Man on Edge

by Humphrey Hawksley

  The Kasatka submarine, Barents Sea

  Five submariners sat at the weapons panel in the control room of the Yasen-class Russian submarine, their faces colored by the red, blue, and green lights glowing off their screens. The commander, Andrei Kurchin, studied charts on the plotting table and examined the array of enemy ships stretched through the Barents Sea as the Dynamic Freedom exercise prepared to get underway. A green bulb lit on his communications panel and he switched on his headset. ‘Merrow has agreed to the summit,’ said Yumatov.

  ‘We’re ready to go.’ After his evening with Yumatov in Moscow, Kurchin had had a good feeling about the mission. Yumatov was solid. Their friendship stretched back more than twenty years. They had become so close that Yumatov had made him godfather to his first-born. When Yumatov approached him, he laid out his plan in such meticulous detail and advocated the simultaneous assassination of two presidents as merely one stage in reaching an end goal. The sacrifice of two lives with inevitable collateral casualties could save the lives of millions. While the West has spread its influence around the world through slavery, murder, and nuclear weapons, China had spread its with barely a shot being fired in anger. It was time for Russia to learn from Asia.

  ‘The venue is the Norwegian royal yacht, which is docking at Kirkenes now,’ said Yumatov.

  Kurchin and Yumatov had discussed variables of the summit venue and put in place fallbacks in case the two Presidents refused to meet. The current scenario was the best possible outcome. ‘When are they boarding?’

  ‘Within twenty-four hours.’

  ‘We’ll use VLF.’ Communicating with submerged submarines was difficult because radio waves did not travel well underwater. The most secure method was through sonic equipment laid on the seabed, of which there was a network around Severomorsk and along the north Russian coast. But, with security stepped up for the summit, the Americans would be intercepting. Kremlin security, too, would be all over it. Very low frequency radio waves could get through water in distances up to about sixty feet. The summit itself would have a narrow window, probably less than an hour. Kurchin would keep the Kasatka just below the surface for Yumatov to send a burst of VLF which would be his green light to attack, or to withdraw.

  ‘I will signal once the targets are on board,’ said Yumatov.

  ‘You have Semenov’s cloaking data?’

  ‘Carrie Walker is on a train between St Petersburg and Murmansk. Consider the threat neutralized.’

  The Kasatka’s mission could be finished swiftly with minimal risk. The sea around was crowded with naval hardware and attention would be split between the military exercises and the presidential summit. Norway would provide an immediate cordon of defense around the yacht. American, Canadian, British, and European warships, together with Russians, would form an outer ring to protect the two Presidents.

  Presidential protection produced complex layers of security. Military exercises carried a realism of live conflict, but also an unrealism of pushing agendas, piling on decisions, and creating scenarios with pressure that would be unlikely in a real war. Both would fabricate a fog of war which Andrei Kurchin would exploit.

  He gave orders to dive. On his screen, the captain watched blocks of sea ice scatter as the massive gray whale-like hull dipped below the surface. He placed his hands on the cool metal of the periscope shaft, half in prayer, half to feel the tremors of the submarine descending into dark, freezing water. The weather was due to break. The two Presidents would soon be on the Norwegian royal yacht. The timing was perfect.

  Kirkenes, Finnmark, Norway

  Rake had told no one where they were. He needed to get back to Kirkenes to get Carrie across the border and there was no time for discussion. He messaged her reassurance. Close by. On plan.

  From Helsinki, Rake and Mikki flew to Oslo and took a connecting flight far north to Kirkenes. The temperature in the small airport parking lot measured minus seventeen Celsius. They walked across from the terminal. Mikki opened the white SUV they had hired using the passports and driver’s licenses that Lucas had given them, John Gray and Vincent Joseph. Tire chains were fitted. They cleared windows of ice. Mikki climbed in behind the wheel and fired up the engine.

  Rake would soon have to contact Lucas. First, he needed to get his plan straight.

  At an intersection from the airport, Mikki swung the vehicle south. The gritted road looked like a winding piece of dark thread lying on white-speckled desolation. Headlamps swung through mist. ‘Do we take Nilla?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. She’s good. She’s independent. She’s—’

  ‘You slept with her. She wants more of you and you’re asking her to help save the woman you love.’

  ‘Nilla’s bigger than that.’

  ‘Jesus, Rake.’ Mikki laughed out loud. ‘You only knew her for a day.’

  ‘As a team, we’ve been across there before. Nilla knows the border. She knows snow. And she’s not the one who betrayed. Her security clearance is too low. She knows shit.’

  ‘See. You’re biased.’ Mikki turned on wipers. The road sloped down between two jagged slopes. A wall of hail splattered onto the windscreen. The road rose out of the dip. The hailstorm ended as suddenly as it started. A dull light hung low casting a gray-orange glow over the white. Mikki held his hand loosely on the wheel, understanding how cold worked on a metaled road, letting the tires move naturally over the camber and stray ice patches, trusting the vehicle to right itself. He slowed on the outskirts of Kirkenes. Drifted snow piled against walls of dull apartment blocks. A few people were out, heads down to avoid windchill, faces covered against frostbite.

  Rake called Nilla. It went to voicemail, said she was on leave, which only made sense if she were being investigated for what had gone down across the border. Mikki pulled up outside Nilla’s building. The path had not been cleared of snow. Ice covered the windows. Rake trod through the snow to the front door. A frozen sheet of paper was pinned to it: Gått til min gård. Rake used his phone to get a translation: Gone to my farm.

  It was an hour’s drive south. Mikki drove fast on good gritted roads while Rake called Harry Lucas, whose tone was edged with irritation.

  He briefed Lucas on the dangers of St Petersburg and Carrie’s plan to get to Nikel and out of Russia.

  ‘What do you need?

  ‘To go through the border and back with a vehicle,’ Rake said. ‘FSB border guards on side and weapons in case it goes bad.’

  ‘Who’s going with you?’

  ‘Mikki and Nilla Carsten.’

  ‘Could you and Wekstatt do it alone?’

  ‘Nilla Carsten has the language and local knowledge. She knows the FSB.’

  ‘Point taken, Major. I need you back in Norway with Carrie and the drive by ten hundred, day after tomorrow. Merrow and Lagutov are holding a summit at the start of Dynamic Freedom. The venue is Kirkenes. She needs to be in Norway before the President’s plane touches down.’

  Rake’s expression furrowed. Mikki glanced across, sensing that something had changed.

  ‘Who called it?’ asked Rake.

  ‘Lagutov.’ Lucas softened his tone. ‘Yeah, I know. The Russians are way ahead of us.’

  Mikki slowed at a small rotary where snow was heaped up against the walls of a shopping center. He swung left. The road ran alongside a gray iced lake edged by leafless trees. Wind came straight at them, buffeting the vehicle.

  ‘Get me what I need,’ said Rake, ‘and we’ll be wrapped well before the summit.’

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Train to Olenegorsk. Murmansk Oblast, Russia

  Carrie was an hour out of Olenegorsk. She had become used to the rhythm, bad air, and animal sounds of the railcar. She had slept only to be woken by damp straw falling from high up onto her face. The soldier had still not spoken a word, except to the horses. He was good with them, calming, talking softly. They got jittery every time the train pulled out of a station. One had kicked hard enough to dent the steel of the container. A mare whinnied
for a long, excruciating hour or more while the soldier pampered, coaxed, and soothed her to quiet. Every so often he went into a container to clean out soiled straw and splash around ammonia. Carrie offered to help. He put both hands up as if to say, ‘Stay away from me and my work.’

  The soldier was inside a container with one of the horses when they both heard a single rap on the door. It was followed by fast, sharp knocking. The lock shook. Voices, loud above the noise of the train, demanded the door be opened. Color evaporated from the soldier’s face, not fear, not surprise. He took on a completely new demeanor, like a soccer player waiting on the benches and now called onto the pitch. He snapped a lid back on a can of ammonia, stepped out, and bolted the container door. He looked at Carrie, pointed to the door at the other far end, and spoke for the first time. ‘Through there. Now.’ Carrie picked up her gear, brushing away straw clinging to her coat. The solder spoke on his phone. He unclipped a trapdoor under his stool and lifted out a machine gun, a pistol, and other weaponry, prepared for trouble long before Carrie arrived. From outside, there was harsher, impatient thudding, forceful voices, threatening to shoot out the locks. The noise set off a stream of high-pitched neighs and whinnies from the horses. Pistol in hand, machine gun slung around his shoulder, the soldier led Carrie to the other door. As he crouched to lift the bolt, a single rap came from the other side, a rifle butt on metal and a command: ‘Federal Security Bureau. Open this door.’

  Both doors at either end of the railcar were blocked. They were boxed in. ‘Not FSB,’ whispered the soldier.

  ‘Open this door now!’

  The soldier replied in a firm, steady tone. ‘This railcar is under the jurisdiction of the armed forces. I need to seek authority from the Security Council before I comply.’

  ‘Two minutes.’

  Another prompt from the door behind them. ‘We have authorization to break in.’

  ‘I advise you to wait for the Security Council decision,’ insisted the soldier. Compared to the heated urgency from outside, he was calm and authoritative. The soldier’s eyes searched every filthy crevice and dark space in the railcar. He pointed to the pile of soiled straw, loosely held within the orange rope netting that hung from the ceiling way above her head. Wet, filthy clumps bulged through, pushing out at the edges. Inside bacterial feces and urine rotted. Carrie suppressed an urge to retch. ‘They’re not after me. I can—’

  ‘They are after Carrie Walker and that is you,’ he said.

  Her resolve crumbled. She slowed her breathing. The railcar tang that had become familiar seeped down her throat and churned her stomach. Nausea enveloped her. The soldier was right. The fetid mound of horseshit was the only place. He slid his pistol into his belt, unbuttoned a couple of squares of the netting, and used a pitchfork to hold the straw back from tumbling down, uncovering a stench sharper than anything in the air. The rapping on the doors became louder. The soldier’s free hand reached for his pistol, Carrie thought to take them on, but he leveled it at her face. He wouldn’t hesitate to shoot her. His expression had a hardness of determination. If she continued to risk his safety and of his horses, he would kill her. ‘Take your bags,’ he instructed. She put on her black woolen hat and leather gloves and picked up the bags. ‘There is a trapdoor on the floor, bolts at each end,’ he said. ‘The train will stop either on a red signal or at the next station. Be ready. Open it, drop out, and run.’ Using both hands, Carrie clawed open a space, pulling out clumps of straw and dropping them on the carriage floor. She climbed in, tearing out more, until she was in with her bags, her face pressed up against sickly excrement and scratchy edges of straw. The smell overpowered her. The soldier replaced the hay, pushing it up against her like closing a full suitcase. He sealed her in with the plastic netting. Dark, damp, airless, Carrie became disorientated like she was drunk. She took short breaths to prevent vomiting. Bile rose in her throat causing her to cough. Strands of straw caught in her mouth. She tasted horseshit, spat it away. She waited for the dizziness to pass. She eased the straw apart, just a fraction. She needed to keep her bearings. She heard bolts drawing across, the grind of the hinges, male voices, argumentative, loud enough to catch phrases. ‘Where is she?… Who?… The American doctor …’ A sway of the train. Rustle of straw. Lost next words. They were closer. She could see their heads and upper torsos. Carrie’s soldier said, ‘I am alone with the horses. No one is here, and this railcar is under the jurisdiction of the Presidential Regiment of the Russian Armed Forces.’

  ‘Fuck the President.’ There were two men, stocky, around six feet, one in a suit, tie, scarf, and dark overcoat, the other in a dark-blue down jacket. She couldn’t see their hands. Their faces were jumpy, not in control like the soldier, who said: ‘I care for the horses. I work alone. We are going to the December thirtieth ceremony at Severomorsk.’

  ‘There won’t be a ceremony if you don’t hand her over,’ said the one in the overcoat. The other in the down jacket stepped out of Carrie’s arc of vision. She heard a crashing thud against the side of a container. A horse whinnied, the mare that the soldier had spent time calming. She screeched, hooves smashing against steel. ‘She is pregnant,’ explained the soldier. ‘She is nervous.’

  ‘Where is the woman, or I shoot your horse.’

  ‘If you do, I will kill you.’

  The soldier took a step toward the container. There was a jolt of the train. The man in the overcoat stumbled, reached out for balance, and found the rope netting, pulling on it, loosening the straw, freeing up Carrie’s view. The other had his back to the container, elbows hooked over the side, like he was leaning against a bar. He wore a sneer on his face. He carried a machine pistol and another weapon in a shoulder holster underneath his jacket.

  A batch of straw fell to the floor. Carrie pressed herself back to stop being seen. The train slowed, then jerked again. The wooden stool Carrie had been using fell over. To her horror, she saw a glimpse of red material. She had left the scarf there. The man in the overcoat saw it and shouted, ‘They were right. She is here.’

  THIRTY-SIX

  The man in the down jacket unbolted the door at the back of the carriage and two more men stepped in. Each had a similar build and wore black jackets. They put their hands over their mouths against the stench. One coughed with a tubercular sound from deep within damaged lungs. Outnumbered, Carrie’s soldier moved to protect the pregnant mare. A jolt of the train knocked the pitchfork, clattering to the floor. The man in the overcoat picked it up and seemed to look straight at her, but gave no reaction meaning she must still be hidden. Then, he said: ‘Let’s try inside this pile of shit.’ He drew back his arm and plunged in the pitchfork, missing Carrie’s head by an inch. The man with the cough said, ‘Stand back. I’ll give it a few rounds.’

  He couldn’t have been more than eighteen, a child soldier, a kid with a gun. His face was pale and thin, his expression cold, detached, also anxious, a weedy guy, sick, desperate to prove himself. He couldn’t see her, but she could see every contour of his intent. He was about to kill her. Her jawline tightened as she tried to control her reflexes. She had never experienced such undiluted fear. She had seen how bullets tore flesh and organs apart. Half her mind went to Brooklyn, her bickering mother and father, Angie and her nephew and niece, life flashing by you stuff. The stronger half of her mind calculated bad options. If she screamed out and surrendered, there was no guarantee she would survive and a good chance the kid would open fire in panic. If Carrie was found, the soldier would defend himself and his horses over her.

  ‘Go ahead,’ the man in the overcoat told the kid. He leant the pitchfork against the railcar wall and folded his arms. The other two men held their weapons ready, but relaxed, watching. Bring on the fun. Let the boy make a fool of himself. The American doctor had forgotten her scarf. It lay bundled on the wooden stool. They had won. They were right. The one who had come in with the boy tipped a cigarette out of a pack. The soldier said: ‘No smoking. Horses don’t like it.’ His tone was sof
t and assured and had no urgency that Carrie was about to be shot. He had his back to the container with the mare who was restless, stamping hooves.

  ‘Screw you.’ A lighter flared. In the next few seconds, several things happened. The boy fired into the mound of straw, high and blind. The rounds crunched through above Carrie. She heard their hissing. Smacking into the metal wall. One of the men said, ‘Fire lower, kid.’ Two crashing explosions of gunfire echoed around the carriage. The soldier killed the man with the cigarette. As he fell, the boy’s face changed to terror, then bravado. He aimed right at Carrie. ‘Stop!’ she screamed. The boy’s expression turned to surprise. Carrie stumbled out, tearing at the straw, wet, scratching her skin. Gunfire from the soldier smashed into the boy. His warm arterial blood splattered onto Carrie. From deep on the other side of the railcar came a single shot that hit the soldier. He flinched, stayed on his feet, and responded with four rounds, shattering his attacker’s legs and ripping away half his face. The man in the overcoat, close to Carrie, fired three rounds toward the soldier, who fell heavily against the container. Carrie couldn’t see exactly because the boy had toppled forward, his head caught through the rope netting, like in a noose. His corpse blocked her view, staring straight at her with wide-open empty eyes.

  There was quiet apart from skittering horses. The man in the overcoat kept his weapon on Carrie while he freed the boy’s head and let the body thud to the floor. Only he and Carrie were left. The mare reared up and unleashed her hoof against the container wall. Other horses did the same, creating an overpowering sound of frightened animals. Fresh cold air streamed in from the two open doors. The stink of horseshit mixed with the smell of gunfire. Carrie clung onto the rope netting. She spat a strand of straw from her mouth. Given they had used the manure heap for target practice, the surviving gunman would have no orders to take her alive. He could kill her and display her body and his would be a job well done. They examined each other. The overcoat hung well on him; drawn in at the waist with a matching belt. He looked out of place. He could have been a commuter heading to the office. He was broad-shouldered and slim. His face was long, his look shrewd. He lowered his weapon. Three confirmed dead. Two probably dead. Two survivors. ‘Are you Dr Walker?’ he said.