the entrance. Four of them.’
TWENTY-SIX
Purkiss said, ‘Understood,’ and rang off.
There would be a back way through the kitchens, but they’d have that covered. Apart from that he knew nothing about the layout of the hotel.
He grabbed the man under the arms and dragged him to a standing position. The man staggered but he kept himself upright. He blinked vacantly. Purkiss hissed in his ear, ‘English?’
The man stared at him.
‘Russian?’
The man didn’t nod his head but Purkiss could see he’d understood. He said, ‘Come on,’ and, an arm across the man’s shoulders, he led him to the door, stowing the gun in the waistband of his trousers and covering it with his jacket.
The corridor was empty. There was no approaching commotion to suggest anyone had been alarmed by the banging. Purkiss hurried the man, not allowing him to stumble, towards the stairs. Instead of descending he urged the man up to the second floor.
At the top of the steps he pushed him along the corridor and round a corner. To their left the lift was coming, the numbers above the door counting the floors as it rose. It wouldn’t be the four others; they were unlikely to take the lift. With his free hand Purkiss gripped the man’s throat on either side of the tracheal cartilage and massaged the carotid arteries with thumb and fingertips. It stimulated the vagal nerves which in turn slowed the heartbeat, a trick Purkiss had learned from a doctor in Morocco. The man’s eyes rolled up and he sank. Purkiss held him under the arms and lowered his dead weight to the carpet in front of the lift. Then he slipped back round the corner.
The lift door opened to the murmur of voices, which changed to sharp cries. Purkiss stepped round the corner and saw a middle-aged couple crowding round the body on the floor. They looked like tourists. He strode forward.
‘Move aside, please. I’m a doctor,’ he said in English, with a Russian accent.
They looked up in bewilderment. He put a little impatience into the voice.
‘Move out of the way.’
The man on the floor looked awful, his face like the sweating underbelly of a fish. His breathing came in laboured rasps. Purkiss crouched beside him and lifted his eyelids with his thumbs to reveal a rind of white on each side. He felt his pulse – thirty-eight beats per minute but at least full – and peered in his mouth at his tongue.
He looked up at the couple. ‘You speak English?’
‘Yes.’ The man was American.
‘You know this man?’
‘Never seen him before. We came out of the elevator and he was just there.’
‘He needs urgent attention. I need to get him on a bed, quickly. Where’s your room?’
The woman said, ‘Well, I don’t know if –’
‘Where’s your room.’
The man said, ‘Opposite. Two oh three.’
He walked quickly to the door a few paces down the corridor and unlocked it. He came back and took the supine man’s feet while Purkiss got a grip beneath his arms. They hauled him into the room and laid him on the double bed. Purkiss bent over him, busying himself, loosening the man’s collar, turning him on his side so that he wouldn’t aspirate if he vomited. He addressed the couple without looking at them.
‘Sir, I need you to go down to the front desk and tell them to call an ambulance. Don’t try calling from the room because they may not understand you. Their English is not so good here. Ma’am, I want you please to go upstairs to room 507 – that’s the fifth floor – and get my medical bag. It’s beside the bed.’
He groped in his pocket and took out the keycard to room 121. She seemed about to protest again, but her husband took her arm and they left. It was a tissue-thin story and it wouldn’t be long before they saw through it, but at the moment Purkiss was on a floor and in a room where his opponents were not expecting him to be. That gave him an edge, however slight.
The Americans had left their room keycards on the bedside table. Purkiss opened the mini-bar and took out a cold bottle of soda water and pushed it down the back of the man’s collar. He moaned and flailed his arms. Purkiss felt his neck. The pulse was up to fifty.
He was recovering, but not quickly enough. Purkiss put the bottle in his pocket and went into the bathroom. The tiny window opened on to the