Gregor Venko had parked his bullet-proof black Mercedes stretch limousine at a slant under the terrace. His men held the high ground above it. Gilby and his ragged crew had been forced into retreat as far as the rear of the car park, and were dotted among the school Audis and the wreckage. By the looks of the damage to the stonework and the cars, they’d been exchanging cordial amounts of ammunition.
Two separate sets of guns swung in our direction as Sean made his dramatic entrance. We had a few seconds’ respite while shock kept fingers away from triggers. Gilby, of course, must have recognised his own car, but to Gregor’s troops this was an invader, to be repelled. They began to do so then, with enthusiasm.
Sean slewed the Skyline into as sheltered a space as he could find in the split-second he had to make the decision. We ended up between the trucks, nose facing outwards, so when we flung the doors open they afforded us a little protection at least. The bullets splattered around us, zinging off metalwork like hailstones. Gilby’s men started to lay down covering fire.
The Major had strung his people out into sniping positions along the back line of the parking area. Considering the length of time he’d had to plan his campaign, and the fact that he was severely outnumbered, he was well dug in and holding his own.
Sean dragged Ivan out of the back of the car without regard to hurting him, yanking his head back so Gregor could get a look at his face. Hofmann and I dived behind the back end of the car with Hofmann yelling, “Hold your fire!” over and over in half a dozen different European languages.
I glanced at Sean, standing half exposed with Ivan gripped wriggling in front of him. He refused to drop into cover with the boy and his defiant stance made me shiver. To come this far and then lose either of them to a stray bullet would be unthinkable.
Gregor recognised his son in an instant, bellowing to his men to stop shooting. He had to give the order three times before the firing finally ceased, and the look he threw at the last man to take his finger off the trigger was pure poison.
After the noise, the silence deafened me. The only sound that emerged over it was the quiet tickover of the Mercedes’ engine and the breathless whirr of the Nissan’s cooling fans as they battled to stop the overheated turbos from going into terminal meltdown.
And then, into the stillness, came the click and rattle of a dozen magazines being changed and hastily rammed home, and first rounds being racked into chambers.
Gregor Venko, no personal coward, stepped out from behind the limousine. He was wearing another beautiful long cashmere coat, this one the colour of a field of summer corn, over a double-breasted suit that was well cut enough to almost conceal his expansive gut. He advanced as far as the front wing of the Merc, then stopped and gestured impatiently to someone still behind the car.
Sideburns, the bodyguard whose knee I’d kicked out from under him, appeared then, propelling a young girl in front. I recognised Heidi Krauss from the photographs Elsa had displayed.
She seemed to be in a better physical condition than Ivan perhaps, but I wouldn’t like to vouch for her mental state. Her eyes showed a mind well past being terrified and into a shock so deep it was almost catatonic. She was shuffling like a convict who’s been too long in leg irons, stumbling over her own feet. If it came to making a run for it, I calculated, we were probably going to have to carry her.
“So,” Gregor called across the distance between us. “We make the exchange without further – unpleasantness, yes?”
“Yes,” Sean agreed. “Two men only. We meet in the middle.”
Gregor nodded slowly, but was unwilling to surrender complete control by accepting the suggestion without his own stipulations.
As Hofmann went to walk out with Sean, Gregor stopped them. “Wait!” He pointed at Sean, eyes narrowed. “I don’t know you. I don’t trust you,” he said. He waved in my direction, the light flashing from the diamonds on the Rolex at his wrist. “Miss Fox can bring Ivan. Just her and the German. She gave me her word.”
I cursed under my breath and edged out from behind the car. Aware of the eyes watching me, I took over Sean’s grip on Ivan’s collar. The boy curled his lip at me. I smiled sweetly back at him and jammed the Lucznik into his ribs.
“You don’t have to do this, Charlie,” Sean muttered in my ear, scowling. “There’s no way he’ll refuse to make the swap because of it.”
“No, I’ll do it,” I said, sounding more confident than I felt. “And he’s right. I did give him my word.”
With Hofmann alongside me, we moved forwards. Every step seemed to make us more exposed, more vulnerable. The parking area had grown in size until it was a very long way to the middle. Opposite us, Sideburns and the other bodyguard I remembered from Gilby’s study shifted carefully to meet us, shoving Heidi before them.
I was watching Sideburns’s face carefully. The look on it was sly and I knew he was itching for a chance of revenge for the humiliation he’d suffered at my hands. I kept my eyes locked on his, waiting for the first indication that he was planning to double-cross us, despite his boss’s wishes.
It just so happened, therefore, that I was watching at the precise moment that the right-hand side of his face exploded in a welter of bone shards and brain, and the high-pressure spray of viscous, scarlet blood.
Twenty-eight
I didn’t know who’d fired the shot that killed Sideburns, but I didn’t really need to. It was enough to know that somebody was shooting at us.
I grabbed the back of Ivan’s neck, ramming my fingers and thumb into the sensitive points there to force his head down. I was already twisting him back towards the cover of the Skyline before Sideburns’s body had completed its final dive.
Heidi had been so close to Gregor’s bodyguard when he died that she was immediately splattered. The noise was like she’d been hit with a wet tea towel. A great swathe of gore was flung across her face and upper body. The pig’s blood scene from Carrie was just a pale rehearsal for this.
The horror of what the girl had just witnessed jerked her mind out of its zombie-like state and sent her reeling into the far reaches of hysteria. She darted away from the other bodyguard’s clutches, screaming fit to strip her vocal cords raw. Her popping eyes were fixed on the blood on her hands in front of her, her fingers stiffly outspread.
Hofmann took two calm strides forward and snatched her off her feet as though she weighed nothing. The relentless chatter of automatic weapons’ fire battered our senses from all sides. My bearings were shot. Then I saw Declan beckoning frantically from behind the wreckage of the Audis and Blakemore’s FireBlade off to my right. I ran hell for leather in that direction, dragging Ivan along with me.
Sean had tried to come out to us as soon as the shooting started, but was forced back almost instantly. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the dirt at his feet puff up from the hits. He fired a short burst from his PM-98 in the direction of the house, then threw himself back behind the Nissan and wisely stayed down.
Whoever had joined the fight had done so with a complement of full clips and the will to spend them. For almost a minute hundreds of rounds came down like hard rain into the parking area. I crouched behind the Audi, instinctively keeping Ivan down, while Hofmann wrapped himself round Heidi’s still-shrieking figure and held on tight. Ivan, for once, didn’t try and get away from me. I guess he was just waiting to see if I was going to get myself conveniently killed, then he could shrug me aside.
Then, as suddenly as it had all started, it stopped. I lifted my head cautiously and risked a peep round the bottom corner of the crumpled FireBlade. Sideburns’s body lay where it had fallen in the middle of the open ground. One leg was still twitching.