‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’ She took his left hand, cupped it around her right breast, and leant her face towards his to be kissed. He couldn’t remember ever seeing anything lovelier.
‘I feel better,’ he told her a few minutes later, as another car flashed past them. ‘It’s not very private, is it?’ he added. ‘And I’m afraid the back seat’s not very comfortable.’
‘In your dreams,’ she said with a mischievous smile. ‘When we eventually get to do what you want to do right now, I want a big bed, soft sheets and candlelight.’
He laughed. ‘You’ll have ’em.’
McClure knew it was crazy, but he felt let down. It had been too easy, too quick, like taking candy from a baby. He felt like a man who’d been offered one glass of water after days in a desert. Christ it tasted sweet, but when it was gone he felt thirstier than ever.
And instead of more action he’d spent nearly a whole day in a classroom instructing potential SC3s in UHF Morse transmitting and receiving.
A car pulled out of a side road unexpectedly, and as he braked McClure could feel the rage stirring inside him. ‘Fucking cunt,’ he muttered viciously. He thought about giving chase, and then found he was laughing at himself. Why was he feeling so angry? He’d just pulled off another successful mission, won a few more laurels for the SBS. He should be celebrating.
He was close to Annie’s place now. He’d been seeing her a lot in the last few days, but why shouldn’t he? He didn’t spend his money on anything else, and going without sex wasn’t good for anyone.
He parked the car and walked up her street. There was a light on in the bedroom, which might mean she had company. He rang the bell and waited, ready to leave if she didn’t answer.
‘Who is it?’ her voice crackled through the tiny speaker.
‘It’s me.’
There was only a slight hesitation before she buzzed him in. He walked up the familiar staircase, and found her waiting at the top, wearing her dressing-gown.
She smiled at him, and, as she had learned to do over the years, searched his eyes for the tell-tale signs. His last visit had been one of the good ones, and on those occasions she knew he was the only one of her clients who gave her as much as she gave him. Times like that she would have happily not taken his money, but she knew that he would be horrified by the implications of such generosity.
That wouldn’t be an issue tonight, she thought. There was no trace in the blue-grey eyes of that indefinable something which occasionally allowed him to share his feelings like a normal fucked-up human being. And sure enough, they had no sooner undressed than he was desperately pumping inside her, his body stiff as a board.
Afterwards he lay beside for the time it took to smoke a cigarette. It had taken her most of their five-year acquaintance to get him to stay that long, she thought, stealing a glance at his face. He had never talked about his past, and she had always assumed it would be futile to ask, but one thing had seemed abundantly clear to her from the very beginning: as a child, no one had ever given him the love he needed.
Colonel Azad Vezirov stood at the wide window and stared out across the blue-green sea at the distant hump of land. Baku was there, with its bars and its women, with his friends and his grown-up children. And on the other side of the Aspheron peninsula, some eighty kilometres north of the city, his beach-side dacha was lying empty. If the President had let him retire instead of insisting that he take charge of this project, Vezirov could have started enjoying the well-earned perks of his forty years in the KGB.
At least he could see land today; for most of the last fortnight the winds had been kicking up the water and hurling spray at his window.
There was a knock on the door. ‘Come in,’ Vezirov said, hoping that Shadmanov was going to be reasonable.
The scientist came in, took the offered chair, and wondered where to begin. He didn’t expect anything to come of this meeting, but he felt he owed it to himself to have a try. At the very least he might get a fuller understanding of what his own government thought it was playing at.
‘Professor Shadmanov,’ Vezirov said curtly. ‘You wanted to see me?’
‘I have wanted to see you for two weeks.’
‘Well, here you are.’
‘Yes. Well, first, and even though I realize it is utterly useless, I would like to formally protest at the kidnapping of myself and my wife by the state organs which you represent here.’
‘Noted,’ Vezirov said. He could empathize with anyone who wanted away from the island, but there was no point in pretending that such dreams could come true. They were all there for the duration, however long that might be.
Shadmanov’s mind was moving in the same direction. ‘Are we to be kept here like prisoners, with no opportunity to visit our children or friends, for a period of years?’ he asked.
‘Every opportunity will be taken to make the prison a comfortable one – even a luxurious one – but yes, I’m afraid so. Azerbaijan is at war, Professor, and when the nation is at risk people have to make sacrifices. Particularly those people who have been best rewarded for their labours during the years of peace, I might add.’
Shadmanov wondered whether Vezirov actually believed what he was saying, and supposed it didn’t really matter. ‘Are you telling me that the weapons I am designing are for Azerbaijan, and only Azerbaijan?’ he asked.
‘Of course not. This is a joint project, undertaken by two states for reasons of mutual benefit. The Iraqis, as you are well aware by now, have contributed the lion’s share of both the material and the research expertise.’
‘That is obvious. The point I was trying to make was that I have been dragooned by you and your bosses into working for a foreign regime, and one with which I have no sympathy whatsoever.’
Vezirov shrugged. ‘Perhaps you would feel happier if you thought of your assistance to Iraq as a necessary but unfortunate by-product of your work for Azerbaijan. We need these weapons, Professor.’
‘What for?’ Shadmanov half shouted. ‘You could never use them against Armenia without risking the destruction of our own country. Have you lived here all your life without noticing which way the prevailing winds blow?’
Vezirov seemed stung by that. ‘We have no more intention of using these weapons than the Kremlin intended using the ones you designed in the past. They will deter an Armenian invasion, that is all. They will save lives.’
Shadmanov smiled coldly. ‘And the Iraqis? Is that what Saddam Hussein wants them for? I seem to remember that a few years ago he threatened to irradiate the entire Gulf oilfield.’
‘That’s their business.’
‘It’s mine if they need my skills to do it!’
Vezirov decided he had let the scientist vent his frustrations for long enough. ‘I will pass on your protest,’ he said.
Shadmanov got slowly to his feet. Half of him recoiled from the idea of extracting a threat, but the other half was determined to know exactly where he stood. ‘And what if I refuse to work?’ he asked simply.
Vezirov chose his words carefully. ‘I can make no specific predictions,’ he said, ‘but you will suffer for such a refusal. As will your wife, your son, your friends.’
Shadmanov felt a hollowness in his stomach, and a nervous desire to belch which he managed to repress. ‘I understand,’ he said, and turned for the door.
Concocting a reason to visit Moscow was not hard – much of the historical data relating to the Caspian and its water catchment area was still on paper in the old Soviet capital, and in happier financial times Institute workers had often journeyed to examine them. Once Raisa had told her superior that she had a friend to stay with, and would not be charging exorbitant Moscow hotel expenses to her employers, he was happy to OK the funds for the relatively cheap air fare.
Leaving, it seemed, was going to offer more in the way of emotional problems than practical ones. As the day for departure grew nearer the enormity of what she was about to do – sacrificing career, country
, the only life she knew – almost overwhelmed her. There was no one to argue her out of it – she had not told Aida anything of her plans, partly for that very reason, and partly because she feared to risk involving her friend. There was even the slight fear that Aida would not prove so immune to patriotic impulses as she herself seemed to be.
On the morning of her flight she took one last sad tour of her flat, gave her plants enough water to last them a few days, and took a taxi to the airport through the city which had been her only home. The wind was blowing as strongly as ever off the Caspian, grabbing at the flags on the old Muslim citadel, pulling at the long, black dresses of the old women perched like crows on the wooden benches.
At the airport the checking-in process had apparently been abandoned in favour of mob rule, but those in charge of passport control were made of sterner stuff. The official went through Raisa’s passport twice, while his partner simply stared at her. ‘This is not you,’ the man eventually decided, tapping the picture for emphasis.
‘Yes it is,’ she said, with more authority than she felt.
‘This woman has short hair.’
‘It has grown since then.’
The man changed tack. ‘Why are you going to Moscow?’ he asked.
‘On business. For the Caspian Research Institute.’
‘You are travelling alone?’
‘Yes.’
He gave her a disapproving look, which she ignored. It wasn’t illegal for a woman to travel alone – not yet anyway. He went through the passport a third time, looking for something that was, but came up empty. He handed it back and gestured her through with a contemptuous flick of the head.
The delay had cost Raisa any chance of a seat on the plane, but she managed to get one of the better standing places, close to an emergency exit. An hour of waiting ensued before the Tupolev took off, climbing up over the Caspian and providing her with an unexpected bird’s-eye view of the rigs which she believed were home to the Azeri nuclear programme.
A comic interlude was then set in motion by one of the standing passengers, who commandeered the seat of a toilet visitor and then refused to give it back. A loud shouting match ensued, and violence was only avoided by the aggrieved party’s obvious inferiority in physique. A precedent having thus been set, the seated passengers were left to choose between their seats and relief, and by the time the plane was approaching Moscow it seemed to Raisa as if the strain was beginning to show on more than a few faces.
Domodedovo Airport was much as she remembered it – a concrete monstrosity built on the edge of the city, with an interminable bus ride to the centre. The latter at least gave her time to think through what she intended to do and say, and as the drab apartment blocks rolled by she checked through her reasoning for one last time. Everything seemed to make sense.
It was almost dark when she finally arrived, with suitcase, at the gates of the British Embassy. They were locked for the night, but she rang the bell anyway, and eventually a woman’s voice sounded on the intercom.
‘My name is Raisa Karayeva,’ she responded in Russian. ‘I am from Azerbaijan, and I have information for your government. It concerns a secret nuclear weapons programme in my country.’
The woman told her to wait, and shortly thereafter a man appeared to open the gate for her. He introduced himself as Brian Cunningham, ushered her in and left her alone for a few minutes in a high-ceilinged reception room hung with English pastoral scenes, before taking her through to what was obviously his office.
He laboriously wrote down her name, and asked her to repeat what she had told the woman on the intercom. Raisa was ready to explain in English, but since Cunningham’s Russian was grammatically as good as hers – though his accent left something to be desired – they agreed to speak in that language.
She did as he asked.
‘OK,’ he said, allowing scepticism to colour his tone. ‘Now tell me about this secret programme.’
‘I will only tell you this,’ she said. ‘My government is developing nuclear weapons to use against Armenia. I know where they are doing this, and I know at least one of the scientists involved – he is my friend, and he was abducted by the government two weeks ago to work on this project. But I will not divulge the exact location until I get a promise from your Prime Minister that no military action will be taken against this facility.’ She looked across at her questioner, whose face had been through a rapid series of expressions, culminating in disbelief.
‘I can give you references,’ she said. This indeed was why she had come to the British, rather than the Americans. ‘I work for the Caspian Research Institute in Baku – we monitor the state of the Sea – and I have been to several international conferences on hydrography, some here in Moscow, one in Athens and one in Vienna. I know several British scientists from these meetings, and I can give you their names. They will vouch for the fact that I am not a crazy person.’
He smiled at her for the first time, and picked up his pen. ‘OK,’ he said.
It was almost midnight, and David Constantine was in the middle of brushing his teeth, when the phone rang in his cottage. He hurried into the bedroom, almost tripping over one of his cats, and picked up the receiver. It was Glyn Sanford, his usual connection at the MoD.
‘David? Sorry to call you so late, but we need your expertise in town tomorrow.’
Constantine groaned inwardly – he had already earmarked the day for gardening and reading.
‘. . . something that should interest you,’ Sanford was saying. ‘And nothing to do with the wretched Iraqis for a change. Some woman scientist has walked into our embassy in Moscow and claimed she has proof that Azerbaijan is developing its own nuclear arsenal. She wouldn’t go into details, but she gave a list of British scientists she’s had dealings with over the years, and they’ve all given her a clean bill of mental health. Of course, she could have fallen off her trolley in the last few weeks. We’ll soon know – she’s on her way to London now. We’ll put her in a hotel overnight, and then start the debriefing around ten in the morning. I assume you can get here by then?’
‘Of course. Did the woman say anything else?
‘Not really. She dropped one name – Tamarlan Shadmanov. Mean anything to you?’
‘Yes. He was one of the Soviets’ top missile engineers in the 70s and 80s.’ And he had specialized, Constantine remembered, in exactly the same field as Abas Naji.
‘She sounds more kosher by the minute. I’ll see you in the morning, then.’
‘OK,’ Constantine said absent-mindedly, and put the phone down. Azerbaijan, he thought. A country at the secular end of the Islamic spectrum, with a sophisticated technological base. A government involved in an unwinnable war.
Put like that, Azerbaijan sounded like an apt nest for a nuclear cuckoo.
In fact, it sounded very like the ‘new location’ which Abas Naji had been unable to divulge.
8
The Prime Minister put his palms together in front of his mouth, then abruptly lowered his hands into firing position, thumbs cocked. ‘All the evidence seems to be circumstantial,’ he said. ‘But I take it that both of you are convinced?’
Sir Christopher Hanson and Martin Clarke both nodded, the latter with a sigh of reluctance.
‘Right,’ the PM went on, shifting in his armchair. ‘So the next question is, how seriously do we take this? How much does it matter to us if Saddam Hussein gets hold of a few atom bombs?’
‘We did go to war with him to prevent that from happening,’ Hanson said mildly. ‘With just a few missiles he could render the Gulf oilfields unusable for thousands of years. Or simply threaten to do so.’
‘The Japanese and the Germans would be very unhappy,’ Clarke added with a smile. ‘And our North Sea oil revenues would probably rise tenfold.’
The Prime Minister smiled wryly. ‘We might be the winners in the short run, but somehow I don’t see our economy prospering in the aftermath of German and Japanese ruin, no matter how emotion
ally satisfying the latter might be. I think we have to assume this is our problem as much as anyone else’s.’ He looked at the other two. ‘So the question then becomes, what can we do? Hand it over to the UN? Or to the Americans?’
‘If the Iraqis have managed to fool the UN to this extent already, there’s every reason to believe they’ll be able to do the same in the future,’ Hanson offered. ‘As for the Americans . . .’
‘They’ll either make a huge production job of it and end up bungling things,’ Clarke interjected, ‘or they’ll worry themselves to death over who they might be offending – the Turks, the Russians, their own Congress, anyone.’
‘If you want something done properly, do it yourself,’ the PM murmured. ‘And this will require a little subtlety. If we just wanted to blow this research facility out of the water then no doubt someone would be happy to oblige – the Israelis would probably leap at the chance – but before we think about subcontracting, I think we have to be certain of exactly what is going on out there. We may be convinced, but I think the rest of the world will need rather more in the way of evidence than David Constantine’s theories and a half-Armenian woman’s suspicions. Someone will have to go in and check this place out,’ he concluded, with a meaningful glance at Hanson.
The MI6 chief shook his head. ‘We have no one suitable. We may not know the exact location of this facility, but we do know it’s out at sea in a restricted military area, and that makes civilian infiltration almost impossible, even if we had any Azeri Turkish speakers, which we do not. If we want to check out this place I’m afraid there’s no alternative to a covert military operation. This could be restricted to pure reconnaissance, or it could be stretched to include other objectives, like rescuing Tamarlan Shadmanov.’
‘That’s upping the stakes,’ Clarke observed.
‘Such a mission certainly decreases our chances of deniability,’ the PM observed. ‘In which case we have to consider the diplomatic implications. Who’s going to get upset if British soldiers are caught paddling in Caspian waters?’
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