It was a couple of hours before they saw anyone in uniform, and then it was four men in a group, all wearing what Raisa recognized as the post-independence outfit of the Azeri KGB. They emerged from the doors on the third level and climbed up to the open roof, each carrying a small suitcase. Their heads had no sooner disappeared from view than the reason for their presence filled the air – a Mil Mi-8 ‘Hip’ was approaching from the west. The helicopter loomed briefly above A rig before setting down on the elevated helipad, some two hundred metres away on the far side of the structure. About a dozen passengers climbed out, all carrying personal bags. Several were women, and at least two of the men were of Slavic appearance.
These arrivals had all disappeared from view by the time the four KGB men reappeared. The latter helped the crew unload some boxes and then clambered aboard. Minutes later the helicopter was airborne again, the drone of its passage fading into the west.
Another hour had passed – it was now almost two in the afternoon – when Raisa suddenly tugged at Finn’s arm and handed him the binoculars. ‘Third-level doors,’ she said.
A woman in a red skirt and blue sweater was leaning against the railing and smoking a cigarette, her medium-length blonde hair twisting in the breeze. A man was with her, also smoking; the two of them were laughing at something, and there was more than a suggestion of intimacy in the way they stood together.
‘That’s Farida Shadmanova,’ Raisa whispered.
‘With her husband?’
‘No, that’s not Tamarlan.’ She felt angry with the woman for deceiving her husband so openly, and angry with herself for having such a ridiculous reaction.
‘The plot sickens,’ Finn murmured beside her.
13
As Madonna crooned Bedtime Stories in his ear, Uday al-Dulaini stared stony-faced out of the helicopter window. The light was already fading, and the sea some hundred metres below seemed to be covered in oil. Maybe it was – the way the Azeris talked you could be forgiven for thinking that they had discovered the stuff.
Their flight had been six hours late arriving in Baku, thanks in large part to a long delay in Kiev. As the crow flew it was about eight hundred kilometres from Baghdad to Baku, but the roundabout route dictated by Iraqi’s pariah status had now consumed twenty hours of his and Barzan’s time, eating deep into Uday’s already depleted resources of tolerance. On more than one occasion during the journey he had found himself questioning the wisdom of Saddam’s continued defiance of the Americans and their cronies. The Iraqi leader had guts all right, but then so had a bullock. And maybe it was time for the regime to start cutting its losses, get the oil revenue flowing back in and start teaching its internal enemies a few overdue lessons in obedience.
Uday could now see the Aliyev rig up ahead, its windows flashing gold in the late-afternoon sun. Maybe this project would shift the balance of power back towards Iraq, but there was always the danger that Saddam’s bluff would be called, and the country would end up an irradiated desert. If that were to happen, Uday planned to be a distant spectator. Like many of his Mukhabarat colleagues he already had money stashed away in Switzerland for what the English – who had never known a real water shortage in their lives – liked to call a rainy day.
His thoughts turned to Salam Muhammad. The man might be a brilliant nuclear scientist, but his refusal to work showed a remarkable lack of intelligence. Uday was looking forward to the look on his face when he saw the family memento which they had brought to show him.
The helicopter was hovering just above the landing pad now, and he could see the rig’s security chief waiting to one side, holding his cap to his head against the wind generated by the rotor blades. ‘What’s his name?’ he asked Barzan.
‘Vezirov,’ was the answer.
‘Why don’t the Azeris get rid of their Russian names?’ Uday wondered out loud.
Barzan just shrugged.
The Russian pilot brought them down gently, the co-pilot swung the doors open and the two Iraqis jumped nimbly down on to the tarmac. Vezirov waited for them outside the radius of the still whirring blades, a smile of greeting on his face, mixed emotions in his heart. He was glad someone else had been given the job of sorting out the recalcitrant scientist, but not overwhelmed with joy at the prospect of sharing either his authority or his rig with these two men. On the occasion of their last visit the senior of the two had probably raped an Azeri technician – she had claimed as much, while he had been apparently unable to grasp the concept – and only a judicious mix of threats, appeals to national interest and financial compensation had prevented her colleagues from taking some sort of collective action. For that reason this visit had been designed as a day-trip, but the lateness of the Iraqis’ arrival presumably implied a change of plan.
Vezirov asked as much.
Uday smiled at the Azeri, knowing exactly what was on his mind. ‘We don’t want any repetition of Salam’s behaviour, so I will be talking to all our people, reminding them of their duties.’ He smiled again. ‘And of the consequences of any failure to discharge them. So yes, we shall have to stay overnight.’
‘In that case I will show you to the rooms we have set aside,’ Vezirov said. ‘They are not luxurious, but . . .’ He shrugged.
‘I remember,’ Uday said.
They took the lift down through three floors, emerging into a cream-coloured corridor. The two rooms were small but clean, adequately rather than lavishly furnished, with a single square window looking south across the Caspian.
Uday left his briefcase on the bed and turned to Vezirov. ‘The earlier I see Salam the longer the others will have to consider his punishment,’ he said.
‘You can use my office,’ Vezirov offered.
‘No, I will see our people in their own rooms. I want them to remember this visit.’ Uday smiled. ‘And then perhaps I will not have to make this journey again.’
Vezirov nodded. ‘I will take you to Salam Muhammad.’ He had to admit, at least to himself, that he was curious to see how the Mukhabarat man intended convincing the young scientist of the error of his ways.
Five minutes later he found out. As Salam looked up defiantly from the bed on which he was sitting, Uday asked him if he would recognize his sister’s wedding ring.
The scientist looked up, fear and suspicion in his eyes. ‘My sister has nothing to do with this,’ he said, but his tone lacked conviction.
‘Every Iraqi citizen has a duty to assist the state,’ Uday contradicted him. He nodded at Barzan, who removed the small box from his pocket, and handed it to the scientist.
The wedding ring was inside, still on the finger. Salam stared at it in disbelief, his mouth hanging open.
‘There are no more rings,’ Uday said, ‘but you will receive another finger for each day you refuse to work.’
A silence lasting several seconds was eventually broken by Salam. ‘I will work,’ he whispered.
In the OP on B rig McClure had spent the hour since the helicopter’s arrival hoping in vain for its departure. Its presence overnight on the helipad posed one more problem in an operation already overflowing with them. The gradual clearing of the sky that afternoon, though half-expected, had also been thoroughly unwelcome. Now they would have to deal with lunar light, albeit only the faint glow of a crescent moon, for the first few hours of darkness.
The helicopter had brought more than problems, though. It had also delivered two men, at least one of whom was an Iraqi. McClure had recognized the face from the MI6 gallery of senior Mukhabarat operatives which they had studied in Poole, and had had the quickness of thought to capture it on film while the two arrivals were being given the red-carpet treatment on the helipad. If by some miracle the SBS operation failed to turn up anything else, that one photo should go some way towards substantiating Constantine’s theory; far enough at least to set some alarm bells ringing through the various NATO defence ministries.
But McClure intended to go home with much more than that.
The pr
ime objective was Shadmanov, with or without his agreement, and with or without his wife. If they failed to find the Azeri scientist, then they were to gather what photographic evidence they could of the rig’s work areas before leaving for the rendezvous with the Sea King on Narghin Island. Whatever happened, they would have to move fast and think on their feet, hopeful of escaping detection but ready to deal with any unwelcome interference.
As he watched the last of the daylight drain from the western sky, McClure couldn’t help thinking that it had all the makings of an interesting night.
He looked round at the others. Finn was busy keeping watch, now exchanging the nightscope for the binoculars, but the other two were simply sitting with their backs against a pile of flooring sections, the tension obvious in their faces. McClure decided it might be a good time for a team meeting.
‘OK,’ he said softly, ‘let’s talk about this party we’ve been invited to. Finn, you’d better join the rest of us.’
‘And miss the excitement of watching someone take a fag break?’ He gently laid the nightscope down and crawled across to complete the small circle.
‘Right,’ McClure began. ‘Since the plan of action was worked out before we left England, the first thing we should ask ourselves is what we’ve learnt since we got here, and what changes, if any, we ought to make.’ He looked at each of the faces inviting participation.
‘There are less security guards than we expected,’ Finn offered, ‘and about half of them look like Russians. If someone would lend us a uniform we could probably get away with impersonating one.’
‘Raisa was right about the lab coats,’ Noonan said. ‘And we don’t even need to borrow them.’
‘None of which . . .’ McClure began.
‘One other thing,’ Noonan said doggedly. ‘That bunch who arrived on the chopper this morning. They might be just a returning shift, but they could be new recruits. They could be new faces to the people already here.’
‘Good point,’ McClure agreed, impressed by the younger man’s acumen. ‘Anything else?’
‘The chopper itself,’ Finn said bluntly. ‘If the balloon goes up they could use it to track us, which will be trouble. Against that, sending someone all the way to the helipad to disable the fucking thing seems like an invitation to disaster. That would double the chances of someone being seen and mean splitting us into three groups rather than two, which seems like pushing it.’
McClure worked his way through Finn’s argument, and decided he agreed. The helipad was just too far away – both in metres and their knowledge of the ground – for the precise coordination and timing an operation like this required. He didn’t like it one little bit, but when all was said and done the risks involved in taking action against the wretched chopper seemed greater than those involved in ignoring its existence. ‘Agreed,’ he said reluctantly, turning to Noonan for a show of male unanimity.
‘Yeah,’ the third man said. He wasn’t sure he did agree, but he certainly didn’t feel strongly enough either way to start an argument with his two more experienced comrades.
‘The other new item is the moon,’ McClure said. ‘We knew it was a possibility, but this morning it looked like we might get away with another blackout.’
‘It’s kind of lovely,’ Finn said with a smile.
‘Yeah. So lovely, I think we might give ourselves another hour to watch it set.’
Finn looked up sharply. ‘The Sea King can’t leave any later and still make it back before dawn.’
‘I know.’
‘So we’ll have to cut our own time margin to almost zero,’ Finn persisted.
‘I think it’s worth the risk. We’ll still have time to turn the Sea King round if we come up empty. And we built plenty of margin into the original plan. I reckon we’ll still be twiddling our thumbs on Narghin for at least half an hour before they arrive.’
‘You could be right,’ Finn admitted. ‘And you’re the boss,’ he added with a grin.
‘There is one other thing we learn,’ Raisa said unexpectedly.
They all looked at her.
‘Farida Shadmanova has a lover,’ she said simply. ‘If she is with Tamarlan she may not wish to come, and if she is not, then he may not be willing to leave her. We have ten minutes to argue with them, right? Maybe we need more.’
‘Maybe,’ McClure murmured. This was the part, the only part, of the operation which filled him with foreboding, because it seemed utterly impossible to predict how the parties concerned would react. The team’s orders were to bring Shadmanov out, voluntarily if possible, by force if necessary. If he said yes and his wife said no, then she was to be rendered incapable, one way or another, of raising the alarm. How Shadmanov would react to his wife being left bound and gagged was anybody’s guess, but then again, given the nature of their relationship, there was always the possibility that even if she wanted to go he would insist on her being left behind. Raisa’s presence would provide yet another emotional twist to an already overburdened situation, but was necessary both for gaining the scientist’s confidence and for handling any linguistic crises encountered en route to the living quarters. It had occurred to the SBS man more than once that an assumption of non-cooperation on the part of both husband and wife would have considerably simplified the whole mission. ‘But ten minutes is all we’ll have,’ he added. ‘And it’ll have to be enough.’
He looked at his watch. It was ten to six. ‘Get on the radio,’ he told Noonan, ‘and tell Galloway we’re going into action an hour later than planned. If he wants to know why, tell him.’
Tamarlan Shadmanov found it hard to take his eyes from the table on the other side of the canteen at which Azad Vezirov was sitting with the two Iraqi security men. The story of the gift they had brought for Salam Muhammad had already reached every waking ear on the rig, and, as far as the Iraqi contingent was concerned, had no doubt created an instant upsurge in loyalty to their master in distant Baghdad. Shadmanov couldn’t help wondering what sort of people encouraged loyalty in a late-twentieth-century nuclear weapons facility by mutilation of the workers’ relatives. The two Iraqis looked like normal people. They didn’t have horns or fangs or yellow eyes.
One of the uniformed Azeri security men was walking towards the Shadmanovs’ table. To Tamarlan’s surprise he stopped and gave Farida a slight bow. There was a half smile playing about his lips, and they seemed to curl with faint contempt as he acknowledged Shadmanov’s presence with a curt ‘Professor’.
So this was his wife’s latest, the scientist thought, ignoring the man. He idly wondered whether they had yet consummated the affair and decided that they had probably not. Farida, as he knew from personal experience, derived a great deal more pleasure from expectation than reality – she loved seduction but she didn’t much like sex.
It was none of his business, really. He turned his attention back to the far table, and spent the next minute watching Vezirov’s face. The KGB man obviously neither liked nor felt comfortable with his Iraqi counterparts, but he was just as clearly fascinated by them. He would be repelled by the Third World savagery, the scientist thought, but despite himself he would also be attracted by the directness and panache of its expression.
Shadmanov suddenly felt sickened by the whole business. He turned to his wife, who was blowing smoke towards the ceiling. ‘I’m going to our room,’ he told her. ‘Are you coming?’
‘Not yet. You’re only going to pick up a book and read, aren’t you? I’ll watch TV in the rec room for a while.’ She forced a smile. ‘I might even find someone who actually wants to talk to me.’
‘I’ll see you later then,’ he said equably.
* * *
On the tarmac at Dogubayazit Major Galloway stood beside the bright-yellow Sea King HAR Mk3, hugging himself tightly as the RAF crew went through their final checks. On a clear spring night at almost two thousand metres above sea level it was bitterly cold, and the beauty of the world around him offered only partial compensation for the SBS m
an’s fears of incipient frostbite. Here, six hundred and fifty kilometres to the west of the Aliyev rig, the crescent moon was yet to dip below the horizon, and the snow-covered peaks of Mount Ararat were shining with pale-white fire.
Looking round, Galloway could see no sign of other life on the NATO base. The Americans were minding their own business – while keeping warm – inside the dimly lit base buildings, and the local Turkish military were apparently all away on leave that night. More than a few palms had been crossed with dollars, and the official rumour – that a stupid British journalist with very influential friends had managed to get himself marooned in the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh – had been more or less taken for the truth, even before the unarmed RAF Rescue helicopter had arrived to provide further confirmation. The British might be acting illegally, but there was no conflict with the national interests of Turkey, and every opportunity for a few Turkish officers to profit from turning a blind eye to what was, after all, an obviously humanitarian endeavour.
Fortunately, no one had seemed to notice the external fuel tanks which the Sea King was now carrying, and which were needed only because the long return journey to the Caspian was beyond the helicopter’s normal operational range.
It was 22.28 Turkish time, and the crew of four had finished their checks. The captain gave Galloway the thumbs up, and the SBS man retreated a few paces as the rotor blades hit a higher note and sharpened the cold wind on his cheeks. Part of him wished he was going along, but there was no good reason why he should – the Sea King crew could find Narghin better than he could, and once there would either pick up the waiting party immediately, or wait the agreed ten minutes before leaving without them. There would be no hanging around on Azeri soil.
Marine I SBS Page 14