‘Oh, you want to look like a tough guy. Why didn’t you say?’
They exchanged a look, the look that always said it could be their last. ‘Twenty minutes,’ said Dima. ‘Any longer — come and get me.’
The lift was dead, its doors half-closed on a crushed shopping trolley. Dima collapsed the grab handle of the case and lifted it. The stairs stank of piss. Despite the hour, the building was alive with the thump of rap and domestic disputes. If it came to an exchange of fire, no one would hear or even care. A boy of no more than ten came past, with the low nasal bridge and pinched cheeks that Dima recognised as foetal alcohol syndrome. The grip of a pistol stuck out of his hoodie pocket, a dragon tattoo on his gloveless white hand. The kid paused, glanced at the bag, then Dima, considering. Behold the flower of post-Soviet youth, Dima thought. He wondered if he had been right not to bring a gun. The boy, expressionless, moved on.
The metal apartment door made a dull clang as he thumped it. Nothing. He thumped again. Eventually it opened half a metre to reveal the muzzles of two pistols, the local equivalent of a welcome mat. He stood back so they could see the case. Both of the faces behind were shrouded in ski masks. The men stepped back to let him enter. The apartment was dark; candles on a table gave out a ghostly glow. The smell of fried food and sweat hung in the hot dry air.
One man pressed a pistol into Dima’s forehead while the second, shorter one patted him down, squeezing his genitals as he went. Dima had to force himself not to kick out. He sent a stern command to his foot, ordering it to stay on the floor while he collected all the data he could. The shorter one was probably late twenties, left-handed, stiff movement in his left leg, which bent awkwardly, probably from a wound to the left lower abdomen or hip. Useful. The other, straight and tall, almost two metres, looked younger and fitter, but being a terrorist had lived on a poor diet and had neglected to exercise. The sight of their faces would have helped, but the job had taught him to assess character from movement and body language. A mask was a sign of weakness — another useful pointer. A slight tremble from the gun trained on him: inexperience.
‘Enough.’
The voice that rang out from further in the gloom, followed by a low cancerous chuckle, was instantly recognisable. The room became clearer: empty except for the low table strewn with candles, a take-away pizza box, three empty Baltica cans, a pair of aged APS Stechkin machine pistols and a couple of spare mags. Behind the table squatted a huge red plastic sofa that looked like it had come from a cheap brothel.
‘You’ve aged, Dima.’
The sofa creaked as Vatsanyev hauled himself to his feet with the aid of a stick. He was barely recognisable. His hair was grey and ragged and the left half of his face had sustained severe burns, the ear almost gone under shiny, livid scar tissue that twisted round to one end of his mouth. He let the stick drop and opened his arms — the knobbly fingers splayed. Dima stepped forward, let himself be embraced. Vatsanyev kissed him on both cheeks then stepped back.
‘Let me get a look at you.’ He grinned, half his top teeth missing.
‘At least try to act like a terrorist. You sound like my great aunt.’
‘I can see some grey on you.’
‘At least I have all my teeth and both my ears.’
Vatsanyev gave another chuckle and shook his head, his black eyes almost disappearing into the folds of flesh. Dima had seen men in all of the stages between life and death. Vatsanyev looked closer to the latter. He let out a long sigh and for a moment they were comrades again, Soviets united, brothers in arms for the Great Cause.
‘History’s not been kind to us, Dima. A toast to the old days?’ He gave a theatrical wave at the half-empty bottle on the table.
‘I’ve given up.’
‘Traitor.’
Dima looked to his right and saw two corpses, both women, half covered with a rug — overdone, doll-like make-up on the one who still had a face.
‘Who are they?’
‘The previous tenants. Behind on their rent.’
They were back in the present. Vatsanyev stepped back to reveal the huddled bundle on the sofa.
‘Allow me to introduce our guest.’
Katya was barely recognisable from the glamour shots Dima had been shown. Her stained hoodie almost obscured her face, which was a blotched mess, eyelids swollen from tears and exhaustion. The ragged bandage on her left forefinger was grey, topped with a dull brownish-red stain. Her blank eyes met Dima’s and he felt an unfamiliar stab of pity.
‘Can she stand? I’m not carrying her down those flights.’
Vatsanyev glanced at her. ‘She walks and talks, and is now maybe a little wiser as to how the other half lives.’
Katya’s eyes focused on Dima, then her gaze moved slowly to the doorway to her left, and then back to him. He made a mental note to thank her later — if there was a later. He gestured at the case. He wanted them to start counting soon.
‘You’re getting greedy in your old age, Vatsanyev. Or is this your pension?’
Vatsanyev gazed at the money and nodded thoughtfully. ‘You and me Dima, we don’t do retirement. Why else are you here in this godforsaken shithole at this ungodly hour?’
They looked at each other and for a second, the years that separated them vanished. Vatsanyev reached forward, clasped him by the shoulder.
‘Dima, Dima! You need to move with the times. The world is changing. Forget the past, forget the present even. What’s coming will change everything. Trust me.’
He let out a barking cough, exposing gums where teeth had once been. ‘We’re in what the Americans call the End Times — but not in the way they think. God won’t be there, that’s for sure. Three letters: P — L — R. Time to polish up your Farsi, my friend.’
They had served together in Iran during the war with Iraq, comrades and rivals. Dima had to arrange Vatsanyev’s release from the Iraqis, but not before they had stamped on his back and pulled out all of his fingernails. They had even stayed in touch after the break-up of the Soviet Empire, but Vatsanyev had gone underground after Grozny fell to the Russians. Now they faced each other in a dead hooker’s flat, mercenary and terrorist — two professions that were on the up.
Dima swung round suddenly. The two ski masks jumped. He bent down and unzipped the case, and with the flourish of a black marketeer presenting his booty flipped back the lid to reveal the neatly packed dollars. Bulganov wanted it all back but that might have to be Kroll’s task. The ski masks stared in wonder. Good, more signs of innocence. Vatsanyev didn’t even bother to look.
‘Aren’t you going to count it?’
He looked perturbed. ‘You think I don’t trust my old comrade?’
‘It’s Bulganov’s money, not mine. If I were you I’d check every one — front and back.’
Vatsanyev smiled at the joke then nodded at his boys, who knelt down and eagerly started to pull at the tightly packed bundles. The atmosphere in the room relaxed a little. Dima noticed that a dark stain had spread from under the rug that had been thrown over the dead hookers.
The shorter Chechen holstered his pistol but the other left his on the floor by his left knee. Less than two metres away. Dima wished he knew who or what was in the next room, but it was now or never.
‘I need a piss. Where’s the toilet?’
Dima leapt forward, appearing to trip over the table which tipped it on its side. He slammed down hard on top of the younger thug who folded in on himself like a book. As he landed, Dima lunged for the pistol on the floor with both hands, found the trigger with one, racked the top slide with the other and without raising it fired first at the taller one, hitting him in the thigh. The man sprang backwards, offering Dima a better target. The bridge of his nose exploded with petals of bloody flesh. Still with the gun under him, Dima aimed another shot into the groin of the man beneath him and felt the explosion as he went slack. Without pausing, Dima rolled himself over the open case of money and across to the corner diagonally opposite the open door. Looking back, he saw the sofa was empty. Vatsanyev was bent over the upturned table trying to reach one of the guns with his stick. Dima lost a whole second as a remnant of embedded kinship stopped him taking a shot. He recovered enough to put a bullet into Vatsanyev’s shoulder.
Katya was nowhere to be seen. She had to have gone into the other room. Had she taken shelter there or been pulled in by whoever was in there? He didn’t have to wait long. She appeared in the doorway, head pulled back, her face contorted in a fresh convulsion of fear. Just behind her, another face half-hidden, even younger. No question who this was: the same black eyes as her father’s, only wrapped in an exquisite porcelain doll’s face. Dima did a quick calculation: Vatsanyev’s daughter Nisha, his only child by his last wife would be — sixteen. Nisha had had the choice, could have gone to America with her mother and could soon have been heading for Harvard. Instead she was here, sucked into her father’s desperate struggle. He glanced at Vatsanyev on his side, eyes open, watching his daughter on the other side of the money he would never get to spend.
Dima’s eyes locked on to Nisha’s. She kept her body behind Katya, gripping her captive’s hair tightly with one hand while the other held a breadknife against her throat. Half a second passed. Dima had been here before. There had been younger targets than Nisha. An eight-year-old boy in northern Afghanistan wielding an AK like it was joined to him, and a girl, a trained sniper sent to assassinate her own informant father. On a rooftop where he had cornered her, the building beneath them burning, he made a last attempt to persuade her to switch sides. But she made it clear that the idea disgusted her and insisted on going down fighting.
Another half second. There were no choices here, no second thoughts, no opportunities for negotiation. Her father had been like a brother once; Dima had even held Nisha as a baby. The best she could hope for was that his aim wasn’t what it was, that his bullet would hit Katya and then they’d all be fugitives.
Dima raised his arm. It seemed to take a huge effort, as if some subterranean force field was exerting itself. Nisha was slightly to Katya’s left, face half-shadowed by her captive. Dima fired wide, predicting that Nisha would dart behind her human shield, then he fired again to Katya’s right, catching Nisha on the rebound. Katya crumpled forward as Nisha dropped her and fell back into the darkness. He sent a further burst into the other room, then stepping across the debris and bodies he lifted Katya into his arms.
In the sudden silence he could hear the rapid breathing of one of the Chechens. Dima turned, about to put a bullet in him, when he heard something shuffling outside. He looked up just as the apartment front door exploded. Three AK muzzles and, not far behind, three figures: faces pointlessly blackened, their helmets and body armour fresh and untarnished by action. An internal security SWAT team — famous for their ineptitude. Trying to take in the scene that confronted them, they froze. For a moment, nobody spoke.
‘He’s down there,’ Dima said, gesturing at Vatsanyev but keeping his eyes on the men. He could hear Vatsanyev struggling to lift himself, and his wheezing whisper, ‘Dima, Dima, don’t let them take me.’
One of the SWATs stepped forward, lowering his weapon. ‘Dima Mayakovsky, you’re to come with us.’
‘On whose authority?’
‘Director Paliov.’