by Chris Ryan
‘Jesus,’ Sam whispered. The Russian’s casual disrespect for the lives of his victims impressed even him. What Dolohov was telling him had begun to fill in some of the gaps; but there were more questions springing into his mind. Some of them he wanted answers to. Others he wasn’t sure he did. Dolohov, though, was flagging. It was obvious. His body had taken punishment and his head was starting to droop. Even so, Sam wasn’t in the mood to mollycoddle him.
He reached for the bottle of vodka and held it to Dolohov’s lips. The Russian took a gulp, then winced slightly as the alcohol burned his throat. Sam stood then turned and faced the fireplace. A thick silence descended. He contemplated his next question.
‘I’m afraid,’ Sam said finally, ‘that I don’t really believe you.’
He turned once more, strode quickly to the table and before Dolohov knew what was happening he had grabbed the shears and was already unfurling one of the Russian’s thumbs. Dolohov tried to shout out, but his breathlessness stopped him for a moment. When he eventually managed to speak, it was with more of a sense of terrified urgency than Sam had ever heard before.
‘There’s more. I can tell you more. Do not do it again!’
Sam paused. Dolohov was almost weeping now. Through gritted teeth, the ultimate humiliation. His good English failed him. ‘I begging you not do again.’
‘Start talking.’ Sam kept the blades of the shears resting against the skin of the Russian’s thumb.
Dolohov spoke quickly. ‘I do not know everything. They do not tell me everything. It is better that way. But I know some things. One of them is to be activated. Maybe he already has. A major hit. Political. It will happen soon.’
‘Who?’
‘I do not know.’
‘I don’t believe you, Dolohov.’ He allowed the blade to slice gently the skin on his thumb.
‘I do not know! I would tell you if I did…’ And again his voice collapsed into sobs of helpless terror.
‘What’s the name of the red-light runner?’
But Dolohov couldn’t speak. He just shook his head, desperately, while the sounds of animal fear emerged from his throat.
Sam found himself breathing deeply and sharply. He let the Russian’s hand fall, ignoring the trickle of blood that seeped from the small flesh wound. Without a word he walked out of the room. He felt the sudden need to be alone, away from Dolohov. The need to collect his thoughts. The need to decide if he really wanted to ask the question that was on his lips. There was a fire in his blood. Anger. His head was spinning. In some corner of his brain he knew that Dolohov’s life was hanging by a thread. Sam Redman was on the edge, barely able to control himself. A nudge in the wrong direction and he would do to the Russian what both of them had done to any number of red-light runners.
He calmed himself. His eyes narrowed and his jaw set. He walked back into the room feeling numb, but somehow purposeful at the same time. Dolohov was slumped, corpse-like. Sam had seen it before – the shock that drained all colour from someone’s face. Even his lips were grey. He stood in front of the man and gave him a thunderous look.
‘Who gives you the orders?’ he asked. ‘Who tells you to kill the red-light runners? Who gives you the details?’
Dolohov raised his head and paused as he summoned up the last dregs of his arrogance.
‘You really know nothing,’ he observed in a weak voice. ‘Is our system really so difficult for you to work out?’
Sam didn’t hesitate. His body under the control of some force other than his thoughts, he grabbed his handgun from the table and pressed it hard against Dolohov’s head.
‘Who?’
‘The same man who trains them,’ Dolohov whispered. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of his face. ‘British. We never meet.’
‘Damn it, Dolohov. What’s his name?’
They’ll tell you things, Sam. Things about me. Don’t forget that you’re my brother. Don’t believe them.
It was like a dream. Sam heard the words and they were like a trigger firing a weapon. Out of control, he raised his gun hand and slammed his fist against the side of Dolohov’s face. The Russian’s glasses cracked and flew across the room; the chair in which he was sitting tottered back and fell to the ground, taking its occupant with it.
Sam knelt down and once more pressed the gun against the Russian, this time into the flesh of his neck. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he hissed. ‘Tell me the truth. What’s his name?’
But Dolohov was past lying. He repeated himself slowly and in an exhausted tone of voice. ‘His name is Jacob Redman,’ he croaked. ‘Now I have nothing more to tell you. And if you are going to kill me, I ask that you do it now and you do it quickly.’
*
A bright orange sun rose slowly above the horizon of southern Kazakhstan. The countryside through which Jacob Redman drove his truck was bland. Flat and featureless. Every few miles he would drive past a settlement, but he saw only the occasional shepherd. Now, though, up ahead and in the distance, he saw the bleak sight of Communist-era tower blocks emerging above the horizon – concrete monuments to a time long gone, but they were still inhabited, no doubt. There were cars here on the outskirts, as well as the ever-present goats. Jacob just kept his eyes on the road ahead.
He was getting close now. His journey was nearly at an end.
The road took him past the town and further into the flat landscape. In his rear-view mirror he watched as a military vehicle approached from behind, clad in green and brown camouflage webbing and carrying God only knows what. Jacob allowed the truck to overtake him, but then kept the vehicle in his sights. After all, the chances were that they were heading for the same place.
Gradually, he began to see landmarks, sights that he knew indicated he was indeed on the right path. A control tower in the distance with a satellite receiver spinning slowly on the top. More vehicles – articulated lorries as well as military ones. Brown-grey concrete buildings, austere, unwelcoming constructions that again spoke of this country’s Soviet past.
Jacob was tired. He had been driving non-stop, allowing himself ten minutes shut-eye every few hours just so that he could keep going. Now that he was nearing the end, however, he felt a surge of adrenaline. It was no longer a struggle to keep awake. His mind was alert.
A fork in the road. The military vehicle up ahead bore left. Jacob followed. They continued through the drab countryside for several miles before he saw a high, wire boundary fence emerging from the distance. The military truck began slowing down. There were signposts now along the side of the road. Jacob couldn’t decode them because they were in Russian, but he could tell that they were warnings to stay away. He continued driving nevertheless.
They were only metres from the boundary now. A large panel announced their location in austere black letters.
Космодром Байконур
Jacob’s Russian was good enough for that. Baikonur Cosmodrome. Built by the Soviets in the mid-Fifties, it was the largest operational space launch facility in the world. The truck ground to a halt. The military vehicle ahead was allowed in, giving Jacob a plain view of the entrance as the truck disappeared into the vast expanse of the cosmodrome. There was a barrier marked with red and white stripes. The boundary fence had rolls of barbed wire on the top that made it look like some kind of concentration camp. There was a lookout post, but it was old and didn’t give Jacob the impression of being much used. By the barrier were a number of guards. They wore military uniform and carried the ubiquitous AK-47s. Jacob, in his non-military truck, had clearly raised their suspicions. Two guards approached, their weapons raised.
Jacob put his hands on his head.
The driver’s side door was opened. Chatter from the soldiers. Russian. It made no sense to Jacob. A few of them swarmed round the back. It wouldn’t take them long to find Jacob’s own AK stashed away with the fuel canisters. He needed to be careful not to make any sudden moves. With his hands still on his head he stepped out of the car. There were tw
o AK-47s pointing right at him, and they were just the ones he could see.
And then he spoke. Not in his own language, but using the small amount of Russian at his disposal, the words that he had been practising in preparation for this moment over the past twenty-four hours.
‘Menya zovut Jacob Redman. Ya rabotayu v Federalnoi Sluzhbe Bezopasnosti. Ya hocu vstretit s nachalnikom etogo faculteta.’
‘My name is Jacob Redman,’ he said. ‘I am working with the FSB. Take me to the head of this facility.’
PART THREE
EIGHTEEN
Vaziani Airbase. Georgia. Sixty miles from the Russian border. If anybody had been looking into the dawn sky, they would have seen the lights of the RAF C-17 Globemaster glowing in the distance as it made its approach. But nobody was watching. Aircraft were hardly a curiosity here, either for the Georgian nationals that manned the base or for the small platoon of British troops who kept themselves to themselves, but were not welcomed with much enthusiasm by their hosts.
So it was that the Globemaster, which had made its way from the UK over commercial airline routes – only to stray off piste towards Vaziani at the very end of its journey – was little more than a blip on the air-traffic control screens until it thundered towards the runway, its emissions causing the air all around to wobble and become hazy. As it turned off the runway and started taxiing towards the hangars, it passed an area of bombed-out land, scars of the attack on the base by Russian fighter jets in the late summer of 2008. The attack had not been so bad as to damage the infrastructure of the base itself, and the Globemaster came to a halt without any problems.
The engines had almost wound down to silence by the time three forklift trucks had trundled up to the aircraft. Unusually, though, they were shadowed by two military vehicles. The Georgian airbase staff were unimpressed with the British troops’ insistence on accompanying them every step of the way; but the troops themselves had their orders, and that was to make sure they were present at all times during the unloading of the Globemaster’s cargo.
It didn’t take long. It was a small cargo for such a large plane. Eight cases, each of them about the same size as a small van; wooden, and with the words HUMANITARIAN AID emblazoned on the side in big black letters. Under the watchful eye of both the troops and the loadies from the Globemaster, the forklift operators carefully transported each box into one of the nearby aircraft hangars. When they had completed their task, they left with their vehicles, without even a gruff nod at any of their guests.
The hangar doors were swung shut. It was a huge, cavernous space lit by industrial strip lighting, and in which the voices of the troops echoed and rebounded. They had made the place their own in the weeks that they had been here. In one corner of the hangar were low tables with full ashtrays; a few mattresses were unfurled on the ground; someone had even cadged an old black and white TV set, but it was largely unused. Russian-language TV didn’t hold much interest for them.
In the centre of the hangar, just metres from where the crates had been unloaded, stood a man. He was the only person in the place who wasn’t in army camouflage gear; instead he wore perfectly ordinary civvies, and not very fashionable ones at that. He was approaching middle age, wore rimless glasses and had a balding head, which he disguised by careful brushing of what remained of his thin hair. The guys called him ‘Doc’. Their standard joke was to ask him for remedies for imaginary ailments that they’d made up on the spot – usually some grotesque affliction of the genitals. The Doc took it all in good humour. He had long since given up telling them that the letters after his name were not a medical qualification but a scientific one. After all, there weren’t so many jokes to be made about the scientific engineering that was his particular area of expertise.
The Doc held a clipboard with an inventory list. Eight cases. He ticked them off. Then he turned to the nearest three soldiers and waved his pencil vaguely at them. ‘Would you mind?’ he asked politely.
One of the soldiers grinned at him. ‘Don’t know what you’d do without us, Doc,’ he said good-naturedly. He strode to one corner of the hangar before returning with a large metal crowbar. The wooden crate made a splintering sound as the guys forced it open, revealing its contents.
‘That what you ordered, Doc?’ None of the soldiers appeared remotely surprised that the contents of the crate, whatever they were, were most decidedly not humanitarian aid. There were several long, wide-calibre metal cylinders; there were conical warheads and various other intricate bits of machinery. The Doc ticked these items off on his list before asking for the crate to be sealed once more, while the others were opened and checked.
‘Hope you know how all this stuff fits together, Doc,’ a voice called from behind him. ‘Looks like a fucking overblown Meccano set to me.’
The Doc didn’t take his eyes from the clipboard. ‘Yes,’ he said vaguely, before turning round and peering at the soldier over his glasses. ‘You might want to put that out,’ he said, indicating the cigarette hanging from the soldier’s lips.
The soldier blinked, then dropped the cigarette on the floor as if it were suddenly red hot. He ground it out with his foot.
The Doc nodded with approval, then turned back to his clipboard with a faint, unnoticed smile. A cigarette, of course, would cause no damage whatsoever to the components that had just been delivered. But the guys were keen enough to take the mickey out of him. He didn’t see why he shouldn’t have a bit of fun of his own.
He continued with his inventory. It took the best part of an hour to check all eight cases, but at the end of that time he was satisfied that everything was present and correct. He cleared his throat and issued his polite instruction.
‘All right,’ he called to the assembled company. ‘Everything’s here. You can load the cases up and move them on. And please, be gentle with them. You might all have the heart and soul of Spanish baggage handlers, but we really don’t want to be throwing these things around too much, now do we?’
*
You’ll be sent a package. It will contain everything you need. Only open it when you’re alone. Don’t let anybody else see what’s in it. The abrupt instructions of his handler, the dark-featured former soldier who had trained Jamie Spillane and the others in Kazakhstan, had scarcely left his head since he had called a few days ago.
The package had arrived two days later. Jamie Spillane didn’t know who had sent it, but he decided not to think about that too much. The landlady who owned the bedsit where he was staying had been unable to disguise her interest in the box. She brought it up to his room and stood in the doorway for far too long a time after she had placed it in his hands and received a curt word of thanks from Jamie, who had been forced to shut the door in her face. Nosy bitch.
He had looked at the package for a good long time before opening it: half because he was waiting for the landlady to piss off, half because he was nervous. It just sat there on the bed in its tightly wound brown packing tape and neatly typed label. Jamie smoked a cigarette, locked his door from the inside and paced the room before he even attempted to open it.
It took a while. His chewed nails were not up to the task of unpeeling the packing tape. He was forced instead to use a key from the bunch in his pocket to tear into the tape and open up the box. The contents were cushioned in a roll of protective plastic, the type that as a kid he had liked to pop between his fingers. Jamie discarded it without so much as a squeeze and stared for a moment at the contents inside.
He removed the camera first. It was heavy. Chunky. Not a lightweight little gizmo for taking random snaps, but a serious piece of kit. Included in the box was a telephoto lens. It took Jamie a while to work out how to fit it to the body of the camera, but once he had managed it he was pleased with the result. He took the camera to the small window which looked out over the street and into the attic rooms beyond. While he had been looking out the previous night, he could have sworn some chick had been undressing in one of those windows. It was too far to be seen a
nd enjoyed with the naked eye, but now that he had a bit of help…
She wasn’t there. He sniffed, then pulled down the blind and dumped the camera on to his bed. Only then did he turn his attention back to the box. It wasn’t as deep as it had looked from the outside and his hands were trembling with excitement as he unpacked the compartment at the bottom. Excitement and a little apprehension. As he pulled out the small, black handgun, his mind flashed back to the training camp. If you need a weapon, it will be supplied to you. Don’t fuck things up by trying to get hold of one yourself. People will just start asking questions.
He liked the way it felt in his hand. A Colt. He felt pleased with himself for recognising it. He aimed it towards the door and discharged a silent, imaginary bullet. Then another. And then, laying the handgun on the bed next to the camera, he removed the final item from the package: a box of rounds. Only then did he go about choosing a hiding place for his new toys…
And now, two days later, he was making use of one of them.
He had arrived in Russell Gardens, West London, at 6.30 a.m., the earliest the Underground would allow. He could have taken a cab, of course, but that would not have been secure. Don’t let anybody know where you are or what you’re doing. Much better to take advantage of the anonymity of the Tube. The building he wanted, couched between the relative bustle of Kensington High Street and the Holland Park roundabout, was totally unremarkable. Had it not been for a small plaque by the door which read Embassy of Georgia to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland it would have been impossible to say what function it served. Jamie loitered, but not too close. He couldn’t see any CCTV, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t any. Anyway, he didn’t need to be too close. That was what the telephoto lens was for, after all.