Eldershott was examining me again, his hand resting between two pages of the book; they were full of scribbles in the margins. I decided it might be handy for me to examine the book more thoroughly later.
"One is for you," I said, as the waiter brought over two large bottles of Baltika beer and deposited them on the table.
Again, I seemed to startle him. I couldn"t read him; he seemed to be a mixture of meekness and aggression and he moved between the two almost without noticing. "Thank you, Miss...?" he trailed off, leaving me to fill him in.
"Gordon. Janet Gordon. Pleased to make your acquaintance," I said, formally, then smiled as he offered his hand. "As a thanks for helping me out," I said, pushing one of the beers towards him. "Mr...?"
"Morcombe," he said. "Thanks again."
"Well, Mr Morecombe, it"s a pleasure to meet you."
Then the second bowl of soup arrived and I concentrated on that, ignoring him and yet observing his reactions, his signals. He wasn"t tense but he was on some kind of edge, and that made him unpredictable; his fingers kept tracing invisible runes in the open book, and his eyes blinked like two flies trying to escape from solidifying amber.
The second bowl helped, and the beer was good. When I finished eating, I sat back against the window with my feet up on the seat.
"I"m an archaeologist," I said into his silence. "I"m going to work on a dig they have in the Gobi desert. Are you planning to stop in Ulaan-Bataar, too, or are you going on straight to Beijing?"
His ticket was all the way and so was mine, now, but I had a suspicion he wouldn"t be going that far, and his reaction when I mentioned the Gobi was interesting, the eyes shifting to the window where the snow kept blowing in the icy wind. His fingers kept scribbling, faster and faster, on the pages of the book.
The Gobi, then?
Perhaps. But I didn"t think so.
Either way, he didn"t answer, and when he finally looked at me, his eyes were haunted, the orbs as large as moons in a pearly cloud, and he breathed once, deeply, and then his fingers stopped their motion and fell silent and he slumped in his seat, his head almost hitting the table and blood coming out of his mouth.
Chapter 12.
They were waiting for me in the s.p.a.ce between the cabins, a narrow metal enclosure with a window on one side and a door on the other and the smell of stale cigarettes permeating it.
The first one tried to grab my arm and I twisted, my knee finding the soft place between his legs, and he grunted but didn"t let go. I felt the second one move and I kicked out, a backward kick that connected and threw him against the window. The first one landed a punch in my ribs, hard, and I nearly collapsed from the pain, and then he released me and I stood, gasping for air between the two of them as both slowly straightened up and looked at me.
Blond, bulky, and dangerous. It was too late at night, n.o.body could hear us, n.o.body would wander past or go for a late cigarette.
The one by the door kicked out then, a high kick that would have connected with my neck had I not blocked it, and I ducked under and punched him in the stomach in a one-two-one rapid movement but his arm came up and hit me on the side of the face, and then the second one was there, trying to grab me from behind in a Nelson lock, and I went mad. There are no rules to krav maga, only to inflict as much damage on your opponent as quickly as you can, but these weren"t amateurs; they were good, so I let Anna Gordon dissipate and Killarney take over, the organism cornered and frightened and angry, and my foot flew back between his legs and connected, and he let me go, briefly.
It was enough, and I turned round and ducked as the first one aimed another punch at my face that almost connected with his friend"s. I tried to trip him, hooking my foot into his and using his own body weight against him and it worked, throwing him against the door, but his friend was already up and on me--and I knew I couldn"t go on for very long with these two, they were pros and they were big--and he grabbed me in a bear hug, and I twisted, kicking in the air as he held my body, and somehow managed to press the lock on the door and throw it open.
Freezing air came rushing into the cabin and I could see the tracks running past and the beginning of light in the distant horizon.
I kicked out again and by luck it connected, hitting the first one in the chest and pushing him against the wall and closer to the open door.
The one who was holding me tightened his grip and I felt my arm fracturing, that sick sound of bones being slowly broken, and in desperation I used him as my springboard, feeling a bone breaking as I did but I lashed out with both legs and pushed, and my feet connected with the man by the door and threw him outside, where his short scream disappeared behind the moving train.
I was on more even ground now and he knew it, but he had the advantage and now I"d p.i.s.sed him off, and I could hear another bone going and thought, No, this isn"t how it ends, and I twisted, releasing myself somehow and hitting him with an open hand on the neck before landing my thumb in his windpipe.
He hit me on the side of the head, hard, but I just kept pushing and his breath turned to a choke, and I dropped him to the ground and landed my elbow in his neck, over and over, until he stopped moving.
It was hard to breathe but it wasn"t over, and so I rolled him on the floor, wincing in pain and as I did his hand turned and I saw the tattoo on his wrist, a red, inverted swastika and the wings on each side; the same as the dead girl I"d left in a Parisian loo, and I thought, d.a.m.n, who the h.e.l.l are these people, and then he was by the door and dangling out, and I pushed him, but he wouldn"t move and I had to kick his head, and the fourth or fifth time finally did it and he dropped.
I cursed them for not giving me the chance to find out who they were, and cursed again as I catalogued the damage they had caused. Split lip, what felt like broken bones in my left arm, and the skin on my face felt raw and bloodied. I"ve had worst but this was bad timing, and I knew that I couldn"t stay on the train all the way to Beijing now, and I still wasn"t sure what to do about Eldershott.
In the dining cart, he"d almost fallen into his food, and I"d done the only thing I could think of, lying him on the ground and trying to make him breathe, and when he did I shoved my fingers into his mouth and made him puke, his food coming out purple and red, with mucus and blood intermingled.
He could have been poisoned, but when he regained consciousness he shoved me away as if nothing had happened and walked out of the dining cart with an awkward step, and I still couldn"t read him, couldn"t read him at all. Something had happened to him on the train, something had reached over and he"d almost died, and I didn"t know why.
Eldershott. He was alive, but he had almost made me break my cover and all the explanations about how Janet Gordon once took a first-aid course weren"t going to amount to much; we had both become focal points of interest and I didn"t want that. I needed to operate in the dark and this was far too visible.
And then there were the blond twins, and that strange tattoo again, and the door flopping open in the cold Siberian wind as the train snaked away into the distance. Someone had left a packet of cigarettes lying on the floor, Prima, and there was one cigarette still in it, a little crushed but it would do, and I lit it, thinking the h.e.l.l with abstinence, blond killers or angels or both.
The nicotine spread through my bloodstream and into my head, making me light-headed. I thought back to Paris and to the girl in the bathroom, the one I"d had to kill, and to that nameless Irish bartender and the equally-nameless sniper who"d killed him.
I"d a.s.sumed the opposition were Russians to begin with, but I didn"t think that was the case anymore--the Russians would be just as worried as the Bureau--so there must be someone else operating on this mission, running a counteraction to the one I was running. I needed to find out who they were and what was going on, and I decided it was time to stop p.u.s.s.y-footing around; I didn"t have much time left and the train was becoming dangerous, and Eldershott would have to talk, one way or the other.
But first I needed to take care of myself. The train was moving, and Eldershott would be safe in his cabin for a while longer--at least I hoped he would. I shut the door on the night and the snow outside and went to my cabin. They had searched it thoroughly, and I went through everything carefully, checking for traps, but they"d obviously thought they could finish me off by themselves and hadn"t bothered.
They"d been wrong not to bother, but it was too late to tell them that. I bandaged my arm and cleaned my face and climbed up onto the top bunk and fell immediately asleep.
Chapter 13.
I had to hurry at Omsk station because the train wouldn"t be stopping for very long, and I almost waved the copy of Pravda in the air before dropping it. I stuck to protocol, but it cost me.
The local agent was a short, skinny lad with nervous brown eyes, and I thought, They"re really scratching the bottom of the barrel here, though I could be wrong; you don"t get sent to Siberia unless you can handle it, and there aren"t that many agents who can.
"I need to see Seago," I said. "Straight away."
He blinked, and I said, "Did you get that?" my voice rough, and he blinked again and nodded without speaking. The next stop was Barabinsk but it wouldn"t do; it wouldn"t give Seago time to get there, so it had to be Novosibirsk and I had a bad feeling about that.
I had a bad feeling about the entire thing, and I was getting worried about Eldershott. He hadn"t come to the dining cart the next day, and when I"d looked into his cabin he was spewing black blood again, but when I tried to check him over his eyes opened and he pushed me away, not speaking, and wiped his mouth with a handkerchief as if nothing had happened. The handkerchief was stained with old blood.
He looked up at me. "What do you want?" he demanded, then saw my face and stopped still. "What happened to you?"
"I cut myself shaving."
He didn"t know how to take that, and I looked at the dark blood on his handkerchief, and he followed my gaze and back. "Look, don"t come in here again, all right? I suffer from fatigue, and sometimes I black out." He could see I didn"t believe him. He was like a dying man saying he"d never felt better.
"It"s nothing serious."
I nodded, slowly, and it was evident something had shifted in our interaction, that he was wary of me, and that wasn"t good either, because he had no way of knowing who I was unless the opposition agents weren"t there to trail him, they were there to guard him and, if that was the case, he must have been unpleasantly surprised to see me in his cabin.
I waited outside until he left the cabin and locked the door behind him and went to the bathrooms, and then I picked the lock. I had to be quick, but I went through his stuff methodically, searching under the mattresses, behind the loudspeakers that woke us each morning with shrill Russian programmes, finally through the small, dark leather bag that seemed to be his only possession.
Inventory: three pens, two black and one blue; three pairs of underwear, Woolworths; two shirts, Marks and Spencer; four pairs of socks from same, dark green; one book, Military History Since the Coming, the same one he"d had with him in the dining car. I went through the pages more thoroughly than I had been able to before, but there was still nothing hidden inside it.
Nothing else in the bag, nothing in his coat pockets either--and was that a commotion outside, had he tried to open the door and couldn"t? I listened carefully but it was nothing, only my imagination playing up, and I knew I had to hurry.
No notes, no writing, nothing to indicate what he was doing here in the middle of Nowhere, Siberia, in the depths of winter.
I"d checked for the little traps we always leave on our stuff when we"re in the field--the hair on the spine of a book, the clothes lined up at a specific angle, all the little things we do to see if anyone has been there, but there was none. Eldershott was clean; he wasn"t a pro, or else he was so good that I couldn"t detect it.
I didn"t think he was that good. Whatever he was, he wasn"t a field agent.
I made sure everything was left exactly as I"d found it.
Except for the book.
There was nothing to indicate it was anything but a normal book but there was something about it, maybe the way Eldershott tapped his fingers on it the whole time he sat in the dining car; he behaved as if the book was a lifeline and when they do that, it"s usually because it is; it has some special significance for them. I thought it was a lifeline and I decided to cut it for him. I wanted him on the defensive; I wanted him nervous now, and I wanted to run him, not be run blindly myself.
I was back in my cabin when he finally got out of the bathroom and, afterwards, he was silent, and I began to read the book carefully, still searching for the hidden codes but I hadn"t found them and I was getting edgy because I knew something had to be there.
Omsk, the train silent by the platform, the railway stretching into white fog like a gate into another world.
"Get in touch with Seago," I said again, wondering where they"d got an agent from in Omsk, "and tell him to be there at Novosibirsk when the train arrives. Tell him to meet me on the platform. Do you understand? And to be ready to activate whatever p.i.s.spot network we have operating down there."
He nodded again, and I was getting irritated. It was important he got it right, and I made him repeat it before getting back on the train. There were still eight hours to Novosibirsk, and so I sat back in the cabin and opened Eldershott"s little book and read, for the umpteenth time, the history of the world since the Coming of the Angels, back at the end of the Second World War.
It was an old story: how the angels began to materialise above the battlefields and death camps of Europe, appearing wherever blood was spilt and ma.s.s death occurred. I flicked through the ill.u.s.trations again: Azrael manifesting in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Raphael appearing in Normandy, Behemoth--the largest of all the Archangels, who now resided in St. Paul"s--come into being in the midst of the Germans" aerial bombardment of London.
It was the same old s.h.i.t: the end of the war, and the Coming of the Angels. They settled where they wished, and in the intervening years they played their curious games: Raphael and his drug cartel, Mafiya connections and gambling; Azrael in Lubyanka, turning the prison into a miniature h.e.l.l on earth; Metatron sprawling with all his ma.s.sive bulk inside Notre Dame, where fools came to worship him.
Now all three were dead and I had to find out why.
I had nearly finished reading when the window exploded and a hot searing pain cut through my hand and fragments of broken gla.s.s. .h.i.t my body like tiny razorblades, and through foggy eyes I saw in very slow motion, my blood dripping onto the pages of the book, each drop suspended for a moment in the air, a frozen red ruby, and then everything sped up again and I rushed headlong into a cold ocean of darkness.
Chapter Fourteen.
The sky was the colour of freshly-washed linen and, between the low-lying clouds, angel wings beat a measured tempo.
I stood on a ground as white as the skies, a featureless expanse of paleness devoid of any signs of life. It was a clean place, an empty place, a sterile place, and my blood fell on the ground like the red petals of a flower and stained it like a wound.
I stood and watched angels fly on the high winds.
Angels: wings that stretched six or seven metres from tip to tip, razor-sharp white feathers cutting through the cold, clean air like heated knives. Angels: strangely human heads that swivelled this way and that, with eyes that were fathomless pools of mixed grey and milky whiteness, eyes that I could feel examine me from high up, from the cold clear winds of those enormous skies. Angels: circling on the wind like giant birds, swooping low and coming back up again, majestic and care-free and dangerous birds of prey.
I felt strangely devoid of urgency, as if I had stumbled into a dream world in which dream logic applied, where my wounds were only a detail of the dream; when I looked down, the bleeding had stopped and my injuries seemed to have suddenly disappeared.
I sat down on the ground and pulled my feet up under me, and watched the angels fly in the vast, featureless sky.
I remembered the window breaking, the pain in my hand. Someone must have been shooting at the train, shooting at the window, shooting at me.
And I must have been shot, and this was the result: that I was now hallucinating, that I was dreaming this place.
And yet I could feel the cold. That was real enough, the sort of cold that penetrates into the bone, that makes you want to claw your face to draw warm blood, anything to warm up. It felt very real, that aspect of it. It had the kind of coldness that shakes you awake.
And it had an alien essence about it, a strangeness and a wrongness that said I did not belong there, that this was not my world.
The shadows of the angels flittered on the ground like giant, shifting shapes. As I watched, the shadows congealed and came together into one ma.s.sive blotting of light, and as I sat and waited, a shape slowly appeared, t.i.tanic and yet indistinct, descending from the skies to land before me.
A giant head regarded me from a height. Eyes the size of lakes set in a craggy face, a face like a weathered mountainside where little grew or lived or breathed.
A vast mouth opened, and a sound like a hurricane emanated from it.
It was one word.
Just one word.
It was a name.
Killarney, the voice said.
"What are you?" I said, but even as I spoke, my voice dissipating in the cold, clean air, I knew the answer to my question.
As above, so below.
"I don"t understand."
You will, Killarney, the giant mouth said, and in its voice was the sound of leaves in autumn and the coming of snow. And: Too long have the Fallen escaped me.
"What shall I do?" I felt lost and small, a child amongst giants, seeking answers to questions I didn"t even know to ask.
The man you follow is both more and less than a man. The cipher and the key.
The giant moved like an avalanche, and its breath carried down to me and brought with it images: snow and ice and loneliness, and in the whiteness of the desert of ice, a building, human-made and impregnable.
"I don"t understand," I said again.