Close Quarters

EIGHT

Twenty minutes later, as I was beginning to think I’d been duped, Ivkanoy appeared in the doorway. He was still carrying his briefcase. He didn’t come all the way in, but clicked his fingers in the air and signalled at me to follow. The way you do things when you want everyone in the place to know you’re the boss.

What a pro.

He was moving with a lot more energy now, hustling ahead of me like his feet were on wings. We passed a row of shops, mostly closed for the night or maybe out of business, their owners unable or unwilling to operate in the current climate, and rounded a couple of corners, all without seeing anybody. If the authorities wanted to impose a curfew here, they weren’t exactly going to have their work cut out. Most of the locals were off the streets already.

We ended up in a narrow, ill-lit street with a dead-end formed by the embankment of a railway line. There was a single vehicle in sight, a Toyota Land Cruiser parked beneath a tree. It looked oddly out of place, and I checked all around me, seeing nothing but darkened windows and deserted doorways. It reminded me of some of the fake city lots I’d been on for close quarters combat training in the military, although if anybody was going to jump out at me, they wouldn’t be cardboard silhouettes. And if any cops were watching, they were staying well back.

Something didn’t feel right, but maybe it was mission nerves.

Ivkanoy saw me looking and smirked. ‘No need to worry about police,’ he said, and rubbed his fingers together. Whether it was a nervous reaction or meant he’d paid them off, I wasn’t sure, but I took it to be a good sign — with reservations.

I walked round the Toyota, checking out the shadows as I went. The vehicle was well-used and looked a dirty red under the poor light. Its life story was easy to read in the tracer-work of dents and scrapes on the body panels and fenders, and a multitude of scratches on the windshield. But it looked ready to go with good tyres and wipers. So far so good.

‘What about the extra?’

‘In the glove box with a spare clip. Add another fifty per cent, cash,’ Ivkanoy suggested heavily, ‘and I won’t ask you to bring them back.’ He chuckled as he said this and jiggled a key on a plastic fob.

It was an odd thing to say. A deal was a deal. I looked at him, wondering if he was a joker or just plain greedy. ‘Is the car clean?’ The last thing I needed, travelling with a gun, was for the car to be on a stolen vehicle checklist.

He shrugged in a take it or leave it kind of way. ‘Why should you care?’

Then I got it. There was no deal; it was a set-up.

I heard a shuffle of movement in the shadows to my right. I turned just as a man in a leather jacket stepped out from a narrow gate in a wall a couple of yards away. Even in the shadows I could see he was big and carrying what looked like a sawn-off pool cue in one large fist, and was grinning like he would enjoy using it.

I heard a click and Ivkanoy had his briefcase open and was taking out a nasty-looking blackjack. I was surprised; it’s pretty old-school as a weapon, and most gang-bangers in the US would laugh at it. It’s basically a leather sack full of lead or sand, but its main advantage is that it’s silent.

‘You’re kidding,’ I said, just to keep him off-guard. A talking mark is one who might just give up the game without resisting.

Ivkanoy dropped the briefcase to one side and held out his empty hand. He wasn’t listening and suddenly he didn’t look quite so tired or rumpled.

He’d done this before. No doubt the local situation was giving him ample opportunity to screw anyone he could with no come-back guaranteed. With everything else on their plates, the local cops would be too busy to investigate minor crime, and he knew damn well I wasn’t going to make a complaint, anyway. It was win-win for him.

‘The money,’ he said. ‘Also your wallet and passport. All of it. You want to go home in one piece, yes?’

I really didn’t want to get into this. I made a mental note to have a word with Max, maybe pay him a visit when I next got to Berlin. Knowingly or not, he’d served me a dud deal. ‘OK,’ I said, showing my open hand. ‘There’s no need for violence. We can sort this out.’ I was talking to stop them attacking, knowing they would want to do this without having to work too hard. But I was also playing for time and advantage. I took a fold of notes out of my pocket and held them out to him, letting my fingers shake as I did so.

Ivkanoy saw the movement and grinned. He understood fear; it was part of what he traded in, what made his world go round. I was a mark and he’d got me where he wanted me. Easy money — and he’d probably only need to give me half a beating before letting me go.

Just as he reached out to grab the notes I dropped them on the ground.

It caught him flat-footed. He hesitated and looked down. Dumb move — this wasn’t the way it was supposed to play out. Before he could react, I stepped in and slapped him hard enough to spin him like a top and drop him to the ground, the sound of the impact echoing along the street. The blackjack rolled out of his hand and the sound of his head hitting the sidewalk told me he was out of the fight.

His wingman hadn’t been prepared for this development, either. But he tried. He made a noise deep in his chest and ran at me, the cue raised above his head and no doubt hoping his size would be enough to intimidate me. I gave it half a second then threw my bag in his face, turned away from him and delivered a mule kick. The advantage of such a kick, which is delivered backwards, is that your own danger area — your head — is furthest away from the attacker, and if timed right the extended foot makes contact first — and hard.

It took him just below the gut, sinking in deep. He squealed once and fell to his knees, eyes wide and mouth open in shock. Surprisingly, he started to get straight back up, whooping for air and clutching his groin, but ready to go. He was clearly made of tougher stuff than his friend and still had hold of the cue. So I scooped up the blackjack and while he was trying to get his other leg to work, tapped him once under the ear. He fell over to one side and I gave him another tap just to make sure. This time he didn’t move.

I checked his jacket pockets and was surprised to find he’d come weighed down by something heavier than a pool cue. It was a small submachine gun clipped to a chest strap and tucked under his jacket. It looked like an Uzi, but I was betting on a local copy. It was a typical gangster’s scary badge of courage, and I wondered if he’d ever used it or whether it was just for show.

I unclipped it, along with a spare magazine in a strap, thankful that he’d come out wielding the pool cue and not the gun, otherwise it might have ended differently. Then I went over to Ivkanoy and checked his hand. He was still holding the car key and groaning in pain. As I took the key he looked up at me and made a wild grab at my face.

I took hold of his hand and knelt on his chest, making the air go out of him like a punctured cushion. Then I grabbed his middle finger, bending it back until I had his full and undivided attention. He stopped moving.

‘We had an arrangement,’ I reminded him. ‘You were to supply a car and a weapon and I was to pay you some money. That was a simple enough transaction, right?’

He didn’t say anything but hawked and tried to spit in my face. Tough guy. So I broke his finger and left him screaming like a girl.

I climbed in and started the Toyota, then checked the glove box. Empty save for a bunch of sweet wrappers. No extra. But no surprise there; I hadn’t been expected to get this far. I drove away, flicking on the lights and testing the heater and wipers. Overload a car like this right away and any faults in the electrical circuit should show up before going too far. If I was driving a glammed-up wreck I’d need to find an alternative pretty quickly. But it ran sweet enough, so I stopped near a small car park shielded by a line of scrappy bushes and went walk-about. I spotted a small Datsun pretty much the same age as the Toyota and got to work, switching the plates and caking the ones I was leaving on the Datsun with a liberal amount of dirt. With luck the driver wouldn’t notice the switch for some time and I’d have some leeway before I needed to trade the ones I’d taken for a new set.

Next I needed to hide the submachine gun, which turned out to be a Croatian Ero model. If I ran into a problem, having it out in the open would be inviting trouble. The simplest solution would have been to drop it down a convenient sewer. But that would be like going naked. If Ivkanoy was the kind of man I figured he was, he’d be sorely pissed at having been dumped on his ass with a busted finger, and the chances of meeting up with him or his friends was too high; he’d be on the look-out and I’d need some heavy backup for that eventuality somewhere down the line.

I also needed to have the gun within easy reach, which left out anywhere on the outside of the vehicle. So I sliced open one of the rear seats and made sure it was tucked away out of sight, then took a drive back out to the airport for a look-see.

Game on.