Fit For Purpose by Julian Parrott (novels for students .TXT) 📕

sprang up on her feet still holding the gun. She fired at Tom without aiming. The bullet passed above his right shoulder and thundered into the plaster and brick behind him. She swivelled towards the Canadian and fired once again at the prostrate Gagnon. The big Canadian reflexively rolled to his right. The bullet dug into the floor a few centimetres from his forehead. Tom dove into the redhead’s midriff and they crashed to the floor heavily together. This time, the assassin dropped the Walther. Tom saw the gun before she did and reached for it. As his hand grasped for the Walther the assassin kicked him in the stomach. Tom was still able to grab the pistol and he rolled onto his back bringing the gun up towards the red-headed killer. She dove, rolling again through the open doorway then turned and ran down the hotel’s corridor and was gone.

Tom closed and locked the door and then knelt next to Gagnon. He felt for a pulse. Stronger than he had expected. He noticed the knife wound while using more towels to staunch the bleeding gunshot wound.

“My friend,” Tom said. “What the bloody hell have you been doing?”

Gagnon grunted. Tom called for an ambulance and the police. He waited impatiently for their arrival so Gagnon could get professional attention, knowing that he would undoubtedly be the police’s prime suspect. His bloody fingerprints would now be on the Walther. He thought about calling MI5, he thought about calling Nia, but he made neither call. Two young but experienced paramedics arrived quickly. They knelt next to Gagnon and began working on him. Tom moved back allowing the paramedics to do their work, he noticed a tattoo on one of the paramedic’s forearm’s.

“Military?” Tom asked.

“Yes mate. RAF Regiment,” the paramedic replied without looking up.

“The guy on the ground did four tours in Afghan,” Tom said. “Take care of him.”

The paramedic looked up, “No worries mate, we’ve seen a lot of bullet and stab wounds both there and here. He’s in good hands.” He gave a quick smile. “He’ll pull through.”

Tom felt a massive sense of relief. He sat on the floor with his back to the wall. He watched the paramedic’s work on Gagnon and too many memories came flooding back. He smelt blood, cordite and desert. He hadn’t noticed the police enter the room nor heard their first questions.

Chapter Seventeen

Russian Embassy, January 14th

 

 

Kamenev was puce with anger. He took a huge gulp from a tall glass of ice-cold vodka. He hadn’t had vodka for breakfast since his time in Afghanistan. The evening had been a litany of disaster. His surveillance team had overstepped and precipitated a street brawl where the damn Canadian had killed one of the FSB men and beaten the other. Then his most trusted and experienced contract assassin, for the first time, missed her target and, worse, was eyeballed, reducing her future utility. Kamenev had spent the dark morning hours arranging the exit, via London’s City Airport, for his walking wounded. However, he had cannily used the opportunity to appear to also leave the country himself. He had made sure he was seen entering the aircraft but a quick change into a mechanic’s overalls, a wig and a peaked cap pulled low over his eyes had made him virtually invisible as he left the jet with other ground crew personnel. He travelled back from City Airport hidden in the back of an embassy Range Rover.

Back at his desk, Kamenev had spoken with Moscow Centre. Their anger and disappointment had been made abundantly clear. His career was on the line. He was ordered to expedite the Kirov mission. Snatching her was no longer an option, the mission now was a straightforward assassination. It didn’t need to be clever, kill her and get his team safely out of the UK. Her death would send yet another ripple of fear and anxiety among the Russian exile community and Moscow Centre would simply deny involvement. Kamenev was ordered to personally be on scene to supervise and then to return to Moscow immediately after the mission’s conclusion.

Kamenev took another long pull on his vodka. A good solider, he would comply with orders. But, he thought, if his career was going to effectively be over, he would settle the growing score with Tom Price before heading home to Moscow.

***

Tom woke and momentarily wondered where he was. The room itself was typical of a low to mid-priced international chain. He had been in such rooms before and they all looked and felt the same. It was comfortable and utilitarian but stale. It could have been New York, Toronto, Rome, or even, latterly, Moscow. The only difference would be the vista that lay behind the curtains and the type of prints that could be found on the room’s walls. After a night at the police station, Tom had been returned to his hotel at dawn and had grabbed a few hours’ sleep. Sunlight emerged through the gap in the curtains illuminating the room’s architectural prints of London landmarks. He ached for Nia. It felt odd for him to be in a hotel room without her. He felt even odder to have not been totally truthful with her.

Tom made a cup of coffee with the room’s Keurig machine. He recalled the police station’s desk sergeant furtively informing him that he would be contacted by the security services. He sipped his coffee and wondered what any potential meeting with MI5, or the security services, as they preferred to call themselves, would bring. He had encountered officers from the sister service, MI6, in Afghanistan and Iraq and Qatar. He respected them, they were all charming, but they were hard bastards and they played the game well. They’d had a lot of practice from the cold war, to hot wars, domestic terrorism, international terrorism, and the global war on terror. They had