by Alex Shaw
‘That is correct.’
‘And how did you come to the conclusion?’
Strelkov explained. His own anger at the situation had now turned cold, but he was not resigned, he had a plan. ‘Regretfully what is done is done, and I cannot change this but I have an idea of how this situation can be used in a positive manner which, I may say, will benefit our cause more than Vasilev’s skills ever could.’
There was a pause, punctuated by electronic static before the director spoke. ‘Well, I am listening.’
Strelkov started to talk and when he had finished, he could tell by the tone of his voice that the director in Moscow had a thin smile on his often-sullen face.
‘Very well, I shall advise the president of this.’
The call ended, Strelkov put away his phone and gazed into the distance where he saw smoke rise. The shelling had started again.
*
Distant shelling had distracted the Ukrainian soldiers at the checkpoint marking the start of Ukrainian government-controlled territory. A young soldier had peered into the old couple’s car. Recognising them he’d only asked to see Racine’s passport. She felt in her jacket and handed over her Ukrainian passport in the name of Olena Onika. After a cursory glance and then a quick search of the boot, they were allowed to continue on their way with the rest of the civilians escaping the conflict. The extraction plan, although modified, had worked. Racine had managed to enter Ukraine but she also had to leave it. At least, she mused, no one with guns would be attempting to stop her this time.
As the old car wafted and rocked on its soft suspension and the heaters blasted stuffy, warm air, Racine battled to stay awake. The fear and the adrenalin of the past two days had now been replaced by post-mission malaise, an acute lethargy. It had many names – soldiers called it battle fatigue – but she just knew that although very much alive, she felt like death.
*
Racine continued to travel with the elderly couple until they arrived at their final destination, the city of Poltava in central Ukraine. She’d offered to drive part of the way but Dima, the old man, would not hear of it. It was a matter of principle to him that he get his wife and their new lady friend to safety. He was a safe driver, slow but steady. Some eight and a half hours later, after traversing in the darkness, what resembled miles of dark undulating waters but in fact were Ukraine’s flat, fertile fields, they arrived at a dacha belonging to Dima’s relatives. The owner, his cousin, offered to put Racine up for the night but she politely refused and just asked to use their telephone. Calling a number at the French embassy in Kyiv, she gave an authorisation code and stated what her requirements were. Half an hour later Dima dropped her off at the railway station in time to board the overnight train to Kyiv.
It was just before four in the morning when Racine alighted at Kyiv’s central railway station. She felt exposed, alone, vulnerable. It wasn’t a city she had been to before and one she hadn’t planned to visit. Bedraggled passengers pushed past her. She allowed herself to be carried along with them, a piece of flotsam on an encroaching tide.
The cafés and kiosks were shut for the night, not opening for another hour and a half, but the street was noisy. Grimy, yellow minibuses, called ‘Marshrutka’ waited for passengers, to ferry them to outlying regions. Several taxis stood hoping to get a fare in the lull after the nightclubs had closed and before rush-hour started.
Two taxi drivers accosted her, much to their annoyance she respectfully refused their services, and stepped purposefully from the kerb. Her directions were simple. She headed straight ahead and joined a street lined with three-storey ornate apartment blocks and not so ornate utilitarian office buildings. She carried on walking for five minutes, leaving the station behind her, and became the only living thing moving in a predawn road of ghosts. All senses alive, checking for tails or watchers, she turned left onto one of Kyiv’s wide avenues. In full daylight it would be thronged with traffic but now it was still. She drew level with a large, steel and concrete box of a building she recognised as a department store. She took a step back into an alcove next to the entrance and vanished into the cold black shadows. Racine smiled thinly as she noticed Kyiv’s own Soviet-era Circus across the street. In communist times there had been clowns everywhere.
Ten minutes later, with only the occasional rumble of a passing taxi breaking the nocturnal city silence a dark saloon car drew up to the kerb. A dumpy, middle-aged woman, dressed in an ill-fitting trouser suit, heaved herself out. She stood on the pavement and looked around. Checking her watch, she exhaled loudly.
Racine emerged from the shadows and addressed her in French. ‘It’s a bit early for a walk, Madame.’
The woman spun, surprised, and placed her hand on her chest. She pulled a face. ‘You made me jump,’ she chided, in Parisian-accented French.
Racine raised her eyebrows. She knew it had been short notice, but had the DGSE really sent an untrained agent to collect her? ‘I’m sorry, Madame.’
‘It’s Mademoiselle. The only thing I’m married to is my country. Now don’t mill about, get in.’
Racine didn’t move. ‘Who’s the driver?’
‘One of our local Ukrainian staff. Please get in.’
Still Racine stayed put.
‘Jacob would not be happy with me if you missed your flight.’
Racine knew this to be true, and did as she was told, now assured by the woman’s invocation of Jacob’s name. Moments later the car, an older model Volkswagen Passat, sedately drew away from the kerb.
‘There is a package for you in the seat pocket.’ The woman glanced back over her shoulder. ‘Check that it contains everything you need.’
Racine switched on the reading light, reached for the large, brown envelope and assessed its contents. It contained an Irish passport, using her photograph, issued in the name of Estelle Malcolm, five hundred euros in mixed-denomination notes, a handful of Ukrainian hryvnia and a business-class ticket for the Ukrainian International Airways ten a.m. flight to London’s Gatwick airport. She pocketed the cash and ticket, then checked the passport for entrance stamps. ‘Thank you. This looks fine.’
‘Good.’ The woman was happy. ‘It will be about thirty minutes at this time of night to get to Boryspil.’
*
They arrived at the airport as dawn broke. The driver had not spoken at all and the woman only opened her mouth again to say, ‘Bon chance.’ Boryspil International Airport was awake and open for business. It was too early for Racine to check in, so she used the hryvnia to buy a large café latte and a pastry at the coffee shop. She wasn’t hungry but knew she needed to eat. An outsized fish tank formed part of the partition wall of the eatery and she took a table near this, hidden from onlookers but able to peer through the water at the concourse beyond. The tropical fish inside made faces at her.
Racine was one of the first to check in and after making full use of the business class lounge to clean up, the first to board the plane. The flight was just over three hours. She ate her business-class breakfast, served her by an impossibly fresh-faced blond steward with perfectly gelled hair, and then snoozed for the rest of the flight. At Gatwick she was the first off, whizzed through immigration. She joined the back of a group of British tourists returning home from an Orlando flight, and was ignored by the customs officers as she entered the green corridor. She changed terminals and at the EasyJet counter bought a ticket on a flight to Paris. Her Irish passport held up to the checks at both Gatwick and Charles de Gaulle.
Exhausted but her training keeping her vigilant, Racine caught a taxi to a location on the opposite side of Paris to where she needed to be and then took a meandering route utilising buses, two more taxis and finally the metro. Eventually arriving home she locked herself in her secure flat and set the alarm system. She desperately wanted to wash and get into bed but there was something she had to do first. Racine wearily moved to her bedroom chest of drawers, opened it and pulled out her secure work iPhone. After powering it on she sent
a simple message to Baptiste and Jacob:
Mission was set up by Vasilev to abduct me. Must find out how?
Depositing the iPhone on her bedside table, she thought about switching her personal phone back on too but decided she didn’t have the energy. She gingerly undressed, not wanting to see the physical toll the mission had taken on her body, and got into the shower. The water was the best she’d ever felt and its warmth started to relax her. Eventually she forced herself out of the shower. Minutes later, barely towel-dry, she collapsed into bed.
Chapter 25
Central Paris
Racine’s dreams as always were vivid but now rather than events of her childhood it was images of the mission that assailed her slumber. She relived randomly selected parts, almost like a trailer for a Hollywood film – except she was the hero. The trailer continued, complete with villains dying and vehicles exploding. Finally she was at Sasha Vasilev’s doorstep, her gun rising to take her first shot, to complete her mission, only this time when she squeezed the trigger nothing happened. Vasilev stepped forward, grabbed the gun, and forced the barrel into his mouth. And then his face changed to that of Aidan Snow.
Racine’s eyes opened. A strange expression on her face. She frowned. Why was she dreaming of nonsense? And then before she could give her dream any further thought her stomach rumbled. She was hungry. She checked her bedside clock. She’d slept for twelve hours straight. Racine painfully padded to the kitchen, acutely aware of her many bruises. She needed caffeine – she was ideologically opposed to decaf – and started the coffee machine then used the microwave to defrost a couple of croissants, incomparable to those her mother used to make but tasty enough.
Ten minutes later, with a greasy smear on her lips and a concoction of strong painkillers dissolving amongst her breakfast, she started to write up her after-action report. Apart from any intel that could be shared with the wider DGSE, the document had a readership of two – Baptiste and Jacob. It was classified, would not bear her name, but was a record nonetheless of the mission she had undertaken. Ninety minutes of manic typing, and a pot of coffee later, Racine sent an encrypted email to both men. She felt tears form in her eyes but rubbed them away before she stretched, showered, dressed and left her flat in search of something more substantial to eat.
That evening, red-eyed, Racine sat with a glass of wine in her hand and a plate of cheeses balanced on her lap as Alexa shuffled through the hits of Roxette. She felt exposed. Crying was an alien act to her. It had started in the taxi in Donetsk and she wished it would stop. It struck her as strange that tears were freely flowing for someone who had died almost a decade and a half before. The mission, her killing Sasha Vasilev, had brought with it closure but also grief and emptiness. Her mother was god knew where, her father was in Nice with his girlfriend and she was in her DGSE Paris flat, loveless, friendless, and bruised.
She remembered her personal phone was still off. What would another day mean to anyone? She’d switch it back on tomorrow, when she was ready to face the real world, and that was when she would talk to her father. She was used to the post-mission emotional and physical comedown, a conflict cold-turkey, which took several days to pass regardless of the mission outcome. This was different somehow, more personal. She finished her glass of wine, reached for the bottle and realised it was empty. Moving her cheese plate, she padded to the kitchen, uncorked her second bottle of Monoprix special-offer wine. If she finished that she’d switch to pastis or perhaps cognac, her father’s favourite.
She returned to the settee, shouted at Alexa to stop and switched on Netflix. Her work phone rang, but she ignored it – she was officially off duty and would be so for a few days. It rang through to voicemail. And then a text message arrived. Giving up, she transferred her wine to the coffee table and looked at the message from Baptiste on her iPhone’s screen.
All OK?
She sighed, knowing that if she didn’t reply he’d think something was seriously wrong. So she called him back rather than sending a text. Racine had no intention of playing instant message ping-pong with her ex, even if he was also her supervisor.
Baptiste answered immediately, as though he’d been holding his handset. His voice was warm and soft. ‘’Allo, you’re alive then?’
‘Yes, I am.’
There was a pause before he replied, ‘Your voice is croaky. You sound upset. Are you sure nothing’s the matter? I can come over if you need anything, if you need to talk?’
‘No. I’m fine.’ Embarrassed, Racine realised her tone was harsher than she had intended.
‘OK. Look, are you watching TV?’
‘Netflix.’
‘Change the channel.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve just got word: ON are about to go to a live interview with Darren Weller.’
‘Riveting, thanks,’ she replied before ending the call.
She swapped Netflix for the Russian ON channel and caught the end of a commercial for a Russian bank before the news programme continued. She took a large swig of wine, refilled her glass and settled down, nervously, for another type of light entertainment.
*
Racine watched the grey-suited ‘Our News’ anchorwoman, Sharron Machin stood in a semi-casual manner to the right of an immense plasma screen in the ON television broadcast newsroom. As she spoke directly to camera the display to her left was covered with a gigantic still from an earlier report by Darren Weller. It showed the Englishman standing in front a derelict train in a disused goods yard. His long hair tied back, he stared down the lens. Machin addressed her own camera. ‘British journalist Darren Weller has been found alive and well in Donetsk after going missing whilst covering the conflict in the east. In a shocking revelation Weller was held illegally captive for two days by the members of the Security Service of Ukraine and agents of Britain’s MI6. We now have the first chance to speak to Darren, who joins us live from central Donetsk.’
The word ‘LIVE’ whooshed across the screen. The plasma display became a split-screen, showing Weller sitting behind a desk on the left and rolling footage of his most recent reports on the right. The footage had been chosen to emphasise his status as a war correspondent. It included explosions in the near distance, swirls of smoke from smouldering buildings, Weller dressed in a DNR uniform carrying out weapons drills and a bombed-out bridge. In Donetsk, Weller sported a new shorter hairstyle, but what was most noticeable was the stubble and two-day-old bruising on his usually boyish face.
Machin, still standing next to the display spoke. ‘Darren it’s good to see that you are alive and well. ON lost contact with you earlier this week – we had no communication with you for two days. Tell us what happened?’
‘Yes, thank you, Sharron.’ Weller took a sip from a glass of water on the desk. He winced as his did so, overplaying the discomfort. ‘I was travelling with my cameraman Vadim, to the site of the latest Ukrainian shelling. A group of Ukrainian soldiers had placed an illegal checkpoint across the road. We were stopped and ordered out of the car. When we informed them we were accredited journalists, they just laughed. And then they attacked Vadim.’
‘They attacked your cameraman?’ Machin asked, with her trademark incredulity.
‘That’s right. The Ukrainians struck Vadim with the butts of their assault rifles and then when he was on the ground, they kept kicking him in the face and head. Their leader stated if I couldn’t prove who I was, he couldn’t guarantee that I was going to live.’
‘And then what happened?’
‘They left Vadim at the side of the road; I thought he was dead. I was blindfolded, handcuffed, and dragged away. I was terrified.’
The camera pulled back wide to show the studio, with Machin standing next to the giant screen. She put her finger to her ear. ‘And we’re just getting this. ON cameraman, Vadim Azarov, is now confirmed to be in hospital receiving treatment for his injuries. Good news, Darren, I’m sure you’d agree.’
‘Very good news.’
‘So then what happened?’ It was clear to Racine that Machin wanted to move the narrative along and get to the really sensational part.
‘Then Ukrainians took me away, I don’t know where, and I was in a locked room without water or toilet facilities for two days. They kept questioning me. You can see the bruises on my face from their “questioning”.’
‘What were they asking you?’
‘They accused me of being a Russian spy, a terrorist and working for terrorists. They informed me that I had a Russian passport and had entered Ukraine illegally. All of this was completely false. Each time I told them the truth, they punched me.’
‘Who hit you?’
‘There were three of them. One was an SBU specialist. The other two were MI6 agents.’
The camera cut to show a close-up of Machin’s reaction. Her eyebrows had arched above the frames of her glasses. ‘Let’s just clarify this: agents of MI6 were illegally interrogating you in Donetsk?’
Now the camera cut again to a similar close-up of Weller. He wagged his head emphatically. ‘One was definitely an MI6 spy – the man. The woman I believe she was too, she had an English accent but she spoke in French to him.’
‘She spoke in French?’
‘Yes, they thought I couldn’t understand it. They used it as a code. I’d met the man before in Kyiv, when he was undercover pretending to be a British teacher. I’d never seen the woman before.’
‘You’d met one of them at an earlier date? Do you think you were specifically targeted by British intelligence?’
‘There is no other explanation. I report on the real truth on the ground. The Kyiv junta and their allies don’t like it.’
Racine rolled her eyes as she watched Machin feed Weller the next question, in a very obvious attempt to maximise the drama. ‘Darren, do you know the name of the MI6 man?’
‘Yes I do.’