by Nick Elliott
‘I’ll activate my jammers,’ Dougal declared.
‘What?’
‘I can jam the CCTV signals and any GPS signals and no one will be any the wiser. Counter-surveillance, ken? This thing jams all wireless signals within a good radius, creates a dead zone.’
‘Let’s go in and have a look then.’
I gave him a leg up and, once atop the wall, he reached down to haul me up. Dropping down into bushes on the other side, we waited for a few moments. No dogs barked, no lights came on.
I was hoping that if we could get in unobserved, we might find something of value: notes from meetings carelessly left behind, a chance to check the garbage, or just a feel for the place where these sinister men gathered to plot and plan their schemes; anything in fact.
Dougal turned out to be something of a breaking and entering specialist. He had the front door open in less than a minute. He went in fast, his torch beam finding the security alarm control box in a corner at the far end of the hall beside the staircase. He reached up and clipped two wires inside the box with his pliers before the alarm had a chance to go off.
‘How the hell did you know where to look for that?’ I whispered.
‘I told you I cased the joint earlier, when I was here with my fake Council ID.’
Only the sweep of the lighthouse beam and the sound of the wind in the trees relieved the darkness and the silence. The house seemed empty but I told Dougal to show me the room where he’d recorded the speech, then to check all the rooms on each floor in case we were wrong.
‘By the way,’ I asked him as we entered a large panelled room directly off the hall, ‘how many people did she say officially resided here when you asked?’
‘Just his Lordship, she said, he owns the place but doesn’t come very often.’
‘His Lordship?’
‘Aye, a bloke called Kershope she said, Viscount Kershope. Ring any bells?’
CHAPTER 25
‘Kershope? He’s chairman of the CMM for God’s sake.’ We looked at each other as the implications struck home. Was it he who had made the speech Dougal had recorded? Was he behind the Revival? I was having difficulty reconciling this with the man I thought I knew. My mind went back to the drink we’d had together after the Trinity House meeting. Knowing I would be investigating the Astro Maria’s sinking, had his show of concern simply been to establish his trustworthiness in my eyes in case I became suspicious of his involvement later?
And both Peter Stark and I were sure that the people who had taken out the Astro Maria were the same crowd who were colluding with Malatan in his Mindanao coup plans: the Revival. Now I had to come to terms with the near certainty that Kershope, as the Revival’s commander-in-chief, had ordered, or at least condoned, the sinking to stop the Coreminex cargo from reaching the Buwan Bundok site and clear the way for their own scheme.
As I tried to assimilate it all, a beam of light swept across the room. At first I thought it was from the Fidra lighthouse, but then I heard the sound of tyres on the gravel.
‘Christ! Who’s that?’
‘Just stay put, Dougal.’
‘Are you kidding?’ he said, but it didn’t matter. Within moments lights came on in the hall and a man appeared in the doorway. He was wearing a black leather coat and a black woollen hat but his dress sense was not what caught my eye. It was the gun he’d pulled out of his pocket. His bulky figure filled the door frame. As he realised we posed no immediate threat, he relaxed. And his expression changed – to a sneer. A second man appeared behind him. The big guy stepped aside, limping slightly but still pointing the gun at Dougal and myself, and the second man entered the room, clearly in command. And then it dawned: Tbilisi Airport, a long time ago.
‘So, Mr McKinnon, what a pleasure it is to meet again after all this time,’ Boris Kaliyagin sounded like he’d been watching too many old movies. If he was surprised to see me he didn’t show it.
A woman entered the room: a dark, wild-looking beauty I took to be his girlfriend. Maybe she’d been parking the car.
‘Boris,’ I said, stepping towards him to shake his hand. But the big guy, maybe suspecting I was going for his boss or maybe just because he felt like it, moved between us. Despite his weight and his limp, he was quick, and he had an old score to settle. And I was too slow to react, by a mile. He slammed the pistol’s grip down onto my left temple. As I reeled from the shock of the blow he whipped the pistol across my opposite cheek. Dougal lunged for him and got an elbow in his face. My head was pounding from the blow, blood dripping from a gash down the side of my face. Dougal had fallen to his knees. I tried to staunch the flow of blood but all I had was the sleeve of my jacket.
‘Come, McKinnon, you must know that “Ivan” would like nothing more than to kill you. And he could have done so before now, but he is a patient man. He has been watching this house since your careless friend here started making enquiries with his unlikely cover story. And now we have you both.’ He sounded delighted.
Boris Kaliyagin hadn’t changed much in the past decade: the same charcoal grey cashmere coat with black fur collar, the same Lenin-style beard and the same unyielding stare from those dark eyes.
Dougal had stood up and was nursing his bleeding nose and mouth. Boris sat down in a comfortable-looking leather wingchair. The woman was leaning on the wall. I heard her sigh as if she’d seen it all before.
Ivan went over to Dougal, who still had his bag of tricks with him. He took it from him and emptied the contents on the floor, crushing the jamming device and other gadgets under his heel. Then he came over to me. I thought he was going to pistol whip me again. I raised my hands in front of me for protection but that didn’t stop him sinking his fist into my stomach.
I lay doubled up, gasping for breath on the carpet. I was in no hurry to move – so long as Ivan didn’t decide to start on me with his boot, though what with his limp, I figured that might have been a step too far for him.
Boris spoke to the woman sharply and she left the room.
‘You are staining this fine carpet with your blood, McKinnon. Get up.’
I pulled myself up and slumped into a chair facing him. The woman returned with a plastic bowl filled with cold water and a roll of kitchen towels which she placed on the floor. I wondered whether she was going to start cleaning the carpet but she just stepped back into the corner of the room.
‘Very thoughtful of you, Boris,’ I said, holding paper towels to the side of my face. Dougal was watching me. He was wiping blood from his face. Perhaps he thought I was about to execute some brilliant escape plan. I tried smiling at him but it didn’t work. It just hurt.
‘Yes. So tell me what you and your friend are doing here will you?’ Boris’s voice was soft, even soothing.
‘I’m here to talk some sense into you, Boris.’ It hurt to talk too. ‘You’re in over your head you know.’ I was winging it – using the facts I had and guessing the bits in between – but I had nothing to lose, and despite the thumping in my head and the pain in my gut, I’d had an idea.
He laughed. ‘I admire you, McKinnon, but you persist in meddling in matters that do not concern you and now you have stepped beyond the limits.’ It struck me how proficient his English was compared with our last meeting. ‘You are in a great deal of trouble but still you act as if you are the one telling us what we should and should not be doing.’ He laughed again. ‘You’ve got balls, McKinnon, I’ll grant you that, but you have become troublesome.’
He spoke to the woman again. She left. Shortly after, I heard the noise from a television in another room.
‘Who’s “we”, Boris? The Revival? That’s what I’m here to tell you. They’re conning you, double-crossing you. You think you’re dealing with honourable men, honour among thieves? Is that it?’
‘You know nothing of such matters,’ he said. His voice had an edge. Now that I’d revealed more than he’d thought I knew, I’d ruffled his feathers. ‘But you present me with a problem: what to do with you a
nd your friend here. There is one obvious solution which your friend Ivan here would favour, I’m sure.
‘Listen,’ I said, anxious to pursue any advantage I might have gained. ‘You know what they are planning in the Far East. Where do you think they’re they getting the funds for that venture? Are they using your money Boris? Your gold?’ I had remembered Levan saying that Boris controlled the gold prospecting business in his native Svaneti, a northern province of Georgia. It was a long shot but I pressed on. ‘What did they tell you, Boris? That they’d market your gold, help you develop other deposits in the North Caucasus? And did they tell you they were doing the same in Sarangani?’
‘Where is Sarangani?’ Was there a flicker of doubt in those dark eyes?
I laughed. ‘They’ve told you nothing then.’
‘How dare you!’ He was angry now. ‘You interfere in my business. You know nothing of my plans.’
It made sense though, and he knew it. The Revival speech, given in this very room, made reference to exploiting mineral wealth and supporting secessionist movements in the world’s ungoverned spaces. But given the ruthlessness with which they pursued their aims, it seemed likely they would as soon deceive their partners in crime as support them in their separatist ambitions.
‘More than you think, Boris.’ I tried to sound conciliatory, sympathetic, without goading him. ‘You might get to use Kershope’s safe house here, but don’t fool yourself into thinking the Revival have taken you into their confidence. When did they first enrol you? After you’d lifted that ethyl alcohol cargo from the Med Runner? And since then? What have they done for you, Boris?’
His anger had abated now and I had his attention. ‘What is it? Do you aspire to the trappings of the Scottish nobility? A castle in the Highlands? You’re not one of them, Boris, you never will be. And anyway, in the end, the Revival are a bunch of two-faced outlaws. You might feel comfortable with them because you’re both on the wrong side of the law, but they’re playing you, Boris, playing you for your gold.’
His urbane manner was firmly back in place. ‘You are speculating of course.’ He was right: I was. ‘Just what is the plan you say they have for this place, Sarangani? I don’t even know where it is.’
‘That proves my point. You know nothing of their plans.’ I needed a drink. ‘Get us a whisky and I will tell you what they are planning, how they are using you. Then maybe we can figure out how you can turn the tables on them.’
He hesitated. ‘I will listen to you, McKinnon but it had better be a good story. And a true one.’ He walked across to a drinks cabinet on the other side of the room. Dougal leaned towards me.
‘I hope you’ve got a way out of this one, pal.’
I didn’t reply.
Boris poured three large measures of whisky, handing one each to Dougal and I, and keeping one for himself. Ivan wasn’t getting any.
‘So, entertain me,’ Boris said, sitting down with his whisky and stretching his legs out in front of him.
I told him of what I understood to be the Revival’s plans for the Buwan Bundok copper and gold mine in Sarangani, of the unstable situation in Mindanao, of the Malatans, and of the sinking of the Astro Maria. I was taking a risk, but I believed him when he said he’d never heard of Sarangani. It made me sure he was not as close to the Revival as he liked to think he was.
‘But it’s one thing to back a coup in Mindanao. It’s another to stage one in the Kremlin’s backyard,’ I concluded. ‘I’d think that might be a step too far even for these megalomaniacs, wouldn’t you? Do the risk analysis for yourself, Boris.’
He tried to cover it but I knew I had him worried. He stood up and paced around. He drained his whisky and refilled it. ‘All right, McKinnon, you are well informed. But let us suppose, for argument’s sake, that they are deceiving me as you suggest. Surely they would be as likely to cheat this warlord you speak of in the Philippines, as they would me?’
‘Good point. Maybe they will. But meanwhile Malatan offers them the key to immense riches. And as I said, supporting a well-organised coup in Mindanao with Buwan Bundok as the prize is a good deal more rewarding and less risky than backing a similar enterprise in Svaneti with the Russians breathing down your neck and a much smaller prize. The gold panned from the mountain streams of your homeland, Boris, is hardly in the same league as Buwan Bundok. But they must need you for something. Tell me what.’
He gave a bitter laugh. ‘What purpose would that serve?’
‘I can help you turn the tables. But I must know what they promised you before I can understand how they are playing you now.’
He was staring at me with those dark eyes, as if trying to look into my mind and decide what he should tell me. Finally he said, ‘I have gold. But I cannot convert it into hard currency. They have the means to do that. Then I need arms and equipment.’ He hesitated. ‘What do you know about my homeland, McKinnon? Anything at all?’
‘Svaneti? Not a lot. Clan-based, trigger-happy society. I heard there are over a hundred ethnicities in the North Caucasus. And you’re surrounded by Muslim enclaves, each with their own violent insurgencies.’ Much like Mindanao, I reflected.
‘It is the most beautiful land on this earth. But it is wild, untamed. So are its people. My people.’ This was a Boris Kaliyagin I hadn’t seen before: passionate, unguarded. ‘You’re right. My people still settle their disputes with the gun. My own family has been involved in a blood feud for decades. Over what? Nothing. They are ignorant peasants, but they are my people. I love them and I love my country. Yet we are going nowhere.’
He leaned forward. ‘I was born for others,’ he said. ‘I am a wise elder in my country, McKinnon. And I must lead my people out of their wretched poverty, their primitive ways.’
All this sounded rich coming from a hooch-smuggling gangster but I wasn’t going to argue the moral rights and wrongs of his position.
‘This can only happen if we secede,’ he went on. ‘And we will never achieve nationhood without outside help. You know, once, many years ago, we were an independent principality, and we prospered. Now, we have no say in our own affairs, or in our future.’
‘So where do your Scottish friends come into the picture?’
‘We need them. And yes, I was first approached at the time of the Med Runner affair. Their own plans had failed where I had succeeded.’
‘Who approached you?’ I interrupted him.
‘You ask too many questions, McKinnon.’
‘So, they offered to trade your gold and support your uprising?’
‘It is an uprising only in that it is politically motivated. We will negotiate our independence peacefully, but from a position of strength. To do so we need arms. Without that we have no teeth, no bargaining power. They can supply us with arms and equipment. They have these resources, believe me. They have shown me.’
‘All right. So this gold, where is it? How much is there?’
‘We Svans mine the mountain rivers as we did in ancient times, using sheepskins to recover fine flakes of gold. It is called placer gold. Jason and his Argonauts may be mythical characters, McKinnon, but that story, even though it is three thousand years old, has more than a grain of truth. They came to our land in search of the Golden Fleece.
‘From early times we used the power of the water to force the sand over the hide of the sheep. When the fleece had absorbed all it could hold, it was hung up to dry. Then it was beaten so that the gold would fall off and be recovered.
‘Now we know there are veins and nests of gold-bearing ore between a single centimetre up to one metre thick. We know this and we know where to find them. This is what we have been exploiting. It is not a secret.
‘So I have been honest with you. Now answer a question for me. Why are you offering to help me? What is your motive? Who are you working for?’
‘I’m working for myself. These people have stitched me up,’ I said bitterly. ‘They’ve pushed me out of the Caledonian Mutual, effectively destroying my business.
They’re not finished with me either. I believe they want to destroy me. I must bring them down, Boris, by any means, legal or otherwise, or they’ll have me.’ It wasn’t too far off the truth, and he seemed to buy my modified version of the facts.
‘But let me tell you what I think,’ I continued. ‘They don’t intend to involve you in Sarangani, otherwise they would have told you about it by now. But they need your gold to fund the project. Sarangani is the big prize for them, but they need to invest heavily to pull it off. You’re not their partner, you’re their stooge. And if I were you, Boris, I would not for one second count on their supporting your own separatist plans for your precious homeland. As I said, it’s too risky for them.’
Then I laid out for him, with more conviction than I felt, how he could thwart the Revival by playing them at their own game, and how it could be done.
‘But I need to know where the gold will be transferred, Boris. Where, when and how.’
‘It will be shipped to a port in India.’
‘From where?’
‘From a Black Sea port. But …’ He hesitated, reluctant to divulge the details.
‘But what?’
‘The ship will call at a Greek port for fuel before the voyage to India.’
‘Which port?’
‘Perama, near Piraeus.’ I knew Perama. It was a scruffy little port where old ships got mothballed, or were simply left to decay. There were repair yards there, and bunkering facilities.
‘When’s this taking place?’
‘A month from now. We will charter a ship to load the gold in early February.’
‘How much gold?’
‘Enough.’
‘I need to know, Boris. If this is going to work, I need to know.’
‘Fifteen tons, more or less.’