He went back to the figures. No man ever reached the heights he had climbed to if he did not concern himself with detail. He looked up to ask what time they would take off from Trabzon in the morning and what time they would land in Baku. A message should be sent to the contact who would meet them and who would square Immigration, landing rights and Customs, take care of the formalities. It would go encrypted and the kid swore on his mother’s life that neither the Americans nor the Europeans could break the codes or make sense of the jumbled mess of letters, digits and mathematical symbols. Trabzon to Baku to Constanta, then home for two full days, then to the west of Africa and on to the Mediterranean. Tomorrow he’d want confirmation of the stop on the Mediterranean coast. Now he had figures to work at.
He didn’t see the kid’s face. He hadn’t looked for it.
At the end, when the team was disbanded and scattered, Winnie Monks had thought them ground down by their failure to identify Damian Fenby’s killer. They had biographies of more than forty organised-crime leaders in Russia, Georgia and Chechnya, but couldn’t put any of them in Budapest on the relevant date. The last explosion of hope had been nine weeks earlier when a shivering, terrified little runt – an Irish teenager from Pomeroy – was captured with a loaded Russian-made automatic handgun from a batch previously unknown. The team traced the weapon back to its import in a cargo container, its shipment from Lisbon, its transfer there by lorry from Trieste. In that Adriatic city the trail had died. Weeks of bloody work and nothing achieved, but they had all stayed strong, little Dottie, Kenny, Xavier and Caro Watson.
Winnie had said, ‘It’ll happen, believe it. When it happens, come running. When you’re running, remember what they did to our boy, picture his face. He was one of us, our family and our team. I’ll call you. It will happen.’
‘A mistake. We’re always looking and praying for the mistake . . .’
The Latvian policeman walked towards the outer gate where the Czech’s car and chauffeur waited. It was the end of the day and the man from the Foreign Ministry in Prague had asked perhaps his only pertinent question: what did the investigators need to bring down the major figures in the organised-crime groups?
‘We need to hear of a mistake. They work diligently to avoid such but they do make mistakes, and we have to be ready to exploit them.’
2
He was almost run over – might have been flattened on the road.
The lorry swerved late enough to avoid Natan, but its draught blew him aside. He stumbled, lost control of his legs and fell. He had been far away, his mind in turmoil. Ahead, the flag hung from its tilted pole above the entrance to a concrete office block. Its colours, red, white and blue, were bright against the grey and the tinted windows set in the walls. It marked his target. He had started across the road, looking neither right nor left, and had dreamed again of how he would introduce himself, but there had been the ear-shattering blast of the lorry’s horn, the scream of the tyres, and as he had hit the road, a knee and an elbow taking the impact. He had seen the face of the driver, mouth twisted in anger, and heard the abuse.
He pushed himself to his feet. Natan – his paymaster called him the Gecko – had no Azerbaijani but understood the venom shouted at him. His crime? He had delayed the bastard a second or two as he drove between destinations and caused him to lose precious time.
He cursed in his native language, Georgian, then in his adopted language, Russian, and his learned language, English – he’d come too close to a mangled death. He was on his feet and swayed. His moment between life and a fast death was past. He knew where he was, and why. He stood at his full height, more than six feet, and had a view of the flag above the doorway into a modern block. He started again into the traffic to cross the road. If there were more blasts on horns and yelled insults he didn’t hear them. That November morning Natan was twenty-two years old.
He had been born inland from the small port town of Anaklia, on the Black Sea, and the cluster of farmers’ homes was close to the Enguri river. It was mountainous country, cut by deep gorges and the kids growing up there were hardened. There was a culture of masculine strength and feminine beauty, and his family worked a smallholding, growing enough maize, vegetables and soft fruit for them to survive. Natan had hated fighting, sport, the sunlight and the beach, and had lived his early years with neither purpose nor ambition until a teacher had opened a door for him. The talent the teacher of Russian origin had identified was an understanding of computers. Where every other pupil in his class regarded them as dominant tyrants, Natan – the name given him by his tutor – recognised keyboards as the gateways to routes that took him far beyond the reach of thugs and bullies. He had no girlfriend and did no work on the farm, but he had a power unmatched by any other child at the school. The teacher had given him an old laptop for his fourteenth birthday.
He was on the pavement and began to stride towards the fluttering flag.
Natan could hack. He believed he had an intuition that led him through password blocks into areas that were supposedly impenetrable. He could out-think security devices and break down codes protecting against illicit entry. To his teacher, he showed the accounts of the new hotel complex in town, than delved into the mayor’s personal bank accounts. He rapped the keys, clicked his mouse, and was inside the military headquarters of the Russians in the occupied territory of Akhazia to the north. The teacher had gone white with shock, and the fear of having such material on the screen of the clapped-out laptop. A university place had been arranged for Natan in Kaliningrad, on the dank coast of the eastern Baltic, and the teacher must have prayed he would never again hear of a young man with the power to have him arrested by the security police in Akhazia and charged with treason.
In Kaliningrad, Natan had had no attributes that appealed to his fellow students, who specialised in marine matters. He had no girl to usher him into a pretence of social life. He had no time for skiing, sledging, skating or drinking himself insensible. He had no friends in the remote city other than the images he found on his computer. He could have completed a degree in naval engineering or naval architecture, but he had no interest in either, and his course floundered. After eight months of his first year he had been thrown out. He had cleared his room, packed his clothes, his laptop and its accessories. After two nights of sleeping rough, he had walked into a computer-repair business and asked for work.
There was a shopping arcade off the pavement. He broke his stride and looked for a green cross. He slipped inside, collected a packet of painkillers from a shelf and took them to the counter. A woman stared at him with distaste as he paid, and he saw himself in the mirror: dishevelled, dirty, torn clothing. He took the bag, went back on to the pavement and strode towards the flag.
By the end of that year, in Kaliningrad, he had been well known in a community that respected him. They were – in American slang – nerds and geeks. He was installed in a squat near to the principal fish market, required a couple of fast-food fixes a day, endless cigarettes and limitless coffee, and did a little porno on his screen. Otherwise he fixed computer problems. He was well-enough known to be called out by the city’s vibrant Mafiya clans for special work. Then men came for him in big cars, their jackets bulging. He was driven to darkened locations, told what was required, and would hack. He was paid handsomely. Those who called him out must have paid their police contacts well because the militia never came to the squat or the repair outlet. Two years and four months before, his life had changed. He had been at his bench – a July afternoon, the temperature in the low seventies – when his employer had called him into the office. A folded wad of American dollars had lain on the desk and he realised he had been sold on. He had turned to face those who had purchased him, his new employers, and had thought them to be army people. All three lacked an index finger on the right hand.
The previous evening, in the Trabzon hotel’s coffee shop, he had eaten a light dinner – alone. He had gone to his room and had sent the encrypted messages,
exactly as he had been instructed. He had heard them, late in the evening, come back down the corridor to their own rooms and the suite. He had burned at the outrage he had suffered. They had thought a slap on his shoulder and the pretence of a hug sufficient to erase it.
They had been wrong.
Sometimes they were wary of him, as if he were a stranger, and sometimes they simply ignored him. He accepted the suspicion, but he had fashioned computer systems that meant they were blind without him. On the flight between Trabzon and Haydar Aliyev or Baku, he had decrypted the returning answers to the messages he had sent the previous evening and passed them, in clear, to the Major. He had kept out of earshot as they were discussed, which was expected of him: the future itinerary was in place. He had been given back the laptop – state-of-the-art – and cleaned it of the exchanges. Then he had murmured something about toothache and the need to find a chemist in Baku. They would have heard him, but only the master sergeant responded with a little flap of the hand. He was not asked how bad his toothache was. They had been met at the airport by the people they would negotiate with. He was given a schedule and told what time they expected to arrive at the hotel into which they were booked.
Natan went through the door into a lobby. At the far end he saw a heavy glass door that he assumed to be blast-proof, a shielded reception desk with a microphone to speak into, and a small air-lock through which documents could be passed. If he had gone to the American embassy he would have been stuck in a booth outside a security perimeter and they would have had small interest in him. It was the British he needed to make contact with. He had information to trade, and would do so with no backward glance. A wave of fear enveloped him. They would flay the skin off his back if they knew, or rip out his nails and teeth. They would wire him to the electricity and slice off his genitalia. He saw a portrait of the British Queen, a poster of rolling fields, a notice inviting submissions for an essay competition and another about the visit of a theatre group. He went to the counter. He tried to find his voice. He felt hands grasping him from behind and dragging him away. On each hand a finger was missing. They would hurt him – and then they would kill him. He had betrayed them.
He stammered, ‘I want to see a security officer on a matter of intelligence.’
‘Course I am. Really looking forward to it.’
‘That’s brilliant.’
Jonno hadn’t been able to reach her until late last evening – she’d said she’d been out with a girlfriend. He’d blurted out the invitation – there had been times in the last month or two when he’d almost convinced himself that Posie was cooling on him. There had been a pause when he’d made the offer. He’d sensed a sucking-in of breath, a big decision being weighed. And then she’d said she’d come. It was the morning after, and she’d slipped out from work, having pleaded her own sob story with her line manager. The coffee-house was about halfway between their desks.
‘It’s going to be good.’
‘I hope so.’
She was rueful: ‘I’ve never been there. The rest of the world’s been to the Costa, but not me.’
‘I haven’t either. I don’t really know what to expect.’
‘Sun, sangria and . . .’ There was a diamond touch in her eyes.
Jonno said quickly, ‘We’ll set the rules when we get there.’
‘I rang my mother last night. She gave me the usual stuff – a two-week break at this time of year was hardly the road to promotion, that kind of thing. I don’t think she’s had a day off in the last five years. And she said, ‘‘Do you really want to spend that amount of time with him?’’ That’s you, Jonno.’
She was his girlfriend. They were a reasonably steady item. He didn’t think she was seeing anyone else. Her family lived in the East Midlands, but he hadn’t been invited up for a weekend to meet them. He knew what she liked to eat, what films she wanted to see and the music she listened to, but he couldn’t have claimed to be her soul-mate. He had never seen her angry, or disappointed, facing a crisis or delirious with enjoyment . . . but the sex was all right, and they seemed good together. When she was out with other girls, he missed her. If they couldn’t meet, or if he had to cancel her weekend sleepover at his place, he didn’t know how she felt about it.
‘We’ll be fine,’ he said.
‘It’ll be good,’ she said. ‘I mean it. Lots of fun.’
‘It’ll be great.’
‘Better than that. Brilliant. Can’t wait. One long laugh – thanks.’
Their hands were together and they drank their coffee, spearing looks at their watches. They were taking liberties with the time, as they talked through where they’d meet in the morning for the drive to Stansted. He told her about the tickets and she promised to pay him back for hers. They talked a bit about cost-sharing when they were there, and then they stood up. Posie had her arms around his neck and gave him a long slow kiss. Jonno thought that house-sitting with the cat at Geoff and Fran’s Villa Paraiso might be Paradise and heaven rolled into one. Other punters in the coffee shop eyed them, one or two laughing. It was a good moment – no, a great one.
Out on the pavement they did cheek kisses, and had another hug, then went their separate ways.
The Major dominated the meeting.
He had not come this far, in an executive jet, to exchange small-talk.
The shipping agent they met would have expected a session with the doors closed and the windows keeping out the wind that came off the inland sea. They talked bulk and tonnage. The cargo was opiate paste, or crude heroin, refined in Ashgabat where the factory was cheaper than in Trabzon: Turkmenistan cost a pittance compared to Turkey. He preferred always to meet face to face so that he could watch a man’s eyes when they talked business. The Major believed he could recognise half-truths, evasions. Men were dead because they had not taken account of that skill.
The smoke from the shipping agent’s cigarettes was whipped away from his face by the gusts off the Caspian. They were outside. The temperature was hovering between fourteen and fifteen degrees, and they sat at tables by the pool, which was drained, and looked out over a patio area, the beach and the water. They were the only people who had ventured outside. The Major did not talk business in hotel rooms or restaurants. He regarded himself as a prime target of the Americans and wanted open spaces. He didn’t use mobile phones unless he had clearance from the Gecko. The shipping agent was cold – he had worn his best silk suit to the meeting – and showed his discomfort. They could not be overheard as they talked money. The deal involved a margin of trust: the shipping agent would build into his price what he must pay to Customs officials at each end of the transhipments across Azerbaijani territory. The Major could not verify the figures but his word was backed by his reputation – and the menace of those with him.
He did not cheat those he did business with. He pressed for hard bargains, but good ones. The threat of violence hung over every clinched deal if honesty was not two-sided. It was the same as it had been when he had started out, and the same for all of those who existed in that twilight world and under that particular roof. Authority was backed by violence. He knew of no other way to guarantee control. It was done, agreed.
He held out his hand, the gesture that pledged his word better than any lawyer’s contract. The shipping agent flinched. The Major had watched the man’s eyes all through the meeting: they had flitted across his hand, his warrant officer’s and the master sergeant’s. The missing fingers enhanced the threat. The warrant officer had sat behind the shipping agent, with his back to him, and had watched the hotel building; the master sergeant had a view of the area where the recliners were stacked and into the car park. The shipping agent shook the hand. The meeting was finished.
There was material to be sent from the laptop.
‘Is the Gecko back?’ He was not.
A shrug.
‘For fuck’s sake, he only went to buy pills for toothache.’ But he had not yet returned.
He led them inside. He wo
uld go back to his suite and the girl would be there. She’d had enough time to see her hair fixed – the last time he would pay for it. He reminded himself to take back the earrings before they flew.
‘Send the Gecko to me when he gets back.’
By her own admission, Liz Tremlett was a bit player in the world of international diplomatic relations. Until that morning she would have bet against herself on negative involvement in intelligence gathering. She had been called by the front desk.
The resident spook, Hugh, was across the border in Armenia on the monthly brainstorm meeting, his PA with him, and the ambassador was home on leave. The first secretary was in the northern town of Saki, opening a secondary school funded by British aid, and the military attaché was at home with influenza. Anyway, his home was in Tbilisi, Georgia, and . . . She had reached the spook by open phone and been told what to do. Paramount was that Bear should be with her every inch of the way. She had sensed, down the line, a crackling disappointment that the man was not where she sat.
Among her normal work, Liz Tremlett organised the annual English-language essay competition in Baku. She would have described the boy as pitiful. No spare weight on him, light stubble on his cheeks, an abrasion on his forehead and another on an elbow. His jeans – threadbare and faded – were torn at a knee and his glasses were bent. They were in an interview room behind the reception and security area but still cut off from the main staircase and lift. She should have been arranging the guest seating for the ambassador’s monthly dinner, or a greetings-card list, or working at pre-publicity for a Welsh choir’s visit – and there was preparation to be done for the Confederation of British Industry seminar . . .
The Outsiders Page 4