Die for Me (Killing Eve #3) - Luke Jennings Page 0,26

Her wig, which smells of ancient sweat, tickles my cheek. A figure enters the microcamera’s field at the same moment that the screen goes black.

“Go,” says Oxana, grabbing the first-aid pack and the medication bag. “Go, go, go.”

I take a firm grip on the defibrillator unit. It’s the monophasic type, at least twenty years old, and heavy. Oxana pushes open the side door of the Gazelle, we hit the pavement running, and seconds later burst through the entrance of the banya. There are two male reception staff sitting at a desk behind a low pile of folded towels. Seeing us they half-rise, and Oxana yells at them to stay where they are. They look uncertain, but our uniforms represent officialdom, and they obey.

Oxana leads the way, marching briskly through the changing room, ignoring the half-naked figures who freeze with surprise at the sight of us, and into the wet-floored steam rooms. Here, again, everyone stares and no one moves. The choking heat makes my scalp run with sweat, and my glasses steam up so that I can’t see where I’m going. Grabbing my arm, Oxana drags me into the cold plunge area, I wipe my glasses on my shirt, and there’s the Pakhan, alone and naked, submerged up to his chest in the small marble pool. He has an impressive range of faded tattoos, including a knife through his neck, eight-pointed stars on his collarbones, and epaulets on his shoulders.

“Are you all right?” I ask him breathlessly. “We had a 112 call.”

He gapes at me, understanding neither the situation nor, probably, my shaky Russian. Oxana, meanwhile, drops everything she’s carrying, and attends to the defibrillator.

“I’m fine,” the Pakhan says, smiling. “There’s been some mistake.”

“Our apologies,” Oxana murmurs, and touches the defibrillator paddles to the surface of the water. The Pakhan shudders, his eyes widen, and he slips sideways onto his back, his legs trailing underwater. His face turns the color of putty, and his lips bluish-gray. His fingers twitch and grasp feebly at the water. His hands, I notice, are quite small for a man who has killed several people with an ax.

“Bit more?” I suggest.

“Stand back,” Oxana says, and gives him another jolt of electricity.

Still Dzabrati doesn’t die. Instead he lies there open-mouthed, pillowed by water, staring at me sadly as if disappointed by my choice of wig. So I kneel, take Oxana’s wrist with one hand to steady myself, and hold his head underwater with the other until the bubbles stop coming. It’s nothing much. I don’t even have to push very hard.

I’m still kneeling there when, with a wet slap of plastic sandals, the two reception staff arrive. “I think he’s had a heart attack,” Oxana explains. “We’re trying to get him out. Can you help?”

One of the men descends the ladder into the water, and between them they manhandle the Pakhan’s naked body onto the tiled floor. As they do so Oxana discreetly reaches up and removes the micro camera from the top of the door frame. Kneeling beside the wet body of the Pakhan, I go through the motions of attempting cardiopulmonary resuscitation. To no one’s surprise, it doesn’t work.

An hour later, Oxana and I are walking away from the ambulance, which we’ve left outside Alfa Bank in Moskovskaya, where we found it. We’re back in our own clothes. The ambulance service uniforms, the wigs and the medical equipment have been tossed into the back of one of the city’s garbage trucks, and are now on their way to a landfill site.

“I’m really sorry about the phone…” I begin, but Oxana is in an affectionate, almost light-headed mood. I’m wearing my black and yellow sweater under my leather jacket and she calls me pchelka, her bee. “You were so good,” she says, slipping her arm through mine and dancing us down Moskovsky Avenue toward the Metro. “You really kept your shit together. I’m super-proud of you.”

Deciding that she’s hungry, Oxana steers us into a half-empty McDonald’s, where we order Happy Meals. “People think that there’s this hard border between life and death,” she says, cramming fries into her mouth. “But it’s not like that at all. There’s this whole area in between. It’s fascinating.”

I unwrap my burger. Our faces are inches apart. “Did Dasha say when she could get us the papers and the money?”

“Yes. This week.”

“So do we have a plan?”

“Yes, we absolutely do.”

“What is it?”

“You have to trust me, pchelka.”

“No, you have to trust me, remember?”

“Oh yes, so I do. OK, well… Can