"It's not that. It's not just finding the bints. With this particular wrinkle I'm going to need an iceman."

"Oh yeah?"

"A real piece of work. He'll do what he's told, no questions, take the pay cheque and vanish. It's not just that Killian's a tinker, I need someone who isn't squeamish. Someone who is not connected in any way to Belfast. Someone from your side of the sheugh."

"Outsider. That makes me think it - whatever it is - is very bad."

"It is. I'm thinking Killian stays in to find the hoor, but someone at a whole other level does the rest."

Michael didn't hesitate. "You'll be wanting the Starshyna then. I'll have one of my boys give him a call."

And with that the last of the pieces fell into place.

CHAPTER 6.

STARSHYNA.

The place stank of dead Mexicans and n.o.body was even dead yet. He found a sports store at a strip mall outside of Nogales and bought himself a set of swimmer's nostril clamps and a pair of golf gloves. At first they overcharged him thinking that he was a tourist but a moment later the manager followed him out into the street to give him his real change.

Stuff like that happened to Markov all the time.

He took the money and stood there on a sort of boardwalk.

From his pocket he removed a hard rubber ball and bounced it into his left hand ten times and then put it away.

The sports store was next to a shop selling cheap, crudely figured statues of the Virgin Mary, the pietas looking like a Finnish bog monster with its victim. They depressed him and he wondered if he'd made a mistake coming here. It was hot, you couldn't get c.o.ke Zero, and his phone didn't work even after he'd pushed the + key. And the heat really was bothering him. In Vegas you could live in air-conditioning; but then again that was the kind of living that had made him soft.

The gloves were good. Kid skin with hand-st.i.tched evap holes.

He might even use them for golf some day.

He got back in the car, looked at the bottle of tequila he'd bought for Daniel, wondered how it would taste, shook his head. That was the way of f.u.c.k-up officers.

The road murdered the BMW's suspension for ten Ks until the GPS said something in German and he saw the taverna.

He stayed in the car with the engine running, the air pumping and the music playing until they showed.

They were driving an old Toyota pick-up and wearing plaid shirts, crumpled cowboy hats and cowboy boots.

They flashed their lights. He flashed his.

Everyone got out.

Good morning, they said and in English asked to see his ID.

He showed them his American pa.s.sport. They nodded and told him to ride in the back of the truck.

"What about my car?" he asked and they told him that they would look after it. The one with one eye pointed a grubby finger at the tailgate.

"I don't do the back of trucks," Markov said.

He sat next to the driver for half an hour on dirt roads in a cab stinking of aftershave until they came to a big house in a guava cactus plantation.

Men with AKs gave him the once-over and waved them into a shady interior courtyard with a fountain.

Kids playing. Women talking. A washing line.

Markov stretched his back. He counted guards until a man he recognised from Bernie's info pack got up from a chair and shook his hand.

His count showed a dozen heavies and as many gardeners, maids, butlers and other auxiliaries. Hard to fight your way in or out of here.

The hand shaking his was covered with rings, the man was short and his breath had liquor on it.

"This way," the man said and they went out a side gate into the plantation.

They walked a few hundred metres through the cacti until they came to a long shed with mud brick walls and an aluminium roof.

"In here," the man said and they went into an empty barn.

Markov tensed as four men got up from a card table and walked towards him. Four ahead, one behind, in this nothing place. He didn't like it. The men weren't toting guns though, just beer cans covered with condensation. He was thirsty but he wasn't going to say a word until they offered him a drink, which he knew they wouldn't.

"He's the one they brought from America?" one of the new men asked in Spanish.

"Yes," the man with the rings said.

The card players looked at him sceptically for a beat but Markov didn't have anything to prove to these putas.

"We should have got a r.e.t.a.r.ded kid to do it for nothing," another of the men said.

"Kids talk," the man with the rings said.

"Where now?" Markov asked in English.

"This is it," the man with the rings muttered.

Markov looked about him. The f.u.c.k was this? Some kind of cross? Where were the clients? "I don't get it," Markov said.

The Mex with the rings laughed, spat and pointed underground.

"The bas.e.m.e.nt?" Markov asked.

"Is not okay?" the man with the rings asked.

"I need light. Can we work outside?" Markov asked.

The man with the rings pointed at the sky and shook his head.

"Planes?" Markov wondered.

"Satellites."

They kicked straw and pulled the trap door.

The smell of s.h.i.t was a trip back to the day. Ten thousand miles and ten years.

Down the ladder.

Flashlights.

The prisoners were chained up against a concrete wall. Some naked, some not. All of them lying in their own filth. All of them had been tortured, most castrated, the wounds cauterised with welding gear.

Markov had seen worse. But not recently.

"All of them?" Markov asked.

The man with the rings shook his head.

"Just one."

"How?" Markov asked.

"Watch us."

They went to a metal cupboard and unlocked it. They took out a chainsaw. This also was not a novelty, but again it had been a while. The man with the rings pulled the rip cord and the brand new machine snarled into life like a demon in a samovar.

One of the Mexes produced a video camera.

He'd known it was coming. "Keep that thing away from my face. Film me from the back only," Markov said, pulling his hat down over his eyes just to be on the safe side.

There were half a dozen witnesses now and everyone was drinking. Tequila, but not from the plantation, home-brewed firewater that they pa.s.sed around in a plastic milk jug.

They grabbed the first guy on the line, unchained him, shoved him to the ground and sat on him.

He began to scream.

The man with the rings applied the tip of the chainsaw to the back of the man's neck and pushed it through the second and third cervical vertebrae, severing his venal arteries. He was killed almost instantly.

Almost.

The rest of the men, even the ones who had been blinded, began to yell. It was a terrible, desperate screaming that also f.u.c.ked with Markov and sent him reeling back across the years to February 2000.

Maybe that's why he'd come here. To trip on the sense memory. Bodies. Fear. Blood.

But this wasn't the moment.

This was the moment to focus on the now. To build this memory.

"I'll take a shot of that," Markov said and drank while they held down the second man. He was a skinny, older character of some spirit who struggled and fought them and when the chainsaw entered his writhing neck it veered into his skull making a noise like steel grinding on a lathe. The man with the rings looked at him and shook his head. They were losing face in front of the Yankee. He barked orders and one of the others ran upstairs and came back with a cattle prod.

Markov remembered his nostril clamps. He fished them out of his pocket and put them on.

They electrocuted and pistol-whipped all the rest of the men to render them meek and it was easy after that. The last two victims had begged for their lives on their knees, crying, saying things about how they "were really sorry" and that they had "wives and children, beautiful children" but it didn't do any good, they beheaded them just the same.

Eight people were dead.

All the prisoners.

All except one.

A formerly well-dressed young man, in a now filthy suit, chained separately from the others in the far corner. Markov hadn't even noticed him until now.

They handed him the chain saw.

"This one's yours," the man with the rings said.

"What's special about him?" Markov asked.

The man with the rings touched his nose.

Markov took the cattle prod and the chain saw and walked to the young man. The man looked at him; he had deep, intelligent brown eyes and a little smile. Markov knew immediately that he was a priest.

In Markov's slum in Volgograd there were few Catholics. Even after the fall of communism it was the orthodox who'd had the power in that town. Fatherless Markov had a lot of respect for his local priest, a Pole called Korchnow, who had impressively survived every regime from Khrushchev to Yeltsin.

"Excuse me, Padre," Markov said in Spanish.

"Is there any possibility that I could be released from here?" the priest asked in a whisper.

Markov shook his head, "Even if I wanted to there are too many."

The priest nodded. "Well then, you must do what you do," he said.

Markov took a breath and pulled the rip on the chainsaw.

It buzzed into life and before the priest had time to panic Markov swiped it sideways into his carotid artery, through his neck and out the other side. It was over in three seconds.

For a horrifying moment the beheaded priest blinked but then the life went out of his eyes.

Markov turned off the saw and set it on the straw.

The Mexicans crossed themselves and muttered and spat. Death was all around but it was a h.e.l.l of a thing to murder a priest.