He put the phone away.
‘The big question is: how is the bomb going to be set off? By remote control? Or is it on a timer?’
He watched her right hand shift a fraction. It wasn’t an overt gesture, but it was noteworthy nonetheless.
‘If it’s by remote control, then life is easier for all of us. I assume you’d have the detonator. If you’ve planted the bomb, it makes sense for you to be the one who activates it. In which case, all I need to do is search you, and I should find the trigger.’
Her lips parted a couple of millimetres. Purkiss heard the tiny dry sound.
‘On the other hand… if it’s set to go off at a specified time, then we have a slight problem. I certainly do, because I suspect you’ll be less than forthcoming about when exactly the blast is scheduled to happen. But you have a problem, too, Yulia. I know this because there’s a tiny bead of sweat creeping down your right temple, just below the hairline. I’m sure you can feel it.’
She didn’t react.
‘Your problem, I think, is that you were intending to be far away from here by the time the bomb went off. You’ll be captured eventually, of course. That’s all part of the plan. And your experience in custody won’t be a pleasant one. But you’re prepared for that, because the fanaticism that’s driven you to throw in your lot with a man like Rossiter has inured you to fear.’
The droplet of sweat, winking in a sheaf of light that slanted in through the windscreen, traversed her cheekbone and picked up speed as it travelled towards her jaw.
‘Getting caught in a blast from a radioactive bomb isn’t what you had in mind, though. We’re behind the station, behind multiple layers of wall. I don’t know how much force the explosion will carry, but I’m assuming it won’t necessarily kill us outright. But the damage from radiation, at this distance, will be significant. You’re a Russian. You’re aware of the effects the Chernobyl meltdown had on the local population. You know they’re not pretty. And that was a straightforward meltdown. There was no blast effect, no explosion to fling the isotopes far and wide, penetrating everything for miles around.’
Her right hand opened and closed.
‘There’s acute radiation poisoning, which kills within hours. A step lower, there’s radiation sickness, which will cause the scalp to shed its hair like October leaves, and blister the skin, and erode the lining of the gastrointestinal tract so that the sufferer expels bloody fluids from both ends. And, of course, there are the longer-term effects. Blindness from cataracts. Leukaemia. The warping of your reproductive cells, so that your offspring are born horribly mutated. But you know all this. You were fully aware of it when you entered into your devil’s pact with Rossiter.’
Purkiss leaned back in his seat, arching his back just enough that his jacket stretched across his chest and the bulge of the pistol was clearly visible.
She continued to watch him. He thought he saw a ridge of muscle twitch beneath her ear, near the angle of her jaw, but he couldn’t be sure.
‘So we’ll sit here for a while, Yulia. Sit here, and give you a chance to do some thinking. It’s over for you. Please understand that, first and foremost. Whatever happens, your role in all of this is finished. You’re no longer the catalyst for a war between the superpowers. All you are is a woman who planted a radioactive bomb in a major city. If you choose silence, inertia, then presumably the bomb goes off. Thousands of people die. But to what end? You’ll be remembered as just another rogue agent, and the world will keep on turning.’
A hand slapped against the windscreen and Purkiss tensed. But it was just a drunk, ambling past, and he already seemed to have forgotten them as he disappeared down the alley.
‘You can salvage this, though,’ Purkiss said. ‘You can stop the bomb from going off, stop the pointless murder of innocents. And you can tell me how to find Rossiter. If you do those things, you’ll be afforded clemency. Not unconditional freedom, of course. But your punishment will be diminished. More importantly, you’ll earn peace of mind, to some extent. And that, God knows, is something few of us in this trade ever get a shot at.’
She made her move.
He’d been expecting an attack — had been trying to provoke it — but she’d done it in classic fashion, launching it before he’d finished speaking, and in the split second before the impact came he found himself both appreciating her craft and excoriating himself for having failed to anticipate it.
Her left hand darted into her coat and emerged just as quickly. The light glinted off the blade.
His eyes were drawn to the flash.
And she hammered the side of her right fist, the one closest to him, into his forehead.
The blow rocked his head backwards. He didn’t see stars, or lose consciousness, but the effect was momentarily paralysing.
He registered, dimly, Vodovos’s shout from the back seat.
The knife flickered within an inch of his face and he swiped the edge of his hand against her wrist and felt it connect, less accurately than he’d intended and against her forearm instead. He saw the steel swing wide, across the dashboard, and he groped for the wrist and found it and twisted.
Her other hand, the knuckles extended, stabbed at his throat.
Purkiss managed to duck his chin at the last instant but although the half-fist didn’t slam into his neck with full killing force, crushing the larynx and triggering a haemorrhage that would flood his lungs, the shock of the blow was acute. He recoiled back against the door, his free hand coming up to clutch at his throat.
At the same time his right hand clamped down on her wrist and he felt the bones shift. Heard the knife clatter onto the dashboard.
Her elbow connected with the side of his head in a roundhouse hook and this time the starburst exploded behind his eyes.
Something rammed into his belly. A boot heel.
He saw the door behind her fly open, saw her disappear as though sucked out through a rent in the fuselage of an airborne plane.
He weaved upright, trying to focus on the figure that was sprinting away down the alley.
Vodovos shouted something behind him, but Purkiss ignored it.
He gave it five seconds.
Five seconds in which to allow her to put some distance between them, and in which to carry out a rapid inventory of his condition.
He was conscious.
He could breathe.
He was moving all his limbs.
His throat felt as if a steel bar was being pressed across it, and his belly and the left side of head screamed in agony. But those were minor details, and to be discounted.
Purkiss threw open the door and lurched out and began to follow Saburova at a loping run.
Twenty-five
He caught sight of her after ten seconds, sprinting towards the station entrance.
Purkiss grabbed his phone from his pocket and hit the key for Vale’s number.
‘She’s on the run,’ he said. ‘Heading into the station. Get Service people, local police, whoever you can in here.’
Keeping the line open, he wove among the crowds thronging in front of the entrance. A suitcase appeared in his way and he kicked it aside and sent the contents spilling and left a shouted rebuke in his wake.
The high-ceilinged concourse of the station echoed with a multitude of voices and the chiming announcements from the public address system of arrivals and departures. Here, the crowds were even more densely packed. Saburova was a tall woman, but she was keeping her head low, and it would be all too easy to lose her.
Purkiss tracked her as she aimed towards the stairs leading down to the Underground.
King’s Cross was one of London’s major hubs, for both overground trains and the Tube network. If he lost her now, in the bowels of the city, he’d never find her again.