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

was the face of the man sitting at the far end of the table.

‘Did you make contact with the Syrian yet? The hitman?’ the voice of Julius Witaarde asked.

‘Uh huh. And he’s good, this al-Javari guy?’

‘Nazir Aboud al-Javari is one of twenty men worldwide you could trust to do a job like this. Trust me, he’s good. ’

‘He bloody should be, the fee he’s asking.’

‘Joe, you want him to kill Princess Alexandra. That kind of work, it doesn’t come cheap.’

‘Yeah, well just as long as he follows the script, I’m fine with it.’

‘Did you tell him what you wanted? It sounded pretty complicated.’

‘Yes! And it’s really not that difficult to understand, Julius. Even for a Boer.’

Off-screen, Klara heard Julius laugh. She felt her tears begin to flow. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

‘Oh, Julius. I always said you were paranoid, but thank God you were.’

On Barnett-Short’s phone screen, Tammerlane was still talking. The smug tone survived the phone’s tiny speaker.

‘I take Lieberman up to the tower. Get him to line up the shot so his prints are all over the rifle, then stand him down. Al-Javari comes up. I kill Lieberman and then al-Javari shoots the princess before taking off. The evidence points to the Jew and I’m left as the saviour of the hour.’

The video began to replay from the beginning. Barnett-Short jabbed the pause button.

Gabriel looked at Tammerlane. His face was drained of colour.

‘What are you going to do?’ Tammerlane asked.

‘I’m going to kill you,’ Gabriel said, raising the Glock in his right hand.

59

The door swung wide, banging back against the wall. Three men in black tactical gear burst through, assault rifles at their shoulders, screaming.

‘Armed police! Armed police! Get down. Drop the weapons! Drop the weapons!’

Gabriel placed the pistols on the table. He got to his knees, then lay, facedown, on the floor.

Strong hands drew his hands behind his back and he felt cuffs snapping home.

‘Stay down,’ a voice growled in his left ear. ‘If you know what’s good for you.’

After being released from custody five hours later, Gabriel found Don waiting for him outside the station in his Jensen. He wound down the window.

‘Climb in, Old Sport,’ he said with a grin.

‘Those armed cops were on the scene pretty quickly,’ Gabriel said.

‘Hmm, mm-hmm. You took your Department-issue phone with you when you left in such a hurry. I just asked our technical team to switch on the tracker. Bingo! Once I realised where you were going I scrambled a team and waited to see what sort of a stunt you’d pull.’

Then he started the Jensen’s engine and pulled smoothly away.

60

PADDINGTON GREEN POLICE STATION, LONDON

In his windowless cell inside the police station designed to hold Britain’s most dangerous terrorists, Joe Tammerlane closed his eyes. He lay down on the thin mattress pad on the moulded plastic bench that passed for a bed.

With his arms folded behind his head, he flew back to the day when everything still looked good. Windsor. The wedding day.

After standing Lieberman down, he’d observed the Syrian closely.

Al-Javari worked the bolt on the rifle and the extractor popped the empty shell casing from the breech like a dentist pulling a tooth. He’d been careful to angle the rifle just so, and the brass pinged into the centre of the concrete platform.

The screams of the crowd were audible at this distance, though robbed of some of the higher frequencies.

‘Will your prints be on it?’ Tammerlane asked, gesturing at the spent cartridge.

Al-Javari shook his head.

‘Too hot. The detonation burns off any organic material. It’s clean as a whistle.’

Tammerlane turned to Lieberman. Smiled.

The pistol was heavy in his hand. Which was odd, given he’d been told it was mostly plastic. He frowned. He’d always imagined guns to be made of metal.

He’d procured it from the same man who’d supplied the rifle. A Dutch arms dealer allied to his African friend’s political party.

‘Your part in this is over,’ he said to Lieberman.

Lieberman held his arms wide, his deep-brown eyes pleading.

‘I did what you asked. Now, make the call,’ he said. ‘Please.’

‘Call?’ Tammerlane answered, cocking his head on one side. ‘What call?’

‘To the people holding my family. You said you’d let them go afterwards.’

Tammerlane slapped his forehead. A silly comedy move. Who did that, really? he asked himself as he pulled out the phone he’d acquired the previous day.

He waited for the ringing to stop. The voice that answered was deep, raspy. Born of a forty-a-day habit and too much cheap whisky.

‘It’s done?’

‘Yes. You can kill them now.’

‘All? Kids, too?’

‘Yes please, Bashir. As agreed.’

‘Can I fuck the woman first?’

‘Do what you like, I don’t care.’

He ended the call. Lieberman stood like a statue.

‘What did you just do? You said you’d return them to me.’

‘Sorry. I don’t like loose ends.’

The gun bucked in his hand. He hadn’t been prepared for the recoil and winced as it twisted his wrist. Lieberman staggered backwards, blood fountaining from a massive wound in his forehead. As he fell, an arc of blood spanned the short distance between them. Tammerlane made sure to be under it, closing his eyes as the hot liquid spattered his face and the front of his suit.

He inhaled once, gripped the still-smoking pistol tighter, squeezed his eyes shut and smacked the barrel against his right cheekbone. He swore at the pain, despite knowing it was coming.

Bending to Lieberman’s corpse, he pushed the butt into the right fist and squeezed the fingers closed around it, ensuring the pads made decent contact with the surface. He let it fall a couple of feet away. He repeated the process with the knife he’d used on the cop, leaving Lieberman’s stiffening fingers wrapped around the hilt.

And smiled.

Behind him, al-Javari left, his boots scuffing the gritty concrete.

Tammerlane opened his eyes. Sighing with disappointment, he turned over a question in his mind. How much should he tell the court? His part in the revolution was over. But his sentence would end, eventually, and then he’d be free again