Silver (39 page)
Authors: Steven Savile
Frost nodded. He seemed about to say something. It was rare that Ronan Frost didn’t simply speak his mind.
“What is it?” the old man asked.
“I saw the screens in the control room,” he licked his lips. “Konstantin, Orla. They’re ours too. And has Noah checked in? This is a mess.” The understatement of the year.
“There’s nothing to be done,” the old man said. It sounded harsh in his own ears even as he said it. Frost didn’t so much as flinch. He accepted the judgment like the professional soldier he was.
“I’m not finished looking,” Lethe said. “I found someone in the crowd who was filming the Pope’s blessing on his cell phone. The angle’s right, with a bit of luck he caught everything on film. The only problem is I’ve got no idea who he is and have only actually seen the back of his head.”
“That’s a bit of a problem,” Frost said, but the possibility that someone had caught the truth of the assassination on their cell phone seemed to energize him. “But it’s not insurmountable. Koblenz is a small enough city. Get the plod to go door to door with a photograph of the back of the guy’s head. You know the deal: Is this you? Is this you? Is this you? It has to be someone.”
There was nothing to say that that particular someone even came from Koblenz, but it was a straw worth clutching at. He could see that in Frost’s face. No man left behind.
“The police won’t go door to door. They took thousands of statements at the scene. If he had seen anything, the BKA will already know, and most likely, if they know he was filming, they will have confiscated his cell phone as potential evidence.”
“They might not have looked at the film yet,” Frost said.
“Or they might have seen it and deleted it already,” Sir Charles said. He knew all too well how some of these profile investigations went. They had evidence, witnesses, and a prime suspect that the British Government would already have disowned. A Russian defector with paramilitary experience? They couldn’t have asked for a better assassin. They wouldn’t be looking for the knife in the hands of the supposedly most loyal guardsmen in the world. It didn’t sit with their investigative mindset, and why would it? They all saw Konstantin do it. Or at least thought they did.
“It’s worth a try. It has to be,” Frost pushed. “What about the guardsmen themselves?” He looked at Lethe. “Any of them see what happened?”
“If they did, I’d expect another corpse to turn up any minute now, wouldn’t you?” Lethe asked.
Frost nodded. “But will another dead body be enough to barter Koni’s freedom?” Frost and the old man locked gazes. Sir Charles was the first to look away. “I want to go out there,” Frost said. “I’m no use sitting on my hands here. Hell, if it comes right down to it, Noah and I can go in there and bust him out of that damned German prison cell. It’d only need the two of us to bring him home. Then the three of us can go get Orla.”
He made it sound so simple.
It wasn’t.
It was a geopolitical minefield.
The suits at Vauxhall Cross might deny Konstantin, but that didn’t mean the Germans would necessarily believe their denials. It came down to whether they believed he was British or Russian, which side he was currently working for and which government they wanted to hang out to dry. Deals could be made, perhaps. The only fly in the ointment was the fact that the public needed to see someone suffer.
“That won’t be necessary,” Sir Charles told him. “You take care of Maxwell, I will make the call. If there is anything that can be done, it will be done. But I am making no promises. Understood?”
“This is becoming
rather a bad habit, Charles,” Control’s reedy voice said over the telephone. “I don’t suppose I need to remind you about the hour, or point out that civilized people are abed?”
“I’m not going to apologize,” the old man said. “You know what is happening. Those are my people out there.”
“And that’s a damned shame, but there’s nothing I can do about it. And even if there was, these midnight calls are hardly endearing, old boy.”
“How long have we worked together?”
“Longer, I am sure, than either of us would like to admit.”
“And how many times have I asked you for help, Quentin?”
“Oh, is that the card your playing? The ‘I’ve been a good and faithful servant all these years and you owe me’? I thought better of you.”
“You’re the second person to say that to me tonight. The first one is dead. Regrettably, she killed Maxwell.”
“Are you telling me Nonesuch was breeched?”
“That’s exactly what I am telling you.”
“Have you been compromised, Charles? Tell me the truth. There’s nothing to be gained by protecting your pride.” Quentin Carruther’s tone shifted, his affected tones suddenly more urgent, all hint of playfulness stripped from his words.
“The situation was contained, this time.”
“Are you sure?”
“I killed the intruder myself, Quentin. Her blood is still all over my clothes, and her corpse is in my bed. I couldn’t be much surer.”
“Well that’s something, at least.”
“I want him out of there, Quentin,” the old man said, shifting the subject back to Konstantin Khavin.
“There’s nothing I can do, Charles. I don’t run you boys anymore, not that I ever did, really. You’ve had far too long a leash for too long a time. This is the new world order, my friend, and there’s a new sheriff in town. Talk to him, talk to the Chief. If anyone can pull diplomatic strings it’s him. My hands are decidedly stringless. But don’t hold your breath. Your boy knew the risks when he signed up. Her Majesty is hardly about to claim responsibility for the papal assassin, now is she?”
“He didn’t do it and you know full well that he didn’t.”
“Neither here nor there, though, is it? The camera never lies. If he was innocent, the picture proving it would have been all over the tabloids by now. As it is they’re calling for his head as though he were John the Baptist.”
“I want him out of there, Quentin.”
“And I want Pretty Boy Floyd to come massage my aching feet. I suspect both of us are going to be disappointed, don’t you?”
“Someone in the crowd filmed it,” the old man said, trying a different tack.
“I am sure they did, but again, it doesn’t help us. Your boy wasn’t supposed to be there. He was operating without German consent. He assaulted the Israeli ambassador’s men in Berlin. There is photographic evidence of him breaking and entering into a dead man’s apartment, and enough to suggest he might be linked to the whole sorry affair. They want him, old boy, and there is sweet Fanny Anne that I can say or do that will change their minds. He was careless. He got caught.”
“So you’re saying he should have let the Pope die?”
“I don’t know whether you noticed, but His Holiness died. So yes, as far as Her Majesty is concerned, Khavin’s involvement in this debacle is nothing short of embarrassing. She could come out publicly and say, ‘Yes, we sent an agent to try to protect the Holy Father, but that agent failed.’ It doesn’t look good for a monarch to admit fallibility. Then there are the questions of why we didn’t turn everything over to the German authorities the moment he suspected something was going to happen on their soil. Things are fractious enough even sixty years on. To say that there is still bad blood between our countries is something of an understatement.
“We can’t make him disappear; that will just make the Germans look foolish. We can’t trade him one for one because it’s been years since we’ve held a German citizen as a gheight=f Her Majesty’s Displeasure. We can’t bully them into giving him back; how would that make us look? Give us back the man who just killed the Pope! Can you imagine? Just be grateful they don’t have the death penalty anymore. They’d have him hanging from a gibbet in the same town square, ironic given one of the purposes of the blessing, if you think about it.” Control had the decency not to chuckle at his own joke. “No one is going to come out of this very well, Charles. Now it is all about damage limitation. The eyes of the world are on Koblenz. Give them Khavin. They have it all on film, they get to look good, a fast efficient clean up, justice served and everyone is happy. That’s the long and the short of it.”
“Not everyone,” the old man said. “You don’t want me to turn this into a war, Quentin. He’s my boy. I lost one of mine today, and I refuse to lose another.”
“Is that a threat, Charles?”
“You know it is, old boy,” the old man said. “I suggest you make the call and don’t try and fob me off with deniability. You’ve got a duty to Konstantin.”
“I suppose you want me to mount an invasion? We could take Tel Aviv while we are at it, bring your girl home, a two-for-one special. Don’t be so naive, Charles. Khavin is nothing more than an unfortunate incident. He doesn’t even register as collateral damage. You need to understand, if you continue to push this, we’ll cut you off. It’s as simple as that. Ogmios will cease to be useful. You’ll be closed down.”
The old man breathed into the phone, letting his silence speak for him.
“In case the nuance was lost on you, that was a threat, dear boy,” Quentin Carruthers said.
“Or I could just send Frost around to your house tonight. It’s always tragic when an old man dies, but there’s something natural about dying in your sleep, don’t you think?”
“And to think I used to call you my friend.”
“There is no such beast in this game, Quentin. There are those that can help us and those that stand against us. I want my boy back, and I will do anything to make it happen. So, I say again, make the call, bring him home.”
“If I do this, and that’s by no means a given, Charles, if I do this, you’re through. I want everything you’ve got on this operation turned over to my people in the morning. I’ll close you down. You understand just what is you are asking?”
The old man didn’t answer him.
He hung up.
28
In Chains
Time lost all meaning in the dark of the dungeon. Occasionally Orla heard something. Sometimes it would be the skitter and scratch of rats scurrying along the edge of the cell wall; other times it would be a whimper in the blackness, a voice, a sob, a cry. And then there were the nightmares as her head went down and she thought she’d slipped into the dark for real, only to hear him whispering in her ear, goading her, “Tomorrow you die.”
How could he not understand that tomorrow was all she wanted,>
The cuffs dug into her wrists, cutting the balls of her palms bloody. She had hung herself, putting all of her weight onto them, only for the steel to bite deeper and the blood to run hotter, but it didn’t matter how deep the cuffs sliced, she couldn’t wriggle free of them. She twisted, pushing off the wall. The cold stone was damp against her back.
She had seen what had happened to the girl, how they had taken her head as a trophy and thrown it at the camera.
She knew that was her fate if she didn’t get out of this dark country.
She was going to get out.
It was as simple as that.
She was going to get out.
She said it over and over, like a mantra.
Somehow she’d let herself be turned into a victim. It wasn’t her. She was stronger than that. She’d been to hell and back and survived. She would survive again.
She was alone in the dark. She stood on her toes when she could no longer bear the agony of hanging, and hung from her wrists when she could no longer bear the torture of trying to stand.
Every ninth heartbeat a single drop of water dripped onto her skin from the damp ceiling. Sometimes it hit her shoulder and ran down through the valley between her breasts. Sometimes it her cheek and ran down her neck. And sometimes she tried to catch it with her tongue. It was never enough to slake her thirst.
She felt the rats brush up against her bare feet. They sniffed at her ankles. She knew they were drawn to the heat of her body, her blood and her bones, but they wouldn’t feast while she was alive. Every inch of her skin crawled. Every ounce of her flesh burned. She shifted her weight and kicked out at the curious rat. The kick lacked any strength, but it was enough to send the rat scurrying away again.
There was a bucket in the corner. The rats liked to sniff around that, too. They made her wait for it, adding humiliation to the torture, bringing the bucket once a day, once every two days—it was hard to tell in the dark. They wanted her to degrade herself and then to have to hang in her own feces and urine. It was another step to robbing her of her humanity. She refused to give them the satisfaction. She didn’t care if they made her crouch naked over a pot and laughed. She made them fight for every little victory they won, that way she didn’t just give up and let those little victories become big victories. That bucket was her key to salvation. There as some leeway on the chain depending upon how her captors secured it against the wall. There was enough play for her to squat with her hands by her side for support, which meant, if the chain was played out to its longest, there was enough room for her to bring her hands down to her waist while standing, and almost all the way to the floor when she crouched.
Orla heard other sounds then. Footsteps in the darkness.
He was coming back.
She closed her eyes, steeling herself. Her first instinct was fear. Fear would get her killed. She needed to survive. That was the only thing she needed. Uzzi Sokol and his friends could rape and torture her, she would survive. Her body could take the abuse. So could her mind. They could try to break her, she was strong. They could demean her, beat her, spit at her, lash her, they could do all of that. She had suffered worse. There was nothing they could do to her that hadn’t been done before. That was the truth of Israel. There was no torment the country could inflict upon her that it hadn’t done already.
She heard the rattle of keys, and the door opened. The tiniest slither of light spilled into the cell. Her eyes had become so accustomed to the sensory deprivation of the dark that even that was enough to burn them. She twisted, trying to see her torturer. He was dressed head-to-toe in black, a hood over his face like an executioner. He had a pistol in his right hand, a Jericho 941. It was a standard issue Israeli security services handgun known as a Baby Eagle. She felt her breathing change, suddenly shallow and short. If she didn’t get control of herself, she was going to hyperventilate. She struggled to slow the frantic rise and fall of her chest, to catch her breath.
He walked toward her, each footstep deliberately slow and measured. They were deafening in the silence.
“I told you I’d come back,” Sokol said. She felt his rancid breath against the nape of her neck. She knew it was him despite the hood. His voice was imprinted on her soul. She closed her eyes. She felt his hand touch her. She didn’t flinch. Somehow his breath was worse than his touch. Orla stifled the urge to twist away as his hand cupped her breast and pulled her toward him. She knew better than to move. He would only hit her if she did. So she let him touch her despite the revulsion she felt at his hands. “I would never deny you your time in the spotlight. You’re going to shine. I’m going to make you a movie star, like Marilyn, bigger even. By the end of today everyone will know your name. Would you like that, Orla? Would you like to be a star?”
He came in close, sloppily so, but he still had the sense to keep his gun hand away from her. She tasted his fetid breath in the back of her throat as she inhaled it. It stank of stale cigarettes. He let his fingers linger on the nape of her neck then caressed all the way down the ladder of her spine bone by bone to the soft swell of her buttocks. He hooked a foot around her ankle and forced her legs apart. There was nothing sexual about it. Sokol was showing her he had all of the power now.
Unbalanced, Orla stumbled slightly to the left, allowing his cold fingers to touch her. She winced despite herself.
“Did you miss me?”
She didn’t say a word.
He stepped back and slapped her hard across the face.
“I asked you a question, woman. Didn’t your mother teach you anything? When I ask you a question, you answer me. It isn’t difficult. Let’s try again. Did you miss me?”
She said nothing.
He backhanded her again, straight across the face. She turned her cheek with the blow. It made her eyes water.
“One more time. Did you miss me?”
Her mouth was painfully dry, but she managed to work up enough saliva to spit in Sokol’s face. The wad of phlegm hit the black hood. He didn’t wipe it away.
“You disappoint me, Orla. Such a pointless thing to do.” He leaned in again, close enough that the saliva smeared across her cheek. He was anything but gentle as he reached back between her legs. “Why should I care about a little bodily fluid when I can do this? It doesn’t make any sense, Orla. I thought you were a smart girl.”
It was a brutal invasion.
She arched her back and twisted her head, but there was nowhere she could go, nowhere she could hide from his vile touch. But she had no intention of hiding. She wanted him to come in closer. She needed his lust to rise. She needed him to forget about power. Her mind went cold, as though part of her soul detached elf and another creature, a harder one, took over to save her from the horror of what was happening. This other her waited for the single moment of sloppiness when his lust outweighed his sense.
It would come.
It had to.
Her life depended upon it.
She twisted around on the chains so she could look into his hooded face. His eyes were the only part of him she could see through the hood. They were wide. His breathing was shallow. She tried to hold his gaze, to draw him into hers, but couldn’t bear the intensity of his eyes as they stared into her. She moved her lips as though to say something. He wanted to hear. She knew he would. That was why there were no words. She wanted him in closer.
He turned his back on her and walked away, taunting her. She counted his footsteps. Six. Eight was the magic number. Eight would take him to the brace on the wall where her chain was tied off. Eight would mean he thought he was in control.
He came back to her and slapped her hard across the face.
Her pain brought a smile from him.
“You don’t want to make me angry, Orla,” Sokol said. She hated the sound of his voice. She finished the line in her head:
You wouldn’t like me when I am angry
. She didn’t laugh. She didn’t want him to think she was laughing at him. Sokol needed to think she was broken. She focused on that instead. She had survived before. She had survived worse. She would live through this.
Uzzi Sokol wouldn’t.
She promised herself that much.
He turned his back on her. He walked away. Seven steps. She counted each of them, willing him to take the eighth, willing him to release the chain so it played out another four feet. Four feet meant she would live.
He didn’t. He walked slowly back to her, tracing the muzzle of the Jericho from her cheek, slowly down her neck, following the artery that pulsed beneath the skin, over her collarbone and down around the swell of her breast. The metal was cold.
“Why are you doing this?” she said, barely a whisper.
Sokol’s hand stopped moving. He looked at her as though he had forgotten she could speak. “Because I can,” he said, and it was as simple as that. “Because in a few minutes the others are going to join us. They’re going to drag you into the center of the room, and they are going to cut your head off with a sword while the world watches on the internet. Until then you are still beautiful. And if I can make your last few minutes pleasurable, then what is the crime in that?”
She wanted to claw his eyes out. Instead she said, “Thank you.”
He hadn’t expected that. He thought it was the ultimate act of submission. She was giving herself to him. He kissed her then, in the soft hollow at the nape where her throat met her body, and it was almost tender. She closed her eyes. She let herself seem to sag against the chains. He felt her move and touched her again, like lovers do. It was all she could do not to lunge forward and bite his throat out with her teeth. She couldn’t do that. Not while her hands were still trussed above her head. She needed to be able to move her arms.
Uzzi Sokol touched her belly, pressing his palm flat against the taut muscle. It was a hideously intimate gesture, worse in some ways than all of the other invasions, because of the tenderness in it. She wanted the brutality because it made it easier to hate him. She waited out his touch. He had said the others were coming soon; that meant it was now or never, and never wasn’t an option.
She arched her back, then came forward, pressing herself up against him. She leaned in, her lips tasting the salt of passion in his skin.
He backed away into the darkness of the cell.
He didn’t like losing control. He didn’t want her dictating their dance, even in chains. He wanted to orchestrate every twist and shudder. He was sick. He walked away from her, five, six, seven, eight steps. She felt the chain go slack. Her arms fell to her sides. Almost immediately she felt the rush of her blood beginning to circulate properly. It was like a drug. She closed her eyes. She had one chance. She needed to stay calm. If this went wrong—if he balked or she sent the gun spinning out of reach—she was dead.
He walked toward her, pulling the black hood off so she could see his face. He dropped it on the ground. His face was a mockery of handsome, twisted by lust. Whatever shred of decency had lived inside Uzzi Sokol was gone. All that remained was this creature driven by primal instincts.
Orla tensed every muscle in her lower body, ready to explode into motion.
She surrendered to her other senses, listening as he neared, listening as his breath sounded ragged and aroused in her ear, and as he came forward, losing control, Orla arched her back and drove her head forward into the middle of his face. She felt his nose explode in a spray of blood and blinding pain. Sokol staggered away from her, stunned. She heard the clatter as he dropped the Jericho and brought his hands up to his face. He screamed over and over, “You bitch! You miserable bitch!” as he stumbled backward, looking for the safety of the darkness. Orla dropped down into a crouch, praying the gun had fallen within reach. For one heart-stopping moment she couldn’t see where it had fallen. She looked about frantically. Then she saw it. It had fallen right on the edge of the darkness, out of reach. She stretched out a foot, trying to hook it with her toes.
The barrel spun away from her.