A storm of kicks, punches and jabs rode down Tillman’s guard in an instant and he staggered back, dropping his own gun and taking damage even as he blocked. Hifela followed him, keeping up the pressure. Tillman knew at once that he was outclassed. He wasn’t going to win this fight, and barring outside factors he wouldn’t even be able to draw it out all that long. One of those outside factors was stirring on the ground behind Hifela. Tillman tried to move round in the opposite direction, forcing the assassin to turn his back on Diema, but it was all he could do to stay on his feet.
The girl made her move, but Hifela could see her out of the corner of his eye. He leaped over her dive, turned as he came down and launched a kick at Tillman’s midriff, blindsiding Tillman and forcing him to turn and take the kick on the thigh as the only possible defence. There was no opening, no hole in the terrifying virtuosity of his violence.
Diema tried again. Her movements were sluggish — the blow to the head had left her hurt and dazed — but she struggled up onto hands and knees and gathered herself for another lunge.
Without seeming even to look at her, Hifela scraped dust and gravel into her face with a sweep of his heel, then wheeled on the spot to kick her in the exact same spot, on the side of the head. As she fell, he shifted his balance and did the same thing again. This time Diema raised her hands in a block, but too slowly. Hifela’s booted foot went through her guard without slowing and slammed into her temple.
It was a taunt, as much as anything, a demonstration of his absolute power over the two of them. But there was an opening this time, the last kick obliging the assassin to angle his body a little away from Tillman. Tillman launched himself into the gap, fists flailing, but Hifela was gone — falling out of reach, rolling, coming up with Tillman’s gun in his hand. He had anticipated the move, probably invited it. He was ahead of them all the way.
Staring down the barrel of the Beretta, Tillman — who counted his shots obsessively — knew that this was the best chance he was going to get. Probably the only chance. He walked into Hifela’s attack as the slide of the empty gun jammed open with a flat thud, and wrapped the other man in a tight bear-hug.
It was scarcely a tactic. He was able to trap the assassin’s right arm against his body, but his left arm was free. He was only hoping to hold the man more or less immobile while the girl got her act together and attacked him from behind.
Hifela responded by hammer-punching him in the head with jarring, agonising force. Tillman saw stars — then the darkness between the stars. He leaned in close, burying his face in the assassin’s shoulder, forcing him to bring his arm down at an oblique angle and so taking some of the force out of the second punch, and the third.
There was no fourth. Trying to break Tillman’s hold, Hifela’s groping, testing fingers had found the hilt of the sica that was still embedded in Tillman’s shoulder. He pulled it out and drove it in again, higher and at a more oblique angle.
The shock of agony, and the near severing of his trapezius muscle, caused Tillman to release his hold. Leaning away from him, Hifela brought the knife up in a diagonal slash across the other man’s chest. Then he drew it up and back for a final thrust into Tillman’s heart.
Taking the risk that Tillman had shrunk from, Diema shot the assassin in the head. The bullet went obliquely through Hifela’s skull, entering via the left occipital lobe and exiting through the orbit of his left eye.
Hifela’s body — that exquisite instrument — rebelled against him. He froze with the knife still in the air, though his hand trembled violently as though he were still trying hard to bring it down. Then the spasm passed and he lunged.
Tillman caught Hifela’s wrist in mid-air and turned him, slowly, inexorably, so that they were both sideways on to Diema. He could see her on her knees, her face stupid with concussion, her eyes glazed, the gun — Hifela’s own Sig Sauer Pro 2022 — held before her like an offering at an altar nobody else could see. The head shot must have been a one-in-a-million chance, but this was a gift and she took it.
In fact, since the gun had eleven bullets left in its magazine, she took it eleven times.
Hifela crashed down onto his knees in the dirt, then fell full-length. Tillman fell beside him, unable to hold himself upright any more. He ended up staring into Hifela’s slack, haunted face.
‘Bilo b’eyet ha yehuani,’ Hifela wheezed. ‘Siruta muot dil kasyeh shoh.’
The words had a liquid undertow, but they were distinct, forced out of him along with the last of his spirit.
57
Kennedy found them first — following the same trail that Tillman had followed — but she knew she couldn’t be far ahead of the pack. The local police — it was the Çevik kuvvet, the anti-terrorist squad — had gone directly to the hotel, because dozens of witnesses had seen shots fired there and there were bodies, one lying face down next to the outdoor pool and the other in the staff car park. But shots and explosions had been heard in the parkland on Gellert Hill, too, so that would be their next stop.
Tillman was unconscious and almost certainly dying. The ground around him was so saturated with his blood that Kennedy’s shoes sank into it. Blood was still welling from deep wounds in his shoulder and across his chest — but weakly and fitfully, like the last knockings coaxed from an almost empty barrel.
The man lying next to him was dead. A dozen bullet wounds, each a black disc ringed with red-brown crust, stood out like withered flowers on his dead white skin.
Then there was another man, also dead, but with no wounds on him apart from a damaged hand — and Diema, trying to stand and failing. The front of the girl’s shirt was drenched with vomit and her bloodshot eyes seemed unable to focus.
Kennedy supported her weight and helped her into a sitting position, her back to a tree. ‘You’re concussed,’ she said. ‘Don’t try to move.’ Kennedy’s gaze kept sliding back to Tillman, his ashen face and the red ruin of his shirt. She had to do something. It was probably too late, but she had to try.
She took out her phone and started to dial the emergency number. If Hungary was in the EU, it ought to be 112. If not she’d try the operator and ask to be put through.
Diema’s hand locked on Kennedy’s wrist and dragged her hand down. ‘Channel zero,’ she slurred.
‘I’m calling an ambulance,’ Kennedy said, pulling her hand free. ‘Try to stay awake.’
‘Channel zero!’ The girl fumbled with the walkie-talkie and unhooked it from her belt on the third try. But then she just stared at it, unable to see the keys clearly enough to operate them.
Kennedy took the walkie-talkie from Diema and reset it. ‘What’s channel zero?’ she asked.
‘Tell them … where we are.’ The girl’s hands were at her belt again. Kennedy opened the channel, heard the crackle of a live line.
‘Ayn? ’ It was a man’s voice, clipped and clear.
Kennedy’s scalp prickled. ‘We’re on Gellert Hill,’ she said.
A pause. ‘Who is this, please?’
‘Diema is here,’ Kennedy said. ‘Diema. Diema Beit Evrom.’
‘Pere echon!’ Diema cried, sounding like a drunkard. ‘Pere echon adir!’
‘I said—’
‘I hear her,’ the man said quickly. ‘On Gellert Hill. North side or south?’
‘North. Just above the Gellert Hotel.’
‘Keep the channel open. We will come.’
Kennedy lowered the walkie-talkie and stared at Diema — or rather, at what Diema was holding in the palm of her hand. A small hypodermic, of the kind that diabetics use to dose themselves with insulin, and a snap-in ampoule of clear liquid. They fell into the dirt as the girl’s hand swayed.