by Alex Shaw
Akulov studied the pedestrians heading his way. An elderly man – with a large, black poodle trotting by his side – powerwalked on the edge of the promenade, and further back, an ash-blonde-haired woman – wearing a fitted, maroon suit – walked her small dog. With perfect etiquette, she nodded formally at everyone she passed. He noted no one who appeared out of place. Eventually the woman with the small dog drew level with the restaurant and nodded warmly at the waiter. There was a sparkle in her emerald green eyes as she removed her sunglasses and looked at him. She was twenty years his senior yet he found her stunning. He nodded back and watched as she came inside. She clicked her fingers and asked for a water bowl for the dog, ignoring a sign that said “Strictly No Pets” then bent down to tie him by the lead to the steel leg of Akulov’s table. The dog yawned and curled up on the floor.
‘I must say it’s a lovely afternoon.’ The language was English, and so was the clear-cut, cultivated accent.
Akulov didn’t reply. He continued to scan the other restaurant patrons and passers-by.
She looked past him. ‘This a favourite place of mine, to sit and watch the world go by. Although what one sees here on Miami Beach is hardly real. Outside these few square miles the world is a dangerous place.’ Her eyes fell upon a speedboat as it powered past leaving a wide, white wake.
‘For me it has become more dangerous,’ Akulov stated.
‘Quite so.’
The waiter appeared with a bowl for her dog. She ordered a large glass of Sancerre. ‘I’m glad you are here, in the land of the living. I had hoped to see you again.’
‘This isn’t a social visit.’
‘What we do has purpose; it has meaning.’
‘For me, or your clients?’
Her eyes locked on to his and he remembered her past, what little he knew of it and how Valentina Tishina had been one of the KGB’s most effective female agents. She lowered her voice. ‘I made you aware of the situation because I do not want to lose you.’
‘You don’t want to lose your commission.’
She paused as the waiter brought her wine. She took a sip and smiled as her palate approved. ‘Voluntary retirement is one thing; compulsory retirement is something completely different. The British were given your name by a credible source, and a friend of mine then passed the information on to me. But you and I know it is a lie, and the man who gave the information to the SIS knew this too. The SIS, however, do not.’
‘So tell them they have the wrong man.’ Akulov drank his water.
‘If only it were so simple. For me to admit any involvement would be a career-ending event.’
‘Me being framed is not?’
‘I must say I was hurt by your threat. I have always been fair with you, even treated you like a—’
‘Son?’
Anger momentarily flared in her eyes. ‘A younger brother.’
‘Thank you.’
She drank, regained her composure. ‘One simply cannot surpass French wine.’
‘Give me a name.’
‘I have certain safeguards in place; however, regardless of this I would prefer to live out the remainder of my life as a free woman.’
‘Who was it? Tell me who the real bomber was.’
Tishina sighed heavily. ‘One of the twelve.’
Akulov’s eyes narrowed. Were his suspicions about to be confirmed? ‘Are you going to say his name?’
‘Vetrov.’
Akulov felt a sudden chill wash over him, and the cool ocean air wasn’t responsible. The twelve Werewolves had been a brotherhood. Selected from various Spetsnaz units of the Russian Army and Navy, each chosen for their individual abilities. Akulov had been their top sniper, whilst Kirill Vetrov had been the demolitions expert, and the team leader.
‘The contract called for the liquidation of two targets. The contract did not call for two explosive devices. The contract certainly did not call for civilian casualties.’
‘Why give him the contract?’
‘Oleniuk.’
‘Who gave my name to the SIS?’
‘No one. The SIS were handed the iPhone found during renovation work. It’s the only footage that shows the face of the Camden bomber. Once they studied the footage they had a match to you. I don’t know from where.’
‘Tell me about the footage. How was is altered?’
‘I have no idea, and as far as the SIS are concerned the footage is real, beyond all reasonable doubt.’
‘Someone has fabricated it.’
‘You are wanted for an act Vetrov has committed. An act I know you find, as I do, abhorrent. We are not monsters, we are not lunatics but Oleniuk was and Vetrov continues to be so.’
‘He is also one of your specialists.’
She drank more wine before replying. ‘He cannot be trusted. He’s now working for the men I sent him to kill. He has gone rogue.’
Akulov turned his head, faced her square on. ‘So this is about your survival now? Mine is secondary?’
Tishina shrugged. ‘You cannot blame a girl for looking after number one. Besides, you are the one being targeted first. The British do not want this to become public; even the Americans remain uninformed. That is why you were nether challenged nor stopped at the airport – the Americans have no idea you are on their soil and the British certainly aren’t going to risk them finding out by asking for their assistance in apprehending you. If the SIS find you, you’ll either rot in a cell in a black site or rot in a hole. You have a choice: clear your name or forever be a target.’
‘Or vanish again.’
‘As you wish. But I know you better than that. This is eating away at you, the thought that those who matter believe you have committed this atrocity. What of your code then? What of your humanity, your soul?’
Now it was Akulov’s eyes that showed anger. ‘And what of yours?’
‘My soul died decades ago but my conscience is clear on this. There were two targets, and that is that.’
Akulov finished his water and wanted something stronger. ‘So I need to locate Vetrov, get a confession, send it to London and wait for my name to be cleared?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Why would the British believe me?’
‘They wouldn’t, but they’d believe Jack Tate.’
‘I see. After I get the confession, I give it to Tate, the man who thinks I murdered his parents?’
‘Persuade him and London will follow.’
‘Where is Vetrov?’
‘He was last seen in Texas.’
‘Where?’
‘Check your email.’ She untied her dog’s lead and stood. ‘Thank you for the wine; it was good but you need to work on your conversation skills.’
Akulov said nothing and watched her sashay out of Smith & Wollensky and disappear in the direction of the beach. He too had to go. He left a fifty-dollar note on the table, got up and walked in the opposite direction, not knowing if he would ever see her again.
Headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service, Vauxhall Cross, London, UK
Neill Plato sat in his overwarm, cramped office and munched on a fig roll. He ignored the biscuit crumbs falling onto his maroon shirt and tie as he reread the alert he’d just received from GCHQ – the UK government’s intelligence and security organisation responsible for signals intelligence.
‘Golly,’ Plato said, and reached for another biscuit from the quickly emptying packet.
Plato was a technical officer, a computer and electronic surveillance expert who was shared between several departments including the Russian Desk. Although this bit of intel had also been sent to his sister organisation, the Security Service – commonly known as MI5 – because the bombing took place in the UK, Plato knew it was the Secret Intelligence Service who would be acting upon it. The official reason for this was because the perpetrators were overseas and from a foreign organisation. The unofficial reason was that the parents of one of their own had been among the victims. He played the attached
video file: footage from three different airport security systems in the US. He studied them in full. He played the footage a second time, but now running it through his own facial recognition system. His program confirmed what GCHQ had said: there was a 92.4 per cent match between the face on all three pieces of US footage and the same face that appeared on the smartphone footage of the Camden Market bombing.
Too excited to sit, Plato nimbly got to his feet and brushed the accumulated biscuit crumbs from his torso. Leaning forward over his keyboard, he now played the US footage on three screens and brought the Camden footage up on another. He paused each screen when the face was full on to the camera. He crossed his arms and studied the wall of monitors that faced him. The Camden image was clearer than the US ones, but in his opinion, they were identical.
‘We’ve found him!’ Plato croaked, his throat inexplicably becoming dry.
Plato tapped a few buttons and made a footage comparison video, which he then copied on to his iPad. He reached for his desk phone, but thought better of it. He’d take this immediately to Pamela Newman.
Plato left his office and took the lift up to Newman’s floor. He reached his boss’s door and knocked, rocking slightly on the balls of his feet as he waited for a reply.
‘Come in.’
Plato bounded into the room, his cherry-red Dr Martens propelling him forward. ‘I’ve got something for you.’
‘Tell me.’
‘We’ve had a hit on the facial recognition program.’ He moved towards her large desk and handed her the iPad.
Newman looked at the device and pressed the play icon. Her eyes narrowed as she concentrated. ‘Is this who I think it is?’
‘Yes.’ Plato smiled broadly. ‘GCHQ believe it is the same person, and so do I. There is no doubt. We’ve found Ruslan Akulov.’
Newman nodded, seemingly agreeing. ‘How old is this footage?’
‘It was captured twenty hours ago at Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport in Wichita. He caught a flight via Dallas/Fort Worth to Miami International.’
Newman frowned. ‘What’s he doing in Miami? And why has he popped up now after a year?’
Newman continued to look at the iPad and watched the screen once more. ‘You can’t take a flight in the US without getting scanned so why do this now?’
‘He’s ready to turn himself in?’
‘Perhaps.’ Newman’s reply was non-committal and Plato could sense there was something she wasn’t letting on, but she was his boss and privy to secrets that he was not. ‘Can we track him at the other end?’
‘Yes we can. Now that he’s been pinged, if he’s captured on any other system I’ll get an instant alert.’
‘Good.’
‘So what would you like me to do now?’
‘Just keep doing what you do best and let me know if you find anything else.’
‘Will do.’ Plato left her office to return to his.
*
Newman sat back in her chair and let her gaze wander to the ceiling as she traced the last of the evening rays dancing on the grubby plaster. What she hadn’t told Plato was that the Americans did not know Akulov’s identity. It had been her decision, and hers alone, to keep the UK’s largest ally in the dark. Akulov had killed American citizens a year ago, the Russian had murdered British subjects in cold blood both in the UK and in the US and, what was more, she personally knew several of them. The Americans couldn’t have him.
She glanced at her wall clock, at this time of year eight thirty in the evening in London made it ten thirty at night in Doha and half past three in the afternoon in Washington, DC, and Miami. Tate would still be in the air and as he was travelling clean, not contactable until he was at his hotel.
It was at times like this that she wished the old spy films were accurate, that she did in fact have an emergency bottle of malt in her desk drawer to celebrate victories and drown the sorrows of defeat. The strongest stimulant she had, however, was black coffee, and now her cup was cold. She drank it anyway, savouring the bitter taste as it slipped down her throat. She tapped in a US number and called the SIS station chief in Washington: Simon Hunter. He needed to know what she now did.
Chapter 5
Miami, Florida, USA
Akulov had shelled out for a room at the Holiday Inn, Port of Miami, not due to the place’s location or even that he intended to spend the night but because he’d wanted something corporate, large and anonymous. In front of him on the glass-topped desk he had a new burner smartphone, laptop and printer. The last two items he’d bought that afternoon from a tech store in a mall. He didn’t trust hotel business centres or copy shops with a USB. Commercial ventures had a tendency to save jobs on shadow memories or drives for legal or insurance reasons and the Russian was not going to run the risk.
Using the smartphone as a hotspot, he connected the laptop to the internet and accessed his email. There was a message in the drafts folder from Tishina and a link. He followed the link to the intel she had left him on the dark web and downloaded it as a zip file. He opened the file and printed the photos and documents off. The whole process took him a little under five minutes.
He studied the photographs, seeing the face of Kirill Vetrov for the first time in five years. Pushing aside a wave of memories he continued to study the images with a professional detachment.
They had been taken on three different occasions. The first set showed Kirill Vetrov with a pair of Hispanic men. As Vetrov was the same height and build as him – exactly six foot – Akulov could estimate the height of the other two men. They were extremely short, but had gym-wide chests and shoulders. The photographs had some lowlight pixilation because they had been taken covertly inside a Houston bar, but the faces were clear enough. The three men seemed to be celebrating – their table was littered with shot glasses and tequila bottles.
The next set of photographs revealed Vetrov in discussion with a man whose jet-black hair was tied back in a ponytail; but it wasn’t his hair that struck Akulov, it was his height. He was not just tall but gigantic. He was over seven foot tall, with a bodybuilder’s physique that bulged through his T-shirt. The image showed the pair standing outside an apartment block beside a white Cadillac Escalade. The location too was noted as Houston.
The last set presented Vetrov at what appeared to be an open-air rifle range. In each photograph he was training armed Hispanic men. In one he was prone and aiming an assault rifle and in another he was watching over a row of men who were doing the same. The location of the range was noted as La Tijerita, Mexico.
And then Akulov read the documents. There was a profile on each of the two short men. They were twin brothers – Angel and Caesar Mendez – who ran the Mendez drug cartel, based around the Mexican border town of Matamoros. Caesar Mendez was primarily based in Houston, Texas, to ensure the smooth distribution of their product. This was after a turf war with the rival Arellano Cartel had followed them from Mexico. It gave a list of his favoured hangouts, which included the club in which one of the sets of photographs had been taken. Caesar Mendez’s enforcer was a man nicknamed “the Giant” – real name Luis Bravo. The Mendez brothers were the targets Vetrov had been sent to liquidate, who had persuaded him to work for them. Nowhere in the briefing notes did it state who had ordered the contract on the Mendez brothers.
Neither Akulov, Vetrov nor any of the other specialists Tishina had on her books were bound to her, indebted perhaps due to the lucrative contracts she attracted but nothing more. They could walk away. However, Vetrov’s actions had undermined her professional standing and that of the business as a whole. Akulov sighed. He was in the business of murder for money, pain for profit. Profit. The world swirled around in his head. There was something else in Houston, something Vetrov could leverage for profit. A list of addresses he had memorised many years ago flashed back through his mind. Akulov frowned. Could this somehow be interlinked?
Akulov picked up one of the photographs and studied the face of his former team leader. H
e now did not fight the memories and let them engulf him like a tidal wave. Akulov had a choice to make. There had been a time when the twelve Werewolves had been brothers. They ate together, drank together, trained together and finally fought together. Each took an oath above and beyond that of allegiance to Mother Russia, that they would defend each other to their last breath. But all that stopped in Syria. Two Werewolves were killed by a kid with a lucky shot from an RPG, as they moved from the apparent safety of the Russian command base to their forward operating base. It was the lack of training of their attacker that had shocked them the most. That some child could kill a Werewolf went against everything they had been taught.
The deaths damaged group morale and cohesion like nothing ever before. There was an almost physical change in several of their brotherhood, but most of all in Vetrov. He no longer saw the local civilians as non-combatants; it had been a malnourished teenager who had taken out one of their Kamaz trucks and murdered two of their brothers, and not a hardened ISIS fighter. Akulov became uneasy, and his unease increased with each day they spent in theatre. It was not that he doubted their orders or their missions but that their methods had started to become increasingly like ISIS themselves.
The remaining ten Werewolves had started to splinter, with Vetrov leading a smaller group in an assault role and ordering the others to act as a rearguard or overwatch. Time and again families were terrified as the Werewolves invaded their homes, destroying what few possessions they had, beating their men and shooting anyone who got in their way. Vetrov’s new mantra was results over everything else. But then came the day that Akulov could stand it no more.
Chapter 6
Six years ago
Aleppo, Syria
It was the hottest day yet, a debilitating forty-nine degrees Celsius in the shade, or one hundred and twenty Fahrenheit, as the Americans would say, but there were no Americans in the vicinity, only Russian Spetsnaz. Akulov lay covered in a mixture of sweat, grit and dust as he looked down the optics of his VSS Vintorez silenced sniper rifle. Intelligence had located the Emir of the Inghimassiyeen, the elite shock troops loosely affiliated to al-Qaeda. Abu Al-Muthanna, arguably the most significant of the high-ranking jihadist commanders, was in South Aleppo with a detachment of battle-hardened men. Their job was to defend the city by launching guerrilla attacks on the lines of Syrian Government forces who surrounded it.