by Tim Stevens
*
Through the windows of the cabin the sky was changing almost perceptibly to slate. Below, a light ground fog blurred the details of the fields and the sparse network of roads between them. The weather didn’t matter greatly, Venedikt reflected. The handshake would take place in anything short of a hurricane.
He sat on the bench facing Fallon, forcing himself not to prowl about the cabin. Dobrynin was leaning into the cockpit and asking something of Leok and Lyuba, the pilot and co-pilot. Dobrynin was as excited, as moved as he was, Venedikt knew. He was simply more reserved in his personality and therefore didn’t let it show.
Two missiles would have been ideal, one as backup for the other. The finances wouldn’t have been a problem. The haul from the hijacking of the bank vans would have stretched to a second one. Availability was the stumbling block, as the arms dealer had told him. The missile was one of the most sought-after pieces of weaponry in the world, and therefore the most closely guarded. Still, one would be enough.
The dealer had given Venedikt a choice of warhead. After consultation with Dobrynin he had gone for the Penetration/Blast/Fragmentation warhead rather than the High Explosive Anti-Tank round. There was no armour to be penetrated, and the PBF had bunker-busting capability and in terms of destructive power over a wider area it was the surer option. The War Memorial would be destroyed, of course. Had it not been for the context, Venedikt would have baulked at this. But the symbolic power of such an outrage… it was almost as important that the Memorial fall as that the President be sacrificed.
The window was a wide one. The handshake was scheduled to take place at eight a.m. precisely. Even if there were a delay – Venedikt doubted it would take place ahead of time, these things never did – he had a radio link to the memorial site to guide him. The handshake would last a good few minutes for the benefit of the world’s cameras. Then the two leaders would step up to their podiums and deliver their respective speeches of hope. Perhaps twenty, thirty minutes in total. The missile travelled at a velocity of one hundred and fifty metres per second. Over ten kilometres, that amounted to a little more than one minute from firing to impact.
A wide window, indeed.
The Black Hawk was capable of a speed just under three hundred kilometres per hour. There was no reason to hurry, and Leok and Lyuba kept it at well below a third of the maximum velocity. Beyond the smudged rim of the horizon, past the fields and the treetops, Venedikt began to catch the glitter and shift of the sea.
*
Encased in his crowded coffin, aware of the pressing down of at least one human body on the lid, Purkiss felt the claustrophobia ram its suffocating fist down his throat. All that stopped him from crying out, pounding on the wood inches from his face, was the knowledge of what would follow.
Instead he concentrated on his phone, staring at the backlit blue face as though by force of will he could summon a signal into being. By his watch they had been airborne for ten minutes. Assuming they were heading out to sea, as he suspected, they would by his estimate still be over land, and certainly potentially in range of a phone mast.
It was ingenious, he had to admit it, now that he understood what they were going to do. Purkiss was no expert on missile systems but he remembered reading something about the new Israeli development, a missile that could reach its target at a range of fifteen miles without the target’s having to be in sight of the person operating the launcher. The exclusion zone for air traffic around the War Memorial had a radius of ten kilometres, Elle had said. Fifteen miles was twenty-five kilometres. There’d be plenty to spare.
He blinked, moved the phone an inch back from his face to make sure of what he thought he’d seen. A single bar had crept into the upper left hand corner of the screen. Weak, but a signal.
He had already composed the text message a few minutes earlier. He pressed “send”. As he waited, the words that he assumed to be Estonian for “sending message” flashing at the top of the screen, their pulse almost mocking in its languor – don’t get your hopes up, friend – he reread the message.
It’s Purkiss. I’m hidden on board a Black Hawk heading out over the sea. They plan to use a long-range missile to make the hit. They have Fallon prisoner. I believe they have him on board & intend to leave his body in the wreckage of the chopper so it looks like SIS was responsible. You have to alert the authorities & they need to find us & shoot us down.
A smiley face filled the screen. Message sent.
*
The handset made a tiny chirrup. The Jacobin grabbed it off the seat and stared at it, negotiating the bends in the country lane with one hand on the wheel. The signal had been reestablished. Purkiss was on the radar again.
Instead of the stationary pulse centred in the airfield that the Jacobin had been expecting, the beacon was on the move, crossing fields, moving steadily across boundaries such as walls and streams. Purkiss was in the helicopter.
Three possibilities. One, Kuznetsov had him prisoner on board the chopper as planned, and had for some bizarre reason allowed him to keep his phone. Two, Purkiss had command of the machine and was either flying it himself – virtually impossible – or forcing Kuznetsov’s pilots to take it to some unknown destination. Or, three, Purkiss had stowed away on it.
Whichever was correct, there was only one course of action to take. He dropped the phone back on the seat, seized the wheel, and gunned the engine.
*
As a schoolboy Purkiss had developed the involuntary habit of waking seconds before his alarm went off in the mornings. He would lie paralysed by the lingering grip of sleep, anticipation of the blare from the clock radio rising in his chest to a peak of terror. He felt that way now, eyes on the tiny screen, fist slick around the handset, waiting for the reply.
Fallon, I got you in the end, he thought bleakly. It was too late to hear what the man had promised to tell him. He should have pressed him harder while they were imprisoned together in the basement. But he suspected it was all bluff. Fallon had no stunning revelations to offer. It was more likely to be a last-ditch torrent of blather to try to achieve absolution for his crimes.
It would be quick, Purkiss supposed. The Estonian security forces would scramble fighter jets with air-to-air missiles. There would be no messing about with close-combat artillery, no opportunity for Kuznetsov and his crew to go down in a blaze of defiance. Boxed in his coffin, Purkiss wouldn’t hear the end coming. All of which assumed that Elle had got his text message and could persuade the authorities quickly enough of the seriousness of the threat. It assumed that the air force could locate the Black Hawk in time, before Kuznetsov and his crew discovered that Purkiss had raised the alarm and took evasive action.
The reply came then. Purkiss didn’t register the words on the screen, was unaware of anything but the tone that heralded the arrival of the text, loud as a blast in the confined space, a double ting sound like the tapping of a spoon against the rim of an empty glass to gain an audience’s attention before an after-dinner speech.
Didn’t think of that, did you, forgot to mute it.
Purkiss knew it had been heard outside his hiding place too, because from beyond the lid he heard a muffled cry and a creak as the weight shifted on the lid.
Thirty-Eight
The man was a surly old walrus, moustache and fingers the same nicotine sienna. He stared through the haze from his rollup with eyes stewed in last night’s booze.
‘You’re out early.’
‘I wanted to get away from the crowds back in town.’
‘You’re not interested in the handshake?’
The Jacobin shrugged. ‘Big deal. People make friends, they fall out again. Round it goes.’
The man was old enough to have been a child during the war. He gave half a laugh. ‘Isn’t that the truth.’ He sat up straight on his stool, dropping ash on the newspaper spread on the counter before him. ‘What can I do for you?’
The Jacobin told him: something fast. He took out his wallet and f
anned the notes. Money no object.
The old man squinted through the smoke, nodded. ‘Got just the thing. Come on.’
It bobbed among the small collection at the jetty, dull white in the morning gloom, a Finnish make, not brand new but well cared for.
‘Handles exceptionally well, and I can’t say that for some of these other buckets,’ the old man said. ‘Inboard motor, as you can see. Maximum speed a hundred and ten knots.’
Back in the office the Jacobin exchanged keys for cash. The old man eyed him. ‘You all right? You look like you’ve had a rough night.’
‘Touch of asthma. The morning cold always makes it play up. I’ll be fine.’
‘Good, because I want my boat back.’
The Jacobin accepted the man’s offer of a waxed jacket to go over his suit. He climbed aboard. He wasn’t an experienced speedboater, but the controls were easy enough to grasp. The engine started smoothly, its low rumble comforting beneath his thighs.
‘Keep clear of town,’ called the old man. ‘They’ll torpedo you if you get too close.’
The Jacobin nosed away from the jetty. Ahead the grey sea stirred, annoyed by this new intrusion.
*
Venedikt glanced sharply across at Dobrynin and saw he too had heard it. Some sort of sharp clinking of metal. He tensed, muscles bunching, hand moving to the pistol at his hip.
Across from them the Englishman, Fallon, arched his back sideways, his lumpish clotted face twisted in a grimace. Through lips of rubber he muttered: ‘Seatbelt.’
‘What’s the matter? You want it on?’ Venedikt laughed. ‘Afraid you might hurt yourself if we stop suddenly?’
‘Digging into my back.’
Dobrynin strode across the cabin and pulled Fallon forward by his collar. He fumbled at the small of his back and cast free the ends of the seatbelt. Venedikt relaxed. It was the movement of the parts of the buckle that had made the chinking noise. Fallon heaved his bottom up and down a few times, taking advantage of the marginal improvement in his comfort, until Venedikt said, ‘Stop that.’
Up ahead in the cockpit, Leok and Lyuba were exchanging low remarks. The Black Hawk was proceeding northwards, keeping well clear of the no-fly zone, before it began its eastward turn and, at the end, its full swing to face back towards the shore.
Seven twenty-seven.
*
Inside the bench Purkiss cringed, breath held, readying his fists and his legs to emerge doing as much damage as he could before they cut him down. Instead of being raised, the lid creaked and bore down harder as if the weight on it were increasing. He heard, distinctly, Fallon’s voice. It sounded like he said seatbelt in Russian.
Then another voice, further but still close, Kuznetsov’s this time. Something about Fallon’s not hurting himself.
Then a series of thumps on the lid. He recoiled at each one. A bark from Kuznetsov.
Silence followed.
Slowly, controlling the sound, Purkiss exhaled. Fallon too had heard the tone made by the arriving text message, had recognised what it was. Had realised Purkiss was on board the aircraft, and had covered it up. Unbelievable reflexes, in his beaten-up condition.
Purkiss found the “mute” button and pressed it. He read the message while his heartbeat slowed to normal.
Working on a GPS fix on your phone at the moment. So Fallon not working with Kuznetsov, then. Kendrick asks what sort of missile?
Two pieces of good news, then. They were both alive, Elle and Kendrick, and they had access to tracking technology, which meant the chopper would be easier to locate.
He typed back: Fallon apparently also trying to stop Kuznetsov. One missile that I could see, five to six feet long, wings, no markings. I suspect of Israeli origin, non-line-of-sight. He hesitated, added: Any sign of Teague? before deciding this was irrelevant for the moment. He deleted it and wrote instead, Have you alerted the security forces?
An age passed, during which he heard nothing more than the steady drone of the Black Hawk’s twin engines. He checked his watch. Seven thirty-eight. At the very least they might be able to evacuate the area around the War Memorial in time.
The screen lit up, silently this time. Kendrick says probably right about the missile, if so it’ll have a tank- or bunker-busting warhead, v. messy. Got a fix on you with the tracker.
He waited for a follow-up message. When one didn’t come, he thumbed in: Have you told the security forces?
In a moment: No. We’re coming to get you ourselves.
Purkiss closed his eyes, hard, until the stars began to flare redly behind the lids. He sent a reply.
There’s no time. This chopper has to be shot down.
And immediately back: No.
God damn them, both of them. He resisted the urge to crush the handset in his fist.
*
The signal on his phone was struggling to stay alive. It didn’t matter any more, because the Jacobin saw it, distant enough that it seemed to be hovering but actually moving away from him, several knots away to the northeast.
He kept up the speed, but eased the wheel to the left so that he was heading due north in parallel with the course of the helicopter, the sharp stern of the boat slicing a thin furrow through the water’s flesh. Far on the horizon to the west was a large ship, a freighter of some sort, making its early morning way towards Helsinki. Otherwise there was no traffic, the sea brooding alone under the brightening sky. In another six weeks the sea would go to sleep for the winter, frozen over until as late as next April.
It was time to make his decision. If Purkiss was hidden on board the Black Hawk, the Jacobin had to alert Kuznetsov in some way, and the only way to do so would be to approach and try to attract his attention and hope he was recognised from up in the air. If on the other hand Kuznetsov had Purkiss captive, then all the Jacobin could do was to wait for the hit to proceed, then try to persuade Kuznetsov not to use Purkiss’s and Fallon’s bodies as means to scapegoat SIS. Or perhaps retrieve the bodies from the wreckage himself.
The Jacobin was fairly certain Kuznetsov wouldn’t try to kill him. The man knew the Jacobin had insurance, in the form of a document to be opened by lawyers in the event of his death or disappearance, spilling the beans on the whole operation, which would negate any use of Purkiss and Fallon as scapegoats.
The Black Hawk was tilting slightly to the right, eastwards, drifting inwards at the beginning of the circling movement that would wheel it to face the shore at the beginning of the final phase. Its crew would be looking out for the backup boat – and, yes, there it was, a bigger and noisier craft than the Jacobin’s, steaming from the southeast some distance behind the Jacobin.
The backup crew. They would be able to provide access to Kuznetsov. The Jacobin began his own turn, to bring his boat across the path of the larger vessel.
*
Dobrynin tapped Venedikt’s arm and nodded at the window. Venedikt turned and craned, saw the boat approaching far below, its occupants unidentifiable at this distance. Venedikt knew them to be Raskov and two of the other men. There would be additional room on board for the four of them: himself, Dobrynin, Lyuba and Leok, assuming they all made it out alive.
It was going to be impossible to land the helicopter on the water. They had agreed that Leok and Lyuba would bring them as close to the surface as they dared, and then Venedikt and Dobrynin would leave the craft, with pilot and copilot following. The Black Hawk would rapidly spin out of control and would hit the surface. It was then that they would be in the most danger from the rotor blades and the wild bulk of the machine. Once aboard the boat, they would leave the Black Hawk and its remaining passenger – Fallon – to the mercies of the sea and of the fighter jets that would descend on it like wasps.
Venedikt strained his eyes. A smaller vessel, a speed boat, was veering towards Raskov’s, not heading directly at it but moving to head it off. There was a solitary figure aboard. Through the dim light and the spray from the boat’s passage Venedikt couldn’t make out wh
o it was. It was his turn to touch Dobrynin’s arm and point. Dobrynin got a pair of binoculars from a knapsack and peered thorugh them. He passed them to Venedikt, eyebrows raised.
Venedikt sharpened the image. The Englishman. What did he think he was doing?
An enormous cheer, loud enough to be heard above the chop of the rotors, drew his attention. He looked round. Dobrynin had turned up the portable radio he’d brought on board. The sounds from the War Memorial indicated that the convoy bearing the two presidents had arrived.
He turned back, picked up his phone and thumbed in Raskov’s number, saw movement on board the approaching boat as the man answered.
‘That speed boat approaching you,’ said Venedikt. ‘He’s friendly, I think. See what he wants. Don’t attack him unless he attacks you first.’
‘Understood.’
Seven fifty. In ten minutes’ time it would be done.
*
Still he heard only Kuznetsov’s voice, the words unclear. The tinny patter of radio sound he identified as constant background cheering, like that at a sports match. Purkiss assumed they had the radio on and were using it to monitor events at the site of the meeting.
Close by his ear, through the wood, came two distinct sounds. Taps, rather than creaks.
He held his breath again, waiting.
Just as he decided he’d misheard, they came again.
Two. Fallon was signalling him. Two men, obviously excluding the flight crew.
He didn’t dare tap back to indicate he’d understood.
It was useful information. Even if he didn’t know the precise locations of the two men, having a clear idea of the number of one’s opponents always improved confidence and speed. He’d have surprise on his side, too. The problem was, paradoxically, Fallon. He was seated directly above Purkiss, no doubt still bound. With his weight bearing down, Purkiss had no way of lifting the lid of the bench.