Revenger

73

Celina Novak was furious with herself. She’d had the chance to kill Carver without the slightest risk to herself. She’d known it had to be him from the moment she’d seen him step through the gap in the chain-link fence. Who else could it possibly be? The police had arrived, exactly as she’d been told they would, and then Carver had taken the obvious escape route. She’d recognized his walk, too.

Like all former Eastern Bloc intelligence personnel, Novak had been taught the three-point identification method, developed by the East German Stasi. Using academics from a range of fields, from anthropologists to zoologists, they’d identified hundreds of markers that define an individual: the shape of their eyes, their stride-patterns, their posture and so on. Agents were trained to take three of these markers, apply them to someone they were trailing and then consider those three markers — and nothing else — when they were looking for that individual. A person could change their clothes, their haircut, add a false beard or wear spectacles, but as long as one or more of those markers remained consistent, they could never escape observation.

Novak had observed Carver at the closest possible range when they had been together, back in Greece. She had automatically filed away the markers she would use to identify him. The shabby, balding, mousey-haired man hurrying towards her across the building site had still retained the essential characteristics of Samuel Carver. And yet she had somehow been unsure. She had hesitated; only for a second, but that had been long enough.

Now she would have to hunt him through this godforsaken warren, which reeked of failure and broken dreams almost as much as it did of the methylated spirits and rancid urine of the drunken tramps who’d spent the night there and were now lying dead in the bare basement beneath an unfinished townhouse. She hadn’t wanted any witnesses, even ones with addled brains.

Novak put a fresh magazine into her long-barrelled Ruger MK II pistol, and walked towards the house where she’d last seen Carver, the gun held in front of her in both hands as she peered into the relative darkness of the interior. She was only about ten feet from the entrance, walking at a slow, steady pace, alert to any movement. And then she heard the sound of footsteps above and ahead of her and looked up to see Carver leaping from a gap in the ragged brickwork of the house’s unfinished upper storey and flying through the air towards her.

She raised her gun to shoot him. But at the very moment she fired Carver crashed into her, flinging her backwards and sending the shot harmlessly wide. She hit the ground back first and was winded as Carver gripped her right wrist and slammed her hand against the rough, concrete-studded surface, forcing her to let go of the Ruger. She was still gasping for breath as he rolled off her and scampered after the gun.

Carver grabbed it, got to his feet and spun round to face her. Now she was lying on the ground and Carver was standing over her, the gun-barrel aimed right between her eyes.

‘Morning, Ginger,’ he said.