by Matthew Dunn
When the men were inside, Sign set about cleaning the fish, pan frying them, and cutting slices of bread. It was a simple yet hearty breakfast. He served up the plates of food on the dining table. Yuri came into the house, washed his hands, and sat with them at the table. For the most part, the four men ate in silence.
When they’d finished, Gregor rubbed his stomach and had an approving look on his face. “All days should start this way. Yuri and I have some jobs to do on the farm today. After that we’ll prepare the birds. Do you have plans today? If the answer’s yes you may borrow one of my cars. If the answer’s no I have a tree that needs felling and turning into logs.”
Sign gathered up the plates and placed them in the kitchen. “Thomas and I have to see someone today. Thank you for the offer – yes we’d be grateful to use your car. We’ll be back before dinner.”
Lenin walked up to Knutsen and nuzzled his ferocious jaw in his lap. Knutsen stroked him.
Gregor beamed. “Take the wolf with you if you like. He enjoys car travel. Just make sure you leave one of the car windows a few inches open so he can get the outside smells. Keep him on a lead. And if anyone asks about his pedigree, for the love of God don’t say he’s a wolf. Tell them he’s a huskie or similar breed. And don’t let him near dogs, or children, or women, or anyone for that matter that you think he will kill for pleasure or food.”
Fifteen minutes later Sign drove out of the farmstead. Knutsen was in the rear passenger seat. Lenin was half-on-half-off his lap, panting as he had his nose stuck out of the window. The wolf’s one hundred and seventy pound weight was crushing Knutsen’s legs. And Knutsen had to keep pushing his fur away from his mouth.
Sign looked in the rear view mirror and smiled. “I hope you’re both sitting comfortably back there.”
Knutsen made no effort to hide the irritation in his voice when he said, “This is weird. I should have stayed in the police. When you asked me to come with you to Russia you didn’t mention anything about looking after a wolf, staying at a mad submariner’s house, and having to catch my dinner.”
“Ah, but dear fellow we must always strive to enrichen our lives with periods of the unusual.”
“I’d like to see how you’d get on with a monster sitting on your lap. I can hardly breathe!”
“The drive isn’t long. I’d say about ninety minutes.”
“Ninety minutes! Oh, that’s just bloody fantastic!”
Sign headed north on a road that followed the lake for six miles before veering northwest. All around them was countryside. Very few cars were on the road. At one point a car overtook them. In the rear seat was a young girl. She waved at Lenin and Knutsen. Knutsen gritted his teeth, put on a fake smile, and waved back. When the car was gone he said, “When we get back to London you’re going to take me to a pub and buy me as many beers as I want.”
“I’ll do better than that, old boy. I’ll take you to my club in St. James’s. They do a lovely beef and ale pie and have an excellent cellar of wines and port.”
Thirty minutes later, Lenin started retching. Knutsen screamed, “Pull over!”
But it was too late. Lenin vomited on the window, door, and Knutsen.
Sign tried to suppress laughter as he stopped the car on the side of the deserted road. “The poor fella needs some air. Take him out for a few minutes.”
“He needs some fucking air?! God, you’re going to pay me back big time for this.” He took Lenin onto a grass bank, walked him back and forth, stopped to allow the wolf to have a pee, and brought him back into the car. “Right – wherever we’re going let’s get there fucking quick!”
Sign drove on. Twenty minutes later he turned the car into a layby and stopped. “We walk from here.” He got out of the car. “Bring Lenin.”
Knutsen couldn’t work out who was more relieved to exit the vehicle – him or the wolf. He tried to wipe vomit off his fleece with blades of grass, but it only resulted in smearing the bile and slime further into his coat. Cursing, he followed Sign while holding Lenin on his lead. They trudged over rough, uneven, open ground, through a copse, and down an escarpment.
Sign pointed at a house boat that was moored on a river. “We reach our destination.”
“A boat?”
“Yes, a boat and the man who lives inside the vessel.” Sign strode onwards, then stopped sixty yards from the river, spun around to face Knutsen, and said in a quiet voice, “Listen. The man in there is friendly enough, but don’t let that fool you. He was a mercenary in Africa in the seventies and eighties. People who worked with him gave him the nickname Mad Dog. You can imagine some of the things he did. None of them were pleasant or pardonable. He’s retired now, but still retains contacts in his old world and dabbles in arms smuggling. He thinks I run a private military contractor company. Can you put on a German accent?”
“What?”
“A German accent. You’re ex-GSG9 – the elite German police counterterrorism unit. Now you live in London and work for my company, though you’re freelance. Make up the rest, if he asks you questions.”
“I can’t…”
“You’re learning to be a spy and that means you have to think on your feet. Don’t worry, I’ll step in and pick up the slack if I sense you’re faltering. One other thing – don’t tell Gregor that we’ve been here. He hates the man after a job Gregor and I did in Sierra Leone a few years ago. To my knowledge, Gregor doesn’t know he lives here. Regardless, let’s tread carefully.” He walked to the boat.
Knutsen was stock still for a moment. He sighed and said, “Come on Lenin. This can’t be any worse than you puking on me.”
Sign called out, “Knock knock! I’m looking for a crazy Russian guy who owes me money after he crashed my jeep in the Congo.”
A man in his mid-sixties looked through one of the boat’s windows, grinned, and walked out onto the vessel’s gangplank. He was medium height, had a handlebar black moustache, long silver hair that was tied in a ponytail, and the physique of a soldier – slim and athletic. He was wearing camouflage army trousers, desert boots, and a green jumper. Wrapped around his forehead was a thin green bandana that he told people he wore to prevent sweat getting into his eyes, wherein the truth was he used it to hide the results of being branded by a red hot iron after he’d pissed off a tribe of Hutus. “Ben! My friend!” He held up his palm as he swaggered to Sign.
Sign slapped his palm and embraced him. “Good to see you, Anton. It’s been a while” He pointed at Knutsen. “This is Thomas. He’s German and doesn’t speak Russian. He’s an associate. Like I said to you on the phone, we’re in Russia to do a rather tricky business transaction.”
Anton switched in to English. “Nice to meet you, Thomas. Come aboard. What is that?” He pointed at Lenin.
Knutsen replied in an accent that he borrowed from the movie The Great Escape. “It’s a Siberian husky.”
“He looks like a wolf. Doesn’t matter. Bring him in.” Anton walked inside his boat. Sign, Knutsen, and Lenin followed.
The interior was narrow, cramped, but not cluttered. There was a tiny kitchenette midway in the boat, a single bed that folded up into the starboard, cupboards, fireproof metal containers of fuel strapped to the floor, a steering wheel and controls at the helm, and a triangular seating area that was permanently fixed to the rear of the boat.
Anton gestured towards the only place to sit. “Make yourself comfortable. The dog-thing can sit on the floor. I’m making tea with a dash of rum.” As he prepared the drinks, he asked, “Thomas – how did you come to work with Ben?”
Knutsen replied, “He wants me to test weapons, to see if they’re combat ready.”
“Small arms?”
“That is correct.”
Anton poured boiling water into a pot. “The types needed by special forces and mercenaries in unusual circumstances?”
Knutsen glanced at Sign. Sign nodded.
“Yes.”
Anton stirred the tea leaves in the pot. “You are ex-military?”
“No. Police. I served in GSG9. Then I went freelance.”
“Did you see action in GSG9?”
“In Germany. I’ve seen action elsewhere since I left.”
Anton poured the tea and added a glug of rum to each mug. “Where is GSG9 headquartered?”
Sign held up his hand. “We all know its garrison is in Sankt Augustin-Hangelar, near Bonn. This is Thomas’s first trip with me to Russia. It’s a delicate situation for him, and for me for that matter. I want Thomas to keep a low profile, for reasons I’d rather not go in to. It wouldn’t serve me or him if he was grilled by trusted friends like you.”
“Alright. Keep your hair on.” Anton smiled, brought the mugs over, and sat with them after carefully avoiding the huge wolf.
Lenin looked at Anton and growled. Knutsen stroked his head to calm him.
Anton addressed Sign. “Last time I saw you we were hightailing it out of Zambia. That was hectic shit. You really screwed over that South African mine owner. Can’t remember his name. Hendrik, or something. Doesn’t matter. He put the hounds on us. We’d be dead if you hadn’t evaded those ex-Legionnaires by heading into the jungle. Also, it helped enormously that you managed to get the herd of elephants to stampede toward the Legionnaires. I still don’t know how you did that.”
Sign waved his hand dismissively. “I speak elephant and told the beasts that the men were coming to kill them.”
Anton laughed. “Always the storyteller.” His expression turned serious. “How can I help you?”
Sign sipped his tea. The taste reminded him of the time his parents had taken him on holiday to France and they’d gone to a bar-tabac at seven AM to get breakfast. Farmers were propping up the bar, taking a break from their four AM start, before heading back to work an all-day shift. Sign had marvelled at the sight of them having a nip of rum in their tea, so early in the morning. His father explained that it fortified them. Much to his wife’s consternation, the father bought tea and rum for Sign to taste. Sign looked at Anton. “Thomas and I are shortly due to meet rather unsavoury customers. We will be discussing terms of a trade. They will likely get agitated and unpredictable. Guns will be involved. Therefore we need a gun; specifically a highly reliable pistol. I wondered if you could help us.”
Anton looked at Knutsen. “To my knowledge, Ben no longer uses guns. So, I presume the pistol is for you. Are you right or left handed?”
“Right.”
“Are you scared of recoil?”
“No, but I prefer precision over power, though ideally I like to opt for a combination of the two.”
Anton nodded. “Because you don’t want a shot man to have a few moments to shoot back. Yes, I can help you. Come with me.” He walked onto the exterior bow of his boat, lifted a hatch, and withdrew a silk bag from a storage area. “This should do the job.” He walked off the boat and into the copse. “Whose dog or wolf is it?”
Knutsen replied, “It’s on loan. Ben and I are taking it to the meeting in the rural outskirts of Moscow. There will be six men there. We have intelligence that three of them are petrified of wolves. So, we got a dog that looks like a wolf, just to have a bit of leverage.”
“Clever.” From the bag Anton withdrew a MP-443 Grach Yarygin Pistol. He handed it to Knutsen. “What is this?”
Knutsen weighed the pistol in his hand. “It’s an MP-443. It’s a very good gun = accurate, reliable, packs a punch, and easy to strip down and clean. It’s been issued to some Spetsnaz units but is not yet in service in the police.”
“Very good, Thomas. You can see I’ve inserted targets of men in the forest. Most of them are only partially visible. I’ll pick a target and you shoot.”
Knutsen handed Lenin’s leash to Sign. “Take him close to the boat. I don’t want him getting jumpy when he hears the shots.”
Sign walked off with the wolf, calling out, “If the gun’s any good you can deduct its price off what you owe me.”
Anton inserted ear defenders and quietly said, “Target two o’clock.”
Knutsen crouched and put two bullets into the target.”
“Excellent. Fast and accurate. That person’s dead. Eleven o’clock.”
Knutsen pointed his gun left and fired two more rounds.
“Perfect. Six o’clock.”
Knutsen spun around and shot.
“That GSG9 training has obviously paid off.”
They continued until all of the targets were shot. Then they walked back to the river boat. Anton said to Sign, “He is highly proficient. The gun is his, plus I’ve thrown in three spare magazines and a cleaning kit. Will you stay for lunch?”
Sign shook his head. “That’s an extremely kind offer but we must get on the road.” He shook Anton’s hand. “Until next time, my friend.”
“Ah, there might not be a next time. My adventures are catching up on me.” He tapped his head. “A bullet I took in the shoulder in Chad is heading up towards my brain. Doctors can’t remove it. Still, at least I know what I’m going to die from.” He laughed. “When we face the devil we are no longer scared of the devil.”
Sign nodded. “What was that music you hated so much when we were in Mauritania? One of the mercs kept playing it on his CD player.”
Anton scratched his head. “It came from your country. Four girl singers.” He smiled. “The Spice Girls, that was it.”
“You’re right.” Sign placed his hands on Anton’s arms. “When you’re dead and before they close your coffin and put you in the ground, I’m going to put a record of the Spice Girls on your chest. They’ll be with you forever.”
Anton laughed. “Outstanding. But if you die first I’ll put a jar of mayonnaise on your chest. I know you hate that crap.”
“I would expect nothing less. Adios Anton.” Sign walked off and handed Knutsen Lenin’s lead.
When they were in the car and heading back to Gregor’s place, once again Lenin was on Knutsen’s lap. Lenin was licking Knutsen’s face. Knutsen said, “Why oh why does the wolf like me?”
“Because you’re like him.”
“I might weigh pretty much the same as him but that’s where the similarities end.” Knutsen continued to let Lenin lick him, even though it prompted the ex-cop to wince. “I don’t bite people, only have two legs, buy my food from the supermarket – though that’s changing since I’ve been out here, am not looking for a mate, and I certainly don’t sit on people’s laps and lick them.”
“Small details.” Sign turned on to the main highway south.
“You seem to get on well with Anton.”
“He was fine after I stopped him killing me in Kenya. We did a few jobs together after that. But throughout I knew all about his history. He and his men once got into a firefight with a Congolese army. Anton and his men were significantly outnumbered for days and besieged in their camp. It was hopeless. One night Anton crept out at night and entered the enemy’s village, grabbed the army commander’s six year old son, and dragged him back to his tiny base. The next day more fighting ensued. Finally, Anton wandered out across the grasslands, holding a white flag. The Congolese leader met him half way, expecting Anton to surrender. Anton shook his hand, tossed a hemp sack on to the ground, and told the commander that he and his men were facing a small unit of unspeakable creatures. Anton returned to his base. The Congolese commander opened the sack. His son’s severed head was inside. Anton’s men then mortared the bejesus out of the commander’s army and opened fire with everything they had. They slaughtered the Congolese army.”
“How the fuck can you be friends with someone like that?”
“Friends? How can Lenin be friends with you? He likes you now but if he’s starving he’ll kill you without a second thought. I used Anton for my own benefit. In my world we work in the dark side of morality and pray our souls remain intact.”
Natalia entered the basement archive section of the SVR headquarters. It was a vast room that stretched the length and width of the building. Files of current and former cases
were housed in tall shelves that were fifty yards long and eight feet apart. There were forty shelves in the archive. The room was illuminated by strip lights in the ceiling, some of which needed replacing because they flickered when electricity oscillated over the poor contact between light fittings and energy source. The place resembled a museum’s vault of historical documents. One man worked in the archive. His name was Osip Delvig. He’d worked here for eleven years and prior to that he’d conducted various administrative jobs in the SVR and KGB. He was a wizened man, in his early seventies, widower, had arthritis in his nicotine stained hands, and liked the archive job because it meant he could work from nine until five and then lock up his room for the night and go home for a few cigarettes and drinks. Natalia had met him many times and they’d formed a connection because they both liked reading works by the brilliant literary novelist Franz Kafka and the Philip Marlowe crime stories by American author Raymond Chandler.