The Code

by Nick Elliott

  Berzins’ acting was masterful as he seemingly took command of the situation, shouting and pointing with his truncheon while gradually moving us towards the gate. Now he was shouting at the guards, but they were looking doubtful, uncertain whether to obey or challenge. It was turning into a confrontation. Valdis and I held back, but there were guards advancing now to join the row as it began to escalate beyond a shouting match. The gate guards were holding their ground despite Berzin’s commands. Then without warning came a blinding flash and the boom of explosives. The steel gate was suddenly collapsing inwards and on the far side were men in black clothing, body armour, helmets and masks, each armed with an assault rifle. For a moment, everyone stood frozen in the harsh light, like figures caught in a camera’s flash.

  ‘Go!’ I yelled, grabbing Valdis by the arm, Berzins following. I assumed that since they’d blown in the door from the outside, the men in black were there to help free us. Now I doubted it. Their focus seemed to be on the rioting, and in the chaos they ignored us as we clambered over the wreckage of the steel gate. We sprinted across the road and found a track leading into scrubby woodland. Headlights flashed: the Lada.

  Chapter 15

  Daugavpils, Latvia

  7 June 1999

  I should have been shouting for joy, punching the air and drinking brandy from the hip flask the driver was passing round. Or better still, wandering among the pine trees that surrounded us, breathing in the heavy scent of resin and of freedom. But it wasn’t like that. The three of us piled into the Lada. It turned and headed down the heavily rutted track into the woods; headlights off, the driver guided by instinct rather than sight. We were escaping, but it was too soon for celebrations.

  Valdis, Berzins and the driver were talking intensely among themselves. It seemed we were travelling in the direction of the river, from where we would rendezvous with a boat and head downstream to Riga. But that’s not what happened. We hadn’t travelled more than a couple of miles when the driver braked suddenly. I leaned forward to see what the problem was. Parked across the track was a black van. Our driver veered off, trying to find a way round, but they’d chosen the site of their ambush carefully. Neither could we turn round, at least not in the time available, which was no more than thirty seconds before they were upon us: Aramis, Athos and Porthos, the GRU hoods from White Swan.

  We were dragged out of the car. Weapons were drawn, orders shouted and before any of us could react, Berzins and our driver were pulled aside to the edge of the forest. They were protesting at first, then when they realised what was happening, they turned to run and seek cover among the trees. I’d have done the same. Better to die trying to escape than meekly surrender to your fate. The clatter of automatic rifle fire seemed to go on for a long time as Aramis made sure neither of them got away. He walked over to examine his handiwork then returned, grinning, to where we were held, pinned against the van with pistols against our heads.

  ‘See what will happen,’ gloated Porthos, ‘if you don’t do what we tell you?’

  We were bundled into the back of the van, Athos and Porthos either side of us, Aramis at the wheel. As we took off, Valdis said something to Athos in Russian. He got an elbow in the face and a single word of warning for his trouble. Athos was the quieter of the three but I sensed he was the most dangerous. He watched carefully and listened closely. Was he or Aramis the de facto leader of the three, I wondered.

  The journey took over an hour. Every time I tried talking to Valdis I had a gun rammed into my ear and was told to shut up. They knew enough English anyway to understand if we were talking of escape or resistance, so I stayed silent.

  They took us to what in the dark looked like an abandoned warehouse. Any sense of direction I might have had was lost, but I could see we were in some kind of run-down industrial zone on the outskirts of a town. Inside the dimly lit building as we were marched in, I could see high, empty storage racks divided by aisles. We were pushed and prodded down the centre aisle. The concrete floor was smooth and oily in patches. Forklifts or other cargo handling equipment had been in use here. At the far end directly ahead of us was an upright wooden chair. A man was tied to it, his head lolling down onto his chest.

  ‘Your friend, English,’ announced another man, who was walking towards us: average height and thin, thirtyish, so younger than the triplets. Black hair and hunched shoulders. He was wearing a long black leather coat that completed his crow-like appearance. I imagined he might have flapped down from a nearby tree. He certainly didn’t fit the D’Artagnan role.

  As we approached, the man tied to the chair lifted his head wearily. His face was swollen and covered in blood but he wasn’t difficult to recognise. Dominic Farrington took one look at us before letting his head roll back onto his chest.

  ‘He sang like a little bird,’ said the crow. ‘He told me all about your clever escape plans, where you would be met and where you would be taken.’ His voice had a soft, modulated tone to the point of sounding effete. ‘So my job could not have been made easier. However, he has, as you would say, outlived his usefulness, so if you would oblige, Kazimir?’

  Kazimir, or Aramis as we knew him, stepped forward and without hesitating, loosed off a volley from the same automatic rifle he’d used on Berzins and the driver. Still tied to the chair, Farrington flew backwards, propelled by the force of the rounds, and struck the back wall. He lay still, a dark pool of blood spreading out across the concrete floor.

  ‘Ozols will be familiar with our methods, but they may come as a surprise to you, English,’ the crow continued. ‘They are both direct and effective though. Your friend over there told us some but not all of your travel arrangements. He claimed he was not a spy, just a consular officer. However, it was enough. You won’t be needing tickets or passports from him for any onward journey.’

  He appeared unarmed. He may have had a gun on him but perhaps he considered it beneath him to wave it around. That would be for his henchmen. He was showing off his English for my benefit and for a moment I found myself wondering where he’d picked up this bizarre Bond villain façade. Only this wasn’t a film set, and if nothing or no one intervened soon, we would be going the same way as poor Farrington. Crow was talking directly to Valdis in Russian now. I glanced around. The triplets were standing behind us, their weapons casually trained in our direction. Should I wait and see if Valdis could influence events in some way? I couldn’t see how though.

  The crow was standing a few yards in front of me, slightly to my left. Valdis was on my right and the triplets behind us. We were grouped at the end of the aisle, close to the brick wall where Farrington lay. As long as he was talking and didn’t give them direct orders, I figured the triplets would hesitate before shooting. And he seemed to like talking. I stepped forward, hands spread and without rushing. ‘Listen, I’ve got something important to tell you,’ I said, smiling, arms wide and unthreatening. I didn’t, other than that I was planning to kill him, but I needed to distract him. The good news, I kept telling myself, was that he didn’t seem to be armed, or if he was he was too busy talking to bother drawing a gun. More likely, he trusted his henchmen to protect him. I’d seen that there was a patch of oil on the floor between us. As I drew closer, I moved to his left to avoid alarming him head-on, still acting as if I just wanted to talk. Then, feigning a slip on the oily floor, threw myself forward in a crouching position. More by accident than design my shoulder made contact with his gut. It didn’t wind him but gave me a second or two to get behind, grabbing him clumsily in an improvised headlock, my right arm round his throat, my left forearm pressing into the back of his neck, compressing it front and back.

  ‘Valdis! Get behind me!’ I yelled.

  He did and now he was pressed against the wall with me shielding him and the crow in front shielding me. I was strengthening my grip on him now. His feet had lifted off the ground and he was trying to talk while clawing at my arm to get it away from his throat while kicking at me with his feet, neither having much
effect. I tightened my grip more and he began to choke.

  The three goons had moved forward in unison but it was clear from their expressions and hesitant movements that they were not sure what to do next.

  ‘Drop the guns – all of them, now! Or your boss dies,’ I shouted, hoping that he was their boss and that the prospect of his imminent death was something that would worry them.

  ‘Tell them!’ I growled into the crow’s ear, loosening my grip slightly so he could speak.

  He croaked something to them before I tightened my grip again. He was still kicking feebly at my legs and now began making gurgling noises.

  ‘Do it!’ I shouted and Aramis, who had blown Farrington away minutes earlier, slowly laid his gun on the floor. The other two followed.

  ‘Valdis, get the guns. Unload one, give me one and keep one for yourself.’

  Keeping hold of the crow with my right arm still round his neck I took one of the AK-47s Valdis had gathered up.

  I had the idea that using the crow as a shield and having disarmed the triplets, we could move back up to the entrance and escape in the van with the crow as a hostage. The three of us began by moving awkwardly round the goons, then backwards up the length of the warehouse aisle. Holding onto the crow while dragging him on the slippery floor was proving hard. The triplets were advancing towards us, unarmed but unencumbered. I was about to voice my concern to Valdis when he stepped out from behind me and raised Porthos’ rifle. Perhaps they’d thought that we were sportsmen, that we’d play by a set of rules instilled in us through the British sense of fair play. But they’d misjudged Valdis. He was, after all, a trained agent and he knew the importance of quick affirmative action. Without hesitating he sprayed the three men with a hail of fire. It was a massacre: no screams, just the gunfire echoing round the warehouse, men collapsing and blood everywhere, spattered up the walls, gathering in dark pools across the floor.

  ‘Christ, Valdis,’ I yelled, staring at him in shock.

  ‘What?’ he retorted angrily. ‘You want me to leave them alive? What then? We’re never free of them? Is that what I should have done? They deserved it. And they would have killed us. This one said so.’ He pointed the barrel at the crow.

  ‘Okay. Let’s just get out of here.’ It wasn’t the time to start debating the rights and wrongs with him. I thought of Berzins. Valdis had told me he’d planned to cross the border into Poland where he had family, before heading for Greece. He would have had enough to get started in a new life there, or maybe he’d go back to sea. He’d have been safer there. All too late now.

  In the shock and chaos of those moments I’d overlooked the threat from the crow, who I still had round the neck. But I’d loosened my grip and I’d not thought to check his pockets. I’d just assumed he was unarmed. But he wasn’t. And now from inside his pocket he fired at Valdis. The shot went wide as I jerked him back into my hold then grabbed at the pistol which was still in his hand inside his coat pocket.

  ‘Let him go and stand back,’ called Valdis.

  ‘No, not another. We may need him.’

  ‘We don’t need him. He’s a crook like others. Worse. Now get out of the way.’

  As he spoke he moved towards us. I backed away, still holding onto the crow. But he was struggling, and we were on an oily patch of the floor. In trying to push back with his feet he lost his footing. He slipped down, out of my grasp and onto the floor, and as I moved back away from him, I slipped too. The crow probably had a couple of narrow choices. He could have tried to get behind me for cover or he could have lunged at Valdis. Instead, he scrambled to his feet and ran towards the warehouse door. Valdis fired a single shot and the crow went sprawling across the floor, crashing into the side of one of the metal storage racks. Then he lay still. We walked over to him. Valdis turned him over with his foot. Now he reminded me even more of a crow – a dead one.

  The keys of the van were in the ignition. I took the wheel. ‘We need to find our way back to the river,’ I said. ‘See if we can locate the rendezvous point.’

  ‘Carry on, I will direct you.’

  ‘Do you know where the rendezvous is?’

  ‘The driver told me. We will find, don’t worry.’

  We drove in silence for a while. Finally, Valdis spoke: ‘I am sorry if that shocked you, Angus. It was necessary.’

  I was shocked, as much by Valdis’s ruthlessness as by the killings themselves.

  ‘They got what they deserved,’ I said. ‘And Farrington had told them too much about our plans. They had to be silenced.’

  ‘You know, the boss was too busy trying to impress you,’ Valdis mused. ‘He got careless.’

  ‘Been watching too many movies where the villain has to explain everything for the benefit of the audience.’

  He laughed grimly and we drove on in search of the river.

  Chapter 16

  River Daugava, Latvia

  7-8 June 1999

  ‘Where is it then, Valdis?’ Finding that river took forever, but the sense of hope hadn’t deserted us, despite the shock of what had just happened and the exhaustion we both felt. The Daugava was further than we’d thought, and the search was made harder by the maze of byroads we were forced to navigate in the dark. Eventually we found ourselves heading northwards on a narrow road running alongside it. The river rises in the Valdai Hills midway between St Petersburg and Moscow, Valdis informed me, from where it flows on through Belarus into Latvia and eventually into the Gulf of Riga, making it one of Europe’s longest rivers.

  ‘Valdai Hills? Is that where your name comes from?’

  He threw me a derisive look. ‘My name derives from Latvian word for “rule”, not from some Russian hill in middle of nowhere.’

  ‘You really don’t like them, do you.’

  ‘The Russians? I have known and liked many Russian men and women over many years. I judge people as I find them. But the system? Soviet system? No, that I hate. Now, that system has gone. We will have to see whether new “system” is better or worse for Russia. I am not optimistic, but Latvia is an independent state now.’

  We drove on into the night. I was about to ask him whether he knew where we were going when he said, ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This we are doing – for me, not you. You are escaping back to your own country. Me, I am being exfiltrated; drawn away from my own country. And I do not believe I will ever return.’

  ‘Do you regret that?’

  ‘Of course I do. But do I regret betraying Soviet system, apparatus? No, never. I was a fighter in the Cold War and I knew in my heart and my mind who was right and who was wrong. It was clear to me, even before Cuba.’

  ‘If you don’t stay here, where will you settle? Vienna, with your daughter?’

  ‘No. Would not be safe.’

  ‘Then would she be safe there?’

  ‘This is one of things that worries me. One of many things. And now we are free I worry more. Am I really free? Where shall I settle? Where will she? I must talk with Admiral about it all.’

  Every time we reached a junction where a bridge bisected the river, we would stop to identify where we were. And every time we came to a riverside mooring, we would stop to check whether our boat was there, waiting.

  ‘Cannot be much further,’ Valdis kept saying. Now that we could sense freedom and he’d begun to worry about the future, he’d become desperate to contact his daughter, but we hadn’t passed any phone boxes.

  It was past midnight by the time we pulled up beside a derelict-looking wharf clinging onto the riverbank. Two men were standing beside a workboat with the words: Ships Agent, Crew and Stores on the cabin’s side in English. We got out of the van and the shorter of the two men, who I could see now was the Admiral, stepped forward and greeted Valdis with a formal handshake, but I could see he could barely contain his delight. ‘You made it! Well done!’ He turned to me. ‘And Angus too!’ He punched me on the arm. ‘What the devil happened
? We’ve been here hours. And your man Berzins? The driver? Where are they?’

  I let Valdis tell him what had happened. They knew each other well despite their rare face-to-face encounters and now they were together, the Admiral had lightened up and I could see that the relationship between a double agent and his case handler was special – beyond mere colleagues or friends, they were comrades in arms. There was something intense and resolute about their exchanges. And the Admiral was a different man from the one who had visited me in White Swan.

  We cast off and headed downriver. The water was calm and what current there was favoured us. The night was clear without much light pollution from the shore, so we could see the Milky Way clearly as a diagonal, luminescent swathe across the black canvas of the sky.

  It took us another nine hours to reach the next rendezvous in our journey. For the first hour or so there was much lively conversation, mostly between Valdis and the Admiral. Then they fell silent and both Valdis and I dozed off in the cabin, drained by the gruelling events of the day, the drone of the engine and the boat’s gentle motion on the water.

  I woke with a start as we were approaching Riga’s river port. The sun was rising and ships alongside already working, most of them loading timber or discharging containers. I recognised the berth where the Electra M had moored ten weeks earlier. There was more traffic on the river now: workboats like ours belonging to local agents, chandlers and stevedores, all competing with tugs and barges for room. The Admiral appeared with coffee. He handed me a mug and gently shook Valdis awake.

  ‘All okay?’ I asked him.

  ‘All okay. We’ll be passing the Mangalsala Pier within the next half-hour, then through the breakwater and out into the Gulf. From there it’s another three or four hours, depending on the sea state. There’ll be a bit of a swell but it shouldn’t slow us up.’

  Earlier Valdis had tried repeatedly to contact his daughter on the Admiral’s Nokia. Now he was trying again. I sought to reassure him. ‘Maybe she switches it off at night.’