travelled.
Harvey Gillot was the last off his carriage. Far ahead of him stretched the lines of marching passengers as they headed down the platform for the centre of the station.
He had forgotten Solly Lieberman, and pretty much the question of which brand of armoured car was suitable for which damn market. He had almost forgotten where he was and why when he seemed to see his dog.
He missed it. He’d been gone twenty-four hours – a day and a night – and already he missed the dog and its wet tongue. His bag swung loosely on his shoulder and in it was what he had brought from the floor safe under the living-room carpet and the solicitor’s strong room. Yes, he missed the dog, and maybe – already – the open land of the island, the bare brown fields, the shallow cliffs, the storms on the rocks and… There was a board ahead of him, but it was too early for his connection to have reached the display.
He would get the Herald Tribune and maybe Time, and they would see him through. He would have nine hours on the EuroCity Mimara to work at the detail of the village and the people, to remember Zagreb, a man he had met there, and the start of what Benjie Arbuthnot called ‘Blowback’ and- An announcement was in mid-stream: the platform from which the ICE express to Berlin would leave. He walked briskly, not because he needed to hurry but because of the crowd in front of and behind him. Squadrons of wheeled bags snagged at his ankles and – he nearly fell.
A blow struck him. He had an image of a metal pipe, heavy, against his back on the line of his spine. It caught Harvey Gillot unawares and he spiralled forward, staggering. He flailed to keep his balance.
The second impact hit him, again in the back, lower than the first, and a little to the left where he knew his kidneys lodged. A huge blow and a massive impact. He felt himself collapsing and realised he had been shot, twice. He tried to get hold of a woman’s shoulder but she swatted him away. He was going down faster, had lost control at the knees.
He scrabbled for a grip on a case pulled along on its wheels, but its owner, wearing a fine suit and polished shoes, glanced at him and jerked it forward.
He was sprawled on the platform.
They didn’t break their stride. They went to the right of him and to the left. They charged past him. No hand reached down to help him. Two women came out of a door that had a cross above it, would have been the station’s chapel, but neither paused to bend over him.
Did they think he was drunk or had overdosed?
He was prone and helpless. He waited for the third shot… and waited.
Shock first made numbess, then pain in his spine and over his kidneys. He could do sums: a pistol bullet had a muzzle velocity when fired of around 800 feet per second. Maybe the two shots had been fired at a range of five feet. He had heard nothing above the sound of a woman’s voice telling him in what cities, towns, the ICE express to Berlin would stop. It was the Helene Weigel and he heard when it would reach Nuremberg and Leipzig… and the gears of his mind crashed at a bullet taking 0.00125 – madness, fucking madness – of a second to go from the barrel and impact into the bulletproof vest.
It didn’t come.
He was helpless, on the ground, his eyes closed.
It wasn’t that people laughed or swore at him. They fucking ignored him. They didn’t disapprove of, criticise or mock him. They didn’t fucking see him.
He didn’t hear the beat of feet and the squeal of little wheels pass his head – and the announcer had given the arrival time in Berlin, Zoologischer Garten, and was quiet. Harvey Gillot felt a moment of emptiness and dared to look.
He saw nothing except the closed door to what would be the chapel and the emptiness ahead. He dragged himself to his knees.
He turned his head slowly, expecting that a man, with or without a balaclava, slight built, would come into his peripheral vision and take a firing stance.
There was no man and no pistol.
He hadn’t thought it could happen here. He hadn’t reckoned on danger beyond the island and his home – had thought himself rid of it when he’d left the armed police and strode off to get the Eurostar. He hadn’t believed that danger had survived while he travelled. He had to use all his strength to prevent himself subsiding on to the dirt left by thousands of shoes.
His target was a trolley. He reached and hung on to it. At first, from each shot, there had been the sledge- hammer shock wave and the numbness. The pain racked him.
He moved, unseen and unwatched, along the remaining length of the platform, using the trolley, twice, to turn the full three-sixty and look for the man. He failed to find him. He pushed the trolley far to the left on the concourse, past the row of platforms and past the great trains, and saw the white-painted ICE express nudge from its berth and start on the run to Berlin. Ahead a flight of steps led down to the toilets. He had to leave the trolley.
There was a handrail to cling to. He went down the steps. He gave the attendant money and saw the guy look curiously at him, but he would have been a Turk or an Albanian and wouldn’t push his interest to impertinence.
He went into a cubicle – couldn’t imagine that the goddamn head with or without the balaclava would poke over the door – and sagged on to the seat. It was agony to get the coat off, then the shirt. There were holes in the coat, two, neat but for the mess of singed material round them. He put his index finger through each one, waggled the tip and was almost stupefied, then did the same with the shirt. The holes were the same size as those in the jacket but had no burn marks. He undid the stays that held the bulletproof vest close and shrugged out of it. So heavy, and so strong: there were two deep dents in the material that held the plates in place and he could see where the soft-heads had disintegrated, sending the shock waves that the plates had absorbed. The worst pain was when he twisted his hand behind him and groped for the places where the strikes had come. He felt bruising but there was no blood.
He was hunched on the seat.
In his mind Harvey Gillot began to compose a text message. He wouldn’t send it on his own mobile, but would find a pay-phone in the station. Hi, Monty – Think u shd know that bpv fantastic, brill. Have tested amp; no angst. Works. What chance me for franchise? Best Harv
Had lost the pain, and had the salesman’s smile, felt the patter melting on his tongue. ‘Would I try to sell you something, sir, that is crap? I know about this product and I can tell you, with utter sincerity, that it does the business. Look, sir, at this jacket – now look at this shirt. Neither washed from the day it happened. I never saw him but I estimate the range was five feet, and he used a silencer. Now look at the vest. Damaged but not holed… Can’t say the same about old Titanic, can we, sir? I was wearing it. Believe me? Nearly knocked me over but I wasn’t punctured. What I’m saying, sir, I’m not one of those flash lads in a West End security company who knows damn-all about a real situation. I’ve been there. The bruising has gone, but I can strip off, if you like, and show you how it was worn and you can see for yourself that I wasn’t punctured. Frankly, sir, if I was in a situation of possible or potential danger to life and limb – or if any of my employees were – I would, with complete confidence, recommend this model. New, we’re talking about a range between five hundred and six hundred sterling. Second- hand, police castoffs, would be a hundred sterling – but I don’t believe, sir, that this is an area where used items are appropriate. I think my life’s worth a fair bit, sir, and yours is worth a great deal more. Not a matter you’d want to hang about on, sir, and you’ve seen the evidence and met a man who can vouch for this product. I look forward to hearing from you.’ He was laughing, couldn’t help it.
Harvey Gillot dressed again, and reckoned he hacked the pain. He put the damn thing back on, let himself out, walked awkwardly but reached the steps, and went in search of a coffee.
He needed them and didn’t have them. There was no elder brother or younger sister. But he reckoned he’d done well and hadn’t panicked. Could have done, too damn easy. It was only afterwards that he had understood. The taxi dropped him at Departures. All the time, during the journey, walking into the travel agent and out and going to the taxi rank, he had waited to hear sirens, then a command in a language he didn’t know but which would have its authority big in the shout, and to see guns pointed. There had been no noise and no aimed weapons
… but there had been no blood.
The target had stumbled, almost fallen, and the drilled hole was in his jacket, and his head was ducked, as if his chin was against his chest, and the double tap had had to be into the back. He had fired the second time and
