A Darker Place (33 page)

“He means it, Yuri. I’d do as he says,” Kurbsky called.

“Get your boss out,” Ali Selim said. “And keep in front of the Mercedes so I can see you and watch your hands.”

Yuri opened the passenger door and Luzhkov got out. He stood there looking terrified, and Ali walked to the other side of the wharf, paused for a moment, as if daring someone to shoot him in the back, then turned.

“So you don’t want me to blow up the
Garden of Eden.
Have you spoken about it to anyone?”

“Before God, I have not, I swear it,” Luzhkov said.

“I can vouch for that,” Bounine said. “He couldn’t care less about the boat and the people on it, he told me so. It’s his future he’s worried about, both here and in Moscow. That tape could destroy him.”

“What tape?” Ali Selim turned to face Luzhkov and barked that harsh laugh. “There is no tape, you maggot. If there were, it would have me on it condemning myself. Do I look stupid?”

His arm swung up and he shot Luzhkov between the eyes, hurling him back over the edge of the wharf into the water. It was so instant, so brutal, that it took the breath away. Bounine didn’t make a move.

Ali Selim said, “If you’d pulled a pistol, old son, you’d have been swimming with him now, but I’ll keep you a bit longer because you could be useful. Ease your piece out and throw it in the water, and use your left hand.”

Bounine did exactly as he was told. “Now what?”

“Back down to the cabin. Walk in front of your friend.” Bounine led the way, and they paused at the end of the table. Selim said, “Sit down for a minute.”

They did, and Kurbsky said, “What happens now?”

Ali Selim opened another wardrobe and pulled out three yellow and black fluorescent jackets. “Each of you put one on, and help him with his arm,” he told Bounine.

He retreated and put one on himself quickly. Then he found a life jacket, pulled it over his head, and tied the tapes at his waist. They had done as they were told, and now he took some plastic ties from a drawer.

“Wrists, both of you, behind the back. Do your friend,” he told Bounine again.

Bounine struggled, but Kurbsky’s left arm wouldn’t bend. “It won’t work.”

“Then tie them in front of him and I’ll do you.”

It was finished and they stood looking at him, and he produced the holdall from behind the bar, put it on the table, and opened it. He leaned over and sniffed. “I love that smell, Semtex. I’ve blown up parts of Belfast in my day with this stuff, and the IRA got the blame. Mind you, it’s no use without these.” He took out the tin box and opened it. “Pencil timers. If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen?”

He went to work, quickly and deftly, to do what needed to be done, and finally zipped up the bag. “I’m going to blow them all to hell, so let’s get on with it.”

Bounine led the way, followed by Kurbsky, who said as they went up to the stern deck, “Tell me one thing. Why the lifejacket—you won’t need that in hell.”

“But it’s what some nosy River Police patrol boat would expect me to wear, a legal requirement.”

“You think of everything. What are you going to do with my friend?”

“I could shoot him, but I wouldn’t like him down there in the same water as Luzhkov. You and I want to go all the way, and together.” He turned to Bounine. “He’s got cancer like me. It’s better this way.”

“He hasn’t got cancer,” Bounine said. “You’re crazy.”

“Don’t say that. And he does have cancer, he told me. You only have to look at him, anyway.”

Kurbsky said, “Of course I’ve got cancer, Selim, but he hasn’t. Let him go.”

“That’s perfectly correct, so I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Just before we turn to run into the
Garden of Eden,
I’ll roll him over the side.”

“With his bloody hands tied?”

“Who knows? If he kicks and struggles enough, he might float. It’s all in the hands of God, though I’m not sure which one. Now, down the steps and sit side by side in the stern. Go on, do it.”

Bounine went first and Kurbsky followed gingerly, and they got themselves settled. Ali Selim followed, put the bag containing the Semtex close to the prow, and cast off. They drifted out a little, the body of Luzhkov in the water a few feet away. Ali Selim crouched down.

“This is it, the big moment. The
Running Dog
does forty knots tops, so when I turn it up, we fly. It’s all going to happen very quickly, do you understand? I’ll be at Cadogan Pier in fifteen minutes. You’d better believe it.”

“I think by now you’ve made your point,” Kurbsky said. “No Russian flag?”

“Fuck the hammer and sickle. Attempt anything out of order and I’ll just give you each a bullet in the head.” He stood up, the rain pouring, and said cheerfully, “What a terrible day to die on.”

He went and sat behind the wheel, switched on the engine, and moved out into the Thames and turned upriver.

 

 

AND FLY
Running Dog
did, at an incredible speed, particularly considering the weather, the rain like a lace curtain obscuring everything. The
Garden of Eden
had cast off and was moving out into the channel to proceed downriver toward the House of Commons, when Captain Henderson, on the bridge beside the helmsman, saw the moving dot on the radar screen.

Ferguson, Harry Salter, Dillon, and Monica were below, but Billy, who didn’t drink and found most social gatherings boring, had joined the Captain.

Henderson said, “What the hell is that?”

The helmsman said, “By God, it’s shifting. I’ve never known such a speed on the river.”

Billy reached for a pair of glasses and focused them. “It’s one of those orange jobs like the police and customs use. I think it could be the police. They’re wearing the right jackets. There’s one guy at the wheel and two in the stern. It’s difficult to work out what’s happening. It’s bouncing about, and with all that spray and the rain, you can’t see much.”

“I don’t like it,” Henderson said. “It’s already veering off center. I’ll try the hooter.”

The warning blast echoed in the rain, and Ali Selim laughed. “There they are. Already working out, ready to proceed downriver. Too late. He won’t have time to maneuver.”

On the boat itself, there was no alarm, no panic as the music played and people enjoyed themselves and the Vice President of the United States glad-handed his way through the crowd, followed by Blake Johnson, but on Roper’s screens it was different.

“What in hell is that?” he said to Sergeant Doyle, who was standing beside him. He tried for a close-up, but the curtain of rain and spray defeated him.

Ali Selim, standing up at the wheel, howled with delight. “There she is, ready and waiting.”

Kurbsky and Bounine had been drenched with waves engulfing them, and it had taken time for Kurbsky to wrestle the gutting knife free with his bound hands. He showed it to Bounine, who half turned, holding up his wrists at the rear, and Kurbsky sliced through. He held out his hands, and Bounine freed him and gave the knife back to him.

Kurbsky stabbed into the thwart of the
Running Dog,
the razor-sharp blade doing terrible damage, and it swerved and immediately started to slow. Ali Selim turned, hanging on to the wheel, trying to keep his balance. Bounine and Kurbsky tried to stand up.

Everything seemed to happen at once. Ali Selim held on to the wheel with one hand and drew his Beretta, loosing off a shot wildly as the boat swerved. Bounine was hit in the right shoulder and knocked back in the stern seat.

“You bastard,” Ali Selim cried, and shot Kurbsky twice, once in the nylon-and-titanium jacket, the second round passing straight through the left hip. He turned back to concentrate on the steering, the boat slowing down, and Kurbsky flung himself against his back, sliding his right hand around and cutting his throat.

Ali Selim fell to his knees, bowing his head across the steering wheel as his life ebbed away. Over to the left, the
Garden of Eden
was virtually invisible in the rain and mist. The engine suddenly died and the
Running Dog
drifted, half full of water, pushed by the current.

Bounine was trying to sit up. Kurbsky sliced the waist tapes of Ali Selim’s life jacket, removed it, and went and looped it over his friend’s head.

“Hang on, old lad, we’re going for a swim.”

“The bag, Alex,” Bounine croaked. “The Semtex.”

“Of course.” Things seemed to be happening in slow motion for Kurbsky. “I think we’ll leave it to go down with the ship.”

He was knee-deep in water as he helped his friend over the side and followed him. The tidal current pulled them away, Kurbsky holding on to a strap on Bounine’s life jacket. The
Running Dog
had disappeared completely now. It was quiet, distant city sounds, the rain muffling everything, and then the surface of the river heaved and an enormous fountain jetted up, the sound echoing with a curious flatness.

In the computer room, Roper said, “And what in the hell was that?” to Doyle, and hurriedly called Ferguson on his mobile, connecting with him instantly. “What’s going on?”

Ferguson said, “Don’t know. It wasn’t us. There was some craft proceeding very fast midriver and then it stopped and there was a muffled bang. The River Police are investigating.”

 

 

IN EXTREME CONDITIONS, a five-knot current can be found on the Thames, but three knots is relatively common, and it was enough to push Kurbsky and Bounine at some speed downriver. There was a certain amount of traffic, but visibility was so poor they simply weren’t seen.

They’d been in the water at least forty minutes, hypothermia kicking in, when their luck changed and a strong eddy in the water swept them in toward the shore. They drifted in toward an entrance between two wharfs. A notice board, paint peeling, said “Puddle Dock.”

Bounine said, “What the hell does that mean?”

“English humor, Yuri. Who cares? We’re alive.”

“Only just,” Bounine gasped as they were swept in between stone piers and ended up at broad stone steps leading down into the water.

It was only when attempting to scramble out of the water onto the steps that Kurbsky realized how serious his wound was. He sprawled on a step in considerable pain.

“The bastard got you twice?” Bounine said.

“I think I’d have been dead if I hadn’t been wearing a bulletproof vest, but the other one’s in the right hip. It’s bad, Yuri. What about you? Now we’re out of the water, I can see you’re bleeding like crazy.”

“Left shoulder.” Bounine looked about him at the decaying building, the rotting barges, the total desolation. “Well, I don’t know what we’re doing here at the backside of the world, but we’re alive, Alex, at least for the moment. What do we do?”

Kurbsky took out a mobile from his right breast shirt pocket. “Waterproof. I think we’ll hand ourselves in.”

Roper answered at once. “Good God, Alex, where are you?”

“In a bad way, Roper, with my good friend Yuri Bounine. Luzhkov’s dead at the hands of a very bad article named Ali Selim, who was going to blow up the
Garden of Eden
using a fast orange rescue boat with seventy pounds of Semtex primed with short-time pencil fuses in a suitcase. Bounine and I were his prisoners, we managed to break free, I cut his throat, and the boat went down and blew up. In the process, Bounine and I got shot to pieces. We must have left a quart of blood each drifting downriver with the current—and let’s get one thing straight, in case I die on you. Bounine’s one of the good guys in this. Treat him right.”

“Where are you?” Roper demanded.

“Don’t laugh, but according to the sign it’s called Puddle Dock. I can’t go on—I think I’m going to pass out.” Which he did, dropping the Codex on the step, and Bounine picked it up.

Roper was saying, “Hang on, Alex, hang on. We’ll send a helicopter.”

“Bounine here. Whatever you send, it better be quick—he’s out of it, and I’m not feeling too good myself.” He leaned against Kurbsky, tried to put his good arm around him, and fainted.

 

 

KATYA AND SVETLANA had moved back to the conservatory after turning off the television. The buzzer sounded and Katya discovered Billy Salter on the screen.

“Let me in, Katya, it’s important.”

She did, and was waiting at the front door when he appeared in his Alfa Romeo. He got out, and she knew from his face it was bad news.

“What is it, Billy?”

“I’d rather keep it for both of you.”

“That bad?”

“I’m afraid so.”

He followed her in and along to the conservatory, where they found Svetlana sitting on her wicker throne. “Why, Mr. Salter, it’s you.”

“And my news isn’t too good.”

“Then let us hear it.”

 

 

“SO THE HELICOPTER found them half dead at this place Puddle Dock and rushed them straight to Rosedene. It’s in the same area of Holland Park—local people assume it’s a nursing home, but it’s a very private hospital maintained for security personnel, run by Professor Charles Bellamy, the finest general surgeon in London. I should know—he’s put me back together again twice.”

“And he’s operating now?” Katya asked.

“He and his assistants are taking care of both Alex and this Bounine guy as we speak. The very best of treatment, and by God they’ve earned it. The Prime Minister, the Israeli Prime Minister, the President of Palestine, and the Vice President of the United States. If this guy Ali Selim had managed to bring it off, it would have shaken the world.”

“To put it mildly,” Katya said.

“So can we go now to this Rosedene?” Svetlana asked.

“That’s what I’m here for. Ladies, your carriage awaits.”

 

 

IT WAS LATE evening at Rosedene, and dark outside, and they sat in the lounge with Dillon and Monica, the women talking in low voices. The matron, Maggie Duncan, looked in. “We’ve two teams working away, Professor Bellamy alternating. Both patients have lost phenomenal quantities of blood, but that’s down to the time they were floating along in the river. Bounine took a shoulder shot that passed straight through, so he isn’t too bad.”