by Alex Dryden
At just after 11.30 she saw him ascending the road. He seemed alone but then, a hundred yards behind him, she saw three men. When they walked under a street light, she was certain they were special forces or KGB operatives. They wore light-blue berets and shoulder flashes – VDV airborne uniforms – but she was sure they weren’t regular forces. They had the same unit patches as the Russians had worn back at the barn in January, and the patches were cover, she guessed; they were using a locally based unit’s insignia.
At first she could barely believe it – that Balthasar should have tricked her so well – but then she realised that the men weren’t following him with his approval but out of suspicion.
She saw him stop near the entrance to the park. He knew he was being followed, she saw. Then she saw further down the hill the men melting into shadows away from the street lights. He’d half turned and then she knew he was aware of their presence. To her consternation, he walked on, turning into the entrance of the park and towards a memorial stone a hundred yards away from where she was concealed behind a cabin. The men were closing now behind him.
Anna drew the Contender handgun from inside her jacket and screwed a silencer into place.
When Balthasar reached the stone monument he sat down on a step and took a packet from his pocket. She couldn’t see clearly but it looked like a paper bag with food in it. He held it in his right hand and removed an apple. He began to eat the apple, still holding the paper bag, and facing directly towards the entrance.
The men walked abreast now in the open space of the park. They were a yard or so apart and had evidently decided to no longer track him from a distance, but to make their approach. She saw the sides of their faces, and the positions of their heads told her they were staring straight at him. The distance closed. Balthasar sat perfectly still apart from the movement of the apple between his left hand and his mouth. He ate it in a slow, measured way, chewing each bite with great care. Down from the direction of the harbour, a bell chimed midnight. The air was still and – down here in the city – retained some of the warmth from the day even now.
Anna came out from behind the cabin and stealthily walked at an angle from behind the men towards where Balthasar sat. There was no cover except the thin protection of a wood and iron park bench halfway between her and the monument. She decided to make for the bench and crouch behind it. But she knew now she was committed. There was no way back without exposing herself.
Attack was possible, defence almost out of the question. She reached the bench, crouched behind the short end of it, leaving its full length between her and the men, and watched them now approach Balthasar and stand a yard away from him in a semicircle that blocked his escape. He put down the apple. One of the men had asked a question and drawn a handgun. Slowly Balthasar put his hand inside his jacket and withdrew his card identifying him as an SVR colonel.
The second man took out a small torch and also received the card, which he proceeded to study in the torch’s beam. The first man held the gun, hanging lightly and looking as if it wasn’t trained anywhere in particular. The third man just stood, arms by his sides, completing the semicircle. Balthasar picked up the apple from the step and stood up.
Anna watched a conversation ensue, sharp, abrupt questions from the man who still held Balthasar’s ID and slower responses from Balthasar. The third man now held a phone in his hand and was tapping a number into it slowly. Anna watched Balthasar slowly raise the paper bag in his right hand towards the man with the gun. It happened very slowly, a simple gesture, the offer of something in the bag. Instinctively, the man leaned slightly over the bag and then pulled back as if realising an instinct had got the better of training. As he did so, Balthasar’s hand that held the bag shot straight up towards the man’s neck. Anna heard a strangled cry and raised the Contender on to the back of the bench.
She saw a knife flash, perhaps just in the light of the moon, its blade swinging away and the knife handle wrapped in the paper bag still clutched in Balthasar’s hand. The blade had swung upwards with great force, cutting the Adam’s apple in two and slicing the man’s neck from just above the chest to the throat. Before the man had started to topple, Anna fired a single shot at the third man who was reaching for a gun. He dropped instantly.
The one who held the ID card was suddenly distracted from drawing a gun of his own as he saw his colleague drop like a stone. In an instant, Balthasar flashed the blade sideways and sliced his neck halfway to the man’s spine.
There was a gurgling sound from the ground and one of the men thrashed his legs for a minute. Then there was absolute silence. Anna and Balthasar stood frozen in position for a second that stretched into ten before Anna stood up from behind the bench and walked towards the monument. When she arrived, she just looked at Balthasar’s face. He still held the paper bag in one hand, the knife protruding from it, and the apple in the other. Slowly he raised his left hand and took a last bite, before putting the core in his pocket.
‘Now I know you’re real,’ she said.
‘You didn’t before?’
‘No. I’m not like you, Balthasar. I have to see things.’
They carried the three bodies across the grass towards a heap of composting grass from the previous year. Anna began to shovel it away and placed the first body on the ground, the other two on top of it. Then she shovelled the compost back over the bodies.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
ANNA AND BALTHASAR sat on a high rock above the canyon camp. The dawn was rising from across the Kerch Straits and Russia and, below them, the derricks lining Sevastopol’s dockyards and harbours and the superstructures of warships were catching the first light in the city. For a long while they sat in silence and watched the coastline revealed on another clear blue day.
On their exit from the city into the mountains neither spoke, but both were thinking of the implications of the dead men buried below them. There would be a massive manhunt if the Russians persuaded their Ukrainian allies in government that it was necessary.
But most of all, it was the intelligence that Balthasar had brought back with him from the bar that preoccupied their minds; the sonar in the harbours and their approaches being cut off in two days’ time and the standing-down of special forces frogmen. At last, Balthasar broke the silence.
‘Miller is right,’ he said. ‘The fake attack is going to happen down there on the first of May. The payment on the second is to be the supposed reward for the attack.’
Anna looked at the hulks of warships dotting the bays. Then she paused at the aircraft carrier, Moskva, and the other relatively new ship and submarines.
‘They won’t want to damage anything that’s worth something to them,’ she said. ‘They’ll stage this attack on one of the ships that’s past its usefulness. And that will be the cause for Russian anger, their casus belli. The destruction of a useless ship.’
‘Provocation followed by its reaction,’ Balthasar said. ‘They set up the attack themselves, then say they are under attack. It’s the way things are done. Our terror experts know exactly how to make it work and how to make it look.’
‘And then?’ Anna said.
‘Then the Kremlin will demand that Crimea becomes Russian again. In order to protect its own interests. After that? I give Ukraine itself a few more years at most of independence. Putin is binding the country ever closer to Russia with economic ties. It’s the end of Western ambitions for Ukraine to join Western Europe. It’s the end of Ukrainian nationalism and independence from Moscow.’
She turned to look at him. ‘You must get out now,’ she said. ‘You’re the only witness.’
‘And you?’ he said, returning her gaze with sightless eyes.
‘I have to finish things here,’ she replied. ‘I’ve made a deal with Taras.’
He didn’t ask her what it was, the deal. He merely looked back towards the sea and felt the sun’s first warmth on the side of his face. ‘Then I’ll stay too,’ he said. ‘Until it’s finished. We�
�ll take our chances together.’
She studied the side of his face. It was a new experience, to feel a man looking at her, when he couldn’t see her with his eyes. She felt the novelty of being next to a man who didn’t see how she looked but only felt her as a woman through some power that was inexplicable to her. The feeling was good and it made her strong. Her usual distrust of a man’s motives in her presence was entirely absent. It was as if the twenty odd years since their last meeting at an orphanage in Damascus had never existed. A feeling of comfort, simplicity, inevitability even, invaded her mind and she didn’t resist it. There was nothing about Balthasar that aroused her suspicions or defensiveness. It was the most natural feeling she ever remembered happening, more so even than with Finn, whose early relationship with her had been one of recklessness. There was no recklessness about sitting beside this man. She felt that they had been destined to meet again.
‘Why, Balthasar?’ she asked him. ‘Why now? After doing so much destruction to Russia’s enemies, why did you decide to come over now?’
He didn’t speak for a moment. Then said, ‘The necessities of acting for oneself develop only over time. At first, events and other people dominate our lives. It was the same with you, I believe. We do a job – it doesn’t matter what the job is, even. It’s a life moulded to other people’s rules. And, like you, I was good, very good, at my job. That made me question it less. And I didn’t stop to ask whether I believed what I was doing. The job too was exciting,’ he admitted. He bent his head. ‘That perhaps is the most shameful excuse, the compulsion of excitement. But when you’ve done the same thing for many years, it suddenly loses the compulsion. You become a machine. If you’re lucky or merely not entirely stupid, you begin to question the machine-like qualities of who you’ve become. Suddenly, it’s as if the child in you returns, the voice that speaks for itself and not for others. You want that again and not the machine.’ He turned towards her. ‘And then treason is easy,’ he said. ‘People become traitors to their country for many reasons; excitement plays a part in that too. But with me it was the futility, the futility of doing something I didn’t want to do and had never really wanted to do. I will do this one thing for the West; be a witness to what is happening here. But I’m not changing sides, just being on my own side.’
He stopped and by now the sun had broken over the bays below them.
‘You have a plan, Anna. I know it,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘Are you going to tell me what it is or do I have to tell you?’
She laughed. ‘I’m sure you have a very good idea, Balthasar.’
‘You’re right.’
‘If the Russians are planning to blow up one of their own ships, why don’t we do it too?’ she said. ‘But with a ship that really matters to them.’ She stood up. ‘It’s time to get some sleep. We only have a few hours now. Then we’ll explain to Larry and the others. After that I have to square everything with Taras. I need his help.’
They descended into the canyon along a pathless scree slope that finally brought them up above the camp and then followed the stream until they saw tents. But it was Larry who saw them first and who looked with alarm at the presence of Balthasar.
‘It’s OK, Larry,’ she said. ‘We’ll all work together until we get out of here. Where’s the Cougar?’
‘It’s to the west of the Crimea. About sixty miles away. Along this coast between here and Odessa.’
‘Good. Wake me in a couple of hours.’ She looked at Balthasar. ‘You can sleep where you wish,’ she said.
The invitation wasn’t lost on him or on Larry, who turned away in confusion and perhaps frustration.
‘I know,’ Balthasar stated.
Anna laughed. ‘Of course. Of course you know,’ she said.
Balthasar followed her into her tent.
After two hours, Larry called through the flap of the tent and she emerged first. Balthasar followed a while later. Lucy and Adam were making breakfast over a charcoal fire, reduced to ashes in order to limit the smoke. They ate in silence and then Anna laid out the plan.
‘This depends on Taras?’ Larry said and failed to conceal his deep scepticism.
‘It does,’ she replied impassively.
‘You trust him that much?’
‘I believe what he says about this, yes.’
‘Why?’
‘His interests coincide with ours. If he helps us, we help him. Don’t forget, he has to believe what I told him too. There’s a mutual gain.’
‘Well, OK,’ Larry said. ‘We don’t have nearly enough ammunition. Not for what you’re planning.’
‘I think plenty will become available,’ she replied.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
AT FIVE MINUTES past two on the morning of 1 May, when darkness was reaching its greatest intensity over the sea, the American frigate Lafayette was exactly fifty miles to the west of the Pride of Corsica and on a bearing of thirty-nine degrees. The engines were now idle and rubber boats were being lowered from stanchions on the deck into the calm waters. In each boat there were eight marine commandos and there were five boats in all. Four helicopters waited, with airborne commandos milling around them, waiting themselves for orders to board. They would leave when the boats were well on their way.
The majority of the boats were manned by British Special Boat Service teams and it was the British who had the command of the operation in a compromise between Moscow and Washington. One boat was under the individual control of Russian special forces and the other under American control, but the operation was planned by the British and all were agreed that the British should command the assault, from the sea and the air. At sixty knots – which it was agreed could be achieved in the calm waters – the boats would reach the Pride of Corsica in just under an hour. The helicopters’ departure was timed to be ten minutes before the boats reached the target vessel and the assault would come from the sea and air simultaneously. Three boats were to approach the starboard side of the target, drawing any fire in the priceless seconds before they boarded. The other two would remain out of sight and below radar and approach the port side as the choppers swooped in. The plan was to split the defenders’ attention three ways.
The boats began their rapid passage across the black waters, planing at speeds that sometimes went over the required sixty knots and sometimes under, but always maintained as close to the average they were aiming for as possible. When they judged they were within ten minutes of the strike, there would be a radio call to the Lafayette and the helicopters would leave.
The British teams were made up mainly of M Squadron members, the SBS maritime counter terrorism squadron, of whom the Black Group provided one officer and three men and there were two members of 14 Intelligence Unit, briefed on what to look for, assuming the assault was successful. They were all trained in multiple weapons use and hand-to-hand fighting at the highest level and were all practitioners of Brazilian ju-jitsu.
It was two days after the new moon, and the darkness and below-the-radar approach of the rubber boats enabled them to reach within two hundred yards of the Pride of Corsica before anyone on board the ship saw them. The boats swerved violently in see-saw motions over the remaining distance to avoid providing a steady target and as soon as they’d drawn aside – so far without a shot being fired – pulleyed abseil equipment was fired over the decks of the vessel and the first four-man team shot to the deck level. The other two boats attacked simultaneously from the port side and then the helicopters were heard and the deck was suddenly flooded with intense spotlights that blinded the defenders and left the attackers for the moment in shadow.
Lines fell from the helicopters and marines abseiled down in seconds. The defenders had drawn towards the bow of the ship, up towards the bridge, when the helicopter and boat teams opened an intense burst of fire that ripped the night apart. ‘It was like a firing squad,’ an SBS officer was quoted later as saying. ‘They were up against the white steel wall of the bridge
, spotlights on them, in a row and hands over their faces. Some had their hands in the air. They were surrendering. They had no guns that we could see, there was no return of fire.’
After a minute of firing, one of the helicopters landed on a deck space cleared by the assault teams. Then all fell silent as the other choppers flew to stand off the ship and await instructions.
Above the silence came the groans of the wounded.
Two teams of four descended steps into the ship’s belly and began a section-to-section search. The captain was turfed out of bed and a few bemused crewmen were similarly awakened who hadn’t already heard the firing. All were brought to the deck, hands strapped in plastic cuffs behind them. It was a scratch crew, only five in all. The rest of the ship’s occupants – twelve in all – were on the deck and all but two were dead. As the SBS teams and their American and Russian counterparts stripped masks from the faces of the few who had managed to don them in time, and looked at the unmasked dead and wounded, there was a stunned silence, the occasional shout of a man’s name, curses and swearing that rose in anger and distress as the identities of the defenders who had put up no defence was revealed. In each case, faces were recognised by the British and the Americans as former colleagues in their own special forces, in one or two cases, friends. It was a massacre of their own. There were no Russians among the defenders. And it was noted later that none of the Russian spetsnaz present bothered to look at the faces of the dead and wounded.
The captain of the Pride of Corsica was interrogated in a chair on the deck while the teams searched the vessel and brought up five wooden crates from the hold. The captain repeated over and over that there was no cargo of a dangerous nature.
‘Why the missile system? Why the helicopter?’ The SBS interrogators were not sensitive in their methods. The captain was weeping, and repeating the same phrases over and over. The Russian special forces stood back and watched.