A Shadow Falls, page 20
part #2 of Jenny Aaron Series
Important rule: make it simple and make it fast.
He shoots Bulldozer in the back of the head and throws himself against the closet door. It smacks Nutcracker squarely in the face and sends him reeling. As Pavlik flies towards him, the man numbly tries to evade him, haphazardly fires in his direction, but misses him. Pavlik slams Nutcracker’s lower arm onto the knee he sends darting up. The man drops his gun with a groan and staggers as Pavlik rams his fist into his face.
So far, it’s been a piece of cake. As he stabs his Glock into Nutcracker’s jugular notch he wonders whether he overestimated him.
He didn’t.
The man bats aside the weapon so fast that to Pavlik it looks like an abrupt cut in a film.
Nutcracker grabs the silencer. Both try to gain possession of the gun, twisting their hands at mind-boggling speed, while belting kicks and any free fist into the other’s face, eyes and genitals.
A tiny window opens in Nutcracker’s cover. Pavlik slams his palm onto his opponent’s lips, which sends an electric surge shooting through the man’s body.
But it’s a pyrrhic victory. Nutcracker has simultaneously levered the gun out of Pavlik’s hand. The Glock tumbles to the floor.
They stand facing each other, one metre apart.
The guns are lying between them. They read in each other’s eyes that neither of them is going to try to reach them.
Nutcracker spits out blood. ‘Tired, old man?’
‘Let’s find out.’
Pavlik’s shifts his weight onto the balls of his feet, draws his chin down onto his chest to protect his jaw and opens the debate with a swift right-hand jab, which Nutcracker neatly blocks, replying with a double hand against Pavlik’s sternum. He responds with a reverse punch, driving his shoulder and hip forwards to give the blow a brutal power. Normally this is a knock-out argument, but it shows no effect. Nutcracker just shakes himself off, continues the conversation with a kick to Pavlik’s neck and even stays relaxed when Pavlik drives his knuckles into his spleen. They swap anecdotes with humourless upper cuts and jabs. Nutcracker’s fist makes an arrogant assertion against Pavlik’s sinus node, which Pavlik contradicts with rollicking liver shots. The ridgehand that his opponent fires off could have buckled his windpipe like a straw, but it dissipates like chatter because Pavlik ducks down.
He could spend hours chewing the fat with Nutcracker, but time is ticking away. Three minutes have passed since he opened the gate, and he is sure that his opponent will have already informed the others in the city.
Pavlik has to end the fight. Now.
The axe kick with his carbon prosthetic has the force of a sledgehammer.
But Nutcracker dodges it with lightning speed. With stiff fingers he stabs into the neuroplexus of Pavlik’s pelvic organs.
And straight into the scar below his navel.
The pain thunders towards Pavlik like a steam train and tears him into a black tunnel. In the void, a thought spins past him: he should have drawn his knife. In a blind reflex he pushes his thumbs into Nutcracker’s eyes, but there’s no strength in it.
Far away, he hears the voice of his instructor: You’re always engaged in two battles. One against your opponent and one against yourself. When everything inside you yearns to give up, you haven’t even reached half of your potential.
Nothing but mere theory; Pavlik slides into a big silence.
Nutcracker has done everything right. Except one thing: he rams his knee into Pavlik’s hip wound. Beside this pain there can be no other.
It’s like an adrenalin injection into his heart.
The train races out of the tunnel with him. Suddenly he sees everything in razor-sharp detail: Nutcracker’s white knuckles, the thick blue vein pulsating on his neck, the perfectly twisted shoulder as he prepares the final farewell with a kick to Pavlik’s head.
But no matter how much he can take, the knife that Pavlik drives into his thigh up to the plunge line, while simultaneously slamming his elbow onto the bridge of his nose, is too much.
Nutcracker keels over.
He stays down. He’s gone.
Pavlik once read that in Stalingrad they carried out amputations with the lids of tin cans. Without anaesthesia. That must have felt like his hip just then. He doesn’t sink to his knees, he falls. For half an eternity he just breathes to fend off the blackout that threatens to engulf him. His entire body consists only of this damned wound.
Pain does not exist. It is a fairy tale told by our nervous system, they’ve had drummed into them.
This particular fairy tale he will remember for ever.
Groaning, he pushes Nutcracker’s gun into his waistband. He pulls the knife out of the man’s leg, wipes it on his jeans and tucks it into the sheath under his jacket.
He pats down Nutcracker and finds the phone in his leather jacket. German display. He checks the last call. Five minutes ago, Moroccan number.
Pavlik checks the location of the Smart car. Still in Hivernage, now in the Rue du Temple. But at least one car is on its way over here.
He inserts a flash drive into Nutcracker’s phone and loads the app that Krampe, the Department’s technician, has developed. Pavlik grabs the Glock and slaps Nutcracker in the face until he wakes up.
When he opens his eyes they are blood red because Pavlik’s thumbs have caused the veins to burst.
You probably look better than I do.
He kicks the phone to Nutcracker. ‘Press the button and read out the text,’ he says.
‘Fuck you.’
‘Read it without altering your voice, or I’ll do the same to you as I did to your mate.’
‘The hell I will.’
Pavlik shoots him in the right knee. The man doesn’t make a single sound, but red tears trickle from his red eyes and over his stark white lips.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Pavlik growls. ‘First both knees, then the elbows, then your balls.’
Nutcracker takes the phone.
The app will generate a mirror pattern of his voice. Krampe has a penchant for poetry and has chosen a poem that contains all the necessary sounds for a perfect clone.
It is by Robert Gernhardt and is called: ‘The Intercity Has a Brake Failure After Karlsruhe.’
Grudgingly, Nutcracker starts to read: ‘Framed in the lilac’s purple blaze stands a cottage—’
Pavlik shoots off his left earlobe. ‘Like I said: read it with your normal voice.’
He makes more of an effort now. ‘Framed in the lilac’s purple blaze stands a cottage / The rusting tub is immersed in blooms / A path runs dry and dusty / Unceasing, the wind tugs at the grass / All is enraptured: the swallows, the blossom / All is steady: the fences, the hedgerows / All is illuminated: the ballast, the sleepers / All is buggered: the brakes, the schedule.’
‘Good boy.’
Nutcracker slides the phone back over to Pavlik.
‘Stand up,’ he says.
The man tries to get up. He uses his kneecap as an excuse, failing artfully. Pavlik wouldn’t dream of helping him.
When Nutcracker realizes that Pavlik isn’t falling for it, he pushes himself up.
‘Turn round.’ Pavlik hits him over the head with the butt of the Glock. Nutcracker collapses. He drags him to the closet, shoves him in, locks the door and calls the number on the screen.
It is answered immediately. ‘Yes?’
‘Where are you?’ he asks in English. For the person on the other end he now sounds like Nutcracker.
‘About halfway. Anything new?’
‘You can turn round. It was the cleaner. I’ve disposed of her.’
‘Oh boy.’
Someone with Nutcracker’s abilities would be a leader in any elite unit. Correspondingly, Pavlik acts self-assured. ‘Go cry to your mama. What’s Layla doing?’
‘She’s taken the boy to school.’
A child. That complicates matters.
‘Stay on her,’ Pavlik says coolly.
‘She’s having breakfast on the terrace of the Royal Mirage. Three are with her. Shouldn’t we still—’
‘You’ve heard me,’ he snaps.
‘OK. Where shall we send her afterwards?’
His pain is abruptly numbed by a realization:
Layla is receiving orders from them.
‘To the Palais Badi, tell her to go for a walk,’ he forces out.
The other man ends the call.
He senses it even before the gate to the road closes.
Behind him.
He drops the gun and raises his hands.
Very slowly he turns round. He sees highly polished Italian shoes and hears a voice from the realm of the dead.
‘Hello, Pavlik.’
18
At eight on the dot she called a pharmacy. They didn’t have Endothelinac in stock. Aaron got the same answer from the next two she rang. She could carry on trying, but it’s clear that the earliest she will get the drug is the day after tomorrow. She has ordered it nevertheless. She doesn’t know how long she will have to stay in Marrakech. How quickly they can get to Layla.
‘Twelfth of February. Thursday. Eight a.m., ten minutes, forty-seven seconds,’ says her watch in the car.
Forty-seven.
Forty-seven.
Forty-seven.
As far as she’s aware, the number hasn’t played any significant role in her life. Did it have a special meaning for Holm? If yes, it would have to relate to something that connects them.
Suddenly it’s so simple that Aaron can’t understand why she didn’t think of it straight away.
Bushid¯o.
The forty-seven r¯onin. Of course.
The feudal lord Asano Naganori once came to the court of the sh¯ogun in Edo. When a master of ceremonies insulted him, Naganori sliced open the master’s forehead with his sword. For this, the sh¯ogun ordered Naganori to kill himself by seppuku, which caused his samurai to become leaderless r¯onin.
Forty-seven of them decided to avenge the death of their daimy¯o. Because the master of ceremonies suspected this, he had his house protected by the sh¯ogun’s household guard. The r¯onin still managed to force their way in. They killed half an army. Their leader decapitated the master of ceremonies with Naganori’s sword, and the r¯onin laid his head on their lord’s grave in the temple of Sengakuji. Then they turned themselves in to face the sh¯ogun’s judgement and also committed seppuku.
Like Aaron, Holm followed Bushid¯o philosophy.
He knew of the legend.
He insisted on having the safe deposit box number forty-seven.
What is Holm trying to tell her?
That her revenge will bring about her death?
Perhaps it was also intended as a consolation. The r¯onin died honourably. If they had accepted their fate, nobody would remember them today.
She pushes it aside and concentrates on the present.
It’s been thirty-eight minutes since Pavlik phoned her. Thirteen minutes ago the gate opened. He lured the men onto the property in order to eliminate them. He needs one of them alive, which presents a particular challenge.
Nevertheless, she should have heard Pavlik drive the Rover onto the premises by now.
It’s not going to plan, something is holding him up.
Of all the things that Aaron hates about being blind, waiting around and not being able to do anything is the worst.
Perhaps the Broker already knows who you really are.
If he does, then not from me.
Was that a hint that the Department has a leak?
It could also have been conjecture.
Aaron tries to crawl inside the Broker’s head. She is sitting on his two billion. He is wondering why Holm has made her the heiress, and can’t find an answer. The men who survived in the souks will have told him that Aaron and Pavlik can handle their weapons and are well versed in close combat. He will assume that they have been sent by an international police authority or a secret service.
A thought clings to her like a leech.
What if Layla is long dead, and the woman we think is Layla is in fact on the Broker’s payroll?
Aaron reaches for the equipment bag and rummages around in it. She finds the larger magazine for the Glock and whacks it into the grip. As if a few rounds will make a difference.
She hears the gate.
It’s closing again.
And the Rover hasn’t moved.
Aaron’s muscles tense, her heart does what it wants. She fixes the silencer onto the gun, tucks it into her jeans and gets out with the spare cane.
The shortest route would be through the palm grove. But she wouldn’t be able to get her bearings there, she’d be stumbling about.
She has to go along the road.
The first hundred metres she runs with her cane folded up. She is far enough from the villa for her clicking not to be heard. The echo guides her. Crossing the car park, Aaron dodges the cars, lampposts, signs, a refuse bin.
But not the flower tub.
The wretched thing was hiding in the reverberation off a palm. She suppresses a yell. At first she thinks her shin bone is broken. No. It can bear weight, it’s only bruised. She limps on, carefully at first, then faster again.
The change in the wind tells her that she has reached the road. Where’s the kerbstone? Got it. She sprints to the other side. Her shin bone plays along. Aaron counts the steps, assuming a standard road width of six metres.
It’s six-and-a-half. She realizes this as she takes a leap onto the pavement, jumps into empty space and is thrown off balance. She gets caught on the kerbstone, almost tumbles over, catches herself and darts to the left.
Her tongue issues fast power-clicks.
The echo is broken in front of her.
Twenty metres, in the middle of the pavement.
A person.
She doesn’t reduce her speed, but reaches under her jacket. She feels the Glock. Aaron is so full of adrenalin that her skin is burning.
She clicks her tongue again.
The person isn’t moving.
Just standing still.
As she comes close, her eyes burn, her lips, even her hair. Then she hears an aggressive yapping. Dog walker. Harmless, her mind tells her.
But fear is tarring the world.
Ten steps on, she allows herself a final click.
Any moment now she will be at the turn-off. There she has to keep to the right. Fifty metres to Layla’s road. She slows down and lets the cane snap open. The speed at which she is rushing along the footpath while swinging the cane across the pavement would be described as crazy by other blind people. Aaron feels as though she is barely moving.
It always feels that way, because she can’t see her destination. Fifty metres is an abstract size, it is only the number of steps that tells her she is making progress.
A lowering of the footpath signals that the next corner is ahead. Aaron stops. She holds her breath and boots up her receivers. Her heart is doing somersaults. The wind is rustling the palms. Far away, the little dog yowls. Nothing else.
Lissek says: fear makes the wolf bigger than he is.
She sprints across the roadway. This time she allows for six-and-a-half metres and lands on the footpath with perfect balance. After two quick steps she comes to the boundary wall of the compound. She runs along it, one hand on the stone, until she feels metal.
The gate with the recessed door.
In everyday life, perfect breathing is a luxury, a pleasure. Now Aaron’s life depends on it. And perhaps Pavlik’s too.
She focuses on the centre of her body and allows no other thought than breathe. Breathe, breathe, breathe. She visualizes the breath flowing into her, how it permeates every muscle, every artery, every cell, making her light as air.
When she feels that her pulse has dropped to under eighty bpm, she puts down her cane, takes off her ballerina shoes and feels for the door handle. Carefully she pushes down on it. Locked. She hoists herself up by the brickwork and with a wide stride she places her right foot on the door handle, then wedges the toes of her left foot into a gap. She stretches up a hand and feels for the steel teeth along the top of the gate.
Aaron can only use three fingers of each hand for this move because she has to grip the gate between the steep prongs. She heaves herself up, swings to the left and braces her feet against the wall. She is now suspended horizontally, three metres above the ground. In her mind, she is floating above herself like a drone. She sees herself pushing off forcefully with her feet, thrusting herself upward and turning simultaneously to change into the cross grip.
For a moment she is vertical, like a gymnast on the bar. She balances her weight on her fingers and performs half a stretched backward somersault, landing on her feet.
She’s on the premises.
Aaron draws the Glock and silently runs towards the house. The paving under her bare feet is a four-metre-wide runway that leads directly to the front door.
Twenty-one metres.
The door is open.
For seconds, Aaron stands motionless.
She hears whispering in the darkness.
As she creeps through the entrance hall with arms outstretched, her foot bumps against something soft. She knows it’s a corpse. Naked fear flips her stomach upside down.
She squats down.
Runs her fingers over the body.
He’s wearing a leather jacket.
Not Pavlik.
Slowly she advances towards the whispering.
It turns into a voice.
All of a sudden it’s as if Aaron is in a desert, staring at the horizon, where a silhouette is appearing. It takes shape. A face emerges. It shimmers like a mirage, a ghost from her nightmares.
It is the man who never uttered more than five words. The one none of them knew. Who left behind a wife and an unborn son. Whose empty coffin she had stood beside.
Vesper.
‘I would have ended it sooner, but I was curious to see whether you’ve still got it in you,’ she hears him say.
‘Give me my Glock, then you’ll find out,’ Pavlik mumbles. ‘Or put yours aside. Either suits me.’
Vesper laughs coldly. ‘You’ve kept in good shape. Let me guess: plenty of sleep, not much booze, no tarts?’
