“Please, don’t hurt her,” he stammered. And then, “What do you want?”
Marchand was given a very simple set of instructions. First, he was assured that this was not a conventional kidnapping. His wife’s captors did not want any money. As a consequence, they had no incentive to keep her alive. If he refused to do as they told him, at exactly the specified time, or made any attempt to contact the authorities, they would kill her.
“Anything!” he pleaded. “Just tell me what I must do.”
“Work late,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “Invent an excuse. At precisely half past eleven tonight, you will call the duty nurse on the third floor of your clinic. You will tell her that you need to see her. If she protests, you will insist. Say that you have uncovered an irregularity in the records of drugs administered to patients. Say anything you like. All that matters is this: The nurse must be in your office, in your presence, away from her station, between eleven-thirty and eleven forty-five. After that time, she can return to her post. At midnight, you may leave the clinic and drive home. If all goes well, your wife will be waiting for you, unharmed.”
“Thank you, thank you.” Marchand was almost weeping with relief.
“Do not thank us until you have completed your task,” said the voice. “And one more thing. If you should ever decide to tell anyone about this conversation, or what has happened to your wife, we will know. And you will both be killed.”
Marchand put down the phone, wiped the sweat off his brow, and told his secretary he would be working late. She, however, was free to go home at the normal hour.
Carver’s recovery had not gone unnoticed in Moscow, nor its possible consequences. Deputy Director Olga Zhukovskaya had made it plain to her staff that she wanted the matter dealt with at once. Now they were obeying her orders.
32
Carver awoke and found to his surprise that he had not been asleep for half the night, as he’d imagined. The clock by his bedside read 23:35-he’d been out for less than an hour. He rubbed his eyes and then frowned. Something was wrong, something out of place, but he couldn’t work out what it was.
Then it struck him. He couldn’t hear the TV. The night nurse on duty this week was a kid called Sandrine, and she always had a late-night movie on in the staff room when she thought the patients were asleep. So why would tonight be any different?
Carver got out of bed and, keeping the light off, padded across his room to the door. He opened it a fraction and paused, listening for any unusual sounds outside. He thought he could hear footsteps down at the far end of the floor. Very slowly, he eased the door open another few degrees, just enough for him to lean around and catch a glimpse down the corridor. He saw the shape of a man, bending over the nurses’ reception desk, running his finger down the top sheet on a clipboard. He was checking the list of rooms and their occupants.
He might have been looking for someone else, but Carver wasn’t going to take that chance. He closed the door and looked around the room, giving himself no more than a couple of seconds to make his decision. Then he went to the bathroom, switched on the light, and turned on the tap, letting it run in a steady dribble that sounded like a man taking a leak. When he quit the bathroom, he left the light on and the door half open, before going to stand to one side of the bedroom door, his back to the wall between him and the corridor.
Steps came pacing down the corridor. The man’s rubber soles squeaked against the vinyl tiled floor. They paused outside the door to Carver’s room and he saw the handle move as it was twisted from outside. The door opened. It was now between Carver and the other man, whoever he was, blocking each of them from seeing the other.
Carver’s bathrobe was hanging on a hook on the back of the door, a cord strung around its waist. Carver gently slid the cord from the robe, then held it in both hands, forming a loop like a lasso. He knew he had only meager reserves of strength and stamina. Whatever he did, it would have to be fast.
The man closed the door behind him. His attention was focused on the bathroom, unaware of Carver behind him. There was something in his right hand, a thin tube that protruded a few inches from his fist. At first glance Carver thought it might be a small flashlight, but then the man’s hand moved and caught the light from the bathroom door. The tube was a plastic injector pen, the kind used by diabetics for their daily doses of insulin.
Now he understood. An overdose of insulin, given to a sleeping patient, would swiftly induce hypoglycemic coma as the neurons in the brain were starved of glucose. Death would follow if the condition was left untreated, and if the injection site itself were not spotted, there’d be no reason to suspect foul play. Insulin was one of the most effective murder weapons a hospital could offer.
Carver had no intention of being its latest victim. He came up behind the intruder, slipped the bathrobe cord over his head, and pulled it tight around the neck.
The man reacted instantly. He brought his left hand up to the cord, trying to pull it away from his throat. At the same time he jerked his head back, hard, hoping to catch Carver on the face.
Carver anticipated the move and swayed back, his own movement adding to the tension on the cord. But now he had another problem to deal with-the man swung his right arm around behind him, jabbing the injector pen at Carver like a deadly snake, with insulin as its venom.
Carver twisted to one side to avoid the pen. The movement shifted his balance and gave his opponent the chance to push backward. Carver was sent crashing into the wall between his room and the one next door. The breath was knocked from him by the impact, but he forced himself to hold on to the cord. Ten or fifteen seconds’ pressure on the carotid artery would be enough to bring on unconsciousness, but fifteen seconds was an eternity when two men were fighting to the death.
They lurched around the room, their bodies linked like two drunken dance partners as they collided with a chair, knocking it over; then the bed; then a side table, sending a glass of water flying. And all the while the injector was jabbing at Carver, searching for his flesh and the moment when it could finally release its deadly cargo.
Groggy calls of complaint started coming from the patients on either side of Carver’s room. One of them started banging on the wall and calling for a nurse. It would not be long before someone came to see what was happening.
As the seconds passed, the fight was becoming a test of endurance between Carver’s enfeebled muscles, desperately hanging on to his improvised noose, and his enemy’s oxygen-starved brain. Whoever gave in first would die. And then came a stroke of luck. The assassin’s flailing hand struck against the iron frame of Carver’s bed and the injector was knocked from his grasp. Desperately, he tried to bend down to pick it up, but that only gave Carver the opportunity to plant his feet and give one last heave of the cord.
He felt the other man slump into unconsciousness and let the cord play out through his hands, lowering the lifeless body to the floor.
Suddenly there was a hammering on the door.
Carver dragged the body into the bathroom, then opened the door. Christophe, the crack-addicted son of a prominent local banker, was standing in the corridor in shorts and an old T-shirt, his usually pallid features inflamed with indignation.
“What the hell have you been doing in there?” he whined, making no attempt to keep his voice down.
Other heads began peering out of doors up and down the corridor.
“It’s okay-I’m sorry,” said Carver, turning to one side and then the other, holding his hands up in apology and surrender.