Ivory Nation Andy Maslen (best short novels of all time TXT) 📖

in shock as Gabriel pulled the door closed behind him and delivered a sharp blow to the side of his head that felled him like a tree.

Gabriel stuck the pistol in the back of his waistband, and dragged the unconscious man by his heels into a recess behind the stairs in the vast hallway.

Breathing heavily, he straightened and scanned the exit points from the hallway. Where are you, Tammerlane? Where’s your conference room?

The hallway, dominated by a glossy black grand piano with the lid resting on its stay, offered several exits. Gabriel pulled the pistol from his waistband and checked it. A Glock 19, full mag, ready to go. On the balls of his feet to minimise the sound, he ran down a corridor hung with dusty old oil paintings of generals and nobleman from a bygone age.

He saw a door to his right and stopped, pressing his ear against the polished wood. Nothing beyond but silence, broken, just, by the ticking of a grandfather clock.

He ran on. The corridor doglegged and he came to a second door, guarded by two enormous floor-mounted vases as tall as he was, in some sort of liver-coloured stone. Porphyry! The word flew unbidden into his mind.

He listened at the door. Nothing but the rushing of blood in his ears like the North Sea surf back in Aldeburgh.

He heard voices. A man and a woman. They were coming his way.

‘When’re they breaking?’ the male said.

‘Don’t know. Twelve? Half-past?’

‘Don’t they ever get tired of gassing?’

The female laughed.

‘Not this lot. It’s what the comrades love best, isn’t it?’

Their footsteps grew louder.

Gabriel estimated he only had seconds.

He looked back the way he’d come. Nowhere to hide in the arrow-straight passageway. He flattened himself into the six-inch-deep recess housing the door he’d just checked.

The guards turned into his portion of the corridor. Still bitching about their masters, like guards the world over.

Gabriel counted their footsteps.

One, two, three, four…

He stepped out.

Smiling broadly, he asked the female guard, ‘Where’s the loo, please?’

She frowned. Struggling to process the appearance of a clearly unauthorised guest, she paused before answering.

Pausing was the wrong choice.

Gabriel caught her across the left temple with the Glock, felling her like a stunned calf. He drove his left elbow into the male guard’s solar plexus, emptying his lungs so thoroughly that he collapsed to the ground clutching his stomach, utterly failing to drag so much as an angel’s breath of air into his temporarily paralysed lungs.

Gabriel struck down with a chopping hand, sending him into the darkness with a blow that struck a nerve-rich area at the base of his skull. He relieved both guards of their pistols, kept one and dropped the other into an elephant’s foot umbrella stand beneath a mullioned window. He took a bunch of cable ties from his go-bag and bound them, ankles to wrists.

He’d been inside the house for over five minutes now and time was against him.

He ran on, assuming, hoping, really, that the conference rooms would all be on the ground floor, the upper storeys being reserved for bedrooms and the old servants’ quarters.

A low murmur brought him to a stop. Ahead, the corridor opened out into a square hallway. A door on the far side led to the gardens. But on the left side of the square space, between two imposing suit of armour complete with ten-foot pikestaffs, was another door.

Beyond it, clearly audible without the need to press his ear against its polished surface, Gabriel heard murmurs, laughter and then, crowing in that familiar confident tone, the voice of Joe Tammerlane.

Gabriel grasped the brass door knob and twisted it, then, a pistol in each hand like an old-time gunslinger, he entered the room.

58

Despite, or perhaps because of, the grandeur of the house in which the room was located, Tammerlane had fitted it out like any one of millions of anonymous conference rooms in hotels the world over.

Whiteboard easels, flipcharts and a laptop coupled to a projector filled the space not occupied by Tammerlane and the members of his inner circle.

Gabriel recognised a handful from the brief moments he’d spent watching television news.

To Tammerlane’s left sat Tracy Barnett-Short, the secretary of state for defence. To her left, Ariane Hooper, the home secretary who had done so much in such a short space of time to demoralise and antagonise the police, the prison service and the security agencies.

The men he was less sure of, although one face he did recognise. The secretary of state for the Environment, whose sanctimonious interviews in the election had had even the normally supportive papers questioning his sincerity.

Gabriel heeled the door closed behind him.

‘Good afternoon,’ he said, holding the pistols wide so everyone in the room would feel they were being aimed at. ‘My name is Gabriel Wolfe and I have come here to end your little shit-show.’

The seated politicians all bore an identical expression. One part shock, one part bafflement, one part hatred. Teeth bared. Eyes wide. Faces pale. A couple of the men were grasping the arms of their chairs as if to rise. Gabriel swung the gun barrels in their directions and they sat back down.

‘Look, friend,’ Tammerlane said, his voice smooth, unwavering, calming, ‘I don’t know who you are or what you think we’ve done, but there’s really no need for the guns.’ He half-rose from his chair. ‘Why don’t you—’

‘Sit down!’ Gabriel barked, deriving satisfaction from the speed with which Tammerlane’s rear end hit the seat cushion.

‘Fine, fine,’ Tamerlane said, his voice having risen in pitch by a semi-tone. ‘Look, I’m sitting. Now, everyone stay calm, OK? What is it you want, Gabriel, was it?’

Gabriel walked to the end of the boardroom table they were sitting at and took up a commanding position where he could see each one of them and the door.

He leaned forwards and spoke directly to Tammerlane.

‘I know about your little business deal with Julius Witaarde and Horatio Bokara.’

Tammerlane’s lips twitched. A tiny movement. But Gabriel caught it. He’d been trained to catch it.

‘I know