Into the fire, p.27
Into the Fire, page 27
She waited until she heard a door open and close, choking off the voices, then she crawled out, and straightened up. She wanted to flee. To hop out of the window, run from the house and the garden, keep on running. A stronger yearning kept her where she was. She had a sense that this was her last chance, that somewhere in this room lay the secret of her father’s whereabouts.
The second file was as useless as the first. Full of reports, clippings, articles, nothing that could be remotely relevant to her father. She pulled down the third file. Fifteen minutes later she consigned that to the shelf. She glanced at her watch, luminous in the dark. It was nearly midnight. She was haunted again by the feeling that somehow time was running out. With trembling fingers, she pulled down the fourth box file. Something inside it rattled. She opened it to find a series of old diaries and address books. She started with the address books. She flicked through until her fingers were dry. Her eyes were beginning to ache and she nearly missed it.
Arturo Leon, then in brackets after the name, Jack Jencks. Her fingers trembling violently, Helen scrabbled for a pen from the desk. She wrote down the address on her hand: 268 Calle Choquechaca, Cusco. She was replacing the contents of the file when she heard voices again. Maldonado’s, harsh and low, seemingly issuing some kind of order. She pushed the file back up on the shelf, the voices coming closer every moment. She wheeled around, headed for the window, and swung herself out. She dropped to a crouch and angled herself along the wall just as she heard the door to Maldonado’s study open. She suddenly remembered her torch. She’d left it lying beneath Maldonado’s desk. She cursed herself, and tried to suppress the sudden shuddering that coursed through her body. She heard footsteps inside the study, then Maldonado’s voice, so close. He must have been standing by the window, looking out. Helen tried to quieten her breath. It seemed to be coming in rushes of sound she felt sure he must hear. She knew she couldn’t stay where she was, exposed against the lit wall of the house. The guards would be making their rounds with remorseless regularity, but if she moved she risked being heard. She waited, seconds drilling into her brain as she imagined the guards getting closer. She heard Maldonado’s voice dull as he must have turned away from the window. She edged along the house, made a low, crouching run for the nearest bushes. She paused, glancing around, then ran again to the next bush, and on in a series of wild dashes until the adrenaline threatened to choke her. She reached her cottage, slipped through her bedroom window just as the first guard rounded the house. She saw his outline, silhouetted against the stone, as he patrolled the garden, passing just feet from where she had been crouching less than thirty seconds earlier.
Inside her cottage Helen rolled on the floor, catching her breath, trembling, and stilling her desire to laugh out loud from the elation of her discovery of her father’s address, and from the sheer narrowness of her escape. As she thought of escape, she sobered. She had a sudden sense of being trapped. Now she had her father’s address, the desire to flee was overwhelming. She looked at her watch. Five past midnight. The dogs would be freed now, roaming the garden. Even if she could, by some miracle, quieten them, persuade them not to rip her to pieces, she would have to take her chances a second time with Maldonado’s patrolling guards. She reckoned that she wouldn’t be so lucky as to evade them twice in one evening. But, God, she wanted to go. Her legs were trembling with the suppressed urge to run. She got up and paced in the darkness.
The sound of a gunshot ripped through the night. Helen froze. She could feel the sound in the echoing silence that followed. Another shot rang out. One of Maldonado’s guards was probably just checking his rifle, something like that. But then a third shot ripped through the night, raw and close. She stared around, as her mind began to race. Before she could gather her thoughts, another shot cracked the air, and another, then a chaos of shots, and the drilling of machine-gun fire, in short sharp bursts, like a mad conversation with everyone trying to speak at once. She dropped to the floor and crawled into the sitting room. Her blinds were drawn, she could see nothing. All she could feel was terror and confusion. She was running towards the bathroom, the shots still blaring, when another sound wailed through the air: an alarm, shrill and insistent. It came from across the garden, from Maldonado’s house. Even that wild sound was silenced for a moment by the roar of an explosion, deep and vibrating so that it shook her chest and seemed to force the air from her lungs. Then, as the sound died, leaving her ears ringing, the alarm in her own cottage went off, which meant only one thing: someone was trying to get in, might be in already. She ran for the kitchen, towards the only weapon to hand. She took a carving knife from the kitchen drawer, ran to the bathroom and locked herself in.
She waited, knife poised. Still the gunfire raged. That was the only sound. There were no shouts, no spoken words, all she could hear were the sickening explosions, and her own breath. The knife shook violently in her hand. Her whole body trembled, her breath came in shallow gasps. She had never felt pure terror before, never been at the centre of what sounded like blind, insane chaos. She imagined men walking on silent feet, through the cottage, guns poised, seeking her out. She imagined them going through every room, until they came to the locked door of the bathroom. She was trapped, with only a knife and her aikido for weapons. In the wildness of her thoughts, Dai’s words, and Connor’s, came back to her. Aikido’s not much use against a gun. The fear ripped through her till it felt as if her whole body was vibrating. Her body and mind were operating on a level she had never before experienced. It was a wild, live mayhem. Part of her wanted to run out, to search for the intruders, to see their faces, to do something. Her fear didn’t paralyse her, as she had read it did to many people. It gripped her, goading, and her body shook as if to break away. She listened for sounds in her cottage. Nothing. She unlocked the bathroom door and cracked it open an inch. She looked out, waited, eased herself out. She seemed to be following some unspoken instinct to move. She ducked below the shuttered window and crawled towards the main door. A sound stopped her. A key in the lock, the sound of it turning. The rage of panic threatened to blind her for a moment. In three silent strides, she made for the wall, flattened her body, waited. The door inched open. She could smell someone, the stench of sweat, of sexual excitement. There was a faint sound of breathing, of movement. The door opened wider. An arm protruded, holding a revolver. Helen’s mind went silent. Her training alone spoke to her, guiding her body. She placed the knife by her feet and waited until the man took a step forward, until his whole body was inside her cottage. Then her right hand shot out and caught the man’s right hand, the one holding the gun.
She wheeled round one hundred and eighty degrees, placed her left elbow over his right elbow, and threw all her force down upon it. His elbow cracked and he plunged face first to the floor. Helen grabbed the gun from his flailing fingers, moved back and pointed it at him. He was wearing a black balaclava with a slash for his eyes. She could see in his look of wild implacability that he wouldn’t back off. He was so close she could almost touch him. He pushed up from the ground, reached down towards his ankle. Helen saw a glimpse of a black nylon ankle holster, a flash of stainless steel, the barrel of a revolver. She aimed for the man’s shoulder, and fired. The sound of the pistol roared in her heart. The shockwave of the explosion hit her chest. There was a blinding flash of burning yellow edged by white, with red at the centre. She blinked rapidly, for a few moments she couldn’t see, then her eyes picked up the figure of the man, staggering backwards, falling out through the open door into the garden. Helen grabbed the revolver he had dropped. The man looked at her for a moment, at the two weapons she pointed at him, then he struggled to his feet, and ran away into the darkness.
Helen slammed the door, locked it, dragged the dining room table out into the hall, rammed it up against the door. Her ears rang piercingly. Her hands were shaking violently. She stuck them under her armpits, went to the far end of the room, squatted down on her haunches, the guns by her feet, and stilled the wailing scream that was gathering in her throat. The man had come to kill her, and something in her knew that others would follow, and probably in minutes. Outside the gunfire still raged. She could choose to stay and wait, or take her chances in the mayhem. She crawled back to her bedroom, peered out of the window. The garden was strobed by spotlights. Low figures ran in bursts across the garden, machine guns blazed and she heard screams. She leapt up, pulled her window closed and sank down to the floor. It would be suicide to run out into that, but she knew too that to stay in the cottage was sure death.
She would rather die running than trapped in a corner. She grabbed her sports bag, threw in the two guns, her passport, the bundles of money Dai had given her, and her walking boots. She zipped it up, crawled back to her bedroom window, and, inching her way up, peered out. The shots outside sounded as dull thuds, growing sharper as her hearing gradually returned. As she watched and listened, the shots grew fewer till she could hear them individually, and then they stopped, leaving an awful silence. Her ears hurt, she seemed to be able to hear her heart beat and her lungs move. She began to shake more violently, knew that now was the time to run. She picked up her bag, peered out of the window again, and saw only stillness. She pushed open the window, raised her leg over the sill, and froze, as she heard a voice calling her name. ‘Helen! Helen, are you there? It’s Victor.’ He was at the front of the house, maybe twenty feet away. His voice was subdued, but insistent at the same time. He called her again and again, the sound growing louder as he walked around the cottage towards her. She heard him speak again, what sounded like instructions. She eased out of the window, her muscles spasming with stiffness. She glanced around, then loped towards a clump of bushes twenty feet away. She crawled into their dense interior, branches scraping her face. Once hidden in their midst, she froze. She heard Maldonado calling her again, then he appeared, a blurred outline through the thorns. Four men followed him, all carrying submachine guns. They stopped by the open bedroom window. Maldonado barked out instructions and two of the men climbed into the cottage. They emerged after a couple of minutes and spoke to Maldonado in low voices. Helen heard him curse, and in the instructions she heard him speak next, she picked out the word perros, dogs.
She crouched in the bushes, watching the dim outlines of Maldonado and his men as they walked back towards the house. Some minutes later—she had no idea how long it was, as time, like any of the realities she had known, seemed to be suspended—she forced her way out of the bushes, glanced around the now empty garden, and ran towards the next clump of bushes ten yards away. She paused there, heart pumping, then ran on, dropping down behind a thick cluster of heliotrope. She could see the dull purple of the flowers glowing in the ambient light that beamed still in the illuminated garden. The scent of the flowers filled her nose, mingling with the smell of cordite, legacy of the gun battle.
She heard a sound and wheeled around. The Dobermans were approaching at a run. She crouched down, making herself as small as possible.
‘Hey, girls, it’s all right, good girls,’ she whispered. Her breath made her words ragged. The Dobermans slowed, approaching at a stiff walk. They stopped about five feet from her, legs angled back, necks straining forward, teeth bared, growling.
‘You’ve been trained, haven’t you, to attack anyone loose in the garden when you’re let out, anyone except Maldonado and the guards?’ She forced her breathing into a deep, slow pattern, trying to take the edge off her fear. ‘There, it’s all right, I’m no threat, you know me, remember, ssshhhhh, quiet there.’ She could see their eyes soften fractionally as she spoke, her voice low and rhythmical. She kept her words flowing, a stream into their unconscious. She spoke quietly, knowing there was a chance the guards or Maldonado would hear her, knowing too, that if she couldn’t becalm the animals, she was dead anyway. She knew what they could do. In seconds her throat could be torn out. She forced the image down, replaced it with one of sitting with Dai and his dogs beside the fire. She must show no fear or they would smell it.
‘There, come on, come to me.’ She reached out her hands, very slowly, gently. The growling eased to a low rumble, then stopped altogether. The lead bitch came right up to Helen, sniffed her outstretched fingers, then licked them. Helen rolled onto her back with her throat exposed and the three other dogs came up and licked her face. She wanted to giggle with a kind of wild relief, and their tongues were tickling her. ‘All right, girls, good girls, good dogs, I’m gonna get up now, OK. It’s all right, don’t be alarmed.’ She got up very slowly, stroking the dogs as she straightened. ‘Got to go, girls, bye bye.’ She glanced around, then walked slowly across the garden, forcing her rubbery legs to keep to a slow, smooth rhythm. She couldn’t run now. In three paces all the Dobermans’ training would be reawakened by her flight. The bitches watched her go, nut-brown eyes gleaming in the dark.
Helen glanced left and right. There was no sign of Maldonado or the guards. They had probably retreated inside, to Maldonado’s study, where the light glowed, complacent in the knowledge that the dogs would succeed where the assassin sent to kill her had failed.
The perimeter area burned with light. There was nowhere to hide. Helen paused, staring at the thirty feet that separated her from freedom, from life. The urge to live was so strong. She fought down the terror which gripped her, stepped into the light, crossed the glaring border, and reached the door to the street. She stood in the full beam of a spotlight, slid back the bolts, opened the latch, and walked through.
CHAPTER 65
Evan Connor was awakened from sleep by the insistent ringing of the intercom. He peered at the luminous dial of his clock - three fifteen. He felt the stab of alarm always produced by abrupt night-time awakenings. He swung out of bed, padded through his darkened bedroom to the intercom. Helen’s voice rose ragged from the handset.
‘Evan, are you there?’
Two minutes later the lift brought her to him. He had positioned himself to the side of the elevator shaft, waiting, a six-inch carving knife in his hand. When he saw Helen was alone, and the lift doors had cracked shut behind her, he dropped the knife to his side and pulled her into his flat. He locked the door behind him, flicked on the light. Helen stood before him, terror illuminated in her bloody face. He opened his arms and she fell into them. He carried her into his sitting room, laid her down on the sofa. It was only when he had tended to the thorn scratches on her face, and made her a mug full of heavily sugared tea that he spoke to her.
‘What happened?’
Below them the huge, deep rollers of the Pacific crashed onto a darkened shore. Helen could almost feel them, imagined herself floating on the white spume, in a yacht fully rigged to sail her away. She took a long drink of tea. The bitter sweetness coated her tongue. The mug burned her lips. She seemed supernaturally aware of every sensation.
‘Someone tried to kill me. I was in my cottage when a shot rang out, then another. All hell broke loose, this massive gun battle. The alarms went off, in Maldonado’s house, in my cottage. There were these explosions. I could see lights sweeping past my window, I hid in my bathroom, then something told me to get out of there. I let myself out, moved towards the door when the key turned in the lock. The door opened, a hand reached through, holding a gun. I waited, then this man stepped into the room. I went for him, got him in rokkyo, broke his elbow, threw him to the floor, took the gun off him.’
‘Jesus Christ. What happened then?’
‘He reached down to his ankle. He had a holster there. He pulled out another gun. So I shot him.’
‘Kill him?’
‘I hit his shoulder. He staggered away.’
Connor stared up at the sky and blew out a breath.
‘Shit.’
‘I’ve got the guns here.’ Helen nodded at her bag.
Connor opened her bag and took out the larger revolver with his right hand, pushed the catch forward with his thumb, and flipped out the cylinder with his fingers.
‘Smith & Wesson .357 Mag. You fired one shot?’
Helen nodded. ‘Deafened me.’
‘Yeah, it’s a bit of a monster, especially if you’re not expecting it. He ground off the hammer spur,’ mused Connor, examining the weapon. He pulled out the second revolver and proved it.
‘Smith & Wesson 640. Nothing fired. This was his second gun, yeah?’
‘The one in the ankle holster.’
‘Yep, he was a pro.’ Connor took a handkerchief, wiped both guns clean, and put them into a plastic bag. ‘I’ll have to get rid of them later. God knows how many jobs they’ve got on them.’ He turned back to Helen.
‘What happened next?’
‘After a while, the shots stopped, there were voices calling out. Maldonado came for me, calling me. I didn’t go to him. I hid in the bushes. They searched for me, couldn’t find me, so they let the Dobermans out. I’d befriended them some time before, so when they came for me, I managed to quieten them.’
Connor shuddered.
‘I crept through the garden, walked through all these blazing spotlights, managed to get away. I walked for an hour and a half before I found a taxi. I got him to drop me about a quarter of mile from here.’
Connor took hold of her hand.
‘It’s a miracle you’re still alive. Christ, Helen, that was about as close as you get. Pretty heroic stuff getting out of there.’
Helen smiled. Connor stroked her hand, turned it over in his palm, saw the smears of red ink. Helen followed his gaze and screamed. She pulled her hand from his, and stared at the blurred writing.
‘What is it?’ asked Connor.
‘It was my father’s address. Oh Christ, it’s gone.’ Her eyes were wild with despair.
‘It’s not gone. You saw it, you wrote it down,’ said Connor urgently. ‘It’s there in your memory. We’ll get it back.’
