Raya’s breath erupted in short, ragged gasps as she neared them, and she realized she couldn’t carry on much further. As she reached the young men, they parted to let her through, as if coordinated by a silent signal, then immediately closed ranks as the running man approached.
Seeing the human obstacle blocking the pavement, he didn’t hesitate. He swung out into the roadway, obviously intending to run around the Italians. As he swerved, one of the young men grabbed for him, but missed. A second one didn’t and this man, the biggest of the half-dozen Italians there, timed his move to perfection.
As the runner reached about six feet from him, he simply extended his left arm at a right angle to his body, directly in front of his target, and braced himself, a move known in close-combat as ‘the clothes line’.
The dark-suited man had no chance. He was going too fast to swerve or avoid the outstretched arm, so caught the Italian’s forearm squarely in his throat. His momentum drove his legs on for a couple of feet before he tumbled backwards, retching and choking, to the ground. Two of the other young men immediately leapt forward and sat on him, pinning him down. He was going nowhere any time soon, even without the injury to his throat.
Raya registered all this in another backward glance, but knew she still daren’t slow down. Because the driver of the car was now out of his vehicle and running as well, angling his way towards her from the road and obviously intending to intercept her.
But, actually, that wasn’t going to happen either. A crowd of passers-by had already assembled, and when they saw the man who’d just caused the accident trying to escape from the scene, several of them grabbed him and wrestled him to a halt, shouting and gesticulating in fast and very angry Italian.
As Raya kept on running, but now a little more slowly, she saw the SVR officer struggling violently and trying to fight his way free of the men holding him. A road junction loomed, and she swung left to run down the side street.
But, as she did so, she heard a sudden gunshot from behind her, and turned to look. The SVR man had wriggled free of his captors and had pulled out a pistol, which she could clearly see in his hand, and one of the men who’d been holding him now lay on the ground, clutching his stomach and screaming in agony.
Raya didn’t wait to see what would happen next: she just took to her heels again, finding new energy and additional speed from somewhere. She pounded along the street, dodged across the road, weaving through the traffic and down another side street, hoping she’d managed to get out of sight before the man wielding the pistol saw where she’d gone.
But that faint hope evaporated seconds later, when another shot rang out from behind and a bullet smashed into the wall only a few feet in front of her. She glanced back.
The man had just swung round the corner and was at least seventy yards back, still a slim enough margin. ‘Kosov, stop now!’ he yelled in Russian.
Raya ignored him, and ran. Ran for her life.
She dodged around the next corner, putting solid stone between herself and her pursuer, then turned left again, and almost immediately right, anything to try to confuse the SVR pursuer, to try to slow him down by making him stop at each junction to work out which way she might have gone.
And then, at the far end of the road, an unlikely source of salvation beckoned. A young Italian girl was just buckling on a crash helmet as she prepared to ride off on a Vespa scooter. Raya summoned her last reserves of strength and tried to speed up, desperate to reach the Vespa before the girl rode away.
Raya knew her safety margin was only seconds, maybe even fractions of seconds. As she approached, the girl glanced round curiously, then took a step closer to her scooter.
Another shot cracked out, the bullet ricocheting off a wall somewhere nearby.
The girl whirled round in panic, just as Raya reached her.
Raya knew she had no choice. She grabbed the girl by the arm, spun her round and pushed her away from the Vespa. The girl tumbled backwards, stumbled against the kerb and fell flat on her back.
Raya leapt onto the seat of the scooter, her eyes already flickering over the unfamiliar controls. She guessed the throttle was on the right of the handlebar, while the numbers on the left-hand side were the gear change and clutch.
The engine was already running, with a reassuring throb that she could feel through the seat. She pulled in the clutch lever, rotated the handlebar control to the number ‘1’, then simultaneously twisted the throttle and released the clutch.
It was a long way from being the smoothest start ever. The Vespa leapt forward, its engine screaming in protest, the front wheel almost lifting off the road, but Raya didn’t care. She was moving, already moving faster than any man could run, and right then that was the only thing that mattered.
She accelerated as hard as she could down the street, which continued straight for perhaps a hundred yards. Halfway along it, she risked changing up into second gear, then braked hard for the T-junction at the end. Only then did she risk a glance down the street.
The scooter’s owner had scrambled to her feet, and was staring straight along the street towards her. Raya could guess what the girl was thinking but, right then, pissing off an Italian teenager was frankly the least of her worries.
The SVR officer stood in the middle of the street, eighty-odd yards away from her, now well out of effective pistol range. He was talking into a mobile phone, no doubt calling for help and providing a description of the scooter Raya was riding. The Vespa had got her out of trouble, but she couldn’t stay with it long. She’d be altogether too exposed, and there was a good chance a policeman might stop her for not wearing a helmet.
What she had to do was get well clear of this district before any other SVR men turned up, then ditch the Vespa and lose herself somewhere in the sprawling city of Rome.
He had to do it that same night, Stanway knew, because he needed to be back at his desk on Monday morning. As he’d have to drive all day on Sunday to achieve that, the Russian clerk would have to die tonight.
He’d found a cafe a few miles up the road, and stopped there to eat a very early and very average dinner, and now he was on his way back to Ax-les-Thermes, heading south down the N20. As soon as he entered the village, he noticed that the Renault Laguna was no longer parked opposite the Hostellerie de la Poste.
That could simply mean that the SIS officers sent to debrief the Russian defector had checked out of the hotel, that continued surveillance wasn’t considered necessary. Or it could mean that they were already satisfied with what the defector had told them, and had decided to move him elsewhere, in order to start processing him. Stanway had no way of knowing which. If they’d moved the Russian, Stanway would have to abandon his plans and try again the following week, after he’d found out where the man was being held. But that would probably be both difficult and messy.
As he drove past the front of the hotel, he shot a glance to his left. The dining-room windows were wide open, it was a warm evening, and he could see, perfectly clearly, the fair-haired man sitting eating a meal by himself in the corner.
‘Excellent,’ Stanway breathed, and continued down the road without stopping, the Peugeot becoming just one more vehicle in a long line of cars heading south.
‘So what in hell’s got our Russian friends so riled up? Any ideas?’