She pondered, only briefly. She woke him, surprised by the force necessary to stir him, told him of an incident, and a location. He was – then – awake and alert and was coughing, spitting into his handkerchief, and rubbing at his eyes, and he took his side-arm from the drawer, with its holster, buckled them, snapped his fingers for the sergeant to drive him, took a vest from the cupboard, and was gone.
He had been brought a pastry by Daff, sweet and clogging round his teeth, and coffee in a beaker. Her flask was finished and she’d gone to find a café. Boot maintained his watch.
He blinked frequently and looked into thin sunshine. Almost gold, the sun rose above Ivangorod on the far side of the river, beyond the bridge, and the rich colour of the skies was misted by the first smoke from the chimneys and then peeled off into horizontal lines. Hard to look into the bright line of the dawn, and hard to stave off the tiredness. The first of the day’s small-time smugglers were coming over the bridge, going from east to west, carrying heavy plastic bags that would be floppy, empty, when they returned an hour later having dropped off the early delivery of vodka and cigarettes. Most were old people, stooping, and the wind blew hard on them on the open walkway. A few were younger and braved the bluster of the wind, and did not need to clutch at a handrail. But the vigil was pointless because he could not see their faces. They were vague and blurred, and none stood out . . . Not that he had seen them for himself, but Daff had shoved photographs under his nose, and he’d have sensed them. Not certain they would be walking, not certain they would be driving . . . not certain if they were alive . . . and not certain if they were still at liberty . . . and not certain where the one who called himself Merc was. It weighed on him, and bowed his shoulders, and he had wolfed down the pastry, hadn’t the heart to tell Daff that it had tasted foul, instead had grimaced by way of gratitude, and the coffee was worse.
She was his source of news. Daff had been down to the queue waiting for clearance to leave Estonia. Could attract men’s attention when she leaned forward, even in the quilted anorak. There had been a shooting up the road, twenty kilometres away, would have been gangsters, bandits, hooligans; a militia operation had started. A shrug, more cigarettes. Anything on the radio? Nothing . . . Boot was starved of what he needed to know.
She let him drink the coffee, and then forgot herself sufficiently to take a small handkerchief from a pocket and use it to wipe crumbs from his lips and what had stuck in the unshaven stubble. He’d have admitted that his collar, tight with a tie beneath it, felt dirtied and stale. Something of a liberty for her to nanny him, and he should have shown displeasure. She took the beaker and the pastry’s wrapping, and binned them. A little light cough, as if it were time to move and he was merely humoured. There would have been many others who shared a similar situation that morning.
Might have been in Peshawar, and waiting for some poor compromised devil to emerge from the tribal homelands of the North West Frontier having slapped a beacon on the under-side of a wagon used by a mujah’ commander. Might have been up in one of those little Turkish towns on the Syrian border and an asset late for a rendezvous, and time crumbling, and wondering if a video of a decapitation was already in post-production. Might have been in the Control Tower at RAF Akrotiri, awaiting the return of a Special Forces Chinook, which might have brought out a burned agent, and might not. Might have been in Kabul, or Baghdad, or up close to the poppy fields of the Triangle, or the coca leaf farms of Peru, and might have been in Grand Cayman or Turks and Caicos or the Virgins and looking for the key that would unlock the accounts of bad bastards. Little operations running all over the place, damn them, and had to be if VBX was to ‘punch above its weight’, be a decisive player in the grand game. Men like himself, and women, would be staring into the middle distance, into places of acute danger, unable to intervene – and were responsible and carried the weight of it with differing degrees of comfort . . . He had once seen a senior officer in the Service weep because a good family man, a source in the Iraqi police, had ended up crucified, with flies laying eggs in his wounds, and a woman, his junior, had slapped his face and ordered him to ‘Get a grip for fuck’s sake’. Or, might have been sitting, on the 07.38 out of Motspur Park and heading for Waterloo and a day in the comfortable company of a screen and a canteen lunch, and there were plenty who did, and plenty who knew little of the long stare into a fogged distance, and . . .
She held his arm, took him to the car. He reflected how much of his working life had been dissipated, wasted, in waiting. So much of it. Tried to pull Merc’s face to the front of his mind, but failed. At the end of the short journey, the back of Igor Gramov Street, he’d have fallen on his face if she had not supported him as he climbed through the window.
Martin was on the right, Kristjan on the left. Toomas hung between them.
‘You think, Kristjan, he meant that? A beer on the other side?’
‘I think, Martin, he meant it.’
And Toomas’s feet sloshed in the mud but he hadn’t the strength to lift them. Toomas could neither help himself nor speak, was a limp weight.
‘Would you want him, Martin, to get you an Estonian beer or a foreign one?’
‘I would want, Kristjan, a local beer – any sort of piss, but local.’
Toomas was alive, coughed, had blood at his mouth. He was a burden.
‘On the other side, Martin, I think any beer is acceptable.’
‘Not Russian beer, Kristjan, any beer but Russian.’
They had found a narrow track, not adequate for a vehicle, good enough for them. Could no longer smell the fumes of the burned cars. The wind wove through the trees. If they had not concentrated on carrying Toomas, and if the big issue had not been the beer, they would drink in Narva when the Irishman put his money on the bar, then the clatter of the branches would have unsettled them. They would go faster without him.
‘On the other side, Martin, which would you prefer him to buy you? A woman or a beer?’
‘All the women there are Russian, Kristjan, so I would want a beer – not their beer.’
There had been an eyewitness in Haapsalu. She had lived in one of the pretty brightly painted wooden-framed homes, fishermen’s, on the town’s strand, and had seen the flares come down; she had been restless and had been smoking at an open window. Had seen the light descending on a small parachute, had seen three men who were cumbersome with the packs they attempted to drag through the reed bed. Had seen the tracer rounds that were fired, red streaks . . . some said that she was a changed woman, damaged by it . . . had seen two try to carry a third out of the reed bed, then had dropped him, had disappeared. An ambulance man on the scene said afterwards that the top of the head was sliced off, and that death would have been immediate. The two survivors would not have known it in the darkness . . . Martin’s grandfather who was dead, and Toomas’s grandfather who was injured within the next two minutes, and Kristjan’s grandfather who had tried to get home but dogs had brought him down . . . And three girls, young and heavy with child, would have heard the shouting and the barking, and the sirens, and the gunfire. They did not contemplate leaving Toomas while he was still alive.
‘I tell you the truth, Martin, I might drink any beer when we are on the other side.’
‘Any beer, Kristjan – and I am not the accountant I wanted to be, and you are not the boxer you wanted to be – we are fucked up, but we are now agreed.’
‘Any beer.’
‘And I would open Toomas’s mouth and would pour any beer down his throat.’
‘Any beer, Martin, but not Russian beer.’
Laughter from them both. Nervous, frightened, laughter. They trudged on and the wind hurried them.
Dawn hesitantly broke, filtered to daylight. While men and women should have been scurrying to work, their kids heading for school, pensioners on the move to the shops or for meetings where they might gossip and smoke, on a main street between big accommodation blocks and leading to an industrial estate – on the outskirts
of the second city – was the Major’s ‘incident’.
First a police cordon. Waved down, an officious bastard telling them access was prohibited, who had been shown an ID, and had then been ignored. A patrol car was skewed across the road, doors open. Its crew, male and female militia, crouched in a doorway. His sergeant had slowed, swung past it.
Then a side turning, and more men in uniform, some standing and some huddled, and all clutching firearms and looking as though the Third World War was either launched or about to be. They had been shouted at, and the Major’s anger had run unchecked. He’d lowered the window, let in a blast of air, had bawled for them to go shag their mothers, their aunts, their daughters, whichever they preferred. Behind a van, windscreen shot out and water leaking from a radiator, were four armed men. Sheltered by a builders’ skip were two more, one shouldering an RPG-7 launcher. And more in the shadow of a refuse cart, all with Kalashnikovs. And one other was easy to recognise.
He had the torn suit still hanging on his back and ripped trousers loose on his hips and blood on his shirt. Must have been immune to cold and had stained bandaging on his head. The avtoritet of Kupchino held a Vityaz-SN, the most modern submachine gun issued to the military and the police special teams – 400 metres a second muzzle velocity, effective lethal range of 200 metres – and was yelling at the open gates to a warehouse complex that was barricaded by a flatbed trailer. The Major did not have to be told that the building behind it would be the operational base of the avtoritet who controlled Pulkovo airport’s cargo movements at the Moskovsky end of the airport perimeter. He had seen the fist fight of the guardian angels who provided the roofs, and now saw the pack-dogs who paid for the roofs to be in place, paid well, and had been fucked, fucked hard and fucked deep. Then, some gunfire.
A desultory burst, and two single shots in response.
A hero? He would not have declared himself as one . . . He was annoyed. Armed groups of gangsters lined up in the city suburbs, emptied streets, residents hiding in their homes, children kept from school, all irritated the Major – and he was tired, and might not have considered further options. Above all, the Major felt contempt for the men – senior to him – who had scrabbled on the floor. Obvious to the colonel who placed the roof over the operations in Kupchino, and the boss who slipped wealth into his pocket, was that the gang of hoodlums, trapped in their complex and behind the flatbed, were responsible.
He stepped from the jeep, told the sergeant to reverse, turn, then keep the engine idling. Tired, irrational, he had a poor consideration of the consequences. His pistol was in its holster, flap buttoned down, and he had no gloves; the wind scalped his face, and the cold was in his ribs. He would not shiver, would not let them think he was afraid. He walked forward. The vest carried the logo of FSB. He was covered by many rifles, sights were trained on him. He carried the authority of the Federal’naya sluzhba bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Federatsii and he did not expect to be shot in the chest by the people from the Pulkovo mafiya nor in the back by those from Kupchino. None would have seen him before unless they had glimpsed him in the dark chaos of the collapsed building. He was not known, had no links to them.
The Kupchino crowd was fifty metres behind him, and the Pulkovo guns were fifty metres ahead of him and he had already skirted a scattering of spent cartridge cases. A wise officer put little trust in the quality of the vests offered to officers not serving on Special Operations; the best trained teams had the best equipment. The vest offered to a major dealing with dissident activity in the city would be unlikely to stop a high-velocity round from a Kalashnikov, even from the machine pistol held by the avtoritet. If he showed fear then he might be dead. At best, fear would earn him ridicule. At worst, it would bring him a funeral followed by an insincere crocodile of mourners who muttered asides of ‘climbing beyond his status’ and a ‘fool’s just desserts’. A deep breath. He did not shout. Both sides would have had to strain to hear what he said. Almost conversational, and the street had gone quiet and no bird sang – and no shot was fired.
‘It may not be true . . . again, it may be true. I have the rank of major, and I am charged by General Onishenko, from the Big House, with the investigation into the explosion last night at the building used by the Kupchino mafiya. The obvious accusation is that a rival group – the Pulkovo mafiya – believed themselves to be tricked out of a favourable contract given to Kupchino by State Security. In retaliation they – from Pulkovo – took a bomb into the building where a meeting of experts planned to carry out the tasking of State Security. The bomb killed several and wounded more. In retaliation, Kupchino has come to Pulkovo with guns and is intent on exacting revenge. Listen, if you wish to shoot each other then I will not object. I don’t care . . . My own view is that the more you shoot, take each other down, then the happier I am . . . In the night I saw your two “roofs” fight on the floor in the Big House, one accusing the other of jealousy, greed, organising the bomb. I could give you all, perhaps, one full hour to shoot at each other, hopefully get some hits, then the security will be obliged to intervene. One option. The other option is that you put away those illegal weapons and go back to your rat dens. May I please give you another of my opinions? Not set in concrete, but having a certain weight. I have no evidence that Pulkovo brought the bomb to Kupchino. No proof. To be truthful, a small voice tells me I will not find that proof. When the trail is too obvious, my experience is to look elsewhere. I don’t know. Only a small voice . . . You should put away your weapons because at the moment you distract me and use up my time. Put them away.’
Men emerged from behind the lorry, and from the corner of his eye he saw that others moved into the open and abandoned the builders’ skip, and he saw that the wounded autorite turned his back on his rival and let his weapon trail beside his leg, and walked away. He believed he heard the sounds of weapons being disarmed. The Major went to his jeep, climbed in. His sergeant asked if it were true, what he had said, a ‘small voice’ and not finding evidence. Did he believe that?
‘Perhaps, yes, a little. But I do not know yet where else to look. Perhaps, no. But it was the right thing to say.’
‘And to say anything there, it was dangerous for you.’
‘Perhaps, yes. Perhaps, no.’ He hid the stress well, and his smile was slow and careful and would have been hard to read.
Merc judged her by her weight. Not by the tilt of her nose, thickness of her lips, the strength of her thighs that she had wrapped round his waist to grip him better, not by the size of her waist or her chest. He judged Kat by her weight. She clung tight with one hand. The second fended off the branches that bounced into their faces. The ground under his feet was slush and mud but the standing water was now freezing and a trace of sunshine came through the tops of the pines, showing him where to go but giving no warmth. He did it because he had given his promise.
Now, his instinct served him. A track drifted away in front of him. He paused in the tree line, eased her down, laid a hand on her mouth, felt the warmth of her breath, and she nodded her understanding and he eased it clear. He listened. She was good, did not speak. Which pleased him . . . None of the guys did, nor the girls, in the trench lines. Only spoke when it was needed. He heard the wind, and a distant engine, and also the call of cattle. An animal must have come behind them and been surprised by them and had veered away but they did not see it. He stood a long time, and listened, and the sound of the wind was constant, but that of an engine grew clearer. They were back among pines and in front of them was a screen of birches, then the track. It had scattered stones in it and the mark of tyres but was not well used. A whiff of wood-smoke was carried to him.
He felt a vindication. Some would have done high fives in acknowledgement of their skill in locating the one staging post he knew. Merc took off his glove, from the right hand, and lifted her leg. He put the glove over as much of the foot as it would cover, not much but something. There was sufficient light for him to see her face and realise it wore a gentle shade of b
lue, like a paint into which too much water had been mixed, and her sock was sodden. She stood by him, defiant, but would have been crippled by the cold. The engine sound was nearer. He pulled her back.
The vehicle was military, open, painted a dull green, and it came fast and scattered cascades of water from the pot-holes in the track. A lone driver, a middle-aged man, heavy and unshaven and wearing a uniform and flak vest. An assault rifle bounced on his knees. The vehicle swept past them and went on down the track and into the wind and the driver had no helmet, and lank untidy hair flew behind him.
The scent would be from a log fire. A slow fire, made with wet wood, and coming from the building beside the barn where he had slept. He remembered the time in the barn and the animals that had nestled around him, and their smells, and their grunted acceptance, and the fowls that had cheeped over him, and the warmth, and the dry straw, and the freedom from the cold . . . They would not go to the river that night. Too tired and his mind too numbed. On Hill 425, pretty much anywhere he’d been, Merc could hunker down in any corner and get decent sleep. But he would need a floor, and a roof over it, and the comfort of soft dry straw. She felt the cold worse than he did, and he felt it bad, and she had started to shiver and he could hear the little clatter of her teeth. He hoisted her up on to his back.
Merc went towards the scent of a fire, a place of comfort. He walked for ten minutes. The track straightened. He saw the barn and the farmhouse, and the smoke billowing from an angled iron chimney. The barn door was open and animals were out on the open ground in front of it, and some fodder was scattered for them, and a dog chased chickens without enthusiasm. The jeep was parked between the house and the barn. On the driver’s seat was a Kalashnikov with a magazine attached. The militiaman had stripped off his military vest, dumped his cap, and was chopping logs. An old man, a shotgun leaning against a wall and close enough to grab, tossed him big rings of pinewood for splitting and the axe was swung lazily, but he paused when a woman came out of the house, elderly but walking well and carrying a steaming mug, and a second dog followed her and then the chickens hurried to her, and the sheep – and the pigs and the cattle.
A Damned Serious Business Page 35