Nemesis (11 page)

He went over to a desk, which was kitted out as an elaborate workstation, and picked up a laptop. He keyed something in. A few seconds later, a printer whirred into life. Donovan handed the sheaf of papers to Purkiss.

‘My vetting documents on the relevant employees. You may find something there. And I’ve included specifications for the device in question, in case that helps.’

Purkiss glanced over the latter pages.

‘What’s this?’ he said.

A series of diagrams portrayed the device, a thin, flat object that resembled a match from a matchbook. The tip had a slightly bulbous head, also like a match’s. It was to the tip Purkiss pointed.

Donovan said, ‘The toxin compartment.’ He studied Purkiss’s face. ‘Ah. You weren’t aware. This device isn’t standard. The modification was my contribution, made to order. It allows the addition of a neurotoxin. One whose release can be triggered remotely.’

‘This was implanted on Rossiter?’

‘Yes. A combined tracker and, if needed, execution agent. I suppose the reasoning was that if Rossiter ever escaped, he could not only be located but stopped in his tracks.’ Donovan’s face touched on ruefulness. ‘From what you’re saying, it sounds as if he removed the device before either of its functions could be of any use.’

Pieces were slotting into place in Purkiss’s mind more quickly than he could keep up with them.

His phone buzzed in his pocket and, his eyes on Donovan, he took it out.

It was Saburova. Her voice was sharp.

‘There are armed men moving towards the house. I see two of them.’

––––––––

P
urkiss murmured, ‘Where?’ and Saburova said
the front door
and he said, ‘Stay back.’

He rose to his feet, Asher moving swiftly in tandem and staring at him.

Donovan returned Purkiss’s stare.

Purkiss said, ‘Two men at the door.’

He was at Donovan in two strides and barrelling into him and sending him backwards into the armchair he’d risen from. He felt Donovan’s sinews tense, his arms come up and his torso twist in the automatic defensive posture that had been drilled into him over gruelling years of training. But the momentum had carried him back and the chair tipped over and Purkiss was on him with his forearm across his throat.

‘How many out there?’

He relaxed the pressure just enough that Donovan could speak.

The man’s voice emerged as a throaty hiss:
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Purkiss had tried to bring down Donovan with the minimum of noise but it evidently hadn’t been enough, because the door to the living room swung open and the two guards from earlier came through with handguns drawn, shouting, ‘Back off,
back off.
’

Purkiss rolled off Donovan and dragged the older man across him where he crouched and slid an arm across his throat once more, this time from behind. He kept the man’s head in front of his so that just his eye peered past.

One of the guards was advancing on Asher, the other towards Purkiss and Donovan on the floor behind the overturned chair. Both were professionals, walking side-on with their firearms held in the Weaver stance.

The window behind Asher exploded in a screeching cavalcade of glass an instant before the sound of the shot rang through the room.

Purkiss saw Asher dive and roll and come up, fragments of glass glittering in his hair and on the shoulders of his suit jacket, and he saw Asher too had a gun, not the .22 Purkiss had taken off him but a spare he must have had in the car somewhere, a 9 mm pistol of some make. Asher pressed himself against the wall beside the window, out of range of whoever was outside.

Asher had his gun trained on the security guard nearest to him. He shouted: ‘Drop it. Drop it and tell your friends outside to back off.’

The double thump and crack of two shots in quick succession came through the broken window. Purkiss braced himself, but the shots seemed to be confined to outside.

Purkiss hauled himself up to a standing position, lifting Donovan with him so that the man hung straight in front of him. The security guard held his aim, squinting down the sight of his gun, the barrel trained on Purkiss’s eye.

Purkiss said, ‘If you shoot, I’ll know it. In the instant before you pull the trigger, you’ll give yourself away. I’ll move your boss’s head a fraction to the right, and you’ll put a bullet through his head. Don’t risk it.
Don’t.
’

Without waiting for the guard to reply, Purkiss hissed in Donovan’s ear: ‘How many outside?’

Donovan emitted a choked noise, half cry, half cough, and Purkiss eased the pressure a couple of millimetres. He saw the guard’s expression shift just a degree, saw the lifting of the face from the line along the gun barrel.

He felt Donovan go rigid in his grip. Felt the limbs shaking.

‘He’s sick,’ said the guard, without lowering the gun. ‘Heart.’

‘Drop the gun,’ Purkiss said.

Against his front, Donovan’s entire torso was convulsing now. The sounds rasping from his throat were like the death rattle of a beast in an abattoir after its throat has been cut.

‘For God’s sake,’ the guard yelled. ‘He’s having a heart attack.’

The second guard kept his gun locked on Asher in a Mexican stand-off. But he was glancing over, his face taut.

Another single shot outside echoed across the gravel forecourt.

Purkiss thought:
are they firing at Saburova?

He said, again, very precisely: ‘Put down your weapons and I’ll release your boss.’

Donovan’s hands were clawing feebly at Purkiss’s arm now. Purkiss felt the wetness of the man’s drool on his wrist.

Two seconds slouched by.

The two guards, as if obeying some invisible signal, lowered their guns simultaneously.

‘On the floor,’ Asher called.

The guards knelt, then lay prone, their hands behind their heads.

Asher was across at them in a moment, ducking to keep below the level of the front window, kicking their guns away, crouching behind them.

Purkiss lowered Donovan to the carpet and turned him at the same time so that he was on his back. He saw the eyelids fluttering, the spittle white in the corners of the mouth, one hand gripping the chest.

‘Medication?’ said Purkiss.

One of the guards raised his head. ‘In the sideboard over there. The top drawer.’

Asher moved quickly over and pulled open the drawer.

Purkiss registered his mistake even as Donovan’s knee came up and connected with his groin.

The man’s face had been pink, and healthy looking, with no pallor or cyanosis, no sheen of sweat.

Asher spun and raised the 9 mm but the guard nearest to him was fast and already lunging across the carpeted floor and seizing his own gun. The guard fired blindly, without aiming, the shot smashing into the base of the sideboard but causing Asher to leap aside.

The sick punch of nausea in Purkiss’s lower abdomen was rising, filling his chest and his throat. He fought not to vomit, waves of dull agony blurring his vision, and bore down on Donovan, but the older man was already slipping out from under him and pulling free.

Purkiss rose from his knees, staggering, and managed to put up an arm as Donovan’s kick snapped at his jaw, deflecting the foot to one side, not smartly enough to throw the older man off-balance.

Somehow, Purkiss found his feet once again. He grabbed at Donovan but the man darted out of his way and stooped and picked up the gun belonging to the second guard and aimed it at Purkiss.

Donovan said, ‘Wait.’

It wasn’t clear whom he was speaking to -
nothing
was clear - and the tableau assumed a slowed-down, dream-like quality.

Purkiss took in Donovan, six feet away and with the gun trained on him. He saw both guards on their feet, one starting to run towards Donovan and Purkiss, the other taking a bead on Asher, who was aiming back at him.

The door to the living room, which had hung ajar, swung into the room again as someone -
Saburova
- came through.

The guard with the gun pivoted and brought his pistol to bear on Saburova, his mouth contorted in a yell.

Behind him, Asher fired, the flash from the muzzle of his gun preceding the roar of the shot by a hair’s breadth of time.

The armed guard jerked forward as the bullet met its mark in his back.

Saburova dived, lifting off her feet, and cannoned into the other guard, knocking him across the floor.

Donovan turned, his gun arm angled across at Asher.

Asher shot him, twice, a double tap, both hits squarely in the chest so that the crimson duo of the exit wounds bloomed on the white of his shirt where it covered his back.

In his head, Purkiss screamed:
No.

The pain in his groin and his belly roiled and twitched like a snake.

He stumbled forwards, over Donovan’s body where it lay sprawled and twisted, because Saburova was on the floor and the second guard was on top of her and straddling her and he had his hands around her throat and was leaning his full weight down and a move like that was usually fatal within seconds, ten at the most.

Purkiss slammed his knee into the side of the man’s head, the force of the blow weakened by the pain in his crotch but the effect enough to rock the man sideways and to release his grip on the woman’s throat. He seized the guard’s short hair and wrenched him completely off Saburova and drove his head, face-first, into the thinly carpeted floor, twice, three times, until the man slumped and stopped moving.

Purkiss stood up. He looked round at Saburova, who was hauling herself into a sitting position, coughing, her hands rubbing at her throat as if to erase the feeling of the hands pressing down on her windpipe.

He looked at the bodies on the floor. The unconscious guard closest to him. The bloodied corpses of the other guard and of Donovan.

He looked at Asher, who stood, his gun raised vertically with his other hand gripping that wrist, his face impassive.

*

‘H
ow many outside?’

They were moving swiftly around the room, Purkiss at the shattered window, peering out into the night, Asher and Saburova searching the bodies on the floor.

‘Two men,’ Saburova said, without pausing. ‘I came to the gate after you had gone inside. I saw them, which is when I called you. I climbed over the gate and advanced. One of them saw me and opened up. I returned fire. One of them I dropped. The other disappeared round the side. I came in through the front door.’

‘So there’s at least one still out there.’ Purkiss said, ‘We need to move fast. Anything on them?’

Asher said. ‘No ID.’

Saburova stood up from Donovan’s body, a handset in her fist. ‘His phone.’

‘That’ll be useful.’ Purkiss picked up the laptop from the desk. He wondered, briefly, whether to wait for the police to arrive. He couldn’t hear any sirens, yet, but gunfire in an area like Richmond would attract attention sooner rather than later.

His instincts overrode the thought.

He said: ‘Let’s go.’

They emerged into the brightness of the forecourt, the spotlights still blazing, and ran down the driveway towards the gates. Asher was at the rear, his gun pointed back at the house, but nobody appeared.

They clambered over more quickly than it would have taken to activate the electronic  mechanism to open the gates, and were at the car in the lay by in less than two minutes since they’d left the house.

Purkiss dropped into the driver’s seat, for no reason other than that he’d reached the car first.

He sat for a couple of seconds, aware of a gnawing sense of unease. Of things being not quite right.

At the corner of his eye, Asher’s face loomed, pale in the darkness.

‘That was a good kill,’ Asher said. His accent wasn’t quite American again, but it had slipped.

Purkiss turned his head to look at him.

‘Donovan,’ said Asher. ‘He would have shot me. I had no option. You know it.’

Purkiss thought of Donovan’s last word.

Wait. 

At that point, Donovan had the upper hand.

It was, therefore, an odd thing to say.

The distant whine of sirens was by now making itself heard.

Purkiss fired the ignition and pulled out.

––––––––

R
ossiter stood on the lip of the broch, the Iron Age round tower which was such a characteristic sight in the Shetland Islands, and gazed out across the dark sea towards the mainland.

It was a precarious spot, and he had to adjust his balance continually, correcting for the wind that buffeted him in periodic squalls from the Atlantic to the west. But he’d been up here before, as a boy and later as a man, and he had a love for the location which time and bitter experience had failed to dim.

By turning his head a few degrees to the left, he could see the lights below, and the movement. He wasn’t particularly high up, but the hill sloped to create an effect of significant distance.

He’d worked relentlessly, mercilessly, for the last two hours, and now, as the final preparations were being put into place, he’d allowed himself the indulgence of wandering up here alone.

The mainland was invisible from here, and would remain so even with the use of a powerful telescope. But it was there, whether or not it could be seen, and somehow the fact that it was hidden from view made it all the more present.

My country.

Most people who claimed to be patriots, in Rossiter’s experience, didn’t have the remotest understanding of the meaning of the word. Whether British, or Irish, or American, when asked to explain their professed love for their nation, they tended to cite values such as liberty, or justice, or, God forbid, democracy.

Ideals, ways of organising society, came and went. But Rossiter had long ago understood that his bond with his land, the force that connected him to it through his very blood, was forged by nothing less than
history
.

He didn’t believe that any nation could inspire loyalty, genuine, visceral passion, if it was a
new
nation. The United States was a new nation, by any reasonable definition, and although it had more overtly
patriotic
people than any other he’d encountered, the whole thing had an ersatz feel, as fashionable and disposable as so much of the rest of the culture.