Silencer

by Andy McNab

  We crossed the car park alongside what was left of the Dubrovka Theatre – just one more featureless concrete mess, but the scene of a terrorist gangfuck in 2002, when forty or fifty Chechens had taken control of an 850-strong audience and demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from their homeland and an end to the Second Chechen War. The message from the Kremlin was, ‘Dream on.’ After a two-and-a-half-day siege Spetsnaz pumped a chemical agent through the ventilation system, then stormed the building. Thirty-nine of the kidnappers and at least 129 hostages were killed. The Russian authorities didn’t turn a hair. While the West’s stated objective would have been to rescue the hostage, theirs was: kill the terrorist.

  The Metro station was a riot of shiny granite pillars, black-and-white ceramic tiles and anodized aluminium hammer-and-sickle motifs. The train was almost deserted: everybody was heading in the opposite direction at the end of the working day.

  We drew a few quizzical glances from some of the older women. They were clearly trying to work out if the tall olive-skinned woman in the shades was my girlfriend or a whore. And if she was a whore, why would I want a foreign one when there were thousands of beautiful porcelain-white Russians to choose from? That was how the older generation here thought. And why was she wearing sunglasses on the Metro? To hide her identity? Or had I been giving her a good slapping?

  We sat in silence, rocking with the train. Katya held her arms rigid on her thighs. I could feel the tension coming off her like nerve gas, fuck knew why. I’d leave her to deal with whatever was going on in her little world. Right now I just needed her to sort out what was going wrong in mine.

  The doors opened to let a group of office workers on board. They took a sneaky look at Katya and gave me the stink-eye. I couldn’t tell if they were sneering at me or simply jealous of the way she looked.

  I checked the map above their heads. Two more stops to Novogireevo.

  10

  I cupped my hands around my mouth, as if that was going to help me be heard above the din of the other long-range conversations. ‘Anna! Anna!’ It was like being a little kid again, calling up from the square in my housing estate to see if a mate would come out to play.

  There was no sign of movement at her window. We both hollered in unison. Then I let Katya have a go on her own: maybe a woman’s voice would pierce the male chorus.

  Eventually, a shadow crossed the window and Anna leaned out. The colour of her skin echoed the strange green apron she now wore, but at least she was up, she was standing, she was breathing.

  I part yelled, part mimed: ‘You seen the boy?’

  I hoped she could lip-read, because a volley of shouts drowned me out.

  Anna shook her head. ‘Intensive Care …’

  Katya gave her a wave. ‘Sasha’s told them you’re one of our patients … Go and tell whoever is on your floor that your obstetrician is here. Tell them she wants to see the infant.’

  Anna caught my eye and we nodded at each other. She was going to do exactly what she was told.

  Katya and I started along the path towards the main entrance. ‘Nick, they won’t want to let Anna be with the child. And they won’t let you near him either. It’s the Russian way. They’re paranoid about infection.’

  As we walked through the large main wooden doors, I crunched a Pepsi Max carton underfoot, crushing the ice that was still inside; a stream of diluted cola spewed out. ‘You’ve got to be joking. They’re worried about infection – in this shit-hole?’

  She gestured towards Reception. ‘Bureaucracy and prejudice – a dynamite combination. This won’t be plain sailing either. Private obstetricians seem to antagonize them – I’m not one of them.’

  ‘So what are you telling me? I’ve got to go and steal the baby?’

  She stopped, not sure if I was serious. ‘No, no, no …’

  A couple of nurses sauntered past, chatting and smoking, followed almost immediately by a couple of half-size chef’s hats tapping a piece of paper and shouting at each other.

  Katya leaned closer to me. ‘I’m just telling you that the system is still stuck in the old ways. They might decide your baby isn’t fit enough to be moved. And they have the final say. I can’t overrule them.’

  ‘But you’re going to sort it out, yeah?’

  She gave me a gleaming smile. ‘Wait here and let me get on with it.’ She pointed to one of the three wooden chairs that stood like islands in a sea of discarded cigarette packets and food wrappers. ‘They won’t allow you to come with me, and I could be an hour or so.’

  She hesitated. ‘And don’t forget, you might have to make a contribution.’

  A contribution. That was the best word for it I’d heard yet.

  She got back on her mobile and I headed for the chairs. As soon as she was out of sight I turned towards the fire door.

  11

  I needed to do something. I wasn’t sure what, but I couldn’t just sit there and pick my arse.

  I sheltered by the exit, out of the drizzle, and didn’t have long to wait before one of the staff emerged, helmet in hand. I was through the door without him even noticing.

  You could have died of smoke inhalation in the narrow corridor I found myself in. A comedy show blared from a distant TV, complete with bad canned laughter. There was a faint smell of coffee from somewhere.

  Banks of lockers lined the walls on each side of me, some of them open. White coats and chef’s hats in all shapes and sizes. I helped myself to one of each, not forgetting the clipboard, switched on my internal GPS and headed in what I hoped was the direction of Anna’s window. The occasional nurse and doctor cast me a sidelong glance, but I carried on walking. I was in undercover-ops mode. I was a fully functioning medic; I had a reason to be there. If you can convince yourself of that, you convince those around you too. And the further you are behind the lines, the easier it becomes. No one expects the enemy to be at the heart of their world.

  I pushed through yet another set of heavy wooden swing doors. Years of grey men had worn away layers of grey paint before me. The ward stank like a school canteen. There were twenty beds, maybe, ten on each side. No privacy curtains, nothing like that, they were just separated by a bedside locker. Three women whose faces I recognized were still shouting from the windows.

  Anna was about halfway down on the left, huddled in an orange furry blanket.

  She didn’t look up as I approached. She was too busy staring at her feet. Her sweat-soaked hair was tied back at the nape of her neck. Dried blood caked her calves.

  I leaned over her as two nurses walked past, leaving a cloud of cigarette smoke in their wake. ‘Hello.’

  Anna was too switched on to show excitement. We didn’t kiss either – not that we’d done that for a while.

  I looked down at her legs. She followed my gaze. ‘The shower’s broken. Where’s Katya?’

  ‘Downstairs, doing the paperwork. I wanted to come on ahead in case we need a Plan B.’ I paused. ‘What about you? You OK?’

  ‘Nicholas, they say he’s stable. But he’s in the ICU. They won’t let me see him because I’m not feeding him. He’s too small to breastfeed.’ She grabbed my arm. ‘They keep saying he’s fine, but …’

  The woman in the next bed smiled conspiratorially. Anna tilted her head towards her. ‘This is her third time, poor girl, so she knows where they take them. He’s on the fourth floor. I’ve tried to go up there, but they won’t let me.’

  ‘They still got your mobile?’

  ‘They said it was a source of contamination.’

  I reached into my jeans and left her my iPhone. ‘Keep it on vibrate. Soon as I know, you’ll know.’ I gripped her hand. ‘I’ll find him. We’re getting you both out of here.’

  She pointed at a sequence of numbers on her wristband. ‘That’s what he’s called.’

  12

  I reached the fourth floor and scanned the signage. An icon of a baby and an arrow sent me down a corridor to the left of a pair of thick plastic doors that must once
have been transparent.

  The sound of crying drew me into a room full of plastic cots with clipboards at their feet. I could read Anna’s name in Cyrillic, but didn’t see anything I recognized on the first board. I checked the next one, then noticed that each baby had an ID band with a serial number on one hand and foot.

  I suddenly realized these guys were all too old, and none of them was in an incubator. At least someone had given the place a splash of disinfectant. It smelt clean, even if it wasn’t.

  I carried on to the next ward. There wasn’t much clipboard activity in here; a few nurses sitting down, reading, and another bent over an incubator. I couldn’t see inside it, just the mass of tubes leading to the monitors. She turned away and I caught a glimpse of purple skin through the Perspex. Fuck, was that him?

  The nurse shuffled further down the ward. Mine wasn’t the only baby in Intensive Care.

  A couple of guys in white coats walked past, one offering the other a cigarette. What was it with the Russians and nicotine? Somewhere along the corridor, a woman yelled in pain. The white coats didn’t even look up. The lunatics really were running the asylum.

  The babies were all tightly wrapped in blankets. Some had their chests exposed and plastered with ECG sensors. Every little head had been tucked into a Tubigrip beanie.

  I started checking clipboards, looking for the last four numbers of Anna’s sequence. It was like being back in the army.

  At last I found it: 8564.

  I stood at the foot of the cot, staring down at this very small bundle. A ventilating tube was taped into his mouth, a feed tube through his nose. Two ECG leads disappeared under his blanket and poked out near his chest. Machinery all around us made more pinging noises than Kraftwerk. I caught a glimpse of a blue and mottled face among the apparatus.

  I stood there looking at him. My son. I didn’t know what I’d been expecting – it had been so much hassle getting to this point. I knew my life had changed: this little blob in a Perspex bubble was depending on me. I just hoped we’d have the chance to get to know each other.

  I cut away from all that.

  There were more important things to worry about than how I felt. Right now it was all about him and Anna, and getting them out of there.

  13

  I headed back out into the corridor, binning the white kit on top of a shelf-load of ceramic bed-pans. Katya was still in the reception area, alongside a doctor in the full Gordon Ramsay, Russian-style.

  ‘I’ve just seen Anna. You got your mobile with you?’

  She nodded and pulled it out of her pocket. ‘This is Dr Potznik. If all goes well, we should be able to get them back to the clinic tonight.’

  The doc’s swarthy features tagged him as East Russian. He looked like life in Putinworld was suiting him: he had the kind of comfortable, three-good-meals-a-day-and-plenty-of-vodka look that matched his bushy grey moustache.

  ‘One of our ambulances is on its way here now.’

  ‘The boy’s last four digits are eight five six four. Make sure the doc picks up the right one, yeah? I’ll wait here.’

  I left them to it and tapped my number into Katya’s mobile. It took Anna a while to answer.

  ‘Katya?’

  ‘No, it’s me. Listen. It’s all good. As long as he can be moved, you’ll both be in the clinic tonight.’

  ‘Have you seen him?’

  ‘You bet. He’s a beautiful little blue lump. He weighs two thousand and six grams, and he’s forty-eight centimetres long. Is that good?’

  I heard a sigh of relief. ‘Good enough.’

  14

  Katya didn’t reappear for an hour. When she did, she had my mobile in her hand. She held it out and we swapped.

  ‘OK, we’re leaving.’

  ‘Now?’

  She smiled and crooked a finger for me to follow her as she exited the main doors.

  A shiny new Mercedes ambulance waited at the kerb, with red signs that said ‘Perinatal Clinic’ in Cyrillic and English, a driver and two nurses in crisply laundered uniforms.

  ‘I’ve got a couple more things to take care of at this end. Anna’s getting dressed. She says she needs her grab bag.’

  I told her about our missing wagon. In our rush to get to the hospital, we’d left the bag behind.

  ‘Then you need to go back to your apartment, pick up a nightdress, clothes, whatever else she needs.’

  ‘She’s going to stay at the clinic?’

  ‘Of course – as long as your little boy needs to. We’ll meet you there, yes?’ She gestured at the nurses and turned to walk back into the birth-house.

  I grabbed her arm. ‘Katya?’ She recoiled for a moment, as if she expected me to hit her. ‘Thank you.’ I headed for the main gate.

  15

  Sucking in oxygen, I ran all the way from the Metro, doing my best to dodge the puddles gathering around the blocked drains. I opened the apartment door and headed straight through the living room into what the letting agent had called the spare bedroom.

  My boy wasn’t going to need much while he was stuck on a ventilator and being force-fed, but I decided to grab a bit of everything. I ripped open cardboard boxes and plastic bags full of romper suits, mittens, bottles, creams, and ran through a mental check-list of questions for Katya: what, where and when-type things. How long did a pre-term usually have to stay at the clinic? When would it be possible to bring him and Anna home?

  I fished some Babygros and socks out of a Baby Infanti bag. It was my favourite of the maternity stores that had sprung up around Moscow for the new middle class. The idea of baby infantry always made me chuckle – it was why I’d been calling him ‘little soldier’. Anna didn’t get it, but it made me laugh.

  I reversed out of the room with my arms full, and went to grab a Coke from the fridge. I didn’t even make it to the kitchen door. A plastic bag over the head slows you down at the best of times, and this one was pulled against my nose and mouth with a huge grunt of exertion. I dropped what I was carrying and threw myself back against my attacker, but he was big enough to absorb the impact.

  I tried to drop to the floor and twist myself free. The grunts behind me got harder and faster. The plastic rippled as I breathed. I brought up my hands to try to tear it away but they were immediately slapped aside.

  There were at least two of them.

  I tensed my stomach muscles, knowing what was coming next. A fist slammed into my solar plexus and I buckled at the knees. I tried to calm my breathing – the bag was moulded to my face, like clingfilm. My sweat was like glue. The pressure around my neck increased. My head felt as if it was about to explode.

  But I knew they didn’t want me dead: if they had, I would have been by now. They wanted me to collapse, to asphyxiate. They wanted me alive. So I complied. I gave myself up. I leaned forward and stopped fighting. This time they let me drop to the floor. The bag loosened; the hands controlling it shifted to my shoulders.

  Before they had a chance to do anything more, I thrust up my hands and grabbed at the body above me. I felt an ear, then wet hair. I gripped the back of his head as hard as I could and raised mine, ready to take the pain. We both snarled with aggression, then he screamed as our skulls made contact and I rolled aside, pulling the bag off my head.

  All I could see were bubbles of red light and starbursts of white. All I could hear was the rasp of air in tortured lungs, his or mine, I didn’t know. The pain went as my adrenalin took over.

  There were two bodies. The one I’d head-butted was on his knees, trying to stem the flow of blood from his shattered nose. The other was coming in fast from my left.

  Scrambling to my feet, I grabbed the TV remote from the arm of the settee. Holding it dagger-style, thumb over the top of the slim plastic sheath, I brought it down between his eyes. He staggered back but didn’t fall. I got right up close, grabbed hold of the back of his neck and rammed the remote again and again into his face.

  I left him to sort out his own little world of pain as
his mate hauled himself off his knees. I gave him the remote treatment too, in the temple, three, maybe four times. When the plastic finally cracked I jammed it into his mouth, forcing it with both hands to the back of his throat. His eyes bulged as it cut off his oxygen supply and vomit forced its way between my fingers. His arms and legs flailed for a moment, then went limp. His mate had done the right thing, as far as I was concerned, and made a run for it.

  16

  I collapsed onto the settee, arms and legs outstretched, my arse hanging over the edge as I wiped his puke from my hands. The acrid smell filled the room, though maybe not as pungently as it would have done if the remote hadn’t remained stuck in his throat. Only the red power button was visible between his froth-covered lips.

  I didn’t want to get up, but I knew I had to. I was the lucky one. Whoever was stretched out on the engineered oak by my feet wasn’t moving at all.

  I wasn’t going to have to raise my hands in supplication and say ‘Izvinite, izvinite,’ to him ever again.

  As I took another couple of deep, rasping breaths, I wondered what had happened to his mate. Thank fuck he’d done a runner. I sucked in another lungful of air and dragged myself upright. I went over to the door, slammed it shut and slid home the bolts.

  My body shrieked at me to go and lie down for a while, but I had too much to do. I went back to the dead one. There was nothing in his light-brown leather-jacket pockets but a pack of Marlboro Lights, a purple disposable lighter, a bundle of notes and a few coins. No wallet. No ID. He was sterile. That meant one of two things to me: that they were really switched on, or they’d been told what to do by someone who was. Going by the performance of the runner, they weren’t the sharpest blades in the drawer. Which meant they’d been taking orders from elsewhere, and he’d bottled it.