The Accident Man by Tom Cain

trying to cover Max and McCall at the same time. She was carrying the gun properly, high on the shoulder, sighting along the barrel. The gun trembled slightly in her grip, betraying her tension. She looked like a little girl playing with her big brother’s toys.
    For half a second they all just stood there. Any longer and it would have been too late. If McCall had done nothing, forced Alix to take the initiative, dared her to shoot in cold blood, she might have lost her nerve. But he got cocky, staking his life on her inability to turn the threat of her gun into action. He grabbed Carver with his left hand and threw him to one side, clearing the space to bring up his own weapon. But Alix fired first.
    She did it properly, just like a training exercise. She didn’t spray bullets all over the place. She fired a three-shot burst into McCall. There was nothing girlish about her now, just a fierce, almost manic concentration in her eyes as she turned toward Max, who was desperately backing against the wall. Another burst hit his chest, shoulder, and neck — the hits rising as the force of the shots lifted the barrel in Alix’s hand. He spun around, blood from a ripped artery spraying in a scarlet arc across the wall. Then he fell to the floor, dead.
    Carver got to his feet, wincing, and made his way across the room. The air reeked of cordite and blood. Alix was standing stock still, her eyes wide open. Then suddenly she turned away from Carver, bent over, and started shaking. She was dry retching, streaming tears and snot. Carver stood next to her, rested a hand on her shoulder, and offered her a handkerchief.
    “First time?”
    Alix nodded.
    “You did well,” Carver said. “You saved my life. Thank you.”
    He was seized by a deep, familiar emotion, the comradeship that exists between those who have experienced combat together and survived. Carver had experienced feelings like this in the Falklands, Iraq, and the bandit country of South Armagh. He’d known what it was to have that bond between fighting men. But a blond Russian woman in a short silk dress, well, that might take a bit of getting used to.
    Gradually, her body stilled, her breathing steadied. Alix stood up, wiping her face. She looked at the two bodies for a second or two. Then she looked at Carver as if seeing her reflection in his eyes. “Oh my God,” she said. “I must look terrible.”
    Carver gave a clipped, dry laugh. “Not half as bad as they do. Listen, you’ll be fine. But we’ve got to get out of here. Wipe your prints off the gun. Stick it in Max’s hands — the guy with the gray hair. Make it look like they shot each other.”
    It would take at least a day for the police forensic lab to work out that all the bullets had come from the same gun. By then, he planned to be long gone.
    He turned his attention to the computer in its case on the table. Somewhere inside it was everything he needed to know about the people who’d hired him and everything anyone else would need to know about him. For both reasons, it was coming with him.
    So was Max’s gray jacket. Carver needed to get out of the clothes he’d been wearing all night, to do something to change his appearance. He looked at the dead men on the floor. Even their trousers were spattered with blood.
    Then he struck lucky. Beside the table there was a soft brown leather overnight bag. Max must have had it beside him, ready to leave. Inside there was a fresh white shirt, still in its laundry wrapper. He put it on, then slipped the jacket over the top.
    Carver picked up the back nylon computer case. “Time to go,” he said. But as he walked from the room, he was thinking: If Alix Petrova had never fired a gun in anger before, what the hell had she been doing on this mission?
     
13
     
    The Pitié-Salpêtrière medical complex in southeast Paris dates back to 1656 and the time of the Sun King, Louis XIV. Over the past century it has been modernized and massively increased in size until