The first thing the man with the gun did was to turn toward the back of the Alfa Romeo, the source of the jolt to the car. It was a mistake Jason had counted on.
Just as the man’s other foot touched the pavement of the parking lot, Jason lunged. The sound of movement made the car’s driver spin, his face meeting the swinging tire tool with a crunch that crushed his right orbital bone, eye cavity, and blinded the other eye with a bloody mask.
Before his victim could even scream with pain, Jason backhanded the iron rod, bringing it up smartly against the wrist of the hand holding the weapon. The gun clattered to the pavement.
Pain, severe pain, tends to momentarily paralyze, and Jason used that instant to bring the tire tool down again, this time against the man’s knee, a blow that sent him sprawling with a shriek of agony. He lay face-up on the pavement.
Snatching up the gun, Jason tucked it into his waistband and sat astride the man now moaning as he cradled his ruined face in his hands. Placing the iron tool across the man’s throat, Jason leaned forward. Not enough pressure to close off all breath, but enough so the man got the idea.
“Move and your neck snaps like a matchstick,” Jason growled. “Understand?”
The head nodded.
“Good. Now, I’m going to ask a few questions. For every right answer, I let up a little on the pressure. For every wrong answer, you strangle. First, who sent you?”
“Fuck you.”
The words were followed by a gurgling sound as Jason leaned forward, putting more weight on the bar across the man’s neck.
“Wrong answer. Let’s try again. Who sent you?”
“Get fucked.”
Jason sighed. His interrogation techniques simply weren’t working these days. On the bright side, Maria wasn’t here. He put his full weight on the tire tool. Even in the dim light from the hotel across the street, he could see the undamaged eye bulge. Killing a man like this wasn’t what he had in mind, but this guy’s effort to kill him in the train station this morning didn’t discourage him either.
“Last chance.”
The form beneath him went rigid and then limp. Playing possum, or passed out from lack of oxygen? Jason wasn’t inclined to take a chance. Replacing his hands on the bar with his knees, he began to search the inert form’s pockets. His first find was the long Spetsnaz knife. He tucked it into his belt next to the gun. A few pound notes in a wallet, along with a British driver’s license Jason would have bet was a forgery. A jacket pocket proved more fruitful: a matchbook with printing on it, too dim in this light to read. Probably just advertising, but even the language might give more of a clue than Jason possessed at the moment. Professionals like this guy didn’t normally carry around stuff that might disclose where they had been. But smokers kept matches.
A moan from the ground redirected Jason’s attention to the man prone on the pavement. His pal in the hotel lobby would be returning to the car when Jason didn’t come downstairs. Jason wrestled the semiconscious man out of his jacket and took the knife from his waist to slash the sleeves into strips with which he bound hands and feet.
He balled up the remaining material and used the knife’s tip to pry the waking man’s jaws open before stuffing his mouth with the fabric. An effective gag if reflexive retching didn’t choke the man on his own vomit.
Jason had neither the time nor inclination to concern himself.
He opened the Alfa’s small trunk and felt around the edge of the inside. He could discover no inside release as required by the ever-meddlesome US Department of Transportation, probably one of several reasons Alfas were not sold in the United States. That, along with lack of side airbags and the Italians’ understandable disinclination to crash-test an otherwise perfectly salable car. Though largely socialist in their politics, Europeans did not favor the nanny state where their automobiles were concerned.
Jason dragged the bound man to the rear of the car. Despite desperate wriggling and muted grunts of protest, he managed to get the man draped over the edge of the trunk and then dump in the lower torso. He slammed the lid shut and climbed into the driver’s seat to wait.
Pulling the pistol from his waistband, he was not surprised to recognize another GSh-18 like the one he had seen in Iceland. He pushed the catch and dropped the clip into the palm of his hand, holding it up to make sure it was fully loaded before clicking it back into place. As he eased back the slide, brass gleamed from the chamber. The weapon was loaded and cocked. He put it on the passenger seat while he reached for the box of cigarettes the man in the trunk had left on the dashboard.
Jason did not have long to wait. A form hurriedly exited the Marriott, blurred in the penumbra between the hotel’s lights and the night’s drizzly gloom. Turning his head away from the approaching figure, Jason lit a cigarette with a match from the book he had taken. Without thinking, he inhaled, sucking a caustic stream of smoke down his throat. He had to struggle not to give himself away by coughing.
The passenger door opened and the courtesy light confirmed that this man was one of the two he had seen at King’s Cross that morning.
“Do come in and have a seat,” Jason said mildly, pressing the automatic against the underside of the other man’s chin as he stubbed out the cigarette. “But be sure to keep your hands right there on the dashboard.”
The man silently complied. “Where’s Uri?” the man asked before his lips tightened.
“Inspecting the baggage, I’d imagine. Now, keep your hands where I can see them.
“Good boy! Now, take your left hand and slowly, and I mean real slowly, reach inside your jacket, remove your pistol, holding it between your thumb and forefinger, and drop it on the floor.”
Jason sensed, rather than saw, a flicker of resistance, an instant when the man was considering his options. He pressed the gun’s muzzle a little harder against the bottom of the man’s chin. “Don’t even think about not doing exactly as you are told. I really would prefer not to make a bloody mess of this nice car. But then, I’m not the one who would have to explain to Mr. Hertz.”
The gun came out from under the jacket, held between thumb and forefinger like the tail of a dead rat.
“You’re doing swell. Now drop it.”
The pistol thumped against the car’s carpeted floor mat.
“Now the knife.”
The man spoke for the first time, the accent light but noticeable. “What knife?”
This time Jason jammed the gun’s business end into the soft flesh under the chin. “We’re not playing games, Ivan. Either the knife hits the floor or your brains hit the ceiling. Your choice.”
The knife followed the gun.
“Very good. Now I’m going to ask you a few questions… .”
“Fuck you.”
Spetsnaz training must include a pretty limited English vocabulary. Jason tipped the barrel of the automatic down and squeezed the trigger. It was no contest between the shot muffled by the silencer and the terrified shriek of the man who was now looking at a hole in the slack of his trousers just between his crotch and his leg.
The sound suppressor was against the man’s jaw again. “Unless you have ambitions to join a girls’ choir, I’d suggest you answer the question.”
Even in the dim light, Jason could see the man’s eyes widen in fright.
“First and last time: Who sent you?”
Jason could almost smell the panic seething beneath the surface. “The sex-change operation will commence on three. One, two …”
It happened so quickly, Jason was caught off guard. With a lunge, his captive opened the car door and was rolling across the pavement. With the grace of an acrobat, he was on his feet and sprinting into the darkness. Jason blamed himself for not locking the Alfa’s door or at least making sure it was fully closed. He never seriously considered shooting. The potential consequences—police, indefinite detainment, explanations—far outweighed any benefit. Besides, the man’s anguished yell may well have the local constabulary on its way already as it was.
As indeed it had.
The desk clerk was either too sleepy or too polite to ask questions about a mid-evening departure when Jason signed the credit card slip for the entire night despite his brief stay. As he turned from the desk, keys to the Morris and single bag in hand, he could see forms across the street silhouetted against flashing blue lights.
He handed the clerk a twenty-pound note. “A favor: after I’ve been gone about twenty minutes, suggest the police check the trunk, er, boot, of the Alfa.”
He was repaid by a puzzled expression and the polite disdain the British have for invasive questions.