Close Quarters

by Adrian Magson

  I was out of time.

  FIFTY-ONE

  Brian Callahan’s attention was torn away from the screen showing Watchman’s location and the two vehicles tracking him by the arrival of an internal messenger. The man was holding a sealed envelope. He handed it over, got a signature and disappeared back the way he had come.

  Callahan opened the envelope, one eye on the screen. A single sheet of paper inside detailed the results of research into the private investigator, Greb Voloshyn. It gave his home address, workplace and some facts about BJ Group, his employers. Callahan was about to put it to one side for reading later when he noticed a familiar acronym further down the page.

  FSO.

  He felt a jolt go through him. The FSO was the Russian Federal Protective Service, responsible among other things for the security of the Russian president and other high-ranking ministers. They were bodyguards of the highest order, similar to the US president’s Secret Service detail. To most western observers, the FSO was simply another branch of the once all-powerful KGB, now the FSB.

  And Greb Voloshyn was listed as a former officer of that organization.

  ‘Can you handle this?’ he said to Lindsay. ‘Something’s come up.’ He held up his pager. ‘Call me if anything happens – I won’t be far away.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Of course.’

  Callahan hated leaving her at such an important juncture, but there was something he had to deal with that couldn’t wait. He hurried along the corridor and took the elevator to the research section where the report on Voloshyn had been compiled. He checked the researcher’s name listed at the bottom of the form, followed by a signature. David Andrews. He was one of the team of IT and intelligence geeks who trawled the internet’s darkest corners and instigated investigations into whatever officers like Callahan required. It was an intensive job and demanded absolute focus and accuracy. Andrews’s particular strength was his knowledge of the current Russian security and intelligence apparatus and its history.

  He found Andrews and took him to one side. ‘I don’t have to ask if you’re sure of your facts,’ he said, ‘but do we have any way of telling if Voloshyn is still connected to the FSO?’

  Andrews gave a knowing smile. He was short and chunky in build with a wispy moustache and the complexion of a man who spent too much time below ground out of the sunlight. Like a groundhog, Callahan thought not unkindly. Only a particularly smart one.

  ‘They’re always connected, sir. Guys like him might leave the service, same as the FSB and the SBP – the Presidential Security Service – but there’s more than just an esprit de corps involved; they have a duty to remain in touch at all times. Like auxiliaries, I guess. As we’re beginning to learn with the events in Ukraine at the moment and South Ossetia before, some of these people were farmed out with a deliberate mission in mind.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘To infiltrate government departments in the former satellite states of the old Russian Federation. We know the Ukrainian Ministry of Affairs and their intel and security services have got former FSB and GRU members in their ranks, as have a few government offices. It’s the way they do things: infiltrate and take over. By the time anybody finds out what’s going on, it’s usually too late.’ He grinned and made rabbit’s ears signs with his fingers. ‘Like the Borg Collective.’

  ‘The what?’ Callahan scowled. He was never entirely sure with some of the geeky types down here if they were having a quiet joke at his expense or not.

  ‘Star Trek, sir. The Borg Collective was an alien race who—’ Andrews stopped, sensing he’d lost his listener with the first two words. He was right.

  ‘But Voloshyn’s with a private security company based in Kiev.’

  ‘Same thing, different uniform. During my research on Voloshyn I found references to BJ Security working in Russia, on contracts issued by government departments and under direct orders of Russian military and security personnel. But they’ve also got connections with Russian organized crime. In fact one of their directors recently finished a five-year term for robbery. They’re a pretty diverse organization and a lot bigger than their public face indicates. In fact,’ he added, ‘I recently circulated a report advising that BJ Group has established a representative office here in Washington DC.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I believe there’s been a watch placed on it since then, but there’s nothing on the file yet. I checked.’

  ‘What, they’re just watching it?’

  ‘Yes, sir. The FBI and Homeland are arguing over whether to leave them be until they make a mistake, or close them down. Trouble is if they do that the guy could go underground and they wouldn’t know where he was.’

  It made sense, Callahan thought. Keep your suspects where you can see them. ‘You said guy. One man?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Name of Gus Boranov. Looks, dresses and sounds all-American, but my guess is his heart is pure Kremlin. He has a nice office downtown and does a lot of entertaining.’ He grinned cynically. ‘I guess they don’t believe in travelling economy.’

  Callahan felt as if he’d been living in a bubble. On the other hand, that was why the CIA employed people like Andrews: to keep a weather eye on what else was going on out there. This news altered his whole line of thinking. ‘Right. So what’s the bottom line with this Greb Voloshyn?’

  ‘Bottom line?’ Andrews shrugged. ‘Bottom line is, I don’t have definitive proof right now, but I’m prepared to bet my girlfriend’s car, which is a very nice 1978 Mustang, that Voloshyn is still a serving FSB or FSO officer.’ He smiled with the supreme confidence of a man who knew his job. ‘And you can take that to the bank. Sir.’

  FIFTY-TWO

  I threw the branch away and ran back round the lake. I was heading up the slope when I heard three short whistles and looked up to see Travis beating his arm downwards in a frantic ‘hit the deck’ signal, before he dropped out of sight.

  Even travelling at high speed the Lancer’s tuned engine hadn’t carried far, and was almost on me before I knew it. I dropped to the ground and heard the buzz on the road as it went by. Then I heard the harsher sound of the UAZ coming. I stayed where I was and cocked the Ero. The Lancer would have been going too fast to see any detail at ground level, but the UAZ was making heavy weather and the men inside would have more time to study the surrounding countryside.

  I waited as the high-pitched whine of the tyres went by and counted to ten. No slowing down, no change of engine note. Gone.

  I gave it another count of ten to be sure then jacked myself to my feet and started running.

  I was almost at the top of the slope when I heard the squeal of brakes behind me. I turned to see the UAZ doing a virtual ninety-degree turn off the road, its tyres stuttering as they lost traction on the surface. It barrelled across the verge and started on down the slope, and a soldier in the back stuck a rifle out the window and began firing.

  He was good. I guessed he’d been trained to shoot while mobile, and was probably a member of a Russian raider force. I heard the snap of rounds going past me and saw grass being kicked up in vicious clumps, the shots following me up the slope like angry hornets. Something plucked at my sleeve and I knew I was running out of luck. I dived off the slope and rolled behind cover.

  The UAZ was still coming, following the same path round the lake that we’d just taken, the engine howling as the driver pushed it as hard as he could.

  I looked out and levelled the Ero, waiting for the right moment. Where I was lying I was in dead ground. If the UAZ appeared, I’d have maybe two seconds to open fire and take them out of the game.

  The engine started grinding as it hit the slope and I got ready to go for it, following the sound as it came nearer.

  Then I heard the flat bark of a semi-automatic, firing evenly spaced rounds.

  Travis?

  I looked up. He was on the rise above me, using a two-handed grip, feet planted wide and shooting down the slope at the oncoming vehicle. He was right out
in the open, and looked pale and unsteady, but determined, and had evidently remembered enough from live firing exercises to know what to do.

  The UAZ’s engine note changed and went up the scale for a few seconds, rising to a screech, then it fell silent and Travis stopped firing. ‘Portman, come on!’

  I scrambled up the slope and looked behind me. The UAZ was nose-down in the lake, muddy water washing around the base of the windshield and steam brushing across the windshield and roof. I could see the driver slumped over the wheel, but two soldiers had already scrambled out of the back and were rolling desperately into the reeds to find cover. One of them turned and fired off a couple of wild shots with his rifle before disappearing.

  I fired a return burst with the Ero, peppering the reeds and digging holes in the side panels and windows of the UAZ.

  Silence.

  ‘Good work,’ I told Travis. ‘Get the car and I’ll check them out.’

  I jogged back down to the UAZ. The driver was out of it, slumped over the wheel with blood on his face. I walked over to where I’d seen the two soldiers dive into cover, ready to return fire if they came up shooting. But it wasn’t necessary. The first one had lost his weapon and was clutching at a bloody wound in his leg. When he saw me he forgot about the wound and shook his head, throwing up his empty hands. I motioned for him to stay where he was and went looking for his pal. He was half in the water, but buoyed up by the reeds and holding his arms out wide. He looked dazed and wet, all the fight gone out of him.

  I dragged both men out on to solid ground and told them to lie down back to back, then stripped out their bootlaces and tied their thumbs together. It would be uncomfortable but bearable. And at least they were alive to tell the tale. I checked the wounded man’s leg but it wasn’t a killer. The driver was coming round so I left him where he was.

  Travis drove up in the Land Cruiser and I climbed in. He took us back round the lake and up the other side, and we got back on the road heading west.

  The Lancer was coming towards us, kicking up dust.

  ‘Keep going,’ I told Travis, and took the Grach. The Ero was virtually empty and I didn’t want to have to change weapons in mid-fight if it came to it.

  It did.

  The Lancer saw us and slowed, then swung across the road to block us. Nobody got out, and I figured they were ready to move if we tried to squeeze by them. All it would take was a nudge and we’d be off the road and helpless.

  We got to within a hundred yards when I said, ‘Stop.’

  This kind of stuff could go on all day long if I didn’t neutralize them. For all I knew they had reinforcements on the way here or others ahead of us ready to block the road. It was time to call a halt.

  Travis stamped hard on the pedal and the Land Cruiser slewed sideways as the brakes bit unevenly. I was out of the car before it stopped moving and walking towards the Lancer. I could see Grey Suit sitting there watching me, mouth open, and the driver frantically moving the gear shift to go.

  This was something they hadn’t expected. In their world fugitives simply don’t get out of their cars and walk towards trouble.

  Well, this one does.

  I fired twice into the nearside tyres as I approached the car, and twice more into the engine block, killing it dead. Or maybe the driver stalled it in his haste to move. Just for effect I put another round through the rear window. I’ve been in a car taking incoming shots and the noise of impact damage is considerable. No matter how experienced you are, when a window goes bang it’s enough to scramble the brain and delay a reaction.

  The two men sat very still.

  I signalled for them to get out of the car and told them to sit on the ground at the side of the road. The driver was in standard police uniform, but he didn’t have the look of a real cop to me, and was shaking with nerves. Grey Suit was a different animal altogether; he looked mad enough to spit but kept his mouth shut. Wise man.

  I motioned Travis to drive by. It was a squeeze but he made it. Then I leaned into the Lancer and disabled the car radio, and tossed a cell phone I found into the ditch at the side of the road.

  FIFTY-THREE

  Walter Conkley was feeling relaxed for the first time in days. After a second meeting with Marcella Cready, this one at her apartment and going into far greater detail about his meetings with the Dupont Group, of dates, times, topics under discussion and even some recording of recent talks, he’d experienced a sense of enormous relief at what she had agreed to. His own position as a newfound ‘Deep Throat’ would be protected at all costs, and Cready had claimed the discovery of enough information on Benson and his friends in the Dupont Circle Group to confirm that she would be going after them with everything that she had.

  He took a deep breath and chuckled with an almost childish sense of excitement. An enormous weight had been lifted from his shoulders and he felt like a new man. Cready’s reputation in Washington DC was awesome. She was the pit bull of investigative news-hounds, and once she began looking into a case, the end was already in sight. All she had to do was drop the investigative package on a news editor’s desk and the fallout was both guaranteed and earth-shattering.

  He decided to walk while mulling over his next move. Staying on in the White House might prove less than comfortable after the story broke, and he’d already made a few enquiries into property in the Catskills in New York State. He had lots of stories to tell, and there was always a demand for memoirs and nuggets of gossip from people in the know, like himself. He could already imagine an ‘insider’ column syndicated in various newspapers, and who knew – maybe a book deal?

  He headed northwest to Connecticut Avenue, then drifted along, needing the exercise, his mind in a whirl as he considered the possibilities open to a single man with enough money to keep himself comfortable in a world that wouldn’t ask too many questions. Time to forget his lack of discretion and the way he’d allowed himself to be sucked in by others; time to kick back and let others listen to the daily fights and squabbles among the movers and shakers of home and foreign policy in the bear-pit that was Washington.

  He found himself close to the Parrotts Woods area and wondered how he’d managed to walk so far without noticing. He smiled to himself. Maybe this was an indication of a newfound interest in life; being free and able to do whatever the hell he wanted, when he wanted.

  He decided to eat somewhere special for dinner, and took out his cell phone. A little early to celebrate perhaps, but he felt he owed himself at least a little something nice. A French menu, perhaps. And a nice Burgundy – a Brouilly. He could already taste it along with the sense of victory.

  He checked the street and turned to cross when he saw no traffic.

  The phone screen flickered brightly as his thumb accidentally brushed the keys, and he glanced down automatically, eyes off the road. It was enough. His mind filled with thoughts of pleasures to come, while slowly registering the unchanged home screen and no incoming messages. Simultaneously, his auditory senses became aware of the roar of a powerful vehicle engine approaching very fast.

  His final thought was that it was too fast for these streets.

  When he looked up, it was too late.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Marcella Cready sat and stared at her laptop screen, where she had been thrashing out the main details of what she had learned from Walter Conkley. She was too experienced to be thrilled by what she now knew, too hardened to feel anything but quiet satisfaction at the promise of what lay ahead. She had uncovered other men and women involved in corruption, double-dealing and outright criminality on a vast scale; but the members of the group Conkley had called the Dupont Circle Group were something else. Benson, especially.

  She had only a vague knowledge of Chapin, Teller and Cassler – a man she’d thought was long dead – but the former senator from Virginia was the big beast who would occupy the very heart of the story, providing it with the meat that would make it fly. Financial investors, bankers, lawyers – even former members o
f the Intelligence Community going back to the Cold War era – were big game, but Benson would be the biggest kill of all. The reverberations caused by Conkley’s testimony would echo around Washington DC and the rest of the country for years to come.

  She decided to celebrate with a drink at the thought of Benson’s upcoming fall from grace. She walked round the room first, straightening cushions, adjusting pieces here and there. She regretted inviting Conkley to her apartment, which she habitually kept as her private space, a retreat from the daily grind of interviews and reports. But with what Conkley had promised to reveal in detail, she hadn’t trusted anywhere else to be private enough. And she needed absolute trust in her surroundings to put the facts down that would effectively nail the Dupont Circle Group to the wall.

  As she lifted the whisky decanter, she heard the buzz of the entry phone. She walked over and pressed the button.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s Walter Conkley. I have something else—’ The voice was indistinct and the rest of his words were lost in the clatter of a delivery truck roller going down. Maybe he had more juicy details he’d forgotten about. Jesus, like what – that Benson was in bed with the North Korean president? Or had he simply developed cold feet and wanted to retract his story?

  No chance, not now. This was going global. She pressed the button.

  ‘Come on up.’

  Two minutes later the doorbell buzzed and she walked down the corridor, whisky in hand and already experiencing a light heady feeling. She needed food to counter the alcohol. She hadn’t eaten a bite all day. But that could wait. Maybe she’d send out for a pizza and get this thing done and dusted.

  She opened the door and a man she’d never met before stepped into view. He was smartly dressed, young and even handsome if you liked men with Clark Kent glasses and wide, brown eyes. A mid-level government employee, perhaps, or a corporate middle-manager on the way up the ladder.