They’re in an anteroom now, full of overstuffed furniture. On the wall is a vast painting of Michael Jackson fondling a chimpanzee. From somewhere in the interior of the building comes the muffled thump of feet on stairs. A security guard edges into view levelling an assault rifle, and Villanelle spins him to his knees with a three-round burst from the KRISS Vector. He balances for a moment, blank-eyed, and falls face down. As she fires a double tap through the back of his skull, spattering the deep-pile carpet with blood, Bravo throws a stun grenade through the doorway towards the main body of the house.
A tidal wave of sound rolls over Villanelle, punching through her helmet, and Alpha and Bravo race past her. As she and Delta follow, leaping over the body of the guard, her ears sing. They’re in an oversized hallway, which is hung with a pall of oily smoke from the stun grenade. For a couple of seconds the place appears unoccupied, then there’s a fusillade of automatic-weapon fire, and the assaulters dive for cover.
Villanelle and Delta are crouching behind a large Chesterfield sofa upholstered in turquoise calfskin. Behind them is the main entrance, now open to the night, with the heavy front door sagging on its hinges. To their left, on a marble plinth, is a life-size statue of a ballerina naked except for a thong. A burst of fire rakes the sofa, tearing into the scatter cushions. If we stay here, Villanelle thinks, we’re dead. And I really, really don’t want to die here, among these criminally ugly furnishings.
Delta points at a gilt-framed mirror reflecting the far end of the hall. In it, a figure is just visible behind a large, ornate desk. As one, Villanelle and Delta rise from each end of the sofa. As she gives covering fire, he blasts the desk with the shotgun. Wood chips fly, and a body pitches heavily to the floor. Four down. There’s a movement in the opposite corner, and a rifle barrel shows above a white leather armchair. Bravo smacks a burst into the upholstery, and a mist of blood reddens the zebra-print wallpaper. Five.
Ducking back behind the sofa, Villanelle changes magazines and runs for the stairs. The remaining hostage-taker, she guesses, is waiting on the first floor.
She inches up the stairs, and cautiously brings her eyes level with the first floor. A figure appears in the nearest doorway, she fires, and her head is whipped back with such force that, for a moment, she’s certain that she’s been shot. She falls to a crouch, her ears ringing, and is steadied by a hand to her shoulder. Pinpoints of light are bursting in front of her eyes.
“OK?” a familiar voice asks.
Villanelle nods, too dazed to wonder why Lara’s there, and reaches a hand to her helmet. There’s a deep furrow scored through the armoured plastic; a centimetre lower and it would have been her skull.
“You both fired at the same time,” Lara says. “And luckily for you, he fired high.”
The sixth guard is lying on his back in the doorway. The ragged, sucking sound of his breath indicates a lung shot. With Villanelle covering her, Lara runs up to him, an automatic in her right hand.
“Where’s the hostage?” she asks in Russian.
The guard looks upwards.
“Next floor up?”
The faintest of nods.
“Anyone guarding him?”
The eyes flutter and close.
“No one?”
The reply is an indistinguishable mumble. Lara leans closer, but all she can hear is the sucking of his chest. Levelling the handgun, she fires a single round between his eyes.
“What are you doing here?” Villanelle says.
“The same as you.”
“That wasn’t the plan.”
“The plan has changed. I’m your back-up.”
Villanelle hesitates for a moment, and then biting back her doubts, leads Lara up the last few stairs. At the top, facing her, is a door. Taking out the fibre-optic scope, Villanelle slips the flexible 1mm cable over the carpet and under the door. The tiny fish-eye lens shows a brightly lit room, empty except for a figure trussed to a chair.
Silently, Villanelle tries the door. It’s locked. A single round from the KRISS Vector blows out the cylinder, she kicks it open, and she and Lara burst into the room.
Together, they attend to the figure on the chair. There’s a black cloth bag over his head, stiff with dried blood. Underneath it, Konstantin’s face is battered. He has been gagged, and his breathing rattles through a broken nose.
As Lara removes the gag, Villanelle draws her combat knife and severs the PlastiCuffs binding Konstantin to the chair. He slumps to one side, his bruised and bloodied head thrown back, working his swollen fingers and drawing air into his lungs.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Lara tells Villanelle. “You’re thinking that you’ll never be safe as long as I’m alive, because I know who you really are. You’re thinking about killing me.”
“This would be the perfect moment,” agrees Villanelle.
“You can also see how that puts me in the same position. How I’ll never be safe as long as you’re alive.”
“True again.”
“Oxana? Lara?” Konstantin whispers through lips dark with dried blood. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
Both women turn to him. Neither removes her balaclava.
“I never told them anything. You know that, don’t you?”
“I know that,” says Villanelle. She glances at Lara, notes the deceptive casualness of her stance, and the tautness of her index finger on the trigger guard of the automatic.
Konstantin’s eyes move to Lara. “I heard what you said. You two have no cause to fear each other.”
Lara’s gaze narrows, but she doesn’t speak.
Villanelle genuflects, so that her face is level with Konstantin’s, and her body shielded from Lara by his. Reaching behind her back, she draws the Glock from its holster.
“Something you once told me,” she says to Konstantin. “I’ve never forgotten it.”
“What was that?”
“Trust no one,” she says, and placing the barrel of the Glock against his ribs, squeezes the trigger.
Gaining entry to the Cradles’ house is something of an anticlimax. After
