“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. Tell them everything you know, everything you saw. Tell them it was me who killed the Russian, me who made this whole mess, and if they want me they can find me at the hospital.” It was true; she didn’t care. She got in the car, fired up the engine, then lowered the window when Izzy tapped on it.
“The hospital is on the north edge of town. Turn right out of the driveway, and there’s a sign at the first junction.”
Bridge placed her hand over Izzy’s, resting on the window. “He’ll be OK,” she said.
“He’d better, or I’ll kill you myself,” said Izzy, and Bridge knew she meant it.
“Maman, Maman, he’s not dead,” said Stéphanie, tugging at Izzy’s arm.
“I know, darling,” Izzy said, “but he has to go to the hospital.”
“No, the other man. Look!”
Time slowed as Bridge turned to where Novak lay on the ground. Except now he wasn’t on the ground. He was pushing himself up, staggering to his feet, raising the Grach.
Bridge stood on the accelerator, leaned hard on the wheel, and jammed the car into gear. The Renault surged forward in an arc and broke Novak’s knees as he flew onto the bonnet, slammed against the windscreen, then fell off the side.
Bridge opened the door and stepped out. Novak squirmed on the ground, his mouth howling a silent scream of pain. His pistol lay nearby. She picked it up.
“Izzy, take Stéphanie.”
Izzy understood. She pulled her daughter toward her, burying Steph’s face in her dress.
A single shot rang out across the farmland, scattering blackbirds.
63
The Renault itself was innocuous and unremarkable, but the deep dent in the bonnet, along with Bridge’s driving, was anything but. As she sped down country roads, Bridge saw several drivers reach for their phones.
Let them. Let them call the police. The cops would be on her soon enough anyway, with all the red lights she was running. The Renault was the diametric opposite of a performance getaway car, but it was small and nippy enough to weave through crowded junctions and cut across traffic islands with abandon. If Hard Man could see her now, it was equal odds whether he’d praise her daring, or bollock her carelessness. Driving may not have been Bridge’s best class at the Loch, but she’d never been this motivated before. Motivated to save the life of a man who disliked her intensely, but meant everything to the only people she had left to care about.
Blood soaked into the passenger seat, and Bridge wondered if Izzy’s insurance would pay for this kind of thing. Did ‘acts of God’ cover international espionage? Would “front seat, footwell carpet, and door lining irrevocably soaked with human blood” make the car a write-off?
It would definitely write off her hoodie, which was now soaked through with blood as she held it pressed against Adrian’s stomach whenever she didn’t have to change gear, or spin the wheel with both hands. His own limp hands rested on the jacket, but as soon as she let go there was no pressure. She squinted ahead, trying to see beyond the dim headlamps in the desert night, looking for a landmark.
Not the desert. French roads. France, not Syria.
A road sign pointed to the local hospital, left across a traffic island. She took the direct route, skipping the island itself, and cut in front of a courier van taking the same turn. The van driver blasted his horn and slammed on the brakes. Bridge sped away, flicked the car back into high gear, and thrust out her hand to press her hoodie against Fred’s wound. Her fingers sank into the wet fabric as if there was no resistance underneath, no real body casually pouring out its life onto the cheaply upholstered seat of a Renault hatchback.
If only he’d listened to her. Why did nobody ever do what she told them to?
“Wake up, Adrian!” Bridge shouted. He was slipping in and out of consciousness, occasionally regaining enough sense to whimper quietly as the jeep’s iron-hard suspension bounced him around while they sped through the night.
When she was young, Izzy had fallen off a low wall in the street, landing on her head. The doctor had attended her at home and said she would be fine except for bruising, but warned their mother not to let Izzy fall asleep for at least six hours, otherwise she might be concussed…or was it that she might slip into a coma… It was so long ago. Bridge thought of her sister lying on the couch, prodded awake by their mother every time she closed her eyes. She shouted at Fred again and threw the jeep down a gear. The engine complained, high revs whining like a lawnmower, but the vehicle grudgingly accelerated, bouncing over the terrain, and Bridge’s laugh was carried away on the desert wind. She hoped he wouldn’t remember that, if he lived.
When he lived. He was going to live. He was not going to die. Not this one.
Not this time.
Fuel. How much fuel did she have? She glanced down, cursing herself for not checking before. Half full. Enough to get to the hospital. More than the jeep, only a quarter full even before the Russians shot a hole in it. Choking its last north of the settlement, dying without drama and leaving Bridge alone in the cold night.
Not this time.
Her foot tried to push the accelerator through the floor, across two lanes and into the hospital entrance. She eased off twenty metres from the emergency admissions door, standing on the brakes, grinding the Renault’s offside wing against a parked ambulance. She stumbled out and pulled open the passenger door, trying to haul Fred out of the car. Her hands fumbled on his arm and shoulders, slippery with his blood and her sweat. “Come on, you bastard,” she grunted, and then someone was pulling her away, back, as the ambulance staff reached over her to lift
