A noise outside the door. Commotion.
Max’s face hardened. He refused to talk. It was all Sam could do to stop himself grabbing his father’s nightclothes in his fist through frustration. ‘For God’s sake, Dad! For once in your life don’t be so fucking stubborn. Jacob’s not the golden boy you think he is.’
‘Stay out of it, Sam,’ Max replied, wheezing as he spoke. ‘It’s nothing to do with you.’ More coughing. ‘All right, so Jacob came to see me. What’s wrong with a son wanting to visit his parents?’
As Max said those words, two things happened. In a sudden flash of insight, Sam knew where Jacob would have gone. And just as that thought hit him, the door burst open. ‘That’s him!’ a breathless voice said. Sam spun round. In the corridor he saw the receptionist he had so abruptly ignored on his way in; and in front of him, entering the room, was a security guard – broad shouldered, grim-faced and rushing towards him.
Sam acted on auto-pilot. A violent kick in the groin and the security guard doubled over. Seconds later, Sam had one of his arms crooked around the man’s neck and his Browning pressed up against his head. Sam pulled him into the corridor.
‘Get in the room!’ he shouted at the receptionist. ‘Get in the fucking room or I’ll kill him!’ The frightened receptionist did as he was told. As Sam stepped backwards he heard his dad shouting weakly. ‘Stop him. He won’t do anything.’ But the receptionist was too terrified.
‘Don’t make a fucking mistake,’ Sam told his hostage, ‘and you won’t get hurt.’ He hustled him along the corridor and down the stairs. They echoed noisily, but it was early and nobody else was awake. The guard was crying with fear. am just ignored it. They hurried through the reception area. By now the receptionist could have called the police. Sam didn’t have any time to lose.
Outside the building, he dragged the guard halfway to the car, then stopped. ‘Get on the ground,’ he instructed. The guard, frozen with fear, did nothing. ‘Get on the fucking ground!’ He pushed him down and the guard hugged the tarmac. ‘Move an inch and I’ll fucking kill you,’ Sam told him, before sprinting to the car. He was sweating profusely despite the early-morning chill, as the car coughed into life. Speeding from the car park, he looked in the mirror; the guard was still prostrate on the ground.
All notions of care and secrecy had evaporated from Sam’s mind. He drove furiously, screeching round corners and ignoring red lights. The few cars that were on the road at this early hour swerved away from him; horns blasted then faded away. Sam ignored them all. He knew the road he had to take, even though he hadn’t driven it for four years.
The graveyard was surrounded by black iron railings topped with spikes. Sam’s Fiesta came to a halt just outside the entrance, two wheels up on the kerb. He grabbed the gun that had been sitting on the passenger seat, jumped out and sprinted in among the graves. It was a large cemetery; as Sam ran among the stones, images of the last time he was here flashed in his mind like punches. The coffin being lowered into the ground; a small group of people standing around, barely protected from the biting cold; Sam himself standing next to his father; and the absence of one person keenly felt by everyone there.
What’s wrong with a son wanting to visit his parents?
Jacob was there, just as Sam knew he would be. He stood on the unkempt grass in front of the simple tombstone, his shoulders hunched and his head bowed, his back towards his brother. Sam halted some thirty metres away. He caught his breath and extended his gun hand. And then he walked forward.
He didn’t expect Jacob not to hear him; he just wanted to be prepared when his brother turned round. Sam was barely ten metres away when he did.
Sam stopped. Jacob also held a gun. Both brothers faced each other and Sam couldn’t take his eyes from Jacob’s face. He looked like he was wearing a mask – a mask of anxiety and hate. He didn’t appear at all surprised to see Sam.
‘Long way from Kazakhstan, Sam,’ he drawled.
An unnatural silence surrounded them.
‘Is that what you said to Mac?’ Sam asked. ‘Before you killed him.’
Jacob’s face wrenched itself into an agonised expression. His hand, Sam noticed, started to shake. ‘Mac got in the way,’ he said. ‘It was his own fault.’ Sam didn’t reply, so Jacob repeated his words, as though trying to persuade himself that it was true. ‘It was his own fault.’
‘You know that’s not true, Jacob.’
Now it was the older brother’s turn to be silent.
‘Mac was helping me. Helping you, actually. Trying to stop the Firm from sticking a bullet in you.’
‘I didn’t need your help.’
‘Clearly not.’
They stood.
‘You should have been here four years ago, J.,’ Sam said. ‘When we buried Mum. You should have been here.’
Those dark eyes bored into him. ‘She wouldn’t have missed me. Not her, or the old man.’
‘You’re wrong.’
Jacob snorted with contempt.
‘Jesus, J. What the hell’s happened to you?’
‘You should put the gun down, Sam. You’re not going to shoot me.’
Sam looked meaningfully at Jacob’s own weapon. His brother shrugged, then stowed it inside his jacket. Sam lowered his gun arm, but he kept the weapon in his hand. ‘I’m waiting for you to tell me that I’ve got it all wrong, J. That you didn’t kill Mac. That your red-light runners…’
Jacob interrupted him sharply. ‘How did you know about them?’ Then, almost as soon as the words left his mouth, he nodded in understanding. ‘Dolohov,’ he said.
‘We had a little chat.’
‘Good for you. I’m going to leave now, Sam. Why don’t you go back to the old man’s bedside. Talk about what great soldiers you both are.’
Sam’s eyes narrowed. ‘You honestly reckon that’s what he thinks?’
Jacob didn’t reply.
‘Since you went dark, he’s talked about no one but you. I mean it, J. I can’t spend five minutes in his fucking presence without hearing how much better you are than me. Or were. He thought you were dead, J., because you never came to see him.’ Sam looked over at the grave. ‘Mum too. If you hadn’t left, she wouldn’t have given up.’
Jacob’s lips had thinned. ‘Shut up,’ he said quietly.
‘No, Jacob. You don’t know what I’ve been through to catch up with you.’ He found himself breathing deeply, trying to keep his anger under control. ‘Mac had two children, you know. Cute kids. I don’t suppose you thought about that when you plugged him.’
‘It was his own fault,’ Jacob half-shouted, repeating his mantra.
‘And Rebecca, too. Wonder how she’s going to cope? You know, Mac risked a hell of a lot in Kazakhstan to stop the Regiment nailing one of their own. And in the end you nailed him.’
‘Fuck the Regiment!’ Jacob flared. ‘I stopped being one of them the day they kicked me out.’
‘And then you felt a burning desire to work for the Russians, is that right?’
‘I felt a burning desire to work for whoever paid me,’ Jacob retorted. ‘And don’t try to tell me it’s anything different to what you do. We kill people for money, Sam. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter which people, or whose money.’
It doesn’t matter which people. Mac on the roof, blood oozing from his fresh, fatal wound.
Sam felt like he was in the control of some other force, as though his limbs weren’t even doing his own bidding. He strode towards Jacob, who didn’t move from that spot in front of their mother’s grave. He raised his gun hand. Some tiny part of his mind observed that Jacob barely moved to defend himself, and he wondered why just as he brought the hard metal of the gun down forcefully on the side of Jacob’s face. A crack – the breaking of bone – and a sudden welt of blood. Jacob staggered, then drew himself up to face Sam.