“Think of that pension and the MBE” I said, “I’m still in Essex.”
“A gong is of little use in prison” he sighed. He gave me the address of a private airfield ten miles north of Colchester. “We have an arrangement with the owner. I’ll have a heli there in the hour, how many passengers?”
“Three. I’m leaving now.”
“Good luck, but after this you’re on your own.”
“Good to see some SIS traditions never change” I laughed, and rang off.
Oz was asleep, the combination of pain and Ketamine finally knocking him out. Andy checked him and pronounced him stable. “It’s a fairly clean wound but I can’t tell if the median nerve has been damaged. It’s missed the bone anyhow.”
“He needs surgery” said Alisa, checking the IV, “he’s lost much blood.”
We checked and re-loaded our weapons, stowing them in ballistic bags. Andy readied spare ammunition, flash-bangs and medical kits.
Alisa found Evan Sands’ house on her laptop, feeding in the coordinates Mellissa had emailed me. “It is a mansion” she said, “Croll House, very remote. It’s eight miles from the nearest town, a place called Market Laverick.”
“I know Market Laverick” said Andy, “not far from Warminster, right?”
We all knew Warminster, slap-bang in the middle of army training country. I took a look at the online map, “yeah, on the edge of Salisbury Plain.” Market Laverick wouldn’t even qualify as a half-a-horse town, a quiet Wiltshire backwater popular with retirees.
I checked Oz, who opened his blood-shot eyes.
“Fuck off” he said, “I’ll be OK.”
I laughed, and checked his IV drip, “I’ll leave you some more Ketamine. The medical team are on their way.”
“Cheers Cal” he said, “just promise me you’ll nail the bastards and take care. OK?”
I hefted the ballistic bag onto my shoulder “since when did I start making promises like that?”
Oz chuckled then coughed. I left a pistol on his lap and the door on the latch.
We made it to the airfield in under an hour, Andy driving like a demon and Alisa laughing throatily every time we almost skidded off the road. It was almost dawn as we arrived, weak grey light bleeding across the horizon. A sign read FOXBRIDGE FLYING CLUB – MEMBERS ONLY.
A stocky guy in his early fifties stood by the gate wearing a dark green parka over a flying suit, stamping his feet against the cold. “Come on” he grunted, striding off towards the out buildings, “and please, for the love of God, don’t talk to me.”
The heli squatted on the snowy airfield, where four light aircraft were parked by a small control tower. It was a white Augusta 109 with no livery, but a VP-G registration mark painted on the fuselage.
“This heli’s registered in Gibraltar?” I said.
“I said don’t talk to me” huffed the pilot, opening the doors, “just get in.”
“This is just like flying with the RAF” said Andy, “but friendlier.”
“Develop some manners” said Alisa coolly, pulling her pistol “or I will shoot you. You are just a taxi driver as far as I’m concerned. I will fly the helicopter myself if necessary.”
“Listen to the lady” I said, telling him where we were going, “and you might just get a tip.”
The pilot shook his head and went through his pre-flight checks. “I’ll drop you in the grounds of the house if you want.”
“No” I said, pointing at the map, “it might not be a friendly LZ. Put us down on the other side of this road if you can? We’ll walk in.”
“OK” said the pilot, starting the engine, “it’s going to take us about forty-five minutes to get there.”
The Augusta lifted off, turning one-hundred and eighty degrees and thundering west. Inside, the heli was kitted out like a military transport aircraft, with removable canvass seats and an RAF-issue first aid kit. The deck looked like it had brackets welded on, the sort you could use to mount weapons. The pilot took us up above the low-lying cloud, and for the first time in weeks I saw brilliant blue skies and sunshine.
Whoever or whatever the pilot was, he didn’t need to speak to any ATC or use a call-sign. He flew in silence, face blank behind his sunglasses.
“That taxi driver comment must have hurt,” shouted Andy over the engine noise.
“It is true” shrugged Alisa.
“You can fly a helicopter?” I said.
“No” she replied, a smile playing across her lips.
I closed my eyes for a few moments, my stomach heaving as the helicopter pitched and yawed. Then I feel asleep.
Andy nudged me awake, shouting. Below us, snowdrifts had divided the fields like silver-white dunes.
The pilot’s voice crackled in my headphones, “don’t expect me to pick you up: there’s a fresh dump of snow forecast for tonight, a Red weather warning. Nothing will be flying for the next day or two I’d imagine.”
I nodded and took the offered water bottle from Andy.
He showed me his smart-phone. “It’s Oz, he’s with the doctor.”
“Good” I said, happy that he’d been picked up OK and that the MEDEVAC system worked.
I tapped Melissa’s number into my phone and told her to pick us up. We were two miles from Croll House, out of view of any surveillance operators dug into hides.
“Sergei has his best bodyguards here” she said darkly, “and the house is full of guns.”
I laughed as the heli descended. “Melissa, that’s the first good news I’ve heard all day.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The heli took off as soon as we’d unloaded our last kit bag, the rotor-wash blasting us with a thousand tiny shards of ice. Laden with equipment, we trudged through the snow towards the road running along the south side of the field. I sighed, putting on a black fleece hat and lighting a cigar, half-expecting the smoke to freeze as I exhaled. A Mercedes four-wheel drive SUV approached, side windows tinted and snow chains churning up muddy ice. Melissa Compton sat in the front passenger seat, a big man wearing a black coat behind the wheel.
Melissa jumped out and opened the side doors, “let’s go.” She wore a fur ushanka hat and a padded jacket.
We loaded our stuff and climbed in. Dmitri Aseyev, Sergei’s security chief, was driving. He grunted hello in heavily-accented English as he spun the Merc around towards the road. After a short drive I noticed a solid brick wall, some eight feet high, running alongside the road. Fine motion-sensitive security monitors ran along the top, the occasional black dome of a security camera visible here and there. The Mercedes turned right, through a natural break in the wall and along a tree-lined drive.
“This is it” said Melissa, “Croll House. We should be safe: it’s in the middle of nowhere. I’ve told Sergei that we should go back to London, or even out of the UK, but he’s in a foul mood. He says if they want him they can come and get him.”
“I’m not so sure it’s Sergei they want. And they are probably watching us now,” said Turov.
“Who are you?” said Melissa coolly.
“Her names Alisa. She’s working with me” I said.
“No” said Alisa, “he’s working for me.”
I was too tired to argue. I shrugged and puffed on my cigar.
“Well, Alisa, good luck with that,” said Melissa.
“You can say what you like about Sergei Nikolayevich, but he has balls” said Dmitri, “I wouldn’t run from these FSB shit-heads either.”
“What use are balls if you are dead?” replied Alisa in Russian.
He laughed “You have a point, sweetheart.” Under his coat he wore a MP5K on a shoulder sling, his dark sweater bulky over covert body armour.
“You’ve met Dmitri,” said Melissa “security director for Mister Belov.”
“I’m still not sure if this is all a joke played on us by the FSB” spat the big Russian, “if I hadn’t seen that place burning on the news this morning, the farm full of mafia …” his big yellow teeth filled
the rear view mirror as he grinned.
I pulled a notepad from the cargo pocket of my trousers and started making a rough map of the drive and main road.
Andy saw what I was doing. He nodded approvingly and rummaged in his day-sack for the Tough-book. “Remember Brecon? Defence from a fixed position?”
“Yeah, but I don’t think we’re gonna have machineguns and mortars on this one.”
“We’re not far off,” chuckled Dmitri.
Melissa gave Dmitri a look. “This is Sir Evan Sands’ house. Evan is pretty shaken by all this, so is Pieter. Can you play down the …”
“… Heavy weapons and threat of imminent death?” smiled Alisa cruelly.
“Quite” said Belov’s PA, “but I was hoping your plan was evacuation. Why stay here?”
“Because I’ve got all the bait I need sat in that house” I said quietly, “let them come to us.”
“And look at the weather Miss Compton” said Dmitri, “it reminds me of home. Trust me when I say none of us are going anywhere when that snowstorm hits us.” Above us the sky swirled with strange oyster-coloured clouds, pulses of white flakes already cutting past us, as if on a recce for the big snow-dump.
“Hopefully they’ll freeze to death out there, whoever they are” said Melissa.
Dmitri shrugged as he drove. “If they are FSB Spetsnatz, and they are likely to be, then this weather is just another day at work for the bastards.”
“Dmitri is correct” said Alisa, “these men will be from FSB Spetzgruppa A, a sub-unit called Grob.”
“Grob? Like coffin?” I laughed “how subtle.”
Turov smiled, “FSB isn’t known for subtlety, but these men will be trained to operate in hostile conditions, at the Winter Warfare School.”
“I lost a toe there myself” laughed Dmitri, “in 1996, I was a paratrooper.”
Alisa nodded, “the are called ‘coffin’ teams because they are meant to be buried, hidden, left behind. When the enemy pass them they climb from their graves and strike.”
I guessed the drive was a mile long, a straight metalled road flanked by dense, twisted bushes and trees. As we pulled up to the house the sky finally began dumping snow. Croll House was a fortified manor from the pages of a history book, with mock-battlements, a Belvedere tower and defensive loopholes. Gargoyles leered down at us hungrily.
As my eyes tracked across the building, I could see where over the years the house had been renovated in different styles and materials, like a timeline of ownership. Eventually, to the south-westerly side of the house, I saw an ultra-modern glass-and-timber extension running into the woods that surrounded the property. A white and silver communications array towered over it, a clutch of satellite dishes pointing into the sky. Parked outside was Sergei Belov’s jet black Maybach 62S, the armoured limo like a beached whale in the snow.
“The house used to belong to a rock star, in the 1970’s” said Melissa. She sounded like a tour guide, “Sir Evan bought it in the mid-eighties, when SandsSoft took off.”
SandsSoft was one of Britain’s most well-known tech companies, a baby version of Apple that had diversified into everything from cable TV, banking, e-readers and holidays. Sir Evan Sands, the founder, was everyone’s favourite counter-cultural capitalist. He was often seen at demonstrations and student sit-ins. Most memorably, he had once been arrested for offering the Prime Minister a spliff at a press conference. I’d seen him interviewed often on the TV: He always came across as a decent bloke and his staff adored him. I knew from the army that a good way to gauge a leader is to check morale, and by that standard, Sands wasn’t doing too badly. He gave away millions to charities, even if he was a vicious bastard in the boardroom.
“Yeah,” said Andy “wasn’t this Kenny Moody’s place?”
“I think so” said Melissa lightly, “a bit before my time, though.”
Andy nodded, “thought so, he was the drummer with Diamond Cult.”
“Who? I’ve never heard of them” I said.
“That’s because you don’t have a secret but slightly embarrassing interest in progressive rock” smiled the ex-SRR man, “they were great, like early Genesis meets Rush.”
“Who were they?” Melissa asked.
“What happened to this musician?” said Alisa.
“Kenny drowned in the swimming pool after a drug-fuelled orgy, like a proper seventies rock star” sighed Andy, “although there’s a rumour he was murdered by his missus, who spiked his drink.”
“Sounds like my kind of party, tovarich,” laughed Dmitri as he stopped the Merc. He pulled a radio from his coat pocket. “Everything’s OK,” he said in Russian into the mic and wooden, castle-thick, double doors rumbled open. A burly man stepped out armed with a Kalashnikov. He covered us, aiming into the trees. Looking up, I saw another man wearing a white snowsuit armed with a long rifle, prowling the battlements.
“Go” said Dmitri, pulling the MP5K out from under his coat, “I’ve got you covered.”
We jogged from the Mercedes into the house, through a small ante-chamber that led into a long stone hall. I gazed up at the barrel-vaulted ceiling, the smell of incense tickling my nose.
“Wow” said Andy, dumping his kitbags.
The hall was painted a stark white, lit by row after row of candles mounted on elaborate black metal chandeliers. A red Persian rug ran the length of the flag-stoned floor. In the centre of the room was an oak dining table big enough to sit thirty people. The medieval effect jarred with the works of modern art mounted on the walls: I noticed some of the more famous ones: a Jackson Pollock, an Andy Warhol and a brace of Roy Lichtensteins. The pieces were illuminated by cleverly hidden lights.
“A vulgar juxtaposition,” sniffed Alisa.
“Sir Evan has one of the largest collections of modern and pop art in the UK,” said Melissa.
“Fascinating” I said flatly, “where are Sergei and Van Basten?”
“In Sir Evans’ office, come on” she said, “the guards will look after your equipment.
“No they won’t love” said Andy gently, “it stays with us OK?” He pulled his M6 out of the bag and loaded it. The snap of the action echoed in the room.
“Of course” said Melissa, eyeing the firearm, “follow me.”
Dmitri followed us as we walked through the hall into a large sitting room, then along a deeply carpeted corridor. Everything was new and old, from the paintings to the furniture. Eventually we were ushered into a large pine-panelled office, the window looking out over a sunken garden. Three men were waiting for us.
“Close the blinds please,” I said.
Andy nodded and padded over, pressing a switch. The blinds glided down. Soft lighting automatically flooded the room.
“The glass is armoured. Let the bastards see me!” Sergei was sat by the fire nursing a tumbler of vodka. He wore a turtle-neck sweater and corduroys, face grim.
Melissa scowled, “Sergei, if you need me I’ll be upstairs.”
“Of course,” said Belov.
“I’ll speak to you in a bit” said Pieter Van Basten as Melissa left the room. I recognised the internet maverick from his photos in the newspaper. He stood next to Sergei, slightly-built, in his thirties with short sandy hair and amused-looking blue eyes. He smiled sheepishly, taking in our guns and equipment. “Hello” he said, voice reedy but friendly “I’m so sorry about all of … this.”
“He’s such a polite boy” grunted Sergei, draining his glass.
Sir Evan Sands was a tall, lean man with shoulder length grey hair and designer stubble. He wore faded jeans, snow boots and a sleeveless gilet over a fisherman’s jumper. His craggy face looked tired and pale, his hooked nose red with cold. “I don’t want to appear rude” he said, “but what in the name of fuck is going on?” His voice was public-school posh, but with the glottal stop the well-to-do affect when they’re trying to slum it.
“My name is Winter” I said, “I’m Sergei’s UK security consultant. This is my team. How much has Miste
r Belov told you?”
I offered my hand to Sands, who looked at it and eventually squeezed it lightly. “Not enough,” he croaked, blowing his nose and walking over to the drinks cabinet. He pulled out a carton of orange juice and poured a glass.
“I have told them that there is an extraordinary security situation” said Sergei Belov, “but that you had the latest information, Cal.”
Sands ran a hand through his silvery mop of hair, “why the guns? Why no police?”
Pieter Van Basten raised an eyebrow, the slightest trace of a smile on his face.
“Cal, please explain” said Sergei.
“OK, but first my colleague is going to check the security arrangements and alarm system.” I gave Andy a look. He nodded and led Dmitri to one side.
“I will take a look around too, I think” said Alisa Turov. Then, in Russian, she addressed Sergei Belov “both you and Van Basten are in danger, even if it is from different directions. Listen to Winter, he is a blunt instrument but he will do the job.”
“You are from the SVR?” replied Belov in the same language.
Alisa headed for the door, her MP5 slung across her chest, “it is in my interest that you and Van Basten survive, will that do for now?”
“I suppose it will have to” smiled the Oligarch as he eyed her up and down, “would you like a drink?”
“Not when I’m working” she said, “maybe later, old man.”
“Old man?” laughed Sergei, settling back in his chair, “I like her. Does she need a job?”
“Why didn’t you leave the UK?” I said to him as Alisa stalked out of the room.
“I have been running from these bastards for fifteen years” he said angrily, “and that is enough.”
Van Basten warmed his hands by the fire and shivered, “besides, I’m fairly sure they’d find us wherever we went.”
“Why do you think that?” I said.
Van Basten laughed. “Mister Winter, for the past five years I’ve been reading and publishing thousands of leaked intelligence reports. I’m au fait with how government agencies of every stripe conduct business in scenarios like this, especially the Russians. If it were the Americans, I suspect a Predator drone might be circling overhead right now.”
The Ninth Circle Page 15