On the Back Foot to Hell

by Roland Ladley

  A different noise?

  On top of the, slap … rush, slap … rush.

  A car. In the near distance.

  Sam strained her ears. It was tyres on gravel. From behind her. There had been little wind all day. She picked it up easily. A heavy engine. Diesel. Probably two-litre. Maybe a small truck?

  Crunch. Silence.

  The engine switched off. A number of doors opened, she couldn’t tell how many. Then an additional noise. Light metallic clanking. Followed by a soft thud, like a mattress falling onto carpet.

  Then she had it.

  A wheelchair. Initially on gravel and then on a wooden boardwalk. It was rolling her way. There were two additional sets of footsteps. Three people. One of them unable to walk.

  They’d reached the hut’s door. A lock and two sets of bolts. It took fifteen seconds to open the Tardis. A creak – rusty metal hinge. It opened inward, towards her. The slatted, rectangular shape of the door came to a halt about the same time her mouth lost all of its moisture. Her heart rate picked up, but it was a soft beat. And her breathing shallowed. She could see very little so her body reduced internal friction.

  She wanted to hear everything.

  First round the door. A man.

  What?

  What?

  It was a scene lifted straight from a Len Deighton book.

  It was the Russian-looking man from Asda sometime yesterday, the one with the pallid face and Muscovite belly. Same grubby clothes. Same oily skin. He made room for the grand entrance.

  Sam’s initial shock was amplified ten-fold by the entrance of the man in the wheelchair.

  He was in shadow. His silhouette was a fuzzy outline crafted by minimal light from a cloudy night that cheated its way into the hut through the open door.

  But Sam immediately knew who it was.

  ‘Hello Sam.’ He spoke in English with a guttural, Russian accent.

  ‘Privet Vlad.’ A muffled, comic response. If she could have been heard through the gag, Vladislav Mikhailov would have recognised Sam mimicking a mid-west Russian accent. It was one she could do easily. It would have matched the man in the wheelchair if his opening line had been given in his mother tongue.

  A third man made movement behind Vlad, he found a switch by the door and there was light. Apart from three Russians - the one in the wheelchair a senior operator from the FSB and the other two, likely FSB support staff in whatever country they were in - nothing in the hut had changed. Four walls, a window, a door, an upright chair and her.

  ‘Zakroyte dver!' Vlad shouted over his shoulder. The third man immediately pushed the wooden door too.

  ‘Razvyazhi zhenshchinu!’

  Asda-Russian leapt forward and attended to Sam’s gag. He then started on the rest of the ties.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sam.’ Vlad spoke in Russian. ‘I hope you are unhurt?’

  Sam, who was now close to being free, took in Vladislav Mikhailov. A couple of years ago they’d been gathering intelligence in a much bigger wooden cabin when they’d both been shot. Vlad had been left in the cabin to die after Sokolov’s men had set it ablaze. She’d been taken from the scene and dropped on the oligarch’s yacht. She didn’t want to think about what happened after that. Ever.

  She’d not spoken to Vlad since the incident. From SIS sources she knew he’d lost the use of his legs. She had assumed he, his wife Alena and the kids, had retired to The Black Sea.

  Obviously not.

  ‘I need a pee.’ Perfect Russian from Sam. Vlad’s English was poor. Whatever he had brought her here for would have to be sorted out in Russian.

  The three men went silent.

  ‘Now. Otherwise the Russian government will owe me a new pair of slacks.’

  ‘Go then.’ Vlad flicked his head over his shoulder to the door.

  Sam half-stood, and then hesitated.

  ‘Aren’t you worried I’ll make a break for it. Find someone in authority and have you and your hoods arrested?’ She was standing now, although she was a bit wobbly after the enforced rest. She placed a hand on back of the chair to steady herself. ‘By the police, of whoever’s country we’re in?’ She added.

  Vlad closed his eyes and shook his head.

  ‘We’re in England. Do you think I have a submarine offshore, or a flight of jets on call to whisk you off to a country of my choice? I work for the FSB, not for the Bank of Russia.’

  Sam, having now taken a couple of strides to the door, stopped by Vlad’s side and looked down at him; he met her gaze. She put a hand on his shoulder He looked much older than she remembered. Closer to 50 now, rather than heading to 40 as she remembered him. The top half of his body had put on weight - his legs, clearly useless, were as thin as sticks.

  ‘How’s Alena’, Sam asked.

  He smiled and blew out through his nose.

  ‘She’s fine. Now go and pee.’ He waved a hand. ‘I’ll make sure the boys don’t look.’

  She stepped through the gap that had opened up between the two men.

  ‘And come back! I have a proposition for you …’

  Twenty minutes later Sam was clear why the FSB wanted to talk to her.

  ‘But why didn’t you catch me in the street. Text me? Why the heavy hand? This ordeal? The gag and the ropes?’ Sam brought her fists together as if they were still tied.

  ‘For a start, I knew you would only listen to me. And then, only face to face. This evening was the earliest I could get here. And, as I said, we only realised we had a problem two days ago. At that point we knew where you were and we didn’t want to lose you. You know, up a mountain somewhere. Or trekking in the woods. We had to bring you in as soon as we could.’

  Trekking? They’d been following her.

  ‘You’ve been keeping a close eye then?’ Sam didn’t know whether to feel flattered.

  Vlad answered the question with a shrug of his shoulders: sort of.

  ‘But how did you get in the country? You’re PNG. The system would have picked you up. Border Force would have been all over you like chickenpox.’ She was sitting back on her chair with an empty bladder and feeling much more human.

  ‘Correct.’ Vlad replied. As if to release some tension in his upper body, he rolled the wheelchair forward a touch, and then back again. He continued with a half-smile. ‘It depends which airfield you fly into.’

  Sam nodded.

  ‘So, you do have a flight of private jets on standby?’ She teased him.

  Vlad scoffed. ‘If only. We have an old Gulfstream that all of the departments fight over. This week, I won.’

  There was a pause. Sam was mulling over what Vlad had told her. He was waiting for an answer. She was still processing it all. She wasn’t sure. At all.

  ‘Show me a picture.’ She asked.

  ‘Of what?’ Vlad replied.

  ‘Of your field officer. The one I’m meant to be replacing.’

  ‘Why?’ Vlad was defensive.

  ‘I’m not a good facsimile, am I? You want me to do the job because I’m expendable.’

  That was the conclusion Sam had come to. It was the only one that made any sense. The Russian internal intelligence organisation, the FSB, feared an upsurge of Islamic-based violence on its southern border with Georgia. A new terror cell, naming itself Freedom for Oppressed, or FFO, had gained traction in South Ossetia, a small satellite state of Russia. Or, if you belonged to any Western government or most members of the United Nations, an integral part of the sovereign country of Georgia. The Russians feared Islamic fundamentalists as much as any nation and they were very keen on keeping the mainly Russian-speaking South Ossetia in tow. And with their own, large and disenfranchised Muslim population in southern Russia, the last thing they needed was a new banner under which that already subjugated grouping could muster.

  Vlad had come to her because the Russian intelligence services had no idea where the leader of the FFO, Hasan Kutnetsov, was based. Their intelligence had the FFO as a small, tight grouping. Maybe ten to fifteen strong
at its core. According to Vlad the FSB had a female operative on the cusp of meeting Kutnetsov. Her cover was as a Reuters journalist. The FFO and Kutnetsov, clearly seeking all the publicity they could get, had agreed to meet the journalist in three days’ time. FSB had an RV just south of the Russian/Georgian border. The FFO had the details of the journalist. Everything was set.

  Except it wasn’t.

  Unfortunately they no longer had a journalist. The FSB woman had been badly injured in a car crash last weekend.

  Vlad had been clear with Sam. FSB couldn’t afford to miss the chance to meet with Kutnetsov. They would get something from the meeting – something that would help them track down and destroy the grouping. And they had very few female field officers and certainly none capable of stepping in at short notice. So they had to find a replacement. Sam was it.

  That was the nub of it. What Vlad hadn’t mentioned was if she failed, FSB lost nothing.

  I am expendable.

  Vlad got out his smartphone and swiped and pressed. He then rolled his wheelchair forward and passed his phone to her.

  Sam took it. It was a headshot of a middle-aged woman, possibly a passport photo.

  It was the right gender. Tick. But the similarities ended there.

  ‘Is this what the FFO have?’ She asked.

  Vlad nodded.

  ‘How tall is she?’

  Vlad scrunched up his face.

  ‘I don’t know. 165. Maybe 170.’

  Her height. Sam looked again at the photo. She studied it for ten seconds, turning the phone ever-so-slightly left and right. She wasn’t the girl in the photo.

  ‘No. It’s not me. And both you and I know there is no time for any cosmetics. And even if there were time, why would I work for Russia on this case - in a country where your imperialistic overtures are not coincident with those of the West? I would be considered a traitor. It’s not happening. Sorry. It’s not.’

  Vlad took the phone, put it in his pocket and rolled his chair back.

  ‘Speak to Jane Baker. Call her now. Your phone has her number on speed-dial. Tell her everything. It’s in everyone’s interest to quell the rising of any Islamic-extremist organisation in central Asia. The Taleban is confined to Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda is a spent force throughout the world. The West and Russia have restricted ISIS operations to small enclaves in Syria and Iraq – there is no Islamic Levant. We are all struggling with what the Western media have coined, ‘neo-terrorism’. Let’s nip this new grouping in the bud – before it grows a tail and whips us all with it.’ He paused. ‘Phone her. Phone her now.’

  It hadn’t crossed Sam’s mind that she might still have her mobile on her. It was in her jacket pocket. She took it out and stared at it. The battery level read 45% and she had three-bars of 4G.

  She looked up at Vlad.

  ‘Where are we?’ she asked.

  Vlad didn’t answer straight away.

  Then … ‘Sheringham. Just down from where your family had the caravan. I brought you home.’

  What?

  It was too much.

  A multitude of thoughts flashed through Sam’s mind. She welled up. Childhood images. The sea. Ice cream cones: vanilla with a chocolate flake. Dad. Mum, for the second time in a month? The static caravan: green and beige with a TV aerial pointing towards a tower in Cromer. Dad had checked. When was it? 1994? That’s it. Her first taste of war – TV footage of the aftermath of the Serbian mortar attack on a market in Sarajevo. Three hundred innocent people dead. She’d wanted to be a soldier from that point onward. Anything to help prevent that sort of horror.

  She sniffed, pulled the phone away from her face, closed her eyes and rested her chin on chest.

  Asda?

  South Ossetia?

  She sniffed again and wiped the smallest of tears from her eye with the hand carrying the phone.

  Then she dropped both hands to her lap and lifted her head. Vlad was looking directly at her.

  ‘If anyone can bring something useful from a meeting with Kutnetsov, it’s you, Sam. You’ll see something. How do you say? Something that should be there, that isn’t. This is what you do, Sam. You are the expert.’

  She sniffed again and pinched her nose with a finger and thumb, her eyes closing momentarily.

  Then she unlocked her phone and pressed the blue phone icon.

  Chapter 3

  Café Napolita, Via Lavinaio, Naples, Italy

  Gareth supped at his double espresso. Short, strong and black; he couldn’t stop himself from bending innuendo around that description. The caffeine had already started to work its way through his system, chasing down the errant alcohol molecules and giving them a good talking to. Victory would be swift; soon he’d be feeling human. Another late evening with Giorgio, a bottle of amaretto, pasta, and clean, crisp sheets had left him tired and elated. They didn’t talk a great deal. It wasn’t just the language, although that was part of the problem. He was working hard on his Italian and between them they could order a take-away, ask about each other’s day and make complimentary remarks as they removed each other’s clothes. It was that Giorgio worked late and they had better things to occupy themselves with. Anyway, they had only known each other for three weeks. It was early days?

  As he walked from his digs to the café the issue of the lack of meaningful conversation did cross his mind. On reflection he realised he didn’t know a great deal about Giorgio. Gareth was 21, Giorgio was … well, he wasn’t sure. Giorgio looked younger than him, but his actions and mannerisms were older. Gareth, who at 1.87 centimetres tall, had his Dad’s build: the size and shape of a small-town, second-team flanker. Giorgio was more a ‘winger’; slimmer and less bulky.

  He had no idea where Giorgio came from. Currently he was renting, as he described it, un appartamento della spazzatura – a rubbish flat, in the north of the city. When Gareth had suggested they stay at his place, Giorgio, looking startled, had blurted out, ‘No, no’, his hands waving like two small windmills. Gareth hadn’t suggested it again. In any case, he much preferred his place - it was close to the city centre and a short walk to the Academy. As to where Giorgio actually came from, all Gareth had was, ‘down south’, with Giorgio cheekily pointing to his own groin.

  Gareth knew that Naples was considered ‘south’ to Italians. After Naples, other than the beautiful Amalfi Coast and the historic island of Sicily, southern Italy was an underpopulated spine of white mountains with some flat bits of earth laid down here and there to make up the toe and heel of the Italian boot. It was known to be church-mouse poor; and almost lawless. As part of his acclimatisation Gareth had read Christ Stopped at Eboli, a Carlo Levi memoir published in 1945. The book had many wonderful descriptions, but in short Levi portrayed anywhere south of Eboli, which was not that far further south than Naples, as somewhere by-passed by God, and even history itself.

  So that was a vague description of where Giorgio came from: Godless and lawless.

  Which made sense as it was Mafioso country. Which, by a stroke of luck, tuned in nicely with Gareth’s dissertation.

  But he still didn’t know exactly where Giorgio came from.

  Neither did he know if he had any siblings, where he went to school, what degree – or indeed any qualifications he might have … and what his favourite colour was. He might know every contour of his body but, thinking about it, not a great deal more.

  Note to self – less sex, more talking.

  Gareth stretched, forcing his arms down and pushing out his chest. He felt his shoulder blades touch.

  He checked his watch. It was 10.05 am. Chiara was late.

  How Italian.

  He finished his coffee, caught the waitress’s eye and was just about to order a second when a sunglasses-adorned Italian beauty stopped short of entering the café’s patio area and took in the clientele.

  Gareth sat still. Looking. Chiara was late. If the woman was her, she could find her own way to his table.

  Then he remembered the waitress. She was s
tanding impatiently beside him.

  Sod it.

  He raised his chin and called across to the woman who had just arrived.

  ‘Chiara?’ He nonchalantly lifted his hand off the table and waved his fingers.

  The woman pulled her sunglasses off her nose and looked across at Gareth under her beautifully manicured, pencil-thin eyebrows. She smiled, and then looked for the easiest way to negotiate the chicane of tables and chairs between the pavement and Gareth.

  ‘Posso farti un caffè?’

  ‘Si, si.’ She was gliding through the assault course, her feet hardly touching the ground.

  ‘Due caffè, per favore.’ He acknowledged the waitress,

  As she moved away, Gareth stood and met Chiara. They feigned a double-cheek kiss and Gareth pulled out Chaira’s chair, making room for her delicate legs which graced the floor with Ferragamo, banana-yellow flatties. She was wearing a black cotton, Emilio Pucci skirt and a half-silk, lime green open-necked blouse. Gareth couldn’t recall the designer. Her handbag was a delicate Valentino Marilyn cross-body and she sported a Gucci watch.

  The pièce de resistance was a string of larger than usual, beautifully-matched pearls, set off with accompanying earrings.

  Gareth did a quick sum in his head. If he had five hours to spare and had been parachuted into Milan, he reckoned he’d need close to two grand to put together what Chiara was wearing. He was flattered.

  She smiled at him, casually flashing her eyelids in a non-flirty way. She was lovely to the eye. Wealthy. And had that confidence that comes from being both.

  ‘Do you speak English?’ His opening line.

  ‘Of course.’ A slight grimace. He hadn’t affronted her, but he had come close.

  ‘Il mio Italiano non è così buono.’

  She smiled again.

  ‘That’s not a bad start.’ Her English was excellent; just a hint of that wonderful Italian lyricism. ‘Your accent is awful, as though you swallowed a couple of toads. But it’s always good to meet a foreigner, especially a young one, who is willing to try.’ She was speaking quickly, like all Italians. So many words; not enough breath. ‘But your accent … you have to imagine you are underneath Juliet’s balcony. Love is coursing through your veins. The words, they come out quickly, like a …’