Close Quarters

by Adrian Magson

  I turned off the road before crossing the river Vovcha, which snakes its way through the town from north to south, and stopped to look at the map. I’d decided to check out the address of the cut-out first before going to the Hotel Tipol, where Travis was staying, just so I had a picture of the layout. Knowing where all the players were located was a must.

  I checked the list on my cell phone. Apt 5, 12, Terkova Street. According to the map it was close by. I drove slowly, relieved to have caught up with Travis again. I’d make sure he was OK, then step back and wait for Callahan to make the next move. If the original plan went ahead, Travis would be handed over to someone else and be on his way.

  The address I’d been given was in a small, three-storey apartment block over a row of shops not far from the river. It was a quiet area with little traffic and few pedestrians, and darkness was setting in. I’d been so focussed on getting here that I hadn’t even noticed how the day had slipped by so fast.

  I parked a hundred yards down the street and walked back towards the apartment block, conscious of being watched every step of the way, even if only out of innocent curiosity. It’s a familiar feeling when operating in hostile areas. You have to learn to deal with it, even if you can never entirely dismiss it; having that little bit of nervous edge is what keeps you alert and out of trouble.

  I stopped at a small store across the way. It smelled of cooked meats, fruit and vegetables, and had a trio of elderly ladies in headscarves exchanging some local gossip. They stopped talking when I walked in, but started up again once they figured I was harmless. I bought some fruit and a bottle of water, taking my time as I kept an eye on the apartment building across the way to see if anything bad was playing out. When I was satisfied nothing was, I paid up and left, carrying a plastic bag. At least now I was just another local making his way home.

  I walked past the building, chewing on an apple and watching for signs that I wasn’t about to walk into a trap. An old man was sweeping some dirt on to the street and a dog was sitting watching him. Above them a curtain twitched and an old lady flicked a duster against the window.

  The street was quiet so I walked on, taking my time and tuning in to my surroundings. If there were police or army here, there would be something in the atmosphere – a tension like no other. But I couldn’t feel it. And the old ladies in the store were the kind who would have been talking their presence to death if they’d seen anything.

  I continued a tour of the block, then walked back. When I reached the apartment building the old man had disappeared but the dog was still there, doing what dogs do when somebody is looking.

  It was now or never. I stepped through the front door. I was in a small lobby with a flight of tiled stairs leading up right in front of me and a narrow passageway running towards the rear of the building. Two doors with numbers. 1 and 2. A bank of mail boxes stood against the wall, the slots stuffed with junk mail and newspapers.

  As I walked up the stairs I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stirring. I ignored that one; it’s a natural reaction to going somewhere you shouldn’t, and besides, I hadn’t seen anything to concern me. Sometimes you have to know when to override the instinctive signals the body and brain sends you otherwise you’d never move forward.

  Number 5 was on the next floor. Three other doors shared the landing, along with a couple of bicycles, a small pram and a broken bathroom cabinet. I listened outside 5, heard the sound of a television or radio with a news update. The bit I caught didn’t sound good; separatists were boasting of three government tanks set on fire and a police station blown up, but the government was denying it as lies.

  A man’s voice spoke, followed by a woman’s laughter. But not from the television.

  I backed off. If the woman was in the last thing she’d want was me stepping into her life out of nowhere, especially if her husband was unaware of her private work for the CIA. If Travis had made it this far, I’d find him at the Tipol.

  I checked the hotel’s location and followed the directions. It was back across the river on a broad boulevard lined by trees and a scattering of shops, houses, a gas station, another hotel and a school. I parked close by and walked past the front entrance, giving it the once over.

  The Tipol was surprisingly large given the size of the town. A four-storey building with coloured fascia and lots of flower tubs, it boasted a large sign over the front door listing its many facilities including conference rooms and Wi-Fi. The car park was busy, but one vehicle stood out immediately.

  An old black VW Polo with a bumble-bee sticker on the rear window.

  I didn’t have to look twice. It was the same car I’d followed out of Obluskva.

  I walked round the block and back. No sign of surveillance, no military or cop presence. But something felt odd. Why was 24d still here? He should have been long gone into his new future – taking with him any chance of his car being spotted.

  There really wasn’t an option. I was going to have to go in.

  I approached the reception desk. The foyer was standard hotel issue with a selection of uncomfortable looking chairs, bright posters of the local countryside and a rack of tourist brochures. The clerk was a young woman in her early twenties.

  She looked up and smiled. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I need to speak with one of your guests,’ I explained. ‘The driver of a black Polo.’

  She thought about it and nodded. ‘I think I know the one. He arrived with another gentleman. Can I take your name?’

  I ignored the question and feigned embarrassment, telling her that I’d scraped the Polo with my car and wanted to apologize to the owner, that my conscience wouldn’t allow me to just drive away.

  She looked impressed. ‘Of course. One moment, please.’ She checked her computer screen then picked up a phone and dialled a number. She waited and pulled a regretful face.

  ‘I am sorry, sir. There’s no answer. He must have gone out.’

  ‘Might he be in the restaurant?’

  ‘No, sir. I have just come from there. Two ladies and a man I know personally. But not Mr Travis. Can I take a message?’

  Travis. He was using his real name? Jesus.

  ‘No. Thank you. I’ll be around for a while so I’ll call back later.’

  I got out of there and did another tour of the area, checking for stray State Department employees and blown cut-outs. But they were nowhere to be seen.

  I’d been in the area enough for one day, and it was getting dark. If Travis was out with 24d, it was pointless looking for him, and sooner or later somebody would wonder why I was hanging around.

  I found a quiet spot with a view of the hotel’s front door and ate some fruit and drank the water. It wasn’t the best meal I’d ever had but certainly not the worst. Besides, I’d found that once I was on an assignment and ready for go, so-called proper meals were something of a luxury.

  By nine o’clock there was still no sign of Travis. To make sure, I walked back into the hotel, where a different receptionist was on duty. I asked if Travis was in.

  She checked her screen, then rang his room extension, keeping one hand over the dial pad so I couldn’t see the room extension number. All the time she managed to keep one eye on me as if I might run off with one of the uncomfortable chairs. After several rings she shook her head. ‘I am sorry. Maybe he’s asleep.’

  I agreed that maybe he was. ‘I’ll call him in the morning,’ I said, and left her to it.

  THIRTY

  Ed Travis lay fully dressed, staring at the digital read-out in the base of the small television in his hotel room. It said 05.00 a.m. and he was listening to the night sounds – or were they early morning sounds? It definitely looked lighter than it had a while ago, although lack of sleep was doing strange things to his head. He focussed on the individual sounds in the hope that sleep would overtake him. There was the vague hum of the heating system, the occasional buzz of traffic passing by on the road outside, and the coughs and rumbles issuing from occupant
s of the rooms either side of his.

  So far, as a distraction, it wasn’t working. And whatever service the television was supposed to provide seemed to have been switched off and it gave out only a mushy screen of white noise, a frustrating snowstorm against a dark background.

  He thought about the old man named Denys, three doors along. They had driven here from Donetsk mostly in silence, Denys steering the car with studied care and observing all the traffic rules. At times his grip on the wheel had become light and Travis had been forced to nudge his shoulder at one point when he thought he was zoning out. It was Denys who had decided to stay the night before moving on to try and get over the sickness that had settled on him. He hadn’t said where he was going, only that he had a couple of people who would help him, old friends from way back.

  Travis hoped he was right; he was no expert, but he’d witnessed the way his own father had faced death, and the aura that had settled around him in his final days. Denys had the same grey pall around his shoulders, the same gaunt look that no amount of medicines would put right. Nobody should have to endure that kind of solitary end in the final days of their life without someone to help and care for them.

  It made him wonder what the hell he was doing here himself, so far from Beth, his wife, and his two children, Dean and Andrea. After his confinement at Donetsk Airport and being freed by the mysterious American, who had so far remained out of sight, he was now in another building, but just as disconnected from them as he had been before. At least he was free to move around within reason, without having an armed guard outside the door.

  But what had he achieved coming to this country that was teetering on the brink of a civil war? He’d spoken to a few self-styled leaders, some clearly extreme in their views, some more strongly committed to real change in their country but by peaceful means. They had invariably been shouted down by others, perhaps not all provably Ukrainian, who were brutally critical of America’s place in the world and demonstrably not happy at Travis’s presence. The latter group were no less convinced that they wanted change, but there seemed to be no limit to what they had in mind to achieve their desired goals.

  He knew which ones were doomed to fail, swept under the carpet of change by the gun rather than the political chamber; and it wasn’t those with a soft line in dialogue and a desire to power-share in a new democracy.

  The idea depressed him, and he found thoughts of his children laying heavy on his mind. They were too young for him to be off risking his life in foreign lands. But then so were thousands of other kids with parents in the military, or in embassies and missions all around the world, facing daily problems and dangers that could rip them away from their loved ones at a moment’s notice. The temptation to pick up the phone as soon as he’d arrived had been tremendous, but he remembered what the American in Donetsk had told him. In any case he knew the dangers of calls being picked up by monitoring stations and had clamped down hard to resist reaching for the phone.

  He closed his eyes, settling his breathing and deliberately trying to ease his family from his mind. If tomorrow was anything like today, he’d need all the rest and energy he could muster.

  Seconds later he opened them again and realized that he’d fallen asleep. He sat up. He’d heard a noise, penetrating his consciousness in spite of his exhaustion. It hadn’t been a car or a phone ringing, or the noisy heating. What then?

  He heard it again. It was a thumping noise, like somebody hitting a pillow to soften it. He lay back, the explanation easy to take in, and closed his eyes.

  Then somebody cried out. Short and sharp, it had the quality of a man in pain … or someone suffering a bad dream. After what he’d seen going on in this country, it would be amazing if some people weren’t troubled by thoughts of what was happening to loved ones, to friends, to their country.

  He sat on the side of the bed, now more than wide awake, and wondered if he should check on Denys. The old man was clearly in a bad way, undoubtedly a victim of poor diet and neglect. But the sudden departure from his home in Donetsk and the journey here, expecting all the time to be stopped by police or military roadblocks, had been an additional strain on a tired body already racked by ill-health. He had gone out shortly after arriving, telling Travis to stay inside and not to talk to anyone, that someone would be along in the morning to pick him up for the next stage of the journey.

  Since then, nothing.

  He got up and checked the grounds outside the window. Nothing moved. A few cars parked in rows, a dog – or was it a fox? – trotting along the road, and the darkness of a section of town without street lights. After what he’d seen in the east, it was oddly peaceful, serene almost.

  A door opened and closed; a soft thump in the dark followed by the click of a lock. An early riser hitting the road. He heard the scuff of footsteps in the corridor. They stopped outside his door.

  He stepped across the room. Denys. At last. Now he could be on to the next stage of the journey …

  But it wasn’t Denys. The man filling the doorway and blocking out the night-light in the corridor was big. Travis caught a glimpse of a bullet head and broad shoulders. The man was pointing at him, his arm encased in a leather jacket giving off a smell of cigarettes and body odour.

  ‘What?’

  He stopped speaking, the words congealing in his throat. The man was pointing but it wasn’t a finger; he was holding the cold metal of a gun barrel against Travis’s forehead.

  ‘Back inside,’ the man said softly, and prodded Travis backwards until he fetched up against the bed. The man closed the door then dropped the gun into a holster strapped under his jacket against the side of his chest.

  ‘Where is the other man who brought you here?’ The newcomer’s voice was clear and precise, almost friendly. But what came next was not.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Travis replied instinctively, and instantly felt a tremendous blow to his stomach that knocked him back on to the bed. He tried to roll away, his knees going weak, but fetched up against the headboard with a sickening bang. A wave of nausea rolled over him, making his head spin.

  ‘Not the right answer, Mr Travis.’ The man leaned over him and began binding his hands and legs together with a roll of packaging tape until he was immobile. ‘There. That’s better. Now, where is the other man?’

  ‘I told you—’

  Another body punch, this one to the chest, followed by a roundhouse slam to his ribs that nearly lifted him off the bed. He heard something crack and felt his stomach rebel as the pain lanced through him like a bolt of fire. There were other blows, but not nearly so hard, merely a relentless repetition, spaced out around his body, the fists sending waves of pain through him until he nearly passed out.

  Eventually the beating stopped. ‘I’ll ask you another question, to see how we get on. Where are you going after here? What address have you been given?’

  ‘I haven’t been told that.’ Travis braced himself for another blow, knowing that he couldn’t sustain this level of systematic damage for long without something going badly wrong.

  But the man didn’t hit him. Instead he leaned closer and whispered in his ear. ‘Your friend, the old man? The one whose car you were in?’

  Travis coughed. The movement produced a renewed burst of agony and he wanted to be sick but didn’t dare in case he choked to death. ‘What … what about him?’ This thug evidently knew about Denys, there was no point denying it. Maybe he could delay things in the hope that one of the other guests would alert the management about the noise.

  ‘He’s dead. See this?’ The man produced a long, slim knife with a sharp point. ‘I asked him the same questions. But he refused to talk so I provided him with an incentive. You know about incentives, Mr Travis?’

  Travis couldn’t speak, he was so horrified. Instead he nodded, not wanting to hear more.

  ‘Good.’ The man smiled. ‘I made a large hole in his side.’ He sighed dramatically, his breath hot and stale on Travis’s face. ‘He was a foolish old
man, but a brave one. He had guts – and I saw some of them. But in the end he told me where you were.’ He giggled and placed the knife blade on Travis’s cheek, close to his eye. ‘Now then, where shall we begin, Mr Travis? You like reading? Watching TV? Looking at your pretty wife as she takes off her clothes and gets naked for you, huh?’ He pressed down on the blade without breaking the skin. ‘How would you be able to do that without your eyes, do you think?’

  The man suddenly moved away. He picked up the roll of tape and tore off a strip, slapping it across Travis’s mouth. Then he bent and ripped out the phone wires from the handset. ‘I’ll give you a couple of minutes to think it over. Don’t think about running anywhere, will you?’

  The man left the room and closed the door and Travis felt himself losing consciousness. Oh, God, he thought, don’t let it end here like this …

  THIRTY-ONE

  I woke at six with a stiff neck and the feeling that I’d missed something. I checked the hotel. All the curtains were drawn tight and the Polo was still in the car park. A delivery truck was dropping off laundry and supplies to one side, but other than a sleepy-looking driver and a woman with a clipboard and the sullen manner of an afternoon person, the place was quiet.

  I left the car and walked a short distance until I found a café with a number of workmen getting ready for the day. Or maybe they were night workers stopping on their way home for coffee and what looked like brandy or white spirit – horilka – locally brewed and flavoured with fruit. I avoided the alcohol and settled for fried potatoes and eggs, which seemed the staple breakfast diet. The nods I got from the other customers, who shifted over to allow me to sit, told me I seemed OK.

  Blending in.

  I finished eating and paid up, leaving an acceptable tip, then walked back to the hotel. Most of the room curtains were now pulled back. The Polo hadn’t moved. Travis had to come out sooner or later and be on his way. Unless he was waiting for the next cut-out to show up and collect him.