The Blog I'd been just about to post had the same title - Killer's eyes - but it just seemed inappropriate. But the more I think about it now, it isn't.
The phrase comes from the new book I've written called Sixty-Six Metres, a thriller set mainly in the UK and Moscow. The protagonist, Nadia, is a crack shot but doesn't want to kill anyone. But her own mother tells her she has killer's eyes, and the book puts her in increasing jeopardy.
So, here's the premise; is it easy to kill someone? I don't mean physically - anyone can pull a trigger. I mean - would you really do it? Could you?
Presumably most readers are not killers. At least I hope so. Some may be - soldiers, cops, for example, may have had to kill at some point. And yet in fiction we read about people killing all the time. Sure, killing goes on, just turn on the news. But most people get through life without ever doing it.
So I find in books and films it is all too easy for characters to kill, as if they are just having a cigarette. Do we watch too much James Bond? I remember as a kid watching one film where Sean Connery killed several 'baddies' in quick succession, not in particularly nice ways either, and I wanted to say 'Stop! Can't you just tie them up?' I watched another one recently where he strangled a baddie. The guys' legs were thrashing around, kicking, slowing. And I thought, if that was me instead of James, I'd stop. I wouldn't end a life so easily. I couldn't. What about you?
In my scifi books there is a character named Micah. He sure as hell is not a soldier, and doesn't want to kill. But near the end of the series he is faced with his own imminent death and that of many others, unless he kills. So he does. And it nearly breaks him.
In the new book, Nadia will end up facing the same choice.
Back to Paris. A friend of mine, after the attacks, said he wanted to learn to shoot, so if anything like that happened again, and there was a gun on the floor, he could pick it up, know what to do with it, and shoot, in order to save lives. I can't imagine the hell it must have been inside the Bataclan, nearly ninety people gunned down one after another. So, yesterday, I learned to shoot, for the first time in my life. Would I, if the situation ever arise? Do I have killer's eyes? Who knows.
Anyway, here's some Nadia, because sometimes fiction feels safer than reality. This is the opening of the book.
Nadia stashed her father’s Beretta inside her rucksack and
crept downstairs, hoping to escape unscathed. But her red-faced mother was
waiting outside in the chill dawn air, and thrust an Orthodox crucifix towards
Nadia, as if to curse her.
“You’ll end
up a cheap whore, or a killer like your father!”
Nadia’s lip
trembled but she refused to cry, and didn’t look back as she departed the
family home in Uspekh on the banks of the Volga, where her father had taught
her to shoot, before they’d taken him away.
“Don’t ever
come back,” her mother screamed as Nadia neared the turn of the road into the
forest.
Only when
she was on the bus to Moscow, to join her sister Katya who had left three years
earlier, did the tears come. Nadia was eighteen. It was her birthday.
Six months later, the
ever-gorgeous Katya invited her plainer, dark-haired little sister to a party
in Moscow. Katya dragged Nadia away from her grotty studio flat in Old Arbat,
where each night she fell asleep exhausted from working in the local bakery
from 4am until 3pm, then at a supermarket until 9pm. Nadia was still a virgin.
She liked boys well enough, but hated the unsubtle flirting, the vodka-fuelled
race to unconsciousness, and the lies. She’d loved her father, but he’d been
one of the worst with women, and she’d seen the permanent damage it had done to
her mother. So Nadia kept her hair cropped short, dressed for comfort, and was
often mistaken at first sight for a boy, which was fine.
But at the party, held at a
wealthy businessman’s country dacha, she was amazed at the naked opulence, the
women with perfect skin in low-cut dresses, the handsome and not-so-handsome
men, their ease in the world. Viktor, a man twice her age who turned out to be
someone in government, seduced her. He wasn’t bad-looking, took his time in
bed, and was generous.
She let
things coast along for six months, no demands or promises on either side. It
was better than before. She felt not so much loved, but alive. She presumed he
was married; she never asked and he never said. She gave up the early morning
bakery job, and thought about getting a cat.
Then, one morning at 4am the FSB
broke down the door to her apartment, threw a black hood over Viktor’s face,
and took him away. He didn’t struggle or cry out, just uttered one muffled word
to her – spasiba – before
disappearing from her life forever, and probably his, too.
Two days later she was arrested
on the grounds of receiving misappropriated funds. She was never formally
charged, never saw a lawyer. After three months in Moscow’s Lubyanka prison,
Nadia was informed she’d be inside for twelve years, ten if she behaved. She
walked around in a daze. This should be the prime of her life. Instead it would
be spent behind locked doors. At night before lights-out she tried not to stare
at the lone hook in the ceiling; there had been three suicides since her
arrival. She couldn’t see how it could get any worse. Then Kadinsky arrived to
get her out of jail.
He had a gleaming bald head, and
was fat without being flabby, as if his weight was there to throw around, to
crush you if necessary. You just knew straightaway not to mess with him. He
wore an expensive beige suit, and gold jewellery dripped from his wrists and
neck. Her sister Katya stood behind him in a skimpy dress and high heels, her
large eyes hopeful and terrified at the same time. Kadinsky got Nadia out with
bribes and favours. Of course, she’d have to work it off.
Once back at Kadinsky’s country
dacha, she stood in the large lounge with its single bay window overlooking the
non-functioning fountain with a chipped statue of Pan in its centre. Inside,
oil paintings of Russian battles, including one above the fireplace featuring a
victorious Napoleon, hung around the white walls. Kadinsky ordered Katya not to
speak, then walked around Nadia. He looked her up and down with an appraising
eye, and shook his head with distaste. He sat down in his wide leather
armchair. Katya was perched on an antique wooden dining chair on the opposite
side of the room. Nadia stood directly between them.
“You have grey eyes,” he said,
wagging a finger at her. “Like a fucking tombstone. Who’d want to make love
staring into such eyes?” He glanced at Katya. “Are you sure she’s your sister?”
Katya stared at the carpet and
nodded, her own eyes a deep blue, like her mother’s. Nadia had her father’s
eyes; killer’s eyes, he’d once joked when she’d been too young to realise it
was a confession.
Kadinsky swirled the ice in his
whiskey tumbler with a pudgy index finger.
“What else can you do, girl?”
Nadia never knew where her answer
came from, possibly utter revulsion against a life of prostitution, but she
thought of her father, and the words that sealed her fate slid out of her mouth.
“I can shoot. I never miss.”
Kadinsky’s
two henchmen laughed. He didn’t.
“I detest
exaggeration,” he said. “So American.” His mouth moved like he was going to
spit.
“Let’s see if you can really
shoot. Give her your pistol,” he said to one of the henchmen, the one with a
pock-marked face – Pox, Nadia named him – who immediately lost his sense of
humour.
Nadia took
the weapon from his outstretched hand, weighed it in her palm. An old-style
Magnum, the classic six-shot. God knows why the guy had it, most Russians
preferred semi-autos. She checked it was loaded, all six bullets nestling in
their chambers, then looked to Kadinsky, and thought about killing him. But the
other henchman, the one with slicked black hair – hence, Slick – had his Glock
trained on her, a lopsided leer on his face, daring her.
Kadinsky
waved a hand towards Katya, five metres away. He tilted his head left and
right, then settled back against the soft leather, took a gulp of whiskey, and
smacked his lips.
“The red
rose in the bowl of flowers behind her left ear. Shoot it from where you
stand.”
Slick’s
eyes flicked towards Katya, gauging the angles. His leer faded.
Nadia
stared at Katya and the rose. It was just to the side of her head. Most of it
was behind her head. Nadia swallowed, then lifted the Magnum, and took up a
shooting stance like her father had taught her, right arm firm, elbow not
locked, left hand reinforcing the wrist, prepared for the recoil. Nadia knew
she had to do it before anger could build up and dislodge her concentration.
She lined up the shot, then spoke to Katya’s serene, trusting face: “Love you,”
she said. Then she breathed out slowly as if through a straw, and squeezed the
trigger.
Masonry
exploded behind Katya, the crack of the shot so loud that several other men
burst into the room, weapons drawn. Kadinsky waved them back as Pox peeled the
Magnum from Nadia’s stiff fingers. Petals fluttered to the floor amidst a plume
of white powder from the impact crater in the wall. Katya still sat there, the
hair on the left side of her head ruffled as if by a gust of wind. A small
trickle of blood oozed from her left temple where the bullet had grazed her,
and ran down her cheek.
Katya, lips trembling, beamed at
Nadia. “Still alive,” she said, her voice hoarse. She touched the graze with an
unsteady forefinger.
Nadia’s gun hand began to shake.
She folded her arms, refusing to give Kadinsky the satisfaction.
Later that night, while she slept in Katya’s bed, holding
close the sister she’d almost killed, Slick and Pox came into the room. Katya
woke up, leapt out of bed and told them to fuck off, for which she received the
butt of the Magnum across her mouth.
“It’s
okay,” Nadia heard herself say. She half-planned to try to grab one of the
guys’ guns at a crucial moment, but they knew what they were doing, one held
her down while the other…
Eventually
they left, and Katya, her chin smeared with blood, an ugly bruise rising on her
left cheek, returned to the bed and held Nadia tight. Nadia felt nothing, her
body strangely still, like it belonged to someone else. While Nadia’s eyes
stayed dry, Katya cried and whispered apologies, repeating how it would all be
all right, the worst was over, the important thing was that they were together.
Nadia replied in conciliatory tones; the first time their relationship had
inverted, Nadia becoming the bigger sister.
At dawn
Nadia awoke to find her sister gone, presumably to Kadinsky’s bed. She
considered their predicament. Katya was locked into Kadinsky’s world, and now
Nadia owed him too, and he wasn’t about to simply let her off. Added to that
she felt bound to Katya, they’d been through too much at home. Nadia was
trapped. Her mother’s prediction came back to her: a killer or a whore. Maybe
both.
She dressed, crept downstairs and
stole outside, timing it to get past the guard outside the main door when he
went to take a piss. Snow crunched softly under her footsteps. She got a couple
of miles from the dacha before she collapsed from the biting cold, and lay down
in the crisp silence. “It’s okay,” she heard her mother say inside her head,
with a kindness she’d not heard from her in years. “Better this way.” Nadia
closed her eyes and went to sleep, hoping never to wake up, unless to join her
father.
But she did
awaken, and found herself back in the dacha on a sofa, buried in blankets. She
shook violently, and heard shouting in the room next door: Katya, Slick and
Pox, and then a low growl that must have been Kadinsky. Katya entered, wiped
away tear streaks on her bruised face, and closed the door behind her. She
braved a smile and walked towards Nadia.
“They won’t
touch you again,” she said, her voice shaky. “Nobody will.” She sat next to
Nadia.
Kadinsky entered, a gold-rimmed
coffee cup in his hand, a sad-looking golden retriever trailing him.
“Here’s the deal, girl.” He spoke
to the bay window rather than her face, and took a swig before continuing. “I
need a female operative who doesn’t piss herself under pressure. You’ll work
for me for five years. Your training will take three, including eighteen months
in Britain. I want your English to be impeccable – not like a newsreader, like
a local.” He stared at her, his eyes flat, hard. He stooped to pat the dog ineffectually,
like he didn’t really know how, then stood again, downing the last of the
coffee. He spoke to the window again.
“Katya stays here. You’ll do ten
ops for me, Nadia, then I’ll let you both go.” He nodded to himself as if
concluding the contract. “Ten ops, five years.”
He left, not waiting for an
answer. The dog followed, its head bowed.
Kadinsky’s words echoed in
Nadia’s mind. Five years. Half the time she would have been kept in prison.
Thinking of her cell back in Lubyanka helped. Katya had got Nadia out of her
own personal hell. But would Kadinsky really let them both go afterwards?
Katya hugged Nadia, and Nadia
succumbed to the embrace, because the only person Nadia cared for in this
brutal world was Katya.
“It’s going to be alright,” Katya
said, her voice unsure.
Nadia felt something inside
herself harden, as if the tears that should have come earlier had turned to
glass. She promised herself she would go and retrieve her father’s Beretta the
next day, strip it, clean it, and begin practicing again. Ten ops. Five years.
And then, one way or the other, they were leaving.
“It will be alright, Katya,” she
said. “Whatever it takes, I promise one day I’ll make it right.”
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