‘Doesn’t matter,’ Chaikova said loftily, ‘it will do.’ The way he was eyeing Ruslan, Tallis half wondered whether it was a trick but, then again, if one went down, they all did.
They caught the Metro to Komsomolskaya and walked to Kazansky, a vast draughty train station. The train they were catching was bound for Vladikavkaz, capital of North Ossetia. En route it would stop at Rostov-on-Don. Chaikova had booked tickets in a second-class carriage with a sleeping compartment. The train, which was warm and cosy, was busy with families and single men saying goodbye to lovers. Tallis didn’t sleep much that night.
The next morning it seemed that they were stopping at every station along the way, the train constantly filling up with and emptying its cargo of passengers. The atmosphere on the train was strangely electric. A spirit of bonhomie prevailed that simply didn’t exist in Britain: people shared food and drink as well as conversation. Some stations were busy thoroughfares, providing goods for sale, men and women rushing to the windows to trade anything from bottled fruit and sweet pastries to whole fish wrapped in newspaper, and bags of beetroot; others looked empty and forgotten, a little like the bleak Russian steppes, Tallis thought. Neither he nor his travelling companions talked very much: Tallis because he feared that one of the numerous female officials stomping up and down the corridor might overhear; Chaikova because it was a way of demonstrating his dislike, on principle, of Ruslan. Despite that, they all ate well in the dining car—soup and pirozhi, savoury meat pies, washed down with coffee in plastic cups. By the second evening they were pulling into Rostov-on-Don. Herds of their fellow passengers disembarked. Here they met their first obstacle: OMON patrols.
‘Stay cool,’ Chaikova said, taking out a pack of cigarettes, walking calmly in front, papers at the ready.
‘Cigarette?’ he offered an officer as Tallis and Ruslan surged forward, averting their eyes from the granitefaced policemen, the patrol entirely unable to cope with the sheer volume of people.
‘Thanks,’ Tallis heard the officer say behind him as Chaikova pushed his way through to join them.
‘Which way?’ Tallis muttered.
‘Here.’ Chaikova led the way, crossing over and turning immediately into and down a road lined with nineteenthcentury red-brick houses. A few narrow streets on and they were in a less salubrious part of town where they were booked into a dispiriting and dilapidated-looking hotel. Tallis soon got the picture: hookers outside; cockroaches inside. He was too tired to pay much attention to either.
As soon as they were shown to their room, a barren chamber furnished with three single beds with dubiouslooking bedding, Ruslan fell to his hands and knees to pray. Chaikova yawned and stretched. ‘A man must have his enthusiasms, I suppose,’ he said cynically. ‘Say one for me while you’re at it.’
‘I’d be here all night, then,’ Ruslan flashed back, with more humour than Tallis thought Chaikova deserved. Ruslan’s magnanimity was rewarded by a deep throaty laugh from Chaikova.
The next morning, after a vile breakfast of sour yogurt and stewed coffee, they headed for the market. The nearest Tallis had ever come to visiting a place like it was one of the big markets outside Birmingham where you could pick up a battered Fiesta for two hundred quid. This was full of Ladas, Volgas, Mercedes, Land Cruisers, and museum pieces that he’d never seen before in his life. Chaikova had his eye on a Soviet-style 4x4 that had seen better times. Tallis preferred the look of a Nissan 4x4 but, as Chaikova had offered to do the buying and driving, he graciously deferred. Driving the vehicle to the nearest petrol station revealed a number of strange-sounding noises from the exhaust and clutch, although none seemed particularly terminal.
‘Nothing like travelling in style,’ Ruslan said dryly.
‘As if you’d know,’ Chaikova shot back. ‘At least it’s quicker than a tractor.’
‘What are you suggesting?’ Ruslan said, edgy. ‘That Chechens are all peasants?’
‘Far too glamorous a description.’
Ruslan let out a slow hiss of anger. ‘I guess that’s to be expected from a foul-mouthed, pig-eating Russian.’
‘Oi, boy,’ Chaikova growled. ‘Remember, I’m doing you a favour here.’
‘Really? Well, I’ll act grateful if you act nice.’
Chaikova twisted round and blew Ruslan a kiss, a naughty grin suddenly plastered across his face. ‘Nice enough for you?’ At which Ruslan then Tallis burst out laughing.
After they’d filled up, Chaikova announced the next stop: his friendly arms dealer.
‘Drop me here,’ Tallis said. ‘I’m going in search of a decent cup of coffee and something to eat.’
‘You don’t want any weapons?’ Chaikova said, mystified.
‘No need,’ Tallis said, pointing at the backpack positioned down by his feet. ‘That’s why I wanted the Kurtz, remember?’ And the Makarov, he thought.
Chaikova broke into a big smile then his expression darkened. ‘What about the Chechen? Does he want guns?’ Chaikova gestured with his thumb at Ruslan, who was sitting in the back.
‘Thought you were supposed to be polite.’ Tallis looked across unsmiling. ‘Why don’t you ask him?’ He had no time for backbiting between them. It could cost them their lives.
Chaikova, chisel-faced, swivelled round, raised an eyebrow. ‘I’d be grateful.’ Ruslan nodded, ironic, squeezing a grudging smile from the Russian.
‘He’d better go with you, then,’ Tallis said, opening the door and hopping out with his backpack. ‘Meet me in a couple of hours back at the dump,’ he said, alluding to the hotel, and walked away. He quickly found himself in wide tree-lined streets with nearby parks. Rostov-on-Don, the entrance to the Caucasus, was, in fact, a much nicer regional city than he’d first imagined. Although it was cold, slashes of sunlight filtered through the trees, dappling the pavement, giving the illusion of spring. It hummed with people and, like a little Moscow, the buzzword was trade.
After a while, the parkland dried up and he found himself in a quieter area with far fewer people. He seemed to be in a maze of brick railway arches and back streets with tired-looking homes, the only inhabitants an old woman pulling a shopping trolley, muttering obscenities and a couple of teenage boys off their faces on hard liquor. Nobody paid him any attention. Nobody posed a threat.
Feeling hungry, he went into the first café he came across, off a side street full of lock-ups, close to a road where the river Don ran through the city. In Russian, he ordered coffee and pizza. Both arrived promptly and he ate and drank, savouring the solitude. He was so lost in thought he almost missed the two leather-jacketed men who entered the café, one a typical Russian—short, stocky with fair hair and blue eyes—the other taller, heavier featured with pouched cheeks. They were talking softly to the female proprietor. Something in her tense expression triggered Tallis’s alarm bells. When she glanced anxiously in his direction he thought it time to decamp. He scraped back the chair and got up slowly, working a smile onto his face and thanking the owner as he left. The two men immediately stopped talking and glanced away. There was something too studied about them, Tallis thought as he opened the door and slipped outside. If they were professionals, he knew they wouldn’t immediately follow so he hacked down the narrow street, darted into a darkened doorway and, taking the Makarov from his backpack, loaded a magazine, attached a silencer and released the safety.
Sure enough, the Russians came out of the café, looked both ways then, as if by a sixth sense, headed in the direction he’d just taken. Tallis could almost feel the air part as both men walked past. Counting to five and knowing that as soon as they hit the main street they’d realise his trick, he moved back into the alley and walked swiftly in the other direction, body hugging the wall. He’d gone no more than a few metres when the sound of footsteps hammered in his ears. That’s when he knew he was clean out of options.
He turned in time to see the stocky guy move for his weapon, the taller of the two already taking up a typical shooting stance, legs apart, knees
slightly bent, a deadly PSM blow-back pistol in his hand. Without hesitation, Tallis squeezed the trigger, taking down the tall guy first with a head shot, then let off a second round, felling the man’s colleague. Two follow-up shots reduced his ammo to four rounds. Pulse hammering, Tallis looked around him. Other than a dog bolting past, the alley was empty. He couldn’t do anything about the blood, but he could remove the bodies. Breaking into the nearest lock-up, he lifted both men inside, careful not to leave a trail. A quick trawl through their wallets revealed nothing other than their names: no organisation, no rank. Reversing his jacket to conceal a bloodstain on the sleeves, he pulled the door closed.
Rolling up his collar, he set off down the street, leaving what he hoped seemed nothing more serious than evidence of a drunken brawl behind him, and returned via a circuitous route to the seedy hotel entrance. Why the two guys had singled him out, he hadn’t a clue. And that worried him. Could it be connected to the FSB man he’d run into when he’d been checking out the prison, and who’d later wound up with his throat cut? Could Orlov be playing fast and loose? But, then, why would he compromise the safety of his friend Chaikova? The trouble with working in a strange land was that it was difficult to tell who was the enemy.
Nodding a good morning at the blowsy-faced proprietor, Tallis crossed the lobby and went up the stairs to the room he shared with the others.
Chaikova was in his element. Wearing a shoulder holster, he was examining the goods: the latest Browning, derived from an earlier high-power model; and a SIG P226. For heftier weaponry, Chaikova had gone for an Uzi sub-machine-gun, not the standard pray and spray but the more diminutive model, the Mini-Uzi, smaller in every dimension bar the calibre. Ruslan had settled for the thirty-round Steyr SPP.
‘I told him it was good for a two-handed hold,’ Chaikova said.
‘Look,’ Ruslan said, imitating a typical shooting stance, more American gangster than British firearms officer.
‘Bang! Bang! That’s my boy,’ Chaikova said appreciatively, immediately colouring on realising the inadvertent warmth of his remark. Spotting weakness, Ruslan grinned and winked at him.
‘Fine.’ Tallis sincerely hoped Ruslan wouldn’t need the advice.
‘And I got us these,’ Chaikova said, producing three Kevlars.
‘Good idea.’
‘Everything alright?’ Chaikova frowned.
‘Cool,’ Tallis replied.
They left the next morning before first light. It took them eight hours to drive south along the main three-lane highway in the direction of Stavropol. On the way a news report hissed and crackled out of the radio. Tallis strained to pick up the gist, fearing that it would reveal the killing of two men in Rostov-on-Don. It didn’t. It concerned a Chechen terrorist attack at Nalchik.
‘What do you say to that?’ Chaikova said, an ugly note back in his voice, the remark clearly aimed at Ruslan.
‘I say there are terrorists on both sides,’ Ruslan said, staring out of the window. ‘I don’t agree with either.’
Chaikova gave a snort. Tallis was wondering whether Darke had had any involvement.
The journey was punctuated by numerous checkpoints. So far their luck had held out. After cursory examination of their papers by jumpy and undernourished-looking soldiers, they were waved through. Tallis understood the sub-text. Another crackly news report had talked of the possibility of suicide bombers. Whether this was the Russian government’s method of ramping up the fear factor or whether it was based on genuine intelligence, you could hardly blame the average soldier for being scared. Suicide bombers were difficult to defeat. It really was a case of Russian roulette. Fortunately, the threat was working in their favour. Nobody wanted to invite the opportunity by stopping them and poring over their papers.
Tallis, in the front, his cheek against the glass, spent the time contemplating the ever-changing landscape—fields of maize and sunflowers lining tributaries, surprisingly green pastures with cows and sheep, the odd shepherd’s hut, finally hints of shadowy peaks that haunted from a distance. It wasn’t so much what he could see as what he could sense, as if the land beyond spoke another narrative: of impending violence and hatred and dissent.
By the time they were drawing into the outskirts of Pyatigorsk, the light was starting to fade. Tallis stared out at a dense thicket of trees, their branches broken, the 4x4 slowing, rattling along a road slippery with mud and cratered with potholes, another checkpoint ahead. Usual four-man combo—one to flag them down, one to cover him, one sentry forward and one at the rear. This time they weren’t so lucky.
‘Registration number,’ the guy doing the talking barked.
Chaikova gave it.
‘Where’s your spare wheel?’
Chaikova smiled, yawned and told him. Had he got the answer wrong it would indicate that the vehicle was stolen, Tallis registered, trying to calculate whether the soldiers were going for a quick search based on nothing at all, or whether they’d been tipped off and were working up to a thorough going-over. As Chaikova had passed their little test, Tallis hoped that they’d be waved on.
‘You, get out,’ the soldier ordered, waving his rifle in Tallis’s direction. Not a good idea, Tallis thought. Once he was out of the vehicle anything could happen. He stayed put.
The soldier barked the order again. Three others gathered round, weapons raised. Tallis had a sick image of the vehicle peppered with bullet holes, three metalriddled bodies spilling out of the wreckage. He blinked. He could feel Ruslan’s hot breath on his neck. Chaikova, cool as mint julep, stared ahead, lazily chewing a wad of gun. Against every instinct, Tallis got out, nice and slowly, acting as easy as possible. He smiled at the officer, who had a face like a graveyard, and spoke to him in Russian.
‘Papers,’ the soldier said, one hand shooting out.
The night crackled with tension.
Tallis hesitated, knowing that whichever set he relinquished could be a bad move. Problem was, he had to act one way or another. Remembering Chaikova’s comment that journalists no longer travelled to the region because of the high price on their heads, he decided to go with his British helicopter guy identity. When they cocked their weapons he did as he was told.
‘You British?’ the soldier said, looking up.
‘Da.’
‘Businessman?’ The word was spat out.
‘Da.’
The soldier fired a volley of Russian, too fast for Tallis to catch. Another soldier standing next to him burst out laughing. Tallis was handed back his papers and waved away as if he were no more than a speck of dirt underneath the soldier’s boot.
Tallis walked slowly back to the 4x4, climbing into it as lazily as he’d climbed out. Chaikova started the engine, depressed the clutch and jolted down the road. Tallis let out a breath. A kilometre later he asked Chaikova what had been said. Chaikova kept on chewing.
‘Well?’ Tallis said, impatient.
Chaikova turned to him, briefly taking his eyes off the road. ‘He said you are a dead man.’
Leaving Pyatigorsk, one of those sprawling places that looked as if it had previously enjoyed more refined times and could currently do with some money being spent on it, they travelled south along the M29, along the last of the flatlands, and headed towards Nalchik, in the central Caucasus, and roughly one hundred and thirty miles west of Grozny. Chaikova was reluctant to spend the night there due to the recent terrorist attack. Tallis took the view that if the place was a recent target it was unlikely to come in for a repeat performance any time soon. After a frank exchange, in which Tallis gained the upper hand, they booked into an unassuming hotel in the centre—another win to Tallis as Chaikova had favoured a more elegant hotel in the wooded suburbs.
According to Ruslan, Nalchik was a spa town known for its fine mineral water. Not that any, either mineral or plain tap, was in evidence that evening or any evening at Hotel Rossiya, something Chaikova took great pleasure in pointing out. It wasn’t that extraordinary; water had a habit of being switch
ed off in Russia and its satellite states. Later, with no ill will, Chaikova produced a bottle of konyak and offered to share it with Tallis, Ruslan already being asleep in bed.
The two of them stood out on the balcony overlooking the street, the cold against their cheeks, the only sound the howl of a stray dog and the noise of small-arms fire in the distance. The night was as black as any Tallis had seen. As if someone had switched all the lights off, it felt compressed, with silence and fear.
‘You know Timur?’ Tallis said, feeling the alcohol zip through his veins.
‘Timur Garipova?’
‘I’m not sure of his surname. He said he worked for the State. Grigori invited him to one of his dinners and we got talking. I had the impression he was connected to the FSB. Quite a cool customer.’
Chaikova let out a slow gurgling laugh. ‘I know the man. Part of the new criminal elite.’
‘What?’
‘You’re right,’ Chaikova flicked a smile. ‘He does work for the FSB.’
‘And?’
‘In a rather specialist unit.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ Tallis took another drink. Chaikova wasn’t being coy. He was enjoying the chase.
‘It’s a secret department dedicated to extra-judiciary killings.’
‘Assassinations?’ Tallis suddenly felt quite sober.
‘Among other things.’ Chaikova shrugged.
‘What other things?’
‘Abduction, terrorism, provocation.’
Tallis took another drink, trying to think. Could Timur have engineered the incident in Rostov-on-Don? Had he ordered his execution? Then his mind leapfrogged in another direction. What if all this stuff with Graham was a blind? What if Graham Darke and his merry band were fall guys? What if Chechen terrorists had had absolutely nothing to do with the hits? His mind travelled back to Lena’s remark. She’d claimed that the FSB were behind a series of explosions that had ripped through Moscow as a means to discredit Chechen terrorists and provide the motivation to go to war for the second time. Trash or truth? And were they doing it again?
Land of Ghosts Page 16