by Tom Wood
Below them the mountains of the Hindu Kush were huge, imposing and very close. Fifteen thousand feet above sea level was only five thousand feet clear of the mountains. The pilot desperately tried to guide the Antonov towards a valley where he might just be able to put it down safely. But the plane wasn’t responding.
‘ Fourteen thousand feet,’ the co-pilot yelled.
The Ukrainian pilot blinked sweat away from his eyes. Behind him the navigator was screaming, but the pilot ignored him. All his focus was on making it over the next ridgeline. Maybe on the other side there would be somewhere to crash-land. Maybe.
‘Thirteen thousand.’
The mountain seemed to shoot up before them. The pilot pulled on the controls with all his strength. He felt something tearing in his arm but refused to give up the fight despite the pain.
‘Twelve thousand feet.’
The mountain filled the view from the cockpit.
‘ WE’RE NOT GOING TO MAKE IT.’
The pilot closed his eyes.
The Afghans watched through their binoculars as the Antonov’s underbelly clipped the ridgeline, crumpled, and spectacularly tore apart. An instant later its aviation fuel caught light and the ensuing monstrous explosion tossed the wreckage across the sky.
The two Afghans clapped and cheered as burning chunks of fuselage rained down over the mountainside.
CHAPTER 38
Lavarone, Italy
The Alps were a good place to lay low. Mountains always were. By definition they were remote and light on people. There were countless places to hide. With his mountaineering, climbing and survival skills, Victor could exploit the terrain and climate, turning them to his advantage and against any enemies. He liked the scenery too, the peacefulness, the sense of isolation. Adrianna would have loved the area, and had Victor not being lying low, he might have invited her to join him.
The Lavarone plateau was located in the north-east of the country. It was a lush, rural area of several small towns and villages. There were a little over one thousand residents spread across eleven square miles of woods and pastures. Tourists and passers through were common enough for Victor to blend in. Three international borders lay within one hundred miles.
He had a room at the Albergo Antico in the centre of town. It was the perfect kind of establishment to hide out in for a few days; big enough to have some anonymity, but not so big as to lose track of who else was staying; modern enough for decent amenities, but not so modern as to have security cameras everywhere. The lobby was strictly functional, not the kind of open space where people could just hang around. The location was good too. From his window, he could see the street outside and the main highway passed straight by. Again, not the kind of place where people would loiter without a reason. The proximity to the highway would also aid him in a fast exit if it was needed. The modest rates meant the bribes he paid to the desk clerks were particularly reasonable. Separately, he asked them to let him know if anyone enquired about him, directly or otherwise. The food also happened to be excellent, which always helped make laying low a little easier.
Victor had been in Italy for two days and in Lavarone for one, which he’d primarily spent in a paddleboat on the lake and then visiting the huge Belevedere-Gschwent. He’d read about the fortress before and he rarely gave up the chance to see a part of military history if the opportunity presented itself. The Belevedere-Gschwent and its museum also made a good place for drawing out shadows, but he’d seen no one suspicious since arriving in the country.
Victor didn’t know what to expect, but expecting the worst came both easily and naturally. Hoping for the best was a privilege reserved for regular citizens and dead assassins. There was an even keener edge to his counter surveillance and precautionary measures than usual. The failure of the Yamout contract was never far from his thoughts, in particular the fact his failure was due to the intervention of a third party. A third party that he had been forced to kill four of and who had shot him in return. He rubbed his arm. Still sore. The injury wasn’t too much of a problem, but what the surveillance team’s employers might do in response was far more serious.
He’d destroyed their laptop on which they had recorded him via hidden cameras in the Presidential Suite, but there would be backups of those recordings, he was sure. They had been too skilled in combat to be poor at surveillance. Whoever they worked for would have Victor’s face, his voice, and could at this very moment be tracking him down. The encounter with Petrenko’s men at the train station would give any pursuers even more intelligence on him.
Petrenko wouldn’t be a problem. Victor had left the Belarusian far too scared to risk retribution. That took care of one potential enemy at least.
Which left his employer.
There was no internet cafe in Lavarone so Victor caught a bus to one of the larger, neighbouring towns. There he spent two hours performing counter surveillance before entering the lone establishment and sitting down in front of a computer. It was the first time he’d checked his CIA-supplied email account since before attempting the Yamout contract. As expected, there was a request to make contact for a post-action report regarding Minsk. He’d missed the prearranged call, but this wasn’t commented on. The tone of the email was neutral, nothing to give away just how angry his paymaster was at Yamout’s survival. The voice wouldn’t be happy about it, that went without saying.
Victor rubbed his right triceps before typing a response, stating a time he would call. A few days without strenuous activity had done his wound some good and it was healing well. There had been no infection and the pain was gradually subsiding. He took no painkillers for it. Pain, despite its inherent negatives, was the best indicator he had of how the injury was healing.
He spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the towns and villages of the Lavarone plateau, taking buses and walking, occasionally chatting with the friendly locals about their beautiful region, but never truly relaxing.
Victor returned to his hotel after dark, a newly purchased compact laptop hidden in a backpack. In his room, he powered on the computer, connected to the hotel’s internet, downloaded and installed the required software, and called his paymaster.
‘What happened?’ the voice demanded.
‘No attempt at small talk today then?’
‘No, not today, my man. Not when last week you failed. Not when you got four civilians killed in the process.’
‘When you give me such a limited time frame in which to kill an arms dealer shielded by ten armed men, in a restricted location, you should recognise such a contract has a limited chance of success.’
‘Don’t expect the second half of your fee,’ his employer countered, ‘and don’t think you only have the one job left for me after this debacle. I thought you were better than that, I really did.’
‘Given the unforeseen circumstances I encountered, if you had anyone else capable of pulling off that job, you really should have used them instead.’
A pause, before, ‘What circumstances?’
‘I don’t know where you’re getting your information from,’ Victor said, ‘but it couldn’t be less accurate. Those four civilians I killed were not civilians.’
‘So who were they?’
‘I don’t know,’ Victor answered. ‘I spotted one of them when I first arrived. At the time I thought he was one of Yamout’s people. But they weren’t allied with either Yamout or Petrenko. They were a surveillance team, though I use that term lightly. They didn’t shoot or fight like your typical pavement artists. They had Petrenko’s suite rigged with cameras linked to a computer in the suite next door. When I went after Yamout, they intervened, which is the only reason they died and Yamout lived.’
His employer processed the revelation for a long moment before saying, ‘If they intervened, then they-’
‘No,’ Victor interrupted, ‘when Yamout called for help they did nothing. If they had any association, they would at least have answered. They ignored Petrenko’s call for help
too.’
‘Did you speak to any of them?’
‘Briefly. They told me nothing useful, but they spoke in Russian, though I don’t believe they’re Russians. Or Belarusians. The only one I saw in the daylight had tanned skin and dark hair. I guessed he was Middle Eastern, working on the assumption he was with Yamout, but he could have easily been South American or Mediterranean. Or just had some of that heritage.’
‘That’s pretty broad.’
‘Did I say it wasn’t?’
‘I don’t suppose they had ID on them, did they?’
‘Belarusian driving licences.’
‘Genuine?’
‘Expert fakes.’
‘So they’ve got resources.’
‘Plus training, experience, financing, and accurate intel — unless Yamout and Petrenko advertised their meeting in Arms Dealers Weekly.’
‘So you’re saying some intelligence agency was running an op on Yamout or Petrenko and we’ve stepped right in the middle of it?’
‘Is the most likely case,’ Victor agreed. ‘Or they’re private operatives working for some other organisation or individual.’
‘You said they had rigged Petrenko’s suite up with cameras, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘So logic would dictate they were watching Petrenko, else they would have spied on Yamout back in his own country, wouldn’t they? Could have been cops or domestic agents looking to bust Petrenko for one of his many crimes.’
‘None of them tried to arrest or apprehend me,’ Victor explained, ‘which they would have done had they been from the Belarusian security services. My guess is they were interested in what Yamout and Petrenko were discussing, as opposed to them as individuals.’
‘Either way, we’ve been compromised. How exposed are you?’
Victor had been waiting for that question. He knew his employer would be paying very careful attention to his answer.
‘Minimally,’ Victor said. ‘I’m a careful kind of guy, and the four team members are all dead. I put a magazine full of nine mils through their computer’s hard drive. No one’s going to be able to recover the recordings.’
‘Good,’ his control replied through a sigh of relief that should have been better disguised, considering the implications had Victor’s answer been different. ‘And what about the next day? I heard there was a significant number of deaths at some train station. That wouldn’t be your doing, would it?’
‘I extracted by car,’ Victor answered. ‘Anything that happened the day after is likely to be Petrenko striking out against enemies he suspects came after him.’
‘I suppose so.’
From the tone, Victor couldn’t be sure whether he’d been believed, but there was nothing his employer could do to prove the incident at Minsk Central had been Victor’s doing. Any security-camera footage would be inconclusive at best.
‘Right,’ the voice said after a moment, ‘if there’s no exposure there’s nothing to worry about. I’ll let you know if that changes, but until then we carry on as normal. I won’t need you right away, but stay in Europe. You’ll be back to work soon enough.’
After the call had disconnected, Victor sat still in the darkness with only his thoughts for company. He examined one of the wallets he’d taken from the surveillance team, as he had done several times already. Aside from the Belarusian driver’s licence and some cash, it was empty. There would be fingerprints, of course, and if those they belonged to were on anyone’s database no doubt the CIA could identify that person, but Victor didn’t want his employer to know anything about his attackers before he himself did. If Victor’s suspicions proved to be correct, then it could put him in a very precarious position with the CIA.
He thought about the events at the Hotel Europe. There were some grey areas where he couldn’t recall every detail, but that was always the same after combat. Certain events remained vivid for years, whereas others — not necessarily of less significance — disappeared from memory within minutes. Victor didn’t understand the physiological or psychological reasons behind it, and he didn’t want to either.
Checking his other email accounts, he found a reply from Alonso, dated last week. The email explained that Alonso was in Europe for just one more day and if they were going to meet up it had to be very soon. That had been several days ago, so Alonso’s European contract would have gone to an alternate professional. The email also went on to say that, in retrospect, Hong Kong hadn’t been that much fun and Alonso wouldn’t recommend going. Victor deleted the message. He could have used the money the Hong Kong job would have given him, but it had been withdrawn for some reason. Maybe the client had got cold feet or the target had been hit by a train.
Victor found he’d missed out on another job from a different broker too. A Kazak working out of Moscow, who Victor hadn’t done a job for in years, had an unspecified but very dangerous contract worth a potentially huge fee. He wanted to pitch Victor for it. When Victor replied to the email asking for more information, the message was bounced back. The recipient account was no longer active, so like the Hong Kong job it might have been withdrawn, or perhaps it had already gone to another killer or killers. His other accounts were full of spam and nothing else. No one was offering work. He had been out of the market for over six months, so it was hardly surprising brokers were going elsewhere.
He didn’t believe his employer was going to be a problem, at least not yet. But the voice on the other side of the world would want to know whose surveillance team Victor had killed just as much as Victor did, and Victor wanted to find out first. It would have helped his cause to have kept his findings to himself, but it wouldn’t have been long before his employer had discovered that those additional bodies hadn’t belonged to civilians. Being found to have withheld information wouldn’t improve his precarious position with the CIA.
Another day of healing and he would move south to Bologna. If Victor was going to identify the men he had killed in Minsk before his employer did, he was going to need some help.
CHAPTER 39
Moscow, Russia
Despite the smiles, anecdotes, kind words and handshakes, Vladimir Kasakov was bored, frustrated and wishing he was anywhere else. The party was typical fare for the Moscow elite. There were politicians and oligarchs and celebrities all rubbing shoulders, acting friendly and laughing while secretly hating each other. The oligarchs hated the power the politicians wielded, while in turn the politicians hated the wealth of the oligarchs, and both hated the popularity of the celebrities, who hated the politicians and oligarchs simply for not being celebrities too. Kasakov was unique in that he hated them all.
He threw some champagne down his throat. He stood alone, only caring about when the next tray of canapes would pass his way. Despite doing his best to give off leave-me-alone signals, plenty of people wanted a piece of him, and it took an enormous act of self-restraint not to start throwing hooks and uppercuts. Normally he was able to mingle deftly, converse affably, and tell a mean joke. For all that he loathed such parties and their odious partakers, it was essential that he attend to maintain the acquaintances, contacts and friendships necessary to remain a free man. Even though Russia never extradited nationals, there was always the chance some politician might turn against him, whether to take over his business, gain favour with the international community, or perhaps, unlikeliest of all, out of moral decency. So long as the Ukrainian had the backing of the rest of Moscow’s aristocracy, he could sleep easily. Tonight, however, Kasakov couldn’t put on his party face. All his thoughts were consumed with Illarion, Ariff and the vengeance he so urgently needed.
*
The only person at the party he had any time for was on the opposite side of the room, hanging on the words of some handsome Russian actor. Izolda wasn’t alone. There had to be a dozen wives similarly enraptured, and a dozen husbands jealously trying not to let it show. The difference between Izolda and the other wives was that the handsome actor was obviously as taken with her a
s she was with him. It wasn’t surprising. Kasakov’s wife looked simply gorgeous, as always. Tall, slim and graceful, she outshone every woman in the room. Her backless evening gown managed to be both unashamedly sexy yet undeniably elegant. Some of the less classy wives showed off their inflated chests with necklines that almost reached their navels, and could neither frown nor smile thanks to their stretched and frozen faces. Izolda’s black hair was tied up — how Kasakov preferred it — and the style elongated her already enviable neck. The diamond earrings that had been a birthday gift from her husband danced and glittered as she laughed.
The actor made another joke, and by the strength of the mirth it generated from the coven of wives he had to be something of a comedian. Kasakov had watched him in a couple of Russian films and knew the man had to be a better comic than actor. The man leaned close to Izolda and whispered into her ear, at which she smiled, wide and carefree. For once Kasakov could not detect the pain she hid so well from others, if not from him. They had been married for a little over fifteen years, and though Izolda was in her late thirties now, she was still without a child. It killed Kasakov to know her unhappiness was his fault.
Izolda laughed again and her hand moved to the actor’s arm. He was no more than thirty and no doubt as fertile as he was handsome. Kasakov imagined Izolda was fantasising about sleeping with the actor at this very moment. From the way he looked at her, the actor’s own thoughts were certainly no different. If she succumbed to his charms, Kasakov couldn’t blame her. It was his infertility that caused her to cry into her pillow in the middle of the night when she thought he was asleep. He pictured the scene, a month from now, when she came to him to announce the miracle they’d been waiting for. He would hold her, and they would both cry and he would never comment that their child looked nothing like him, else kill her for the betrayal.
Izolda glanced his way and saw him watching. Guilt and fear began stripping the smile from her face, but Kasakov hid his thoughts, smiled and waved back as if he was ignorant of the scene unfolding before him. She was convinced by him, or convinced enough, to regain her own smile. Maybe it wouldn’t be the actor now, but if not it would be someone else eventually. Kasakov could feel it in the pit of his stomach.