Spy Trade

by Matthew Dunn

  He waited for a gap in the traffic, so he could cross the street and knock on the door. He looked left and right along the route and glanced back at the house. An old man emerged from the property. He was wearing a thick overcoat even though the temperature wasn’t cold, a wide-­brimmed hat, and carried a cane to compensate for his limp. Will subtly looked at his surroundings, walked across the road, and followed the man.

  They walked for several hundred yards along the side of the road, the old man moving slowly, Will matching his pace from fifty yards behind. All the time, Will examined the handful of ­people they passed—­a construction worker with arthritis, a housewife who was heading to shops, an off-­duty cop who was in trouble at work, and a junior civil servant who could no longer bear the mundanity of his work. Though he’d never seen them before, Will knew that’s who they were.

  On the other side of the street, behind Will’s field of vision, was another man whom Will had previously seen, albeit on CCTV footage in London. He was tall, had a powerful athletic frame, and was wearing sunglasses and a grey sweater with its hood pulled up. He was watching the old man and the person following him, certain that neither of them was aware of his presence.

  The old man entered Kuzminsky Park; previously a nine-­hundred-­acre nineteenth-­century estate owned by Prince Golitsyn, now it was a peaceful expanse of grass and trees within which were the ruins of a palace, bathhouse, other neoclassical buildings, gates, iron fences and lions, pavilions, and a stable yard with sculptures of horses. Will had been here before to conduct a brush contact with an SVR agent. That was a long time ago. Now, he couldn’t yet decide if the old man was walking through the park to reach another destination or whether he was here to get some exercise and soak up the peaceful ambience.

  It was the latter, Will decided, when he saw the old man stop, pull out some bread from his coat pockets, and toss chunks of it into the adjacent pond, where ducks paddled and squawked in a sound that resembled hysterical human laughter. The Russian sat on a metal bench, both hands clasped over the top of his cane, staring at the waterway. Will glanced around, walked quickly toward him, and sat next to the man.

  “Good morning, sir,” said Will in Russian.

  The man lifted the rim of his hat and looked at Will. “Good morning.” His thin face was clean-­shaven, and a scar was on his chin.

  “The day would be better without the rain, I think.”

  “I know it would be better.” The old man made ready to leave.

  “Mr. Mikhaylov—­please stay for a moment.”

  The Russian was visibly suspicious. “How do you know my name? Who are you?”

  Will had thought about who he wanted to be when meeting the old man. There were manifold false identities he could have used, but only one brought with it justice and closure. “My name is Eddie Lanes. I’m a journalist with the British newspaper The Independent though I’m here in a freelance capacity.”

  “Journalist?” Mikhaylov’s evident suspicion remained. “Your Russian is perfect.”

  “I was based with our Moscow bureau for a number of years.”

  The man huffed and jabbed his cane on the paved sidewalk. “You could be Russian secret police, trying to trick me.”

  “I’m not. But if I ask you anything that makes me sound like a liar, walk away. I won’t bother you again.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Just information. Old information.” Will’s eyes imperceptibly took in details about the man—­his coat was frayed at the cuffs; a tear in its sleeve had been stitched and restitched many times; there were spots of blood on the collar that its owner had attempted to remove, first with cold water, then with cheap vodka; the spots were recent, and ranged in age from weeks ago to a day old; his mottled facial skin betrayed a penchant for vodka though of late he’d stopped drinking altogether, maybe through conviction, more likely due to fear about his ill health; shoes that were once pristine were now ragged, yet still highly polished, and had been resoled at least six times; his suit smelled of mothballs, and had only recently been taken out of its wardrobe after decades of no use.

  There were eighteen other indicators that told Will that Mikhaylov was a poor man who couldn’t afford medical care and was determined to see out his end with dignity. “I have an expenses budget for my story. If you can help me, I’ll pay you $5,000.”

  The suspicion evaporated from the Russian’s face. “That’s a lot of money.”

  “I’m hoping to sell the report to the New York Times or one of the British tabloids. They pay well.”

  Mikhaylov rubbed his scar. “I can’t say I don’t need the money. But I’m not sure I’ll be of any use to you. I don’t think I’ve got anything interesting to say. My life’s been fairly unremarkable.”

  “Maybe once that wasn’t true.” Will glanced around. They were alone. “I’m doing an investigative feature on a man called Arzam Saud.”

  “The prisoner in the news? The one the terrorists want released?”

  “That’s him. It’s topical news right now.” Will shrugged, hoping he looked unthreatening and nonchalant. “I’m looking into Saud, trying to do a human-­angle story on him. Who is he? What makes him tick? What turned the young man toward terrorism? That kind of stuff.”

  Mikhaylov smiled. “Just write one line—­Arzam Saud turned crazy. That should sum it all up.”

  “I’m hoping there’s a bit more flesh on the bone than that.” Will also smiled. “Though you might have nailed the truth. They’re all crazy.”

  “Maybe, but I don’t know Saud or anyone like him.”

  “I didn’t expect you to.” Will checked again to ensure they weren’t being watched or overheard. “What interests me is his business association with Viktor Gorsky.”

  “Gorsky?”

  “He’s a very private man. I’m having a devil of a job finding out about Gorsky’s background. I’m hoping that’s where you can help.” He withdrew the photo that Lanes had given him. It was smeared with the journalist’s dried blood. “This was Gorsky when he was in the Soviet Army. Looks to me like the shot was taken in a combat zone or lookout fortification. Gorsky was in an airborne unit. Maybe he was working in a four-­ or eight-­man team. Judging by what he wrote at the bottom of the photo, he was invalided out of the zone two days later because of an injury from an artillery or mortar strike.” He handed Mikhaylov the photo.

  The old man stared at the image, his frail hand shaking and his eyes watering, as he said, “My goodness, that was a long time ago. Why is there blood on the photo?”

  “I had a nosebleed while studying the image. You were Gorsky’s captain, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I suspect this was taken when the Soviet Army was advancing or retreating in the Afghan mountains during the war there in the 1980s.”

  “Correct.” Mikhaylov ran a finger across the image. “In fact, there were six of us there. It was an advance lookout post, high up in the mountains. Our job was to spot Afghan troop movements and relay those movements to command. Sometimes we were ordered to engage any Afghan advances if our troops couldn’t get there in time. We had a name for that tactic—­Suicide. This photo was taken two days before our last suicide engagement in the region. It went badly wrong. We thought we were hitting a small skirmishing party. Then Afghan armor appeared. They hit our position with everything they had. Were it not for our bunkers and Soviet reinforcements arriving later, we’d have been obliterated. Still, Gorsky got severely clipped.” His finger rested on the official Soviet photo of a man in combat uniform; underneath his image was his name in type. “I can confirm that the man you see in the photos is Viktor Gorsky.”

  “What happened after the assault?”

  Mikhaylov’s voice trembled as his memory took him back to Afghanistan. “We were exhausted, our minds weren’t working, nobody could hear because of the bombardment. We’d
managed to hold off the Afghan advance for two hours until we were relieved by hundreds of our men, who were supported by airstrikes. Most of the Afghans were killed, the others retreated. When it calmed down, four KGB officers came to our position and asked us if any of us had died in the battle. I told them, no, but that one of us was on the brink of death unless he received urgent medical treatment. I pointed at Gorsky.”

  Will handed Mikhaylov a brown envelope containing cash that had been meant for Lanes by way of payment for what he’d done in Dubai. “Do me a favor: Take a different route home, and if anyone asks, you never came to the park today.”

  “Why?”

  Will didn’t answer. “What happened to Gorsky?”

  The old man stuffed the envelope inside his jacket. “The KGB took him away, and I’ve never seen him since.”

  Will frowned. “You must have seen Gorsky on television or in the papers. He’s now a powerful businessman.”

  “You mean the billionaire Gorsky? The property developer?”

  “The recluse who’s done business with Arzam Saud.”

  The old man shrugged. “He may share the same name, but that’s not the Viktor Gorsky I knew. My eyesight is not what it was. But as far as I’m concerned, the businessman you reference looks more like the highest-­ranking KGB officer who came to the mountains after our battle than the man who I served alongside.”

  The killer who’d followed Mikhaylov and Will could easily see the two men from his hidden position on the other side of the pond. Holding his binoculars in one hand, he used the other to call Gorsky. He told his boss what he could see. “The tall man with Mikhaylov is one hundred percent the same man I saw walking toward Lanes, before I killed him. I’m in no doubt that he’s a special operative. Probably British or American.”

  Viktor Gorsky’s response to the former Russian Spetsnaz commando was immediate. “Kill the operative. Then go to the old man’s house and put him out of his misery.”

  Will watched Mikhaylov hobble away. The retired army officer had done what Will had asked him to do, taking a different route out of the park. It was a perfunctory precaution. Anyone who wanted him dead could easily get to the old man at his home or elsewhere. Once again, Will felt he’d entered someone’s life and ruined it. This cycle had to end. His mind raced because of Mikhaylov’s certainty that the man in the photo was not the man who’d submitted the photo alongside KapSet’s other DIFC registration documentation. The truth was that Viktor Gorsky was a former senior KGB officer who’d assumed the identity of a soldier called Gorsky. He’d wanted a dead casualty after the Afghan assault. When none was forthcoming, he’d taken the next best thing—­an injured soldier. No doubt he’d taken the wounded paratrooper to a remote mountain gully in Afghanistan and shot him in the back of the head.

  Will checked his watch. He had to get out of Russia. He started walking back along the route he’d taken in the park and used his cell phone to call Patrick. “Tell the president that he must not make any decisions about Saud. Not without me present.”

  Patrick tried to object.

  But Will interrupted him. “Just do it. I’m on the next available flight to D.C.”

  The former Russian Special Forces operative shoved his binoculars into his jacket and sprinted between trees and alongside dense foliage. His target—­the operative who’d just met with Mikhaylov—­couldn’t see him. He withdrew a knife similar to the one he’d used to end Eddie Lanes’s life. Its blade was sturdy and razor-­sharp. In the hands of a child, it could easily kill an adult as powerfully built as the man he was going to murder. In the Russian’s hand, the blade could make a man unrecognizable as a human being.

  Even with no weapons, the Russian’s combat expertise was such that time and time again he’d been able to use his hands, feet, knees, and other body parts to make men and women’s bones break, their hearts stop, and their brains shut down forever.

  He stopped close to a clearing at the easterly end of the pond. Crouching to one side of a bush, he saw the operative talking on his cell phone as he walked along the park’s footpath. The man was oblivious to the nearby predator. That was a bonus though the Russian would have been equally comfortable meeting him head-­on. That would happen two hundred yards ahead of the man. There was a cluster of trees that obscured the path within them. A perfect place to dispatch the operative. He moved fast along the tree line, needing to get ahead of his prey and close to the kill zone. The next time he’d see him, the killer would be looking into his eyes while twisting the blade of his knife in his gut.

  Everything now made sense to Will. When Patrick had sat next to him in London’s Royal Albert Hall and told him about Saud, Will had responded that he had to construct a starting point to the mission that was outside of conventional thinking. Patrick had countered with skepticism, saying Will’s position was fine so long as he had an idea where such an unconventional approach might lead. Will remembered what he had told Patrick.

  I’ve several hypotheses as to where it could lead, and one in particular fascinates me.

  It had fascinated him. And now he was convinced it was the truth.

  He kept on walking, deciding that he’d head to Kuzminka Metro Station and take the train back to the airport.

  The Russian breathed deeply and silently as he reached his kill zone. He’d sprinted to get there, moving over rough land, hiding within the cover of trees and bushes. The target would arrive in seconds. Soon, he’d have sight of him again. He wondered how hard the man would resist his inevitable death. Probably, he’d react like a wounded lion. Desperate. Savage. Undisciplined. Like the big-­game animals of bygone days who’d been lured to a tethered goat, only to be caught unawares by a hunter with a rifle. He smiled, gripping his knife.

  The knee that punched into the base of his spine knocked him forward, but the hand that then gripped his throat made his upper body stay still while the momentum of his legs carried onward. His target was over him, squeezing his gullet and pushing him to the ground. The Russian kicked his side, wrapped his other leg around his neck, ready to move his leg sideways and flip the target away, and plunged his knife at the man’s belly.

  But the man dodged the blade, grabbed the Russian’s knife-­wielding hand with his thumb on the upper side and fingers underneath, and twisted his hand while looking into his eyes and calmly saying, “No.”

  The word and accent were English.

  An Englishman.

  The Russian hated Englishmen.

  They were so effete.

  The Russian kept pushing his leg against the man’s neck. It was a move that put anyone away in the judo component of his beloved mixed martial arts. But the man on top of him remained stock-­still. Immobile.

  The Englishman broke the Russian’s wrist with a rapid snap, dropped quickly, and wrapped one arm around the Russian’s neck, the other was outstretched, blocking the killer’s free arm. He tightened his bicep around the Russian’s throat, squeezing as slowly and assuredly as a boa constrictor, one leg cocked at a forty-­five-­degree angle flush against the heathland underneath, the other ramrod straight and pointing away from the men. The legs were counterbalances and grips, adding to the impossibility of escape.

  But the Russian struggled anyway.

  His target held him in his viselike grip. In a soothing voice, he whispered, “Don’t struggle. You know it delays matters.”

  The Russian slapped his hand repeatedly on the ground. It was instinctual, like his opponents had done many times on the dojo mat of his MMA class in his club in south London. It meant, Release me, I give up.

  Will Cochrane didn’t give up. Not until the Russian went limp and was dead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  When the six jihadists entered the dead room, Bob Oakland and the translator looked at each other, both certain their time together was drawing to an end. They wanted death, but not like this. Butchered in a secre
t complex in western Syria or northern Iraq. It was inhumane, a barbarism that shouldn’t have been possible within the human race, and yet one that history had proven time and time again was prevalent. War crimes, genocides, torture, rape, mass exterminations, mutilations—­­people blamed them on monsters working the system. Bob now believed it didn’t make sense. The world couldn’t be awash with monsters who were waiting for the right opportunity to unleash their true potential. Instead, he now decided that the truth was much more unpalatable. We are all monsters. It’s just that most ­people don’t know it because their lives are okay, and they’re never put in a situation where bloodlust ­couples with an insane survival instinct. If Bob were released from his ropes and chains, given a knife, and his wounds and strength allowed, he’d go crazy, be a savage beast, a monster and rip apart the jihadists and keep ripping them apart when they were dead. Perhaps Ramzi would be the same.

  No.

  As desperate as both men were, the image just didn’t seem right. It was impossible for Ramzi and him to do stuff like that because there were no monsters lurking inside them. The thought gave him hope for humanity though he had no hope for his own civility because he was as good as dead.