Cold

by John Sweeney

  As it was, Grozhov had to threaten one of the lesser oligarchs with being struck out of the inner circle unless he made his private jet instantly available. Grozhov waddled up the steps with some difficulty – perhaps he should experiment with that 5:2 diet after all, he thought – and sat back in his seat. Six times zones east of Moscow they had to fly, all to honour some stupid rhinoceros that had been locked up in an oversize ice lolly for centuries. Grozhov knew that wasn’t all. Zoba had been booked to see some Chinese dignitary, too – the better to conclude a gas-for-cash deal. These days, Russia could no longer be too choosy about who it did business with.

  Grozhov used the jet’s satphone to respectfully suggest that Zoba should wait for him on arrival at Yakutsk, so that Grozhov could carry out one last security check at the venue. Bekhterev answered Zoba’s personal phone, an unprecedented breach of protocol and evidence that Bekhterev was becoming not just a nuisance in the inner circle but a danger to Grozhov’s position. Bekhterev dismissed Grozhov’s request as if he were some kind of slothful earthworm.

  ‘I must talk to Zoba!’ insisted Grozhov.

  ‘He’s too busy, I’m afraid,’ said Bekhterev, and killed the call. To moderate his anger, Grozhov composed a haiku for Zoba, one that he would never dare to repeat to the great man:

  Ah, so you must wait.

  Cultivation of patience:

  An art to master.

  So when Grozhov’s jet touched down at Yakutsk Airport, Zoba’s entourage was already driving towards the Mammoth Museum. All the senior protocol people in Yakutsk had left with Zoba, so there was nobody forceful around who appreciated the need for extreme urgency. Grozhov had to settle for a shoddy-looking Mercedes saloon and, for escort, a simple Lada police car to bustle a path through Yakutsk’s traffic – nothing as bad as Moscow’s, but still an impediment to a man in a hurry.

  When Grozhov got to the outer security cordon of the Mammoth Museum, the trash refused to let him through because they were under orders to let no one pass. He called Zoba. No answer. He called Bekhterev – the same. Furious, Grozhov struggled out of the Mercedes and brandished his pistol to clarify matters, whereupon some stupid Yakut cop grabbed Grozhov’s wrist, smashed it against the Merc so he had to let go of the gun, and punched him hard in the stomach.

  Panting, nauseous with pain and the shock of physical violence – it had been a long time since he had been struck, a very long time indeed – Grozhov spelt out to the trash just exactly who he was. He speed-dialled the Minister of Internal Affairs back in Moscow, explained the problem, and passed the phone to the trash who’d hit him. Satisfyingly, the minister sacked his assailant on the spot and then another officer, the first one with half a brain Grozhov had come across in this stinkpot of a city, took charge and Grozhov’s motorcade was on the move again.

  Moving astonishingly fast for a man with so much fat on him, Grozhov hurried through the Mammoth Museum, mobile phone in one hand, gun in the other, and entered the ice cave, shuddering the instant the cold hit him. It was crepuscular inside but, despite the gloom, he sensed a large crowd to his left, silent, waiting for the spectacle to begin. Lining the walkway were the familiar faces of the President’s security detachment.

  Thirty yards away, Zoba was climbing up on stage to join two Stone Age hunters clad in furs, one carrying a spear, the other an axe. A great hairy mammoth lunged out of the darkness at the end of the cave, causing the crowd to gasp. The lights grew brighter as the beast neared the trio.

  Zoba bravely held his ground as one caveman, a Siberian, jabbed the air with his spear; the other, a squat ethnic Russian, muscular, with a familiar face, a low forehead and eyes of a brilliant blue, waved his axe above his head.

  Then Grozhov’s phone pinged.

  BEAR LAKE

  The shock of what they had just seen was still being absorbed when Zeke’s computer let out a soft beep-beep-beep. He walked over to it, frowned, sat down and stared at the screen. Then he tapped a few keys and frowned some more. His ordinary demeanour was so sunny that any departure from it lowered the temperature by ten degrees.

  ‘Something wrong?’

  Zeke said nothing and tapped a few more keys. After a time Joe, who had been in awe of the old man ever since meeting him, spoke: ‘Zeke, is something wrong?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  More silence.

  ‘Zeke! What’s gone wrong?’ More shout than question, Joe could no longer contain the tension within him.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Zeke. ‘Forgetting my manners. Katya told me about her brother Timur, about Timur making an offer to the Russians, offering intel on Picasso – al-Baghdadi. I asked the most secure CIA database, one I still have legitimate access to, a couple of questions about Picasso. I’ve just been locked out of the database.’

  He returned to the screen and continued typing, brow furrowed. And then he said, ‘Hot damn!’

  ‘Zeke?’ asked Joe. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Something’s happened which should not be possible. Buried within the movie file was a retarded Trojan.’ And then he smiled his simple smile.

  ‘What’s a retarded Trojan?’ asked Joe.

  ‘A cunning little bug that is asleep when you first look for it. When you think there’s nothing there, then it pops up and goes “Boo!” and sends a signal, letting some folks know that you’re watching a movie you’re not supposed to be watching.’

  ‘The folks who now know we’ve watched it, where are they?’

  ‘That’s the thing that’s been troubling me. My old job being what it was, my Internet goes through Langley and they comb it, automatically, to make sure that nobody nasty can bug me, in or out. This case, out.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Well, someone let the bug get out.’

  ‘Who could have done that?’

  ‘Only someone in Langley.’

  ‘And where did it go? Where are the folks that now know we watched the movie?’

  ‘It says here, fifty-five degrees north, thirty-seven degrees east.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Moscow.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Joe swore softly.

  ‘And my Internet’s just gone down,’ Zeke said. ‘And that, for security reasons, is never supposed to happen.’

  Joe was still struggling to get to grips with the meaning of the grim images in the film.

  ‘Zeke, what we saw – why on earth would anyone film that? Pouring boiling fat on that poor man? It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Perhaps it does make a kind of sense. Reikhman is a psycho with a lot of power. He kills for Zoba, but to order. My conjecture is the official story about Zoba is tosh, that it’s true he was a bastard and Zoba is embarrassed and ashamed about it, even now, even with all the fancy pomp he’s constructed around himself.

  ‘Two reporters, one Russian, one Italian, who tried to tell the bastard story got killed in funny ways a while back. I guess Zoba reckons he’s so much in control these days, he can have his revenge on the schoolkids who called him a bastard and no one dares to stop him.’

  ‘The schoolteacher? Why kill the schoolteacher?’ asked Katya. ‘She cared for him, he stuck to her like a cat, she says. Why have someone killed who helped you?’

  ‘Shame at being a bastard,’ Zeke said. ‘She was a sharp cookie, the schoolma’am. Zoba wants anyone smart who could remember him being a bastard snuffed out, hence the schoolteacher gets poisoned. Zoba wanted to see proof it was done, so he got Reikhman to film it. Reikhman’s psycho, but he’s no fool. He knows this is dangerous territory, so he makes a backup tape, a kind of insurance policy. But while making the snuff movie he’s supposed to be making, he makes another one, too, one about the packages that get sent one way. If the Kremlin begins to think that it might be wise to have Reikhman rubbed out – well, he’s got serious insurance. But where to hide it? Swiss banks aren’t safe these days, so he hides it somewhere nobody would think to look, on a chip inside his dog.’

  ‘But it’s
not his dog,’ said Joe.

  At that moment Reilly stood up, wagged his tail, sniffed the air and went back to sleep again.

  ‘Your dog and Reikhman’s dog look the same?’ asked Zeke.

  ‘Similar,’ said Joe. ‘But his had a white beard.’

  ‘Your vet?’

  Joe remembered the headline he’d read in the law office: ‘My vet was found decapitated.’

  ‘The vet put the right chip in the wrong dog. Simple, silly human error. It happens, screws up the plans of the very best intelligence people. They kill the vet but that solves nothing. They were never interested in finding you, only the chip in the dog. They can’t come clean about that, because the moment they do, someone like me will want to see what’s on the chip.’

  ‘That doesn’t explain why Langley let Moscow know we’ve seen the movie,’ Joe said.

  ‘Or why no one is interested in what Timur knows about Picasso,’ said Katya.

  ‘Right.’ Zeke looked troubled. ‘I have a suspicion about that, but my evidence is weak. Nor does it explain why my Internet’s dead. So that is why I’m suggesting that you folks, and Reilly, should leave my cabin immediately and run.’

  ‘No.’ There was something flatly defiant about Katya’s tone. ‘I am sick of running from Reikhman, sick of finding a new place to hide, sick of the killing. At least, here, we’ve found some answers. I want to stay here with you, Zeke. It may not be safe, but at least here I can understand what I’m afraid of.’

  ‘That goes for me, too,’ said Joe. ‘And Reilly,’ he added.

  The dog slept on.

  Zeke sighed. ‘My conjecture is that Reikhman will come here as quickly as he can,’ he said, ‘and he will kill every living thing that is here, and someone powerful in Langley will help him to do just that. I’m not a betting man, but the odds are against us.’

  ‘And when have the odds ever been in our favour?’ asked Katya tartly.

  ‘Good observation, miss,’ Zeke’s smile irradiated the room. ‘And just because the odds are against us does not mean that we can’t make our uninvited guests feel a tad unwelcome. Ever heard of The Adventure of the Empty House?’

  Katya and Joe both indicated that they hadn’t.

  ‘Correct answer,’ said Zeke, and set out his plan.

  Joe was to play a Mrs Something. He didn’t quite catch the surname and he wasn’t happy about pretending to be a lady.

  ‘Joe, son, just do what I ask, OK?’ Zeke said. ‘There isn’t much we can do, but let’s try and do something.’

  Joe said, ‘Yes sir.’

  Katya looked at Joe toeing the line and then at Zeke, and asked the old man, ‘How did you do that? Tell me the secret of your magic powers.’

  Zeke chuckled and shook his head. ‘Nothing doing, sweetheart, nothing doing.’

  And then they went to work.

  They came with the setting of the sun.

  Zssst, zssst, zssst. Zeke’s head, silhouetted against a thin gauze blind, was the first thing to disintegrate. Then a man’s shadow hurried across to attend to the disintegrated head and he, too, was zsssted.

  Then the lights went out. What troubled Reikhman was that he had planned to cut the power to the cabin from the generator a little later, not now.

  He clicked his walkie-talkie and whispered to Oleg, ‘Did you cut the power?’

  ‘Not me, boss.’

  Reikhman thought it through, and suspected it was a simple consequence of their opening move.

  ‘No problem. Let’s go.’

  He cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled out, ‘Grandpa, come out! We want the killers, not you. Come out, grandpa, and you’ll be safe. Our argument is not with you.’

  ‘Reikhman!’ hissed Katya inside the cabin. Zeke nodded.

  ‘Come on out, grandpa.’

  Silence, other than the crackling of the log cabin and the creaking of the stairs.

  ‘Last chance, grandpa.’

  Silence.

  Then three things happened all at once, none of them – for Zeke and his guests – the least bit good. A rocket-propelled grenade blew Zeke’s wooden front door off its hinges. A second RPG slammed in behind it, but this was an incendiary, brimful of white phosphorus, and within seconds the wood cabin started to burn with a hot, acrid brilliance. Thirdly, a bomb went off, blowing the camouflaged hatch at the end of Zeke’s secret tunnel – which he had constructed at his personal expense, in what he thought had been the deepest secrecy – connecting his den through a hundred-foot tunnel with the far side of the bluff overlooking Bear Lake. The cabin was burning down, and Reikhman had just blown the lid off their surprise escape route.

  ‘Hot damn!’ said Zeke. He shook his head – the real one, not the fake that Joe, in homage to Sherlock Holmes’s housekeeper, Mrs Hudson, had been turning every few minutes and which was now obliterated.

  Joe and Katya knew they were in grave trouble. Zeke’s planning had rested on using the exit from the den, then coming up behind their assailants. Now that their escape route was blown, they faced death by bullet or fire.

  ‘What are we going to do, Zeke?’ asked Joe, desperately.

  ‘Think,’ said Zeke.

  All that could be heard was the crackle of flames as the log cabin was consumed by fire. They were crouching behind the windows, guns in front of them, fire behind. They had no chance.

  BOOM!

  The mountainside shuddered, vibrating with a far deeper and louder explosion than anything that had gone before. Zeke and Joe popped their heads over the window ledge and saw an SUV lift into the air and explode, then fall to earth like a burning angel.

  ‘What the fuck was that?’ asked Joe.

  Then came two bangs, the sound of a powerful shotgun being fired twice.

  ‘That, if I’m not mistaken, was Grandma,’ said Zeke with wonder in his voice. ‘And Grandma’s angry.’

  THE MAMMOTH MUSEUM

  FOMO, they called it: ‘Fear Of Missing Out’. Grozhov stared at the phone in his hand, blinking out image after image: Reikhman’s thumbs throttling a beautiful woman; a drawing of an old man being tortured, a gas mask on his head; a BUK rocket launcher trundling through a small town in Ukraine; an old woman in a grave with a blue nose; a thickset Russian with brilliant blue eyes telling the camera, in deadly earnest, ‘This is not my daughter’; and an old British Enfield rifle in the Russian’s arms, with the letters ‘POF’ stencilled into it.

  The moment the images were uploaded onto the Internet, a mild-mannered geek in the British Midlands who made it his business to look out for this sort of thing started work. Within an hour, he had identified the content originator as retired General Gennady Semionovich Dozhd, Hero of the Soviet Union, First Class, and had pinged them around the world.

  The geek travelled to the shops in Leicester not in a Mercedes but a bus; he was also an unstoppable force for the dissemination of information, sharing what those in power know with the powerless.

  This distraction lost Grozhov two, three seconds. That was enough.

  He now remembered exactly who the caveman with the axe was.

  ‘Stop!’ he yelled, reaching for his gun.

  The Siberian leapt from the stage, spear locked under his arm. Grozhov fired and fired again, shooting Uygulaan in the chest, but his momentum was too strong, the spear piercing the fat man’s belly all the way through to his spinal cord. Uygulaan fell face down, spurting blood from his chest, dead.

  Onstage, the mammoth was still plodding towards Zoba. Stunned by the spearing of his gatekeeper and backing away from the mammoth, Zoba tripped and fell to his knees. Something pathetic and pitiful about Zoba’s posture stayed the second caveman for a moment or two, and then images of how this man had deformed Russia flashed through the general’s mind: his daughter, throttled to death; Max, the boy soldier, blinded in a pointless war; an old lady poisoned for no good reason; Yellow Face; the young man turned into a krokodil . . .

  The general lifted up his axe high to bring it crashing
down on Zoba’s head, but the lost seconds counted against him. Bekhterev emerged from the audience, leapt up onto the stage, raised his gun and fired, killing Gennady stone dead.

  Zoba, head down, trembled as the dead piled up, but the killing was not quite over. Bekhterev’s forehead flowered red and he tumbled over the prostrate president. His killer was Grozhov, crippled for life but still capable of eliminating a rival, a fact omitted in the official report into the incident. The FSB had been unable to find any trace of the pathologist Venny Svaerkova. It seems she had faked her death then vanished. That, too, was omitted from the final report. Grozhov wrote it, of course. Zoba’s nerves were so shattered by the failed assassination attempt by the two cavemen that Grozhov ordered rest, and covered for his leader’s mental incapacity with a week-long news blackout. No one in the official Russia media noticed. No one dared.

  BEAR LAKE

  Two figures slowly emerged from the twilight, walking towards the burning log cabin: Mary-Lou, tiny, grey-haired, a hefty shotgun in her hands; in front of her, Reikhman, his hands in the air.

  Zeke, Joe and Katya came out from the log cabin and hurried down the steps, away from the heat at their backs.

  ‘Mr Reikhman, we meet again,’ said Zeke.

  Mary-Lou had her shotgun trained on the back of the Russian’s head the whole time.

  Reikhman ignored Zeke. He was scowling at Katya and Joe, but when he saw Reilly he smiled.

  ‘Mr Reikhman, I have just one question for you,’ Zeke said. ‘Back in the day, who was the second American in Kabul? Who is your friend in the CIA?’