A Darker Place

by Jack Higgins

  He phoned Kurbsky. “Where are you?”

  “Sorting a few things out in my new quarters over the garage. I spoke to that guy at the local shop up the road. He’s Indian-Hitesh Patel. An interesting guy, actually-a fourth-year medical student minding the store while his parents are in Bombay.”

  “What are you up to this evening?”

  “I thought I might come and see you. Is that okay?”

  “I’m certainly not planning on going anywhere else. The television’s been full of the Basayev shooting. Some of the old footage from the Chechen war shows him in a less-than-flattering light. Was that your opinion, too?”

  Roper knew something, it was obvious from his tone. The finest way of handling that was to tell the truth. Kurbsky said, “He was a vile, sadistic monster, evil in every way. Even the Devil would reject him from Hell. And am I happy that somebody shot the bastard? I couldn’t be more delighted.”

  “Well, that’s plain enough.”

  “By the way, Katya’s given me a Ford van of the kind gardeners use, to help with my cover. It’s green, and I’ll give you the number.”

  Roper took it. “I’ll see you later, then.”

  They rang off. Kurbsky sat there, then called Bounine and found him in his quarters. “It’s Alex, Yuri. How did Luzhkov take it?”

  “He was terribly put out at first, but phoned Putin on his special number. The Prime Minister was delighted and apparently approves of you making fools of Ferguson’s people. Luzhkov says he’s going to leave contact with you to me, because I’m the only person you trust.”

  “That’s good, but I have Roper to contend with-a difficult man to fool. Tell me, Yuri, if you bring up your career details on computer does it show the London posting?”

  “No, that’s classified information because of the peculiarities of the job. It’s word of mouth only. As far as my records are concerned, I’m still commercial attaché at Dublin.”

  “Excellent. I’ll speak to you whenever.”

  “Just a minute. Something’s come up and it affects someone who’s a friend of Ferguson and his people.”

  “Go on.”

  “His name is Blake Johnson, and he’s head of personal security for President Cazalet, so he’s big stuff and, according to Luzhkov, very close to Ferguson’s group. When he was in London the other year, Luzhkov hired somebody to assassinate him, but it was foiled by this man Dillon and somebody else. Luzhkov’s still got a bee in his bonnet about him, don’t know why. Anyway, Johnson is apparently coming to London tomorrow on NATO business-and Luzhkov’s thinking of kidnapping him.”

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “I’m not involved, but I sat in. He’s using Petrovich and Oleg to do it-you remember them from the safe house outside Moscow?”

  “I do indeed. They’d shoot a dog, those two. But anything that touches on Ferguson and his friends touches me, too, so I’m concerned about this. This seems like madness, Yuri!”

  “I agree, but Luzhkov’s intent on it. You should have seen his face. Must be some old bad blood.”

  “Well, keep me informed. Don’t let Luzhkov know I know. Keep this to yourself.”

  “Of course, Alex, you come first.”

  HE WENT THROUGH the garden to the house and entered the conservatory, where Svetlana sat playing Patience with a background of Rachmaninov’s Fourth Piano Concerto. Katya stood at her easel, doing a pastel drawing of Monica.

  “That’s excellent,” he said.

  “Not at all. I’ve got the face, but where’s the soul?”

  “I’ve no answer to that. I’m going out for a while down to Holland Park. I was going to drive, but I’ve been drinking, so I’ll find a cab.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No problem.” He gave Svetlana a kiss on the forehead and smiled at Katya. “Don’t wait up for me.”

  “I’ve no intention.” She went to the sideboard, opened a drawer, and returned with a control device for the gate. “Now you can go and come as you please.”

  “What a woman.” He kissed her lightly on the mouth and went out.

  IT WAS PLEASANT walking down through Belsize along Abbey Road, which made him think of the Beatles, and then he came to Swiss Cottage, where there were dozens of cabs swirling by. He hailed one and sat in the back, thinking about what Bounine had just said. It was Luzhkov feeling the sap rising because Putin had approved of what Kurbsky had done. So Luzhkov had failed in some previous attempt to deal with Johnson and now the idea of kidnapping him had appealed to him, which seemed utterly ludicrous to Kurbsky. If Luzhkov succeeded, what on earth was he going to do with Johnson? He shook his head.

  He told the driver to stop at the end of the street, paid him, and walked to the entrance of the safe house. He announced his arrival, the Judas gate opened, he stepped through, and it closed behind him.

  11

  Doyle nodded to him at the door as he went through to the computer room, where he found Roper watching the news from Moscow.

  He turned and smiled. “There you are, old stick. I must say that cream she’s used under your eyes is really doing the trick. You’re beginning to look like someone out of an old Hammer horror movie. You didn’t drive down, then?”

  “Svetlana got the champagne out. A kind of celebration that I’m back in the house.”

  “It must be strange for you after all these years.”

  “And amazing to be with her again. So much of that time has already returned to me with extraordinary clarity. London when I was a teenager, sharp and fresh and full of zip.”

  “The age when anything’s possible.”

  “Or you believe it is.” Kurbsky nodded to the news program from Moscow showing old war footage of Basayev. “See, they’ve even got him for home consumption, black and white and grainy, just like the bastard was in real life.”

  “The Kremlin is rejecting the scurrilous charges that they have had anything to do with it-while making it clear that the large numbers of people who suffered at the hands of this brutal war criminal, as they describe him, no doubt feel that they have finally seen justice done.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” Kurbsky went to the sideboard and poured a large vodka. “Here’s to nine good friends of mine who suffered appallingly at his hands. I wasn’t quite honest with you when you asked me if I’d known him and I said everyone in the Russian Army did. The truth is I was involved with a unit in Chechnya called the Black Tigers, a special-ops paratroop outfit. A reliable source discovered Basayev was at the monastery in the mountains. We were dropped in to try to assassinate him, only the reliable source turned out to be not so reliable.”

  “Oh, dear, it was ever thus,” Roper said.

  “There were only eleven of us left. He had nine tortured and strung up, and my sergeant and I managed to escape and got back to Grozny.”

  “Pass me the whiskey.” Kurbsky did, and Roper said, “The sergeant would be Bounine? He must have been a useful chap.”

  “Good God, you know all this?” Kurbsky managed to look amazed. “But how?”

  “Your army career on the Internet. There’s a brief citation next to each decoration explaining the reason for the award. In this case, it also said you jumped without training.”

  “Several of us did.” He became very open now. “Bounine had jumped a time or two in Afghanistan. The most unlikely-looking paratrooper you ever saw. He had a law degree he kept secret from the army, too.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Somebody found out about the law degree and he was transferred to the GRU. There was some talk of a commission, but I was promoted to captain and back in deep shit. I never heard from him again.” He looked at Roper. “But something tells me you know more than I do.”

  Roper grinned. “Well, cyberspace can reveal all. He’s done well for himself. A major and still in the GRU, posing as a senior commercial attaché at the Dublin Embassy.”

  “He always had a brain, that was the lawyer in him. That would make hi
m stand out in any crowd.” He sat back. “So tell me, what’s not being reported? You must know the right people at Scotland Yard.”

  “Oh, I do, and it’s almost funny. Josef Limov, the chauffeur, had been Basayev’s hit man for years, and he had a Walther, drawn, but not discharged. Basayev also had a Walther, only his was still in his pocket. The postmortems have not been completed, but rounds already recovered from the bodies indicate the weapon used to kill them was also a Walther.”

  “It isn’t almost funny, it is funny.” Kurbsky went to his bag, opened the secret compartment, and produced the Walther he’d been issued. “So this one makes four. A very popular weapon, thanks to James Bond, easy to use and a hell of a stopping power. The preferred weapon of many hit men in Moscow… So you think it was a professional hit?”

  “Hard to say. Here you have a thoroughly nasty bit of work full of himself on London television, rich beyond most people’s wildest dreams, and amongst the two or three million Londoners watching the program, there are bound to have been refugees and asylum-seekers who suffered at Basayev’s hands.”

  “In other words, who would have loved the chance to bump him off? You could say his appearance at the church was an open invitation. There’s only one thing wrong with that. From what you say, both men were armed and Josef got as far as drawing his weapon, and yet the killer got both of them. That’s the mark of a professional.”

  “So that means the Kremlin, either directly or through a contract killer. Since the fall of Communism and the advent of capitalism, the battle for that money has led to an incredible rise in contract killings in Moscow. Journalists, politicians, businessmen. In this case, I’d say the only questions are who paid and whether the killer was imported or local.”

  Roper poured another scotch. “And if it’s local, there are plenty of possibilities. The criminal scene has changed a lot since the old days of the East End gangsters. The Moscow Mafia has made its mark, and powerful Albanian and Romanian groups have moved into London.”

  “Not to mention the Irish Troubles,” said Kurbsky. “Wars in Bosnia, Serbia, and Kosovo, the first Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan. That adds up to thousands of men not only trained, but used to war. I’m sure many of them would be perfectly capable of doing something like the Basayev killing, especially for money. There used to be a man in Moscow, known as Superkiller, who charged fifty thousand dollars for a hit and was seldom unemployed.”

  Roper nodded. “What you’re really saying here is that we might never get anyone for these killings, because there are just too many possible suspects? The general public sees a perfectly vile man sitting on his money and laughing at the world, and when he unexpectedly gets what’s coming to him, the truth is, they’re rather pleased. I guess that’s why I can’t get particularly worked up about the bastard myself. Anyway, there’s something else I want to discuss-Ferguson asked me to raise it with you.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “We’ve always had a close working relationship with President Cazalet, who has an outfit very similar to ours operating in Washington. It’s called the Basement, and it’s run by a very good friend of ours named Blake Johnson. He’s coming to London tomorrow for a NATO conference with the Ministry of Defence.”

  “And?” Kurbsky asked.

  “And we do a great many things in tandem with them. Ferguson wonders if you’d agree to him passing on your story to Blake, and through him to the President. It’d be under the strictest of secrecy.”

  “No way. I made it plain that I would embark on this venture only if I was guaranteed anonymity. General Charles Ferguson gave me his word on the matter. He has a moral obligation to keep it.”

  “He totally accepts that.”

  “Then let that be the end of the matter.”

  “I’ll see that it is.”

  KURBSKY LEFT AT ten o’clock, refused a lift by Sergeant Doyle, and walked slowly down through Holland Park toward the main road. He paused at the end of one lonely street and phoned Bounine.

  “Have you heard anything else regarding this Blake Johnson business?”

  “A certain amount. He invited me to have a drink and was very excited. Apparently, we’ve just reached a deal with a private airfield at Berkley Down that specializes in jets for millionaires. The place is about twenty miles out of London in Kent. Luzhkov talked about being able to book a Falcon wherever he wanted.”

  “And the point of this is?”

  “I’m getting there. He got quite worked up about all this. Told me more about the previous attempt on Johnson’s life the other year. The mistake, he said, was to trust a low-life gangster and pay him well for the contract. Luzhkov got quite drunk when he was telling me this. Apparently, the gangster farmed the work out on the cheap to two second-rate specimens who were foiled by this man Dillon, an ex-IRA enforcer who now works for Ferguson, and someone called Salter, who also works for Ferguson.”

  “Did this business involve anyone being killed?”

  “I understand there was some damage done to those concerned. He said Dillon had a bad habit of shooting ears.”

  “I wonder if Oleg and Petrovich are aware of the opposition they are up against.”

  “I suppose if the affair proceeded in the right way, they wouldn’t expect any opposition. We live in a world where anything is possible. You don’t need to hunt for a public telephone, you have a mobile phone in your pocket that can handle a call to the other side of the world. And you can bang a man on the head in a London street and bundle him off in a car twenty miles into the Kent countryside, where a Falcon jet will have him in Moscow in five hours, instead of eating breakfast in the American Embassy guesthouse in Peel Mews.”

  “I get it now. And this is your idea of fun, Yuri, for this poor bastard?”

  “The American version is called extraordinary rendition. You fly some unlucky bastard from one country too civilized to harm him, to another where you can get someone to torture him for you.”

  “No honor in that.”

  “No honor, either, in refueling the Falcon in Moscow for an onward flight to Siberia and Station Gorky, the last place God made.”

  Kurbsky said, “Okay, you’ve made your point. If I ever need a defense lawyer, it will be you, Yuri.”

  Yuri said, “Are you okay, Alex? You sound tense.”

  “What would I have to be tense about? I’ll speak to you tomorrow. Look for me round about noon.”

  HE THOUGHT ABOUT it as he walked to the main road and flagged a black cab, and instead of asking for Holland Park, he told the driver to take him to Grosvenor Square, because he knew that’s where the American Embassy was. In the back of the black cab he put the light on and examined his London AZ guide, found Peel Mews off of South Audley Street running down from Grosvenor Square.

  He put the guide away, turned off the light, and sat there thinking. Boris Luzhkov, feeling his oats, was considering this mad idea of kidnapping the personal security adviser for President Jack Cazalet. It was a crazy escapade, yet, as Bounine had said, in this modern world of today, when hours meant so little, it was eminently possible.

  But it was a nasty business. In the shadowy world of spies and assassins, that sort of thing was to be expected, and the interrogations that went with it. A man like Johnson, so close to the President, would be subject to the most horrendous torture to extract the incredible amount of information he must have. But what would be the consequences?

  He told the cabdriver to drop him on the other side of the square by the statue of General Eisenhower. As the cab drove away, he turned, aware of the great ugly slabs of concrete designed to protect the building against a terrorist attack, and walked back across the square and entered South Audley Street. Peel Mews was to the left some little way along. He paused for a quick moment.

  It started to rain lightly, and he looked around him, taking everything in. Fine buildings, Georgian, Victorian, some superb shops. Mayfair night in the rain, cars swishing by, not too many people walking. It was
dreamlike in a way, or was that just him? He continued steadily to the end, where he turned toward Park Lane and discovered the Dorchester Hotel, which was reasonably busy, night porters on duty, umbrellas at the ready, cars in and out, and on the other side, the darkness of Hyde Park, the traffic cutting between in long streams.

  What a great city this was, still the wonderland to which he had come when he was seventeen, all the way from Communist Moscow. It was still probably the best city in the world, and he knew quite suddenly, standing there, that he didn’t like what Boris Luzhkov wanted to happen to Blake Johnson, and he knew why. It was Bounine mentioning an onward flight to Station Gorky that stuck in his craw. Yes, there was the cursed business with his sister and all the years she had rotted there. Sure, he would have to continue to follow the path he was on in the hope of earning her freedom. But to consign someone else to the degradation and despair of such a place was something he was not prepared to do. In a way, it was his own private declaration of war and that was all that mattered, and he turned and walked to the cab rank in the side street.

  JUST BEFORE HE went to bed at eleven, Ferguson called in to Roper. “How did you get on with Kurbsky about the Blake Johnson matter?”

  “He was absolutely firm. He said you’d promised him anonymity, given him your word, and that was the end of the matter.”

  “All right, I give in.”

  “Something interesting happened, though. When I asked Kurbsky earlier if he’d known Basayev, he said everyone in the Russian Army did. But when he came round tonight, he told me there was a bit more to it than that.”

  “Did he indeed?”

  “Mind you, I already suspected there was, because of my research online.”

  “Go on, tell me.”

  So Roper did.

  When he was finished, Ferguson said, “A hell of a story. God, if that swine Basayev had done that to any unit I commanded, I’d have hounded him in every way possible, shot him like the dog he was.”