There was a lengthy silence as the words sank in, punctuated by a pigeon flapping on a windowsill outside. If there was a collective thought among the listeners, it was one of alarm.
‘I don’t believe it,’ a voice muttered. But nobody hurried to agree.
‘What about the Americans? They’ve been supporting Georgia. What are they doing?’ The first speaker looked at the American as if he alone were responsible. The American ignored him.
‘That’s why we’re monitoring the situation.’ Spake tapped the map. ‘As of forty-eight hours ago, two teams – one from the US Delta Force and the other from our own Special Reconnaissance Regiment – were inserted to watch the possible approach routes from the north.’
‘Inserted? How?’
‘The usual way. Quietly.’
‘It’s leaving it a bit late, isn’t it?’ said another man. ‘By the time the teams spot anyone, they’ll already be over the border and heading south.’
‘You’re right. But dropping men to the north of the mountains, where they could spot any movement earlier, would be too hazardous. The Russians have already been increasing their monitoring operations in the area for some time.’
The voices died again as they digested these implications, and Paulton reflected that if it hadn’t been the Deputy Director Special Forces delivering the sobering facts, the place would have been in an uproar of doubt and sheer incredulity. As it was, their belief was total. He glanced at his watch and wondered how soon he would be able to get out of here. His involvement was going to be minimal from here on in.
The next question killed any such notion.
‘What if they do move south?’ Marcella Rudmann queried. ‘How far might they go?’
Spake studied her face for a moment, and she blushed again under the scrutiny.
He shook his head. ‘We don’t know. Nobody does . . . except possibly Mr Putin.’ It did not go unnoticed that he made no mention of President Medvedev.
‘But your best guess?’
He studied the map and reached out his hand. It hovered for a moment on the mountain region of South Ossetia . . . then stabbed down further south.
Much further.
‘Best guess? At least Gori . . . but possibly the capital, Tbilisi. And anywhere in between. God help anyone who shouldn’t be there.’
And George Paulton, watching where the finger finally came to rest, felt his guts turn to ice.
TWENTY-ONE
Sixty miles to the north of Tbilisi, in the foothills of the Caucasus, a late breeze was sliding off the mountains, bringing a cold snap from the peaks. It was a welcome relief from the unusually warm lull that had been hanging around the lower plains during the day, and the man on watch shivered slightly under his camouflage smock. Winter was making its first move, far to the north and east.
He moved with care, scanning the lake three hundred metres away. The lightweight thermal infrared monocular was good to go in any light, and the long range optics could pick up any heat source or movement.
At any other time and place, he reflected, such as his native Michigan, it would have been a joy to sit and drink in the utter stillness and beauty of nature. A few birds were swinging slowly over the water, occasionally dipping to gather insects or some drops of moisture, then soaring upwards like elegant kites, feeding off the remaining thermals. A bunch of crows called among a stretch of conifers over to the right, their haunting sounds echoing across the lake, and a fox poked its nose out of the bushes and made its way down to the water’s edge, where it drank in brief bursts, before slinking back into the shadows.
The watcher, whose name was Jordan Conway, glanced at his watch. The dulled case and face reflected nothing, both treated with light-absorbing film. For out here, even the smallest movement, the tiniest glimmer, could betray a man’s position in an instant. As if to test the theory, he stared beyond the trees to the right of the lake, where he knew Bronson and Capel were dug in, watching their flank. There was no sign that they were there. He hoped it stayed that way.
‘How’s it going?’ The whisper came from a few feet to his rear. The speaker was Doug Rausing, the leader and fourth member of the Delta team and a ten-year veteran of covert operations on behalf of the Pentagon and the White House. He came from Tennessee, although none of his colleagues held that against him. Surfacing from a brief sleep, he was inching forward to take over from Conway as soon as the light dropped.
‘No signs,’ said Conway. ‘Just the birds.’ He wished he could move and scratch the itch on his upper right arm, which was driving him crazy. He was sure he could feel the tiny electronic biscuit under his skin, although they’d told him he wouldn’t; that it was buried too deep. But they’d also said the alien object wouldn’t trouble him after the first couple of days. Darned fool scientists, what the hell did they know? Did they ever come out here in the field and test this stuff for themselves?
Behind him, Rausing was also fingering his upper arm and wondering how the others were coping.
Two hundred miles west of Conway’s position, three members of the British Special Reconnaissance Regiment were in their initial observation post, rotating to watch the northern approaches. Shrouded in a makeshift basha, they had eaten their rations and were waiting for the light to fall before moving forward to take up a better position on the lower slopes. This would place them at the neck of a narrow pass leading through the foothills. It was a two-mile hike, but would be easy meat, and a necessary move. Intelligence briefs had told them this was a likely line of approach by motorised forces. Such was the lie of the land, even a squirrel would find it difficult to move without being seen.
The leader of the three-man team, a stocky Para Regiment veteran named Mike Wilson, lowered his binoculars and rubbed his eyes. Then he eased himself backwards a few inches off the brow of the hollow towards Jocko Wardle and ‘Hunt’ Wallis, his two colleagues, who were asleep. He nudged them awake with his foot without taking his eyes off the landscape before him, and waited while they stirred and opened their eyes, moving only to reach for their weapons.
‘Ten minutes to go,’ he told them quietly. ‘Clean up.’ It was something none of them needed telling, to check the ground where they had been lying, but repeated procedure was the way to do things right. Even the tiniest scrap of personal litter – a wrapping, a piece of foil, a button – would reveal their passage and tell anyone looking that they had been here. And in this relatively barren landscape, if that happened, they would be unlikely to survive for long.
Wilson checked his own kit. When he was satisfied everything was in its place and tied down tight, he slid to the front of the O.P. and began scanning the terrain in front of him for signs of movement.
There was nothing. But he felt uneasy all the same. It was too quiet.
He paused only to scratch at an itch in the top of his arm.
TWENTY-TWO
‘We’ve got another job.’ Clare Jardine was waiting in the office next morning, nursing a cup of tea. She was dressed in what Harry thought of as her Lara Croft look, and looked as friendly as a pit-bull.
‘Oh, goody,’ he said dryly. ‘Another pick-up?’
She ignored his sarcasm. ‘We’re going to eyeball a convoy moving north. It looks like part of a much larger force. The satellite images are inconclusive, and London wants us to ID the unit and report back on numbers and density.’ Jardine meant seeing if the vehicles in the convoy were full or empty. Unless the convoy was obliging enough to reveal its load just as the satellite passed overhead, there was no way of telling, save for sending in someone on the ground to take a look.
Harry was surprised Mace hadn’t mentioned it, or that he hadn’t been brought in on the transmission from London. In a place this small, all hands should be aware of the general nature of things, in case someone dropped out through illness or accident. He wondered what else he wasn’t being told about.
They took the same Land Cruiser as before, this time with Jardine at the wheel. She drove w
ith skill, using the right amount of aggression to compete with the local trucks and cars, and said nothing for twenty minutes until they were clear of the town. When they reached the fork in the road, she took the right one this time, the suspension protesting at the rougher surface. Harry noticed that theirs was the only vehicle.
‘This leads north into the hills,’ she explained. ‘Nothing much to see up here, so why bother with a decent road?’
Harry nodded. It was clearly not her first time on this road, so he sank back against the door pillar and closed his eyes. He’d had another restless night, haunted by images of Parrish charging along the bank of the inlet and the man in dreadlocks calmly shooting him with a wooden pole. The young couple had been standing in the glare of the Land Rover’s headlights, clothes torn and bloodied by gunshots, applauding the outcome. He had woken in a confusion of sweat and shivering, trying to figure out how the couple had penetrated the secure cordon without being seen.
‘Mace told you about me,’ Jardine interrupted his thoughts. It wasn’t a question.
Harry shook off the images from his dreams and shrugged. ‘Only that you’re with Six.’
‘Liar. Mace couldn’t keep a secret if his balls were on fire.’ There was no heat to her words, which made him even more certain that Mace had told her and the others why he was here.
‘You know him better than I do.’
‘Damn right.’
‘OK, so what brought you to this lovely spot?’
‘That’s none of your business. I didn’t stick to their stupid rulebook; let’s leave it at that.’
‘But you know all about me.’
‘Jesus, everyone knows about you.’ She touched the brakes, skimming uncomfortably close to a tractor parked on the side of the road. ‘Not many Fivers get tabbed for allowing two civilians and a cop to get killed.’
Harry stared, surprised by the brutality of her words. He wasn’t sure whether to be angry or not.
‘I didn’t—’ He stopped. She might not know all the grubby details, and he’d almost been lured into telling her. It was a reminder of her job prior to being sent here.
She looked disappointed. ‘Never mind; if you don’t want to tell, don’t. We hear rumours – and we get the newspapers here, and the internet, just like they do in SW1. You’d be famous, if only the public knew who you were.’ She glanced across. ‘I suppose there’s more to it than meets the eye?’
‘A lot more.’ He wondered how much to tell. But what could she do to him that hadn’t been done already? ‘It was a combined drugs bust. Five and the police. We had strong intel about a shipment of mixed narcotics. We were all ready to go, then the team was cut back hours before the operation on economic grounds. I decided it was too late to call it off, that the shipment was a big one and worth stopping.’
‘What happened?’
‘We were outgunned. Two civilians got in the way. I still don’t know how. They popped up out of nowhere.’ He didn’t elaborate; there was no need.
She drove in silence for a mile, then said, ‘So what made you come here? You could have refused.’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve always gone where they sent me. It seemed a good idea.’
‘And now?’
‘It was a mistake.’ It sounded resentful, even weak. Maybe that was the trouble; he had meekly done what Paulton had told him, rather than risk facing exposure and possible humiliation, even though both would have been inherently unfair.
It still didn’t answer the mystery of the young couple who had died. The other question bugging him was, why a Land Rover? It was hardly the best transport for a bloke on the pull. And why had the man held up his hand the way he did just before he was shot? Was he trying to be cool? Did he think that would be enough to protect him?
Or was it a signal?
Later, as they passed through a huddle of small houses and began a steady climb into the foothills, Jardine asked him to pass her a cigarette from the glove box. He hadn’t seen her smoke before. She opened the side window and turned up the air-blower, and when she had the cigarette going, said, ‘Sorry. Nasty habit I picked up recently. It keeps me sane. I’ll pull over and have a quick drag outside if you’d prefer.’
Harry shook his head, wondering what other surprises were waiting for him.
‘I was tabbed for letting the game get away from me,’ she announced suddenly. She sounded angry. ‘I overstepped the mark and broke the golden rule of the Whitehall gentlemen’s club: I screwed the enemy.’
Harry remained silent, which seemed to annoy her even more.
‘Christ, you men are so bloody two-faced! How many of you,’ she demanded hotly, ‘if you had to get close to a target, and found her to be – I don’t know, a twenty-three-year-old with a body to die for and who wanted you – would say no? Tell me that.’
‘Beats me,’ said Harry honestly. ‘I’ve never been in that position.’ She had a point. Would he be able to resist, given those circumstances? He didn’t know. Not that he was expecting it to happen anytime soon – not unless the enemy started fielding older Mata Haris with a weakness for out-of-condition British men on the downward slope of manhood. Anyway, playing down and dirty in the street was one thing – he’d done it for years and was good at it. Boudoir games weren’t part of his armoury. ‘Did you know Jimmy Gulliver?’
She changed down and swerved past a donkey and cart loaded with cut grass. An old man watched them go, flicking a makeshift whip over the animal’s flanks.
‘What about him?’ She hadn’t answered the question, he noticed.
He told her about meeting Geordi Kostova and his wingman, Nikolai.
Clare nodded and said, ‘If you shook hands with Kostova, don’t bother counting your fingers – he’ll have kept one. He’s a wheeler-dealer. The only difference between him and a Mafioso is that he actually made mayor without sticking a gun to anyone’s head.’
‘You mean he paid for it.’
‘Did Mace tell you that?’ She shrugged. ‘It’s possible, I suppose. Mace knows more about him than I do. He’s welcome. I had Kostova grease up to me once. He’s a toucher, he can’t help it; but he soon pulled in his horns.’
Harry recalled what Mace had said about her being hard-nosed. ‘What did you do?’
‘I showed him my little toy.’ She threw her cigarette out of the window and took a shiny black object out of her pocket. It was crescent-shaped, the width of her hand and carried a trace of powder residue on one edge. Clare rubbed it across her thigh to clean it, then gave a flick of her wrist. The compact opened into a razor-sharp knife with a three-inch curved blade. ‘It seemed to convince him.’
‘Nice.’ Harry’s belly contracted at the sight of the cold steel. He’d seen something like it once before, in the hands of a Dutch prostitute who believed in affirmative action. It was called a drop-point blade and for cutting rather than stabbing. He decided that Mace’s description of Clare Jardine had been much too generous.
‘I spent some time in Miami,’ she explained. ‘Got close to a girl who ran with a Cuban street gang. She got raped once and vowed never again. She showed me how to use it.’ She closed the blade with a click and put it away. ‘You say Kostova mentioned Jimmy Gulliver?’
‘Yes.’
She was silent for a mile or so, then said, ‘Jimmy was already here when I arrived. He stayed about a month. He was one of the first postings after Mace. He was nice. Sorry if I sounded cagey, but I wasn’t sure if you were just fishing.’
‘I was. Mace acted as if the name meant something.’
She threw him a glance. ‘It would. Jimmy never told us why he’d been sent here, and if Mace knew, he didn’t let on.’
‘He played dumb with me, too. What did you know about him?’
‘Only that he was part of a fast-track intake and marked out for higher things. Then something happened. He was pretty deep into the organization, considering his age. He was thirty-two. He hated being here – he thought it was a dead-end.’
&
nbsp; ‘Isn’t it?’
‘I suppose so, for some. Anyway, one day he packed his bags and went home.’ She grimaced. ‘I’m surprised Kostova admitted to knowing him.’
‘To me, you mean?’
‘Yes.’ She gave a sideways look. ‘You’re still an unknown quantity.’
‘Kostova knows what we do?’
She nodded. ‘Bound to. There isn’t much goes on in this town that he doesn’t know about. I doubt London will have been pleased to hear he and Jimmy knew each other – that’s if Jimmy ever admitted it.’
‘They’d have found out,’ said Harry. Any debrief after a posting like this place, so close to the Russian border, would have been highly intensive. Add in the punishment element and Gulliver would have been under the spotlight for weeks, every fragment of information about his movements and contacts being wheedled out of him by the company shrinks until he was left dry.
Clare nodded. ‘I guess. Still, nice to know – that he went back, I mean. It says there’s a chance for the rest of us, doesn’t it?’
‘Have you heard from him since?’
‘No. Not a word.’ Her voice carried a frown, but she didn’t elaborate. He wondered how close they had been. Then she added, ‘No surprise, though; once they go, they stay gone.’ She hesitated. ‘It would have taken a while, though.’
‘Why?’
‘He was going overland. He’d got a fantastic rate on a car from a local rental place, and the arrangement was he could drop it off at the dealer’s brother near Calais.’ She shook her head. ‘I said he was mad, because it’s a hell of a trip. But he said he wasn’t bothered because he hated flying. I think he just wanted a taste of freedom for a while. Who could blame him after this?’
‘Did he have any family?’
‘I don’t think so. He had an aunt who brought him up, he once told me. Exeter, I believe.’ She glanced across. ‘What about you?’
The change of tack surprised him. ‘No.’
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