Run for Home

A flash of light that shouldn’t have happened caught his eye. He blinked but kept going. Further along the pavement, he slowed and stepped sideways into the doorway of a Chinese grocery store.

He moved deep inside, amongst the half-dozen customers, and considered his options: to go on, or to abort? He wasn’t sure.

He took a jar of pickled cabbage from a shelf and turned to examine the vegetable racks stacked near the door. From there, he could see the third-floor window in the apartment building across the street. It was in darkness.

He waited a minute or two, foraging amongst the pods of broad beans and the cabbages, but he didn’t see another flash of light. Had he imagined it?

No. He was sure he hadn’t. As ever, he had been vigilant on his approach to the safe house. It paid to be careful, and caution was second nature to him anyway.

If the others had arrived, as they should have done by now, the light would have been on in the room; it wasn’t. He could think of nothing that might have caused a brief flash of light, nothing normal at least. It was worrying.

He came to a decision and chose several large sweet
potatoes to present to the small, tired woman behind the counter. She gave him a token smile, and weighed and bagged them, together with the jar of pickled cabbage. He paid and returned her courteous
Na’sledenou!
Goodbye!

Coming out of the shop, he turned to his right without looking up and walked purposefully along the street. Autumn, going on for winter. The last of the daylight almost gone now. There were deep shadows in doorways and stairwells. He breathed in the dank seasonal smell, and the breath he exhaled hung in a small cloud on the air before his face. Car headlights dazzled as they approached and swept past.

The flash of light still bothered him, made him uneasy, and he stayed on full alert. But he detected nothing else out of the ordinary. No one seemed to be watching the apartment building from any of the doorways he passed; no one was hanging around seemingly with nothing to do. There were no parked or idling cars on this section of the street. Everything looked normal. But he couldn’t get past the thought that the flash of light wasn’t normal. There was no obvious reason for it.

At the next intersection, he waited until a tram had squealed to a stop and then he dodged behind it and crossed the road, using the opportunity to glance upwards and to his left. The window was in darkness.

Back on pavement again, he dropped the bag of sweet potatoes and pickled cabbage into a bin and walked at a leisurely pace back towards the entrance to the building. When he reached it, he turned and climbed the half-dozen stone steps to the front door. He took his time. No hurry. A weary man heading home after his day’s work, perhaps? But his antennae were bristling, on guard for anything the slightest out of the ordinary.

The lighting in the hallway was dim; economy lighting,
not much better than emergency lighting. Paradoxically, the building was overheated, as if, unlike light, heat came free. So always, when they met here, they opened the window wide as soon as they arrived. He had seen it wasn’t open today. Something else to worry about.

Were the others not here yet? It didn’t look like it. Odd. He was slightly late himself. Were they later still?

He stood still in the entrance hall and listened. He heard the rattle of the heating pipes and the gurgling of an ancient radiator. Somewhere a door slammed shut, the sound reverberating. There were children’s voices upstairs, and he heard children’s feet clattering along a stone-floored corridor. He turned his head slightly and listened to the traffic noise building up outside, as evening set in. Then the lift began to whine as it started its slow, cranky descent.

He walked briskly a dozen paces along the dimly lit corridor to his left. Then he stopped and turned to face a scarred wooden door, his finger poised ready to press the buzzer set in the wall alongside.

The lift stopped and he heard its cage door rattle open. Moments later two men walked past the end of the corridor, heading towards the exit from the building. He waited until he heard the front door slam shut. Then he waited a few moments longer – an old precaution – before pressing the buzzer.

As the door to the apartment opened, he glimpsed out of the corner of his eye a figure appear at the end of the corridor. He didn’t turn to look but he knew one of the men had turned back, and that he was being observed. He didn’t like that. The dim light gave him some protection, his fur hat and upturned coat collar rather more, but it wasn’t good to be under inspection.

The tired and middle-aged woman who had come to the door looked up at him expectantly with a polite smile. He asked for Pán Novotny, having seen the name on a slip of card housed in the small tin bracket to one side of the door.

‘He is not here yet,’ the woman said. ‘May I help you?’

He shook his head, sighed and launched into a complicated fiction. They – his company – had been contacted by her husband, he said, about thermostatic radiator valves. He was anxious to progress matters.

No, she replied, shaking her head. It couldn’t have been her husband. He expressed surprise. She was sure? She was sure. He was astonished, couldn’t believe it. But she was certain.

She was so sure, she said, because they had already had such valves fitted. In these old flats you needed them. Otherwise the windows had to be open all the time, it was so hot. She knew she shouldn’t complain about being too hot in winter, but really. …

It was true, he said. He understood the problem. It was why his company. … He stopped, sighed with exasperation and proffered his apologies. He was so sorry to have disturbed her. The people in the office! Wasting both his time and hers.

She nodded and sympathized. It was still like that, everywhere. One day it would be different perhaps, even for ordinary people like them. Better, even. Her husband thought so. For herself, she wasn’t so sure. After all, twenty years had passed already, she added with a shrug of resignation as she started to close the door.

When he turned away, the figure at the end of the corridor was no longer there. He walked back to the hall, satisfied himself that no one was lurking, and headed for the stairs.
He didn’t trust lifts. These lifts, especially. They were open cages, traps, and inclined to fail and strand you helpless.

No one was about in the corridor on the third floor. He walked quickly along to the second door on the left and pressed the buzzer. He heard the raw sound of it reverberate inside the flat. No one came to the door. After a few moments, he used his key to open the door and stepped inside.

The sweet smell struck him instantly. He grimaced with recognition. Holding his breath, he moved reluctantly into the main room, his heart pounding.

They were there, the others. All three of them. None were alive. They had been shot in the back of the head: execution style. And not long ago. Their bodies were still warm.

There wasn’t much blood, but what there was he had identified as soon as he had opened the door. That distinctive, sickening smell you never forgot, and never mistook for anything else.

Shot. He knew now what had caused the flash of light. Landis had taken more than one bullet. He had tried to reach the window, perhaps to warn him. If so, it had worked.

Gregory and Phillips, meanwhile, had died as they had lived – quietly.

He swore savagely. He was shocked, and sickened. He fought back a wave of nausea. The questions were racing through his mind but he resisted them. He knew he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted. Survival, his own, was the priority now.

He had been lucky – so far. If he hadn’t been late arriving, there would have been four corpses here, not three. And if he didn’t get away quickly there still might be. He grimaced again, knowing he might already have made a mistake in turning on the lights as he entered the flat.

There was nothing to be done here. He turned to leave, and then checked. There was something here he could use, and might well need now it had come to this.

It took seconds to lift the floorboard and take out the holdall where the money in different currencies was kept, much of it in high-denomination banknotes. He had no idea how much there was; Landis had never said. But the weight told him it was a lot. Better for it to go with him than be left here. He also took out a handgun, a Glock pistol, and a box of ammunition.

He closed the door to the flat quietly when he left and walked quickly along to the central stairwell. Even before he got there he heard soft feet on the staircase down below. More than one person coming up, moving fast. He turned and ran upwards himself, quickly but quietly, staying close to the wall.

On the next floor, he hurried along the corridor to the far end, burst through the emergency door and ran down the metal fire-escape, down the four flights to the yard at the back of the building and out into a narrow alleyway. Then he walked quickly back to his car, parked several blocks away in a side street, and got into it with mixed feelings of relief and shock. Despair and anger, too.

He leant forward, closed his eyes and pressed his forehead hard against the steering wheel for a moment.

All of them. Damn, damn, damn! All three.

He straightened up. His inclination was to get as far away as possible, as quickly as he could, but he couldn’t do that. Not yet.

He started the engine, drove back along the main street and parked on a small patch of vacant land next to the railway, alongside several other cars. From there, he could
see the entrance to the building.

It was a busy corner. The traffic streamed by incessantly. Cars and a few trams, all ablaze with light now dusk had given way to night. People hurried along on foot, their breath clouding the air. Behind him a long goods train moved past slowly at the foot of the Vyšehrad hill, heading for the tunnel and then the bridge over the Vltava.

For ten minutes, nothing out of the ordinary happened across the street. He was shivering continually by then. It was bitterly cold and difficult to sit still, especially after what he had just discovered. Difficult to concentrate, as well. He began to think he should just go, after all – leave, get out, while he still could.

Then a shiny black car, a Jaguar, pulled up outside the building and sat with its lights on and the engine running, wisps of condensation and fumes puffing into the evening air. Two men in leather jackets came out of the building. At the foot of the steps, they paused to light cigarettes before getting into the car, which immediately pulled away fast into the traffic stream.

He was stunned and dismayed. Jackson and Murphy? Surely not! But it was. He was in no doubt whatsoever.

So he had something else to think about now. He swore bitterly and started the engine. Time he was gone.