even water-courses were marked, and there was no sign in the middle of it saying ‘Proving Ground’. But I had a plan.

I looked up. The convoy would have come from the naval air base Anna said was located about forty K further up the road. That was the direction we were heading when we left here.

The thunder of turboprops rumbled somewhere above the low cloud. Anna had said the base was where long-range aircraft took off to patrol the Atlantic. I knew the ones she was talking about – Antonovs with wingspans as big as B-52s, but props instead of jets. The papers had reported that the Russian crews held up boards with their email addresses on so the Brit interceptors could drop them a line and join their Facebook page.

Anna came out of the nearest shack carrying two paper bags and a couple of large steaming cups. She wasn’t short of admirers, even here. Five or six soldier boys followed close behind. They whistled appreciatively, zipped up their jackets and headed reluctantly for their wagon.

The bag she passed me contained a small loaf of brown bread and a jar of strawberry jam. I broke the loaf in half and scooped jam into it with two fingers. ‘Did you find out where we can get it?’

‘About ten kilometres further up the road.’

I wolfed down the bread and jam between gulps of strong, sweet black tea, then climbed back onto the saddle. Getting aboard Cuckoo was just like straddling a regular bike, except you had to manoeuvre your right leg just ahead of the metal bars connecting it to the sidecar and just behind the air intake for the right cylinder. I liked to be able to move my leg around, and it felt hemmed in by the hardware.

Another invisible aircraft laboured above us as I kick-started the Ural. I hoped the cloud cover hung in there. We needed all the help we could get.