by A P Bateman
“Well, you managed to get a piece, more than I could do.”
King spun around, but he had already figured out who it was and refrained from grabbing the pistol. “You made decent time,” he said lightly, but he was mad with himself for being crept up on. Fatigue and circumstance was putting him at a disadvantage.
Rashid walked up, held out his hand. King took it, shook it warmly. It was relief to have help, to see a friendly face.
“How is it on the outside?”
“Flying blind,” King replied. He told him about Sweden, what he had been about to do, and the idea that Simon Grant had unwittingly given him about using leverage. He told him about Anna and the way she had played both sides. The two men that he had killed, the unknown number of men in the burned-out Mercedes. He hadn’t seen the need to check.
“You’ve been busy,” Rashid commented as he looked inside the boot of the car. He saw the IEDs. “Blast radius?”
“A hundred feet for the electrical charges, fifty-feet for the taper fuse ones,” King said with a shrug. “Or thereabouts.”
“Shrapnel?”
“About two-hundred grams of screws in each. The taper fuse ones will be less powerful, but still enough to wreck a vehicle.”
“I’ll be sure to duck, then,” Rashid said. He updated King on what he, Ramsay and Marnie had found. He told them about South Africa, working with Ryan Beard from MI6 and what had happened at Botha’s property. And then he told him about the IP address and that Marnie and Ramsay were heading there to investigate.
King listened intently. This last piece could lead them directly to Caroline. He wondered whether he should pack up and go, but he was so close, and they could find themselves at another dead end. He needed to hold his nerve.
“I’ll stick to what I’m doing here. I just want a hand with a diversion,” King said. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m getting Catherine Milankovitch out. Romanovitch is Helena’s problem. With Catherine, I have a bargaining chip, a fair trade for Caroline. Anna Sergeyev told me that Romanovitch snatched Catherine and has kept her ever since Helena funded some mercenaries to move in on the Bratva’s assets. He covered his arse, even taunted Pyotr Sergeyev about it, telling him to hide.”
Rashid nodded. “So, what do we know about Romanovitch’s place?”
“I’ve found it with Google Earth, worked out the borders, which way is north, seen the gates. Nothing more.”
“So, flying blind,” Rashid said flatly. “I haven’t got a weapon,” he said.
“If all goes well, I just want some big bangs. There are outbuildings, cars, and of course, a huge gate. If some of those things go skywards, I plan on slipping in through the back and finding Catherine.”
“And if she’s being held in one of those outbuildings and gets blown to kingdom-come?” Rashid shook his head decisively. “No, we need to do a thorough recce. You’ve come so far, buying time, getting Helena to trust you, discovering both the existence and whereabouts of Catherine. Now you have an edge. We can’t risk harming the one person who can get Caroline back unharmed.”
King nodded. He was not only fatigued, he wasn’t thinking straight. “Agreed,” he paused. “I bought some binoculars. There is plenty of high ground above his property. If we can work our way up there, it will be worth it.”
“What about a recce, then hitting him in the middle of the night? We can be stealthy, use the demolition stuff to aid our escape instead of storming the castle, so to speak. Could keep the body count down too.”
“We’ll see,” King said. The end was in sight. He was so close to transferring the power between Helena and himself, so eager with anticipation, that he felt like a child at the end of term. He was glad that Rashid was here to play devil’s advocate, lend a sense of perspective. He looked at Rashid and nodded. “I guess you’re right,” he admitted.
Rashid patted him on the shoulder. “We’ll get her back,” he said. “It isn’t over till it’s over.”
60
She had waited two-hours and twenty minutes and it had felt like a day. Parked on the road overlooking the seafront, the doors to the car locked, the windows wound up and the keys in the ignition. She had positioned the mirrors to watch the road behind her, affording little in the way of blind-spots and had spent the entire time studying all who came near. She kept the tiny pistol with its three rounds under her thigh. An easy reach.
Her nerve was gone. She was frightened, now that she was away from that place of hell, terrified she would be caught and bound and returned. Or taken someplace new and equally as hideous. She was hungry and thirsty, tired and desperately in need of a shower. The clothes Michael had given her were muddy, torn and blood-splattered. Her hair was tangled and lank, and as she caught sight of herself in the mirror, she would acknowledge that she looked hollow and worn. She was a beautiful woman, although she would never allude to thinking that, but she could see some light had left her eyes, some sparkle was gone, and she doubted it would ever return. She had been through much in her life – the killing of colleagues in both the army and MI5, as well as the death her fiancé in a terrorist attack – but she knew that these past weeks had extracted more from her than bereavement ever would. She thought of those poor women, their bastard children – innocent and compromised by fate, and whether they would ever know freedom again. She vowed, as she sat and stared at the stranger in the mirror, that she would help them. She would make it her life’s work if she had to.
Caroline watched Ramsay’s Skoda saloon pull up and park. He got out and looked around, then walk towards the lighthouse. There was a woman in the passenger seat. Her hair was dark and shoulder-length, her shoulders slender. Caroline felt a pang of familiarity. The same profile and build as Helena. Caroline continued to watch, noticed the woman looking around uneasily. She could see it was not Helena. While attractive, she wasn’t in the same league of beauty, and she wore a pair of small, rectangular glasses set in trendy designer frames.
She realised that she was being paranoid, but her ordeal had infected her, changed her. She doubted she’d ever feel truly free again.
Trust nobody, rely on nobody.
She unlocked the car, took the keys out of the ignition and slipped them into her pocket. She did not lock the car door behind her, preferring to know she could save an extra second getting back in if she had to. Why was she dubious? She should have trusted Ramsay, thrown herself at him as he arrived. But she didn’t feel she could let down her guard, put her safety into someone else’s hands. No rescue had come for her. She worried about Alex. Had he come to harm going through who knew what for Helena’s agenda? She had faith in him, but she couldn’t worry unduly. She needed to think about herself. But she knew that safety was an illusion. She wanted to flee back to London, but London was where she was abducted from. She knew she wouldn’t be any safer there than right here, right now. Leaving Georgia was putting the place behind her, but not the threat. The threat lay with Helena. And until she was dead or imprisoned for her crimes, then Caroline knew she would never truly be safe.
She glanced at the woman inside the car. She did not recognise her, but much of MI5’s work was compartmentalised and many people from various departments never met until they were pulled in to work on something specific. Support staff, analysts and technical departments would work together regularly, but field agents like Caroline and King rarely rubbed shoulders with them. In fact, since the attack on Thames House by Russian terrorists last year, most of her briefings had taken place in temporary offices in Whitehall or the MOD.
The woman was working on a laptop, balancing it on her lap and checking a smartphone at the same time. Caroline walked onwards, watched all around Ramsay and behind her, feigning interest in the giant Ferris wheel. Nobody seemed to be watching him, which was Caroline’s fear. She had come too far to be led unwittingly into an ambush. There were only a small number of places where it would have made sense for Caroline to go, it wouldn’t be too difficult for Helena with her resourc
es to have people looking out for her. After all, Caroline could link her with a number of major crimes and would be a witness to her sex trafficking and baby farming schemes. Both of which would be crimes where sentences would be handed out in decades rather than years.
Ramsay turned and saw her. He strode over, stopped short of hugging her and hesitated. Caroline hugged him, relief catching up with her. She pulled away, looked at him. There were tears in her eyes.
“God, I’m glad to see you,” he said.
“Ditto,” she replied, a little croak in her voice. She coughed, took a breath and said, “Where’s Alex?”
Ramsay sighed. He glanced around and said, “Let’s talk in the car. We’ll get a hotel room, you can have a shower.”
Caroline stopped in her tracks. “I asked you where Alex was.”
Ramsay shook his head. “I don’t know,” he paused. “I haven’t had contact with him since this started.”
“So, you don’t know if he’s okay?” she asked. “Helena said that he was working for her, doing tasks to keep me safe.”
Ramsay nodded. “He has been,” he paused. “I don’t want to go into it here, but he’s a skilful chap. A certain set of skills, few possess. He has used them to good effect.”
“So where would be your best guess?”
“I imagine getting closer to Helena,” he said nonchalantly. “There’s nothing high-profile on the grapevine since his visits to France and Italy. Those weren’t exactly subtle affairs.”
“So, you’ve no clue?”
“No. But an SAS officer on secondment to five, a man King knows well, by all accounts, was working with us to help find Helena,” Ramsay paused. “Find Helena, find King. That was his angle. But I fear he has played us; been in contact with King throughout.”
“Rashid?”
“Yes.”
“Alex has no other friends in Hereford. He hates the place. I have met Rashid. He’s a solid character. Where is he?”
Ramsay hesitated. “Well, that’s just it,” he said. “We arrived in Tbilisi and while I was hiring the car, he upped and went.”
“Just like that?”
“The technician I have working with me, well, they both got fairly well acquainted…”
“And that’s why he left?”
“No. Marnie was with him when he got a call. He listened, didn’t speak much and left her standing there.”
“You think it was Alex?”
“I do,” he said.
“And he left through the airport, out onto the concourse?”
“Yes.”
“Then if it was Alex, that would mean he was in Georgia,” she said hopefully. “Which means Helena is still in Georgia and Alex is closing in on her.”
“Precisely.”
Caroline nodded. “We need to contact Rashid, see if he is with Alex. He’ll need to know I’m safe and well.”
“And are you?”
Caroline shrugged. “I’ve been through a lot, but I’ve seen a lot worse. Others did not have it as easy as I did,” she paused. “I was eventually held at a farm…”
“We’ve been there,” Ramsay said. “Near Skhimili. It was evident it had been in recent use, but it was deserted.”
“Oh, no…” Caroline said quietly. She looked at Ramsay, her expression sorrowful. “There were girls there, young women… they were being held, ready to go out to the sex trade. Pop-up brothels, the internet, sex-slaves to the wealthy and immoral. They also had women set aside for a baby farming venture.”
“Jesus…” Ramsay trailed off.
Caroline sighed. “The dark web, or deep web, or whatever the hell it’s called. A place where babies can be bought and sold. To the highest bidder, naturally.”
Ramsay shook his head and said, “I don’t get it. I just don’t understand how a British billionaire’s wife can get so low, so quickly.”
“She always was,” Caroline said. “She worked in the sex trade herself, was part of the Russian mafia. She married well, that’s all. She was the same person all the time. She cheated, keeping her long-time lover, Viktor Bukov, planned and schemed her husband’s death all along. Together, they came up with Anarchy to Recreate Society. A terrorist organisation praying on the rich and powerful. Modern-day Robin Hoods. But that was all a cover, a way of making Sir Ian Snell’s death look like part of a bigger picture. In doing so, she gladly sacrificed three other men, and people like the Jameson family, who simply died because they owned and lived at a house that was perfect for Bukov to take his shot from to kill Snell while he was down in Cornwall.”
“And both King and yourself thwarted their plans, uncovered them.”
“She’s a spiteful and vengeful bitch,” Caroline said bitterly.
“And clever too. Or at least smart.”
“But not as smart as Alex. He was onto them from the moment he investigated the murder scene. He knew that they had taken more than one shot from such a great distance. He knew that from the position Snell had been sitting in, and the granite wall behind him, meant he would have been drugged. Snell simply would have known he was being shot at. He would have moved at least.”
“Well, if Alex is onto her, we need to find out where he is so that we can be of assistance,” Ramsay said thoughtfully. “It just doesn’t feel right. The woman managed to be involved with the Russian mafia all this time, overthrew them using you as bait and a British agent to do her dirty work, and cleaned away her operation and evaded capture in a matter of hours, but she allows King to get near her? I don’t see it. With the best will in the world, the woman is out for vengeance, and I just can’t see her letting King get near her after all that has happened.”
“You think Alex is walking into a trap?”
Ramsay nodded. “I’m convinced of it.”
61
The mountain road led to a former communications outpost, chosen for the uninterrupted signal it would both receive or generate, high atop the tallest mountain in the range. It would have dated back to the original cold war, and King imagined bored and weary, undisciplined Soviet troops milling around, Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders, waiting for word from Moscow, or counting down until their tour led them to something a little more favourable than a deserted mountain ridge. The posting would have been a punishment, or perhaps a last-chance shot across the bow for junior soldiers. A trained radio operator, and a handful of conscripts to cook, clean, guard and maintain the series of huts and bunks. Inspections would depend on the senior ranking soldier, and their own balance between social acceptance and fear of a snap inspection. The person in charge of this place would either be ostracised by his men or hauled over the coals when an officer turned up with high-ranking KGB officials for a report.
The buildings were now largely torn down. Graffiti and what King recognised as Russian profanity was tagged in garish colours on the remaining walls, and the roofing, windows and doors had all been stripped and stolen, most likely making up somebody’s house soon after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Rashid had left his car further down the mountain, parked off the road in a mountain track and tucked the keys under the front wheel arch. He had then ridden the rest of the way up with King, who had turned around and parked nose facing outwards, ready to escape if they needed to. Rashid’s car would serve as a back-up plan if they were compromised by Romanovitch’s men and could not make it back to King’s car. Leaving the keys was merely soldier thinking – Rashid may not make it back, but it didn’t mean that King would be out of escape options. King did the same with his hire car, returning the favour for Rashid. The two men now made their way down the mountain slope, where they could see the Russian mafia boss’ property spread out below.
“I’m going to have to up my rate,” Rashid said, following King’s route through some loose boulders. “I keep getting into shit with you, and you never pay your bar tab.”
“Pretty sure I saved your arse in that mosque.”
“Wasn’t it the other way around?” R
ashid laughed.
“It’s all a bit hazy now,” King said and ducked down behind a large boulder.
“Well, I saved your backside in France, that’s for sure.”
“Quit your bitching,” King replied. “At least I get you out from behind a desk.”
“It’s not exactly slow in the regiment.”
“It is if you ravage the daughters of senior officers who can block your career path.”
Rashid shrugged. “He should watch out. He’s got a fit wife too…”
King smiled, checked the position of the sun before he raised the binoculars and studied the property below. He could see that Romanovitch had undertaken work since Google Earth had been overhead. The main building was a McMansion. Two-tone colours, pillars and tall windows. He estimated twenty rooms or more and could see that not only did the property boast an Olympic-sized swimming pool, but a sizable pool ran along the south side of the building, entirely enclosed in glass. The gardens reminded King of French palace lawns, with striped mowing patterns, water features and statues of women in vulnerable poses.