Nikola pressed herself against Calvary, her body and her mouth. He started to say something but she waved him away, her glance quick and liquid.
‘Go.’
*
Calvary dropped Gaines off just inside the German border. He parked near a bus depot and walked the fifty yards with him to the depot’s office, where there would be timetables.
Gaines said, ‘What will you do?’
‘I’m not going to tell you. Obviously.’ Calvary said.
Gaines turned, gave Calvary his hand. ‘I’m really most grateful.’
‘Even though I might have killed you. Even though you’ve been through two days of hell, and your life here is destroyed forever.’
‘They would have fed me to the Russians sooner or later. This… Chapel, or whatever they call themselves. And that would have been disastrous.’
‘Yes.’
He gave a silent laugh. ‘I don’t just mean for me personally.’ Stepping a little closer he said, ‘I might as well tell you. Your Mr Llewellyn can’t be aware of this, but I know who TALPA is. The mole, the real one. Yes, I’ve been fed disinformation; I knew that was what it was at the time, and I assumed it was so that I wouldn’t compromise the real mole if I ever fell into Moscow’s hands. I might have held my own under questioning, enough that my interrogators would have believed the false information. But I might not have. By delivering me from Mr Llewellyn, from Moscow, you’ve done your country a great service.’
My country. Calvary suppressed a laugh of his own. He said, ‘And you’re not going to tell me who this mole is.’
‘Obviously.’
Calvary watched his back as he headed for the office, an old man with a stoop now that was more pronounced than in the beginning, as if his shoulders had recently taken on a weight.
*
The last light of the afternoon came coldly through the window. Alone in the carriage now, Calvary huddled into the corner of his seat. His eyes were closed, the unfamiliar Saxony fields and towns through the window having long ago lost their appeal. The train’s destination was Berlin, but he was going to change well before that.
He thought about Llewellyn, and how he’d looked as Calvary had pressed the barrel of the pistol against his forehead. For a second his face had morphed into that of the young man, Pelabo Ghilzai, the one he’d failed to kill in Garmsir.
But of course it wasn’t him. Nobody ever would be.
Calvary thought of the old man, Gaines, a stranger to him until right at the very end, an object he’d been intending to erase like a speck of grease. He thought of Nikola, of Max, of Jakub, dead. He thought Gaines and the three Czechs were among the bravest people he had ever met.
He had money to last a while, shored up in bank accounts Llewellyn wouldn’t be able to reach. Apart from that he had nothing. He could never return to England. He’d be looking over his shoulder forever, expecting to see Llewellyn’s Punch-like grin close behind.
And he needed urgent medical attention, because he’d had a bloody great hole drilled in his head.
But he was free, for now at any rate. He’d helped bring down Blažek, a blight on the lives of Prague’s citizens. He’d saved Sir Ivor Gaines, a good man – and, it seemed, an important one – from torture and death in a Moscow cell.
And he was alive.
For the first time in as far back as he could remember, Calvary smiled.
THE END
Martin Calvary will return in a new novel, Annihilation Myths, to be published for Kindle in autumn 2013.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I was born in England and raised outside Johannesburg, South Africa. Currently I live near London with my wife and daughters, and work full time as a doctor on the National Health Service.
My other novels include the thrillers Ratcatcher and Delivering Caliban, both of which feature spy hunter John Purkiss and are available for Amazon Kindle.
My blog is Dead Drop, where your comments are always welcome. You can also find me on Facebook here and on Twitter @TimGStevens. If you’d like to email me, perhaps with comments about this novel (good or bad!) please do: timstevens@aol.com.
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Tim Stevens
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