‘And if the T4 was there, but is now gone? The Saudi intercept said the device was in transit.’
Vlad looked across at her. He smiled and raised his eyebrows indicating an ‘I haven’t a clue’ look.
‘Let’s hope they’ve left enough evidence behind to point us in the right direction.’
It took them another 15 minutes to make it to the cabin. The approach was along a half-kilometre, tree-lined, gravel and grass track. As they got close, the wood thinned, leaving an open area just about big enough for a medium-sized, all-wood cabin and, to its left, a garage/shed affair; wood and corrugated iron. Sam could pick out the lake just beyond the cabin. She looked left and right. There were no neighbours. It was a perfect place to escape to if you wanted to find some peace and quiet. Or, if you needed seclusion to conduct some nefarious activities.
There were no vehicles – and no sign of life. Sam stole a look upwards. The tree canopy almost covered the open area to the front of the cabin. Even if they’d known about the place, normal satellite photography wouldn’t have been able to show much. They might have got somewhere with infrared (IR) cameras, showing hotspots – which the US could do.
But that didn’t matter now. They were here in the flesh. And so far, it didn’t look promising.
Vlad was out of the car. He walked over to the shed and played with the double doors. They were locked. He’d got the Geiger counter out. He shouted across at her that the reading was normal.
Sam was looking at tyre tracks by the front of the cabin, just off the broken tarmac. She had taken a photo of the T4’s rear tread, but didn’t need to look at it. She’d know a match when she saw it.
Nothing here.
‘Have you got anything?’ Vlad asked from across by the shed.
She didn’t answer.
She moved left, still staring at the ground. It was wet – the rubbly tarmac right up to the edge of the wood. No chance of any tyre tracks.
Hang on?
There was a patch of mud toward the track they had come in on; about a metre square with a small puddle in the middle. Still half-bent over, staring at the foliage as she moved, Sam made her way to the area of mud. She stared intently at it.
That’s it.
‘Vlad!’
He was using the Geiger counter to take readings at the front of the cabin.
‘No Sam, come here. There are raised readings here. 180 counts per minute.’
‘That might still be within the normal threshold. Bring the machine here. I think I’ve found the T4’s tracks.’
Vlad jogged over.
‘Here.’ Sam pointed to an area of mud a couple of feet to the right of a smudgy tyre mark.
Vlad pressed the ‘Read’ button on the Geiger counter.
210 cpm
‘Inconclusive?’ Vlad asked.
‘In a court of law. Probably, yes. As are the tread marks just there. But good enough for a strong hunch. I’ll snap a photo just in case we need it. I’d probably bet a month of your wages on it being the T4.’
Vlad snorted a laugh.
‘Typical. I’ll go and try the front door.’
Sam snapped the muddy area whilst Vlad had a go at the front door. It was locked. He peered in.
‘Looks deserted to me.’
Sam joined him, looking round his shoulders. It did look deserted. And there was something about the place that gave her the creeps. The T4 had been here – she couldn’t prove it, but she knew it. And this cabin held the secrets as to what they should do next.
‘Let’s go round the back.’
The cabin was about the size of a small house. It looked to be made straight from chopped pine trees, the corners of the building an intertwined set of two perpendicularly stacked tree trunks. Sam could easily make out the growth circles of each tree, where they had been cut with a chainsaw. There were a couple of windows on the side, and two more and another door on the back. A path led from the rear of the house directly to a ramshackle wooden jetty, which poked out into the lake. A canoe was tied up to one of the jetty’s piles. It all looked pretty idyllic.
Sam felt a small, but hungry insect bite into her neck. She slapped it away.
Maybe not that idyllic.
As they shuffled slowly along the back of the cabin, Sam was sure she heard the muffled sound of people talking from inside. The voices were high-pitched; it could be the radio? Or TV?
Vlad put his hand up to stop Sam. He was looking in through the back door, which was half-glassed at eye level.
He beckoned her forward, putting his finger to his mouth as he did.
Be quiet.
Sam looked in through the window, under Vlad’s arm.
There, in what she assumed was a kitchen-diner, was an armchair. Beyond the armchair was a TV. It was on. Sticking out from the top of the chair was the back of a head. A man’s head?
Her heartrate was up. Her mouth drying.
Vlad used his hands to make signals. Sam translated: me, open door; you stay here; me go inside.
OK, Vlad. But don’t expect me to wait outside whilst you tackle the man in the chair.
Vlad gently tried the door. It was locked.
He looked at her, raising his eyebrows in resignation.
He then took a couple of steps back and launched himself at the door.
It gave way, not at the hinges, but at the frame. As it fell, so did Vlad. Both he and the door ended up on the floor in an almighty clatter.
Sam, sensing the man on the armchair might well have been distracted from the TV by the noise (OK, so that was sarcasm), jumped over Vlad and reached for the nearest weapon – a pan that was on the kitchen table. As she took it, she turned to face the armchair.
I really must sign out one of those Glock 17s the next time I do this.
She was poised ready to strike when…
…Nothing happened. Just the sound of the TV – reverberating with pictures and sound a few feet away.
Is he dead? Is that the news? What’s that smell?
Vlad was on his feet, brushing himself down. They both looked at each other. Sam inched her way round between the man in the chair and the TV. The smell was repugnant. It wasn’t death – she’d been there before and would recognise it. It was more putrid than that; a much stronger version of the smell she’d remembered when she’d visited her dad in the nursing home. Very old and infirm people?
She looked at the man. She now understood the smell.
Vomit, pee and excrement.
The man was alive.
But only just.
She could see that. A vein in his forehead pulsated away, very slowly. His eyes were half-open. Sick dribbled down his chin, the remnants of whatever he had previously eaten was staining his red FC Spartak sweatshirt. A pee stain spread out from his crotch. His mid-blue jeans a darker shade around the zip area. The smell of excrement was overpowering – like a baby’s nappy. Sam knew that he was sitting in his own.
But none of that compared to the state of his head. His face was blotchy, sharp whites, rosy reds and some blue, like bruising? His eyes, what Sam could see of them, were lifeless – his irises colourless. And his hair was falling out in clumps. Big chunks of it joined the vomit on his chest.
Vlad was at her side. His hand was covering his mouth and his nose.
‘Take a reading. Try his hands first,’ Sam said.
Vlad, still using one hand to protect his senses, took out the Geiger counter. He switched it on and pointed it at the man’s right hand.
It went ballistic.
810 cpm.
They both took a step backward.
‘Leave him. He’s as good as dead,’ Sam said – but then abruptly stopped herself, realising that the man might still be able to hear her. She stepped forward, crouched down, looked him in the eye and tenderly touched his hand.
‘Sorry fella.’
Vlad was already in the room next door.
‘Sam!’
She jogged in to join him.
<
br /> And there it all was. The remnants of exactly what Porton Down had described – the packaging of everything you needed to make a dirty bomb. There were a stack of glass containers that Sam assumed had been used to bring out the uranium from the shipyard. There were empty bags of sand and gravel strewn about the place. And, on a table to one side, the distinctive oily, white wrapping of maybe up to 50 sticks of plastic explosive. She picked one up.
‘Russian military grade PE4. There’s a date mark of Nov 15, here.’ Sam was pointing at a designation on the packet.
Vlad had the Geiger counter out, sticking it near bits of the discarded equipment. They were used to hearing clicks from the machine. Noises like a couple of dolphins: that would be a normal background radiation. The reading from the man’s hands sounded like a couple of pools of the mammals had got together for a party. The noise from one of the glass jars was a high-pitched whine – the clicks all squashed together in protest.
Vlad read out the score. ‘2800 cpm. Shit! We can’t afford to stay here long, otherwise we’ll end up like the Spartak supporter next door.’
Sam wasn’t listening. She was ahead of him; searching. They were a step further along the bomb’s journey. Now they needed to find out where it had gone to next.
And she was looking for a clue.
‘Sam!’
She turned. Vlad was holding up packaging for a Motorola mobile phone.
‘There are two of these here. And a couple of empty laptop battery containers.’ He held up one of those as well, looking very pleased with himself.
Good. But where next?
She knew they didn’t have very long. Within 30 minutes they’d both start to feel nauseous. Any longer and having Mr Right’s children would be in jeopardy – and she valued her uterus as much as her hair, which would fall out in clumps next week if they hung around.
But, they couldn’t leave here empty handed. They had to find something.
They both poked about for a further five minutes. Sam found the packaging for an automatic stop button – the big red variety – as fitted at each end of an escalator. Confused by her latest find, Sam went back into the kitchen. Unsurprisingly the man hadn’t moved.
‘Vlad, phone for a decontamination team and an ambulance. They might be able to provide the man here with some dignity,’ she yelled.
‘OK,’ was the call from next door. ‘I’m going upstairs for a quick look.’
Sam needed to think. She sat at the kitchen table. Dirty dishes lay strewn around.
The TV was still on. It was showing Russia 1. The news.
Something caught her eye. The guy on the TV was stood next to a Stars and Stripes. The caption underneath it read: Henry Clarke – Deputy Director FBI. She tuned in. The man was speaking, subtitles turning the English words into Russian for the home audience.
‘…We can confirm that the body discovered on a beach on the Greek island of Crete, is that of the missing American teenager Kelly Jameson. Her hands and feet had been tied together before, we believe, she was thrown into the sea. And there’s still no news of the missing 21-year-old American woman, Lizzy Jefferson. She was abducted in Larnaca, Cyprus, five weeks ago. Nor is there any news on the missing Congressman’s daughter, Holly Mickelson. What we do believe, is that the murder and abduction of these three vulnerable women is part of a pattern of crimes. For example – all three women were young; all three were blonde. And all went missing from a port on the east Mediterranean coast. We are liaising with other police forces to see if they have reports of other abducted innocents.’
The interviewer, who was off screen, asked a question.
‘Do you have any leads?’
‘Only ones that naturally come to mind. For example, as I’ve said, all three women were abducted near major ports: Larnaca, Athens and Istanbul. The women could have been taken by a ship that does business in these ports. We are following this lead, among others.’
Sam stopped listening. She tuned out.
Think.
Four days. Four days of travel between yesterday, and the day of delivery. Thursday to Monday. Four days. That’s a long time.
By van. Or train.
Or ship?
Who would use a van, when you had so many borders to cross? Or a train, which restricts flexibility?
Her thought process had nothing to do with the poor girls. But the report had triggered something. Sokolov had a ship. A big one. Berthed in Sevastopol on the Black Sea. Maybe 800 kilometres south of here? No distance at all. And then the open sea. To where? Tel Aviv? Alexandria? Athens? Istanbul? Trieste? Venice? Rimini? She was running out of eastern Mediterranean ports that she could remember.
Many of those were too close for a ship capable of 20 knots. Not in four days – unless it dawdled.
Think further.
Venice was good. Trieste, also.
Good – but great? Spectacular?
Probably not.
Naples? No?
Rome? One of their targets; Rich had suggested it. Home to the Vatican – the centre of Catholicism. Residency of the Pope. Now that was a spectacular target. And Rome had its own port: Civitavecchia. Where all the cruise ships stop. Sam had seen it on afternoon TV. Only 30 kilometres from Rome?
Could they make it to Rome from Sevastopol in four days? She did a quick calculation. 20 knots – that’s quick for a boat, but not impossible for one like Cressida. Multiply by 100 hours. Around 2,000 miles in four days. How far was it from Sevastopol to Rome – by sea? She didn’t know. Less than that, surely? Through the Bosporus and then onto the Strait of Messina, between the toe of Italian mainland and Sicily. It might be tight. Would they need to refuel?
Hang on. There was a website where you could track all ships and boats in the ocean – via their Automatic Identification System (AIS). They’d played with it during training at Portsmouth. What was it? ‘www.vesselfinder.com’. That’s it. Every ship and boat, even 30-foot yachts, have one of these fitted – by law. The AIS gave out GPS location information by a VHF radio signal, or a satellite system – if they have one fitted. Cressida would be fitted with one.
Unless they’d decided to turn it off.
Would they?
Sam heard some clumping about upstairs. She was too engrossed to be bothered with the noise. It would be Vlad thumping about.
She opened her phone and Googled ‘vesselfinder’.
Her phone laboured using the slow data signal from a far-off mast.
And there it was. A map of the world’s seas and oceans covered in coloured dots and arrows – all of them designating a boat or a ship.
She typed in Cressida in the ‘Locate’ box on the website, and pressed ‘Return’.
Three boats of the same name automatically appeared in the drop-down box. She tapped on one. Up came a photo of a massive oil tanker, with coordinates somewhere in the Atlantic. Nope. She returned to the main screen and pressed on the second.
Before she could see the outcome, her ears tuned into an unwelcome noise. Tyres on gravel.
Shit!
They had company.
She put the phone away and ran into the next room, keeping away from the window, but close enough to get a view.
A dark red Ford Mondeo. Latest version, the Mark 4. Both the front doors opened. Two men got out.
Gotcha.
They were the same two men who had got out of the Mi-8 at the oilfield. The taller of the two reached into his jacket and pulled out a handgun. Sam couldn’t see what it was at this distance. Short-barrelled, 9mm – very likely. Accurate at 25 metres, if you stood still and took aim. Useless at a moving target, unless you were lucky. Really handy at close range.
They were here on business. No doubt about that.
She jumped as Vlad touched her elbow.
You frightened the life out me!
‘I don’t suppose you’re armed?’ he whispered.
‘Only with my wit,’ she replied.
‘Oh well. I don’t even have that.’
>
‘Let’s get out of the back door and make a run for it. Maybe circle round, come back and collect a car? Or not?’ Sam was making it up as she went along.
One guy was already at the front door. It was being unlocked.
‘Good idea.’
They both went together, Sam was first to make it through the door into the kitchen…
…Where her heart leapt out of her mouth.
Stood there, so close to the frame of door that she couldn’t get past without knocking into him, was the man from the armchair. It was like coming face-to-face with a zombie. Bloodshot eyes, irregular clumps of hair, a complexion of a man with the plague, and dried vomit on his chin and all the way down his front.
Sam recoiled and screamed, a truncated scream of a woman who was struggling with the choice between staying quiet for fear of being shot by a 9mm slug; or grappling with the walking dead. It was an instinctive, girly reaction. And she hated herself for it.
As she stopped and ducked in the door frame, Vlad smacked into the back of her. The man wobbled and started to fall, and the three of them became one mass of bodies: legs, arms, vomit, and the foul smell of excrement.
Crack!
Sam knew the sound, as she guessed did Vlad. It was the sound that followed the trajectory of a low-velocity bullet. Likely 9mm.
Vlad’s body, which she felt pressing against her, became inert. He’d been hit. Shit. The three of them fell through the door into the kitchen.
Think! Most 9mm magazines hold at least eight rounds. The man had fired one. There were plenty left for her. But Sam wasn’t prepared to wait to discover the nomenclature of the weapon; nor how many rounds the magazine held. And she really did want to turn to Vlad. To administer first aid. To get the bastard who had shot him.
But hanging about wasn’t going to save him.
Getting out of there alive was.
Reluctantly, but efficiently, she pushed Vlad’s body away from her, and with strength she only ever found when her life was truly in danger, she stood – grabbing the zombie-man’s arm, lifting him and half-dragging him behind her.
The Innocence of Trust Page 29