White Hot Silence

by Henry Porter

  The flame from the lighter illuminated a staircase, which, after testing the stairs for creaking floorboards, she climbed. There was just one large suite at the top, with windows that faced in three directions and a large shower and bathroom on one side. This was where Kirill slept. His ridiculous hats were lined up on the dresser. She could see that he’d emptied his pockets in preparation for bed – a wallet, a leather key holder, a penknife, his cheroots, a lighter and some kind of ID were on the bedside table. But then his drunken libido had plainly got the better of him and he’d gone from the room in his socks, leaving his boots on their side by the dresser. She searched around for his phone but found nothing and began her descent, occasionally clicking the lighter to see where she was going. Halfway down she noticed a flash reflected back from a metal cabinet tucked into a recess that she hadn’t noticed on her way up. She reached the bottom and went over and tried the handle. It wouldn’t shift. Maybe he locked his phone away; maybe there was a computer in there. She listened. Nothing stirred in the building. She went back up to the bedroom, took the key holder and returned to the cabinet. Only two of the many keys were candidates for the small lock. The second worked the mechanism and the door opened with a metallic scraping noise. She froze and waited before holding the flame of the lighter inside the locker. ‘Jesus!’ she whispered. Three hunting rifles stood in a rack; two had scopes. Several boxes of different-sized shells and an ammunition belt lay below them, together with a spouted tin of oil and some cleaning rags. An open padlock hung at one end of a bar that secured the guns into the rack. She removed the padlock from the hole in the bar and swung it towards her.

  She had never in her life touched a gun, was instinctively afraid of them and had no concept of how heavy a gun was or how to carry one. She selected the smallest rifle, which had a strap but no scope, eased it from the slot made for the stock and gently lifted it out of the cabinet. It was much lighter than she’d expected. She didn’t know how to open the breach and, anyway, she couldn’t manage the gun while holding the lighter to see what she was doing. She took a handful of different-length shells from the cartons and stuffed them in the inside pockets of her jacket. Then she stepped back and carefully replaced the padlock and secured the cabinet.

  Even as she did so, it seemed bizarre to return the keys to the place beside Kirill’s bed, but she was keeping her options open. In her mind, she was still not committed to any course of action. She needed to think things through. She sat on Kirill’s bed for five minutes and breathed deeply, calming herself and going through the options, none of which seemed very practical, even with a gun in her hands. She worked the bolt distractedly and eventually managed to open the breach. It turned out that all three lengths of shell were the same calibre and slotted neatly into it. She left one in and pocketed the rest.

  One option was to return to the room, leave the gun and the shells under her bed – they never searched the room – and wait for a good opportunity. But what was the point of that? They would certainly be found when her captors discovered the gun was missing and she would never have a better chance of escaping than now. Emboldened by the gun, she stole back to her room. Kirill was in the same position but, as she pulled bits of clothing from the towel hanger by the basin, he stirred and all thought of patting down his pockets for his phone deserted her. She backed from the room and eased the door shut, turned the key in the lock and removed it. The noise stirred him. She heard him murmur something then call out, but this was just Kirill talking in his sleep.

  She had no thought of killing him, but she knew that if his bedroom was empty and the door of the room where she was kept locked and the key nowhere to be found, it would cause a delay that might be vital for her. She put on the T-shirt she’d washed, the patterned jumper they had given her and a scarf that was in the room – and then went to look through the windows towards the gate. She could see very little, but someone was out there because a cigarette lighter flared.

  She was now committed to a course of action. She moved quickly to the kitchen, scooped up the cooking oil, turned on the gas rings without lighting them and closed the door. She went to the corner of the large room furthest from the kitchen. Behind a heavy upholstered armchair she formed a pile from magazines, kindling wood from the log basket by the fire, books and a plastic table cover, on to which she placed any combustible ornament she could find. She poured cooking oil over the top and set light to the paper at the bottom. At first, the flames didn’t take. She crouched down and blew softly. The paper caught light, followed by the kindling. She stepped back, willing the flames on, and at length the fire took hold at the top of the heap and the back of the armchair began to smoke. The light from the flames now danced on the ceiling, but she wasn’t done yet. She dragged an ornamental bamboo table over to the fire and toppled it on to the flames.

  In a state of pure flow and almost unaware of herself, she moved behind the main door and waited. The whole room was now illuminated and smoke billowed beneath the ceiling. She shut her eyes and covered her mouth and nose with the scarf. Seconds later, the door bust open and two men rushed in, their arms shielding their faces from the flames. One dashed to the stairs, the other to the back room where she had been held. She slipped out behind them and ran along the front of the building and into the dark. She tore over the damp grass and reached the gates. They were chained and padlocked. She looked back to see if there was a vehicle she could use to ram them but then some part of her mind told her she was being ridiculous: she must scale the fence. She strapped the rifle across her back, gripped the wire either side of the metal gatepost and began to climb, placing one foot in front of the other on the post, causing the gate to rattle. The pain in her shoulder burned each time she hauled herself up with her left arm. At the top, she had to hang with her right arm so that she could unwrap the scarf from her face and neck and place it over the loops of razor wire that were strung haphazardly along the line of the fence. There was a lot of shouting behind her and she knew that if anyone looked towards the fence they would undoubtedly spot her. It took two or three agonising minutes for her to get enough of the wire covered, but even then her hands were cut as she swung one leg over and lifted herself clear of a big hoop of barbs. Her trousers caught and she had to wrench them free, ripping the material and giving herself a long scratch on the back of her calf. But she had managed the fence – just – and she hung there, panting in the rain, to give her arms and shoulder a rest before descending to within a metre of the ground then letting go and landing squarely on both feet to face the compound.

  The fire had taken hold of the front of the building and the part nearest to her. Men darted about, silhouetted against the glow. She couldn’t make out much of what was happening but she found herself hoping that no one had been killed or injured in the flames. Too many people had died already.

  But that concern was short-lived. A loud bang came from the dacha and reverberated around the forest. The gas in the kitchen had ignited and blown out part of the ground floor. She couldn’t escape the truth that she had done something that might have killed or injured people. She turned and followed the track away from the building into the vast, dripping forest and, gradually, the glow of the fire diminished and her eyes became accustomed to the dark. ‘I am with you,’ Samson had said, and she prayed he was.

  Because of the house arrest, the only way Denis Hisami could take some air in New York was on the roof of the apartment building. He went up regularly during his house arrest, lit a cigar that mostly smouldered in an ashtray, and stood in the shadow of the building’s water tank to gaze up at the towers of Midtown. The fresh air made him think clearly and it was good for him to spend time away from his computer and talking to his bankers.

  Tulliver’s head appeared around the metal fire-escape door and he called out. ‘He’s here. I’ve given him a whisky. Zillah’s waiting.’

  Hisami found Gil Leppo sitting at his dining table, hair still damp from the gym, bangles clinking as he leafed
through that morning’s New York Times, which had lain unopened all day. ‘Hey,’ he said, jumping up to give Denis another hug, which again was barely returned.

  ‘How good of you to come over,’ Denis said, moving away to the other side of the table, where two dark red Moroccan folders lay ready. He brushed the tips of his fingers over one folder, briefly enjoying the smoothness of the leather. ‘I’m glad you stayed in town.’

  ‘The place has great vibe in the fall – always the best time to be in New York.’ He sat down. ‘You’re certainly causing the shit to go airborne at TangKi.’

  ‘It’s good to hear they’re taking it seriously, Gil, because this is not just my problem.’

  ‘Yeah, everyone agrees with you now.’

  ‘Have you everything you need?’ Leppo nodded and glanced at Tulliver. ‘And you have some whisky – I forgot to ask, what do you think of Aberlour?’

  ‘Fantastic,’ said Gil, now picking up the tension in the room. ‘So how can I help?’

  ‘I hope you can help me. I really do.’ Hisami stretched and walked to the far end of the table, where he rested for a second, leaning on the back of a chair, then continued towards Leppo. ‘For both our sakes’ – he patted Leppo on the shoulder – ‘I hope you can help me.’

  Leppo looked up, and Hisami knew he’d seen something in his eyes because his face instantly drained of its usual eager charm.

  ‘Sure, name it – tell me what you want.’

  ‘My wife – I want her back,’ said Hisami. Then he fastened his hand around Leppo’s neck and started pressing into the back of the solid dining-room chair. Leppo’s arm lashed out, sending the tumbler skidding across the table and on to the floor with a clink. ‘You fucking snake! Just four people knew she was visiting the centres in Italy, and you weren’t one of them. We were exceptionally careful about who we told because we’ve had many threats from your fascist friends.’ He was aware of Tulliver shouting for him to stop, but he braced his arm with his left hand and bent down to Leppo’s face. ‘You are going to get her back, Gil. Understand?’ He gave him a jerk upwards, with half a mind to kill him there and then. Leppo managed to gurgle an affirmative.

  Tulliver bellowed, ‘Let him go now!’

  Hisami released him and watched him fall forward, holding his throat and gasping for breath. When at last he could speak, he said, ‘Jesus, have you gone crazy?’

  ‘Shut the hell up. That’s a fraction of the pain and terror Anastasia’s experienced over the last few days.’ He looked away towards the painting he had bought for her. ‘She welcomed you into our home. She cooked for you, listened to you, indulged your self-obsession, empathised with you. And now they film her by her own grave in some fucking Russian forest. My wife! This is my wife you used against me. My wife!’ He was shouting, spittle projecting from his mouth.

  Leppo looked up and shook his head. Tulliver appeared at his side with a glass of water, now the imperturbable butler. Leppo took it and swallowed some.

  ‘How long have you been involved?’ demanded Hisami.

  ‘You’ve got it wrong. You need help with that temper of yours, Denis.’ He looked up, rubbing his neck. ‘You can’t treat me like this. I’m more than your fucking equal.’

  ‘Don’t tempt me, Gil. In other circumstances, I would have killed you and, frankly, it almost seems worth it right now.’ He meant it, so took himself to the other side of the table and sat down in front of the folders that Zillah Dee had prepared for him. ‘Quite apart from Anastasia’s kidnap, have you any idea what this money will do in Europe? Did you even think of the mayhem Crane plans to cause?’

  Leppo was silent. Hisami changed his position so he could look into his eyes. ‘Don’t go on denying it, Gil. It’s all here.’ He tapped one of the two folders.

  ‘I knew nothing about Anastasia.’

  ‘Maybe that’s true, but then Crane told you just so you were up to your neck in it and you couldn’t back out when things got rough, right? My guess is he had something on you. Actually, I think I have a lot more, but we’ll talk about that in a moment. You got one of those emails from an account without a name with the documentary evidence attached. And in that email was the information you dreaded people knowing – the thing that could destroy you, if, as happened to me, it appeared on one of those far-right news sites Crane has connections with. And then one of his proxies – a lawyer, a politician, a business associate – or maybe even Crane himself tells you what to do, and you do it because you have no option. In your case, I guess it was something recent, like the shipment of arms to the Central African Republic that you brokered a couple of years ago.’

  He picked up the first folder and drew out several documents and some photographs and pushed them over to Leppo. ‘It’s all there. Orders, end-user certificates, money transfers, even clear photographs of you doing the deal in a café in Tel Aviv. See, the Israelis don’t like people doing arms deals in their country without their knowledge.’

  Leppo looked dumbly at the papers in front of him.

  ‘Gil, throughout our friendship’ – he put air quotes around the last word – ‘I never quite trusted you. I kept my ears open and I heard about this kid in Antioch. What age was she at the time that scumbag paedophile Griffin Bluett brought her to your home for a fee – fourteen, fifteen years of age? How much did you pay her family – $2 million plus her college fees? That was a nice touch. But you gave her pills – she didn’t know what they were – and alcohol to wash them down, and for the next ten hours you abused her. All this was in Griffin Bluett’s testimony, but you avoided prosecution because neither the girl nor her parents were prepared to testify.’ The second folder opened on a high-school portrait of a pretty young girl with light brown hair cut into a bob. He turned it round to face Leppo. ‘Nancy Milsum is her name and today she is nineteen years old. She never went to college because she had a breakdown. You weren’t her only abuser. She was handed around five or six men – those are the ones she can remember – by Bluett, who was feeding her drug habit. Bluett destroyed Nancy Milsum’s life, and you have your part in that. Just imagine what this is going to do to your reputation, Gil. And that’s to say nothing about the risk of prosecution, which must now be high.’

  Leppo looked at him, now totally beaten and compliant. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Let’s forget the pretence that Crane is dead, okay? We both know he’s alive and that he arranged the kidnap and is holding Anastasia somewhere in Russia. We both know that he’s trying to stop me using the information that Daniel Misak gave me. By the way, I also figured out that you were the go-between who persuaded Daniel to fly to London, where he was tortured and killed by Crane. He trusted you because you were a friend of mine.’ He paused. ‘And it was you, Gil, who passed the information on my years in Kurdistan, provided by Crane’s Russian masters, to the authorities here, which is why I’ve spent most of the last week in jail.’ He inhaled heavily and was silent.

  ‘What do you need me to do?’

  Hisami waited a little longer before answering. ‘I’m prepared to forget everything if you go to Crane and have him release my wife. You have seventy-two hours. If you negotiate her freedom, none of this will be used. Now get the fuck out of my home, and of course I never want to see you again. If I do, be sure that I will kill you.’

  A clock tolled some way off in the city of Tallinn. It was four in the morning and Samson had given up all hope of sleep. He got up, thinking about Anastasia, and found one of two cigarettes that he’d kept from another packet he’d thrown away and, shaking his head with mild self-disgust, lit up and opened the window to let the smoke out. It was no good thinking about her, so he set his mind on Hisami’s strange reluctance to act to save his wife’s life. He considered phoning Tulliver to see if there had been any developments and took out the phone, but then he noticed a movement down in the street. Someone had stepped back as he exhaled a plume of smoke into the rain. He drew back, turned off the light and stubbed out the cigarette so he coul
d relight it, if needs be. He shut the window and angled his face so as not to be seen from the street. Someone was staking out the hotel and that person was no professional – the entrance could be watched from much further off. Then he saw there was another man, short and dressed in a parka, who was apparently unconcerned about being seen. With these two men on his doorstep, Samson didn’t want Naji turning up, so he texted him with Robert Harland’s address and sent Harland a message to explain that a young man would be showing up at his house, in all likelihood with his sister.

  He watched the two men for a while. Unless Nyman had managed to locate the hotel then hired particularly useless local hoods to watch him, he had acquired some other interest. Did Adam Crane already know of the presence of a Hungarian national named Norbert Soltesz in Tallinn, a few hours from the Russian border? He decided to test them, picked up the cigarette butt and went down to the lobby, where the night porter, a young man with a textbook open in front of him, was serenely asleep with his chin resting in his hand. He woke up with a start, almost snapped to attention and made a move to the door. Samson said he’d get it himself, eased it open and stepped smartly into the street. He made for the men, holding up the cigarette. He called out in English for a light, but the two men immediately shot off in opposite directions. At least he had confirmed that he was being watched.

  His phone rang – no caller ID. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘It’s Jim Tulliver.’

  ‘How can I help?’ said Samson stiffly.

  ‘You’re still working on Anastasia?’ Tulliver sounded exhausted.

  ‘I told him I would, yes.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Has he decided to help me?’

  ‘It’s complicated – can we speak off the record?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘This is where I think we are. First, the dossier on the money and how it was to be used to stir up trouble across European democracies was devastating to the parties concerned, both in the US and Europe. Once they had found out what Misak had done for Denis and the extent of Denis’s knowledge, they realised they had to change absolutely everything about their operation – the bank accounts, the signatories on those accounts, the shell companies they were using to distribute the money. That’s complicated when banks are so wary of money-laundering. So they had to buy time, and they did that by kidnapping Anastasia and having Denis thrown in jail. Follow me?’