by Chris Ryan
The object he was looking for. The brown briefcase.
He forced his muscles into movement, removing his rucksack from over his shoulder and starting to undo it. His fingers were shaking slightly; it seemed to take an age to unbuckle the straps. The more he hurried, the slower he seemed to go, but eventually he got it open. Next he pulled out the replica suitcase and opened it. The original case contained a few papers. He flicked through a few of them. They were written in an alphabet he couldn’t understand, but as he scanned through, his eyes fell upon the words Kakha Beridze in English lettering. He nodded with satisfaction. There was also a pen clipped to the interior and a used paper napkin, crumpled and stained where its owner had wiped their mouth. The young man meticulously removed each of these objects and transferred them to the replica case. He then rifled through the original to check there was nothing he had missed. It was empty, apart from a few crumbs, which he carefully picked up and dropped into the replica. Then he closed both cases, placing the replica back on the table in exactly the same position that the original had been and stuffing the original into his rucksack.
The young man stood up. As he did so, his attention was caught by something he hadn’t noticed before. A picture on the wall. In the foreground a meadow, green and dotted with little yellow flowers; behind that, a line of snow-capped peaks. The sky, deep blue and dotted with puffy white clouds. Below the picture, in bright, tacky writing, the words Beautiful Georgia.
He looked at that picture. Not for the first time, he wondered why he was being asked to do this. He was not into politics and he struggled every time he tried to work out the consequences of this operation. But, as he had done so many times before, he let it go. He was just a small piece in the bigger intelligence jigsaw, he knew that. Maybe if he did his job well, if he proved he could be trusted… well then, maybe something else would come his way.
Hoisting the rucksack over his shoulder, he stepped back towards the kitchen. On the table at the end of the room, something caught his eye. A wallet. He approached it and saw several notes peeking out.
Somewhat unnecessarily he looked over his shoulder. It would be so easy to steal the contents of that wallet. Just a couple of notes. Who would notice? He struggled with himself. Whatever you do, don’t be tempted to steal anything. It’ll raise suspicion. You mustn’t do anything to give away the fact that you’ve been there.
He took a deep breath. The temptation was difficult to control, but he managed it. Just. He stepped through to the kitchen, then out into the back garden, closing the door quietly behind him. Squeezing his splintered hand open and closed, he prepared to scale the garden fences again. He allowed himself a brief smile. It had gone well. In an hour he would be back home and then there was just one more part of the operation to complete.
And that would be the easy bit.
*
Sam sat in the unwelcoming surroundings of his hotel room. He looked numbly at the bag Mac had brought with him. How long would it be before they found his body? Hours? Days? Weeks? Every impulse urged him to go to Mac’s family, explain to his wife what had happened. But he couldn’t do that. He was a wanted man. Rebecca was going to have to suffer her husband’s unexplained absence a bit longer until she heard the news that would turn her world upside down. It sickened him to think about it.
And it sickened him to think about his brother. He didn’t doubt that Jacob was the shooter. The whole scenario had his fingerprints all over it. The ribbon. The decoy. It was the way his mind worked. Sam knew that better than anybody.
And better than anybody he knew what a mess he’d made of things. He should never have got Mac involved. Dolohov’s death was just the beginning. Jacob’s red-light runners were planning something. Something big, but he didn’t know what and he was no closer to finding out. Go to the Firm now and they’d stick him in the deepest hole they had. They’d be panicking. They’d know they had to find Jacob and they’d know Sam was their only link. Half the fucking service would be out there looking for him. Anywhere they thought he might be – his flat in Hereford, Clare’s place. And of course, he couldn’t show his face at SAS headquarters. His passport would be flagged and his mobile phone bugged.
All this because of his brother.
Jacob’s dark features flashed before his eyes. Jacob was a real soldier, his dad had said.
‘We’re all real soldiers.’ Sam muttered out loud the reply he had given his father. We’re all real soldiers, and sometimes we do things we’re not proud of. He thought of the red-light runners in Kazakhstan, turned from unknowing stooges to cold corpses at the squeeze of a trigger. In the darkness of the night, when it was just Sam and his conscience, he knew he would be haunted by those young men. He was a soldier, but he wasn’t without feeling.
Jacob was a real soldier.
Was Jacob proud of what he had done? Was his own conscience pricked? Was he without feeling? Could he kill one of his closest friends and not be haunted by it for the rest of his days? Or was he too far gone for that?
Sam felt himself sneering at the thought, the anger welling up in him once more. Half of him wanted to see his brother; the other half didn’t know what he’d do when he caught up with him.
He looked over at Mac’s bag once more. Solitary. Ownerless.
Jacob was a real soldier.
His dad’s voice echoed in his head.
Sam stopped. His brow furrowed. Through the fog of his tired mind he remembered the last time he had seen his father. It had only been a few days ago, but it seemed like half a lifetime. Fragments of that conversation seemed to float in the air around him.
Jacob was a real soldier.
You know what those bastards are like. Jacob was an embarrassment to them. We both know how easy it is to get rid of people who are an embarrassment.
He always looked out for you, Sam.
You talk about him like he’s dead.
If your brother was still alive, what’s the one thing he’d do if he knew I was cooped up in this shit hole, pissing into a pipe and wasting away to a fucking skeleton? What’s the one thing he’d do?
Sam hadn’t answered. He hadn’t had the heart. He knew too well that nothing would have kept Jacob away.
Nothing would have kept Jacob away…
Nothing would have kept Jacob away…
And suddenly, in that dingy hotel room, it was crystal clear what Sam had to do. He looked at his watch: 3 a.m. The night was slipping away. He only had one chance to catch up with Jacob. If he missed that, he knew, without any doubt, he would never see his brother again.
His ops waistcoat was on the bed. He strapped it to his torso, secreted the Browning pistol into it, then covered himself with his hooded top. He looked around the room. Nothing to take. Just Mac’s bag, and he didn’t need anything from that. It would only slow him down. He left it there as he slipped out of the room and surreptitiously left the hotel. In the hotel car park, he felt as though a million eyes were watching him. He ignored them. They were imaginary. Kill the paranoia, Sam. You haven’t time for it. He started examining the cars on offer. Nothing modern, he told himself. Nothing with an alarm or immobiliser. Get your collar felt by the Old Bill now and you’ll have some serious explaining to do.
He walked. He kept alert.
It was an old Fiesta that caught his eye. A dent on one side, with rust creeping round it. A shabby, unkempt interior. Sam looked around to check that he was alone. Nothing. Nobody. He walked round to the passenger’s side where, with a sharp jerk of his elbow, he smashed the window in. The glass shattered onto the passenger seat. Leaning in, he stretched out to open the driver’s door, then walked round and climbed in.
The vehicle belonged to a woman or a short-arsed man – he had to move the seat fully back in order to sit properly. His fingers groped for the panel under the steering wheel and, with a sharp tug, he pulled it off. With both hands he felt for the wires underneath; in less than a minute he had hotwired the engine into life.
Another time check: 03.15. Assuming the car’s owner awoke no earlier than six, Sam had three hours. It was enough. In three hours’ time he would be long gone.
In three hours’ time he would be back in Hereford.
TWENTY-FIVE
Hereford, May 25. 04.55.
Max Redman awoke.
His room was dim, almost dark, with the morning light just beginning to bleach the air. As always happened, it was the confusion that hit him first. Where was he? What was this place? And then the pain. The dull, insidious ache that weakened his thin limbs and reminded him, with a shock that never grew less brutal through familiarity, that he was imprisoned – both by his illness and by the four walls that surrounded him.
He groaned, then lay there listening to his own rasping breath. It was only gradually, and with a creeping sense of unease, that he realised he wasn’t alone.
With difficulty, he moved his head to one side. A figure by the door. The old man couldn’t make out who it was. He squinted, but it was no good and he felt the anxiety of the infirm.
‘Who’s that?’ he asked, his aggressive voice neutered by his weakness. ‘It’s too early for breakfast. I’m not fucking hungry.’ Deep down, though, he knew it wasn’t someone bringing him food. He struggled to stretch his thin arm out for the control that would move his hospital bed into a sitting-up position. His fingers touched it, but it slipped from his grasp. He swore and tried again. By that time, however, the figure was moving. Stepping towards him. And the closer it got, the clearer its features became.
Max Redman’s weak limbs became weaker. His breath rasped all the more. The figure stood by his bedside and looked down. Neither man said anything.
It was Max that broke the silence. ‘My God, Jacob,’ he breathed. ‘What’s happened?’
His son’s face was ravaged. There were deep, dark bags under his eyes and a frown on his forehead that reminded Max of when Jacob was a little boy and had been scolded. But his eyes themselves had the thousand-yard stare, that look of numb shock that Max knew from the battlefield.
Jacob didn’t reply. He just continued to look down on his father.
For a brief, irrational moment, Max wondered if he was being visited by a ghost; he wondered if his own eyes looked as haunted as his son’s. Max Redman was not a man who was easily scared; but he felt fear now, creeping down his spine and making his extremities tingle and burn. If this wasn’t a ghost, why would Jacob not speak?
‘What’s happened?’ he repeated. His voice sounded unsure. Max would never have been anything other than dominant in conversations with his sons, but now the tables had turned. He was frightened of Jacob. It took courage for him to stretch out his hand towards his son’s, an unprecedented gesture of timid affection. Their skin touched.
And then, slowly, like a man in church preparing to pray, Jacob lowered himself to his knees. He looked to the floor and allowed his father to place his thin hands on his head. They stayed like that, father and son, for nearly a minute. They might have stayed longer, had they not both been disturbed by the faint sound of wheels screeching in the car park outside. Jacob stood quickly. His eyes had narrowed, but his face had lost none of that troubled expression. He walked backwards until he was halfway across the room and his face was once more shrouded by the half light. Then he turned and walked to the door.
‘Your mother couldn’t live without you, Jacob,’ Max said. Jacob stopped, but didn’t turn round. His father’s difficult breathing filled the room. ‘Neither of us could live without you.’
A thousand thoughts suddenly emerged in Max’s mind, like the dead rising from their graves. A thousand emotions. A thousand apologies. But he didn’t have the energy to speak any more, even if he had had the skill to articulate them. And so they went unsaid, lost in the dark silence between the father and his son.
Max closed his eyes. He heard the door click open, then fall quietly shut. When he opened his eyes again, Jacob was gone.
*
It was precisely three minutes past five when Sam’s stolen Fiesta screamed into the car park of his father’s care home. There were barely any other vehicles there, just those belonging to the night staff. He stopped at an angle across two parking spaces and sprinted towards the building.
The receptionist on duty looked startled as he burst in. The man shouted something, but whatever it was didn’t register in Sam’s mind as he hurried past, along the corridors that smelled of disinfectant as he followed the familiar route to his dad’s room. As he ran, he put his hand under his hooded top and loosened the Browning that was nestled in his ops waistcoat. A strange sense of calm fell over him, an other-worldliness. He didn’t know quite what would happen when he reached the room, but with an almost emotionless detachment he knew he would be ready for it.
His father’s door. Closed, just like every other one along the corridor. He paused briefly, pulled out the Browning and, weapon at the ready, opened it slightly.
No sound. He kicked it open further and stepped inside.
His father was lying there, just where he always was. The bed was flat, the curtains closed. But Max’s eyes were wide open. Sam pointed his gun quickly to all four corners of the room. There was just the two of them, so he approached his father’s bedside.
Max’s face was grey. Tired. His eyes were red and the rough skin on his face was dabbed with moisture. Sam had never seen his father cry. Not even when Mum had died. It didn’t happen. There was no doubt about it, though. Max Redman had been crying and Sam knew why.
‘Where is he?’ he demanded.
Max stared at his younger son. He looked like he was struggling to control his emotions. ‘Why the piece?’ he asked, his eyes flickering to Sam’s gun.
Sam grabbed the control for the hospital bed. It seemed to move in slow motion, to take half a lifetime to bring Max upright. When finally his father was in a sitting position, Sam spoke again. ‘I know he’s been here, Dad. Where’s he gone? What did he say?’
Like a petulant child, Max pursed his pale lips.
‘Damn it, Dad! It’s important.’
Max’s chest rattled as he breathed. ‘Is he in trouble?’ he asked, before collapsing into a fit of coughing. As the fit subsided, he closed his eyes. ‘He looked like something had happened.’
The image of Mac’s dead body flashed across Sam’s mind, like a hot iron branding the skin of a live animal. He felt the muscles in his face tightening involuntarily, giving away his emotions. Max’s eyes narrowed. He might be old and sick, Sam thought, but he wasn’t stupid. His father looked away resolutely.
Sam took a deep breath. He couldn’t tell his father the truth. It would kill him. But he had to know what had passed between Max and Jacob. He had to know what his brother had said. ‘Listen, Dad.’ His voice low, urgent. ‘I don’t know what he told you, but yes, he’s in trouble. I can help him, Dad. I can get him to safety. But I’ve got to know where he is. If I don’t find him, someone else will.’
A noise outside the door. Commotion.
Max’s face hardened. He refused to talk. It was all Sam could do to stop himself grabbing his father’s nightclothes in his fist through frustration. ‘For God’s sake, Dad! For once in your life don’t be so fucking stubborn. Jacob’s not the golden boy you think he is.’
‘Stay out of it, Sam,’ Max replied, wheezing as he spoke. ‘It’s nothing to do with you.’ More coughing. ‘All right, so Jacob came to see me. What’s wrong with a son wanting to visit his parents?’
As Max said those words, two things happened. In a sudden flash of insight, Sam knew where Jacob would have gone. And just as that thought hit him, the door burst open. ‘That’s him!’ a breathless voice said. Sam spun round. In the corridor he saw the receptionist he had so abruptly ignored on his way in; and in front of him, entering the room, was a security guard – broad shouldered, grim-faced and rushing towards him.
Sam acted on auto-pilot. A violent kick in the groin and the security guard doubled over. Seconds later, Sam had
one of his arms crooked around the man’s neck and his Browning pressed up against his head. Sam pulled him into the corridor.
‘Get in the room!’ he shouted at the receptionist. ‘Get in the fucking room or I’ll kill him!’ The frightened receptionist did as he was told. As Sam stepped backwards he heard his dad shouting weakly. ‘Stop him. He won’t do anything.’ But the receptionist was too terrified.
‘Don’t make a fucking mistake,’ Sam told his hostage, ‘and you won’t get hurt.’ He hustled him along the corridor and down the stairs. They echoed noisily, but it was early and nobody else was awake. The guard was crying with fear. am just ignored it. They hurried through the reception area. By now the receptionist could have called the police. Sam didn’t have any time to lose.
Outside the building, he dragged the guard halfway to the car, then stopped. ‘Get on the ground,’ he instructed. The guard, frozen with fear, did nothing. ‘Get on the fucking ground!’ He pushed him down and the guard hugged the tarmac. ‘Move an inch and I’ll fucking kill you,’ Sam told him, before sprinting to the car. He was sweating profusely despite the early-morning chill, as the car coughed into life. Speeding from the car park, he looked in the mirror; the guard was still prostrate on the ground.
All notions of care and secrecy had evaporated from Sam’s mind. He drove furiously, screeching round corners and ignoring red lights. The few cars that were on the road at this early hour swerved away from him; horns blasted then faded away. Sam ignored them all. He knew the road he had to take, even though he hadn’t driven it for four years.
The graveyard was surrounded by black iron railings topped with spikes. Sam’s Fiesta came to a halt just outside the entrance, two wheels up on the kerb. He grabbed the gun that had been sitting on the passenger seat, jumped out and sprinted in among the graves. It was a large cemetery; as Sam ran among the stones, images of the last time he was here flashed in his mind like punches. The coffin being lowered into the ground; a small group of people standing around, barely protected from the biting cold; Sam himself standing next to his father; and the absence of one person keenly felt by everyone there.