Now you, he urged himself. More glass shattered somewhere close. He skidded his way across the alleyway, dropped behind the cover of Marfa’s parked car, already assuming the lumped lack of identity of other stationary vehicles burdened with snow.
He glanced around him. A shot shattered the car’s windscreen.
Glass and snow flew. The girl waved to him from a nearby shop doorway, her gloved hand raised beside a heavy grille. He waved back, gun raised, gesturing her to begin retreating down the block. She shook her head, gesturing towards the other side of the street. She’d seen where the shots originated.
He gestured to her, crouched only a matter of yards away, turning his wrist as if turning a key. She pointed at the car. He signalled understanding with a raised thumb, then he heard shouting.
The flames from the club belched through the shattered windows and the open door, to be lashed and sculpted by the storm. Panshin was standing in the light of the nearest street lamp, waving frantically, nis figure bulky, recognisable.
Lock opened the passenger door of the car and slid into the seat. He moved awkwardly over the brake and gear lever, roughly brushing the seat as he shuffled himself into a half-lying position behind the wheel. Panshin was still on the pavement, arms waving, dinner jacket whitened with snow. He raised himself in the driving seat, feeling for the ignition. You’ll have to be better than most Russian cars, he thought. A lot better.
He turned the key, hearing two shots in the moment before the engine caught. He watched Panshin’s body slowly, heavily, collapse into the snow and become half-buried, knowing that he had witnessed an execution. They’d known who it was, and he’d died because they were house-cleaning. He thrust the gear lever into reverse and let out the clutch. The car squealed and swung, lurching backwards like a drunk.
Two shots careened off the snow-covered bonnet. The storm half-blinded him through the shattered windscreen. He sensed the prick of glass in his buttocks and thighs from the partly littered driving seat. Shots against the door, impacting, distorting metal and padding. The car swerved, slid sideways, skidded. He was sweating feverishly, his hands slippery inside his gloves. The window behind him shattered.
The car would afford protection for only seconds now. It bucked as he accelerated in reverse, the rear wheels spinning wildly against a huge ridge of rutted ice. He waved frantically at Marfa, a white blob of a face — waving her to keep pace with the car but not to get in. Yelling:
‘Keep behind the car, behind the car!’
He thrust the gear lever into second and accelerated forward, braked and then threw the car again into reverse. Once more, it bucked against the obstacle but wouldn’t surmount it. A rear window shattered behind his head and he heard the ominous, dead pluck of bullets into the upholstery.
A rotund little bear jiggled on a short length of elastic in the rear window, its arms wide in hopeless surrender. He thrust the car forward again, the tyres squealing, then accelerated once more in reverse. Maria’s face, as she crouched behind the car’s moving shield, was white and astonished, as if she feared he was trying to expose her to the unseen marksmen. The car bucked like a horse kicking out with its back legs and then mounted the ridge in the road and skidded away like an escaping animal because his foot was still jammed down on the accelerator.
It careered across K Street towards the buildings that housed the snipers.
Marfa was left stranded and exposed. Bullets struck the car.
Panshin’s body, suddenly a hundred yards away, was slowly being covered with snow.
He stopped the car in a skid, then accelerated back across K Street towards Marfa. As the car mounted the pavement only feet from her, he saw her gesturing towards a dark, narrow alleyway beside a bar where neon struggled. Cowboys’ Bar. Seeing her gestures, he realised they had a better chance on foot.
The car shunted against the grille across the windows and came to a halt. He switched off the engine, opened the passenger door and scrambled out onto all fours, rising like a sprinter to dash into the shelter of the alley. He slid into a tangled heap with Marfa as he collided with the girl.
Bakunin stood over the body of Valery Panshin, which the snow was inexorably and tidily masking, and considered the Tightness of the whim that had ordered the club owner’s demise. The snow melted on Bakunin’s cheek and settled on the epaulettes of his uniform greatcoat and on the crown and brim of his cap.
It had been correct, sensible, inspirational even. Turgenev had kept him in ignorance regarding the American, Lock, and the extent of his knowledge and influence. His danger was unimportant, despite his temporary escape from the marksmen.
Already, his troops were flooding that alleyway and the whole area around the burning club in pursuit of Vorontsyev and Lock and their feeble entourage. Bakunin could now feel the heat from the fire welcomely on his face. No, his position of massive ignorance, deliberately imposed by Turgenev, was intolerable.
It could have exposed him. Panshin — the worthless, cretinous, greedy Panshin — might have already told, confessed. However, in the event that he had not, he had been put beyond any ability to do so. Opportunity, means, motive — Panshin was bereft of all three with two neat holes in his forehead.
Whatever Panshin knew was imprisoned in that broken vessel that had leaked a small amount of blood and brain tissue into the snow. He stirred the body with his foot. Then he looked up.
‘Find them quickly,’ he snapped, ‘and finish them. Reinforce the roadblocks — and warn whoever’s in command at the airport.
Do it without publicity, on a secure channel. You understand?’
The lieutenant, his features frozen by cold and obedience, nodded. ‘Good. He may have let something slip, but I imagine they’re interested in nothing greater than their own skins. However, it doesn’t do to be sloppy, Lieutenant.’
Turning away from the junior officer and the body, he strode through the snow towards his staff car.
‘Alexei, for God’s sake, get into the boot of the car!’
Dmitri Gorov’s patience was as exhausted as his heavy frame.
Vorontsyev stood in the driving snow, staring into the well of the old car’s boot, unmoving and silent. Lubin was absent, hiding the BMW amid the detritus of a building site which wouldn’t see the resumption of activity until the blizzard ended. He and Vorontsyev were in a narrow slit of a street, poorly lit, between blocks of workers’ flats. Three streets from the flat in which the drug courier, Hussain, had been murdered by an explosive hidden in a paraffin heater.
‘Not yet,’ Vorontsyev replied. ‘Dmitri — V he burst out, turning to Gorov. ‘There has to be something else we can do. The airport will be guarded.’
‘And Turgenev himself will be there,’ Dmitri offered seductively, immediately whirling round at the sound of someone approaching. Lubin appeared, hands raised in mock surrender, then passed out of the light of the lamp into shadow.
That’s a guess, Dmitri, nothing more. Is the car well hidden, youngster?’
Lubin grinned and nodded, his teeth chattering with cold, his boots crusted with dirty snow.