the guard grew frantic, twisting, throwing what was left of his strength into a final effort. But Patrick held firm, sliding the wire back and forwards, slicing it deeper into the soft throat, as though slicing cheese.
He felt the man go limp and caught him as he fell, lowering the body to the ground. His hands stung, but that was all he felt. No remorse, no anger, no disgust. Those would all come later, if at all.
For over a minute he crouched in the shadow of the wall, gun at the ready, watching the door. No one came. He heard voices again: the rough voice, then Makonnen’s, pleading, and finally a third, precise and cold and measured. He wanted to take at least one of them alive.
He opened the door slowly, desperately trying to remember whether or not it creaked. It did not. A moment later, he was in the passage. The kitchen door was on his left. He took a deep breath and reached for the handle, praying his luck would hold.
TWENTY-THREE
Surprise was on his side. The door opened to his right, giving him a clear line of fire along the main kitchen area. There were two men with Makonnen, dressed alike in dark green anoraks. One was standing, the other seated at the table, facing the priest. Patrick swung round the door, moving directly into a firing posture, legs apart, arms at head height.
‘Freeze!’
Everything shifted into slow motion. The standing man threw himself sideways, pulling Makonnen with him to the ground. As the chair went from under him, the priest slipped, toppling away from his assailant. There was a shot. It went wild, missing Patrick by several feet. He fired back through the table, two shots in quick succession. The man on the floor grunted and fell silent.
At the table, the second man remained unmoving. Patrick trained the gun on him.
‘Put your hands flat on top of the table! Don’t move a muscle!’
He took a step into the room.
‘Father Makonnen,’ he called out, ‘are you all right?’
There was a brief silence, then the priest replied.
‘Yes. Yes, I am.’
What about him?’ He meant the man on the floor.
Another silence. When he finally spoke, Makonnen’s voice was accusing.
‘I think he’s dead.’
‘In that case, help me tie up his friend. I want to take him with us. He has some talking to do.’
For the first time, the man at the table spoke. His had been the cold voice Patrick had heard through the window. Even now, he was emotionless, bleak. He was tall and gaunt, aged about sixty, with pearl-white hair worn a little long. It had been a long time since he and Patrick had last met.
‘You’re wasting your time, Patrick. There’s nowhere to run to. Not now. Why not give up? While you’re still alive. We don’t want to hurt you, Patrick. We just want you to keep some things to yourself for a little while. It’s not your fault, you weren’t to know.’
Patrick did not reply. Keeping the gun trained on the man, he helped Makonnen to his feet. The priest was bleeding from one temple, but seemed otherwise unharmed. Patrick was nervous. Had there been only four men, or were there others, already alerted by the shooting?
‘Are you alone?’ he asked the white-haired man.
The stranger smiled but said nothing. In the grate, the fire had burned low. A faint smell of cordite hung on the air. Darkness crowded thickly against the windowpane.
Patrick stepped up to the man and levelled the pistol at his temple.
‘I asked if you were alone. Believe me, I will shoot you if I have to.’
He cocked the pistol. The man smiled at him: cool, deliberate, unconcerned.
Makonnen stepped forward.
‘Mr Canavan, you ...’
‘Please, Father, let me handle this.’
The priest held back, uncertain how best to act. Canavan had seemed a moral man, or, if not that exactly, one determined to prevent unnecessary killing. And yet he had to his knowledge killed three men already and was threatening to shoot a fourth.
The man in the chair held Patrick’s gaze unwaveringly. It was not a simple lack of concern that showed in his eyes, but something more: certainty, conviction, acquiescence? Yes, thought Patrick, perhaps that was it: a willing acceptance rooted in an absolute certainty of his own Tightness. But what did Miles Van Doren have to feel righteous about?
Why did you have her killed?’ Patrick demanded. He had to struggle to keep his voice steady. ‘She was your daughter. Your own daughter.’
Van Doren looked at him caustically, much as a cat looks at a noisy child, with studied disinterest. His eyebrows were thicker and darker than his hair, and they canopied his eyes, darkening and enriching them. His skin was meagre, stretched over the bones of his face like waxed paper. Tiny veins ran threadlike in a clumsy mesh beneath the surface of the skin, purple against its grey terrain, like rivers clustered incongruously on a map of a pale and lifeless desert.
‘Don’t get excited, Patrick. You’re mixed up in something you don’t understand. This isn’t Agency business. Shall we say that Ruth was ... a sort of payment? A debt, a sacrifice - hard for you to understand. I had no choice. Truly. She knew things she had no right to know. She’d got in too deep. Just like you, Patrick. You should have dropped it after the business with Chekulayev. There’s too much at stake for us to play games.’
Patrick was growing nervous. He sensed that Van Doren was playing for time. There was a humming sound in the distance. Patrick recognized it as the helicopter approaching.
‘On your feet,’ he snapped. ‘We can talk about this later, once I’ve got you out of here.’
‘I’ve told you already, Patrick, you’re wasting your time. Put the gun away. You’ve nothing to worry about if you act sensibly. I have influence, I can see to it that
you come out of this unharmed. Otherwise ...’ Van Doren shrugged his shoulders.
Patrick started to reply, but his voice was drowned by a sudden roaring. The air filled with it, and a second later an eruption of light tore the darkness apart, as though a giant hand had ripped a thick, black curtain from top to bottom.
Patrick recoiled from the window, half-blinded by the blaze of light. Van Doren took his chance. He pushed back his chair, grabbing for Patrick’s arm. The gun went off, missing Van Doren’s head by inches. The shot was blotted out by the roaring from outside as the helicopter steadied itself for a landing on the lawn.
Patrick was pulled off balance, towards his assailant. Van Doren spun him round, yanking his right arm painfully behind his back, forcing the gun to drop from numbed fingers. Outside, darkness rushed back as the helicopter set down, throwing dead leaves and twigs high into the shuddering air.
Holding Patrick’s arm high against his back, the shoulder close to breaking point, Van Doren used his free hand to draw a gun. He rammed it against the nape of Patrick’s neck, without words, not quite gentle, not quite hard. And as he did so, he bent forward and kissed the top of Patrick’s head: a soft kiss, such as a lover might lay on his sleeping partner.
Outside, the pilot switched off the engine. A profound silence washed through the night. Patrick could hear his heart beating, strokes away from sudden death. He could sense Van Doren’s tension, knew that his finger was tightening on the trigger, that it was over, that the kiss had been an act of betrayal, or perhaps contrition.
‘Please drop the gun.’ It was Makonnen who spoke, nervous, yet firm.
‘Don’t make me shoot you. I don’t want to, but I will if I have to. Believe me.’
Van Doren did not relax his grip, either on Patrick’s arm or the pistol. He glanced round almost casually.
Makonnen had taken the gun from the man Patrick had shot. His hand was not entirely steady, but he was too close to his target to miss.
‘What happened, Father?’ Van Doren asked. ‘Have your scruples suddenly deserted you?’
The priest shook his head. He was not a man given to sudden revelations or moral shifts.
‘You misunderstand,’ he said. ‘I would not have had Mr Canavan shoot you in cold blood. But this is not cold blood. To save his life, I am willing to take yours. Do you understand now?’
Patrick sensed Van Doren’s hesitation. Makonnen took another step forward. Feet ran across the gravel
