The Edge of Madness

by Michael Dobbs

  ‘She was a traitor. She has been dealt with,’ Fu continued, as though delivering a weather report, delighted to see the tightening of the knuckles that Lake couldn’t control. ‘Very serious allegations were made about her. I wonder if you might be able to help us clear them up.’

  Lake turned, just sufficiently to catch Fu’s eye and let the man see the depths of his contempt for him.

  ‘No, I thought not,’ Fu said, his lips puckered in disappointment.

  That was when Fu hit him, a surprisingly sharp blow for a man of such small stature, directly in the solar plexus. The ambassador was a man in his early sixties, more accustomed to the ordeals of the cocktail circuit than long sessions in the gym, and his resistance to the blow was not what it might have been. Immediately his nerves went into spasm; he retched, couldn’t breathe, clutched at the pain that was ripping him in two, and felt his breakfast rising. He stumbled towards the bathroom and collapsed on his knees before throwing up into the toilet bowl. He continued until he had nothing more to give.

  There had been no warning, no small talk, no attempt to probe or wheedle information out of him. Such a blunt attack was unlike the Chinese, who rarely took the direct route between any two points. Even as his eyes streamed and his heart pounded, Lake tried to collect his scrambled thoughts. He came to one instant conclusion. Fu was in a hurry. Perhaps time wasn’t on his side, either. And suddenly he was grabbed from behind by the guard from the door, and he felt a sharp jab in his arm. When at last the kaleidoscope of colours in his eyes had formed into a coherent shape, he found Fu beside him holding a syringe. It was already empty.

  ‘Just a little encouragement, Sir Wesley,’ Fu was saying, ‘something that will jog your memory, and then will help you forget.’

  They dragged him back to an armchair, where he fell, but he no longer hurt. Already his limbs were numb and a greyness had fallen across his thoughts. He heard the name Wu Xiaoling, it seemed to be ringing in his mind, like church bells. He was drowning in confusion and he struggled to stay afloat, he didn’t want to think of Xiaoling so instead he thought of his wife, tried to concentrate every fragment of his energy on her, and as she came to his mind he knew he had nothing more to fear, except disgrace. If he was about to be cast into Hell, let them get on with it, but he’d drag this little shrivel-dick Confucian with him every inch of the way. He gave a roar of defiance, which emerged as nothing more than a groan, and he remembered no more.

  They worked on him for the greater part of two hours, prodding him, slapping him, pinching his cheeks, plying him with more serum, encouraging him with both kind words and threats, until at last Fu dragged a towel across his perspiring brow and slapped it across Lake’s pallid face before hurling it into a corner in frustration.

  ‘A little longer,’ the guard suggested.

  But Fu shook his head. ‘There is no time left. No time!’ he screamed. Then he stamped out of the room and slammed the door.

  Thursday afternoon. Moscow.

  The middle-aged man cursed, in the colourful manner drummed into him on the bare, brutal streets of postwar Leningrad. In those days the city was a frozen concrete wasteland that had been both playground and university to him, providing the sort of education that left scars, particularly on someone on the short side of average, but Sergei Illich Shunin had survived. Not everyone had; he’d lost both his sister and his eldest brother, and his father, too, after pneumonia had caught up with his scarred lungs. The young Shunin had grown up knowing that something more than the ordinary was expected of him, and he hadn’t disappointed. He’d been born in a communal flat shared with two other families and an army of cockroaches, yet within fifty years he’d become the leader of the Russian Federation and had gone to live in a palace. Not bad, so far as it went. Inevitably such a rapid rise took its toll, it meant he was a man of few true friends, yet no one dared ignore him. Behind his back they called him ‘Malenkiy Napoleon’, Little Bonaparte, and that pleased him. Others who had sat in his chair had done so much damage–that tapeworm Gorbachev, and that arse-nipping oaf Yeltsin who had viewed the world through the bottom of a bottle. They’d let the Chechens and every other separatist snake run loose so it was Shunin’s job, his destiny, to nail them back inside their box and bury it so deep they’d wake up next to the Devil. Damnation to them all. One day Russia would be great again.

  Yet right now, Sergei Illich Shunin felt overwhelmed by impotence. It wasn’t just the weather, the crushing summer heat that had stretched on for weeks and was beginning to fry his brain and squeeze his asthmatic lungs, it seemed that God Almighty had taken up arms against Russia and was sending trials of apocalyptic proportions to test him. The poor harvest, the melting taiga, the industrial screw-ups, the Muslims and malcontents huddled in their camps just waiting for the chance to tear his country apart.

  And that cursed nuclear plant. It had come back to haunt him. He’d pretended he’d dealt with the matter, put it behind him, fired the director, decimated the staff, but the spilling of so much blood had simply been for the sake of appearance. Deep down he had known it wasn’t an answer. Then, two days ago, the nightmare had been revived. The British ambassador had delivered a hand-written letter from his Prime Minister, stating that it had been a deliberate act of sabotage. Cyber sabotage. How the hell did the bastard know? Know for sure? But he said he did. It had been one of the theories–guesses–put up by Shunin’s own men, who had blabbed on about protocols and source codes and mysteries that came straight out of a child’s fairy tale. Shunin had dismissed it all, he couldn’t be dealing with make-believe, but it hadn’t quelled the doubts inside and now this Briton was stirring it all up again. And he was suggesting that worse was to come. What could be worse than a nuclear meltdown? Shunin prayed he would never find out.

  He crossed himself in the manner taught him by his mother, a good Orthodox Christian who had held to the faith even during the godless years of Communism. His hand moved slowly to the prescribed points about his body and came to rest over his heart. From the front seat of the vehicle his bodyguard watched every movement, yet beside him his son-in-law, Lavrenti, took no heed, his mind lost to the brain-scouring noises that were emanating from an electronic gadget jammed into his ears. It was some sort of multifunctional mobile phone. He was texting at the same time.

  The presidential motorcade struggled to force its way through the groaning streets of the Russian capital in the direction of the air terminal at Sheremetyevo-1. Shunin’s fingers drummed impatiently. He had no concerns about being late, of course, he wasn’t taking a scheduled flight. His private Rossiya-1 Airbus was already fuelled, secured, thrice-checked by his own personal flight crew, and stocked with his fishing gear. Wasn’t going to move without him. But he was an impatient man and fretted at the constant interruptions to their journey. Leningradsky Prospect was choked, not just with vehicles but with the interminable construction work, and the central-lane highway that was supposed to be reserved for official transport had become stuffed so tight it squeaked. The parts that weren’t blocked by lumbering cement trucks and double-parked delivery vans had been overwhelmed by the number of new cars, private cars, cars owned by individuals, not the state. Even the thought of such things would have had Stalin banging on his box. When he spoke publicly of such things Shunin called it progress, but now the thirty-minute journey to Sheremetyevo-1 was likely to take more than an hour, even for the leader of all the Russias. The FSB were supposed to block off the streets for him, but what could they do when the streets were already blocked by others? He’d given them no notice, just announced that he was leaving in two hours, on a whim, so they supposed, but for the moment he was going nowhere, just like those ankle-tappers of the Moscow Dynamos whose stadium they were passing, a ramshackle concrete coffin covered in gaudy advertising hoardings where the hidden corners and stairwells stank of urine. Some things hadn’t changed.

  They slowed almost to a standstill. Somewhere up ahead a truck loaded with steel pipes was backing ou
t from a construction site and had succeeded in stuffing up the entire Prospect. And Shunin’s asthma was getting to him; he reached for his nebulizer and breathed in the comforting medicinal mist, but despite the relief he knew it was getting worse. The doctors had warned him, one day his lungs would get the better of him and he’d have to slow down, give up, or go just like his father. Shunin’s response had been to get himself new doctors. Now he took a deep breath and turned on his son-in-law in irritation. ‘Lavrik,’ he said, using the diminutive, ‘I am a reasonable man. I don’t mind you screwing my daughter, I don’t even object when you skim a few per cent from the contractors on your architectural projects, but I swear on the Holy Mother I’m not spending the next couple of days listening to you mash your brains to shit with that rubbish!’

  The younger man looked up, bemused at the sudden onslaught. ‘It’s just a toy. Something a friend gave me, Papasha.’

  ‘A contractor.’

  ‘A friend,’ the son-in-law insisted.

  ‘It’s gold-plated.’

  ‘So, a good friend.’

  ‘Throw it out.’

  Lavrenti laughed awkwardly.

  ‘Throw it out,’ his father-in-law repeated. He was not a man used to repeating himself.

  ‘Dammit, it’s worth five thousand US.’

  ‘A trinket.’

  ‘And mine.’

  Shunin stared. He was a man of short stature with immensely broad shoulders, suggesting the sort of strength that in his younger days could have broken a horse with his bare hands. But the years, and the lungs, had got to him. In middle age his crinkled hair had grown thin and was now stretched desperately across his skull, giving the impression of a ploughed field, and he rarely smiled, for inside the Kremlin there was so little to smile about. A thick belt held his trousers round his wide waist, his shape was almost square, and when he walked he rolled from side to side, a man whose better days had been left behind at the roadside. Yet he was never a man to be underestimated, and anyone who did quickly found reason to regret their naivety. He had lost none of his legendary ability to switch from philosopher to huntsman in a single, wheezing breath, and although his neck might disappear into his collar the eyes were always sharp, cat-like, and gave the impression that they could see through people and leave them feeling unmasked. Now they were fixed on Lavrenti.

  ‘Do as I say, Lavrik.’ The instruction was delivered in a whisper like a wind rustling through a graveyard. It was turning into yet another of his lessons in subservience.

  ‘Come on, Papasha, just because we’re stuck in this funeral procession, don’t take it out on me.’ But Lavrenti found no trace of humour in the other man’s expression. ‘Please, I need my phone,’ he murmured, but the plea froze to death in the space between them.

  Shunin was like that. Took positions, stubborn, intransigent, but never pointless, always for a purpose. And so long as he was working over foreigners or Chechens the people loved him for it, they even sent each other postcards with his image on the front, showing him as a bulldog, a favourite pet guarding the home, but those who slept closer to him had reason to fear his moods.

  And few slept closer than Lavrenti Konev. He was in his early thirties, one of the rising stars of this new Russia–how could he not be, so close to Shunin? But Russia had always been a place of suspicion and envy, and the new Russia had mixed into that potent gruel of mistrust the curdling power of money, mountains of it. The ancients of the Soviet era had rarely indulged in ostentatious wealth–oh, they had their dachas and their Zils, but none of it was personal property and most of it was poorly produced tat. Yet the days when the arrival of a refrigerator was cause for a street party were long since gone. Life had changed, and Lavrenti was part of that change. A media man.

  He had come to Shunin’s attention when his daughter, Katya, had brought him home at a time when Shunin had been under pressure from a political opponent, Kamenev. Within two weeks of Shunin meeting Lavrenti, a video of Kamenev had been aired on RTR, the state-run television channel, showing ‘a person resembling’ Kamenev fumbling around with two much younger women. Exposing him to such ridicule was as good as putting him up in front of a firing squad; even before the world had finished laughing. Kamenev was gone, Lavrenti Konev was in, and ever since Shunin had allowed the younger man to run the media side of things. Lavrenti had become election mastermind, propagandist, chief censor and son-in-law, and had spread his wings into ever more lucrative enterprises. He’d masterminded the campaign that brought together a subtle mix of persuasion, corruption and intimidation which had persuaded the International Olympic Committee to award the winter games to the town of Sochi, a resort on the Black Sea where even in January the temperatures rarely touch freezing. Not an ideal location for snow and ice, some people thought, but an ideal spot to make a fortune from the property market. He learned quickly. While Shunin rode a white horse in public, more privately the son-in-law cleaned up the mess that was inevitably left behind. It had become a fruitful partnership.

  Deep down, Shunin hoped that one day Lavrenti might do more, become more–perhaps and in time even his successor. Yet Lavrenti was his son-in-law and there were still areas of power that Shunin had shielded from him. Lavrenti had never been asked to get his hands dirty–really dirty, in the Russian way, Shunin had protected him from that. The hands that touched his daughter must be clean. Yet if Lavrenti were to grow, to follow in his footsteps, there must come a time when he would have to show his mettle, be tested. But in the meantime there could be only one master in any house, and Lavrenti needed to be reminded of it.

  Already the guard had turned from his seat in front and was holding out a demanding hand.

  ‘It’s such a waste,’ Lavrenti objected. ‘Ridiculous. I need it.’

  ‘Not on this trip, you won’t. And if that toy means so much to you, I’m sure you can always get your very good friend to give you another.’

  ‘For God’s sake, this is pathetic.’

  ‘So is being bought for the price of a golden trinket.’

  ‘Nobody’s bought me!’ Lavrenti spat back, rising to the bait.

  ‘Then prove it.’

  The younger man tried to hold Shunin’s gaze, hoping for a reprieve, but none came. They rarely did.

  ‘May Heaven piss on your picnic, Papasha,’ Lavrenti snapped in defiance before thrusting the phone at the guard, who released a lock and opened the door by a fraction, just sufficient for the gadget to be dropped in the track of the vehicle’s wheels. Half a ton of pressure beneath each wheel would do for most things; a mere gadget would have no chance, even if it was gold-plated. Lavrenti sank sullenly back into his seat, where he began chewing savagely at a fingernail, one of the disconcerting habits he’d picked up recently–and one of the reasons why Shunin watched, and wondered. There was so much for a leader to wonder about in this new world, even a son-in-law.

  They had been stationary too long; the guard was growing anxious, muttering into his radio. Then, with a wave of his hand, he directed the driver to squeeze his way off the road and onto the pavement. The car rose up the kerb with a bump. Pedestrians looked on in bewilderment, their faces turning bright with panic before throwing themselves to one side as the convoy carved its way towards them, twisting around lampposts, at one point running over a hastily abandoned bicycle. A whiskery old man emerging from a shop doorway waved his rolled-up newspaper in protest, being either too blind to see, or too old to care what they might do to him. Then, with a nod of the bonnet, they had regained the roadway at a point beyond the cement truck and were speeding away. Before long they had left the city behind and were out into the greener suburbs of Khimki, yet even here they found disruption. Huge billboards were scattered along the roadside like pine cones on the forest floor, screaming the merits of everything from Starbucks to IKEA, while the open fields that had once protected the approaches to Moscow were disappearing beneath a sprawl of ugly shopping malls.

  ‘Ah, the Wild West,’ Shunin quipped
sardonically.

  Everywhere was being ripped apart and once more they were forced to slow as they squeezed into a road tunnel being cut beneath a development that would soon be a new mega-mall. One day the road on which they were travelling would be an eight-lane expressway that would stretch all the way to Sheremetyevo, but for the moment it was just another construction site and soon the presidential cavalcade found itself on a diversion that reduced its speed to less than thirty. The FSB guard was once more glancing nervously around him as the police motorcycle outriders pulled over all other traffic in the tunnel to give the convoy free passage. Amongst those vehicles was an airport shuttle bus covered in so much summer dust that the sign announcing it was out of service was all but obliterated; it sat glowering in the tunnel as the motorcade approached, its exhaust belching dark, impatient smoke. The first vehicles of the convoy snaked past, waved on by the outriders, but as the rest began to follow the long yellow vehicle lurched forward, as though the clutch had slipped, and veered towards the path of the presidential limousine, forcing Shunin’s driver to hit his brakes. Suddenly the air was filled with the sound of car horns and security sirens bouncing off the tunnel walls. From the front seat, the guard shouted in alarm.

  The breath was still leaving the guard’s lungs when the driver of the shuttle bus flicked a switch on his dashboard. It wasn’t a standard switch but one that had been specially installed and led via a wriggling length of wire to the luggage compartment beneath the seats. There it met a shaped armour-piercing charge in the form of an anti-tank shell, the sort of thing that slices through armour plate to a depth of seven or eight times its own diameter. And that was the moment the shell detonated.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Thursday afternoon. Outside Moscow.

  The presidential limousine had been supplied by a specialist subsidiary of BMW and was equipped with many kinds of protective armour. It was also fitted with electronic counter-measures that blocked radio signals in the vicinity and prevented any bomb being detonated by remote control. But the armour couldn’t withstand a direct hit by a shaped charge, and even the finest ECM on earth was worthless in a suicide attack. As the blast wave from the explosion began to force its way down the tunnel, a jet of metal penetrated the limousine, creating an overpressure that instantly killed everyone inside. Even if one or more of the passengers had miraculously survived the initial blast, it would have served no purpose. When the fuel tanks ruptured, what was left of the BMW turned into a metal-melting inferno. Not even the fillings in their teeth survived.