When it did, Marcus told me to make my way to a cafe near the Turkish Consulate and wait for a man called Balsan. I took Pechkin’s jeep and punched the details into the satellite navigation, pulling out into the heavy traffic.
Balsan turned out to be a skinny man in his thirties, wearing a heavy black overcoat and a fur hat. As we smoked and drank strong black coffee he gave me a British Passport, credit card, a fat wad of Roubles, a driving licence and fresh mobile telephone. The photograph in the passport was identical to the one I had in my Adrian Clay pseudonym.
“The e-tickets are booked” said Balsan, passing me a piece of paper, “you fly to Istanbul tonight, connecting flight to Heathrow. Fucking first class seat, geezer, you must be very important.” His accent was straight out of London. He told me he was originally from Haringey.
“Thanks for your help,” I said.
“No problem. Well, best of British mate” he said as he got up to leave, “see you around.”
I called Harry on my new phone.
“At last” he said angrily, “I’ve been answering some very uncomfortable questions.”
“The job’s finished. Tell Belov that Volk is dead. The servers belonging to Pieter Van Basten are destroyed.”
“And we’re meant to take your word for that?”
“Yes.”
“Belov has already released the funds to us” said Harry, his voice softening, “after he survived the attack in Wiltshire. Job done.”
“What’s my cut?” I asked.
“Time or money?” said the Handler carefully.
“What do you mean?”
“You owe us three more years on The Firm. You can halve that if you only take quarter of a million US, which you collect on termination of contract with interest. It’s a good deal, Cal. You’ll get interest on it, on top of the other cash we hold for you.”
“Eighteen months and I’m out? I’ll take the time off my sentence” I said coolly, “I’ll be in touch.”
I ended the call. The cafe was warm. I lit a cigar, ordered cake and coffee. Then I watched the world go by.
EPILOGUE
London, England. Two weeks later.
Dmitri Aseyev and I sat in a pub in Shepherd’s Market. All that was left of the mighty storm was dirty slush on the pavements. “They got me off all the firearms charges and bailed out of prison” said the Russian quietly, sipping a beer, “the rest is going to be self-defence, according to the lawyers. The anti-terrorist police have been OK, I think your government has my back. I’m just waiting for the prosecutors to make decision.”
“That’s good news, Dmitri” I said, handing him a piece of paper, “now read this.”
He read it slowly, his meaty head shaking as he took in the contents. “No. This is … bullshit.”
I put my hand on his shoulder “it’s true,” I whispered.
The scanned copy of the report was the first thing that popped up on screen when I attached the spare external hard drive to the laptop in my flat, using the encryption key Volk had given me. The original drive had been handed to Marcus at Heathrow, who told me he was off to destroy it immediately. He thanked me, told me that I had a friend. He’d made sure that Sam and the kids were protected while I was gone, had kept his word.
Even if I hadn’t kept mine.
He’d sent half a dozen increments, hard men, to watch her house. He showed me the surveillance photographs to prove it, Sam leaving the house. Sam getting into her car with a dark-haired man. Sam …
“So, what are you going to do?” said the Russian security man, looking around the half-empty pub.
I drained my beer and ordered another, “don’t you mean what are we going to do?”
Dmitri’s eyes filled with tears as he nodded. He stared into his drink, emptied a slug of vodka into his pint.
Sergei knew about NEOPHYTE. He’d threatened me. And the evidence I’d put in front of Dmitri proved that, in his own way, Sergei had created Fyodor Volk. There was only one way this could end. It was justice, of sorts. The sort that a court could never provide.
And to hell with The Firm.
I’d just come back from a hell, of sorts, and the frozen Ninth Circle below Shakuvo scared me more than Harry ever could.
“When do you want to do this?” said Dmitri.
“Tonight.”
Just after ten that evening, Dmitri stood down the guards and let me into the side entrance of Sergei Belov’s Mayfair townhouse. He disabled the alarms and CCTV, his big hands sheathed in leather gloves.
I stepped into the study, where the Oligarch sat watching the fire, drinking. A big black book sat on his lap. “Good evening, Sergei” I said.
“Cal,” he replied, surprised.
The suppressed Walther hissed as I shot him twice in the forehead. Sergei crashed sideways, onto the carpet, his glass rolling into the grate of the fire. The devil in the oil painting leered at me from the mantelpiece.
From a pocket I pulled a sterile copy of the report I’d shown Dmitri. With surgically gloved fingers, I left it next to his body.
SECRET
KGB
Regional Headquarters (Central)
Sixth Directorate, Economic Counterintelligence and Industrial Security
4th December 1990
Subject: Sergei Nikolayevich BELOV
Provenance: Personal and delicate
Grade: Highly credible and corroborated
Intelligence: Sergei BELOV is the Chairman of the industrial standards committee of the Shakuvo energy complex in Tatarstan. Last year he fraudulently transferred twelve million roubles offshore from the core maintenance budget for the Shakuvo reactor. BELOV has manipulated monthly maintenance reports to conceal the fraud. Two members of the committee who are aware of this theft and have warned of declining safety standards have been framed and murdered by persons suspected to be linked to mafia groups in Kazan. BELOV has political aspirations and is described as being well-thought of in Moscow.
Intelligence action: BELOV was a respected Party Member prior to 1989. This report should be filed and revisited when resources allow, pending fresh security structures being established by the new government.
***
I pocketed my spent cartridges and left the house, into the night. Dmitri locked the door behind me, nodded and headed for his car.
The ground was coated with frost beneath my feet. London still froze, but the snow had gone, for another year at least. I checked my fake passport and the airline tickets for Barcelona, quickened my step.
Phoning Sam Clarke as I headed towards Berkeley Square, I asked if I could visit tomorrow. I told her I was heading off to Spain for a few months and would like to catch up. She said yes, it would be good to see me before I left. Maybe we could go to the cinema with the kids.
I put the phone back in my pocket. The conversation with Sam made the things that squirm and chatter at the back of my head go away for a while, better than any drug.
It felt good. I decided to enjoy it while it lasted.
THE END of THE NINTH CIRCLE
Table of Contents
Copyright
Contents
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
The Ninth Circle Page 29