“Easy,” they’d said.
“You’re the one of us with the lowest profile,” they’d said.
“You’ve only been with us for a little while,” they’d said.
“They’re not watching you,” they’d said.
“It’s an important role for you,” Sergei had said, before hugging him, clapping him soundly on the shoulder, and heading for his scheduled flight to Stockholm. “Remember: stay hidden until we let you know we’re clear and have reconvened at our assembly point in Budapest. If something happens, we’ll leave a one word message – ‘Icarus’ – which is your instruction to head immediately to the alternative rendezvous, as we discussed.”
He’d wondered, at the time, why they were all in so much of a hurry to get out of the UK. His plane, direct to Berlin’s Tegel airport, had left an hour and fifteen minutes later...
He missed Sergei so much.
He needed to speak to him about what they’d done.
He needed to understand why.
His brother would know. His older brother always knew the answers. He’d be able to explain.
If he wasn’t already dead...
Jeyhun rose swiftly from the table, rushed over to his pack and scrabbled around in it for his cellphone. He pressed the ON button and waited while it sprang back into life – his comrades had been very explicit: ‘Leave your phone off. We’ll use the machine to talk to you. Make sure you get one with a speaker,’ they had said.
His brother’s number was there, staring up at him, ‘TWENTY-TWO’. All of the phone’s numbers were labelled like this. One hundred of them, each named as a number: ONE +447865123879, TWO +442081114598. All but five of these numbers were entirely made up. One of these was now useless: its owner, and phone, atomised in a foreign land. One of them was his brother’s number. His heart was hammering in his chest as he pressed dial and waited, with perspiration beading on his dark forehead, until the ringing stopped.
“Yes?” His brother’s voice sounded alarmed, he only expected the most urgent of incoming calls.
“Sergei, it’s me,” he whispered quickly.
“What’s wrong, brother?” exclaimed his sibling. Jeyhun could hear a dull rumbling noise in the background. “Why are you calling me?”
“There’s a message,” he stammered. “I was worried... You haven’t called.”
“I’m okay, my brother. I’m hitching a ride across the Baltic on a very slow fishing boat but cut this call now and switch your phone off! I’ll dial in later when I hit port!”
“Oh,” Jeyhun felt his face flushing hot with sudden shame and embarrassment.
“Garashsyzlyk Khandastan!” his brother declared confidently. In English it translated to: Independent Khandastan. It was their private rallying cry.
“Garashsyzlyk Khandastan!” the teenager repeated automatically. Then, more quietly, he asked, “Did you know how many would be made dead?”
There was a short pause “My dear brother, you were always the kindest one.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Thanks for worrying about me. I love you, man...,” the line went dead.
~~~~~
London
Greere called Ellard immediately. “Got him,” he said simply.
“Berlin?” asked Ellard, who was driving toward the city in a rental car.
“Berlin. Are you there yet?”
“Yep. Nearly. How did the target reveal?”
“The idiot finally fired up his cellphone. Then rang one of the others. He used as many key words as he could think of. I’ll bet every agency on the planet has lit up like Christmas Trees.”
“His brother?”
“How did you guess? Steel needs to go in quickly, in case he realises his mistake and scarpers.”
“Or another agency moves on him.”
“Exactly. I’m activating Steel. I’ll send you the coordinates. Be ready to meet Steel afterwards...”
~~~~~
Berlin
It was almost midnight by the time Jeyhun picked his last fry from the bottom of the red cardboard carton. He’d been so hungry. Now finished, he stuffed the wrappers and paper into the brown paper bag they’d been served in, and made his way through the darkness to the top of the stairs.
~~~~~
In the black shadows at the rear of the deserted three-storey warehouse, Steel sprayed a quick burst of aerosol lubricant into the door mechanism, then gently tried the handle. It was unlocked.
Steel smiled to himself.
This was going to be an easy mission.
Gently, gently, he eased the door ajar. It opened inwards. Not a sound from the hinges.
He fed the spray-can’s straw into the frame and, using car noise from around the front of the building as cover, gave all three hinges a good spray.
The building was bathed in darkness. Maybe the target was out?
Maybe that was why the back door wasn’t locked?
He listened hard in the gap. Not a sound.
Moving quickly he eased the door open a fraction, squeezed his powerful body through and gently closed it again behind him.
~~~~~
At the top of the stairs, a new bin-liner waited patiently for Jeyhun’s rubbish. He rooted around in the darkness, with his hand, until he found the top of it and then dropped the crumpled paper bag inside. Whilst he was bent over, the briefest of flashes of streetlight, in the normally pitch-black depths of the warehouse, caught his eye.
What was that?
He edged to the decrepit iron railing which wound itself round the hole, and peered down into the blackness. In the dim streetlight which crept into the lower floors through the warehouse’s painted-out windows, he could just make out the white straggly line of the phone cable trailing downwards. Other than that he could see nothing.
He shook his head and made his way over to his mattress.
~~~~~
‘So then, where are you, little dead man?’ Steel thought to himself as he pulled down his night vision goggles.
A telephone cable led untidily from the open junction box next to the door, so he quickly broke the wires from the screw terminals and let the end drop silently to the floor at his feet. There would be no calling for help.
~~~~~
The answering machine made a single bleeping sound on the table. Jeyhun had never heard it make that kind of noise before?
He got up and walked, with the confidence of many hours of solitary occupation, back across the dark loft to the table. An odd little red light was glowing on the machine. He hadn’t seen that before either? The light was labelled: Battery Power.
Snatching up the receiver, he checked the line. Dead.
Shit.
The iron stairs creaked.
Only very quietly.
But they definitely creaked.
~~~~~
The telephone cable trailed across the floor and disappeared upwards in the middle of an old twisting iron staircase: presumably these stairs led to the upper floors. Steel placed one hand gently onto the staircase but the old metal creaked. Carefully he stepped back again. He’d sweep the ground floor first...
~~~~~
Jeyhun rushed over to his bedding and picked up his handgun. His heart was hammering in his chest. They were here. They were coming to get him. Somehow he had failed his simple assignment. He had let his comrades and his brother down. He was going to be captured...
He listened as hard as he could. The staircase was silent again and, other than occasional cars, passing the front of the building, there was no other noise from downstairs.
Had he been imagining things? Making ghosts where none existed?
He clicked the small eight shot magazine out of the ageing Makarov’s handgrip and checked it was full, then slotted it back in with a metallic click.
He wasn’t at all certain that he would be able to shoot anybody with it, but it was reassuring to have the weapon in his hands.
~~~~~
Steel crept amongst the scattering of crates, his rubber-soled shoes silent on the dusty concrete. Then he heard the faint but unmistakeable sound of a magazine being ejected and rammed home again.
He smiled.
The chicken was in the coop after all.
Upstairs.
The conspicuous telephone wire, snaking up into the darkness, would lead like a chalk line to his quarry. He made his way back to the winding staircase and gently started to climb: pausing and waiting for passing cars before each step.
~~~~~
So, why was the line dead? Maybe he hadn’t screwed the wires on tightly enough?
That would be it.
Something simple like that.
Jeyhun glanced toward the stairwell. He’d go down and check... in a little while...
Slowly he extended his arm and practiced sweeping the handgun across the darkened expanse of room. He moved his arm slowly, away from the stairwell, past the dark oblong of the table with the red-glowing machine perched on top of it, past the illuminated shadow of his empty chair, all the way to the circular window...
And then back: window, chair, desk, stairs...
And again: stairs, desk...
~~~~~
Steel eased his head out of the stair-hole on the top floor and could see his target sitting there, childlike, cross-legged, up against the far wall. The kid looked like some kind of green ethereal figure through his night-vision glasses.
The kid was holding a small handgun in front of him and slowly sweeping it back and forth across the space.
Steel watched until the seated figure started turning away from his position, then he began to move up into the loft-space...
~~~~~
...chair, window.
And, more quickly now: window, chair...
~~~~~
The kid was suddenly speeding up!
He was turning back already.
~~~~~
...desk, shadow?
~~~~~
Fuck.
~~~~~
A dark shadow was rising from the stair hole!
Jeyhun jerked backwards in surprise and the gun went off in his hand.
The muzzle of his weapon flared with bright flame and, amongst the deafening bang and sudden burst of acrid smoke, Jeyhun saw a huge alien monster leaping up out of the stair-hole. The creature had a strange mask on its face, with round eyepieces that briefly flared yellow in the splash of cordite-fire. Other than that, the monster was visible only as a sable pool of threatening blackness amongst the gloom.
He fired again.
And again.
And in each muzzle flash, the monster was coming closer.
~~~~~
The first bullet whizzed past Steel’s eardrum with the sound that only high velocity projectiles can make as they blast tiny holes through the air, and for a moment Steel was far away from this dark warehouse. He could see palm trunks and deep green foliage. Large, spreading, dripping, waxy leaves with new holes forming in them. Bullet holes.
Then the second shot from the young kid’s handgun jerked him back to the moment, and he rushed forwards across the space, bringing his weapon to bear.
The third shot from the kid clipped his trailing shoulder, and he roared in anger.
~~~~~
The monster roared.
Jeyhun Ebrahimi realised, with sudden ice-cold certainty, that he was going to die at the hands of this creature.
He pointed at the noise, both shaking hands gripping the gun, and kept on firing.
Sudden intense pain erupted in one of his legs, then his stomach, and then in one arm.
He was surprised at the excruciating sensation of the white-hot penetrations.
~~~~~
Steel’s night-sights flared over with every shot and his own weapon was now adding to the strobing.
He hit the kid in the leg and raised his aim a fraction.
The second bullet hit the kid’s midriff. The third shot hit his arm.
Suddenly Steel felt himself being punched hard in his midriff.
Twice.
Three times.
He started laughing and continued charging forwards.
~~~~~
The monster was laughing.
Some manic noise. Unearthly.
Jeyhun’s gun clicked empty, and the monster came to a halt right in front of him...
He watched as the beast ripped the strange mask from his head and stared down at him.
He had failed.
He had failed his brother.
The monster slowly looked down at his own midriff.
Jeyhun glanced downwards, and could see blood oozing between the gloved fingers of the hand that the monster was clutching there.
He’d hit him!
But Jeyhun’s own body was also screaming with pain.
He’d been hit too.
The monster was still laughing.
Jeyhun watched as the beast slowly raised its arm, the black muzzle gullet of the gun creeping upwards until it was pointing straight into his eyes.
“Goodbye,” said the monster.
There was a flash of white-hot light.
~~~~~
The child crumpled back, stone dead, under the force of the point-blank shot. Nonetheless, Steel continued to fire bullets into the body, which jerked and twitched under the force of the impacts.
Steel was still laughing. Manic laughter.
The magazine clicked empty.
Steel dropped to his knees, and tossed the handgun up, flicking it over in midair, and catching it by its hot suppressor. Then he started to beat the kid’s lifeless face with the butt of the weapon. Cudgelling the kid’s face with big powerful swings like he was hammering at nails.
He could feel the mushy flesh and crunching bones under his makeshift metal club.
~~~~~
Ellard eased the rental car onto the side of the road. The deserted warehouse was another two hundred metres further along the road and he could see strobe-like flashes lighting up a solitary circular window high up in the building’s gable end.
“Shit,” he muttered to himself, and scrambled out of the vehicle.
This backstreet, and the surrounding run down industrial estate, was deserted. Not many cars were venturing into this part of town so late at night. Nonetheless, he ripped a black woollen balaclava down over his head, zipped up his padded khaki sports jacket, and tugged a pair of gloves on as he sprinted silently along the frontage.
The building’s main doors were secured, and looked untouched, so he continued to the far corner of the front wall where he spotted the back alleyway and single rear doorway. Glancing up and down the street he could see no-one around, so he headed to the back of the building and tried the door.