Her skin hung off her face like musty drapes, her hair lank like ropes of cobweb. Even her eyes seemed to be sagging, not just the sacs beneath them but the eyeballs themselves, bleeding southwards like tilted yolks.
She was forty-nine years old, and looked like a woman three decades older. One who’d let herself go.
The blood clots in the vomit were bad news. For the past nine months or so the retching had been a semi-regular feature of her day, but she’d been able to work around it, eating when she felt least nauseous, spewing when her stomach was at its emptiest. The cigarettes had helped, stilling the pangs from her belly, giving her a hacking cough which had distracted from the gastrointestinal grumblings.
Dr Ostrovsky, the specialist flown in from Petersburg, had steepled his fingers on his desk, at their second meeting. The one following the assault course of investigations, scans and needles and proddings, he’d ordered after their first.
‘Perhaps one year. Two? Nobody can say. You have a not uncommon condition, Darya Yaroslavovna. It obeys the normal rules. Which is to say, its course is unpredictable.’
She’d had chemotherapy. That had been a little under two years ago. She was still alive. Alive, and with a final achievement within her grasp.
But that was now in doubt.
Tamarkin had been out of contact for ninety minutes now. He normally kept his phone switched on and at hand round the clock. Ninety minutes was too long for him to be taking a shower and moving his bowels.
Krupina wiped her mouth, splashed water on her face. She unlocked the door and walked past Yevgenia’s tight, impossibly young face.
‘Get me some cigarettes. That’s how you can help.’
The girl was waving a piece of paper at her. She grabbed it. It was a printed-out email. Krupina thought Yevgenia might have been about to slip it under the door of the lavatory.
Reinforcements authorised. Six men arriving in two lots, noon and six pm. Boy do you owe me.
It was something, at least.
*
Scant light came in through the crack in the curtains. It could have been almost any time of the day or the evening, but Calvary’s watch said it was nearly nine a.m.
Beside him Nikola breathed steadily, eyes closed, though he knew she was awake. Her hair spilled across her face and his arm.
‘I didn’t say thanks,’ he murmured.
She lifted her head.
‘For saving my life up on the roof.’
‘No. You did not.’ Her lips smiled against his shoulder. ‘Well, maybe you just did.’
She pressed closer to him. He felt her breast against his side.
‘So. No wife?’
‘No.’
‘Girlfriend?’
‘Not right now.’
She raised herself onto her elbow, traced a finger along a scar on his chest. ‘A soldier.’
‘I was.’
‘Why?’
‘Why did I become a soldier?’ He tilted his head. ‘On a whim. I was at college, studying mechanics. A friend had joined the army and persuaded me to do the same.’
‘And now you are – some sort of agent?’
‘No. Not quite.’ He let out a long breath. ‘In any case, that’s also past. Once I’ve found Gaines, I’m through with all this.’ He felt the shutters coming down, the withdrawal into the shadows that was automatic every time anybody touched on what he did for a living. ‘What about you? What’s your story?’
‘I studied journalism here at Charles University. I was going to go into television, I had some contacts and a possible job at a junior level. I met Jakub at a party. His father had got into debt, had become involved with Blažek’s loan sharks. He turned to drink, abandoned the family, was found dead under a bridge one winter morning.’ She shrugged. ‘His story moved me.’
‘You and Jakub...’
She smiled. ‘No. We were only ever friends. He was married. She left him because she could not compete with his commitment to the cause, to the bringing down of Blažek. Now Jakub is alone. With us, but alone.’ She ran her palm up his chest once more. ‘Like you.’
When she fell silent he glanced down, saw she was weeping again. He moved his arm to embrace her.
‘I am sorry. I was just thinking of Jakub, of Max… just a boy. Tied down somewhere, being hurt.’
Hurt…
Tightness creased the spot between his brows. He sat up, reached across to the bedside table for the remote, turned on the television. Nikola blinked in surprise.
Calvary flicked past a blur of commercials and cartoons until he reached a news channel. Jerking cameras roved about the streets surrounding the multi-storey car park. Police uniforms were everywhere, sometimes barging the cameras aside.
A reporter was shouting to make herself heard, pointing back at the parkhouse. Calvary looked at Nikola.
She shook her head. ‘She says very little. There has been shooting in the parking lot, ambulances have been removing bodies.’ She sat up, pulling the covers over her. ‘For what are you looking?’
He said nothing for a few seconds, staring at the screen. Then he pointed: ‘There.’
The time signature in the corner indicated that earlier footage, an hour and a half old, was being shown. One of the cameras was aiming up at the roof, where a helicopter was taking off. The helicopter bore a red cross, the unmistakeable mark of hospital transport, not of a police vehicle.
‘Someone’s being airlifted out. It means they’re alive.’ He looked at her. ‘Not one of Janos’s men. They were stone cold dead. The Russian.’
She watched him, unsure.
Calvary swung his legs out of bed, started pulling on his clothes. ‘I have an idea.’
EIGHTEEN
Llewellyn’s cheery voice made him want to hurl the phone at the window.
‘Sorry I missed you earlier. No network coverage.’
Calvary had tried twice more, eventually getting a reply fifteen minutes after he’d risen from the bed. He didn’t say hello, just: ‘Any information on those Russians from last night?’
‘Yes, as it happens.’ Llewellyn rustled some paper. ‘The woman sounds like Darya Krupina. An old KGB member, too young to have seen much action before the Soviet Union collapsed. She’s had postings in Bratislava and Vienna. Interestingly she’s not on the list of staff at the Russian Embassy there in Prague, which means she’s there in an unofficial role. Assuming it’s her, of course. The picture you sent wasn’t the best.’
‘What about the others? The younger men?’
‘The fair-haired one is Gleb Tamarkin. Up-and-coming SVR chappie, likely being groomed for great things. He’s been on the radar for the past three years, mostly in the Central European field, though he cropped up in Paris once. Again, no record of him at the Embassy. We don’t recognise the others.’
‘And you were going to let me know this information when, exactly?’ Calvary tweaked the curtains, saw nothing but desultory traffic on the road.
‘I rather assumed you’d be in touch when you needed to be.’ Llewellyn sounded playfully hurt. ‘Didn’t want to ring you at an inconvenient time.’
Not looking at Nikola, Calvary said, ‘What about the other information I asked you for?’
‘Those journalist friends of yours? Nothing. No connection with Blažek or the Russians. They seem to be who they say they are. Unusual in our line of work.’ A soft chuckle. ‘The young lady’s rather attractive, isn’t she? I’ve seen her picture.’
‘Shut up and listen.’ Calvary told him about the events at the parkhouse.
When he had finished Llewellyn said, ‘Well. That’s a turn up, if this young hoodlum Janos was telling the truth. A turncoat SVR officer, working for organised crime.’