by Alex Shaw
Sophie leant against the wall, panting and resting her hands on her knees. The women weren’t speaking; they weren’t moving. She looked down at Marie, and only then did Sophie realise that she hadn’t been scared. She had felt no fear, rather a sense of indignation that they dared target her. She faced the other two. Sylvie was rubbing her cheek, as silent tears streamed from her eyes. Pascal was sitting on the ground, holding her throat, transfixed, frozen as though she didn’t understand what was going on. Sophie took Pascal’s ponytail and pulled her up to her knees and then took a step towards Sylvie. The woman jerked backwards, found her feet and ran away. Sophie locked eyes with Pascal. ‘I don’t think Marie is going to help you and Sylvie has run away. Now shall I hit you again, perhaps break your nose, or should I drag your pretty face against the wall?’
‘N … no … please!’ Pascal spluttered.
Sophie let go. ‘Piss off.’
Pascal loped away after Sylvie.
Marie was now lying on her side, holding her head. Sophie crouched in front of her. ‘Your brother is an imbecile, and you are an imbecile, which means your parents are probably imbeciles too. Unless you want me to slap your whole family around, you’ve got to promise me something.’
Marie didn’t move. ‘Wh … what?’
‘You never, ever speak to me again. And if you see me on the street, you cross the road. The same goes for your brother. You got that?’
Marie opened her mouth to reply; however, Sophie didn’t hear the words as a rough hand grabbed her left arm and dragged her upwards. Instinctively she used the motion to thrust her left elbow backwards, deep into the stomach of the attacker and then, pivoting, swung a powerful right hook into their face. And then Sophie became scared … very scared … as the grey-haired gendarme crashed to the ground.
Chapter 8
Present Day
Izvarine border checkpoint, Russia–Ukraine border
Racine leant against the battered Golf as a seemingly unending line of white-painted Kamaz military trucks rumbled past in the watery light of dawn. Headed for the border with Ukraine, they were the latest convoy of Kremlin ‘humanitarian aid’ for the people of the Donbas region. Seen as a thinly veiled supply corridor for Russian-backed fighters, the first few convoys had attracted the world’s attention and condemnation. Very few of the trucks, if any, carried food or medical supplies and those that did rarely reached the civilian population.
Several Russian army drivers waved at Racine as they went by, and she returned the gesture, smiling sweetly like the ‘good, little journalist’ she was pretending to be. Racine felt exposed as she stood at the side of the road next to her dilapidated-looking hatchback with the word ‘PRESS’ stencilled onto it using white tape. Noah had assured her that the cover story, her legend, would hold up to scrutiny. To anyone who asked – and they would – she was Olena Gaeva, the reporter. Her documents were in order and her internal passport was genuine. An internet search would further confirm her credentials with online versions of her previous articles emphatically promoting the Kremlin ideology. It also helped that Racine bore an uncanny resemblance to the journalist, which made Ms Gaeva pretty damn sexy, in her opinion.
The last truck in the convoy passed her position and as it did so, a black, long wheelbase Mercedes G Wagon came to a halt in front of her. A man dressed in immaculate Russian combat fatigues stepped out and approached. His unnaturally dark hair was parted to one side and he had a small, neat moustache. He looked like a villain from a 1950s B movie. She instantly recognised him.
‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘Your press accreditation card and papers, please.’
Racine smiled – she knew her smile flustered most men. She replied in Moscow-accented Russian. ‘Of course.’ The man watched her with dark, alert eyes as she reached into her jacket pocket and produced her press card and internal Russian passport. ‘Here.’
The Russian took the documents without a word and proceeded to study them. He checked her face against the passport then handed it and the press card back. ‘I have read many of your articles, Ms Gaeva. You have undertaken valuable work, and I hope that you will continue to do so.’
‘So do I.’ Racine smiled again, and this time it was mimicked by the Russian. ‘You have me at a disadvantage,’ she lied. ‘I don’t know your name, but you look familiar?’
The Russian’s smile widened, and his chest swelled with pride as he spoke. ‘I am Igor Strelkov.’
Racine still wondered why the DGSE had not asked her to terminate him, but she raised her hand to her mouth for a moment as if to say sorry. ‘Of course, how foolish I have been. Please forgive me. I had not expected to see you here.’ In fact, the DGSE had pinpointed his location and that was the very reason she was there. Strelkov liked to meet all journalists who travelled into the Donbas, for fear that they may be foreign spies.
‘That is quite all right, Ms Gaeva. I am not only a thinker; I also like to be out in the field with muddied hands.’ Strelkov stood like a peacock attempting to impress a mate.
‘Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed. I am sure it will make for a good article.’
‘I am always happy to discuss our situation with the national press. We shall conduct our interview in the centre of Donetsk; this will enable you to appreciate further the vital work we are carrying out.’
Racine made her smile wide, to hide her frustration. She could have easily taken the Russian out now with her silenced 9mm or a stiletto blade to the neck. She was quick and Strelkov was at point-blank range.
She felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Something in her peripheral vision made her turn her head, and … a huge explosion tore through the convoy. The immense shock wave knocked both Racine and Strelkov from their feet. Dazed by the blast Racine looked up. Less than thirty feet along the road a gigantic fireball rose and tore into the clouds. The humanitarian convoy had been attacked. The illicit munitions inside were exploding with the force of a Bastille Day fireworks display. Strelkov pushed himself back up to his hands and knees as he watched the destruction.
Through the fog of hearing, dulled by the explosion, the voices of two Russian commandos shouted. Clad in black, they appeared like demons, grabbed Strelkov under the arms, lifted him to his feet, and hustled him back to the G Wagon. The Mercedes lurched forward. Tyres squealing, it performed a U-turn and reversed direction. Someone had messed up, and it wasn’t her. Racine stumbled backwards away from the Golf, towards the ditch at the side of the road, and into cover. In her mind she ran through her options. Strelkov was her ticket into Donetsk; as the man who could introduce them, he was the door opener for Vasilev.
Racine looked down the road at the devastation. The Russians were firing in all directions; at ghosts and at shadows. She felt an icy finger caress her spine. She rolled over and looked behind her. A group of three figures were running at a crouch across the fields away from the road and the carnage they had created. Racine was impressed … She was also very annoyed.
‘Hey, you!’ an unseen voice called.
Racine gingerly got to her haunches. It was a Russian soldier.
‘Does your car work?’
‘I don’t know.’ She stood. ‘I think so.’
He pointed. ‘Drive back that way to the petrol station. All members of the press are to wait there for instructions.’
‘OK.’ Racine was compliant. In Russia, the media did what it was told or was shut down. She brushed herself off and got into the Golf. Turning it around, she headed back in the direction she had come from an hour before; this time, however, soldiers holding assault rifles stood on the road pointing her towards the entrance to the petrol station. She placed the car to one side of the large asphalt parking area, making sure that it was facing the road, before she took a burner phone from where it had been taped under the passenger seat and typed a text message to another untraceable phone. She had to let Noah know her mission was potentially blown before it had properly started; perhaps this had been
one of the attacks he’d mentioned The Shadows had been planning? Once the message was sent, she removed the battery, took out the SIM card and broke it in half.
Her hearing had returned to near normal although her throat felt as though it had been cut. She retrieved a bottle of water from the glove box and drained it. She took another, wet her hands and wiped her face – luckily it was make-up free – flattened her hair and then got out of the Golf and looked around. There were now six cars, all like hers marked with the word ‘PRESS’, and several military trucks parked at the petrol station.
A man appeared from one of the vehicles and started to walk towards her. He held his right hand above his eyes to block the glare of the sun. ‘Excuse me, are you Olena Gaeva?’ The words were Russian, but the accent was not.
‘Yes.’
The man drew nearer. He was wearing a plain green field jacket that looked one size too big and dark blue jeans. What struck Racine the most, however, was his shiny, shoulder-length greasy hair, tied back in a ponytail. He spoke again, now switching to English with a distinct English accent. ‘I’m Darren Weller with ON News. I heard you were joining us.’
Racine squinted, and delivered her English with a Russian accent, making her diction more staccato and less fluid. ‘Yes, I have seen you on the television.’
‘Fame eh?’ Weller smiled. It was lopsided, and his eyes seemed to bulge.
‘Yes, you are famous,’ she replied noting that his face was as smooth as a young boy’s.
‘Ah, but it has its price. Can you believe I was arrested in Kyiv and banned from entering the territory of Ukraine for three years? Anyway, that doesn’t matter because we’re heading for the Donetsk People’s Republic!’
Racine knew of Weller’s exploits; he was infamous. He was a former British expat living in Kyiv who had taken it upon himself to become an investigative journalist. First freelancing from inside Ukraine, and now working for the Russian outlet Our News or ‘ON’ as the Kremlin-owned English language television news channel was known. He was ridiculous but could also be another way for her to get into Donetsk. She flashed him a smile. ‘What are you doing here?’
Weller looked around dramatically before he spoke. ‘I’m investigating claims that there is an anti-Russian Nazi group operating in the Donbas People’s Republic. Have you heard about them?’
‘No.’
‘They call themselves The Shadows.’
‘Wow.’ Racine feigned surprise. ‘That sounds very interesting.’
‘It is.’ Weller asked enthusiastically, ‘What about you?’
Racine frowned, pretending that her English was worse than it was. ‘Sorry?’
‘Why are you here?’
‘Sorry. I was to be riding with the convoy, and later interviewing Igor Strelkov in Donetsk.’ She let out a sigh of resignation. ‘Now I am not sure.’
‘I interviewed him once. He’s a genius. He won’t let this attack stop him. Even if he’s got to drive every single one of those trucks into Donetsk, he’ll get them there.’
Racine was about to speak when she saw Strelkov’s G Wagon pull up. It disgorged two commandos.
‘Zdravstvuyte,’ Weller greeted the men with the trademark ‘eyes wide’ smile she’d seen onscreen.
The nearest commando glared at them. ‘We have come to inform you that no reports whatsoever are to mention today’s attack on the convoy. As far as the media is concerned it did not happen. Understood?’ Racine gave a nod while Weller seemed only to partially comprehend his quick-fire, Chechen-accented Russian. ‘Once we have cleared the road, the convoy shall continue via Lugansk to Donetsk. We need to ensure that everyone is accounted for. Therefore, we will need to see your documentation again.’
Outwardly Racine remained calm; inside an alarm bell sounded.
British Embassy, Kyiv, Ukraine
Aidan Snow was no stranger to Ukraine and sitting once again in a commandeered office at the British Embassy in Kyiv, the intelligence operative felt oddly at home.
‘Jacob gave me little in the way of new intel, rather what he did give me was by omission,’ his boss Jack Patchem said from their London office.
Snow said, ‘Meaning?’
‘ECHELON had already sent us the exact same intel Jacob passed on to me regarding Iqbal.’
‘So why arrange the meeting?’
‘Apart from keeping in contact? The DGSE did not want us to learn about their mission. I believe Jacob was after a head start. This means only one thing in my mind. The DGSE are going after their French traitor in the photograph, Sasha Vasilev.’
‘Vasilev, who just so happens to be holding Iqbal?’
‘It would appear so.’
‘That’ll make it fun,’ Snow said, deadpan.
‘Look on the bright side, you’re back in Ukraine.’
‘Cheers, for that.’ Unseen by his boss, Snow let himself smile. The former SAS man had lived in Kyiv as an ex-pat before reluctantly joining the Secret Intelligence Service. The network of contacts he had formed, including his close links with the local intelligence service, made him unofficially the SIS’s go-to man for clandestine operations in the region. In reality Snow never needed much persuasion to return. There was something about the country that got under his skin even after all these years.
‘You know how this has to go: don’t get caught and bring Iqbal back. There’s nothing more I can do at my end apart from wish you good luck.’
‘Thanks.’
Call over, Snow sipped his embassy coffee and studied once more the photograph of Mohammed Iqbal. It was an image taken from the DNR’s VKontakte page and showed the British student sitting in a stress position on a bare concrete floor. A caption accompanied it, penned by the Russian intelligence officer Igor Strelkov. It claimed Iqbal was a spy. Snow found it difficult to comprehend why any British national would remain within a foreign war zone when they didn’t have to. War was not fair; it was violent, pernicious, and utterly unpredictable. Iqbal was lucky to be alive and even luckier to have a father who had the ear of the British Foreign Secretary.
Snow had been briefed by Patchem that it was a matter of national security that Iqbal be rescued, explaining that it had been an order from the very top. As such Snow felt the pressure on him to succeed more than ever. He didn’t know why officially it was ‘imperative that Iqbal be returned’ but that made no difference to him. All that mattered was that Iqbal was a British citizen illegally held in Eastern Ukraine. Snow moved the photograph to one side and now focused again on the blueprints of the target building in Donetsk. It was a commercial garage with offices above and a large workshop bay at the back. From the intel garnered from the photographs, it appeared Iqbal was being held somewhere inside, probably on the ground floor.
Snow’s mission was being conducted with a severe lack of time and intel. He would have help from the Ukrainian authorities to ingress into the Donetsk region, but they would not be able to assist him once he was there. He was to link up with a group known as The Shadows who would attack the target address with him, whilst he focused on locating and extracting Iqbal. Being ex-SAS, Snow was highly trained in hostage-rescue techniques but had no idea if The Shadows were too. As long as they shot the bad guys and neither him nor Iqbal that was really all that mattered.
He drained his coffee and left the small office. He moved along the hallway past framed ink illustrations depicting cricket matches in various grounds around England. This brought a smile to his face as he remembered the last time he’d been at the embassy when his Scottish associate Paddy Fox had complained that ‘cricket’ didn’t represent the UK. Fox had been joking, on the surface at least.
Snow took a left and used a side door to exit the building. A VW Passat sat in the secure car park, a figure leaning against it, waiting for him. Vitaly Blazhevich was an agent of the Security Service of Ukraine – otherwise known as the SBU, the Ukrainian successor to the KGB. He would be assisting Snow on his mission to Donetsk. Snow flashed him a genuinely warm smi
le. ‘Vitaly.’
‘Aidan.’ Blazhevich shook Snow’s hand.
‘Any intel updates?’ Snow asked.
‘None. Apart from being taken outside to dig trenches, the prisoners are still being kept in the same place.’
‘Trenches?’ Snow raised his eyebrows.
‘The leader of the DNR is a WW1 enthusiast.’
The two intelligence operatives got into the Passat. Snow signalled to a security guard who released the blast-proof gates securing the car park. The VW pulled onto Desyatynna Street before turning right and negotiating the tourists on Mykhailivska Square. In less than forty minutes, an SBU passenger jet would be in the air en route to the small airfield at Mariupol, the closest they could safely get to Donetsk without risk of being shot out of sky.
‘It’s good to have you here again,’ Blazhevich remarked as they reached Kyiv’s central drag, Khreshatik Street.
‘It’s good to be back. I just wish it wasn’t work-related.’
‘The possibility of being shot does take the fun out of Donetsk sightseeing.’
Snow smirked. He and Blazhevich had been friends for years; since Snow’s time as an ex-pat teacher in the Ukrainian capital.
‘I know this man – Mohammed Iqbal – means a lot to the British,’ Blazhevich said, ‘but our drones have reported increased activity in the Donetsk area. There is what we believe to be a new Russian army FOB to the south of the city, and larger numbers of irregular forces to the north than we had previously estimated. You may not be able to evade them all.’