Nemesis (17 page)

Purkiss leaned back in his seat, arching his back just enough that his jacket stretched across his chest and the bulge of the pistol was clearly visible.

She continued to watch him. He thought he saw a ridge of muscle twitch beneath her ear, near the angle of her jaw, but he couldn’t be sure.

‘So we’ll sit here for a while, Yulia. Sit here, and give you a chance to do some thinking. It’s over for you. Please understand that, first and foremost. Whatever happens, your role in all of this is finished. You’re no longer the catalyst for a war between the superpowers. All you are is a woman who planted a radioactive bomb in a major city. If you choose silence, inertia, then presumably the bomb goes off. Thousands of people die. But to what end? You’ll be remembered as just another rogue agent, and the world will keep on turning.’

A hand slapped against the windscreen and Purkiss tensed. But it was just a drunk, ambling past, and he already seemed to have forgotten them as he disappeared down the alley.

‘You can salvage this, though,’ Purkiss said. ‘You can stop the bomb from going off, stop the pointless murder of innocents. And you can tell me how to find Rossiter. If you do those things, you’ll be afforded clemency. Not unconditional freedom, of course. But your punishment will be diminished. More importantly, you’ll earn peace of mind, to some extent. And that, God knows, is something few of us in this trade ever get a shot at.’

She made her move.

*

H
e’d been expecting an attack - had been trying to provoke it - but she’d done it in classic fashion, launching it before he’d finished speaking, and in the split second before the impact came he found himself both appreciating her craft and excoriating himself for having failed to anticipate it.

Her left hand darted into her coat and emerged just as quickly. The light glinted off the blade.

His eyes were drawn to the flash.

And she hammered the side of her right fist, the one closest to him, into his forehead.

The blow rocked his head backwards. He didn’t see stars, or lose consciousness, but the effect was momentarily paralysing.

He registered, dimly, Vodovos’s shout from the back seat.

The knife flickered within an inch of his face and he swiped the edge of his hand against her wrist and felt it connect, less accurately than he’d intended and against her forearm instead. He saw the steel swing wide, across the dashboard, and he groped for the wrist and found it and twisted.

Her other hand, the knuckles extended, stabbed at his throat.

Purkiss managed to duck his chin at the last instant but although the half-fist didn’t slam into his neck with full killing force, crushing the larynx and triggering a haemorrhage that would flood his lungs, the shock of the blow was acute. He recoiled back against the door, his free hand coming up to clutch at his throat.

At the same time his right hand clamped down on her wrist and he felt the bones shift. Heard the knife clatter onto the dashboard.

Her elbow connected with the side of his head in a roundhouse hook and this time the starburst exploded behind his eyes.

Something rammed into his belly. A boot heel.

He saw the door behind her fly open, saw her disappear as though sucked out through a rent in the fuselage of an airborne plane.

He weaved upright, trying to focus on the figure that was sprinting away down the alley.

Vodovos shouted something behind him, but Purkiss ignored it.

He gave it five seconds.

Five seconds in which to allow her to put some distance between them, and in which to carry out a rapid inventory of his condition.

He was conscious.

He could breathe.

He was moving all his limbs.

His throat felt as if a steel bar was being pressed across it, and his belly and the left side of head screamed in agony. But those were minor details, and to be discounted.

Purkiss threw open the door and lurched out and began to follow Saburova at a loping run.

––––––––

H
e caught sight of her after ten seconds, sprinting towards the station entrance.

Purkiss grabbed his phone from his pocket and hit the key for Vale’s number.

‘She’s on the run,’ he said. ‘Heading into the station. Get Service people, local police, whoever you can in here.’

Keeping the line open, he wove among the crowds thronging in front of the entrance. A suitcase appeared in his way and he kicked it aside and sent the contents spilling and left a shouted rebuke in his wake.

The high-ceilinged concourse of the station echoed with a multitude of voices and the chiming announcements from the public address system of arrivals and departures. Here, the crowds were even more densely packed. Saburova was a tall woman, but she was keeping her head low, and it would be all too easy to lose her.

Purkiss tracked her as she aimed towards the stairs leading down to the Underground.

King’s Cross was one of London’s major hubs, for both overground trains and the Tube network. If he lost her now, in the bowels of the city, he’d never find her again.

He cannoned down the stairs, heaving against the surge of bodies that were bustling in both directions, and triggered more angry cries. A hand tried to grab at his collar and he twitched away.

At the bottom of the stairs, the ticket hall teemed with commuters, many of them tourists peering about in confusion as they tried to orientate themselves. He slowed for a second to pinpoint Saburova. Saw her passing through the automated barrier and head for the escalators towards the Victoria Line.

Purkiss ran to the barrier and vaulted over and reached the top of the escalator. He saw Saburova pushing her way down. Custom required passengers to stand on the right, to allow those in more of a hurry to pass, but not everybody knew about that. It meant that several rucksack-laden bodies blocked the left side. She shoved them aside.

Next to the escalator was another one, travelling upwards.

Purkiss considered forcing his way down that one. It was crowded with people ascending from below, but he could probably do it. It would bring him level with Saburova, and perhaps allow him to cross between the escalators and grab her.

But he didn’t know yet whether she was fleeing, or whether she had something else in mind, and he needed to find out.

He joined her escalator at the top and descended on the left, though at a slower pace than hers. When she stepped off at the bottom and began striding to the right, he increased his speed.

He leapt the last few steps and hurried to the right. A tunnel curved away towards the platforms.

Purkiss moved swiftly along, peering down the side-passages as he went. The southbound Victoria Line platform lay ahead. He could see the crush of bodies on the platform, typical for a Saturday afternoon.

On the platform, it was more difficult to push through the crowd. The passengers were packed together so closely that there was little room for them to be pushed aside. Purkiss had emerged approximately halfway down the platform. He craned his neck to peer left and right, but could see no sign of Saburova.

He looked at his watch.

Four thirty-seven.

If the explosive was on a timer, then it was probably set to go off at some kind of landmark time. On the hour seemed the most obvious. So, if five o’clock was the scheduled time of detonation, perhaps Saburova was trying to put enough distance between her and the explosion before then to escape injury.

It was rampant conjecture, and didn’t help him.

He had a sense of events slipping out of his grasp. He’d been a fool to let her run, even though his hope had been that she’d lead him to the bomb.

Lights emerged from the tunnel, and the train eased to a standstill with a prolonged screech and a hiss.

The manic ritual of disembarkment and boarding began. Passengers squeezed free from the sliding doors and dropped onto the platform like released livestock. At the same time, those on the platform pressed forward, determined to secure their place before the carriages became too packed to accommodate even one more body.

Purkiss’s eyes searched the platform, and the carriages nearest to him through the windows. He couldn’t see her. There were just too many people.

He pushed his way along, his eyes scanning constantly. He’d chosen to go left, towards the rear of the train. It was a random decision, and there was just as much chance that she’d gone the opposite way.

The last successful boarders were cramming themselves past the doors, their necks twisted awkwardly. Others were stepping back, resigned to wait for the next train.

A man’s voice, distorted by static, barked across the tannoy: ‘Doors closing. Stand clear. Mind the closing doors.’

As one, the sets of twin doors on all the carriages began to slide shut.

They opened again, as they inevitably did when the trains were overcrowded. The driver repeated his request for passengers to stand clear.

The doors began to close again.

Purkiss saw her.

Her back was to him where she stood in the narrow space between seated passengers’ rows of knees, and he would have missed her if she hadn’t turned her head, only slightly, and afforded him a one-quarter view of her face.

Purkiss grabbed a rolled-up umbrella from the hand of the woman at his side and lunged forward and thrust it between the nearest set of doors just before they met one another.

He felt the doors close on the umbrella, almost pulling it from his grip.

The doors slid open once more.

He dropped the umbrella and shouldered his way onto the carriage. A man snarled, ‘There’s no more room, mate.’ Purkiss felt toes under his heels, heard the sharp cry.

Saburova glanced up, and caught his eye.

She moved immediately, barging against the row of passengers standing with her in the central walkway, heading away from Purkiss. He grabbed the shoulders in front of him and shoved sideways, clearing a path for himself. Someone landed a punch in his back but he ignored it.

She was almost at the next set of doors, and Purkiss noticed something different about her.

She was carrying a hold-all.

She’s moving it. She knows it’ll be found if she doesn’t.

The doors began to close and then opened yet again, no doubt because someone was leaning against them. The driver’s voice came over the speaker, exasperated, admonishing them collectively.

Saburova lunged for the doors and got through.

Purkiss shoved his way back through the doors he’d come through and caught sight of her, sprinting along the platform, knocking people aside as she went. She was heading towards the rear end, where another exit gave into a passage leading towards one of the other lines.

Purkiss was probably ten years older than her, but he had longer legs, and he was able to charge through the obstructing passengers more forcefully. He reached the passage and saw her at the far end, about to emerge onto the northbound platform.

He heard the rumbling of an arriving train.

He reached the tunnel and saw the lights of the front carriage as they broke from the tunnel. Saburova was heading down the platform, close to the edge, clearly intending to board as soon as the doors opened.

He put all he had into the sprint, charging up the platform and seeing her turn her head and raise the hold-all defensively.

He dived, launching himself at her, his arms outstretched for a tackle.

She stepped back quickly.

Too quickly.

Her boot heel caught on a ridge in the concrete of the platform and she lost her balance and toppled backwards into the oncoming lights.

The train was slowing, but the impact of the edge of its front against her back flung her forwards onto the platform again like a marionette. A collective gasp rose from the assembled passengers, who’d moved aside when first one person and then another had come running onto the platform.

Then the screaming started, a Babel of horror that echoed off the arched ceiling and down the tunnel.

Purkiss, who’d landed in a stoop, threw himself prone and grabbed the hold-all where it had dropped on the platform and clutched it to him.

He crawled over to Saburova.

She lay face down, one knee bent beneath her, her arms sprawled to either side. Her head was turned and he saw her face, one eye open and staring at him. Blood gouted from her nose, and a thinner rivulet crawled from her ear toward the corner of her eye.

Her back was grotesquely deformed, indented as if a groove had been scored in a lump of clay.

Purkiss crouched, put his face close to hers. He felt her shuddering, intermittent breath against his skin. Saw the crimson bubble forming on her lips.

‘Yulia,’ he said, his mouth at her ear. ‘It’s over. All that can happen now is that Rossiter gets away. You’ve failed to achieve your goal, a goal you believed to be the right one, however warped your reasoning. But you can still die having done some good.’

The screaming was threaded through with other shouts, angry, authoritative ones.

‘Tell me where Rossiter is. Tell me so that I can find him, and stop him. Let that be your legacy. Let your people, in the FSB and in Russia itself, remember your name as, at the last, a heroic one.’

He angled his eyes and saw the boots, lots of them, advancing down the platform. He was aware that the shouting was being directed at him. Without taking his face from Saburova’s, he extended his arms as far as he could to the sides, his hand splayed to show they were empty.

The hold-all was beneath him, pressed against his chest.

She jerked, a sound emerging from her broken mouth that was part cough, part choke.

‘Do it, Yulia,’ Purkiss murmured. ‘Tell me.’

Her lips moved.

He listened.

‘Again.’

She repeated it. Her voice was a harsh rasp, barely more than a whisper. But the words she said were clear.

Hands gripped his arms and his collar and he was hauled upright. An officer in a flak jacket squatted and picked up the hold-all.

‘Careful with that,’ Purkiss said.

Another officer crouched beside Saburova, spoke into a mouthpiece, demanding medical assistance.