He jumped. The logs passed beneath us. Soldiers dived for cover. Silence. And then a terrific crunch as the driver ploughed headlong into the barricade behind. The halogen headlight beams swivelled crazily in the snow-filled air. And then the only light was the weak silver sheen cast by the moon as it struggled to break through the reforming clouds. The road forked. I bore left. Boynou’s hooves skidded on the ice. He stumbled, back legs faltering. But he steadied himself and carried on, sinews straining, nostrils flared, streaming sweat and steam and blood into the cold night air.
Kulisko swarmed with sweeping headlights. I pulled Boynou off the road and into a field. His canter slowed to a trot, bouncing his way through the freshly settled snow.
Two hundred and fifty metres to the lakeside.
Searchlights combed the landscape around us, but their beams struggled to cut through the still-falling flakes. I brought Boynou to a walk with a low whistle and patted his flank, soothing him. The wound in his neck was superficial, the bleeding light, and he seemed hardly affected by the gallop.
A small creek opened up ahead of us. He stepped down one hoof at a time. The ice held. Four paces and then we were out again, on to the lake shore. I turned us left and rode west for another three hundred metres at a sitting trot, picking my way as carefully as I could along the edge of the frozen water. The land bulged into the lake.
Another two hundred metres and that was it: the point of maximum vulnerability.
Estonia was quarter of a klick to the west; Kulisko five hundred metres to the east – and there was nothing between me and either side except a flat, white sheet of ice. I stood up in the stirrups and faced Boynou towards the border. I prayed that Jack Nazzar was waiting on the other side and stepped out on to the ice.
I didn’t hear the launch charges go off.
But I heard the mortars land. First one, then another. The bombs fell on to the ice, fifty metres wide of us, detonating with a deep thud. Hard as iron, the ice topping the frozen lake absorbed none of the blast. Instead, shrapnel spread out from each explosion unhindered, spewing thousands of searing-hot, razor-sharp shards well beyond the usual kill radius.
A third round fell, closer. Boynou spooked and reared. I leaned in and tried to calm him. It was a short, deadly sprint to freedom. I looked back towards Kulisko. More incoming. Not bombs, but bright white flashes that popped and burned on the ice. Five, ten, fifteen of them. Within seconds the inlet was on fire.
Flares. Fuck.
It was too windy to launch them over me, so they were firing them directly at the lake. The entire southern shore was burning with blinding white magnesium.
‘No, poshel!’ I shouted at Boynou. ‘Yah!’
His pent-up power unleashed itself into a massive leap forward. We rode out on to the ice, dangerously silhouetted by the flaming Schermulys. Another mortar round landed, spattering the ice with spiked steel. Boynou galloped on, legs, flanks cut by needle-fine splinters of shrapnel. The wind drove into my face. We were in the middle of the inlet now. I lashed Boynou on with the birch switch. As I did so, a mortar bomb landed in front of us, filling the air with a hissing swarm of killer metal. I felt a punch in my chest. I gasped as the impact winded me. My jacket was torn open, ripped by shrapnel.
Boynou rose up.
A heartbeat.
Then pain.
I lost my grip on the reins and tumbled backwards, falling free of the saddle but not the stirrups. My left boot caught fast as Boynou bolted. My head, hands hit the ice. I twisted on to my back. I put my palm to my sternum and burned my fingers on the steel stuck there. I’d taken a direct hit to the chest. Boynou dragged me, his hooves pounding inches from my head. I flexed my foot, but I was wedged tight.
I squinted at the snow-blurred sky. I was beginning to lose consciousness. All around me the lake whited out. I thought for a moment it was snow powder, whipped up by the wind, but it was too dense. All shape, substance dissolved. Above, the night sky disappeared beneath the white wings of an angel swooping down to engulf me. The wounds in my chest, arms, shoulder, thigh tore apart.
This is how it ended – dragged through a world stripped bare of everything I held dear, from Ireland to Arkhangel. Doc Levy shot in his chair; Rachel consumed by fire; all the dead laid out behind me – engulfed by an inferno of my own creation. I strained and looked up into the fog, searching in vain for Jacob’s Ladder. But there was nothing to see except an infinite emptiness. It was too late to ask for mercy. Whatever happened next, I had it coming. My eyes dimmed.
‘I’m ready,’ I said.
But my words were swallowed by the tattoo beaten out by the bombs and Boynou thundering across the ice. And then the strength went out of me and the bright white world went black.
36
‘I have to hand it to you, McLean. It was a brilliant story.’
Major General Sir Kristóf King, Director Special Forces, leaned over and charged two glasses with red wine from a lead crystal decanter.
‘Convincing that Bulgarian chap I’d sent you on some damned fool mission to shoot a terrorist who was already dead. Quite the ruse. No one gets hanged for killing a ghost, what? Least of all you or I.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘L’Chaim.’ King raised his glass in a toast. ‘That’s what the Jews say, isn’t it? To life.’
‘I believe so, sir.’
I nodded at him and drank deeply. He sipped from his own glass and set it down on the old oak table that separated us.
‘Château Musar, 1988. So hard to get the genuine stuff from the Lebanon these days. I remembered how much you liked it.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
We were sitting in General King’s private dining room in Whitehall, all polished wood and oil paintings. His reflection glinted off the tabletop, white skin taut across his skull, black eyes lost in the beeswax shine. It was dark outside. The room was lit by a single chandelier.
It paid to be cautious with King. He was as much an outsider as I was, and his upper-class affectations just that: an act. Hungarian by birth, ruthless by nature: not even the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service could outplay him. Never mind aces and eights – to play at King’s table, and survive, you needed a fistful of jokers. One slip with him and you’d vanish without trace. I kept my mouth shut and my ears open.
Boynou had unseated me fifty metres from the Estonian frontier, and then dragged me to the NATO front line. I came to in the helicopter, oxygen mask over my mouth, medics working on my chest. Then I understood that it had not been Azrael swooping down on me, but an altogether grumpier angel. Jack Nazzar had received my message and tracked my progress. The dense fog shrouding the final moments of my escape was not the wings of the Destroyer come to get me, but smoke pouring from canisters dropped inside NATO territory by the Wing.
The wind had carried a solid white blanket out across the ice long enough to get me clear. In the end Nazzar’s complaint wasn’t that I’d interrupted his weekend but that he’d not managed to ‘slot any Russkies’. His Revolutionary Warfare mob hadn’t fired a single shot.
On the Special Duties flight back to Brize Norton I’d given him a rundown of what had happened – and asked a favour: it was a straightforward breach of protocol, but I wanted to be taken directly to see King.
‘I don’t fancy my chances in Ulster right now, Jack,’ I’d explained.
I didn’t have to spell it out. Nazzar knew better than anyone the parlous state of my relationship with Frank. He knew, too, that General King’s displeasure cut both ways. If he was not against you, he was for you: the blessing of Director Special Forces, however hard won, was a literal lifesaver.
‘Aye, all right, son,’ he’d agreed. ‘But your lifesaver’s right here, no’ in bloody Whitehall.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I owe you.’
‘Aye, that too. But I’m no talkin’ about me, ya daft prick. I’m talkin’ about this.’
He’d handed me Talia’s cell phone. I propped myself up
on the stretcher and stared at it in the dim glow of the C130’s cabin lights. It was pierced through by a piece of shrapnel – a two-inch chunk of steel, sides sharp as razors. The tip of it had broken the metal casing on the back of the phone, tearing a hole through my passport and gouging a lump out of my chest. But I’d been spared what otherwise would have been a fatal wound to the heart.
‘I saw it once before,’ he said. ‘In Bosnia. Some glaikit cameraman’s wallet stopped an AK round.’
‘There was stuff on it. Stuff I need. Data.’ I slumped back down. ‘Shit.’
‘Christ, son. There’s no pleasin’ you, eh? Tech says he can save whatever’s on the drive. But I wouldnae try callin’ yer burd wi’ it.’ He dropped the phone on to my stomach. ‘Luck o’ the Irish, ya Paddy bastard.’
I finished my wine.
‘Commander Knight thought I’d be furious about that phosphorus grenade.’ General King brought his face closer to mine and winked. ‘Not a bit of it. Burned all the evidence and got those New IRA yahoos in trouble. Two birds with one stone, eh? Best not make a habit of it, though. Scares Downing Street half to death.’
He refilled my glass and stared at me, tilting his head to appraise me as one might an animal before slaughter. Where to put the knife? How deep to thrust it? I’d been back in London for twelve hours. My wounds were as raw as the day they’d been cut.
‘I’m glad we have this, ah, opportunity, to clear up any outstanding personal matters. Tell me, McLean. Is there anything in particular I can help you with?’
He was good. I gave him that much. I thought about all the questions that still remained, but decided instead to ask him the one I knew he’d answer; one that would determine all that followed.
‘How did you know, sir?’ I said, nursing the wine. He kept still, close, watching me. ‘How did Frank – Commander Knight, I mean – how did he know to send me to the cottage in Donegal in the first place?’
‘The devil,’ he said, sitting back in the dining chair, ‘is always in the detail. But if it’s all the same with you, I’ll let Commander Knight delve into the specifics.’ He reached for his wine, crossing his legs under the table as he did so. He paused, calculating, I supposed, the cost of continuing. ‘What I will say, though, is that it’s a bloody good job Doctor Levy didn’t have a telephone. Never mind a computer.’ And then a broad grin spread across his face. ‘Apparently Commander Knight had been watching him for years. And then his daughter wrote him a letter. A bloody letter. Can you imagine?’ He turned the glass in his hand, first examining the wine, and then my reaction. ‘She was unstable by all accounts. Tried to kill herself once before. Looks like this time she followed through. Shame she didn’t survive, though. She’d have made a good gift for the Americans. God knows we could do with some credit at the White House, what?’ He sipped the wine. There was a knock on the dining room door as it began to open. ‘And talking of the Devil, that will be him now.’
King’s batman put his head into the room and cleared his throat.
‘Commander Knight, sir. Shall I …?’
‘Yes, do.’ The door opened wider. ‘Ah, Frank. Come in. We were just finishing up, weren’t we, McLean?’ We both stood. I rolled my shoulders and braced myself, though for what, exactly, I wasn’t sure. Frank Knight stepped into the room. ‘I’ll leave you two Irishmen to it,’ he continued. ‘But before I do, and seeing as we’re all here together, there was just one thing I wanted to double-check.’ He looked at Frank, and then at me, working out, perhaps, which one of us would lie least effectively. I was both flattered and appalled that he settled on me. ‘This Punjabi chap, the one who turned up in Tel Aviv.’
‘Baaz,’ I said. ‘Bhavneet Singh. What about him?’
‘Are you sure,’ he turned his attention to Frank, ‘are you both sure, that was his name?’
‘Yes,’ I said, also turning to Frank. ‘I’ve already been through this with Jack Nazzar on the evac from Tallinn.’
‘I see,’ said King, shooting his cuffs and adjusting his tie. ‘Or rather, I don’t see. See him, that is.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘Neither does anyone else, McLean. The address in Paris you gave for him? On Rue du Texel.’ I nodded. ‘It’s leased in the name of one “Pierre Shor”.’ I went to speak but he cut me off with a raised hand. ‘And there is no one – of either name – enrolled in Saclay University.’
‘I …’
‘And the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs,’ he continued forcefully, ‘could neither locate anyone in jail in Chandigarh who might be his father nor find any academic who might plausibly have been his professor.’
My mind raced. Sweat broke across my back. The centre of my chest throbbed with pain as my heart rate climbed.
‘An auntie. He said he had an auntie in London. I told Nazzar about her, too.’
‘I’m sure you will forgive our colleagues in the Security Service if it takes them a little longer than twenty-four hours to pinpoint that particular Mrs Kaur.’
In my mind’s eye I saw Baaz walking away from me in Tel Aviv and the scales fell from my eyes. Frank shook his head at me like a dissatisfied schoolmaster.
‘Fortunately, if somewhat embarrassingly,’ King continued, ‘the Israelis have found him for us.’
From a pocket inside his uniform jacket he produced a folded piece of paper. He smoothed it out and handed it to Frank, who passed it to me. He wasn’t wearing a turban, but it was Baaz all right, caught in three-quarter profile from above by a security camera – rucksack over his right shoulder, ball cap and upturned collar hiding his hair.
‘Haifa?’ Frank asked.
‘No. Ashdod,’ Knight replied. ‘Your man here is queuing to board a cruise ship bound for Piraeus. His ticket was booked last Wednesday.’ The date stamp on the video grab read 07:00:06 19-01-2018. Friday morning. ‘According to the ship’s manifest he was due to disembark at Alexandria on Saturday morning.’
‘And then what?’ I asked.
‘And then he vanished, McLean. No one has seen or heard anything of Bhavneet Singh since.’
That beautiful, brilliant boy had stepped out of the shitstorm, pocketing the one thing we’d all wanted. Whatever his motivations, it was a stunning achievement. That much I had to admit. It would have been a coup as magnificent as it was monstrous – were it not for one defining fact: he’d jumped ship too soon. Unless his mind proved equal to Rachel’s, without her final calculations all he’d escaped with was precisely one hundred United States dollars. King took the printout from me and walked towards the door.
‘He’s all yours, Frank. The best of bloody luck to both of you.’
General King stalked out of the dining room, swatting away the attentions of the lance corporal whose undesirable job it was to wait on him. Frank and I stood staring at the floor, waiting for their footsteps to recede. When the only sound left was the distant hum of traffic creeping along Whitehall, Frank looked up at me.
‘Well done. Not often you see the old bugger lost for words.’
‘Well done?’
‘The cottage was burned out and all the evidence destroyed. All anyone on the circuit abroad knows is that Her Majesty’s Government wanted you to kill a dead man – and I don’t need to tell you, of all people, how easy it is to lead the press. As usual, the great British public will believe exactly what we want them to: 77th Brigade has been on it for days. All things considered, I think it went rather well.’
‘But the banknote. The …’
‘What banknote?’ Frank interrupted me. ‘There is no banknote. It washed out to sea. Remember?’ I opened my mouth to contradict him, but thought better of it.
‘There was a shooter, Frank. There was a gunman waiting in the bloody cottage.’
‘If you say so, Max. Though as things stand, you might want to think twice before putting that to King. But I did take the precaution of doing as you suggested and checking the sat feed. You were right. We’d have seen a runner clear as day.’ He he
lped himself to a glass of King’s wine. ‘There wasn’t one. Goldilocks must have fried.’
‘Show me, Frank. Show me the satellite images.’
‘As you well know,’ he said, ‘those images are classified. So I’ll say it again, Max. All the evidence has been destroyed. You vaporized it.’ He turned to face me squarely. ‘I expect exactly what happened in Donegal will remain permanently, uh, how shall we put it? Unknown.’
‘And Avilov, Doctor Leonid Avilov? His GRU goons picked me up in-country, in Mayo.’
‘Ah, yes. The good doctor. He didn’t survive, either. A traffic accident, it seems. The Kremlin has issued a statement. Thrown from a bridge in Moscow during a collision. He was court-martialled a month ago, apparently. They’re denying all official knowledge of his excursions to the Holy Land and our Emerald Isle.’ I flexed the fingers of my right hand. ‘So, uh, all’s quiet on the Eastern Front.’
But there was one thing he hadn’t considered.
‘The computer, Frank. The Russians have built a computer.’
‘Yes.’ He nodded slowly. ‘As far as we can tell – and it’s hard to be certain – that does indeed seem to be the case.’ He took a long draft of the wine, and put the empty glass back on the silver tray, next to the decanter. ‘But then again,’ he smiled, ‘so have we.’
‘Does it work?’
‘No, it doesn’t. Not now, anyway. And you know,’ he said, taking a step closer to me, ‘perhaps that’s for the best. After all, if it did, you and I would be out of a job, wouldn’t we?’ He put his hands in his pockets and went to leave. ‘The general’s batman will show you out.’
We both knew that I could kill him right then and there. The fact that I wouldn’t was perhaps the last guarantee of survival I had. Standing on the train platform in Ashford, I’d thought all bets were off. They weren’t. Frank had never even dealt me in. He’d manipulated me so perfectly that I’d believed all along that I’d been the one in charge.
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