Candleburn (11 page)

23

Blake opened the front door of his house and flicked on the lights.

“Good
evening,” he said nonchalantly as he walked into the lounge.

The
blond Russian stood in the open-plan kitchen, making himself tea with Blake’s kettle. The other, the dark-haired, bearded one who Blake had spoken to earlier, reclined on the settee and seemed startled by Blake’s brazen entry.

Jeffrey
was sat on the Russian’s lap, enjoying being stroked. He jumped down and prowled around Blake’s feet before scampering off upstairs.

“Good,”
the bearded thug said with his heavy accent. “We were getting worried we would have to feed your cat if you didn’t come back soon.”

“Well,
I hadn’t taken you earlier as the feline protection league,” Blake said. “It’s kind of you to show such dedication, but you’ve nothing to worry about, Jeffrey is very well cared for, so you’ll find you can leave now.”

The
blond Russian poured the kettle into a two white ceramic mugs and swirled the teabags with a spoon from the drawer.

“Abram,
he’s a funny one, this American,” the blond said.

Standing
by the fridge, he seemed even bigger to Blake now than he had in the car. Muscles flexed inside his top.

“Great,
” Blake thought. “A steroid junkie.”

The
blond put some milk in both teas and returned the container to the fridge. His dark-haired friend – Abram – stood. He too was large; Blake estimated him to be at least five inches over his own height, placing him at 6’4 or 6’5.

“Yes,
very amusing,” Abram replied. “And you know how much I love people who amuse me.”

He
moved around the careworn pine breakfast table and collected his own drink from the kitchen side-board. The blond walked past the central column that ran down the middle of the house. He was flanking Blake.

“Well,
glad to hear it,” Blake said, slowly shifting his own position to the far end of the lounge, keeping his face towards the thugs and an equal distance between them. “So, to what do I owe the pleasure of your company this evening?”

The
blond held his mug in his left hand as he sipped, blowing on the liquid to cool it. He slid his right into his trouser pocket.

“We
are here to discuss with you an item of property that belongs to some friends of ours,” Abram said, leaning against the pine table and placing the bottom of his drink in amongst the patchwork of stained drink circles that lined its surface.

“Any
indications as to what this item might be?” Blake asked.

The
blond drew closer.

“This
will go much quicker if we ask the questions and you provide answers,” he said.

He
withdrew a taser from his pocket.

“Where
is the puzzle box?” Abram asked.

“Why
do you want it?” Blake replied.

“I
told you,” the blond said. “We ask the questions.”

He
jolted the taser into Blake’s chest and let rip with the high intensity electric blast.

24

“No,” Nate said firmly into his phone, “Al Calandria isn’t involved. But he knows who is and he certainly isn’t happy about it.”

“What
do we do next?” Zain replied. “I’m at your place. Alex let me in and the kids are here.”

Asp
nursed his bruises as he walked along the wide road that circled the Burj Khalifa.

“Good,”
Asp said, massaging a particularly sore area of his chest. “You grab some sleep. I’m going to get in a cab and come back to join you.”

The
large battlement walls of the recreated old city towered over the surrounding streets. The caramel-painted ramparts fitted remarkably well with Kaskhar’s personal museum and Asp suddenly realised that this artificial reconstruction of a Saladin Citadel was probably what drew the man to headquarter his business here.

Labelled
“Old Town”, the area was a main tourist draw and contained half a dozen of the Emirates’ best hotels.

It
was all a lie of course.

Not
just that the “Old Town” was barely five years old and constructed of plaster covered reinforced concrete, but deeper, even more insidiously, the idea that anything like this had ever been in this part of the country.

Prior
to the discovery of oil Dubai had been a devastatingly poor part of the world. Pearl fishing provided 90% of the economy. The excruciating heat made permanent habitation foolish at best and impossible at worst. The local tribes had been itinerant – visiting the creek harbours, upon which Dubai was founded, in the winter months and spending the summer in the more sensible, cooler climes of the mountains.

That
was why the country was such a patchwork counterpane with each state owning non-contiguous portions of the others.

Everything
was about tribes and access to oases.

And
that was the most insidious part of the lie: venerable though their culture and history was, it was nomadic. Unrivalled oral histories, the beauty and romance of being desert wanderers and tradesmen – tales of hard living and heroism sung on the lute-like oud.

But
no castles. No great fortifications. No large stone cities.

They
were all a modern wet dream, a stolen fable from less harsh lands further south – Al Ain on the Saudi border, Petra in Jordan or Muscat in Oman.

“A
manufactured past, worthy of its emergent future,” Asp said, a taxi calling to the curb.

“What?”
Zain replied.

“I
think I’ve had an idea,” Asp said, triumph creeping into his voice. “I think someone’s reading history backwards – making connections that just aren’t there.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know,” Asp replied, getting into the taxi. “I’m going to go to the office to do research. I’ll meet you at the house after you’ve slept.”

***

500,000 volts of electricity discharged in a streaming arc of blue lightening as the Russian jabbed the taser into Blake’s chest.

Blake
raised an eyebrow.

A
micro-flash of puzzlement on the thug’s face. Blake’s fist connected with the Russian’s throat. Hands twisted, a wrist broke, Blake grabbed the taser and blasted his assailant in the neck.

Abram
sprung into action, hand darting to the inside of his pin-striped jacket.

Blake
hurled the taser like a throwing knife, hitting the dark-haired Russian on the nose. The impact startled Abram, slowing his draw by a fraction of a second. Before he could bring his pistol free of its holster, Blake’s hand was around the back of his head, forcing Abram’s face violently down onto the table.

“A
gun?” Blake said. “In Dubai? Now that’s beyond naughty. That’s way outside the rules of gangster conduct for this town.”

The
Russian instinctively put his forearm on the wood, preventing Blake from breaking Abram’s nose on the surface. Before he had time to react, Blake struck down with his foot in the back of Abram’s knee.

The
Russian lost his balance.

Blake
balled his fists. He punched to the thug’s kidney. Once, twice, three times. A blow with the flat of his palm to the face. Then one to the spine.

Next,
a throw.

Blake
tossed Abram through the air, minimum of effort, maximum effect. The Russian groaned as he walloped into the wall and landed with a clatter.

“My
God,” Blake said, already dancing back to the lounge, “it feels good to finally get that out of my system. So much pent up fucking rage.”

The
blond Russian was clasping at his throat, clawing for breath. Eyes bulging, fingers straining to release his collapsed trachea. Blake ignored him. He’d be unconscious in thirty seconds and dead four minutes after that.

Instead
Blake stalked across to Abram, who was trying to uncurl from a heap against the lounge wall. The Russian’s fingers finally managed to take hold of the pistol grip and remove it from the leather holster under his arm.

Long
before Abram could aim the weapon, Blake snapped the Russian’s fingers and the gun was removed. Twisting it like a gunslinger, Blake brought the pistol down level with the Russian’s brow.

“Well,
how’d you like them apples?” Blake said.

The
pistol was small, light in his hands. From the feel, a Berretta but the angle of the stock was wrong. For the first time he had chance to look at it.

“Guns
in Dubai?” Blake said. “Even for gangsters, they’re forbidden, a big no-no. Completely against the rules of the detente. And this one in particular... Jesus! It’s a GRU designation 6P28, if memory serves! The ‘silent death’ – the quietest pistol ever made. You don’t see many of these outside Spetsnaz. Which means you guys are either the worst excuses for ex-special forces I’ve ever seen, or badly out of shape or chancers.”

Abram
opened his eyes and spat at Blake.

“Go
to hell.”

“No,”
Blake replied. “I think not.”

He
stuffed a cushion from the sofa over the gangster’s mouth and fired the pistol straight into the man’s left knee cap.

The
pistol was no louder than a cap gun popping. A normal weapon fired in a sparsely furnished room would have deafened them both. Even with a high-end suppressor or silencer reducing its bark, the discharge would have startled neighbours up to two or three streets away.

The
Russian’s face swelled with pain, veins normally hidden beneath the skin pulsed around his temple and forehead.

“So,
now that we’ve established that I’m not the soft mark you thought I was,” Blake said, “it’s time to uncover exactly what’s going on here. Let’s start easy: who sent you?”

He
pulled the cushion away from Abram’s mouth. The Russian went to scream. On the inhalation, Blake shoved the cloth back over his lips. The muffled yelp would have been inaudible outside the room.

“Bad
move,” Blake lamented. “With a full magazine, a standard PSS like this contains six bullets. It’s a very special weapon. Not only are the bullets specifically designed to be sub-sonic, so avoiding the typical crack-boom problem of a normal gun, but the chamber cuts off expanding gases.”

Blake
kept his knee pressed into Abram’s chest as he held the pillow in place. The pistol was barely an inch above the Russian’s eye.

“Of
course, such specialist shots are therefore pricey,” Blake continued. “It costs around $300 every time you fire it. But then, I’m not picking up the tab. So, six bullets means I’m only going to ask you six times. And I’m going to make every shot count.”

Blake
jammed the barrel into the Russian’s crotch.

“Second
time: who sent you?”

Behind
Blake, the abrasive guttural thrashing of the blond Russian turned to stillness. Abram, the muscles in his body still twitching, twisted his head to watch his friend’s legs go limp and motionless. He turned back to Blake and shook out a ‘no’.

“So
be it.”

Another
bullet.

Blake
stood as the Russian’s back arched and his body started convulsing. Arms in spasm, Abram writhed. With no pillow to keep him silent, he swore loudly in his native tongue.

Blake
waited for the flaying to stop before stepping in and placing his foot on the Russian’s seeping kneecap.

Abram
went to scream.

“Uh-uh,”
Blake said, bringing a finger to his lips. “This is a family district and you’ll wake next-door’s baby. Now, I may only have four bullets left – but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to take advantage of the holes in you I’ve made, as I make them.”

There
was a new look on Abram’s face that replaced the pain as Blake applied increased pressure with his boot: fear.

Blake
wondered how many times over the years this thug and his ex-colleague had extracted information or money or retribution from businessmen, rivals or marks. How many times had he beaten or murdered the hookers who worked for his boss?

Blake
always told himself these things when he interrogated. It helped cut the natural instinct for empathy with the one you were torturing.

He
removed from under his shirt the rubberised dustbin lid that had been outside his front door. Pared with the secateurs to more closely stick to his skin, it had been this make-shift body armour that saved him from the taser blast.

He
slung it aside.

“Third
time...”

“Da,
da,” Abram wheezed as he stopped twisting and returned his attention to Blake. “You have fucked up big time. I am enforcer for the Wolves. They will find you and kill you for this.”

“That
doesn’t tell me anything I don’t already know,” Blake said with strained patience.

Blood
from Abram’s wounds was soaking in darkened circles through his clothes and beginning to dribble onto the floor. The Russian’s body was curled foetal as he clasped his crotch with vermillion streaked hands.

“I
estimate you’ve only a couple of minutes before blood loss takes you. So, if you won’t tell me anything useful, we’re going to have to speed this up.”

Blake
took a pace forward, selecting a spot for the next round.

“We
get request,” Abram said quickly, his features contorted with the effort of speaking. “Ash-Shumu’a, I’m not supposed to know, but I know. Ash-Shumu’a.”

“Never
heard of them.”

“The
Candle,” the Russian continued. “New Islamic terrorist network. Very nasty. They plan something big. They want the package you receive and they want key. Big plans.”

“What
plans?”

“I
know not. I don’t even know what package contains – only that is puzzle box and very important.”

“Okay
but Ash-Shumu’a doesn’t control you,” Blake replied. “Your boss does. You work for Fedor Milanovich? He’s the head of the Wolves. Or you get your orders from one of his lieutenants?”

“I
work for Mr Astrinka – but this mission special,” Abram stuttered. “Fedor Milanovich himself, he call me in. He give me orders directly.”

The
Russian paled, his eyelids began to flutter. Blake tapped his boot against the man’s knee.

Abram
gasped with pain.

“And?”
Blake asked. “How would the box be returned to Ash-Shumu’a?”

“I am to text number in my phone. It burn phone, change daily. Must text before midnight. Just one word: ‘cuckoo’ if I have box, ‘nest’ if no locate box yet. Instructions then to come.”

“Who
runs them? Who runs this Islamic group?”

“They
call him Aarez – but not a real name. It mean leader. That’s it. That’s all I know,” the Russian was fading again.

“Bullshit,”
Blake said, kicking the Russian. “You know what they want. You know more.”

“No,
no, I swear...”

“Why
did they target me?” Blake shouted. “What’s so important about this puzzle box?”

“I
don’t know!”

“Speculate!”

“Prince Harry,” the Russian cried. “I don’t know why but they whisper it is about England’s Prince Harry!”

Blake
stood bolt upright with surprise.

“Prince
Harry?” he exclaimed.

He
paused and ran through the links again in his mind to make sure it all fitted: Afghanistan, UK military, helicopters, DNA, cigarettes.