The first of the followers was on Calvary’s left, approximately parallel to him and twenty or so feet away. Short, hair in a brutal buzz cut, expression hewn from a mountain wall. Fifty, fifty-five years old. The second was a little further back on the right. Calvary had noticed him while sweeping his gaze behind him – it was a natural thing to do, with all there was to be marvelled at in a setting like this – and had confirmed his presence with a second, more subtle glance. This one was taller, slimmer. Late twenties, perhaps. Dressed in a hooded parka.
Calvary was well aware of the hazards of racial profiling. Not the political hazards, but the genuine mistakes that could be made when you pigeonholed someone on first sight into an ethnic or racial category. It could lead to complacency, which might have disastrous consequences. Nonetheless – of course there was a but – he identified the two men immediately, on instinct, as Russians.
In any case it didn’t matter. Whoever they were, they represented a hazard. They were tagging the man he intended to kill. If their ethnic background was surprising, if they didn’t appear to be the SIS or Chapel agents he’d been expecting, it was a detail, no more. At least for the time being.
It added a complication, because he was going to have to shake them off before he made his move. And that meant getting them out the way without losing track of his target, Gaines.
A lost-looking backpacker stepped into his path, map proffered like a sacrificial offering. He sidestepped smartly. The alley exiting the square was too narrow for more than three people to walk abreast in either direction, and Calvary allowed the squat pursuer – Squat – to enter first. Past the bobbing heads, Gaines’s trilby wove into and out of sight.
Gaines turned into a broader thoroughfare. The younger of the two pursuers, Parka, crossed the street and Calvary saw him moving parallel to them on the opposite side. It was as though he was trying to corral Gaines without Gaines’s even realising it.
Was it Calvary’s imagination or had Gaines picked up the pace a little? He was perhaps fifty yards ahead of Calvary, Squat between them, and there seemed to be an added urgency to his movement. Calvary saw him duck his head as though he was consulting his watch. Then he turned his head to the left, peering at the road as he walked, and Calvary understood. He was looking for a tram.
Squat appeared to notice it, too, and began to narrow the gap between him and Gaines. Gaines looked back, slowed, and stepped towards the kerb. A designated tram stopping point. Behind Calvary, he heard a bell sing through the jabber of people and traffic.
The tram, modern looking in sleek red and white, slid into position at the kerb with a hydraulic wheeze. Gaines joined the short queue stepping up between the sliding doors in the side.
Calvary strode straight past, almost barging Squat. For an instant he felt the man’s gaze at his back.
*
Krupina was doing what pacing she could in the confines of the office when Oleg’s voice came through.
‘I’m on board a tram with the target. The other party didn’t get on. Walked past.’
She thought about this. ‘Did he make you?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’
‘Where’s he now?’
‘Can’t see him.’
She breathed slowly, through pursed lips. She didn’t like this.
‘How close are you to the target?’
‘Visual contact. Not close enough to drop a spider on him, if that’s what you mean.’
Krupina thought for a moment.
‘Arkady, where are you?’
‘On foot, on the other side of the road. Tram’s disappearing.’
Oleg was on his own with the target, then.
She heard him muttering in the background, in Czech. Then: ‘Tram’s heading for Nádraží Braník.’
‘Okay. He might not be going all the way. Gleb?’
‘Yes.’ Tamarkin. He was still in the car, the floater on standby.
‘Head for the terminus. It’s this side of the river. Be prepared to drive back along the route, in case he gets off earlier.’
‘Got you.’
Time for another Belomorkanal. The last one. Krupina tossed the empty pack in the trash bin.
The foreigner, the maybe-Englishman. Disappeared.
She didn’t like it at all.
*
By waiting until the tram had set off, then stepping on to the road behind it and running at a moderate clip, Calvary was able to keep near enough to close the distance when it slowed for the next stop. He hoped Squat would be looking for him on the pavement, rather than on the road behind, and that he’d be hidden from Parka’s view by the intervening traffic. One or two people laughed as he trotted by: poor guy missed his tram.
He almost didn’t make it, drawing alongside the tram as it was about to pull away once more. Not good: he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. Luckily a couple of backpackers were stuck halfway through the doors, and the driver stopped to let them board. Calvary was able to slip in behind them.
All the seats were taken, and there was little standing room left. Calvary grasped the rail above his head. He saw that he was directly behind Squat, who was also standing, facing forward. Only if the man turned round would he spot Calvary. Gaines had found a seat near the front, but was in the process of rising to allow an elderly woman to sit down.
For an instant, quite by chance, Gaines glanced in Calvary’s direction. Their eyes met. Calvary fought the urge to look away immediately, instead breaking eye contact at what seemed a natural interval. Had he seen something in the small man’s expression? Unease?
Squat turned his head a fraction to the right to look out the window. Calvary saw the earpiece, like a tiny grey bead of flattened wax. The lips murmured. Calvary turned his own right ear towards the sound, leant in as close as he dared.
No words were distinguishable. But the intonation, the sense that the speech was being formed thickly at the back of the mouth, told him that the language was Russian. As he’d suspected.
He looked at the legend on the wall of the tram, trying to make sense of the route. It was more complicated than that of the Metro trains. Near the front, Gaines was checking his watch. Biting his lip. Calvary thought he had an appointment to keep, had dawdled in the beginning, walking instead of taking public transport, and was now running late.
An appointment meant other people. He had to make his move before then.
The problem was Squat. He’d successfully ‘lost’ him, but couldn’t approach the target without immediately making himself known once more to the Russian. On the other hand, the Russian was alone on the tram. Calvary was fairly certain of that. The younger man, Parka, was far behind them in the street, and even if Squat had other colleagues, there was no way they could be keeping up closely enough to be able to come to his assistance quickly. If the hit on Gaines meant a confrontation with the Russian, then so be it.
Five seconds, it would take, barging past Squat, shoving through the standing passengers, then the umbrella up, the point out and driven up into Gaines’s belly – he’d have to be turned a little first, one hand on the shoulder – and the driver would brake when he heard the screams. Calvary would force the doors open with the shaft of the umbrella and step out. The tram was moving at ten miles an hour, tops, and the brakes would have slowed it, so there’d be little risk in exiting. Then away, trailing chaos and screaming in his wake.
The driver yelled something and the tram slammed to a halt. The passengers lurched as one organism. Calvary was sent sprawling into Squat, who staggered in turn against the woman in front of him. Squat turned and stared Calvary full in the face.