Free SEVERANCE KILL by Tim Stevens

the number on the screen.
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Got the product? The Brit?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Good.’ A pause. Then: ‘You realise one of your guys shot a Russian dead on the tram.’
    Bartos stopped in his tracks.
    ‘Not only that, but he was SVR. Oleg Ruzhovsky.’
    ‘Ah, for Christ’s –’ Bartos stared about him, the rage building. Don’t smash the phone. Don’t.
    Into the silence he snarled: ‘My men said some stranger attacked them.’
    ‘Yes. That’s a bit of a mystery to me, too. But he wasn’t anything to do with Ruzhovsky. Somehow Ruzhovsky stopped a bullet from one of your boys’ guns.’
    A civilian , Janos had said. He hadn’t known it was a KGB who’d been shot.
    ‘Look after the merchandise.’
    Bartos headed for his car. He said: ‘Any idea yet why this Brit, Gaines, is so important?’
    ‘No. But I’m looking into it.’ In a moment: ‘What do your guys say about the attacker on the tram?’
    ‘Nationality not clear. Not Czech or Russian, probably. Tough, a professional.’
    ‘What did he have? Gun-wise?’
    Bartos bit his lip.
    ‘You there?’
    Bartos said: ‘They think it was a sharpened umbrella.’
    ‘An...’ In the background Bartos heard coughing, or something like it. ‘Did you say an umbrella?’
    ‘It was sharpened. Weaponised.’
    ‘Right.’
    The voice sounded like it was choking. Bartos shouted, ‘What?’
    He thought he caught something about Mary Poppins before he cut the call. He stood, T-shirted in the cold, the Kodiak, and wished he had something nearby to assault.
    Nobody laughed at him. Nobody.
    When this is over, you’ll pay. God, how you will.
     
    *
     
    Calvary had crossed back over the river and was somewhere south of the Old Town, in a modern shopping district. He kept moving, not with any particular destination in mind but not aimlessly either. Physical motion kept his thoughts flowing; at the same time he wanted to stay close to the scene of the attack without getting too close and possibly being recognised.
    He stepped through the glass doors of a department store and felt the warmth and familiarity draw him in. Escalators soared past layers of shops, many of them with recognisable names.
    His holdall was back at the hotel. It contained nothing of value, and nothing incriminating. He’d registered there using a credit card which bore an alias. The receptionist hadn’t asked for his passport, which was in his own name and which he kept in his pocket. He felt fairly confident that nobody would trace him to the hotel or pin a name on him.
    Besides, the police would be more interested in finding the hijackers and kidnappers, not the have-a-go hero who’d confronted them.
    Calvary wandered into an electrical appliance shop. Deep at the back were the televisions. He browsed among the plasma screens, some the size of cars. Several were tuned to a local news channel. A lone reporter stood at the scene of the hijacking, the tram almost concealed behind her in a cocoon of police officers and emergency vehicles. He watched, not understanding the words. No photographs came up on the screen, no identikit pictures.
    Calvary smiled and waved away a hovering shop assistant, then stepped into a quiet corner where there were radios on display. Nobody bought radios any more. He drew out his phone, connected to the internet, and looked up hospitals in Prague.
    He didn’t know if any of the masked men he’d encountered had been injured seriously enough to warrant hospital attention, or if they’d even seek it in the circumstances. But it was possible – just – that the man he’d skewered through the throat had made it to an emergency department. A long shot, and it might mean doing the rounds of several of the city’s hospitals.
    It wasn’t as though he had a lot of options.
    His search came up with five hospitals within a few miles of the attack, three of which had emergency departments.
     
    *
     
    Krupina stood, hunched, behind Yevgenia, gazing at the monitor.