A Darker Place

by Jack Higgins

  “And rain,” Kurbsky said. “There’s something special about that, the windscreen wipers clicking back and forth. It’s hypnotic.”

  Billy said suddenly, “When I finished On the Death of Men, I felt such a sense of loss, I started again at the beginning straightaway.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “It’s the truth. I may be a gangster, but one day years ago, I was in some waiting room when I found a paperback about famous philosophers. It bowled me over. I loved that stuff, then Dillon came into our lives spouting the same ideas.”

  “Dillon was that important to you?”

  “Harry, me, and the boys were handling a hot package from Amsterdam on one of my uncle’s riverboats. Diamonds from Amsterdam. There was a police sting. We’d have gone down the steps for ten years, only Dillon diverted the package.”

  “What happened then?”

  “He worked for Ferguson and drew us in. We’ve never looked back. To be honest, Harry’s made millions out of development.”

  “So who needs to rob banks?”

  “Something like that.”

  They drew up at Holland Park. “Are you coming in?” Kurbsky asked.

  “Just give Roper my love, and good luck tomorrow.”

  Kurbsky got out, watched the Alfa Romeo drive away. It was quiet, and he turned and walked to the Judas in the main gate, was about to speak into the voice box when the Judas swung open. He stepped inside, walked forward, and it closed behind him.

  Roper was seated in his usual spot, gazing at the screens. He turned. “Did you have a good night? Tell me about it.”

  Which Kurbsky did, sitting down and helping himself to another vodka. “There is one thing,” he said. “People do look at me, because I’m unusual…”

  “Or because they recognize you for what you are, an outpatient on chemotherapy, which means cancer. Most people know that, if only because it’s a staple of medical soaps on television. They feel sorry for you.”

  “Or uncomfortable. There were fifty or sixty customers in the bar just before I left, and I’ve got the feeling a number of them were happy to see me go.”

  “I know what you mean. It’s like people not wanting some soldier who’s lost a leg in Afghanistan swimming in the local pool.”

  “Human nature,” Kurbsky said, glancing up. “Just a moment, what’s that?”

  “A late-night news program.”

  “It said something about Shadid Basayev, or maybe I was wrong.”

  “You weren’t. General Shadid Basayev, a Chechen general. He’s been granted asylum. It was on about an hour ago. I recorded the program because there was an end piece I needed on Al Qaeda. Hold on, I’ll rewind. Here we go.”

  There was some footage from the first Chechen war, the general in a tank, then inspecting men at some hill station, a burly man with a brutal hard face and the cheekbones of some Mongol warrior. His uniform was understated, the cap crumpled, the military shirt of a common soldier, a worn leather coat, boots. As he walked along the front rank, men turned their faces toward him.

  “That’s a nice touch,” Roper said.

  “Yes, Nazi style. He introduced it to his men.”

  “Did you know him?”

  And Alexander Kurbsky, who had known him very well indeed, said, “Everybody in the Russian Army in Chechnya knew the bastard.”

  The television program said Basayev had applied for and been granted political asylum after fleeing the Russian Federation and living for a while in Monaco. Political pressure aimed at his extraction had forced him to move to London, where similar pressure from Russia had proved futile, judges of the High Court having accepted that to return him would most certainly put his life in danger.

  “So, asylum granted,” Kurbsky said.

  “It seems that while he was in charge of certain affairs in Chechnya, oil revenues or something like that, he succeeded in transferring millions into the City of London.” Roper shook his head. “He has it all. It’s been crawling through a court for nine months, but he’s finally made it.”

  “What happened to the war crimes charges?” Kurbsky asked, although he knew very well what had happened.

  “Witnesses disappeared, intimidation. Nothing came of it. I like this bit.” They were interviewing Basayev in his house in Mayfair, and he was speaking of going to evening mass every Sunday. They even showed the church. It was Roman Catholic-St. Mary and All the Angels. Basayev was a Christian, not a Muslim. Kurbsky remembered that, remembered it well. He had a memorial to his wife in the churchyard and visited it on a daily basis in the morning.

  “Many Chechens are Christian,” Roper said. “But surely they’d have been Russian Orthodox or something like that? Let’s look at his details.” Roper tapped the keys and the facts came up. “What do you know? He was a Muslim, did a law degree in Rome in his early twenties, and changed religion to marry a Rosa Rossi, a fellow student. That explains the Roman Catholicism. Involved in politics for years in Chechnya. No children. There was a bomb attack on his car in Grozny in 1989. Unfortunately, he’d been delayed and it was his wife who was traveling. He blamed the KGB very publicly.”

  “He would, but then, it probably was them,” Kurbsky said.

  The show switched back to the Church of St. Mary and All the Angels. It was of late-Victorian vintage, because that was when Roman Catholics had been allowed to build again in England. It wasn’t very pretty, and there was a clock tower. A limousine drew up, and Basayev got out and his driver gave him flowers. The camera showed the time on the clock tower as ten. Then it cut to the cemetery. Basayev appeared and paused at a memorial stone with a photo inset, which he kissed before changing the flowers.

  “You’d think he’d paid to be able to look that good,” said Kurbsky.

  “Oh, the BBC let him have his interview, but their documentary on his activities in Chechnya totally condemns him.”

  “Which won’t bother him in the slightest. The truly wicked do seem to survive rather well in this life, but I suppose that’s the way of the world. I’m going to bed. I’ll see you in the morning, and then it’s off to Chamber Court and the ladies.”

  HE LAY ON the bed thinking about it, the hell of Grozny, the Chechen capital, of General Shadid Basayev and what had happened a long, long time ago.

  CHECHNYA

  1995

  9

  Grozny, the Chechen capital, resembled hell on earth, and in spite of constant rain, there were fires everywhere. Heavy tanks had thrown everything they had at the place and the aerial bombardment had been constant, and yet the Chechens stubbornly resisted, street by street, house by house, urban guerrilla warfare at its most intense.

  Alexander Kurbsky, a lieutenant by rank, was the only officer left in what had two weeks earlier been the Fifth Paratroop Assault Platoon, a special forces unit consisting of fifty men. Now they had been reduced to eighteen men, having spearheaded their way into the heart of the city, using on occasion the sewage system, and in those filthy and foul-smelling tunnels they had found an enemy that fought like rats.

  They finally emerged via manholes in the central square, a wilderness of half-standing buildings and fires smoking in the heavy rain, and found themselves facing what was left of the Astoria Hotel.

  Yuri Bounine sprawled close to Kurbsky. Bounine was an unlikely-looking paratrooper, with his chubby face and steel army-issue spectacles fastened together with tape. His bulky combat uniform was filthy, but then, so was everyone else’s. His rank of sergeant was temporary, because Kurbsky and he had become friends, and Kurbsky trusted him for his brains as much as for anything else.

  “Are we going, then?” a man named Nebit called, someone who didn’t take kindly to discipline and resented Kurbsky anyway because of his youth. “We might get a cup of coffee in there.”

  “Keep your head down,” Kurbsky told him, but Nebit was already standing up, and two men next to him followed. A burst of fire blew away his combat beret, fragmented the back of his skull, and hurled him over
a pile of bricks. A machine pistol had obviously caused the damage, knocking down the other two also. Instant death, for there wasn’t a sound from them.

  “So now we are fifteen,” Kurbsky said.

  Bounine nodded. “So what do we do?”

  Kurbsky raised his voice. “Follow me back to the sewer. We’ll see where it comes out a little closer to the hotel, slowly and with care and covering each other. Nebit was stupid, so he paid the price.”

  He led, disappearing down into the tunnel and proceeding, half bent over, checking the outfalls to left and right. There was water running a couple of feet deep, a mixture of brown sludge in it that didn’t bear thinking about. He came to a kind of concrete chamber, a notice saying “Astoria Hotel,” and paused, and the others closed up.

  “I’ll go-you cover me, Yuri.” He went up cautiously, found a steel door, depressed the handle, and pushed, finding himself in a room containing the central heating system. He went to the end door, opened it cautiously, and found what must have been the kitchen staff’s working quarters, white chef’s uniforms hanging from pegs, toilets and a row of open showers. There was a door marked “Kitchen.”

  The others cried excitedly, “Great, there must be food,” and Kurbsky turned, saying, “No, wait.”

  He was too late. Four crowded through, and as he got to the door there was heavy firing, a cry of agony, two of the men blown back, shot several times. He scrambled over them to the shelter of a steel food bench, keeping low as sustained firing continued, found a grenade at his belt, pulled the pin, and tossed it over to the other side of the kitchen. There was a cry that was more like a scream, and he jumped up and fired a burst from his AK-47 at the wide doorway opposite.

  He moved forward cautiously over the bodies of his men and found what he was looking for, a Chechen soldier, uniform soaked in blood, trying to breathe, and nothing but a death rattle there. A steel helmet had come off, and very slowly, the head turned, hair cropped, eyes staring at him mutely.

  Bounine came up behind him. “Christ, a girl. I hate that. Are you going to finish her off?”

  Kurbsky took her hand and spoke to her gently. She smiled, then her eyes closed and her head lolled to one side.

  “What did you say to her?”

  “I said ‘Go in peace’ in case she was a Muslim.” He turned to the others. “Thirteen of us now. So just follow me.”

  He went straight out into a large restaurant, walked through the tables into the foyer of the hotel leading to the main doors. All was still, and on one side was the entrance to what had once been one of the most luxurious bars in Grozny.

  Someone said, “My God, look at all that booze.”

  There was a surge, and Kurbsky fired a short burst into the ceiling. Everyone turned. He said, “Not yet. You bastards stink, and I stink, because we’ve been in the shit for weeks. So follow me right now.”

  He led the way through the kitchens to the staff quarters, stepped in the first walk-in shower exactly as he was, in combat uniform and clutching an AK-47. He switched it on full. “Come on in, the water’s fine.”

  They stared at him in astonishment, and Bounine was next. “A bloody marvelous idea.” He stepped under the next one.

  The rest of the men followed boisterously, like schoolboys after football, and the filth and the stench of the sewers washed away in dark brown rivulets.

  LATER IN THE bar lounge they rested, eating a whole range of canned foods from the kitchens, discovering that the electricity worked in parts of the hotel and that there were lights in the bar. “Not that we could use those,” Bounine said. “It would attract everyone in the city.”

  Kurbsky had informed Command of their whereabouts and had been promised fresh orders, which hadn’t come. He and Bounine had been working their way through a bottle of champagne, and he was just refilling the glass when there was a sound of vehicles outside.

  Kirov, who’d been left on guard duty at the door, ran in. “They’re ours, Lieutenant, somebody important, I think.”

  Which it was. About a dozen men appeared, flooding into the foyer, excited at the riches the bar disclosed, started forward, and came to a halt, reacting at once to shouted commands. A moment later, General Chelek, the area commander, walked through the crowd. There was little to distinguish him from his men; he was just as unshaven, his uniform just as filthy.

  Kurbsky and his men stood up. He came forward and took the bottle of champagne from Kurbsky’s hand and looked at the label. “Very nice, you lads are doing all right. Who are you?” He took the glass from Kurbsky’s hand and it was filled.

  “Fifth Paratroop Assault Platoon.”

  “The Black Tigers, isn’t that what they call you? I thought there were fifty in your unit.”

  “What you see is what you get, General, thirteen.”

  “Unlucky for some, they say.”

  “Which means you need us for something rotten?”

  Chelek went behind the bar and grabbed a bottle of vodka. He glanced at his men, who stood waiting. “Okay, pitch in.” Which they did. He sat at the end of the bar with Kurbsky. “Who are you?”

  “Alexander Kurbsky, Comrade. I’m the only officer left.”

  “Your name is not unknown to me. Yes, I’ve got something pretty heavy for you. One of our most implacable foes in the Grozny area has been General Shadid Basayev. You’ve heard of him?”

  “Of course.”

  Bounine, who had been standing close, said, “He went to Rome to university, General, studied law. He’s a Muslim who married an Italian woman and became a Catholic.”

  Chelek shrugged. “Men will do strange things where a woman is concerned, even a man like Shadid Basayev. You seem well-informed, Sergeant.”

  “He was once a lawyer,” Kurbsky explained. “At Rome University.”

  Bounine said, “The KGB put a bomb in Basayev’s car before the war here in Grozny. His wife was using the car, not him, and he has never forgiven us. That’s why he kills Russians with such venom.”

  “I’m aware of that. Basayev has withdrawn into the mountains for a while. My intelligence sources say he is at the monastery of Kuba. That’s about sixty miles from here. It’s at the head of a valley-there’s a plateau perhaps five miles away. Our informant is a Father Ramsan, a priest. He contacts us by radio, says Basayev only has twenty men with him.”

  “So what are you suggesting, Comrade?” Kurbsky asked. “That we put together a hunting party and go after him? We wouldn’t last an hour out there. Every peasant, every shepherd on a crag, are his eyes and ears.”

  “You’re absolutely right, but I’m not suggesting you go out by road. By chance, at the Grozny military supply airstrip, there is a Dakota transport plane. Very old, but very reliable, or so I’m informed. It could have you over the Kuba Plateau in no more than an hour one way or the other.”

  There was a heavy silence. Bounine said, “You mean the Dakota would land on the plateau?”

  “Of course not. I mean you would jump, you idiot. You are paratroopers, are you not? You have jumped into action?”

  “Yes, I have, Comrade,” Bounine told him. “And five of my comrades.”

  “But I haven’t,” Kurbsky said. “And neither have six of my men. The demands for the war in the last year in Afghanistan meant that a lot of paratroopers didn’t get jump training.”

  “Well, that’s just too bad,” Chelek said calmly. “My experts on staff say a pass over that plateau at four hundred feet will have you on the ground in a matter of seconds. The chutes are available, they rig an anchor line in the plane, you clip your static line on it, and you jump out. It’s all automatic. You are the Black Tigers, are you not, and an elite unit?”

  “Of course, Comrade,” Kurbsky said. “When would we go?”

  “Tomorrow sometime. I’ll arrange for a truck to pick you up from here during the next couple of hours or so. I’ll see you at the airfield tomorrow.”

  He called to his men and walked out, and they followed. The Tigers were
muttering among themselves, and young Kirov came forward.

  “Is it true, this business, Comrade, something about parachuting out of a plane? We couldn’t hear it all. I’ve never had parachute training, and neither have others here.”

  “And neither have I,” Kurbsky told him. “But in case you hadn’t noticed, this is the Russian Army, so if General Chelek tells you to jump out of a plane, you do it, even if you don’t have a parachute. Sergeant Bounine’s the expert. You take over, Yuri?”

  He sat in the corner, thinking about it, fiddled in his right paratrooper’s boot and found his favorite knife in a secret pocket. It was very old, carved like a Madonna in some kind of bone, and at the press of a button, a blade jumped out, razor sharp. A gutting knife, used by some Caspian fishermen way back in the past. He checked that it was working to perfection, aware of the talk among the men, the anger, then closed the knife and sheathed it again in its secret place.

  Bounine came, went behind the bar, got a bottle of vodka, and came back with two glasses. “You might as well get drunk while we’re waiting for the truck,” he announced. “It’ll help when you have to think that tomorrow at some time or other, you’re going to be jumping from that Dakota.”

  He gave Kurbsky a glass. “Vodka, Lieutenant?”

  “What would I do without you?” Kurbsky said.

  THE AIRSTRIP WAS on a section of highway just outside the city, normal road traffic diverted elsewhere. A tented town had sprung up, mixed in with prefabricated buildings on what had originally been farmland. Planes were coming in and out all the time, mainly transport. Everything was makeshift, even what passed as air traffic control.

  The pilot was an old hand named Bashir, a contract man brought in for the war. He’d flown in Afghanistan, old Dakotas bought from various Asian sources, workhorses that could fly anywhere. He’d dropped paratroopers during his time in Afghanistan, before helicopters became such an important part of that ill-fated campaign. However, he knew his stuff and had an anchor line rigged before Kurbsky and his men arrived.