It was about staying in his flat in my underwear on the day after he'd told me to get out, because if I left the room he'd wanted me out of, he won. I wouldn't give him the win.
That was the lie I was working with. It was a serviceable one. It got me through the toast.
Halfway through the second episode, something thumped in the hall.
It wasn't loud. It was a body knock, the kind you get when somebody braces a shoulder against a wall. I muted the telly and sat up slowly on the sofa.
The flat was quiet. The fridge ticked. The rain hit the window the way it had since I woke up.
Then a second sound came, closer. A scrape, then a soft thud, then quiet again.
The air had changed. I can't tell you how I knew. I'd lived in warehouses for six months, and I knew when something was wrong.
I was on my feet before the next sound came.
I made it three steps toward the hall when the front door blew apart.
I don't know what they hit it with, but it was something automatic. The wood exploded in a spray of splinters, and the locks tore out of the frame. The rounds kept coming, low and wide, walking across the entryway and into the living room. The drinks cart by the wall fell over. The lamp by the window blew apart. The TV took a round, and the screen webbed and went dark on Capaldi's face.
I hit the deck behind the sofa.
When the shooting stopped, the room was full of smoke and cordite. I pressed my cheek to the floor and listened.
Footsteps in the entryway, more than one man's worth. They moved with the careful tread of men who'd just shot up a room and weren't sure if they'd killed everybody they meant to.
I went still and tried to think.
The kitchen was behind me, and there were knives in the kitchen. The back of the apartment was further, the bedrooms,the windows I'd already worked out went nowhere because we were too high up. The front door was now a hole that opened onto a hall with men in it.
The coffee table was right in front of me. On the coffee table was a heavy brass paperweight the size of my fist, the one Aleksi used to hold down his receipts, and an empty whiskey tumbler I'd nicked from his bar the night before.
I picked up the tumbler quietly. Then the paperweight.
The footsteps came around the sofa.
I had a half second to clock them as they cleared the corner. Three men. Two big lads with rifles, dressed too well for the work they'd just done. The third was older, mid-fifties maybe, soft in the middle, sidearm held down at his side, a face that had been comfortable in offices for a long time. A small cross hung at his throat on a chain, the kind with three bars. He wasn't the muscle. He was the man the muscle was working for.
The closer rifleman saw me and his hand went for my shoulder.
I threw the tumbler at his head.
It caught him on the brow. He didn't go down, but the rifle dropped its line for half a second, and that was the half second I needed. I came up off the floor with the paperweight in my hand and brought it down on the bridge of his nose. The nose cracked, and he made a sound a grown man should never make, and went sideways into the wall.
The other rifleman shouted something in Russian and swung his barrel toward me. I drove the paperweight up under his jaw, and his mouth filled with blood. His finger jerked on the trigger. A burst of rounds tore into the ceiling. Plaster came down. He stumbled, gagging, spitting teeth into his own hand.
The older man was shouting now, fast Russian I couldn't follow. The same word over and over.Zhivoy! Zhivoy!An order, whatever it meant.
I had four seconds. I made them count.
The fire poker was by the hearth. Aleksi didn't use the fireplace, but rich men buy fireplace sets the way they buy gloves, for the look of it. I got the poker in my hand, and I'd just turned with it when something hit me across the back of the knees.
I went down on one knee. The first rifleman had got back on his feet and got a boot into my ribs, and the air went out of me. I bit my lip on the way down. The split Aleksi had put there opened up, and the taste of blood was familiar. I swung the poker low and caught his shin. He howled. I came up again, half on my knee, half on the sofa, when the older man finally moved.
He crossed the room in three quick strides and had the muzzle of his sidearm against my temple before I had the poker level.
"Stop," he said.
I stopped.