A Damned Serious Business

by Gerald Seymour

  Not long. A cool, clean voice, accented Russian as spoken by a Pole or a Czech. A murmur of introduction and the brief naming of a client, a security firm in São Paolo. A recommendation from Gdansk. A brief shiver in his back, and the mention of the money he would make, and the throwaway that his friend, Martin, would be part of it. He accepted . . . could not have done otherwise. His bank card was blocked, his rent was behind, his meals were increasingly basic and his drinking curtailed. Bad weather loomed, when no visitors came, and he would be reduced to standing, over Christmas and New Year, outside the restaurants in Raekoja Plats in crap fancy dress, hawking for business inside, with the funnelled winds cutting him. Too many years back he had done the run for Kaliningrad out of Gdansk to spy out the naval base for the Russians’ Baltic fleet. It would be good to be with Martin again, and with Kristjan – the woman had said she would call him next. Their grandfathers had come back to their home town in Estonia after weeks of training and preparation from British instructors, with an intelligence shopping list and the equipment for sabotage attacks.

  The patrol boat, on a stormy night with sleet blocking visibility and the myriad islands along with the popple of the waves screwing the radar, had put the three young men ashore: Martin’s grandfather shot dead in the reeds close to the shore . . . Kristjan’s grandfather seeming to break clear of the cordon and reach the main street . . . and Toomas’s grandfather wounded by gunfire in a small park near the town’s walls, and taken. Not to hospital, but to Tallinn, and brought to the building with the big basements on Pikk.

  Now, above the basements, were what the For Sale boards described as luxury apartments, homes for the youthful élite who had made good money from the newly independent country. The building’s past, as headquarters of the Soviet special agency, KGB, could still give encouragement to the ghosts of six decades before. Toomas’s grandfather had come here, received no medical attention, had been drugged to give him the strength to survive immediate interrogation, had been questioned while the tapes had turned and the investigators had hovered over him. He’d died in Cell 9A, and been consigned to an unmarked grave. On his way to and from the castle yard where he dressed as a mediaeval knight and entertained tourists, Toomas passed the building. The windows to the basement were now bricked up. The images of a young man, in bloodied clothing, wide-eyed and hoarse and maybe trying to be brave; maybe realising in the moments before the release of death that the organisation he had believed in was corrupt and that he had stumbled into a trap, and, had had no chance. Light rain was falling on the city as Toomas returned to his lodging room and started on the preparations to fulfil the new contract. Good to be wanted, and rare for him. He was in poor condition and short-breathed, but did not think it important. He would be driving to St Petersburg, not a problem.

  They barely spoke. Nikki sat in the big room that had the work surfaces for their laptops, and where webs of cables burst from wall sockets and were tangled chaos, and some smoked weed – forbidden but ignored – and some were on cigarettes, and those who did the longest shifts would have ’phets to keep them going through the night. Himself, he drank coffee. When he went to the kettle, he did not ask the Roofer or HookNose or Gorilla if they wanted some. They were adjacent but hardly communicated, and did not socialise. The Ministry defences against his cyber entry in Chile’s capital city of Santiago were pathetic. He had already exfiltrated the necessary file on a contract’s confidential fall-back position, and had passed it on. The kettle howled, and he stretched and arched his back, and his joints creaked. Close to him were some of the people he would betray later in that week . . . he did not know what part he’d play. He had no love for any of them, for nobody outside the building except his sister. He went back to his chair and put down the coffee, and did not look to either side. The Roofer was an urban climber, went each weekend to Moscow and scaled the tallest of the Stalin-era buildings, had been many times to the star topping the Kadrinskaya, and was a celebrity inside his circle. HookNose was clever, arrogant, and quieter now that his face had been ‘rearranged’ by a guard on the gate to whom he was rude when his entry processing was slow, but the fist and the punch had come from an uncle of the GangMaster. Gorilla had the body of a child, the physique of a weakling, was timid in conversation, and came alive when the lights flickered on his laptop’s screen.

  They did not share sandwiches, pizza slices, or girlfriends, but lived their own lives. They were certain of the fact that they – each of them – was the best, and the rest of the team were ‘donkeys’. Controlling them was their GangMaster, Vasily, the avtoritet, middle-aged but regularly with a new suit of quality Italian fashion and a new woman sitting in the passenger seat of a new sports car, and always drumming up new contracts. In theory, Nikki – indeed any of them – could have shut down his laptop, tucked it into a rucksack, collected what monies were owed him – might be $2000 – and gone out into the dusk to search out a new employer, to fetch himself a new roof . . . not as simple.

  The GangMasters, those who ran the city of St Petersburg, were seldom in dispute and seemed models of commercial cooperation. They did not often poach, unless the object on offer was clearly beyond the capabilities, for exploitation, of a lesser clan. Nikki might have admitted, to himself, that he was held by the throat – he was employed at a monthly salary a little in excess of $2000. They had tight hold of him. If he attempted to break free then a phone call would be made and he would have nowhere to run to because he could not abandon his sister whose passport they held. Nor did he have money abroad because the account was in lock-down. He had called Stockholm and tried to speak to the manager who handled him, but had been put off, delayed indefinitely, and when he had asked for a transfer of cash – to a bank in Copenhagen – there had been vague excuses about computing failures. Cold hands gripped him, tough calloused fingers were embedded on his windpipe, and they squeezed, and pain seemed to run in him, and despair.

  They were all of the same stock, Nikki and the Roofer and HookNose and Gorilla. They were clever and rebellious. Had been rejected by the FSB recruiters looking for the disciplined ones who might be inducted and work full-time in a barracks. Had been offered the pick of courses at the university. Had either rejected the invitation or had lasted a year and then dropped out . . . all of them. The remaining twenty hackers on the books of the GangMaster were fulfilled when they crawled along the narrow tunnels and entered the affairs and scholarship of men, women and corporations, and slipped away through trapdoors, via the help of the Trojan Horses, with the bundles of passwords and credit card details. The opportunities were without limit. It had brought him little. There was a sound behind him, by the door, a shuffle of shoes, whispering.

  He looked. Why did he look? Did he show concern? Should not have done, but he had eased back in his chair and had turned his head. The Roofer and HookNose and Gorilla had not, were still absorbed by their screens and the columns of numbers running riot on them. The GangMaster was there, and a man who wore the uniform of seniority in FSB: short haircut, a suit of poor fit but expensive cloth, a belt tight on a heavy stomach on which shirt buttons were stretched. They were watched, might have been animals that farmers were discussing considering which would get a better price at the city’s slaughter-house. Nikki knew the FSB colonel by sight; he came to the building once a month and might have collected the thick envelope that was the price of a roof. The GangMaster coughed for their attention. They gave it, but not with grace.

  ‘I would like to remind you of the situation confronting two brothers – shits – who lived behind an armour-plated door. Not any longer. They are in Kolpino and in the Kresty Two gaol, accused of stealing from a fund that supports veterans of the Great Patriotic War. They took some twelve million roubles that were designated to help the veterans in the final days of their lives. As officers used a thermal lance to get through the door, the brothers stuffed money and memory sticks and phones, all the paraphernalia, into the bog and tried to flush it away: they blocked i
t. It is a lesson. There are matters which are prohibited and matters which are not, but you know that, and all your friends know that. But two brothers did not and will now rot in their cells, and if they come out for exercise, and are pretty, and have tight arses, then they will be fucked hard by the older zeks. Yes? We should spit on them. Perhaps you read of it in the papers yesterday. I think it would be difficult for those two brothers when they are in Kresty Two and they have no friends to cry with, only sore passages . . . I thought you would like to know. Many friends come this week and we will discuss and plan for a big operation, and it has the highest sanction. Please, carry on with your work.’

  The GangMaster eased back into the corridor and pulled the door after him. The other three had not stopped their quiet tapping at the keys. Nikki shivered, and felt the cold at his back, and the chill on his skin. He would have sworn he had heard the whispered last remark of the GangMaster to the colonel of FSB.

  ‘Little bastards – I’d not trust one of them. Come and have . . .’

  Nikki’s next target – to provide cash for the money mules to launder – was a law firm in the city of Orléans, on the River Loire in the heart of France. He did not know whether it was a fine city or a rubbish one. What mattered was that the lawyers handled the financial affairs of many wealthy clients . . . like picking the pocket of a man with a white stick . . . and he did not know what he would be asked to do.

  As a major in the service of Federal’naya sluzhba bezopasnosti, Danik could have demanded a chauffeur to take him from home to the headquarters building at Liteyny Bridge. He declined that privilege. Neither he nor Julia, his wife, attracted attention to where and for whom he worked. He did not have a driver to take him to the Big House, nor was their apartment – two bedrooms and shared with their thirteen-year-old son – in a fashionable quarter of the city, but in a narrow street off Nevski Prospekt. At work, he had a room that was without natural light or a view. All that he did without was of his own choice, and his wife was wholehearted in her agreement of the principles he laid down.

  The Major was secretive about his work, not only with neighbours in their block – who would have thought him one more government bureaucrat and without influence – but also with his supposed colleagues. They had drivers to bring them around the city, had bigger apartments, and some owned small villas in the woods outside the ring road. They also provided for others – the ‘roofs’ that were an accepted benefit of such a position. His car was a Renault, with big miles on the clock, and if he wished to do casual surveillance – not put an entire team to work – it was a useful model. The woman he had tailed had not seen him the night before, nor that morning – and then he had gone home and, with his wife, completed the redecoration of the kitchen. Paintwork drying, she had left for the hospital where her expertise was dermatology, and he had gone to FSB.

  The woman was a sporadic target, but interesting to him for associations – and stupid. Useful to see where she went and then park with an infra-red camera on his lap and watch for the people coming to that café, and build a better picture. Useful also for him to see that she went to the airport early and shivered on the concourse and waited for her brother to come through off a Stockholm flight and then had driven him to the heart of an industrial estate in Kupchino district. The Major had noted the strength of the fences around the place, the size of the guards and the ferocity of a tethered dog, and drew conclusions. Obvious to his practised eye. He did not have a better car because he was clean and was not rewarded with one from the BMW range, as were his superiors. Nor did he live in a smarter apartment, and have a second home amongst the pines because he had no clan leader who paid him for discretion. He did not have a ‘roof’, nor did he provide one.

  She was a little mouse of a woman, and stupid. He had arrested her twenty months before, along with others from that vipers’ hole, and she had faced Public Nuisance charges. The leaders of the group had been jailed, but she and two others had just been reprimanded by the judiciary. She had lost her place at the Conservatory and if she were taken into custody again she would go to a labour camp. She was a potential delinquent and was therefore of interest to the Major. His role was to stifle dissent among the crazy few who, he believed, lived off a diet of self-induced publicity and staged stunts that were juvenile but also offensive: the painting of the penis on the bridge in front of the Big House; the naked man nailing his scrotum into the tarmacadam; another who stripped then bound himself in loops of razor wire; the gang that undressed in a public museum and performed sex for their cameras . . . they were at the front of rallies that denounced the President. The Major monitored them, knew most of them by name, tolerated stupidity, but clamped hard when a dangerous message was preached. If in St Petersburg, a group of girl-kids such as Pussy Riot had danced and made music over the altar of the cathedral dedicated to Saint Isaac of Dalmatia, he would without a qualm have dragged them off, handcuffed, to the cells. He believed in the rule of law. The law said what was permissible and what was violation. He took no bribes, gave no favours, was passionate about the disciplines of the legal code. He was regarded by colleagues as a man to be wary of, and it was said that he had the ear of a general in the upper reaches of the organisation. They were careful not to cross him.

  The girl was stupid. She had stayed in the company of the dissenters. Her passport had been taken from her and she had no future, living hand to mouth from the table provided by her brother. And he was Nikkolas, employed by a gang operating out of the Kupchino district, and that was another story, and another complication. There was a supposed ‘red line’ around the gang, around the building and around the criminality practised there – another story, because a ‘roof’ was above that building, and the source of the protection was a colonel in an office suite two floors above. A further reason for the suspicion surrounding the Major was that he did not belong to their community; he had been recruited from the KGB of neighbouring Belarus, had come from Minsk to work in St Petersburg, with his wife and school-age son. His loyalties, other than to the law he had sworn to uphold, were not to his more senior officers. Efforts had been made to draw him into the web of corruption that nestled in the Big House, the network of favours and indebtedness. His refusals had been blunt and without equivocation. He lived within parameters and did his own work, but was not a crusader.

  In his office, the Major updated his file on the young woman, Yekaterina, and those she associated with.

  How would it have been on that day, in the full beat of summer, two centuries before? The armies had started to catch the pace of manoeuvre as they headed towards the sloping fields by the village of ?Waterloo . . . Boot had brought back a timetable from Stockholm. In his mind, the meeting of the more talented hackers in the industrial park hemmed in by tower blocks in the Kupchino district of St Petersburg matched the day of the battle. Four days before the immense collision that so fascinated Boot, the great Duke, always belittled by his opponent, the Emperor, would have started to place his disparate and multinational force into possible blocking positions to prevent the march of the French into Brussels. He would have been anxious, uncertain of the outcome, and of what weight to put on the qualities of the supposed allies. The Duke would have known that the Emperor was on the march through northern France, but intelligence would have been poor to non-existent, and no HumInt source was sending written dispatches to him. A great army approached but he did not know which bridges it had crossed, what route it was taking, how many guns it brought, the strength of the cavalry, and did not know, in spite of protestations, if his own people would stand and fight when called to. Great forces of young men, the majority of them inexperienced in the shock of combat, groping towards each other at the pace of an infantry march, three miles an hour and over rough ground and farm lanes, tens of thousands of them.

  If there were lessons to be learned from the Duke, then Boot tried to absorb them. Top of the list was calmness, no visible sign of anxiety. Not just the tactics of military
manoeuvre interested Boot, but in particular the leadership displayed by that grand commander, and the steadiness of nerve, and the ability to think on the hoof, change direction. The loneliness of the Duke intrigued him, too. He sent men into danger, sometimes expected to buckle under the weight of it, then looked to the Duke for guidance and strength. Difficult, of course it was difficult, but Boot could hide his emotions. He had taken a train to the west London suburb of Willesden, then walked to his destination, a demolition yard. He had waited patiently until the main gate was unlocked and he was escorted past raucous dogs to a portacabin. A mug of strong tea was in his hands, and he told Dennis what he needed, and when, and to where it should be delivered, and what remuneration would be applicable, and what weight might be necessary for the job involved. The weight, the timer, the detonator were specified.

  ‘Always a bit of shrinkage in this line of business – thank God – and always will be.’

  The voice boomed at Boot. He assumed that deafness went with the trade. The man, usually called Menace but that was not a familiarity Boot used, was gangling and large-limbed and carried a shock of unruly grey hair, and wore a wide grin. He’d seemed genuinely pleased that Boot had made the journey to the site by the railway line where, far from view, was a concrete-reinforced bunker holding a variety of explosives of different origins.

  ‘Not featuring in the books, of course.’

  Several small jobs, destruction and disruption, had relied in the last years on devices manufactured by the Menace. He had the wealth of experience gained from initial work with bomb disposal in the Province, then from the IED curse in Basra, then on the freelance bits and pieces he put together for Boot and others in the shadowlands. Always seemed to get a good bang for the buck. There were many people whom Boot knew who would not have acknowledged to any investigator that they had met him or done business with him. The difficulty was that they were all – and Boot – an ageing clan and work was less frequent so they retired and went to live on the coast. The Menace would see Boot out . . . The timing on the trigger was important, and the description of the building, and where the meeting would be held and the thickness of the walls and of the ceiling. Always a stickler for detail.