“Roger.”
I got in the Volvo, brushing snow off the windscreen with my sleeve. Oz, accusing me of slacking, was expecting me over in Hackney later to take over observation duties. He and Andy had spent over twenty-four hours watching the Spartak Security office and come up with nothing. They’d not seen Misha Baburin or anybody else of interest. And I’d heard nothing from Alisa, Sergei sounded unconvinced and Harry was pissed off. This operation felt like it was going nowhere, that all the cards were held by Fyodor Volk.
I arrived in Hackney just after thirteen-hundred. Andy’s van was parked up on a junction looking towards the front of Spartak Security’s low-rise office building. A squat building made of grey concrete slabs, it had a yard next door where three liveried vans were parked.
Opening the back door of the Transit, I climbed in. Andy, wearing a black field jacket and a fleece hat, was crouched behind a camera with a Canon 600mm lens. The camera body was mounted on a black Manfrotto tripod and aimed forward through the cab. A small hatch had been cut in the cab wall between the front passenger seats to give a forward view. There was a similar arrangement at the back which allowed for a view depending on which way the vehicle was parked. Next to him was a personal role radio, a book of crossword puzzles, a flask and a lemonade bottle full of piss. I’d suggested a chemical toilet for the van but he was having none of it.
“Where’s Oz?” I whispered. I was carrying supplies: Mars Bars, another flask, sandwiches and a spare empty lemonade bottle.
“Went to get some scoff, he’s OK.”
I sat down on the vinyl-covered bench opposite him and helped myself to some coffee, “anything happening?”
The ex-SRR operator sighed. “Assorted meatheads come and go, there’s a bloke with a burglar alarm van who spends all day smoking in the car park, I’ve seen two cars get screwed by local kids and that’s about it mate.”
“So, nobody who looks like the boss?”
“Nope.”
We chatted for a bit, and told him about the men who attacked us last night.
“The Russian has a grass in the camp,” was his blunt assessment.
“Yeah, my thoughts exactly,” I said. “OK, off you go, get some sleep, the Volvo’s around the corner.” I tossed him the keys to my car.
“Good stuff Cal” said Andy, “I’m as stiff as a board.” He’d spent twenty-four hours in the van.
I took off my body armour and settled in behind the camera. I hate surveillance. Although soldiers are used to spending hours sitting around waiting for stuff to happen, it was my least favourite part of the job. On surveillance this is magnified to the power of ten. You can sit on a dead plot for weeks. Men like Andy, surveillance specialists, had a level of patience that I’d never developed. Jack, Sam and Clarkie’s boy, started sending me text messages on my spare phone. He’s ten and knows I was in the army with his dad, so he’s always asking me stupid questions about guns, fighting and action movies.
No, I texted him back, you can’t fire two machine guns, one in each hand.
And a few minutes later,
No I’ve never used a flame thrower and the army don’t use plasma rifles last time I checked.
Oz returned with food and newspapers. He whispered his hellos and stretched out on the opposite bench with the Toughbook. The idea was that he’d run comms back to Harry on a secure satellite phone, or do some open-source research on the internet if I saw anything interesting. In reality, he played chess against the computer and ate fast food.
It was almost dusk when the gleaming white Range Rover Sport pulled up outside the Spartak Security office. I started taking photos of the lump who climbed out and stood on the pavement, talking on his phone. He was easily six and a half feet tall, broad as a barn, wearing a white tracksuit and a black padded jacket with a fur-trimmed hood. He was joined by another track-suited gorilla.
“Did you get the registration of the vehicle?” breathed Oz quietly.
“Roger. It’s Sierra-Papa-Tango-Kilo-One. Cherish transfer number plate.”
“Very low-key” said Oz, “is it him?”
“Dunno” I whispered, “possibly. Phone it into Harry and see if he can get it checked.” I patted my pocket and found the memory stick Alisa had given me. “There’s an old prison mug shot of him on that, check it out.”
Oz picked up the satellite phone and called Harry, repeating the registration number. I don’t know how Harry gets vehicles checked. Maybe it’s a government thing via the Old Bill, or blagged through the DVLA or an insurance database. But he can get it done fairly quickly.
“Look at this,” said Oz, swivelling the laptop around so the screen faced me. The black and white image showed the head-and-shoulders of a big guy in his twenties with short dark hair and a flat boxer’s nose. I could see the edges of Russian gang tattoos creeping up his neck.
I peered back at the man on the pavement through the camera. Magnified, he had the same broken nose, was older and his hair was shorter. His winter parka covered any ink. “I’d say that was a positive identification.”
“Good drills” said Oz approvingly, “Andy will be gutted you made the spot only half an hour after he left.”
Misha Baburin finished his telephone call and went into the front door of his office. The other track-suited Gym Queen lit a cigarette and stood outside, oblivious to the cold. A lonely traffic warden looked at the Range Rover and hefted his little computer. The goon went up, said something and the traffic warden walked quickly away.
The satellite phone chirruped and Oz answered. He wrote something down and rang off. “Cal, that motor is registered to an English name at an address in Essex. Black Hall Farm, Southminster.”
“Where?”
“It’s on the Essex coast I think, up from Southend. It’s the middle of nowhere.” It made sense that Baburin would never register a car in his own name.
“OK, see if Harry can get anything on that address from the spooks. We’ll let Andy get some sleep then get him over there tomorrow.” If there’s anything Andy liked more than hiding in the back of vans and spying on people, it was hiding in holes in the countryside and spying on people.
We sat in silence and waited. After an hour a fat guy wearing overalls started locking the yard at the side of the office and Baburin appeared. Another car pulled up, a blue BMW on Polish number plates. The driver, an older guy wearing a smart suit, got out and gave him a hug. They spoke for a few minutes and then both got in the BMW and drove away. The second goon got in the Range Rover and followed them.
“Do you think Harry can check Polish number plates?” I thought out loud.
“We can ask I suppose” said Oz, “how about Alisa?”
I tapped Alisa’s number into my Blackberry. She answered immediately. “I said I’d phone you after I’d spoken to Moscow.”
“I’m at Misha Baburin’s, I need a check run on a Polish number plate, owner details.”
I heard the rustling of a notepad. “Go on.”
I repeated the BMW’s registration.
“That’s a Krakow number plate” she said, “leave it with me, we have people who can check that.”
I motioned at Oz to get ready to bug-out, “Baburin’s in that vehicle now, I want to know who he’s with. I’ve also got an address for him in Essex.”
Her voice brightened, “can you give it to me?”
“Yes, but can you promise not to do anything without discussing it with us?”
“Of course” she huffed, “we have a deal.”
I gave her the address of Black Hall farm and rang off. Oz climbed into the front of the van and drove off in the direction we’d last seen the BMW, north towards Stoke Newington. Stuck in traffic, we waited patiently for a call.
It was twenty long minutes before my phone went. We’d made it as far as Stamford Hill, red tail lights stacked up in front of us as far as I could see.
“The car is a 2009 Five-Series BMW” said Alisa, “it used to belong to a man called Bolek
Sobczak, from Krakow. He told the authorities that it was sold it last year but there is no record of who bought it. Sobczak is linked to people-smuggling and prostitution.”
“Is there any criminal intelligence linking him to the UK?” I asked hopefully.
“No” she replied, “nothing specific. His record suggests he was smuggling girls from the Baltic States and Poland to mainland Europe, to work in saunas and brothels. This is a big problem in UK, no?”
“Yeah, it makes sense that he might be knocking about with Baburin.”
Alisa sounded calm, but interested, “it is good to see progress. I will see if there is anything else about him, or this Black Hall farm. OK?”
“Great, speak later.”
“Where to?” said Oz.
“I don’t want to go out to the farm tonight, not without the right kit and we need Andy. Let’s park up and wait, in case Alisa or Harry has something for us.”
We found a supermarket car park and sat in the van with the heater on full blast. On the news there was a story about internet rebel Pieter Van Basten’s forthcoming appearance at the High Court. He was fighting extradition to the US, where I suspected it would be even more difficult for the FSB to get at him.
Van Basten’s gentle voice, with only a trace of an Afrikaans accent in it, came on the radio:
Ahead of the hearing next week, and whatever the outcome, and I would like to thank my legal team, all the loyal activists on Forbiddenfacts.net and of course my friend and mentor Sergei Belov, a man who genuinely understands the meaning of freedom. As long as I draw breath I will not hesitate to shine a light in places where the powerful would prefer there to be darkness!
I laughed so hard I choked on my coffee. “He only puts out the stuff Sergei allows him to, the fucking hypocrite.”
“The Yanks have seriously got it in for him” nodded Oz, “after he posted all that stuff about The President.”
Van Basten had famously got hold of a report leaked from the US State Department, outlining an invective-fuelled rant the President of the United States had made about Israel. He’d posted it next to an equally invective-fuelled rant the Prime Minister of Israel had made about the United States. It would have been funny if it wasn’t for the state of the Middle East, which was even more screwed-up than usual. But I guessed this was chickenfeed compared to what Van Basten had stored on his top secret server, the FSB’s treasure trove of dirt on the top echelons of the Russian government.
An hour later my phone went.
It was Alisa. “I have spent the last hour pulling in favours. My boss has too. We have an address in the UK loosely connected to Bolek Sobczak. His telephone number was registered to this address using an international telephone card a month ago. This is the best we can do.”
I grabbed my notepad, “go ahead.” She read out an address in Holloway, not far from the infamous women’s prison.
“Are you going there now?” she said guardedly.
“We’ll take a look.”
“I will join you there” she announced, “meet me at the Shopping Centre on Holloway Road.”
There was no arguing with her. Oz pulled a face, then laughed and pulled out into the traffic.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The address in Holloway was an Edwardian house on a tree-lined back street. It had seen better days, with four un-emptied bins outside and a rusty bicycle lying in the garden. A sickly pink bulb lit the drapes in the upstairs window.
“There,” said Oz as we did a drive-by. The Polish-registered BMW was parked several doors down.
“Only recently parked” said Alisa, squeezed next to me in the front of the van, “the snow hasn’t settled on the bonnet.” She checked her Glock 19 and screwed on the suppressor with surgically-gloved hands.
Oz did the same with his .45, sliding the pistol from its shoulder-holster “I’ll take the back.” He pulled a balaclava from his pocket and tugged it over his head.
We parked the van in the next street. Oz disappeared along the side of the house, hands in pockets. Alisa and I went to the front door. The sitting room was dimly lit behind loose orange curtains. I could hear the bass thump-thump-thump of dance music as we stepped closer.
The front door was locked with a Yale mortise and two sturdy bolts. There was no burglar alarm and no CCTV.
“I’ve got it,” whispered Alisa. She knocked on the door loudly.
I stood to one side, away from the peep-hole in the door.
“Who is it?” said a heavily accented male voice in English.
“I am Natasha” she said in Russian, “Alexei asked me to come over.”
“Fuck off. I don’t know anybody called Alexei,” said the voice.
Alisa sighed. “Fuck off yourself. It’s about a job, you know?”
“Ah” said the voice, “look, hold on for a moment …”
I heard the noise of the latch on the Yale lock. I pulled down my balaclava over my face. Nodding at Alisa, I sprang around the corner and barrelled into it with all my weight, the door flying open and knocking the man behind it to the ground. Alisa stepped in behind me, pistol pushed out in front of her. The music was some sort of awful European dance shit.
“It’s the police!” coughed the man on the floor. He was a fat bloke in his forties, wearing jeans and a black muscle-vest. He was also drunk. The hallway was warm, the central heating turned up high.
Misha Baburin stepped out of a doorway, a big black handgun in his meaty fist. Alisa fired, the silenced bullet splintering the doorframe by his head. He went to duck back into the sitting room. I took aim with my SIG and fired twice, deliberately kneecapping him in the right leg. Baburin dropped the pistol and crashed to the ground, pawing at his shattered knee and groaning.
Alisa closed the door behind her, shooting the drunken man who’d answered the door twice in the chest. “I’m not the police” she said casually, “where’s Bolek Sobczak?”
“Upstairs” he grunted in Russian through gritted teeth, “and who the fuck are you?”
“Let’s talk” I said, gesturing with my pistol for him to crawl into the sitting room. He slithered past me, blood trailing behind him. I tossed him an ampoule of Morphine. I wanted him conscious. “Take that. It’s for the pain. And turn that music off, please.”
Oz walked in with the guy in the suit we’d seen picking up Baburin earlier. The suited guy’s hands were up, Oz’s .45 plugged into the side of his head.
“This dickhead was upstairs” spat Oz, “there are five bedrooms and eight young girls. The girls are locked up and sedated, I’d be surprised if the oldest was fifteen. The usual shit’s up there: condoms, bondage gear, drugs. It’s a sex slave factory.”
“Oh dear,” I said to Baburin in Russian. “I take a dim view of that sort of thing. I really do.”
Baburin injected the Morphine and glowered at me, his face pale and sweaty. The room had a couple of dilapidated leather sofas, a giant flat screen TV and a drinks cabinet. A glass coffee table was scattered with the usual detritus of criminal relaxation: oversized cigarette papers, small bags of cannabis, beer cans, wraps of cocaine and cash.
Alisa pointed at Baburin. “We interrogate this one first. Oz, please take the other one somewhere else for now. Find out what he knows.”
Oz nodded. “My pleasure,” and led the terrified Polish guy out of the room.
I sat on the sofa, pistol in my lap. Noticing the remote control for the stereo, I switched on Radio Three.
“Thank you” said Alisa gratefully as gentle music filled the room, “that’s better. Ah, it’s Prokofiev. Peter and the Wolf! It was my favourite as a little girl.”
Baburin grinned. “When I find out who you are, bitch, I’m going to be the last one to ass-fuck you before you die. But only after I ass-fuck your mother dead while you watch.”
“Really?” she spat, pistol-whipping the giant Russian around the head, splitting his brow. “You will answer my questions or pray for a quick death. Macho bullshit like that will only
make it worse.” She stamped on Baburin’s injured knee, the pain making him roll into a ball.
The narrator of Peter and the Wolf was warbling away in the background, telling his tale of a little boy lost in the woods.
“Look, I’m only here for the girls” groaned Baburin, “this is Sobczak’s business. If you want to fuck-up every man who gets himself an Amazonka you might as well drop a bomb on London!”
Amazonka, or Amazon, was criminal Russian slang for a prostitute. I laughed, “Don’t give me Amazonka, Misha! Trafficked kids? With your money you could pay for a proper girl.”
“Fuck you too, what do you want?”
“When are the team from Spetzgruppa ‘A’ going to kill Sergei Belov?” said Alisa.
He caught a laugh in his throat, despite the pain. “Fuck off. I’m more scared of them than you.”
I shook my head, “a pervert and stupid.”
Turov pulled a pair of chain-link handcuffs from her jacket and tossed them over to me. “’Cuff him, he will need to be persuaded.”
“What are you going to do?” said Baburin, eyes wide.
The SVR officer looked him in the eye. A smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. “Cut your dick off, you piece of shit. For the girls upstairs and for every other woman you’ve gone near. I’m going to watch you give yourself a blow-job, Baburin, while you bleed to death.”
“What?” he gasped.
“Cut. Your. Dick. Off. This will be the third dick I’ve cut off in my career. I’m sure I’ll find it, even if it is tiny.”
Baburin looked at me, as if male fraternal sympathy might save him. I shrugged as Alisa pulled a black-bladed knife. I slipped the cuffs over Baburin’s wrists and locked them tight.
Alisa pulled down the Russian’s tracksuit bottoms. He wore black briefs, her hand hovering by the waistband. “I want to know when the operation is planned against Belov and where the Spetzgruppa are now!”
Baburin glanced, wide-eyed, down towards his crotch as Alisa rested the blade on his groin. She heated the tip of the knife with a cheap plastic lighter.
The Ninth Circle Page 10