Exit wound

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.