“Hey policeman,” said a voice in English from the bottom of the stairwell. Harper recognised it as the FSB man from the Katusev house. “Mr British policeman. Come down here. I want to talk with you.”
Harper edged closer to the top of the stairs and looked down. There was a brick wall at the bottom and a room to the left. He kept the gun pointing straight ahead as he descended. He could hear Russian voices muttering in the basement and stopped just short of the bottom.
“Your men are dead,” said Harper. “Give me Vitsin and you won’t go the same way.”
The sound of Nikolaev laughing boomed around the small room and up the stairs. Harper heard a door open and a small canister rolled in front him, spitting grey smoke into the air. He recognized it as CS gas and ran forward with his forearm over his mouth. Professor Ruminenko was slumped in a corner with a bullet in his chest. He was dead. Cooking facilities and a large pile of books sat next to a dirty mattress. A fire exit straight in front of him was ajar. He pushed it open as the CS seeped into his nostrils. Harper bounded up the metal stairs, three at a time and emerged onto the road where he had entered the market. He scoped the area and spotted Nikolaev and one of his agents bundling Vitsin into a black Land Rover. As they sped off, Harper saw Ruminenko’s Renault. He ran back down the stairs, holding his breath, and fished the keys out of the dead professor’s pocket.
“Sorry about this professor.”
He sprinted back to the street in time to see Nikolaev’s car disappear round a corner. He started up the Renault and put his foot down, the car straining to gain speed. His nose started to stream as the gas entered his system. He saw the Land Rover up ahead going through some traffic lights and pushed the gear stick into fourth. The lights started to change so he slammed it into fifth and put his foot flat to the floor. A chorus of horns blared as he careened round the vehicles coming from his left and right. Harper followed them onto the highway and dodged around the other vehicles as best he could in a bid to keep up. He looked up at the signs overhead. They were heading into mainland China.
“Come on you piece of shit,” Harper shouted at the car as Nikolaev edged further into the distance.
He looked up at the sound of a horn blaring up ahead. The Land Rover came back into view as it swerved around behind a large lorry just ahead of a tunnel. The HGV sat stubbornly in the middle of the road as they probed around the edges for a way forward. A sudden crash shattered the windscreen as a bullet hit the Renault. Harper ducked and punched a hole in the broken glass. He peered through the small opening and saw the Land Rover shoot up the inside of the truck. He slammed his foot back on the accelerator and headed for the gap, scraping the side of the car as he emerged into the tunnel. Another bullet hit the windscreen, spraying shards of glass over the seats and into his face. As he looked up, he saw Nikolaev’s agent slide himself out of the back window and fix his aim. Harper turned left and right to shake him, but the barrel stayed trained on him.
“Come on. Take a fucking shot then you wanker.”
His vision was blurred as tears rolled down his face from the CS. The Land Rover slowed down and the agent smiled as he prepared to pull the trigger. Harper closed his eyes as he heard the shot, but the bullet ricocheted off the road. The Land Rover started to shake from left to right and the agent disappeared back inside. Through the back windscreen, Harper saw Vitsin with his arms around Nikolaev’s neck. The Land Rover suddenly crashed into the side of the tunnel and flipped onto its side, sliding down the road until it came to a stop.
Harper pulled up alongside the wreckage. The lorry behind them had stopped and traffic started to back up behind it. The agent with the gun was hanging out the smashed back window, impaled on a shard of glass. Harper mounted the vehicle and pulled open the passenger door. Vitsin’s small frame was crumpled in a heap. Harper stuck a hand in and pulled him out. He was bleeding from a cut on his forehead and his lip was split. They climbed off the car and Vitsin sat down on the road.
“Are you hurt?” said Harper
“I’m okay,” he replied, wiping the blood from his face.
A group of motorists had gathered near the lorry. Harper pulled out his gun and climbed back onto the car. He opened the driver’s door. Nikolaev was trapped between the steering wheel and his seat. Harper pressed two fingers to the pulse on his neck. As he touched the skin, the Russian snapped awake and went for the gun sitting in his belt. Harper tried to restrain him, but he wrestled himself free and grabbed the weapon from his holster. Harper pushed his own pistol into Nikolaev’s head as the Russian lifted the gun.
“Drop it,” said Harper.
Nikolaev said nothing, keeping his finger on the trigger.
“Drop it!” shouted Harper.
Nikolaev looked at Harper with disdain before swinging the gun round towards him. The bang echoed in the narrow confines of the tunnel as blood covered the front of the car and Nikolaev slumped downwards. Harper slid back down onto the road and knelt down next to Vitsin. The sound of police sirens blared in the distance.
“We have to move.”
“The girl.”
“What girl?”
Vitsin pointed at the boot of the car. Harper rushed over, pushed the corpse of the agent back into the car and opened the boot. The girl was face down. He untied the rope binding her wrists and ankles and turned her over. She took a deep lungful of air as he pulled off the tape covering her mouth. She cried as she saw his face.
“Anya.”
- Chapter 34 -
Friends in Low Places
There were less people in the seedier part of Waterloo. Morton hurried past the pubs and charity shops and towards the station. The smell from a cheap bakery wafted down the street, tempting customers into the shop. A tramp sat on the pavement trying to inhale a bottle of strong cider, stopping only to vomit before clamping his mouth back onto the neck. The Special Branch man sat reading a paper in the small park just off the crossroads. A couple of enthusiastic volunteers were pulling weeds from the flowerbeds as Morton walked in.
“You wanna go somewhere else?” said Morton, sitting down on the bench.
“No, I’ve seen them here before. They’re just gardeners.” The Special Branch man folded his paper and put it down. “Your man’s name is John Tremaine. But they call him Alpha.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s head of the Financial Security Division at MI6.”
“We have one of those?”
“We do these days.”
Morton picked up the paper and waved away some midges from above his head. “What else do you know about him?”
“I know he’s not someone you want to mess with.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He’s on his way up. Talk is that he’ll take over the service soon. You really want to be pissing off a guy like that?”
Morton watched the gardeners. “I’ve already pissed him off. I think it’s too late to worry about that.”
“Just be careful Morton. The people I asked about Tremaine. There was this, well, fear in their eyes. There are stories.”
“What kind of stories?”
“One of the boys heard that his interrogations are pretty brutal.”
“Brutal how?”
“Instead of going to work on the subject, he prefers to bring in someone important to them instead. Apparently, he once brought in a guy’s elderly mother and sat her down in front of him. First he broke her arm with a baseball bat and then started to pull her teeth out with fucking pliers.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, Jesus. The nice old man act is exactly that. An act. These guys play a different game Morton. The rules can be…ambiguous.”