Zero Hour

by Andy McNab

  It sounded fine to me. I took a seat as she disappeared into the office.

  7

  I was surrounded by display cabinets bursting with trophies, framed certificates and photographs of bigwigs handing them over, shots of social and sports events, class and year portraits. It got me thinking. I decided to have a closer look.

  It took a few minutes, but it was worth it.

  A group of students dressed like Victorians stood, bathed in sunshine, outside the building; a party maybe, or some kind of commemoration. Lilian was in three of the pictures. She was alone in one, poking her tongue out at the camera. In another she looked almost shy, alongside three or four other girls. It was the third that interested me. The lad she was with had eaten a few too many pies. He had a mop of fuzzy brown hair and bum-fluff on his chin. He and Lilian had their arms around each other. Their eyes were swivelled towards the camera and they seemed to be enjoying a very un-Victorian kiss.

  I was about to move on to the next display when Anna rushed out of the office. ‘We need to go.’

  I kept scanning the photos. ‘Hang on, look at—’

  She grabbed me. ‘Now, Nick. Now.’

  Sweaterman was piling down the corridor towards us with a posse of six or seven very pissed-off mates.

  ‘What the fuck’s happening?’

  The office clerk came to her door. She shouted and waved her arm to move us on.

  ‘No questions.’

  I started walking fast beside her. We went back the same way we’d come in, with Sweaterman’s posse in hot pursuit.

  8

  Anna didn’t turn a hair as we drove away. There was no need to flap. They hadn’t jumped into vehicles and followed us. All we had to do was make some distance.

  I watched in the wing mirror my side as we rumbled across a cobbled junction. Trams, buses, cars, carts – all tried to head in a dozen different directions at the same time. Once we were clear I glanced behind us.

  ‘What the fuck was all that about?’

  ‘They thought we were secret police.’

  I turned back but kept an eye on the wing mirror. A dark blue Beamer with the new shark-eye headlights and low-rider sills was shadowing us, but keeping its distance. The front fairing made it look like a hovercraft. It was having a hard time with the cobbles and potholes.

  ‘So teachers now stand up to the police round here, do they?’

  ‘The people united will never be defeated. Haven’t you heard?’ She allowed herself a smile. ‘Or, as they’ve been saying more recently, the people with Twitter will never be defeated.’

  ‘Like the green revolution in Iran?’

  ‘They had it here first. As soon as they heard the result, the students started tweeting, trying to mobilize opposition. There was also a rush on Facebook and videos on YouTube. Suddenly everybody knew what was going on. It gave them a sense of power. Something they’d never experienced before.

  ‘The police wanted to get in there and grip everybody, of course. The first people to arrive for a rally outside the government buildings found their cell phones were dead. The network had been switched off. But somebody had Twitter, and they used it to give live updates over the GPRS networks. The authorities won that round, but it could be the beginning of the end of totalitarianism. It’s fascinating, don’t you think – what started as social networks becoming the tools of political change? I might do a piece on it—’

  I cut in. ‘Chuck a right.’

  She didn’t ask. She just did.

  We turned onto a single-carriageway street lined with shops and apartment blocks. A group of cyclists, all women in black, wobbled over the cobbles in front of us. Anna had to slow down. She glanced in the rear-view. ‘The BMW?’

  I didn’t turn round. I smiled and moved my hands as if telling her a funny story. ‘He still with us? He’s been back there a bit too long.’

  She turned her head and smiled back. ‘The registration is C VS 911. That’s a Chisinau plate. Four men. Very short hair. Not smiling, not talking.’

  I nodded as we eased past the women, still jabbering away with no awareness of the vehicles trying to get past in both directions. Anna changed up and we accelerated.

  ‘Take the next right.’

  The indicator clicked away. The Polo lurched across a pothole as we hit a small side road. I sat back and waited for Anna.

  ‘They’ve come with us.’

  ‘Any of them talking on a phone or radio?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. They’re not setting an ambush. As long as we keep moving we’re OK for now. Every time we turn, see if they communicate.’

  ‘Who do you think they are? Secret police? Uni security?’

  ‘Did you get as far as mentioning Lilian’s name in the office?’

  ‘No. The woman was on the phone, face like thunder. She was probably getting the good news from the guy in the sweater.’

  ‘Could it be the university warning us off, or trying to find out who we are? Might be police, I guess – maybe somebody saw me checking out Lilian’s picture. They may be doing the same. Whatever, we need to bin them as fast as we can.’

  ‘How am I going to do that? Are we going to drive around in circles until we run out of fuel?’

  ‘Head back towards the hotel. Remember the supermarket across the road? Drive into the car park.’

  We overtook an old guy with ladders roped to his bike as she worked her way back onto the main.

  ‘They’re with us.’

  ‘Normal speed. Nothing we can do about them. We’ve got to concentrate on that lard-arse in the photo. We need to find out who he is. Maybe she’s done a runner with him. It could be something as simple as that. Falling in love and all that sort of shit.’

  ‘How are you going to go back and check that out, Nicholas?’ She sounded annoyed. ‘You going to disguise yourself as a normal human being or something?’

  ‘Give Lena a call and tell her we’re on our way.’

  I pulled out her iPhone and dialled the number. She was waffling away in Russian as we approached the multi-storey.

  ‘We want one on the ground floor if we can. In between a couple of parked cars.’

  She drove under the height bar and into the gloom.

  ‘There, to the right – straight in.’

  Anna swung the wheel. The Beamer followed us in and rolled to a halt. They only had two options: back out, park up and come back on foot, or come past us looking for a space. They couldn’t park close by because we’d have eyes-on. With luck, they’d have to carry on up to the next floor.

  Anna slipped in between two minging old Skoda-type estate cars. The Beamer’s tyres screeched on the painted concrete as it carried on up the ramp.

  She turned off the engine and started to get out. I gripped her arm. ‘Bring everything. This car’s history. We’re not coming back.’

  We made for the pedestrian exit. There was no point checking behind. It was all about making distance and getting as many angles between us as we could.

  We’d soon find out if they were following. I hoped not. There were a lot more of them than there were of us. And they were big fuckers.

  9

  17.05 hrs

  Irina sat behind the desk. Lena collated documents and pictures for her visit to the mother of the girl in Barcelona. She was still trying to trace her. The address they’d been given was wrong. I could barely see them. The women were all smoking their cigarettes like they were one step away from the firing squad.

  Anna brought them up to speed. ‘Nicholas heard rumours about one of the traffickers in London. His source said he was moving girls to the UK and had a contact at the university.’

  ‘Contact?’ Irina rested her hands on the mountain of box files in front of her. ‘What is his name?’

  I shrugged. ‘I wasn’t given his name, but I was shown his picture. There’s a shot of him outside the faculty office.’

  Lena was still gobbing off on her mobile.

 
‘We got chased out before we could find his name.’

  She didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘I’ll go and have a look.’

  ‘You sure?’

  Of course she was. She’d done things that were a lot more dangerous.

  ‘When?’

  ‘As soon as possible. Now?’

  ‘Lena can drive me.’

  ‘OK. He’s overweight, with big frizzy hair. In one of the photos he’s kissing a girl. She’s blonde, dyed blonde.’

  Lena closed down her mobile. ‘No problem. I’ll drop you off.’ She’d been listening to every word. She pulled another cigarette from her pack and stabbed it at us. ‘You want to stay here?’

  ‘If that’s OK.’

  ‘Of course.’

  They started towards the door, arm in arm. Lena’s mobile kicked off again. She dug in her bag. ‘But please don’t leave. The office must never be unattended.’

  Anna and I sat back and enjoyed a moment’s silence.

  Eventually I stood up and went over to the stack of files on the desk.

  10

  We spent nearly an hour flicking through them. There wasn’t anything to check on a PC because there wasn’t a PC.

  I was feeling rough.

  Anna read my mind. ‘Up the stairs, you can’t miss it.’

  I followed her instructions and dry-swallowed a couple of Smarties. Fuck the water: I didn’t trust anything out of a tap in this neck of the woods.

  Anna was kneeling by the fax machine when I got back, sifting through sheets of paper. ‘Maybe the police don’t want them to be online. It would make Lena’s job too easy.’

  I picked up a box file labelled 2005 and discarded it. Our target wouldn’t have left school by then.

  ‘I bet it’s Lena who doesn’t want to be online. Cell phones are giving the police enough information already.’

  Anna brought another pile of documents to the desk for me to rifle through. ‘You OK, Nicholas?’

  ‘Fine. I was knackered from the flight and we haven’t exactly been dossing around since then, have we?’ I paused. ‘All this smoke’s not helping.’

  Anna scrutinized the desk top. ‘I’ve been thinking, Nicholas. Maybe we could go away together . . . Spring is so beautiful in Moscow.’

  ‘What about CNN?’

  ‘CNN can wait. Maybe I could show you the White Nights in St Petersburg.’ Her face lit up. ‘It’s such high latitude the sun doesn’t sink below the horizon. You can walk along the river in daylight, even at two in the morning.’

  ‘Sounds like an insomniac’s paradise.’

  We sat in silence for a while. I didn’t know what more to say. Did I look that bad? Was it that obvious?

  ‘Nicholas . . . Why are you really doing this job? You don’t need to. It’s not a game, you know.’

  ‘Part of me has always tried to pretend it is a game. But not this time. I don’t want to go all dewy-eyed on you, but I’m worried about this girl. I don’t want to let her down. I’ve been there before, and I didn’t like it.’

  Her iPhone rang. ‘Hello, Irina.’ She grabbed a pen and paper with her spare hand. I watched her write just two words.

  Viku Slobozia.

  They spoke a little longer, and then she closed down.

  ‘That’s him. He’s a post-grad. Irina’s already called Lena. Neither of them has heard of him. Lena’s picking her up.’

  I’d been hoping his name would ring bells. They’d know who he was and where he lived, and we’d go down to his flat and come out with Lilian. What now? I picked up a file with a photocopied picture on the cover, and a light bulb flicked on in my head. ‘You know what, Anna? Lilian might not be on Facebook any more, but this boy might be.’

  11

  ‘Found him!’ She held up the iPhone. ‘He’s quite the Mr Lover Man. At least, he seems to think so.’

  She expanded the first picture with her thumb and forefinger. Viku Slobozia was giving it some in a bar, in full eighties porn-film gear. He clearly thought he was Daniel Craig. He’d not held back on the hair gel, but the frizz remained defiant. The dickhead even had Aviators on indoors.

  She scrolled down. ‘Here we are.’

  It was the photo I’d seen at the uni, the one where he’d mistaken Lilian’s face for a pie. She scrolled some more. Lilian was only one in a cast of dozens. Mr Lover Man had many ‘chicks’. There was a different girl in every picture. He either had a giant appetite, or they didn’t stick around long. I couldn’t blame them. Maybe Tresillian was right about all this social-networking shit. It made you look a dickhead, and for ever.

  She pointed at a caption. ‘It says: “Viku loves the ladies.” ’

  I bet he did. But I still couldn’t believe the ladies loved him. I went back through his gallery of conquests. Lilian included, they all looked younger than him. Maybe that was his secret. He was a post-grad who only hit on first and second years.

  The next three pictures had me worried.

  I expanded one of Slobo sitting in an old-style silver Merc convertible, one of the little two-seater jobs with a steel roof that folded back and tucked into the boot. A machine like that should have been way beyond his student grant.

  What he cradled in his hands concerned me more. He posed side-on to the camera, gangster-style, the barrel of a chrome-plated Desert Eagle semi-automatic pistol aimed at the ground about ten feet away. There was no mag in it, but that didn’t matter. The thing was still so heavy he couldn’t hold it straight. Fully loaded, it would hold nine .50 rounds to fuck people up with. The weapon fitted his profile, of course. As a bad-boy brand it was up there with Mercs and magnums of Cristal champagne.

  ‘Why don’t you email him, Anna? Get a date. Looks like he’d give a warm welcome to a new girl in town. Just stay away from his mouth.’

  Her brow furrowed as she scrolled to the end of Slobo’s picture library. ‘Don’t you think there might be an age issue?’

  ‘We’ll worry about that when the time comes. He’s not going to know until he meets you, is he? By then it’ll be too late.’

  She hesitated a few seconds while she gave it some thought. Then the thumbs got moving again. ‘This guy’s so vain he’s got to be checking his page ten times a day.’ She smiled. ‘I bet he replies inside an hour.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I don’t think Mr Lover Man will turn down what I’m saying is on offer.’

  12

  We could hear Lena gobbing into her phone from half a street away. That thing never left her ear.

  She swept in like a tornado, grabbed the first available piece of paper and started scribbling. Irina was just behind her. She looked down at the coffee-table and saw no mugs. ‘You haven’t had coffee?’

  ‘Didn’t even think about it. We were checking files. We thought we’d have a look in case our guy was tucked away in there somewhere.’

  She looked almost offended, like we’d spurned her hospitality. ‘I’ll make some.’

  Lena accepted one of Anna’s cigarettes and they both lit up. She finally finished the call as Irina came back with the brews and placed her mobile carefully on her desk. ‘The mother broke down with joy. I’m trying to arrange a call between them. The mother has no phone. They’re poor. They have nothing. But, hey . . .’ Her hands went up in the air to signal a change of subject. ‘So what do we know about this Viku Slobozia?’

  She listened intently as Anna tried to explain how we’d found him on Facebook. Her eyes narrowed. She wasn’t having any of it. ‘This doesn’t ring true. There’s more to it. Why didn’t you tell us you were going to the university? Irina could have gone in for you straight away. We’re here to help.’

  There was no way I was going to let Anna bring up Lilian’s name. I jumped in. ‘It was my fault. I’m trying to protect people in London. I didn’t want anybody here to know what we were doing. And then I met you two. I didn’t want to affect what you’re doing, or add to your workload. But I realize now that I could have messed things up.’r />
  Irina took a sip of her brew. ‘What next?’

  ‘I’m waiting for a reply.’ Anna looked up from her iPhone screen and grinned. ‘I’m an innocent seventeen-year-old today, new to the city. He’s in for a shock, isn’t he?’

  They didn’t like the joke. They both looked concerned. ‘He might have contacts in London, but who cares about them? It’s the contacts he’s got here you have to worry about.’

  I shifted in my seat. ‘It’s the only way, Lena. He likes linking up with young girls. But don’t worry, I’m not going to put Anna in danger. I’ll take over before he gets his tongue out.’ I didn’t mention his Desert Eagle.

  Anna’s iPhone kicked off. ‘I told you.’ Her face fell the moment she opened it up. ‘Shit. He wants my Facebook page.’

  ‘Tell him you haven’t got one.’

  Lena cut in: ‘No, tell him your parents wouldn’t let you have one. But now you’re free of them and in the city, you want to put one together. You want to get as many friends as possible. Maybe he can help you do that. If he’s a trafficker or he’s moving you on, he’s going to take the bait. It’s perfect for him. No Facebook, no trace. None of your friends are going to be worried about you because you haven’t refreshed your page.’

  Anna thumbs bounced around and she hit send.

  We had less than a minute to wait. The phone vibrated again. Anna wasn’t impressed. ‘Now he wants a picture.’

  Irina stood up, pulling back her hair. ‘Use me.’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘You don’t want to go that route again.’

  Lena gave a sad smile. ‘It’s all right. It won’t be the first time Irina’s posed as a potential victim to flush these fucks out.’

  Irina nodded. ‘Nick, it’s not a problem.’

  ‘That’s all well and good, but if he wants to meet, it’s going to be Anna or me standing there. What happens then?’