The Ninth Circle

by Dominic Adler

  The Ninth Circle

  By Dominic Adler

  Copyright © 2013, Dominic Adler

  All Rights Reserved

  This edition published in 2013 by:

  Thistle Publishing

  36 Great Smith Street

  London

  SW1P 3BU

  This one’s for PJA

  O creatures foolish, how great is that ignorance that harms you!

  Dante’s Inferno, Canto VII: Fourth Circle

  Contents

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Chapter Thirty Four

  Epilogue

  PROLOGUE

  The Ukraine / Belarus border

  January 2008

  I never liked the word assassin. I was a soldier once, and killing was soldier’s work. That’s what I told myself in the small hours, when Conscience made one of his occasional visits. When I looked assassin up in the dictionary, it said:

  Assassin (Noun)

  A person who murders an important person for political or religious reasons

  That ruled me out by a country mile. And although I was good at the job, proficiency at killing was a shallow skill-set. And it had got me into nothing but trouble.

  So I should have been interested when Harry told me that this job was different, with a twist on the usual killing people theme. He assured me that it was a sign of my progress, that I was being trusted with ‘this level of work.’

  The client wanted the target spoken to. The target had been made a final offer of employment and needed reminding that a decision was required. Then, if he declined, I was to revert to type. Which was all very well, but I was a wet-worker, not a careers advisor. The client was an American who spoke completely in euphemisms. Threats were proposals and kills were outcomes. Maybe the American had an MBA but had wandered into the wrong profession by accident. I reckoned that as long as the end of the job involved fiscal delivery, then I’d be happy.

  They gave me a codename, NEOPHYTE. I didn’t think much of it at the time. Just guessed it was more predictable CIA skulduggery, the sort we’d all gotten used to over the past few years.

  When I deployed and did a recce, I found the target depressingly mindful of his personal security. He took different routes to work every morning and home every night, driving the now familiar Mercedes, which sagged on its suspension under armour plating. He lived a half-hour drive from the barracks near Stara Vyzhivka, which had heavy security on account of him being a colonel in the HUR, the Ukrainian military intelligence service. Built like a truck, the target looked a proper handful and carried a big pistol in a shoulder holster. Occasionally a steroid-raddled bodyguard drove him home, when the Colonel was too drunk to get his car keys in the door of the Merc.

  One of my plans involved door-stepping him at home, another involved grabbing him on the way home from work. The last and most tempting involved just killing him and lying to the client about what had really happened. Sadly, I didn’t have a three-sided coin to toss. Having to find a venue for an afternoon of threats, followed by potential body shifting, was opening up a whole new vista of operational dilemmas.

  I’d been in Ukraine for a fortnight, spending the first snow-bound week at an agricultural engineering fair where I’d learnt a lot about tractors in-between sloping off to research the Colonel’s routine. Then I’d hooked up with a pretty working girl in Kovel and hired her for three times the going rate. I moved into her apartment and paid the rent. Ludmilla only gently taxed my wallet, grateful for my vanilla sexual tastes and good personal hygiene. She was also a reasonable cook, had a CD library full of vintage Acid Jazz and liked playing chess.

  At the end of the second week I parked at a road junction near the target’s office, the heater in my hired Volkswagen struggling against the brutal winter weather. The Colonel’s office was in an isolated army base, a low-rise cluster of boxy-grey concrete buildings half-buried in snow. I shivered, pretending to read Newsweek, the passport in my pocket showing me as a Canadian plant salesman called Brent Oliver. With the passport I got a wad of cash, an Amex card and my choice of things that go bang. I chose a suppressed Ruger .22 Hunter pistol for close work and an M14 SOPMOD rifle with a folding stock for anything else.

  The weapons had been delivered to my hotel during my first week in Ukraine, by a young American woman who looked like she baked Girl Scout cookies for a living. The guns were on the back seat now, covered with a blanket. As usual, the target drove past me at speed, into the woods and turning right. It was getting dark, the windscreen of my VW strafed by snow flurries. Helpfully, the Colonel’s car weaved about, suggesting he’d enjoyed the statutory local Friday afternoon vodka or two.

  And I meant bottles, not glasses.

  Back at the barracks, the great-coated soldier on the gate went back to reading the newspaper in his heated guard booth, the glowing amber tip of a cigarette marking his position.

  I followed the grimy Mercedes, the snow-storm obscuring the tail lights as it bumped along the rutted local roads. Either side of us was endless pine forest. Then brake lights glared and the Mercedes fish-tailed on the icy road. I saw something dart in front of us, a deer jerkily bouncing into the trees. As per my training I didn’t hit the brake, just steered into the skid to correct the course of my car.

  It was too late.

  I pushed my backside into the seat, anticipating the collision and air-bag deployment. My VW slid into the rear of the Mercedes with a grinding crunch, both vehicles sliding drunkenly into a shallow ditch at the side of the road. The fat white globe exploded in my face as I scrabbled for my seatbelt. I rolled my shoulders and pushed the airbag out of the way.

  I reached over and retrieved the M14 from the rear foot well. In front of me, the passenger door of the Mercedes swung open and the target’s Sasquatch-sized bodyguard squeezed himself out of the car. This wasn’t part of the plan. I’d not spotted him when the Colonel had left the barracks.

  Opening my door, I rolled out of the car into the snow-filled ditch and crawled towards the Mercedes. It was like jumping into a frozen swimming pool. I caught my breath as the cold worked its way into my clothes.

  “Sir?” said a gruff voice.

  “Help!” I shouted in Russian, readying my rifle, “I’m hurt!”

  “Fuck you! You drive like an idiot,” yelled the bodyguard.

  I looked to my right. The driver’s door opened and the target fell out into the ditch. His name was Colonel Vasilly Petrovych. He wore a grey military parka with a fur-lined hood over his grey-green uniform. And he was drunk, lying on his back and gazing up at the sky.

  “Colonel!” shouted the bodyguard, now out of sight and to my left. I peered over the top of the
ditch to see him walking towards me, pistol drawn.

  My cold weather clothing made me feel lagged, like an old-fashioned boiler. I rolled towards the edge of the ditch, rifle cradled in my arms. Crouching, I elevated the weapon, firing as soon as I saw the bodyguard look down at me. The snow-smothered forest swallowed the noise of the M14, the 7.62 round tearing through his chin and palate, exiting his head just behind his left ear. He staggered for a moment then fell backwards into the snow.

  “Stop!” said another voice.

  Then I heard the crack and pop of gunfire behind me.

  Oh shit. I flinched as incoming rounds whistled through the branches near my head, felt my arse twitch the way it always does on a two-way range. Looking back down the road, another grimy Mercedes saloon had stopped twenty-five metres behind us. Two big men wearing grey winter uniforms crouched behind the engine block, pointing pistols at me. The target had never had a back-up car before. It couldn’t be an ambush: if they were expecting me then presumably the Colonel would be less refreshed.

  It was more likely bad luck. I’d picked up two more HRU officers on their way home from work.

  My luck is often like that.

  Behind me the Colonel was trying to get up, wondering what was going on. His fur ushanka fell off, and he pawed at it in that comedy-irritated way drunk people do. Breathless, I rested the M14 on its bipod on the edge of the ditch, lined up the car in the Trijicon sights. My frost-numbed finger squeezed the trigger. The first round hit the front passenger window, splintering it, the second gouging a hole in the chassis above the front wheel arch. The Ukrainian officers ducked back down as I peppered the front of the car with bullets, 7.62 rounds slicing through the Mercedes like paper. Superior firepower builds confidence, and my arse twitched slightly less.

  I was sliding another magazine into the M14 when Colonel Petrovych leapt on my back, knocking me forwards into the butt plate of the rifle, gashing open my forehead. I rolled into the snow, the big Ukrainian pummelling me with his meaty fists and growling like a forest animal. Back up the road I heard more shouting. I scrambled from underneath Petrovych and hit him in the nose with a heel-palm strike, breaking it with an audible crack. He lurched backwards, grunting and spitting blood.

  We both looked at my rifle, as more pistol shots rang out. Snow fell like an icy white curtain, our cars barely visible. Petrovych darted forward, fast for such a big man. I pivoted to my right and brought my booted foot up into his groin. Eyes bulging, he fell to his knees, groaning. Grabbing the back of his shaved head with both hands, I rammed his face into my knee until he fell back into the bloody snow.

  The first HRU officer was sliding on ice, pistol pushed out in front of him. He fired, the bullet hitting my padded jacket and passing through the sleeve. I let the bolt slide forward on the M14 and squeezed the trigger, the round hitting him in the guts. Disembowelled, He staggered to the edge of the ditch. I fired two more shots into his head and fell, panting, as his carcass tumbled past me. Glistening, brain-speckled viscera splashed on my collar and face.

  “Dmitri!” called a voice.

  Holding my rifle clear of the snow with my right hand, I scurried along the ditch towards the Colonel’s Mercedes, slithering to the front of the car. The last HRU man hopped down, pistol held ready as he looked at his dead colleague then the semi-conscious Colonel.

  He glanced up, like a hunted deer that could smell me on the wind. Our eyes met. He was no more than ten metres away.

  “No,” he hissed. His voice was urgent and high-pitched. He tossed the pistol to the ground and put his hands in the air.

  I shouldered the M14, the HRU officer’s forehead lined up on the stadia marks of the telescopic sight. Breathing out smoothly, I squeezed the trigger with the pad of my finger. The recoil from the rifle bit into my shoulder.

  He wouldn’t have felt a thing.

  I rubbed my brow, where the rifle had gashed my face. Then, dragging the bodies of the bodyguard and the two HRU interlopers back to the second Mercedes, I reversed it as far as it would go into the woods. I hurriedly covered the front of the vehicle with branches and foliage, the snow already beginning to conceal my handiwork.

  Colonel Petrovych was still unconscious: I duct-taped his mouth and cuffed his hands behind his back. He was a tight fit in the hatchback of the VW but it would have to do. My muscles burned from hauling the bodies through the snow, sweat itching at the back of my neck. Leaving the Colonel’s car in the ditch, I gunned the engine of the VW, along a forest trail, the snow chains chewing at ice and rocks. I hit the M19 motorway and headed north, towards the desolate border with Belarus.

  Two hours later I was digging, icy sweat rolling down my flanks. My shovel chipped away at the frozen earth like a toothpick against rock. Behind me the car rattled unhappily, lemon-coloured headlights illuminating the grave as I stopped and reached for the thermos flask. It was made up of fifty per cent sweet black coffee and fifty per cent cheap vodka. Snow tickled my nose as I finished it. It was thirsty work.

  The snowfall was heavier as I opened the boot. Colonel Petrovych lay curled in a ball, bloody spittle dribbling down his chin. I ripped off the length of duct-tape covering his mouth. He stank of booze. “I told them I wasn’t interested!” he spat, soberer than he had any right to be, “fucking Americans!”

  “I’m meant to give you one last chance,” I grunted “to change your mind and come across.” There. I’d said it. Mission accomplished.

  “Then you’ve figured out my answer,” he replied, nodding at the grave. “Why didn’t you make me dig that?”

  “What sort of bastard makes a man dig his own grave?” I grimaced.

  Petrovych looked me in the eye. His pasty face was the colour of dirty snow. “I need to make my confession.”

  “Do I look like a priest, Colonel?”

  “You’re drunk enough,” he coughed, although it might have been a laugh, “and so am I.”

  I crouched down by the intelligence officer, shivering now I’d stopped digging. I found another flask and let the Colonel have some vodka-laced coffee. Then I held a Sobranie to his lips and let him have a drag. “I’m trying to give up,” I said.

  Colonel Petrovych had some stuff he wanted to get off his chest before he died. Mainly about times like this, when he was the guy with some poor bastard trussed-up in the boot of his car. He confessed the number of times he’d cheated on his wife, his regrets that his kids hated him and how he’d wished he’d been a footballer instead.

  “Are you done, Colonel?” I said gently, glancing at my watch.

  “I think so” he mumbled, “you do know what this is about, don’t you?”

  I was stumped by the question, “not exactly. Apparently you know the score if you want to accept the American offer.”

  “Anti-ballistic missiles” he laughed, “the bastard Yankees want to build their missile defence bases here. We’ve already got their secret prisons full of Arabs. I helped them accomplish that, and this is the thanks I get.” He spat noisily into the snow.

  I shrugged. Lie with dogs and you get fleas, as my old man used to say. He used to sell used quality cars in South London, so he knew what he was talking about.

  “I am now, for my sins, working in strategic missile intelligence” growled the colonel, “I am not a great strategist and I know fuck-all about missiles.”

  “Sounds like the army,” I said.

  “Exactly so, but I have the ear of the minister, he is my cousin. Your American friends want me to sell my country out, pay me to manipulate my cousin. Persuade him that their missiles are a good thing for Ukraine. They can fuck off. I have had enough.”

  “So? Everybody wants to build missiles, right? That’s the sort of shit that got Saddam into trouble.”

  “Saddam didn’t have missiles,” glowered the Colonel. He’d told me what this was about now, tainted me with the curse of cognisance. We both knew it. He gave a tight smile, his bloodshot eyes boring into mine.

  “Okay” I sai
d softly, easing him out of the car and helping stagger to the graveside, his ankles duct-taped, “I was there, in Iraq. I was a soldier. I know he didn’t have any bloody missiles.”

  Colonel Petrovych sagged to his knees as we reached the grave, snow spattering his face. His uniform jacket flapped open in the wind, rows of medals mocking me. I’ve got a couple of gongs myself. I wouldn’t wear them anymore. I helped him to the edge, felt him tremble through his thick winter uniform.

  “Get on with it, then, if you’re going to do it” growled Petrovych, chin jutting as he readied himself.

  I nodded, reached for the pistol. The Ruger was tucked in the back of my jeans, but had worked its way inside my long-johns. I’d been too cold to notice.

  “Close your fucking eyes,” I said.

  “No,” he replied.

  I shot the Colonel twice, once in the heart and once in the forehead. With eyes wide open, he tumbled helpfully into his grave. The client was specific that he wanted Petrovych to disappear if he refused to come across, never be found. I didn’t know why, and I didn’t want to either.

  There’d been no need for a suppressor out here, in the forest. I found myself thinking how quiet pistol shots sound in the snow. Grunting and swearing, I filled the grave back in then picked up the spent brass, pocketed it, and threw the shovel in the boot. Fresh snow continued to fall and would cover up my work by morning. But it would melt eventually. I guessed wild animals would pick his bones clean when he defrosted in the spring. Then maybe one day somebody would find some scraps of uniform, maybe a medal or two.

  Heading west, I drove hard all night. I was picked up by a dour American on the Polish side of the border the next morning. He relieved me of my hire car and weapons, booking me into a cheap hotel so I could shower and change. Twenty-four hours later I was in Prague, being debriefed by the American. He was called Ryan, and we discussed the quality of my work over pivo in some rough-around-the-edges Great Western. My pay, which was good, was wired into my Swiss bank account via the usual financial ping pong route between far-flung foreign banks.