The Run Around

Chapter Thirty-six

Vasili Zenin hesitated immediately inside the apartment, looking at the neatly positioned rubber wedges and recalling his uncertainty during the escape preparations. Unnecessary and time-delaying, he decided, positively. A hindrance, in fact. He continued on, taking off his jacket as he went, throwing it over the chair that remained in position from his weapon assembly and crouched before getting into the harness to bring the photographic gathering in the faraway garden into view through the image magnifier. Practically grouped, he saw. All very neat and orderly. Lining up like targets, in fact. The Russian smiled at his own joke, slipping into the leather vest and zipping it tightly beneath his chin. He secured the cross straps but did not attach himself at once to the M21. Instead, attachments trailing from him, Zenin pulled the curtaining tightly to one side and then lifted the bottom half to loop it through the sash of the adjoining window, so that it was completely out of the way. He raised the chosen window as far as it would go, giving him a gap about a metre and a half square and swivelled the rifle on its tripod mounting to point directly through it. Still in front of the M21, Zenin screwed on the sound suppressor which made the barrel protrude through the open window and snapped the magazine of hollow-nosed bullets into place. The guns of Israeli security would be loaded with the same, he knew. And so was the Browning carried by Sulafeh Nabulsi.

Four minutes to go, he saw, clipping the muzzle strap on to its ring. Timing was vital now, because Sulafeh had to move first. Zenin fastened the last strap to the tripod, hugging the stock into his shoulder, feeling at once the familiar sensation of the weapon being an extension of him, not something apart. The grouped-together statesmen were very clear, through the sight. Zenin could see the American Secretary of State, Bell, with Arafat quite close. Mordechai Cohen, the Israeli Foreign Minister, was talking earnestly to someone just behind him and Hassani, the Jordanian minister, was trying but failing to catch the attention of someone in the Syrian group alongside.

Zenin brought the rifle into line, sighting perfectly upon his first kill, breathing easily, quite relaxed. Zenin saw the gathering start to come formally together, everyone turning towards the camera, and realized the photographic assistant just intruding into the bottom of his magnified circle was warning them the session was soon to begin. Not much longer now, thought the Russian.

Charlie Muffin stared impatiently at the floors lighting up and then going blank on the indicator board as the elevator climbed upwards with agonizing slowness, driving his right fist into the palm of his left hand in his impatience. Blom and Giles and Levy would all be out there, somewhere around the picture session and impossible immediately to contact. But there’d surely be a radio contact, to Blom at least! Some way of reaching the man. No klaxon alarm, Charlie remembered. And he remembered Blom’s words: a klaxon has no other practical benefit beyond making a noise and alarming people. Exactly what they fucking well needed, some way of alarming them. What about the fire alarm here? Too far away, dismissed Charlie, at once. And there was no certainty it would deflect the assassin sufficiently.

So what the hell did he think he was going to do, all by himself! He didn’t know, Charlie realized. The conversation with Wilson and Harkness came back to him with crystal clarity, the experts opinion that calculating stature against build the Russian was toned to a muscle-hardened fitness, a fitness that the airport immigration officer had remarked upon and which had been Charlie’s impression, looking up from the quayside a few hours earlier. Charlie’s feet were agony now and he was panting with exertion and he was conscious of the stomach bulge over the inadequate trouser belt. And he acknowledged that in a one to one physical contest he’d stand as much chance of winning as a virgin saying no at a sex maniacs’ convention where they’d all been on the booze: the trained-to-kill-in-every-way Russian would beat the shit out of him. And that just as a beginning. So what the hell was he going to do, he thought again, as the lift sighed at last to a halt at the top.

The photographic assistant came officiously forward, to re-arrange the positions very slightly to ensure no one would be obscured and Zenin sighed at the delay. He’d isolated Sulafeh through the magnifier, appreciating how close she was and keeping the sight on her for the very moment she moved. She couldn’t miss, not from there. Or be intercepted, until it was too late. Come on! he thought, come on! The assistant edged backwards again and Zenin brought the gun against his shoulder once more, his finger shifting from the safe, no shot hold beyond the guard to the trigger itself, taking up the imperceptible slack. Time! Zenin said, in mental conversation with the woman: it’s time!

Charlie’s indecision was fractional, no more than seconds, when he emerged from the elevator. The outside of the building – and the area it overlooked – was vivid in his mind. He went at once to his left, seeing that the corridor was straight and ended blind, which meant the far end door and still to the left had to be the place. It would be a corner window, of course: a choice of shot. He still had not decided what he was going to do. He’d been trained to fight, you put your foot there and I put my hip there and whoops, over you go, and a karate chop for luck, like it was in all those spy films. Except that he’d always put his protesting foot in the wrong place and got his stance wrong and invariably ended up flat on his arse with the instructor asking what the hell he thought he was doing. What about a weapon, then? Charlie had been as bad with a gun as he had been in unarmed combat, never able to stop his eyes from squinting shut against the bang, invariably blowing leaking holes in all the backing sandbags but rarely managing to hit the paper square and even more rarely the rings outlined upon it. And it was anyway a meaningless run of thought because he didn’t have a gun, in the first place.

There was only distraction. He had to surprise the man, deflect the attack. Anything, until the Swiss got here. Hurry, he thought. For Christ’s sake hurry!

Zenin saw the woman’s hand come out of the briefcase, the heavy handgun clutched before her. It became an odd, slow-motioned sequence: there she was, out in the open and completely visible to everyone with a gun raised in her hand and they all appeared unaware, still smiling at the camera, all holding their poses. He saw the faintest puff of smoke and the jerky recoil, as she fired. Only then – and still slowly – did the stances begin to break but by that time Zenin was firing, moving easily with the rifle’s kick.

Charlie was at the door when the sound came, not an explosion but the fart of a silencer and he knew it immediately, like he knew immediately that he was too late. He pushed against the door, not expecting it to give but it did, so quickly that he actually stumbled into the room, off balanced.

The rifle farted again.

Everything registered instantly with Charlie. He saw the Russian turned practically away from him, attached to the rifle by the complicated professional harness and knew without having to look that it had been the photographic session and that there’d already been two shots and that so concentrated was the man that momentarily, despite the sound, the Russian was unaware of his entry.

And then there was the compressed hiss of a third shot.

‘NO!’ That’s all there was, just a yell: distract and deflect, nothing more. Certainly Charlie did not anticipate the reaction.

From the Russian there was no pause or hesitation, of surprise or fear. Zenin moved instantly and smoothly, trying to swing the rifle on its revolving stand around into the room to fight off whatever the intrusion and Charlie saw the movement and thought, Fuck it, I’m dead. He actually hoped it wouldn’t hurt.

But the gun would not completely swing. The silencer extension caught the edge of the window frame, jarring Zenin against the buttress he’d chosen to shield himself against the light. He swung again, harder this time, but still it was too long and again he rebounded off the wall extension. Trapped inside the harness, Zenin strained back, trying to bend the tripod away from its floor mountings to complete the movement and kill Charlie.

And Charlie realized the man’s helplessness.

He’d actually been half turned, hopelessly to run. Now he jerked back, dashing instead towards the man and lashing out with his fist when he reached him, wincing with the pain that shuddered up through his fist and into his arm when he connected just below the Russian’s left eye. There was another desperate jerk against the rifle and another collision with the buttress and Charlie properly realized it for the first time, snatching out for the rifle barrel with the hand that was not numbed.

Zenin saw what Charlie intended and tried to brace himself against it but so restricted was he by the leather vest there was no way he could stop it happening, just initially reduce the force of impart by stressing his feet against the floor and that only briefly. Charlie hauled the rifle back and forth, as if he were working a pump handle, battering the Russian encased at the other end against the sharply edged wall. The barrel was high now, far away from its target, and twice before the breath was driven from his body and he lost consciousness Zenin fired, trying to frighten Charlie’s grip away from the barrel. But Charlie did not let go, working it back and forth and back and forth, smashing the gradually weakening man into the buttress. Even when Zenin hung in apparent unconsciousness, blood smearing the wall and floor, Charlie did not stop, needing two hands against the barrel now and stopping, exhausted, only when the Russian became such a dead weight that he could not move him any more.

For several moments Charlie slumped where he was, actually bent over the rifle from which Zenin now lolled backwards, mouth open, snorting his unconsciousness. Charlie gulped at the air from the open window, vaguely aware of the scream of approaching police sirens, gradually aware of the panicked scene far away, too far away properly to distinguish. And then he saw the magnified sight, only inches from his face.

Experimentally Charlie pulled at it, isolating the restraining screw. He undid it, slid the sight from its housing and pulled himself up against the tripod, still needing its support. He used the sight like the spyglass it was, needing to adjust it only slightly.

He was perfectly able to see the blown-apart, blood-splattered body of James Bell being lifted on to a stretcher, American security men needlessly ringed around the dead Secretary of State, handguns drawn. They appeared to be standing over another body, too, and as Charlie watched medics lifted it on to a stretcher. Before they fully covered it with a blanket he saw it was Roger Giles, but only part of the man because the left side of his body wasn’t there any more. There was a third body from which everyone seemed to be standing back and Charlie adjusted the magnifier, better to see it, not sure until it was also lifted on to a stretcher. There was a huge, gaping hole in the side of Sulafeh Nabulsi’s body, to the left again like it was with the American security chief, but not quite so extensive because the hit had not been so direct.

Charlie swept the area, back and forth, trying to see if there were any more dead or injured, stopping abruptly when he identified David Levy. The Israeli delegation had already been hustled away to safety and the intelligence chief was looking calmly about him, standing apart from all the other scurrying security officials. And then, suddenly, Levy turned and looked directly up at the window from which Charlie was watching, as if it would be possible for one to see the other.

The final answers to the final questions flooded in upon Charlie, who pulled himself up unsteadily from his half-kneeling position. He lowered the spyglass but remained staring at the scene he could no longer properly see, realizing fully just how wrong he had been.

‘Oh you bastard,’ he said, quietly at first. Then, more loudly, ‘You bastard!’

Charlie became aware of running feet and shouting and moved away from the still unconscious body, not wanting wrongly to become a target by association for some trigger-happy policeman.

But it was Blom who came into the apartment first, pistol drawn. The white-haired, pink-featured man stared around, halting at the sight of Zenin still strapped to the rifle.

‘Satisfied now?’ asked Charlie.

Barbara Giles had taken up her husband’s suggestion to watch the opening ceremonies of the conference live on television and Martha Bell watched, too, because she always did when James was doing something publicly, so they both saw their men gunned down at the very moment it happened.

Aloud, Barbara said: ‘No, please no! I want to love you.’

Aloud, Martha said: ‘What’s going to happen to me!’

Both women, of course, were in shock.

On the Rue Dancet, where Charlie had hours before abandoned Alexander Cummings’s office car, the parking warden attached the second penalty ticket and made a note in his book to summon the tow-away service if it wasn’t moved in the next hour. Arrogant foreigners with their damned diplomatic plates believed they could do what they wanted and get away with it but the law said he could penalize them and so he would.