by A P Bateman
“The guy’s got it going on,” Rashid commented.
“And then some.”
“Let’s have a peek.”
King handed him the binoculars, turned his attention to the boundaries where the well-cultivated lawns and shrub borders met the Georgian mountain scrub.
“No fences,” Rashid said. “Other than the front gate and wall across the front of the property. Have to watch for motion sensors, but I doubt it. This is wild land. I imagine there are mountain goats, deer and wolves up here. Small vermin too. The sensors would be going off constantly.”
King could see that the property was set back from the entrance road like a horseshoe. A wall ran along the road, with large iron gates to the driveway, but the sides of the mountain rose up on three sides like a quarry.
“Got a few toys.” Rashid handed him back the binoculars. “Ferrari, I think. And a Rolls Royce.”
“Standard,” King replied. “Most probably got a few more in one of those barns.”
“We’re in the wrong business,” Rashid paused. “Or at least, on the wrong side.”
“Never.”
“Ever thought about selling those skills?”
“Nope.”
“Liar.”
King stared at him. “Not once.”
“Me neither. Just shitting with you.”
King raised the binoculars again and skirted the perimeter. He watched a man walking across one of the lawns. He stooped and picked something up. King could see it was a hoe. The man reached an area of concrete, in the centre of which was a water feature. The man started to scrape something off the hard ground. King watched for a moment, then moved on. He could see that the Ferrari was a new model. He didn’t covet such cars, but he had flicked through enough magazines and satellite channels to recognise it. Car models changed so quickly these days that he could barely keep up, but he knew this one had electric capabilities that was more of a nod for pairing it to its petrol engine for almighty starship performance, rather than to save the planet. It cost north of a million and that’s when King started to lose interest. He liked the idea of a car a tenth of the price, providing he won the lottery, but he had seen too much of the worst in the world to know what a million pounds would do in some places, and the lives it would change. He saw such spending as a finger up to the rest of the world. Especially when it was criminals like Romanovitch who held the finger. He thought about the misery the man would have caused. He thought about the IEDs he had made, and how they would send the cars up into the air with the Russian mafia boss inside. An easy way to get the job done. But the job had now turned into a snatch and escape. And he could care less what happened to Romanovitch.
“There’s a guard coming out of what looks like a bunkhouse.”
“How can you tell?”
“That he’s a guard or that it’s a bunkhouse?”
“Both,” said Rashid.
“He has a sidearm. Can’t leave it alone. And the unit looks both drab and strategically placed,” King said, handing him the binoculars. “There’s a blue hue in the window. I reckon it’s coming from a bank of CCTV monitors.”
“Or a laptop.”
“Possible.”
“And the strategic element?”
“Close to the gate, enough distance from the house to be discreet and there are no cameras on the building. Every other building has a CCTV camera fixed to it, providing eyes-on across all points on the compass. The building is in the line of sight for at least three of those cameras, which provides the security personnel with a reference-point. If the worst-case scenario happened for them, then they can monitor an enemy’s progress in relation to their position.”
“Fair one.” Rashid slid down behind a large boulder and wiped his brow with his sleeve. He said, “I think the cars would make a great diversion. One of your fireworks up the exhaust and it will be a bunch of headless chickens down there.”
“If that is a bunkhouse, an IED in there would see our job easier.”
“That’s a lot of collateral, my friend.”
“There’s also a wireless receiver unit, solar panels and switch-feed generator on the roof. That place is the hub. If it goes up, the CCTV cameras on the house and other buildings mean nothing.” King shook his head. “As for collateral? It raises the odds a little more in our favour. I’ve got a Makarov and fourteen rounds. A few homemade bombs and an unarmed lothario who looks like he came dressed for the roulette tables in Monaco…” He looked at Rashid and shrugged. “Just saying…”
Rashid smiled. “But you’ve still got your sense of humour, so it will be okay.”
King ignored him, turned his attention to the house and its many windows. Romanovitch had invested in security measures there too. In the shape of net curtains bought for a few lari per pane in the local market. Or perhaps several thousand euros in Milan. Either way, King could not see in, but whoever was inside would undoubtedly be able to see out. They would be going in blind. It could only be done at night. As if to confirm this, four men stepped out of the hub. They loosened up, seemed to stretch as they talked. One man broke away and walked to the house, the other two waited for another man to step outside and they walked to one of the large outbuildings. He could not see if the men were armed, but he expected them to be.
“I’m thinking I get close, or at least, as close as I can,” King said. “There’s little moon tonight, I’ll use as much cover as I can and be ready to use an IED to breach the door to the main house.”
“While I create a diversion?”
“Exactly.”
“And you want that diversion to include putting an IED through the door to that security hub?”
“Best option.”
“Not for them.”
“There’s a lot of men down there. A lot of muscle, undoubtedly armed.” King looked at him earnestly. “I have everything riding on this. I really do appreciate your help so far,” he paused. “And I guarantee I will be there for you if you ever need me in the future, but I think it may be best if we part company.”
“You do?”
King shrugged. “I don’t think I can ask you to drop an IED through that door, not knowing how many are inside. And I don’t think it’s fair to. You have reservations. That much is clear. I’ll take it from here.” He raised the binoculars and looked back at the property below.
“Just like that?”
“Better all round.”
“I just think there’s a better way.”
“If I don’t get this done, I won’t see Caroline again. I know that.”
“Then kill Romanovitch and exfiltrate. Don’t complicate things taking a hostage of your own. For all you know, Catherine Milankovitch might not even be here.”
King rubbed a hand through his short hair. The thick strands sprung back as his hand moved further towards the back of his head. He sighed, shook his head.
“Your vision has become clouded.”
“You’re surprised?”
“No,” replied Rashid. “But this is a big deal. The man has security personnel and adequate measures. You have a short-ranged pistol and nowhere near enough rounds for a pitched battle with multiple targets. And I’m not armed at all.”
“I’ll manage,” he paused. “I always have.”
“Like in France?”
“I knew you’d show up.”
“And in that bloody mosque?”
“You had a gun, and your bindings were almost cut through.”
“You must have a death wish.”
“I’m still here,” King replied tersely.
“And so am I. But if we get down there and into a battle with hardened Russian mafia, most of whom are probably ex-Spetsnaz, we’ll get in trouble. We don’t have enough firepower. Or men.”
King shrugged. “No hard feelings,” he said. “Get out of here. Go back and help Ramsay, to find Caroline through Helena. Keep it a two-pronged attack.”
Rashid stood up, took another look down at the distant pr
operty. He glanced at King, but he was studying something in the binoculars. He didn’t say anything more. It was a suicide mission with ten men, let alone one.
King watched Romanovitch step out onto the patio and make his way towards the Olympic-sized pool. He had studied the photographs that Helena had attached to her text message. The man looked a little older and greyer. A little fleshier. But there was no mistaking him. He rested the binoculars down beside him and turned around.
Rashid had gone.
62
Caroline had showered twice and stared into the mirror for a good while before showering again. She hadn’t seen her own reflection for a month and it seemed a novelty. In the car, she had looked haggard and worn. Now she looked cleaner, but still unfamiliar. There was something different about the way she looked, the way she looked back at herself. She knew part of her had died, lamented the feeling of loss. She hoped one day the sparkle in her eyes would return.
She couldn’t seem to rid herself of her ordeal, cleanse herself of the degradation of her capture and trafficking to the east. No amount of showering left her feeling clean. The way The Beast had touched her in the first house she had been taken to, the threat of what he was going to try back at the farmhouse and what he was going to do to her in that derelict, pitch-dark barn during her escape. And the blood that had splattered over her when she had killed him, and that too of Michael’s. It seemed as if it would never wash out. She stared at herself, deep into her eyes. She had taken a life. She had killed The Beast and she was not sorry.
She would do it again.
Ramsay had ordered her room service, told her he would meet later to discuss their next move. It was a decent hotel, and she had relaxed on the king-sized bed and eaten the club sandwich and fries, drank the gin and tonic and ordered more of the same. She hadn’t realised how famished she had been, nor how the comforts of a decent hotel and a nerve-steadying drink could relax her so.
She had met Marnie briefly, and decided she liked her. The woman had no agenda. She had bought Caroline a selection of clothes and underwear, and she had bought well. No under sizing, nor over sizing – simply the right size and suitable for the occasion. It could have been so easy to buy too small and feign surprise that they would not fit or buy too large and look as if she had sized-her up wrong. Caroline had experience of such women all her life, and it was a refreshing change, especially as Marnie was at least a size larger than Caroline. Her taste in clothes suited Caroline, and she imagined that given the opportunity, or completely different circumstances, they could become firm friends.
Caroline looked up as she heard the knock on the door. Sharp and business-like. For a fleeting moment, she had jumped at the shock, unnerved. She imagined she would react that way for some time. She walked over, stood to one side.
“Yes?”
“It’s Neil, let me in.”
Caroline could hear a tone in his voice but was unsure how to read it through the door. She flicked off the security chain and opened the door. His face showed concern, but she imagined he would think he hid it well.
She walked back a few steps. Ramsay looked at her, nodded approvingly.
“You look better.”
“Thanks,” Caroline replied indignantly.
“Oh, I didn’t mean anything,” he said.
“Forget it,” she said coolly. “What’s up?”
“There was a triangulation on Rashid’s phone,” he paused. “Further down the coast. It’s a monied place, not so much a poor man’s Monaco, as a place where the rich and criminally wanted choose to hang out. Much like the Costa Del Sol in the eighties and nineties. Only Russia’s rich and criminally wanted. Georgia affords them both a police force and regional governments who are susceptible to bribes and turn a blind eye to criminal activity.”
“And you think Rashid is there with Alex?” She sat down on the bed and crossed her legs. Marnie had picked out a tastefully cut silk blouse and Caroline had paired it with dark, tight jeans and a cream lamb’s wool cardigan. The jeans were tucked into tan leather knee-length boots.
Ramsay glanced at the boots as Caroline crossed her legs. “Crikey, that’s the budget gone this month!”
“I do hope so,” she replied sardonically. “Marnie did well.”
“I’ll have to have a word.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” she said. “And I think I’m due a pay rise.”
Ramsay nodded. “I suspect it will be on the cards.”
Caroline nodded. She knew they’d reassess her status – just as long as she promised not to talk to legal or sell her story someday. Standard. They had made her sign all sorts of papers when her fiancé Peter Redwood had died in a terrorist explosion. She hadn’t been thinking straight, both relieved she had lived, and crippled with grief at the same time. The legal department at MI5 knew how to pick their moments.
“Marnie is running software on Rashid’s phone,” Ramsay paused. “The moment the man switches it on, we’ll know where he is to within two square metres.”
“You’ve tried messaging him, or ringing?”
“Of course. But you know how it is. If you leave a couple of messages, then leaving more won’t make them ring you sooner.”
“Enough of your love life,” she grinned.
Ramsay smiled. He could see that she was slowly returning to her normal self. He guessed it would take time, but she would get there.
“What did you find at the farm?” she asked.
Ramsay shook his head. “It was cleaned out. The place was a shell.”
“I killed a man,” she said. “He died in a derelict barn.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“Okay.”
“You found nothing else?”
“Nothing.”
“What about the police? Forensics?”
“Rank amateurs. They will have corrupted more than they’ll ever find.”
“So that’s it? Nothing else to go on?”
Ramsay shrugged. “I think it may come down to King. He must have had a breakthrough, for the way Rashid ditched us and disappeared. He must be close.”
Caroline said, “I certainly hope so.”
63
Rashid pulled his car over in a layby behind a selection of parked heavy plant vehicles and took out his phone. He switched it on and waited for it to run through its start-up sequence. He could see that he had two text messages and two missed calls. He didn’t need to look at the call list to know who it would be. He put the phone on the passenger seat, leaned back in his seat and stared at the headlining as he sighed. He was nowhere. He hadn’t helped King – certain the man was on a suicide mission, that he wanted no part of – and he was no longer aiding in the search for Caroline or Helena Milankovitch.
He had helped King twice in the past, hadn’t really been able to reason why, other than he knew King was a man who bent the rules, acted spontaneously and had completed the gruelling SAS selection course many times. For Rashid, the selection process had been the toughest experience he had ever known, but for King, it had been MI6’s idea of maintaining fitness. King had not only completed the course, but he had been dropped into it many times for three or four weeks at a time, at every stage over a dozen years. If he was honest with his reasoning, Rashid probably couldn’t think of any other reason than that. It said more about King than anything else ever would. He supposed he respected him more than anyone he had met.
And now the man was going up against impossible odds.
Rashid punched the steering wheel and screamed, cursing a half-a-dozen times. He gripped the wheel and went to put the car in gear but stopped himself and picked up the phone. He read the curt messages. Neil Ramsay asking him where he was and to call him back immediately. Rashid looked at the time the message had been sent. Immediately had long-gone. He tossed the phone back down and drove the car out around the enormous digger and pulled back out into the road. He didn’t see the car, rather than misjudged
and was almost rear-ended amid a blast of horn. He stuck up a finger and cursed again, accelerating hard down the mountain road. The driver behind pulled out around him, his modified twenty-year-old Audi blasting past with gunfire erupting from his exhausts. The driver held up his fingers like a child mimed a pistol and was gone with the exhaust popping and banging. Rashid cursed again. Cursing his own stupidity, his own carelessness. He heard his phone ringing, saw the false name he’d used for Ramsay, and cursed again. He ignored it. He was heading for civilisation and a decent road. Then he would call and speak to the MI5 man. He’d use the time to concoct a story as he drove. He had a feeling he’d be back on a desk assignment in Hereford before long, his brief career with MI5 nothing more than a fleeting memory.
64
“Damn it! No answer!”
“I’ve got a cell triangulation.” Marnie played her fingertips across the keypad and brought up the software map. It was a detailed survey map complete with topographical height increments. “Near the border with Abkhazia.”
“Bugger. That border is hot, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Abkhazia broke away from Georgia and became an independent state.”
“I remember. A horrible little war not many heard about in the west. Plenty of ethnic cleansing on both sides, but the Abkhazians had support from Armenia and Russia, who had scores to settle with Georgia for breaking away from the USSR. How close is he to the border?”
Marnie worked the keys and adjusted the map. “Close. Practically straddling the two countries.” She pushed the tiny glasses back up onto the bridge of her nose as she read. “You can’t get in without a letter of authority, which converts to a visa. It’s a relatively straightforward process but takes around five days. And you can’t fly in because the Georgians have vowed to shoot down anything flying in or out across its airspace.”
“Nice.”
“Needless to say; Georgia doesn’t recognise their independence.”
“Nor does anyone apart from Russia and about four pacific islands they paid off.”