for a big man’s chauffeur.
There was a low throb of air-conditioning.
He did not think – whether for Mercedes or Jaguar – that prospective buyers would be Russian. He would look for the fringe markets, where he was better known – Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova or Belarus, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. In their literature Jaguar said: Dealing with real security risks in our everyday lives is becoming commonplace. Too right.
He felt strangely better for being alone, anonymous, tucked away in a sleeper carriage, safer than if he had been behind the wheel of a massive car that was low on the road from the weight of its armour plating.
The bed shook, the carriage rocked and the glasses above the wash-basin rattled. The train edged forward. He felt relaxed, not frightened.
The aircraft had come down fast, had hit hard, and the landing had shaken Robbie Cairns.
It had taken him almost half an hour to find the right platform for the train into the city, and the journey then was another forty-five minutes. He had emerged at the Hauptbahnhof where he had followed his instructions and rung the first number on the contact list. He was supposed to be the cool guy, fazed by nothing, but his hands had been shaking when he had dialled the number in a phone booth and waited while it warbled. It had been answered, and Robbie had blurted English words. Then he had heard an aloof, distant voice, accented, that – thank Christ – he understood.
He had thought of her, had done all through the flight, on the train into Munich and at the station, on the concourse and at the call booth. Had thought she would be colder, paler… He was told what he should do.
The taxi driver grinned at him lewdly as he gave the address.
He was driven away from the main streets, not far from the station, and into darker roads. The destination was a bar. A doorman stepped forward, waved Robbie towards the entrance and settled with the driver. He was led inside. Music blasted and there was a girl on a stage, but they went past her, past empty chairs and tables. The girl danced but still had clothes on. Robbie did not go to strip or lap clubs and kept his eyes on the tired carpet. They went to an office.
Two men were inside.
He was asked for identification and showed his passport. They looked at the photograph, then at him, and a light was tilted to shine full in his face. He was asked the date of his mother’s birthday. He gave it. One of the men stood and the other sat in a desk chair of upholstered leather, trays of invoices and receipts in front of him. A drawer in the desk was unlocked, pulled open and a cardboard box taken out. The top was lifted. Robbie knew the Walther PPK. The butt had a black plastic inlay, while the barrel and mechanism were dull grey. The weapon rested easily in his hand. He looked first at the safety lever, then cleared the breech, hearing the smooth sound of metal on metal, which told him the weapon was well-maintained. Satisfied it was empty, he aimed at a photo of a girl on the wall, pulled the trigger and learned the degree of squeezed force required.
Robbie Cairns noted the camera. It was high in a corner. The lens would have been the size of his little-finger nail and was aimed downwards. It would have covered him from the moment he came through the door. He realised no one would ask him to sign for the gun. There was a television screen beside the desk and the girl who danced on the stage was now naked. The hair on her head was blonde, but black below her belly, as Barbie’s was.
The man at the desk said it was a Polizeipistole Kriminalmodell and the calibre was 7.65mm. The magazine held seven rounds and the range was… He didn’t need to know the range, the calibre or the size of the magazine. It would be close, and it would be what the police called ‘double tap’.
He was given two magazines, then a silencer attachment.
The camera eyed him. He couldn’t escape it. He thought himself stripped. They had achieved power over him and he didn’t know who owned a tape that could convict him. He wanted to be gone.
He was not asked for payment. He assumed, down the line of whatever conveyor-belt now operated behind him, they’d take a cut from the second payments, due on delivery of a body. He had no doubt that when the train came in the next morning and Harvey Gillot walked down the platform, he would be close and would fire the double tap – the first shot to the body, the second to the head – and that he would earn what was still outstanding.
She was in his mind and he couldn’t scratch her out.
He took the pistol, the magazines and the silencer. He asked for a taxi to be called.
Did he want to drink in the club and watch the show? He did not.
He preferred to wait on the pavement for the taxi, and the night settled on him.
‘I wouldn’t.’ Daniel Steyn had a grin on his face, more mischief than malice.
‘I’m packed, the bags are inside the door and the cab’s booked. In the morning I check out.’ It was a game, William Anders realised, and he must play it out.
‘Just that if it was me I wouldn’t.’
‘I have, Daniel, a lecture the day after tomorrow in Stockholm, and then I’m committed to a four-day seminar in Helsinki. It would take a powerful argument to enthuse me to scrub what’s been in place for six months.’
‘I wouldn’t leave here, not now.’
It was supposed to have been a farewell drink, the end of the day, and the little party for the professor – given by those he had worked with on the Ovcara site – was over and his hosts had dispersed. The quack, Daniel Steyn, had stayed up late, driven over to the hotel, and they’d worked over a few malts. Anders had planned, Steyn knew, to be gone before eight and would be on an early flight out of Osijek for a German hub, Frankfurt or Berlin, and then… Steyn had a network of informants. A call had come. He was not an intelligence officer or a police source. Over the years he had recognised that knowledge was power, which he needed if he wanted to stay in decaying, forgotten Vukovar to do good work in psychotherapy. He needed power over the local politicians who would dearly have liked him silenced because he spoke truths. The town and its community were a monument to failure: reconciliation between Serb and Croat was at lip-service level, there was addiction to drink and antidepressants, and the treatment of combat trauma was underfunded and inadequate. Without the knowledge that gave him power, Daniel Steyn would have been forced, years back, out of the town. That he remained was a tribute to his dedication and his mental filing cabinet of informants’ tales. His parent charity was as susceptible as others to cut-backs but he had lowered his standard of living, and he lingered. He knew also that Anders – bombastic, domineering and furthering a personality cult – was a good, kindly man, who bought the meals and paid for the drinks. Probably a small box of Scotch would be delivered to his door the day after Anders had gone.
‘Late at night, Daniel, and I’ve shipped a fair bit of juice. Can we quit spoiling what’s left of the evening? Tell me.’
‘There was a hit attempt that failed.’
‘History.’
‘The latest I have is that Harvey Gillot – on whose head you facilitated the dropping of a contract – is currently en route to Vukovar.’
‘That is a goddamn joke – why? Is that the original death wish? Do we have a kind of suicide factory like the place in Zurich? Why would he do that? Why not dig a hole, climb into it and stay down?’
‘Could be an attempt to confront what he did. The big gesture.’
‘And you reckon it’ll be played out in public.’
‘Not the sort of matter where there’s a privacy clause attached.’
‘I quit my flight?’
‘I wouldn’t be leaving. I can offer you – my connections, my sources – a seat in the grand circle.’
‘Am I sure I want to be there? I don’t queue outside Huntsville gaol to watch lethal injections. Be a lynch job, wouldn’t it? Not sure that-’
‘You set it in motion, Bill, and that’s why you’ll be there.’
They didn’t get round immediately to the matter of cancellations. Quite a number there would be: a taxi, the two flights, a little white lie, or a big black one, to the organisers of a forensic-pathology gathering in the Swedish capital and the seminar in Finland. Steyn could see he had set a cat among the canaries, and that his friend was weighing options. He knew which way the balance would go. William Anders, professor of the science of digging up long-buried bodies, was a prime mover in the efforts to kill the British-born arms trader. He’d stay.
The lovers came back, slipped through the door off the patio. Daniel Steyn nudged his friend, whose jealousy had become a deal more acute. There was straw on the girl’s back and in her hair.
Anders said, ‘It’s because of what they put in the water. I might just take up your offer of the seat.’
