by Andy Maslen
“Aye, so I’m walkin up and down the aisles choosing the scran, you know? And I’m gettin the funny look left right and fuckin centre. So I get to the checkout and when I reach to get ma wallet from my back pocket, I realise what the problem is. Ma coat’s hooked up over the fuckin pistol. I was walkin roond Sainsbury’s like Jesse-Fuckin-James!”
The far-off laughter in the Sergeants’ Mess echoed down through the years as he left the hotel.
Gabriel flagged down a minicab within seconds of exiting the lobby. He immediately wrinkled his nose as the combined aromas of artificial pine and rancid, spice-tainted sweat assailed his nostrils. He sat back and stared out of the window as the car dipped and swerved through the late afternoon traffic. Leaving the Old Town, the architecture lost its distinctive character and blurred into a boring mixture of steel, glass and concrete. Arabic pop music crackled from the tinny speakers in the front of the cab as the driver – a migrant or refugee from some war-torn state in the Middle East – jousted with other vehicles to gain a few yards here and there. He clearly took the same approach to personal hygiene as he did to lane discipline, and the tree-shaped air freshener swinging from the rear-view mirror had no chance.
The same guard was on duty at Volkov’s building, but he didn’t bother frisking Gabriel this time. Orders from Volkov, probably, but you missed out on the search of the century, my friend. Instead he picked up the desk phone and called Volkov. He glanced up at Gabriel a couple of times and nodded, then replaced the receiver.
“You wait. He come,” the guard said, turning back to his monitor and impressing Gabriel with his combination of taciturnity, disdain and signal-to-noise ratio.
“Sure,” Gabriel said, slipping into Terry Fox’s laid-back style and smiling broadly. “I wait, Yuri comes. And you sit on your arse, you lazy bastard, eh?”
Five minutes passed. Then the lift doors opened, and Volkov strode out to greet Gabriel, hand extended, white teeth showing. Erik and Konstantin came out after him, both dressed in jeans and T-shirts that revealed their thickly muscled arms.
“Ready for a little drive up country, my friend? Come, I’ll show you what I’ve assembled for your hunting trip.”
Gabriel followed Volkov through a service door beyond the reception area. Whatever attention the architects and interior designers had felt it necessary to lavish on the public areas of the building, it was immediately clear that their eye for detail had closed here. The corridor was little more than a concrete tunnel, lit with the cheapest industrial strip-lights. Cracked and peeling white, gloss paint covered the walls. With Erik and Konstantin close behind, they made their way past a trio of scuffed grey, plastic rubbish bins to another door. This one had a steel push-bar across it. Volkov struck it with the heels of both hands and it swung open and back on itself to hit the outer wall with a rattle and a clang.
They were in a car park. Waiting for them directly in front of the security door was a brand new Mercedes estate. It was a dark, metallic grey – gunmetal – and all the windows apart from the windscreen were blacked out. The car sat low on massive alloy wheels, through which Gabriel could see bright-red brake callipers. As they rounded the back of the car, the chrome badging told the full story: E63 S on the left, AMG on the right. A 5.5-litre V8 engine, hand-built by a single engineer so proud of his – or her – work that they signed their name on it. Or, to put it another way, a way Terry Fox would probably use, “a fuck of a fast motor”.
“You like it?” Volkov said, thumbing the boot release button on the black plastic key fob and standing back as the tailgate swung open to the whirr of electric motors.
“I love it. But it’s not quite as anonymous as I was thinking.”
“It’s grey! How much more anonymous can you get?”
“Good job I didn’t ask you for anything flash, then, isn’t it?”
Volkov laughed and clapped Gabriel on the back. “You English. Always so worried about what other people think. It doesn’t matter. You have my best two men with you. And listen, my man in the Police Department reviewed the CCTV tapes. Those tarakany were headed towards Tartu. You go after them, you squash them, you rescue your friend’s women, you come back, you collect your money. Everybody’s happy.”
Gabriel stowed his gear in the boot to the side of the canvas-wrapped bundles.
“You get everything I asked for, then?” he asked Volkov.
“Of course. Three M16s, three hundred rounds apiece. One Dragunov sniper rifle, with telescopic sight, one hundred rounds. Three Glock 19 semi-automatic pistols, one-fifty rounds apiece. You have twenty grenades: half teargas, half smoke. And a kilo of C-4 with wiring kit, timers and detonators, including a couple of radio-controlled units.”
“That ought to do it. So I reckon we get to Tartu, scope out the local scrappies . . .”
Volkov frowned. “Scrappies?”
“Sorry, scrapyards. Anyway, we track the Chechens to whichever one is theirs, go in hot and heavy, get the women and then get out. Your boys Erik and Konstantin, they on board taking orders from a Brit?”
Volkov turned to the two big men and asked, in Russian, “The little man wants to know if you will do what he orders?”
All three men laughed and then Konstantin, taller and broader than Erik, answered. “As long as he’s ordering your orders, we’re happy if he thinks he’s in charge.”
Volkov turned round to face Gabriel again. “They’re fine.”
I bet they are. The question is, what exactly are your orders?
“Good,” Gabriel said. “We’d better be going then. Got a lot of driving ahead of us.”
“On you go then, my friend. I wish you success. We will share some good vodka when you return with your friend’s womenfolk, yes?”
Gabriel climbed into the big German estate’s driver’s seat, breathed in the new-car smell – all leather conditioner and chemically treated airflow – pushed the key fob into its receiving slot, and thumbed the starter button set into the top of the gear selector. The big V8 didn’t so much erupt into life as come out of hibernation like a bear. All the aggression and power was there, on tap, but the car had no need to shout about it the moment it woke up. Instead the combined engine and exhaust notes formed a drowsy grumble just audible inside the cabin. Gabriel adjusted the little chromed levers in the shape of a seat until he was comfortable. Konstantin squeezed his bulky frame in beside him, knocking his right elbow as he clicked his seatbelt home. Erik took the backseat, filling most of it. Gabriel buzzed his seat forward a few inches to alleviate the pressure where the big Russian’s knee was jammed into the back of his seat.
Next stop, Tartu.
*
Getting out of Tallinn at six o’clock in the evening was not the smooth journey Gabriel had hoped for. Within minutes of leaving Volkov’s car park, they were mired in traffic, most of which consisted of cars fitted with weapons-grade air horns. That was the impression created by the sonic assault that belaboured Gabriel’s ears the one time he tried driving with his window down. Estonians were obviously as in love with driving – and as fond of improvising road rules – as their counterparts further to the south in Italy, Rome in particular. Using your indicators was clearly viewed by most of the drivers they shared the roads with as an optional extra, like air-con or iPod connectivity.
Gabriel swung the Merc from lane to lane, spotting gaps and diving into them. The size and power of the car, coupled with the three-pointed star on the bonnet and those chromed letters and numbers on the tailgate, guaranteed him a measure of respect from other drivers. At one set of traffic lights, as he cruised to a stop on the inside of a two-lane stretch of highway, an old, matt-black Toyota Celica coupe drew alongside and blared its air horns. Gabriel looked to his left to see a kid of eighteen or nineteen, grinning wildly at him, exposing his teeth, and pointing forwards with a finger-wagging gesture.
He, the kid, raised his eyebrows at Gabriel. The meaning was clear. Gabriel took in the sticker under the passenger-side window. N
itrous . . . is a Gas!!! it read in an acid-green, vaporous typeface. He smiled and shook his head. However, he blipped the throttle a couple of times just to wind the boy racer up. The sound of the German V8 built from a muted throb to a hard-edged roar. Konstantin scowled and muttered about “fucking children”, but did nothing else. The kid answered by gunning his own engine. The standard Celica was equipped with a one-point-eight-litre petrol engine – nothing much in the world of high-performance cars. But the kid had obviously been busy tuning his. Gabriel thought he detected the whistle of an aftermarket turbocharger as the Japanese car’s revs built to a scream. The big-bore exhaust bellowed then subsided as the kid took his foot off, and the dump valve for the turbocharger huffed out a great breath of unused pressurised air.
The lights turned from red to amber. With a squeal from the rear tyres, the kid was away, leaving two black smears on the road behind him and a drifting cloud of blue smoke. He slewed wildly left to right and back again as the power at the back wheels threatened to overwhelm the steering. Gabriel pulled away smoothly, catching a whiff of burnt rubber even through the Merc’s sophisticated air-filtering system.
Half an hour later, the architecture around them changed from classical municipal to contemporary business, and then to who-gives-a-fuck suburban. The city, and the traffic, had thinned out, and finally they reached the E263, which would take them all the way to Tartu. Gabriel flexed his right foot and the Mercedes surged ahead, the acceleration pushing back into the welcoming embrace of the padded and bolstered driving seat. He took it up to ninety-five kilometres per hour and then sat there, watching the road unfold ahead of him in a series of cresting hills and long, swooping curves through the Estonian countryside.
Now they had left the city behind, the traffic had all but disappeared. Konstantin nudged him and jerked his chin towards the open stretch of motorway ahead.
“Faster,” he said, in unaccented English.
“Faster?” Gabriel said, keeping his eyes on the road. “All right, Konnie me old mate. You want faster. We’ll do faster.”
Gabriel stamped down on the throttle pedal, burying it in the thick carpet lining the footwell. The car seemed to hunker down on its haunches for a split second as transmission, engine and steering spoke to each other in a stream of ones and zeroes through the performance control chips. Gabriel could just discern the whine of the two turbochargers as they spooled up, shoving massive amounts of fuel and air into the eight sucking cylinders. But something was wrong. He’d been expecting to get kicked in the back as the Merc’s five hundred and fifty-seven horses galloped off towards the horizon, with him hanging onto the reins. Instead, the acceleration, while still impressive, felt subdued somehow.
He held the car at around a hundred and eighty for thirty seconds or so, flicking his eyes upwards to the rear-view mirror and then in front, scanning the horizon for lorries, caravans and, especially, red lights. He had no doubt that the car’s brakes were burly enough to cope if he needed to scrub seventy or eighty kilometres an hour off the speed, but he preferred not to attract the wrong sort of attention. These days any indiscretion was likely to end up on YouTube or Facebook way before it ever made it onto a speed camera or police patrol car’s dash-cam. Despite the high cruising speed, the interior of the car was sepulchrally quiet, hardly the point of a big engine in Gabriel’s opinion, thinking about the yowling cry of his Maserati’s power plant under full throttle. But that was the difference between the Italians and the Germans. Flamboyance versus efficiency; “look at me” versus “nothing to see”.
Ahead, as the road curved gracefully round to the right and began a long incline, Gabriel could see a couple of container trucks labouring up the hill, dirty puffs of smoke jetting from the upright exhaust pipes mounted directly behind the tractor units. He pulled out to overtake, crossing the white line, and found himself racing at roughly double the speed limit towards an oncoming camper van just a few hundred yards away. The pair of lorries turned out to be a trio; the foremost of the big rigs had been completely hidden by the other two. He had two choices: slam the brakes on and scooch in behind the trailing truck; or put his foot down and chase the gap ahead of the leader.
He looked down.
Konstantin’s left hand was gripping the front of the armrest between them.
The knuckles were whitened and bloodless.
The man’s face was set in a grim, lipless stare.
His right leg was straining as he pushed his foot down where the brake pedal would be if he were behind the wheel.
Gabriel chose.
As he put his foot down, the E63’s engine management computer sensed his intentions and swapped cogs somewhere beneath his right thigh, dropping down two gears. The engine and exhaust notes, finally, broke into wild and unconstrained song as the big estate surged forward. The white speedometer needle swept round the dial to the 265 kph mark, way over into the final quarter of the indicated range and about 160 mph in English money.
Ahead, the camper van was flashing its headlights in hysterical Morse code. The meaning was clear. Get back! Get over! You’re going to kill us all!
To his right, Konstantin was breathing heavily through his nose and behind him he could hear Erik swearing, a continuous stream of the most obscene Russian cursing he had ever heard.
The distance between the Mercedes and the oncoming camper van was telescoping under their combined closing speed of somewhere around 240 miles an hour. To his right, the leading truck’s cab came into view. Out of the corner of his eye he could see a fist being waved at him.
He drew ahead and flicked the steering wheel to the right.
The car fought to keep running in a straight line, as the laws of physics dictated it should want to. But the German engineers were as efficient at designing steering systems as they were engines and transmissions. The car obeyed Gabriel’s will and pulled ahead of the truck and its sonorous air horns.
The camper van flew past on his left with a Doppler-shifting blast of its air horns.
The road ahead was empty. Konstantin resumed his normal rate of breathing and his fingers unclenched from the armrest, which bore four deep dents in its white-stitched leather upholstery.
Erik’s swearing descended from the frenzied peak of inventively violent oaths to a subterranean mutter before stopping altogether.
Gabriel lifted his right foot and let the car resume its steady southeastwards progress at a more stately, though far from slouch-like, ninety. Now the excitement was over, he felt the backs of his knees aching with adrenaline and his right leg began trembling as the knotted muscles discharged their unspent energy.
After another two hours of driving, the first sign for Tartu appeared. Ten miles further on, the exit sign glowed electric blue in the late evening sunshine streaming right to left across the carriageway. Beyond the sign, silver birches planted in profusion along the grass verge flared white, their leaves translucent in the slanting sun. Gabriel dabbed the brakes and signalled to pull off the motorway.
Following signs for the town centre, it took a little over fifteen minutes to find a hotel. He drove round the block to the underground car park, located a secluded space in the furthest corner from the entry ramp, and killed the engine. All three men left the car at the same time, stretching and bending before gathering at the tailgate.
“We go in, we get rooms,” Gabriel said. “Get yourselves dinner. I’m having room service. Tomorrow morning, we have to find Drezna’s scrapyard. I’m going to find out how many there are here. Shouldn’t be more than a couple.”
The Russians nodded. Either they understood enough English to follow his simple instructions, or Volkov’s own instructions were to nod whenever the Englishman said anything, then carry on regardless. Gabriel decided to test them.
“You both understand all that, yeah?”
They both nodded, faces revealing nothing of their thoughts.
“Erik. What are we doing now?”
“Now? Get dinner.”
<
br /> “Good lad. Konstantin, your starter for ten. What do we do tomorrow?”
“Find scrapyard. And kill Chechens.”
“Yeah, well, let’s start with finding the scrapyard.”
Gabriel was about to lock the car and was pointing the key fob at the rear window when Konstantin put a hand on his outstretched forearm.
“Wait. The guns. Not good idea leaving them in car.”
“What, so you want to check in carrying a fucking arsenal under your arm, do you? ‘Here, I say, Comrade Hotel Porter, do you mind lugging this sniper rifle up to my room for me?’ I don’t think so. They’re disguised. This is a secure underground car park. And this fucking Panzer has got better security than Yuri’s office. The guns stay here.” I don’t know about you, boys, but my own personal weapons are all coming to bed with me.
Konstantin glared at Gabriel, who noticed with interest how the Russian’s biceps were flexing. Not saying anything, but holding the bigger man’s gaze, Gabriel let the seconds tick on. To his left Erik seemed content to let Konstantin make the call for both of them. A follower by temperament, if not by position in the pecking order. Konstantin hung on for a count of nine, then glanced away.
“Let’s go. I’m starving,” Gabriel said. No need to rub it in.
*
Once inside his room, Gabriel placed his bag on the folding rack provided by the hotel and sat on the bed to unlace his boots. His stomach growled, reminding him he hadn’t eaten. A call to room service for a burger and fries and a beer sorted that simple problem, then he went into the bathroom, a modular construction seemingly moulded from a single piece of slightly sandy-feeling, off-white plastic, and turned the shower to hot.
He stripped off his clothes, folded and placed them on a chair and stepped under the scalding water. With the back of his head, his neck and his shoulders heated to burning point, he stared at the floor and let rivulets of water course over him, running from the end of his nose, his eyebrows and his fingertips.