SIX
He identified the second tag within two minutes of boarding the bus. The initial process was one of elimination: as a rule, discount people in groups, children or obvious teenagers, very old people, and the physically disabled. The bus was crowded, but he soon filtered out everyone except the middle-aged couple he’d approached in the queue, a young woman in a short skirt engrossed in text messaging, and a short man of about forty in a fedora which he kept on his head even in the humid press of the bus. The man had squeezed on at the last minute and shuffled his rump into a tiny space on one of the seats, provoking mutters of annoyance.
Purkiss let his gaze drift over the other passengers. Through the windows the last glimmers of coral had been sucked down past the horizon and darkness had settled, and with it the cold.
The girl in the skirt pushed the bell and got off. The female half of the couple sat down in her place. Purkiss didn’t think they were the ones.
The man in the fedora murmured into a mobile phone, his voice inaudible. Purkiss let his stare settle on the man. He didn’t look up.
That was unnatural. Purkiss knew he was the tag.
After five minutes the bus stopped again and the man got off. Purkiss peered through the window after him but he strode off without looking back.
The bus pulled into what was obviously the terminus and came to a stop. Purkiss stood aside, letting others pass until he was the last person on the bus, then stepped off himself. The road bustled with shops and early evening crowds. He took a moment to locate the man he was looking for, then spotted him walking away into the town: heavy set, bull necked. Purkiss half turned. There he was, the rangy man with the cropped hair from the airport, ten paces behind, his lips moving.
Purkiss understood how they’d done it. As soon as it was clear he was taking the bus, the crop-headed man had gone to get his car and had driven here to the town gate to wait for him. In the mean time the man with the fedora had got on the bus to make sure they didn’t lose him. When he realised Purkiss had made him, he’d rung ahead and got off at a designated stop, and been replaced immediately by the bull-necked man Purkiss had seen lumber aboard and who was now disappearing ahead.
So, they knew he’d spotted the one in the fedora. Did they realise he’d identified his current tags? It was a classic box formation, one ahead and one behind, except that for it to work the person being followed shouldn’t be aware of either component.
Two followers were going to be difficult. If he could isolate one, lose him and then turn the tables and track him, it could lead him to valuable information. Throwing off two tags was possible, but usually involved breaking cover and running, which tended to make it harder to pick up the trail again afterwards. The answer was probably going to be to get behind the rear tag without appearing to be evading pursuit.
Disorientated by the complete unfamiliarity of his surroundings, Purkiss dropped back a pace, letting the bull-necked man round a corner ahead. He glanced across at a mirrored shop window and saw that his plan was going to need radical revision because the crop-headed man had changed tactics and was closing on him fast.
*
‘He’s made us. Both of us.’
The Jacobin stood and paced, the handset perched on the desk and switched to speakerphone. I told you, damn it. ‘What’s he doing?’
‘Trying to subvert the situation.’
They’d never get back on to Purkiss if he turned the tables. ‘Listen to me. If you lose him now we may never find him again. I want you to move in and apprehend him. Non-lethal force only.’
‘Understood.’
‘How public are you?’
‘Very.’
‘No police.’
‘Of course.’
The Jacobin stood still, breathing slowly, frustrated at the lack of visual contact.
Purkiss, gone from the Service for four years. What the hell was he doing here now?
*
He looked back and there was no pretence now, a direct hard stare as the crop-haired man bore down. The street was crowded but not enough that an attack would go unnoticed in a press of bodies.
Unless the man had something in his – He reacted even before the thought was fully formed as the man lunged, a fluid sweep of his arm which Purkiss sidestepped feeling like he was defending himself against a fencing sword, except that protruding from the man’s fist was no blade but a needle so tiny that it barely produced a glint. For an instant the man was off balance. Purkiss tried to swat at his back to tip him past his centre of gravity, but he sprang forward and righted himself and stepped aside. He glared at Purkiss across the pavement.
Nobody else seemed to have noticed. It was some sort of tranquilliser, Purkiss assumed, designed for quick action so that he’d go down and the man would support him, full of concern, explaining to the passersby that he was a friend. Then he would hustle him away to whatever fate was planned for him.
The man up ahead, the bull-necked one, would be either on his way back or staying put waiting for his friend to drive Purkiss towards him and so to try to keep the odds as they currently stood. Purkiss backed under the awning of a shop and elbowed open the door and stepped inside, letting the door swing shut. It was a bookshop, deeper than it was wide, not crowded but with a few customers browsing unhurriedly enough that it didn’t seem about to close. Purkiss sidled down the centre aisle, keeping his eye on the door. It opened and the crop-headed man came through. He held back, standing near the door, watching Purkiss, waiting. Again his lips were moving. Purkiss knew he was summoning his colleague. There wasn’t much time.
The fire door was down a passage on the other side of the service counter. Two women sat at the tills, one young, the other possibly her mother. Neither had looked up when the man came in. Purkiss walked to the counter. ‘Excuse me, do you speak English?’
The younger woman said, ‘Little.’
‘Sorry to have to tell you, but I just saw that man near the door put a book in his pocket.’
The girl’s eyes widened and she glanced past him. The other woman muttered a question and she answered and the older woman came out from behind the counter and called down the length of the shop at the man, her tone pleasant but assertive.
The man’s stare flicked from Purkiss to the advancing woman, calculating. Then Purkiss was vaulting over the counter and as the young woman screamed he was down the passage and pushing the fire door open. He found himself in an alley, dark and murky.
The other man was there. He must have doubled back earlier and been lurking nearby. He saw Purkiss and ran the short distance towards him, quick for such a thick-set man. Purkiss was off running in the opposite direction but his foot slid on a slick of wet cardboard. He stayed upright but lost a second. The man bore down.
Purkiss turned and the man’s forearm drove off his shoulder. In the man’s fist he saw the flash of a needle – he’s got one too – and he pivoted on one foot and brought an extended-knuckle strike against the man’s neck. There wasn’t much of a neck to aim at and he got the side of the man’s jaw. He bellowed and punched Purkiss in the chest, slamming him back against the wall of the alley, winding him. There was no time to make a fuss about not being able to draw breath properly because the fist with the syringe was stabbing at his thigh. Purkiss twisted his hips, felt a sting in his upper thigh. He pistoned his leg side-on into the man’s abdomen, the syringe spinning high with a liquid streak spilling from the needle’s tip. The man staggered back and Purkiss swept at his shins with a foot, bringing him down hard.
Ten feet away the fire door barged open and the crop-headed man came through. Purkiss felt it then, the leadenness in his limbs and his eyes as though the earth’s gravitational pull had suddenly been doubled. He thought that while most of the contents of the syringe hadn’t gone in, a fair amount had. Even his thoughts were heavy.
There was no chance of taking the other man down now. There was no option but to run, run…
*
‘Talk to me.’
‘Stefan’s down, out of action. He got him with the needle first. He’s running, but he’s slowed down.’ The man sounded out of breath.
‘Stop him.’
The Jacobin kept the line open and picked up another phone and dialled.
Kuznetsov answered at once.
‘I need more men. Near the bus station.’ The Jacobin gave a quick summary.
‘There’s no-one else in the area at the moment. By the time I can get anybody down there it will probably be too late.’
‘Send them anyway. Your man might already have him by then.’
‘Who is this person?’ said Kuznetsov.
‘I’ll explain later. Someone I know. Someone very dangerous.’
*
The wall toppled towards him and he recoiled and the opposite one slammed into his shoulder. One foot in front of the other, like a marathon runner on his last legs, like a baby taking its first steps. Where was the other man? He didn’t dare look round in case the rotational movement dropped him.
A sense of proximity warned him at the last second and he summoned all his reserves and jerked his elbow back, connecting with something soft, a face. The cry receded behind him which meant the man had dropped back, even if for only an instant. Purkiss clasped the wall and swung round a corner. There ahead was a main street again, its lights harsh but welcome as the sun. He loped along the side of the building until he reached the main road. He turned, allowing himself a glance back.
The man was coming after him, closer than he’d hoped, darkness at his nose and streaked on his cheek, his eyes shadowed under the neon glare. Purkiss set off into the pedestrian traffic on the pavement, was immediately buffeted. He stumbled to his knees, hauling himself up amid angry mutters which he couldn’t understand but took to mean look at him, bloody drunk. It wasn’t a clever move being in a crowd because it would be so much easier now for the man to close in and slip in the needle, and this time depress the plunger all the way. What he needed was adrenaline to counter the sluggishness. If you couldn’t get an adrenaline fix from running for your life where could you get it?
Then he knew.
Purkiss lurched towards the kerb, bouncing off a lamppost, and stepped into the road. For an instant he felt as if he were actually viewing his surroundings upside down, so dislocating was the chaos of sensation on all sides, the rushing of headlights and the fury of horns and the tiny faces on the pavement and behind windscreens. The razor squeal of tyres seemed to slash at his legs as a wing mirror clipped his hip and sent him to his knees again, another set of wheels missing his fingertips by an inch.
His pulse drilled in his chest. He lifted his head and saw the front grille of a car halted a foot from his face. He tried to stand but his limbs were nailed to the road surface. Then there were hands on his upper arm hauling him up and a face looking into his in sympathy and helping him back on to the pavement. A familiar face.
No, something wrong there. The face had blood on it and it wasn’t expressing sympathy. It was the man with the cropped head.
Others clustered round. Purkiss saw the man’s other hand come out of his pocket. As it moved between them Purkiss grabbed the wrist and twisted it and jammed the needle in up to the hilt and forced the weight of his thigh against the plunger, driving it into the man’s groin. Purkiss smelt the bloodied breath through the man’s nose as his eyes turned up. Purkiss let him fall, watched his head bounce off the pavement.
There was no time to go through his pockets because the growing crowd had shrunk back in a communal gasp. Shouting, there came the older woman from the bookshop. Was that where he was? He’d come full circle.
All he could do was push his way loose and, again, run.