Authors: Steven Savile
Silver (42 page)
“No,” Konstantin said.
“Then what? Talk me through it, Konstantin. Help me understand, because right now I’ve got a murder weapon, a murderer, and a truckload of evidence, but something doesn’t fit when I think about it. It’s a niggle. The old cop instinct, if you like. I want to say I don’t think you did it, but I’ve watched the footage a thousand times; you’re as guilty as sin. So I don’t know why I keep coming back to the fact that I
want
to believe you.”
So Konstantin told her everything—Masada, Mabus, the two Akim Caspis, the prophecies and the threats, and his involvement in it. He told her about the gun in the apartment and the timer and the birdseed in the trees meant to cause a distraction. He told her about trying to fight his way through the crowd to save the Holy Father and being too late. He told her about the Swiss Guard and begged her to put his face out across the wire, to warn people. Because he was still out there, and the body in the Moselle proved someone else had witnessed the murder and he’d silenced them before they could talk. He told her about Humanity Capital trading on tragedy, about Miles Devere, about the hostages in England. He told her everything.
It felt good to confess it, to put the burden onto someone else, because it wasn’t over yet. He knew that as surely as he knew the sun was going to rise on the ninth day and the College of the Cardinals would enter conclave to elect the next Pope. It wasn’t over.
“What are you going to do with the dagger?” he asked her.
She looked at him. He couldn’t read her face. He didn’t know whether she believed a word he had said. What she couldn’t argue with was how it all hung together. He couldn’t have made up a story like that while they had him trapped in the interrogation room. “It’s a murder weapon. It’s evidence.”
“When it’s over?”
“Why?”
“Like you said, it’s evidence, but not just of murder. In a weird kind of way it’s proof, isn’t it? Proof that Jesus and Judas existed, proof in the stuff they want us to believe. It’s the kind of treasure the Vatican will want, no matter how tainted it might be.”
He lost track
of the time between visits. He was beyond tired. But they wouldn’t let him sleep. Not properly. Only snatches here and there. That told him they had cameras on him and someone watching him at all times. Whenever he started to doze they returned, like clockwork.
They kept coming back, working away at him. Softly from the woman, great hammer blows from the guy. He kept trying to tell them they were wasting their time, that the real assassin was out there, still safe in his position inside the inner ring of the papal guard, but they refused to believe him.
He still didn’t know their names. They were just the woman and the man. It kept it impersonal, stopped him from thinking of them as friends. If he had been running the interrogation, the first thing he would have
done was make it personal. Sometimes he did not understand
the logic of these people. If they wanted him to trust them, surely they should be using every trick at
their disposal to convince him there were bonds between
them. They couldn’t bring in the torturer, so what else could they do?
This time when they came for him it was different.
They weren’t alone.
There were six other men with them. Konstantin watched
them file into the cell. It was like the tiled wall had been replaced with muscle. The muscle didn’t talk. They didn’t acknowledge his nod. I was as if he didn’t exist to them. That suited Konstantin.
“Get up,” the man said.
He didn’t move.
“I said get up.”
Konstantin placed his hands flat on the table and pushed the chair back, dragging the metal legs across the floor so they grated. He stood up slowly.
“What’s going on?” he asked the woman.
She didn’t answer him. She looked at the man.
“You’re being moved.”
He looked at the woman. “How many days has it been?”
This time she answered him. “Eight.”
He had been out of touch with reality for eight days. Eight days. Anything could have happened in that time. Akim Caspi could be dead. Mabus could be dead. A third of the world’s population could be dead. He wouldn’t have known. All he did know was that tomorrow the
novemdiales
would be over.
If the Sicarii were going to strike tomorrow, it would be the perfect moment. For nine days the world would have mourned Peter II, and the victims of Rome and Berlin along with him, and each new dawn would be a day further away from the tragedies. Nine days was enough for the numbness to have receded. Nine days was enough for the world to think that final attack wasn’t coming. Nine days was enough to make a fool out of everyone.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Russia, Italy, London? Does it matter? One cell looks pretty much the same as another wherever it is,” the man said.
“I’d like to know.”
“Berlin,” the m “The fun stuff’s over. You’re going to be held accountable for what you’ve done, and then we’re going to bury you way down deep. And when the world has forgotten about you we’ll whisper in the right ear and someone will find you in the showers or shiv you in the yard. It won’t matter to us. But I am sure we’ll find someone who really wants to hurt you; maybe an ex-countryman of yours? Or maybe someone who isn’t enlightened enough to turn the other cheek. It doesn’t matter one way or the other to me. Justice will have had its way, and the world will have its blood, so everyone is happy.”
“Except for me,” Konstantin said, as they came around the table and grabbed his arms. Two men forced them behind his back and cuffed him. They cuffed his ankles and ran a chain from one cuff to the other, meaning he could barely shuffle more than a foot at a time.
“And who the hell cares if you’re happy?” the man asked.
The muscle bundled
him into the back of an SUV and drove.
They left the man and the woman outside the BKA offices in Wiesbaden. They didn’t talk until they were more than thirty minutes outside of the city, then the driver switched on his blinkers and followed the traffic off the next exit ramp, leaving the Autobahn. This wasn’t the way to Berlin.
For a moment Konstantin thought that perhaps they had decided to do it the Russian way, drive him somewhere remote then finish him, cleaning up the problem he posed. He licked his lips.
The driver pulled over to the side of the road.
It was a remote spot, far enough away for his body not to be found quickly. Remote enough the local wildlife might take care of that problem altogether.
There was little in the way of passing traffic. No one would accidentally see anything from the side of the road.
It was a good place to kill a man.
The driver leaned forward, opening the glove box.
The driver pulled a padded envelope from the glove box. It didn’t look bulky enough, or heavy enough in his hand, to contain a service revolver, and they wouldn’t have risked a close-combat weapon like a Korshun knife or a SARO machete. He turned in his seat and looked straight at Konstantin. “We’ve got a message for the old man from Control,” the driver said in a coarse Manchester accent. “This is it, all debts paid in full. He’s kept up his end of the bargain, but this is the end of the road. You’re cut off, as of now. You understand?”
He handed Konstantin the envelope.
It contained a passport with his picture on it in the name of John Smith, just about as English as names came, and a plane ticket from Frankfurt Main back to Heathrow, leaving in six hours. There was also a billfold with about 300 Euros in it.
“You get yourself caught, you’re on your own.”
“How are you going to explain this?” Konstantin said, meaning the plane ticket. “They’re expecting me in Berlin.”
“Yours is not to reason why, soldier. Yours is to get your ass home. End of story.”
He nodded. He knew enough not to ask operational details. No doubt the real wall of muscle was arriving right about now at the BKA building and the man and woman were scratching their heads, wondering who the hell they’d just turned him over to if it wasn’t the good guys. Or maybe only one of them was scratching his head. The woman had said she wanted to believe him. Maybe that had been enough to convince her to make the call? Had the simple act of telling the truth set this entire chain of events into action like the first domino going over?
One thing Six could do was paperwork. This crew would have presented every necessary piece of paper, with every i dotted and every t crossed. In and out, no one any the wiser until the real prisoner transport team arrived, hence the thirty minutes of driving rather than taking him straight to Frankfurt Main or the military airport at Wiesbaden. Six didn’t want the Germans knowing it was Her Majesty who’d sprung their suspected papal assassin. It wasn’t exactly good form for a monarch to be getting her royal hands dirty like that, even if she didn’t know what was actually being done in her name.
Konstantin pocketed the passport and the ticket.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Don’t thank me, mate. I’m only doing what I’m told. Thank the old man for calling in every favor he had with every man, woman and child from here to Timbuktu. Without him you’d be rotting away in Berlin for the rest of your natural, pal.”
He broke one
of the smaller Euro notes at a kiosk, buying a phone card.
It took him the best part of an hour to find a working pay phone.
He called in to Nonesuch.
Lethe answered on the first ring. It took a moment for
the line to connect and then both of them were talking without
the other hearing. Then the line opened. Konstantin started again, “I am on the evening flight from Frankfurt Main to Heathrow. When I land I am going to call again. By then I want you to have found Miles Devere for me.”
He hung up before Lethe could get a word in.
It was an
uneventful flight, both on the ground and in the air. A lot could happen in nine days it seemed, including people forgetting a face, or half-recognizing it and not being sure where from, even when it was a face they had seen day after day on the news reels and in the press. He wasn’t a film star and he wasn’t a pro ball player. What that meant was when they looked at him a few people did a weird sort of double-take, then shook their heads as though dismissing him. They had recognized him on some subliminal level, just like any other famous person, but they had filed him as just that, a famous person. Logic told them he had to be one, and who was he to argue with logic?
As it was, he landed in London refreshed from the flight and disembarked the plane. On the way along the metal passage back toward the gate, he asked one of the ground crew where the nearest pay phone was and made the call to Lethe.
“Welcome home, Koni,” Lethe said, even before the phone had started to ring in his ear. “We were worried about you.”
“Touching, I am sure. You have the address for me?”
“The old man told me to tell you he wants you here for a debriefing first thing.”
“Second thing. First thing I have a promise to keep.”
“Whatever you say, man, I’m just passing on the message. Second thing it is.”
“The address?”
“He’s in England. He entered the country the day after the assassination.”
“England isn’t small. Where in England?”
“I just want you to appreciate my brilliance for a moment, Koni. I found him for you, just like you asked. But think about it, if I say he’s in London, that means he’s one of seven and a half million people spread over thirty-two different boroughs. That’s a lot of people and a hell of a lot of streets. That’s your needle in a haystack right there.”
“Where is he?”
“Well, out of all those millions of buildings, I found the one he’s in. That’s how good I am at what I do, Koni. He has a place in the heart of London, Clippers Quay, off Taeping Street. You can take the DLR to Mudchute and walk from there in a couple of minutes. Most of the houses are built around the old Graving Dock. There are four apartments in the block. The penthouse is his. You can’t miss it.”
“A graving dock? Isn’t that appropriate,” Konstantin said.
“It doesn’t mean they used to bury people there, Koni,” Lethe said in his ear. The phone line started to beep, but he talked over them.
“Well it does now.”
Konstantin hung up and went to keep a promise.
He left the
train and walked quickly down the stairs that ran between the up and down escalator. He was the only person left on the train by the time it reached the Isle of Dogs. This part of the city was called Little Manhattan because of the mini-skyscrapers that had been built all along the riverside development of Canary Wharf. The Devere Holdings building was in there amid all of the merchant banks and import/export offices. Mudchute rather matched its name. Despite its nearness to the skyscrapers, it was like something out of the ’50s and owed its curious name to the fact that when it was being built the country was suffering from football factories, and its hooligans were the fear of Europe; otherwise, it would have been called Millwall Park, after the football team.
He followed the road around. Twenty years ago this part of London would have been full of kids kicking tin cans and pretending to be Teddy Sheringham and Tony Cascarino. Tonight it was quiet.
There was more building going on on the other side of the tracks. The metal skeleton of the building was slowly being wrapped in bricks and mortar.
He didn’t have a weapon. No doubt he could have climbed over the wall and dropped down onto the building site and found a decent sized rock. Or maybe a piece of steel pipe or rebar, a chisel, hammer or other tool. He decided against it, not for any ethical reasons—he had no problem with stealing from a construction site. No, he wanted to do this with his bare hands. He didn’t want anything between him and Devere as he beat the life out of him.
Konstantin found the building. Lethe was right, he couldn’t miss it. It was one of those carbuncles on the face of the city Prince Charles had been railing about for years while no one paid the slightest bit of notice to his royal raving.
Konstantin picked a path up to the first balcony. It was a long affair that actually ran around half of the frontage, then turned right to catch some of the lowering evening sun. The second story balcony repeated the pattern. It was the same for each of the four stories. The water pipes threaded through the narrowest of places, where the balconies didn’t over lap. Once he got to the first one it would be relatively easy to climb to the next. Of course there was no guarantee that when he got there the balcony doors would be open—and if they weren’t, hell would freeze over before Devere stopped playing Little Pig and let him in.
He could always try the buzzer trick again, but there were only three buzzers and no lights in any of the lower apartments. He didn’t waste any more time. He shimmied up the drainpipe, scuffing his feet off the wall, and hooked his hand onto the first balcony so that he could pull himself up. Second to third was almost as easy. He stood on the balcony rail and reached up. The next level was six inches out of reach, so leaning out over the drop, he jumped.
Konstantin caught the concrete base of the balcony and hauled himself up as though he was doing chin-ups, then swung, hooking his leg up onto the balcony railing and climbed onto the third story balcony. He repeated the maneuver for the fourth story and stood there for a moment, looking in through the huge plate glass doors and dusting his hands off.
The television was on, casting shadow shapes across the contours of the lounge.
Miles Devere was slumped in a leather armchair. He had his eyes closed and rested in the posture of someone who’d slipped into sleep.
Konstantin wanted him awake for the fun.
He checked his watch. It wasn’t quite midnight. There were chairs on the balcony, good cushioned chairs with high backs. Konstantin settled down into one of them. He was going to do this the Russian way. That meant coming late, four o’clock, coming in fast and hard and scaring the living crap out of Devere before he made him beg and plead and offer to pay anything, to give up his fortune, anything, and everything. Konstantin wasn’t about to be bought. When Devere was through begging he would beat the man to death and leave him in his fancy skyscraper city apartment surrounded by all the fine things money could buy.
He had the patience of a saint when it came to keeping a promise.
He looked out over the river, watching the city at night. It was a curious beast. It never quietly slept. He couldn’t understand the appeal of it. It was dirty, smelly, over-crowded, just like any other city in the world. He scanned the rooftops from The Tower to St. Paul’s distinctive dome and over the rooftops to The London Eye and, almost on the edge of what could be seen, Big Ben. The night lights made it seem like a different place. Like a fairy tale city. They might soften the sharp edges of the architecture, but they couldn’t hide the fact that right now murder was the only tale of the city worth telling.
He checked his watch again.
Two a.m.
Soon, he promised himself. The ambient light from the television went out.
Two hours passed slowly. Konstantin didn’t mind. Some moments were worth savoring. This was one of them. The moon was full and bright.
He stood up and walked the length of the balcony, looking for a makeshift tool that would help him break the lock open if he needed it. Three out of ten burglaries in the city required no force at all because the occupants were too dumb to lock their own doors and windows, but Konstantin was working under the impression that Devere was security conscious. Rich men usually were—to the point of paranoia. Whatever he was, Devere wasn’t a keen gardener. There was no ready supply of tools for turning the soil and planting bulbs in the window boxes.
He walked back slowly to the balcony doors. The basic locks that come with balcony doors are usually brittle and quite soft, meaning they will break under pressure. It didn’t matter how tough the glass was if the lock was going to shatter under a decent amount of leverage. A broom handle was enough to break most of them, but thankfully, most of the people sleeping soundly out there under the soft lights in fairy tale city didn’t know that. If they did, they wouldn’t have been sleeping at all, never mind soundly.
The door was locked, but he couldn’t see any additional locks or security—meaning Devere thought living four flights up made him safe. He wouldn’t live to regret that mistake.
He slipped it through the lock handle and applied a little pressure, testing it out. He felt the resistance, then pressed again, a little harder this time, working the lock. It split on the third try, with a crack like a gunshot.
He tossed the metal rod aside and slid the door open on its runner.
He went inside.
The apartment had that eerie four o’clock silence. He moved quickly through the place, walking from room to room. The decor was spartan, Scandinavian minimalist. It had absolutely no stamp of personality on it, and that wasn’t just because of the dark. It wasn’t actually that dark inside; the full moon painted everything silver.
Each white wall had a single piece of art on it. Konstantin couldn’t tell if they were cheap prints or expensive originals. He wasn’t much of an art lover. He recognized some pieces, especially by the old masters, but the new stuff, not so much. He liked his artists like he liked his enemies, dead.
Devere didn’t look like a paranoid man. There were motion detectors in each room at strategic points, and the little red light blinked every time Konstantin moved, but no alarm sounded. Like most people, he obviously didn’t set the alarm when he was in the apartment.
He found Devere’s room.
He listened to the sleeping man’s gentle snores through the door for a moment, checking his watch again. It was four o’clock sharp. It was time to raise some hell. Konstantin kicked the door open, yelling bloody murder as he charged into the room.
Miles Devere thrashed about in the starched white sheets of the bed. Brutally woken, he came up into the sitting position with his right hand across his heart.
Konstantin didn’t give him a second to work out what was happening.
He flew at Devere, straight across the room and into his face like some sort of hellion out of his worst nightmare—and that was exactly what Devere would be thinking for those few seconds as the mad shrieking silhouette charged at him. He hit Devere once, a back-handed left across the side of his face, then grabbed his hair and dragged out of the bed.
By then Devere had worked out what was happening.
It didn’t help him.
Konstantin bundled Devere to the floor and laid into him with his booted feet, kicking him again and again until the naked man was crumpled up in a fetal ball trying to protect himself. He didn’t say a word, he just stepped back, giving himself room to drive another kick into Devere’s back.
He bent down and grabbed a handful of Devere’s hair and dragged him through to the living room. Devere kicked, trying to get his feet under him, and grabbed and slapped at Konstantin’s hand in between screams and howls of pain.
Konstantin threw him across the room and just stood there over him, watching Devere scramble around naked.
“I never break a promise,” he said. “It is a Russian thing, all about honor.”