by Tim Heath
It was nearly an hour later when the entire war committee was once more gathered around his vast conference table. Various people were reporting NATO movements––the Estonian military was not an issue, and most were in Tallinn for the parade, anyway. Then the man who was his link to the FSB––the modern, respectable face of what had been the KGB, a security service steeped in sinister history––rose to speak to the room, though he addressed Putin directly.
“It’s confirmed, sir. It’s them again.”
When Putin had won his first election, there had been some noticeable influence––interference, in fact––in the background. It had worked in his favour, so he’d let it happen. If they weren’t against you, they were for you. Any support was good support. But because of who was involved––they knew it included Lev Kaminski and Sergej Volkov––there remained a little question mark over it all.
In public, neither of these men were overly enthusiastic in support of their President. If they were secret fans, they were doing a great job of hiding that. That made Putin cautious. He’d put a small team onto them.
Over the years––and his successful reelections––the information he had gathered grew. Nothing much was done about it––he was still winning, the nation was moving forward, and Putin was already thinking about his legacy rather than votes. His role was seemingly untouchable.
The background noise of the Games went someway to distract––the Kremlin had far less on them, aware of something happening but their meetings had always happened behind closed doors. It seemed to involve Volkov again, though it was not obvious why.
Putin feared what he didn’t know––what he couldn’t control––and anything within Russian ranks that threatened his power and influence, would always be seen as a target to be exposed and dealt with.
In that war room––it was the day after the Defender of the Fatherland Day in Russia, a substantial military celebration remembering all soldiers, past and present, who had defended Russia––everyone knew who them meant. They’d never been able to find an actual name for the Machine––that was because they rarely used anything in communications––but they existed in the files of the Kremlin by reputation alone.
This organisation had been a hidden monster for many years––they caught Putin’s radar during that first election––but God knew how long they had already been living in the shadows. Maybe decades. Like any beast, hiding and secretive, it was human nature to want it exposed, to have a light shone upon it––ultimately to kill it. No one liked what they didn’t know. What they couldn’t control.
The man who’d just captured the room’s attention continued to explain what he knew––some sort of attack that day in Tallinn, of Russian origin, the reason and the target still unknown.
“Are they trying to force a conflict?”
“It’s possible, sir.” It would have been especially possible had the same happened in Ukraine––but it hadn’t. That had been the Kremlin, the naval base in the Black Sea on the Crimea just too valuable to lose. It was strike first or not at all. “It depends on who the target is.”
“Who is there?” No one from Russia had been invited.
“Mostly European politicians or representatives. The British aren’t there, nor the Germans, though they’ve sent a token gesture. The British Secret Service is there, however.”
“Interesting. Working with those clowns at KaPo most probably,” and there was a laugh around the room. The day after Obama visited Tallinn––a huge statement of support by the then US President, how times had changed––a black ops FSB team, despite Putin’s own public denials, had crossed the border into Estonia and grabbed a senior KaPo officer. He’d been held for over a year, finally traded and released back to Estonia in exchange for an imprisoned Russian spy.
The man left the room, which Putin was then heard addressing. A junior officer spoke to him as he emerged from Putin’s war room.
“We’ve got a third name, sir.”
“Go on,” but the FSB chief feared he knew what was going to be said.
“Mark Orlov, the billionaire. He’s just been spotted with the other two. They are almost certainly in this together.” By the other two it was clear he was talking about Lev Kaminski and Sergej Volkov, the only two names the Kremlin had for the men involved with this organisation.
“Very good, I’ll go back in and tell them. Please, go immediately to the base and prepare your team.”
“Yes, sir.” The young agent turned and left the building. The FSB chief, however, didn’t return to the war room. He wasn’t in the Kremlin to give the President Orlov’s name––but was there to protect the Machine. He pulled out his phone, quickly checking he was alone––which he was––and made a call.
“Agent Davydov is just leaving, heading back to base. Make sure he doesn’t make it.” The order was clear and the call ended.
19
Tallinn, Estonia
Centennial Day––Noon
The first of the military convoy vehicles was rolling through Freedom Square just moments after the Estonian President finished her speech. She’d spoken for ten minutes addressing everyone present––it was a beautiful February day––and those watching on television were clearly moved deeply by the sense of occasion. She said how she felt honoured to be the fifth Estonian President––despite the one hundred year history, only one Estonian President had been in office before 1992, and that for barely two years.
Military bands played throughout, as tanks and missile carriers and surveillance vehicles moved slowly across the open concrete square, their drivers saluting the President as squads of soldiers stood in rows nearby, their particular division’s colours held proudly in front of each group. The most prominent flag, however, was that of modern-day Estonia––a relatively young nation in so many ways, but having been on maps for hundreds of years––and a country now as technically advanced as anywhere else. Tallinn was the front line in cyber security for much of the Western world––which was precisely why it was being targeted by the Machine.
Two police helicopters were hovering in the skies, one almost directly above the square itself, another in the distance, watching the main routes into the area. Sniper teams were in place, though so far nothing overtly suspicious was noted. It was all very quiet––too much so, some feared.
Crowds stood watching, mostly civilians on the raised hillside of Toompea looking down onto the square, though seeing very little. Those of more senior rank––who weren’t otherwise involved in the parade––were given a place alongside fellow dignitaries on Freedom Square itself, close up and personal to the action.
KaPo officers stood in the background, mingling with the crowds, moving around the President, watching the nearby buildings. Everything on the square itself had been in lockdown since that morning, searched and secured long before anyone had arrived. Those buildings that had a line of sight to the square––there weren’t many, but enough to raise some concern––had been closely watched all day. These buildings were the ones from which most of the teams of snipers were watching.
The clock ticked through a quarter past twelve. Still, the convoy continued, the vehicles getting more substantial and more impressive as the minutes went by. The no-fly zone was firmly in place by this point––if the Russians were going to fly a bomber across, even if for a show of strength, it would be intercepted long before it reached the capital. Besides the two helicopters, their presence heard but not distractingly so in the bright blue sky, there was nothing airborne. Ten Estonian airforce jets would fly over at one o’clock, formally ending the parade. They were currently stationed in Paldiski, a city to the west of Tallinn and the main air-force base in northern Estonia. Four NATO aircraft were prepared in Helsinki, able to intercept anything coming across the border from Russia in minutes. Similar jets were also ready in north-east Latvia. There was no way the Russians would be allowed to gatecrash the party.
Clearance had already come from Washin
gton for the NATO jets to engage with anything deemed a threat to regional peace in the area. They held their collective breath, as an escalation of tensions was not anything anyone wanted at that moment. So far, there’d been no obvious move from the Russians. Was that because the threat was already in place?
Half twelve ticked by.
Alex was in the crowd on the hillside watching the President end her speech. She’d spoken in Estonian, so he had no idea what was said, though he could make a good guess. Certainly, she wouldn’t be mentioning anything about the threat that they were currently all under––if she had even been told of that by the KaPo––but it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t have helped matters.
As the first of the convoy vehicles rolled into view, his phone rang. It was Matvey.
“I have some names for you. A team of three people––two men and a woman––were in Tallinn last week. They left three days ago.” Matvey gave names to Alex, who scribbled them onto his right arm, which drew some funny looks from those around him, all Estonians he imagined, all in hats and gloves as if they were in the Arctic. He must have stood out a mile, being hatless and gloveless. Alex moved away a little, the noise from the square making it harder to hear the call.
“Where are they now?”
“Back in Russia. Others arrived to replace them in Tallinn this week, but I think it was these three who arranged everything.”
“So whatever’s in place has already been sorted?”
“Most certainly. Look, they hired vehicles from an outlet near the airport.” That was no use to Alex at that moment, he was the wrong side of town and not even sure what good it would do them now, if the team were gone and the vehicles most probably returned.
“I’ll check it out,” he said, anyway.
“You don’t have long––I just got word that the team in Russia are gearing up to activate.” That meant remote detonation. He was talking about a bomb and not a sniper.
“How long?” He had no idea how Matvey knew all this––he’d long since stopped asking questions, the man just seemed to have connections everywhere, as it seemed did all the oligarchs.
“Thirty minutes.”
He swore. “I’d better go,” and Alex ended the call.
He called Anissa.
“Where are you?”
“At the hotel with Charlie and Zoe,” Anissa said, picking up the urgency in Alex’s tone. She’d been waiting hours for his call. MI6 had based themselves in the hotel room Anissa was booked into, using it as the control centre for that side of things. The hotel was just ten minutes––if that––from the airport.
“I need you to check out a hire firm at the airport.” He gave her the name, as well as reading off the three names he had written on his arm which Matvey had just mentioned. “These three were in Tallinn until recently, and are believed to be the masterminds behind whatever is planned. Hurry, we don’t have long.”
“We can access the hire firm’s database from here,” Anissa said, turning to an Estonian technician who’d been released to assist them. Anissa handed the note to him, and he started the search.
“Great.”
“What are we looking for, Alex?”
“I think they’ve planted a bomb, which they’ll remotely detonate in possibly twenty-five minutes.”
She glanced at her watch. Charlie and Zoe were already putting their gear on, moving out through the door. Charlie held his phone up high––as if to say Call me––and they left.
The technician turned to Anissa.
“One vehicle was not returned––a black Mercedes van, registration 141 BGD.”
“We’ve got the vehicle,” Anissa said, the simultaneous call going out over the radios to all teams with the make and registration number of the van. “We’re going to run the licence plate through the city’s CCTV system to see if we get a match.”
Alex was moving down the hill––away from the square because there was no way he could pass that way, the convoy still rolling through.
He was not even at the bottom of the hill when Anissa spoke again.
“Alex, we have a match. The van was cleared by a KaPo team this morning. It’s in the car park underneath the square!”
Alex turned left, running back around and toward the square, his watch showing it was twenty past twelve. “Have a unit meet me there,” he said, clearly running, his breathing controlled but noticeably heavier than before. “I’ll be there in minutes.”
He was about four minutes away, on a typical day, though the roads were closed off to all at that moment. The convoy was streaming past him as he ran in the opposite direction, down towards the side of the square and where the road entrance to the car park was. He leapt the barrier which kept people off the road, no time to think about anything better to do, and darted between two of the vehicles which were moving up the road. A police officer started to give chase.
Alex was the first to arrive at the entrance, running down the ramp towards the underground barrier––only to see two metal shutters firmly in place. It was tightly closed.
“Damn!” Alex screamed, looking at his watch. Twelve twenty-four.
He heard footsteps behind him, and a shout from a police officer––the one who’d chased him across the road––the man holding a gun in front of him, saying something in Estonian, Alex assumed. He didn’t understand whatever language it was. Just then the team from KaPo arrived, with Charlie and Zoe.
“He’s with us!” Charlie called, no more time to explain, but the presence of the KaPo unit enough to make the officer stand down after a few seconds.
“Get these doors open!” screamed Alex, and one of the KaPo agents then spoke into his headset immediately, and after what seemed like an eternity, the barriers began to rise. Up above, the convoy continued, tanks now rumbling across the cobbled stones of the square.
The British agents moved into the underground car park, the KaPo unit fanning out around the space as they advanced. They all knew what they were looking for.
“Over there!” called Alex, pointing to a section of the car park that was underneath the square itself.
“Bloody hell!” Zoe said. A bomb disposal unit rushed past them, with half of the KaPo unit. The team leader stopped in front of the three MI6 agents.
“I think you’d better wait back there. Leave this to the experts.”
Alex was going to say something––he wanted to be over there––but was no help whatsoever when it came to explosives. Neither did he want to be anywhere near it should a detonation be imminent.
The van was being scanned for radiation––nothing was being emitted from the truck, which was something. A nuclear device––even a small one––would have been enough to obliterate most, if not all, of Tallinn.
Alex checked his watch––it was half-past twelve.
Somewhere nearby, an alarm of sorts sounded. It was soon evident that the sound was coming from the back of the van. The KaPo unit froze, and seconds later the doors sprang open, and then piles of leaflets fell to the ground, a few being blown around by the breeze where the wind caught them. The back of the van seemed to be filled with nothing except paper, at least from where they were standing.
The doors flying open had undoubtedly put sudden fear into everyone.
But there was no explosion. Slowly, as more and more of the leaflets tumbled onto the floor around the back of the van, the KaPo unit moved in, opening all the doors carefully, and giving a thumbs up to their unit leader, who was standing open-mouthed by that point besides the three MI6 agents. All four of them walked over to the van, as another two men were scanning the vehicle with handheld devices for any sort of digital or electrical signal. There was nothing.
Alex picked up a leaflet. The writing he couldn’t understand––it wasn’t in Estonian, the script was Cyrillic: Russian. One half of the A5 leaflet featured a relic of the Soviet era––the hammer and sickle on the red USSR flag.
One unit was now inside the back of the van, havin
g just tipped over a pile of what must have been a few thousand leaflets. It revealed something underneath.
“Careful,” Alex said, automatically, though these weren’t his men to command nor did he know if they would even understand him, let alone obey him.
Five minutes later the four canisters––as it turned out––were completely exposed. On the first one, written in large letters in English was the word Boom. Inside it contained enough fertiliser to have manufactured a massive bomb, and the other three containers included everything else needed. Wiring and a remote detonator were found last of all, the detonator taken away by the KaPo team to be tested for what it might tell them about its origin.
The point was clear: if we had wanted to blow you all up––and everyone above the square––we could have done.
Alex turned to the KaPo unit leader, who had one of the leaflets in his hand––there were now thousands of them blowing around in the wind. Even the entire front two seats of the van were packed with them.
“What does it say?”
“It’s pro-Russia, pro-Putin propaganda. Claims to be from a group calling itself the Estonian Liberation Army.”
“Does the name mean anything to you?”
“Nothing. We’ll run it through the system at HQ and take things from there. Gentlemen,” he said, addressing first Alex and then Charlie, “and ma’am,” he said, turning to Zoe, “if you’ll excuse us we’ll get this scene tidied up and shut down. We can debrief with you later.”