Nia hugged Rachel back, hard. She shook and sobbed until Rachel felt the dampness of Nia’s tears wicking through her shirt. “Nia, Nia, Nia,” Rachel whispered while she stroked Nia’s hair with her hand. Nia looked into Rachel’s eyes silently thanking her for precipitating a little catharsis.
“I haven’t told Tom about any of this, haven’t really told anybody.”
“Oh Nia. You should tell Tom,” Rachel said. “If he’s going to be a part of your future, he needs to be part of your past too.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Absolutely,” Rachel replied.
“What about his pain?”
“This is different. Nia, I’ve known him all his life, and you are the best thing that has ever happened to him.”
Nia wiped her tears and blew her nose. She smiled at Rachel.
“Did you try to have children after?” Rachel asked.
Nia was caught off guard by the question.
“Errr, no. There was no one in my life I felt that could inspire or even share that experience. Rachel, I’ve been hurting since I lost the baby. I felt I couldn’t love anything again, that I couldn’t even love myself after what happened.”
“I’m so sorry. You deserve to be loved and to love, Nia. We all do,” Rachel offered.
“I,” Nia hesitated, “I think I am now.”
“You are, sweetie. Still too early for future plans?” Rachel asked.
Rachel’s bluntness was surprising to Nia, forcing her to go to thoughts she was burying.
“I think we’re both taking it day to day. Seeing how it plays out,” Nia said a little defensively.
“You know that there’s still time, Nia?”
Nia was surprised. “Time for what?” she hesitantly asked.
“You’re what now, early forties? There’s still time for the whole relationship thing, picket fence, garden all that,”
“Well, I kind of have that now.”
“Do you think you’d ever want children? There’s still time for that too.”
Nia was stunned by what she perceived as Rachel’s insensitivity. It stung and hurt her especially after Nia had considered she had shared a moment of deep intimacy, of her exposing her deepest most vulnerable secret to Tom’s sister. Rachel smiled reassuringly and squeezed Nia’s shoulder as she stood and proceeded to clear away the tea service. Nia heard an outside door open a room away and heard the happy chatter of Owain and Tom’s return. She stood and wiped her eyes again. “Fuck,” she thought. “I do have time.” But she also knew that there wasn’t a lot of time, her biological window was shutting slowly but inexorably, but there was time. And, now, perhaps, just perhaps, there was a man. A man with kind eyes and, more importantly, a kind and open heart. Would he want children? Her mind went to so many different places, “He was nice to the mum with the toddler at the airport,” she thought. “But he’s never mentioned kids — but then why would he? And, fuck, he lives on a tiny boat.”
Tom entered the room, still wearing the purple paper crown from his Christmas cracker, and went over and hugged Nia. He saw her eyes were red and puffy.
“Oh God,” he said, “what did Rachel say now?”
Nia smiled and shook her head slightly and Tom understood that it was something that Nia didn’t want to talk about. Nia smiled and squeezed his hand and changed the subject.
Later, as they prepared for bed in the room that was considered Tom’s farmhouse bedroom, Nia explained that she had been momentarily upset over the discussion with Rachel over finances. Tom apologized, but, with a smile, explained that Nia didn’t have to ever worry about him being a gold digger. As they settled into the comfort and warmth of the moment before sleep, Nia reached her hand down her body to her tummy. She let it rest there for a moment before turning to spoon Tom. She felt Tom’s body relax into sleep as she attempted to banish thoughts of motherhood from her consciousness. She lay awake trying to think of other things. Tom twitched next to her. Nia had become accustomed to Tom’s occasional physical and audible manifestations of his dreaming. He never remembered his dreams, but Nia could sense the way Tom would tense in the throes of a dream that he was probably back in Iraq or Afghanistan. Tonight, unownable to Nia, he was in Afghanistan, in theatre.
***
Afghanistan, Eight Years Previously
Captain Tom Price had been seconded to a small, tough detachment of Canadian special forces serving deep on the northern border. There had been rumours of arms for drugs transfers with the arms coming from Uzbekistan to be traded for the Taliban’s raw opium. Opium bound for the Russian market. After a number of missions that came to naught, the group had received actionable intelligence and found themselves observing a small village at the mouth of a valley trailhead that wound its way up and through the mountains. The Canadians were tired, it had been a long slog through difficult terrain to get to this point and they were nervous, not quite trusting the intelligence they received from local friendlies.
The Canadian commander, Captain Jacques Gagnon, a tough Quebecer with the longest red beard Price had ever seen, was observing the village through night vision binoculars. He pointed towards the village and Price, who was lying prone next to him, focused his own optics. Through the green haze, Price could see a small group of armed locals emerge from the village and move towards a dusty field. Gagnon radioed his men who had been sent to flank the village. Unseen by Gagnon, Price, and the Taliban, the Canadian soldiers began to move towards the field. Through his night vision binoculars, Price saw the Taliban stop. They all turned to face north.
“Something’s coming from the mountains,” he told Gagnon.
They heard it before they could see it.
“A chopper,” said Gagnon.
The Russian Mi-17 transport helicopter swooped down out of the valley at a nearly impossible angle just a few feet above the ground. Incredible manoeuvres all the more impressive in the dark without lights.
“Fucking Russians,” Gagnon exclaimed.
The Mi-17 came to a perfect landing in the dry field. Both Price and Gagnon, having spent quite a bit of time in helicopters and hating them, recognised a skilled pilot at work.
“That’s not the first time he’s done that,” Price said.
He began taking pictures of the events through his binoculars.
On the ground, the helicopter’s crew were quickly conducting business with the Taliban. Price was able to focus on what looked like the Russian commander. He recognized the face from the Bagram briefing.
“Fuck,” he said. “It’s Zalkind.”
Feodor Zalkind, sometime trade attaché at the Russian Embassy in Kabul. Sometime foreign service diplomat, but always full time GRU intelligence officer. The rumours of him supplying explosives for Taliban and al-Qaeda IEDs were now fact. The Russians liked nothing more than to make things difficult for the Western militaries.
“High priority target,” Price noted.
“Let’s slot the fucker,” Gagnon said.
Down below them in the field, a Taliban fighter reacted as if he heard something. He dropped what he was carrying to the Mi-17 and unslung his AK. Price could hear shouting before the assault rifles bloomed fire and death. Tracer fire leapt across the field and valley side and then, suddenly the deep darkness was further rift by flares, the Canadians were caught in the open with little cover. A heavy machine gun from the Mi-17 opened up and rocket propelled grenades snaked from the field and the village to where Gagnon and Price knew their comrades were.
Gagnon radioed for air support while Price opened up with his own rifle trying to give the Canadians in the field some covering fire. The Canadians’ chatter through Price’s earpiece was loud and indistinct. Then, the helicopter’s heavy machine gun swung towards him and Gagnon and bullets raked across the berm they had taken cover behind. It moved on as suppressing fire came from one of the Canadian groups on the ground. Back on the berm, Price sighted on Zalkind as the Russian was entering the Mi-17. He fired, saw the Rus
sian duck, and saw a bullet hole emerge in the helicopter’s aluminium skin. Zalkind closed the cabin door and the helicopter began to elevate. Price fired more times seeing his bullets strike the Mi-17 but to no serious effect. The helicopter continued to rise while its cargo door machine gunner laid down a constant stream of fire towards the dug-in Canadians. Price, angry and frustrated that he had missed Zalkind, fired at the machine gunner.
More Taliban emerged from the village adding to the suppressing fire. Gagnon ordered his men to fall back while the vicious fire fight continued. Price saw an isolated group of Canadians about to be outflanked and he ran down the berm to where he could see the nearest group of friendlies. He continued to fire his rifle, swapping magazines on the run. He slid into the shallow depression where the four Canadian troopers were lying. Two fully engaged with the enemy, one injured but alert, while the other soldier lay on his back, eyes fully wide but looking unresponsive. There was a lot of blood.
Taliban fighters approached through the Canadians’ fire. Price aimed his rifle and fired. Nothing happened. He was out of ammo. He reached down to his holster and drew his Sig Sauer side arm. He flicked the safety catch off just in time to fire twice at the nearest Taliban fighter. Price saw his bullets strike and the Afghan crumpled. The Canadians drove off the other Taliban.
Price holstered his pistol and reloaded his rifle.
“Give me all the suppressing fire you can then fall back to the berm,” he shouted. He grabbed the unresponsive soldier, threw him over his shoulder, and ran back for the berm. Puffs of dirt arose around his feet like deadly weeds. He zigged and zagged. He could see Gagnon firing and ran for him. He dropped the wounded soldier and ran back, zagging and zigging, for the second injured man. The Canadians in the depression gave him enough time to hoist the soldier over his shoulder and they joined him on the run back to the berm. Then Price heard jet engines roaring from the south and a couple of US Marine Harriers appeared. The Harriers’ cannon and missiles drove the Taliban back to the village and the Canadians extricated themselves. They retreated to the prearranged emergency egress point carrying their wounded, and their dead, with them.
Gagnon and Price made official after-action reports. They had the photographic evidence that Zalkind was trading drugs for guns. Their superiors noted that the Russians reported a Mi-17, on a diplomatic mission, had gone down killing all on board, including one of their Kabul based attachés. They weren’t willing to pursue the international incident any further. Neither Gagnon nor Price believed any of it.
Later, over beers at Bagram, Gagnon told Tom that if he ever bumped into Zalkind again he’d kill him to avenge the death of his troopers.
***
Kensington, London, Russian Embassy. Present Day
The former Major Zalkind, now Colonel Kamenev, was frustrated with his inability to find the face from the BFI. He had engaged a skilled SRV analyst to help try to place the Brit. They searched again through their photo file of Western intelligence and military agencies; individual faces, glossy eight by tens, photofits, faces in crowds at meetings and public occasions. None appeared to match his memory. Kamenev suggested the analyst search for friends and acquaintances of a British actor, Nia Williams. She had stuck in his memory from her role in the vampire movie which had been the atrocious film’s highpoint and from her presence at the BFI, all thick dark hair and impressive cleavage.
The next morning, Kamenev, bleary eyed, returned to the embassy after only a couple of hours’ rest. Coffee in hand, he went to the analyst’s station and was greeted with a big toothy grin, “I think I’ve found him, sir.” Kamenev expected some computer photofit image and was surprised when the analyst, brought up the online morning edition of one of London’s free newspapers. He enlarged a photo.
“Is this the man you are after?” the analyst, a studious young man from Irkutsk, asked.
Kamenev sat at the analyst’s chair. There was Nia, big smile, camera flash reflecting off her emerald necklace and there behind her, nervous grin, was the Brit.
“Yes. That’s him,” Kamenev said. He turned to the analyst, “Well done, son.”
Kamenev returned to the computer. And read the caption:
“Nia Williams, the Welsh Spitfire, wows at the BFI. Nia Williams, 44, made a rare red-carpet appearance at last night’s BFI Southbank event. Nia, who just returned from filming in Canada attended with a new man in her life, Tom Price…”
The Russian zoomed in on the photo so that Tom’s face enlarged. “Tom Price, my friend, who the devil, are you?” Kamenev said in public school English. He turned to the analyst. “Print that out,” he ordered in Russian.
Kamenev made his way to the SVR Rezident’s office. The Rezident was a grizzled veteran of the intelligence game. A former KGB officer, he was a short timer now on a glide path to a welcome retirement. He had been given the London Rezident’s chair as a nod of recognition to his devoted service to the state. Service that began when Russia’s intelligence agency had different initials, was all powerful, and all brutal. He missed the prestige and fear that the old agency had engendered, but he didn’t miss the domestic and international brutality, he had never fully embraced the iron fist of state security. He recognised that the old violence and the cruelty had begun creeping back into Russian domestic politics and its foreign relations. He didn’t like it and, indeed, it now confronted him in the seat across his desk as he leant back in his chair and listened to Kamenev’s story. He knew Kamenev and Zalkind were one and the same. He was aware of Kamenev’s past and knew that the FSB man was rapaciously ambitious. He also knew that Kamenev and his various teams of thugs had put men in the ground from Afghanistan to Chechnya, Syria to Istanbul, and from Sweden to England’s Home Counties.
The Rezident had initially objected to Kamenev’s posting as he objected to the mission and the man. He also hated the power shift in Moscow that resulted in the expansion of the FSB’s power and operating authority at the expense of his SVR. The cagey old Rezident thought it incredibly arrogant and dangerous that Moscow would have ordered another direct action against a Russian dissident living in the UK. FSB arrogance. Madness, he thought, to do this so soon after the attempt on Sergei Skripal, the Russian double agent who had worked for MI6. Skripal and his daughter had survived being poisoned by a nerve agent, but an innocent English bystander was killed, and the dirty operation was exposed to the world’s press and opprobrium. Yet the attack on Skripal, the Rezident recalled, had instilled a heightened level of fear among the émigré opponents of the Kremlin. Many had gone silent, others went deeper underground, a few brave souls maintained their vocal opposition of Putin and the Kremlin. Kamenev was looking to quiet such voices.
The Rezident was secretly relieved to hear Kamenev’s report about being recognised at the BFI event believing, now, that it would end the scheme to kidnap or kill Daria Kirov, the influential émigré Russian journalist and activist. He was convinced that the plan was at an end. He looked at Kamenev smugly.
“So, what would you recommend as a course of action?” he asked.
“I’d like to find out more about this Tom Price. If he is someone from my past, my mission here could be jeopardised,” Kamenev said. “I’d like to put the actress under surveillance and, when Price shows up to see her, put him under surveillance until we know who and what he is. I don’t want anything to derail my task here. If he could cause a problem, then I propose that he be… removed from the equation.”
“Is it, is he, that important?” the Rezident asked.
“It is that important,” Kamenev replied brusquely.
The SVR man rubbed his chin; he had shaved poorly that morning. He couldn’t disguise his apprehension.
“Okay, I can make a surveillance team available… but just for surveillance. Time and resources, being what they are, means I can’t do any more than that.”
“Thank you,” Kamenev said almost with a sneer. “And if I require more than a bunch of watchers? If I need help… persuading M
r Price?”
The Rezident calmly leant over his desk and put his hands together almost in prayer.
“Colonel Kamenev, after the Skripal fuck up, the UK now watches our every move. Do you know that there are over half a million CCTV cameras in this city? We can’t move without MI5 or Special Branch following us. So, there will be no… extra curricula activities in this case unless I explicitly say so, is that understood? Furthermore, I am going to call Moscow with my recommendation that the mission be cancelled or at least postponed.”
Kamenev sulked. “Yes,” and, after a pause, “sir. That is understood. I’ll note in my report that SVR offered limited assistance in a matter that could be of utmost importance for state security.”
The old SVR man again leant back in his chair and a smile cracked his face. “I will also be recommending that Moscow recall you for impertinence and behaving like a jackass with the English bourgeois elite.”
Kamenev stood, “You do that, you old fool. I think you’ll find that I have more friends in Moscow and at the Kremlin, than you could possibly imagine.”
“Kamenev, I’m the Rezident here. Checkmate. Now fuck off… but do keep me appraised.”
Kamenev left the office clearly in a huff. The SVR man got up stiffly from his desk and moved to the window and his view of London. He liked the city, he liked the people, he liked the food and drink and he would be sorry to leave. Sorry, also, to leave the role in the hands of upstart imperious arseholes like Kamenev.
Chapter Fifteen
London, Nia’s house, January 10th
Nia woke to her alarm. As always, her house was cold. She lay in bed enjoying its warmth but missing Tom. It was a feeling that she knew would only deepen through the two weeks she’d be away on a closed TV shoot. She had been offered a role in a BBC drama to be filmed in Wales. Partly, Jane told her, on the strength of her appearance at the BFI event. She was a last-minute replacement for an actor whose Welsh accent had failed muster. Nia was also attracted to the part in the 1920s costume drama about the closed mindset in the Welsh village and its gradual opening in the shape of a dynamic teacher all the way from England. The charismatic teacher, still recovering from the horrors of the first world war, was the lead character. Nia would play the wife of the village’s cruel and reactionary Baptist preacher. The preacher’s wife would become a quiet ally to the teacher and his modernised curriculum but not the object of his affection. That role went, of course, to a much younger actress. Nia, in this case, didn’t mind the obvious ageism at work. The script was good, her role meaty, and she knew the director was a good one. Nia had been alarmed that the lead role had gone to Goldenboy, but as there would be no on-screen romance with Goldenboy and, after chatting with Tom, she had accepted the role. She had spent a busy week alone learning her lines.
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