The Last Big Job (54 page)

This was the point where Ivankov thought he could lose
Loz.

He wondered what he was doing here. Could Crane be holed up
here following the robbery? Could Loz be doing some running for
him, keeping him in touch with developments? Was Loz going to lead
Ivankov straight to the man he had been contracted to kill? That
would be very agreeable. Ivankov had a good feeling about the whole
thing - if only he could keep tabs on Loz inside the
hotel.

The Russian placed the brochure back on the rack, strode
across the foyer and stepped into the lift after Loz, who pressed
the button for the first floor. He made no offer to his fellow
traveller about pressing a button for him. Manners was not his
strong point. Ivankov leaned across the front of Loz and thumbed
‘Two’.

The lift rose and moments later hissed to a stop at the first
floor. Loz got out and turned right, having completely blanked and
ignored Ivankov on the short journey.

The contraption could not go up quickly enough for the
Russian who, when it reached the second floor, contorted out
through the doors as they opened, ran to the stairs and hared down
them - hoping not to meet Loz on the way; but Ivankov had made an
appraisal of Loz’s mental capabilities in the short time he’d been
watching him, scoring him very low on the IQ
scale. He did not have the capacity to out-manoeuvre the
Russian, nor anyone else for that matter, Ivankov
believed.

At the first-floor landing, double swing doors made entirely
of smoked, patterned glass, opened out on to the corridor. Ivankov
paused. He could hear the murmur of voices further down the stairs,
but they were not important to him. He pushed one of the doors
slightly open and scrutinised the corridor. Loz was further down,
banging impatiently at one of the room doors. The Russian stepped
back out of sight, able to hear the banging through the doors. It
continued for a while, then there was silence. Ivankov gently
opened to door again and looked down the corridor. Loz was now
sitting outside the room. The Russian pushed the swing door open a
little further and worked out the room number - 117. The door
creaked on it hinges, so he moved back on to the landing as Loz
raised his head at the noise.

The Russian turned casually at the sound of people coming up
the steps behind him. Two people. A woman in front of a
man.

The man raised his head and looked past the woman, locking
eyes with the Russian.

Both men recognised one another in that instant.

Henry mouthed the word ‘Fuck!’ as recognition of the Russian
hit him like a thunderbolt. His mind tumbled and twisted. The
Russian killer, Ivankov, here in the hotel! The meeting Henry had
had with Alexandr Drozdov. The race against time to capture Crane
before the Russians got to him first. . . and now Ivankov here, the
Moscow Mafia’s most notorious and successful assassin, in the
hotel, showing that the Russians were well on Crane’s
tail.

Danny, a couple of steps in front of Henry - who had been
concentrating on her bum - was on the landing with the Russian. She
was unaware of who was standing in front of her, thinking the man
was just a hotel guest, nothing more. He had a vaguely familiar
look about him, but she did not make any connection with the
photograph she’d seen until it was too late. . . by which time the
Russian, who did not know who she was, other than a handy
bargaining tool, had grabbed her.

He moved with incredible speed; confident, self-assured,
having already planned his next moves in his mind.

He yanked Danny roughly towards him, spun her round and
pinned her tight against him with his left forearm across her
throat, making her gurgle desperately for breath. She did not even
get the chance to scream. In
the same
movement, he drew his silenced pistol from the waistband of his
trousers and jammed the barrel against Danny’s lower spine. He
reversed through the swing doors, off-balancing Danny, and dragged
her on her heels, almost at a run, down the corridor to where Loz
was sitting.

A dumbstruck Henry followed. He was completely disorientated
by this turn of events and did not know what to do, other than to
wait, see, react or pro-act if the opportunity arose.

Loz scrambled to his feet, his face screwed up in puzzlement.
By the time his slow mind had made sense of it, the Russian, with
hostage, was right up to him and Loz was staring down the barrel of
Ivankov’s gun. His hands shot up straight away.

‘
Who does the room belong to?’ the Russian demanded of
him.

Loz’s eyes flickered to Henry who was standing a few paces
down the corridor. ‘Him.’

Henry’s eyes wavered from the petrified Danny, to her
abductor, to Loz and back again. He gave Danny the best look of
reassurance he could muster, sickeningly aware that it was probably
not very reassuring at all. He wasn’t certain how to handle this.
Henry was a trained hostage negotiator, but this situation did not
fit neatly into anything he had learned. Most hostage-takers were
amateurs driven by greed, emotion, sickness or commitment to a
cause; they were not usually professional killers
and the negotiator wasn’t usually part of the
scenario.

‘
Stay calm,’ he said to Danny, then to Ivankov, ‘What’s this
about?’ Henry had decided that time spent in the corridor was a
bonus. It meant other people might see what was going on and raise
the alarm. Once inside the hotel room, out of sight, the Russian
would be in complete control. ‘Let’s talk.’

Ivankov was not about to fall for any delaying tactics. He
sniggered and said, ‘Open the door and go into the room.’ He pushed
his gun hard against Danny’s cheek. ‘Or I’ll
kill her here and now, and then the both of you - as you know
I’m capable of doing.

Henry licked his dry lips and slowly went for the room key in
his trouser pocket.

‘
Well, I’ll
be going then,’ Loz said
brightly, as if to walk away. ‘You obviously don’t need me. This is
something between yourselves.’ He smiled and bowed
humbly.

Ivankov’s gun swung towards him again. Loz cowered back
against the wall. ‘I think not.’ He turned back to Henry, tightened
his grip across Danny’s throat and reiterated, ‘Open up.’ He smiled
and Henry thought, This man is not concerned that he’s outnumbered
here. He’s actually enjoying this. It’s a test of his skills - and
not much of a test at that. Additionally, Henry thought desolately,
None of us three will walk away from this encounter
alive.

Ivankov drew Danny back a couple of feet as Henry went to the
door, unlocked it. He pushed it open and stood back, letting the
Russian see into the room. Ivankov waggled his gun at Loz. ‘You
first - then you.’ He indicated Henry. ‘Please don’t do anything
silly or suddenly, or I’ll kill you all very quickly ... it’s not a
problem to me.’

Ashen-faced and fearful, Loz trudged into the room, followed
by a dry-throated Henry whose fingertips were starting to dither
with anxiety; then Ivankov and Danny, who was beginning to go faint
as the blood supply to her brain kept being cut off and then opened
as the pressure from Ivankov’s forearm varied.

The hotel room was fairly standard. There was a short hallway,
off which was a bathroom; beyond was a double-bedded room with
fitted wardrobes and a small writing desk. A floor-to-ceiling
sliding window led out on to the balcony overlooking the pool. The
curtains were drawn and the room was in semi-darkness, a slit of
sunlight cutting through the narrow gap between the curtains. The
bed was unmade and in disarray, and Henry’s clothes, and some of
Danny’s, were scattered around. The indent of their bodies was
still visible where they had been lying and making love earlier
that morning.

Loz and Henry stood sheepishly in the space between the bed
and the sliding window, facing Danny and Ivankov.

‘
I think you can let her go now, don’t you?’ Henry said
firmly. For any chance of survival, Henry reckoned Danny had to be
away from the Russian.

Once more, it was as if Ivankov was reading Henry’s thoughts.
He shook his head and pushed the Makarov hard into Danny’s waist,
just above the hipbone. She uttered a squeak of pain. ‘You are a
policeman, aren’t you?’

‘
Yes, I am.’

‘
I knew it when I saw you with Jacky Lee,’ Ivankov said with a
hint of triumph.

‘
And that’s why you’ll never get away with this, or the murder
of Jacky Lee.’

On those last words, Danny now understood who was holding her
and she said, ‘Oh God!’ instinctively, then, ‘Ahhh!’ as Ivankov
wrenched his arm back on her throat to shut her up.

‘
Keep quiet,’ he whispered into her ear, ‘otherwise I’ll break
your neck. And as for you’ - he looked across at Henry - ‘making
those stupid claims just serves to annoy me intensely, because I
always -
always,’
he stressed, ‘get away with it . . . but what interests me
here and now is, what is this all about? Why were you’ - and here
he addressed Loz - ‘knocking on a policeman’s door?’

Loz opened his mouth, but Henry interjected quickly. ‘He’s a
witness against Billy Crane. I know you’ve come for Crane, but
you’re too late, Yuri. He’s being arrested at this moment by the
Spanish police on my behalf. So you can go back to Russia and tell
Alexandr that the chase is over and the law has won.’

‘
I’m impressed, Mr Policeman,’ the Russian said genuinely.
‘You know my name.’

‘
That’s because you make mistakes.’

Ivankov’s face hardened at the slight to his professionalism.
He looked away from Henry and pointed his gun at Loz. ‘Is it true
that Crane is being arrested now?’

‘
Y-yeah,’ Loz responded hesitantly after eyeing Henry for a
lead and giving the lie away. This hesitation meant that the
Russian pulled the trigger and shot him. With no more than the
sound the metallic click of the hammer falling to indicate firing,
the silenced slug struck his shoulder, exploding in the joint on
impact, sending Loz spinning back against the curtains which he
tried to cling to as he fell to the floor. Blood poured out of the
devastating wound and he went immediately into shock.

‘
You bastard!’ Henry snarled, but had the sense not to make a
move.

Ivankov screwed the smoking muzzle into Danny’s waist and
raised his eyebrows. ‘Now then,’ he said in a businesslike way, ‘do
not waste my time, Mr Policeman. Just tell me the truth of the
matter and where I can locate Mr Crane. I’ll be upfront with you.
Even if you tell me willingly, I’m going to kill you all. If you
don’t tell me willingly, then I will have to waste precious time
extracting the information from you using techniques in which I’m a
little rusty. But I guarantee that you’ll regret not telling me
willingly in the first place. So, either tell me now and die
quickly, or refuse and die slowly... the choice is
yours.’

Ivankov regarded Henry with an ice-chilling stare, critically
appraising the cop standing across the room from him. In that
instant, the Russian made a judgment call. He pulled the gun out of
Danny’s side and pointed it at Henry. ‘In fact, you’re going to
die
now,
Mr
Policeman, because I’m quite sure I’ll be able to get all the
information I need from this woman.’ He tightened his grip on
Danny’s throat with a hard, backwards jerk. ‘You’d be just too much
like hard work.’

The gun rose and seemed to focus in on Henry’s palpitating
heart.

Henry emitted a gasp of fear. He was about to back away,
saying, ‘No, no,’ about to plead for his life when Danny, with a
surge of strength, twisted into Ivankov and lashed out with her
right hand in a sudden, chopping motion, bringing it down on to
Ivankov’s wrist with such force that his fingers spasmed open and
the gun dropped on to the bed.

Screaming, ‘Get the gun, Henry, get it!’ Danny kept on turning
into the killer, at the same time driving her right heel down on to
his foot.

Ivankov was thrown off-balance by the tiger in his grasp - but
only momentarily. In a flurry of limbs he quickly overpowered her
and was back in charge, though Danny refused to cease struggling
wildly, antagonising him.

Briefly taken aback by the distraction, Henry was now moving
swiftly across the room towards the bed - and the gun.

Ivankov saw Henry’s intentions.

Roaring, he grabbed hold of Danny’s hair in his right hand,
his left hand going to the back of her neck. With a powerful jerk
he snapped her head backwards with his right hand and pushed
forwards with his left. He then threw her down on to the floor
beside him where she flopped.

Then he went to beat Henry to the gun.

Too late.

Henry was there just before the Russian, having hurled himself
across the bed, fumbling the gun into his trembling hands but still
able to aim it up at the advancing figure, stopping him in his
tracks.

His breathing laboured, Henry looked up at Ivankov along the
barrel which trembled in his grasp.

‘
Ha!’ The Russian’s hands went up in surrender. He stepped
back, stood upright, then without warning launched himself towards
Henry, figuring that he would be too lightning quick for the cop
who was bound to hesitate about pulling the trigger anyway. Hadn’t
he already proved that once before?