by Tim Stevens
Against every sinew that was screaming for him to stay where he was, the Jacobin forced himself to stand and stretch, the agony making itself felt almost everywhere in his body. A hacking cough brought fresh stabs of pain. He filled a glass with water and drank and refilled and drank again, spilling the contents down his chin and on to his rank shirt front.
He had two options. Do nothing, let the situation play itself out, and face the bittersweet consequences: the re-establishment of the old roles, the old and righteous opposition of East and West, but – the bitter part – with West clearly in the wrong from the outset, its agents demonstrably responsible for the rekindling of hostilities. Or, the second option, take the only course that would simultaneously ensure that the assassination proceeded as planned and absolve SIS of all responsibility for it: be there at the scene, and clean up the evidence afterwards. Remove the bodies, even if it meant killing Kuznetsov and every one of his crew in order to do so.
Option two was less realistic than it had been before he’d fallen asleep. What he’d gained in strength he’d lost in time wasted. Six twenty-one. In forty minutes the helicopter would be taking off. One hour after that, the hit would take place. The Jacobin had little more than an hour and a half to commandeer suitable transport and get to the site. And then – what? Kuznetsov was going to have backup. It was part of the plan. Eight, ten guns to deal with.
The Jacobin leant against the back of the kitchen chair, a compromise between enduring the pain and weariness and the siren trap of sitting down again. It was then that he noticed on the table the open laptop, the one that had belonged to the girl. Out of no more than idle curiosity he reached over and swiped the mousepad to bring up the screen from its sleep.
He allowed himself to sit down this time, staring at the screen. He had left open the tracking website. Instead of the message no signal detected, he saw a softly pulsing beacon on an ill-defined background that resembled a grid.
So Purkiss had taken his phone, or at least his SIM card, in with him after all. And either he’d been out of detectable range earlier for some reason and had now been placed somewhere where the signal could be picked up again, or – more likely – he’d found a way to get the SIM into a new handset. Which meant he was on the loose.
The Jacobin pulled the laptop towards him, all discomfort forgotten, and began to hit the keys.
*
The rear of the hangar wasn’t floodlit and Purkiss hugged the wall in the dark. Through the concrete he heard a muffle of sounds, the occasional clash of metal.
When it became clear he wasn’t going to be able to make out any speech he sidled along to one of the corners and glanced round. There was nobody in the space between this hangar and the next. He moved quickly down the length of the structure towards the front. Halfway along was a small metal door, a Braille pattern of rust across its surface. He touched the handle and pushed it down with exquisite slowness, pausing as its unoiled surfaces emitted a tiny screech and controlling the movement even more finely. He gave the door the lightest of tugs. It yielded, though there was a squeal from the hinges. He froze, listening, but the sound had been drowned by the noises from inside.
He put an eye to the crack he had made. The angle allowed him to see the front left corner of the hangar. The large doors at the front stood open and the light from the floods was spilling in, though the interior had its own brilliant source of illumination. Somebody crossed the path of his vision. He flinched. The glimpse had been momentary, but it looked like Lyuba Ilkun, the woman from the nightclub.
Purkiss left the door ajar an inch, eased himself further down the wall towards the front of the hangar. As he got nearer to the light, voices began to emerge from the foam of sound. Low men’s voices, the vowels pronounced far back in the throat in the Russian manner. At the corner he caught a glimpse of a figure stepping out into the dazzle of the floodlights. He drew back, not before he’d recognised the broad back and shoulders, the greater than average height. It was the man he’d seen getting into the four-wheel drive on the coast road. Kuznetsov.
He looked again. The big man was standing with arms folded, gazing up at the night. The temptation was strong. One shot, and he wouldn’t see or hear it coming. It would be the end for Purkiss, of course, would bring all Kuznetsov’s men down on him. More importantly, it might not be enough to put a stop to whatever was planned, if there were others lined up to take over the leadership role.
Kuznetsov turned his head a fraction. Purkiss ducked back, breathing as shallowly as he could through his mouth, his nose still swollen shut. From around the corner he heard murmurings. He realised Kuznetsov had been joined by another man. The voice was familiar, and after a moment he fitted a face to it. Dobrynin, the man with the mutilated hand from the Rodina offices. He could just make out the conversation.
‘All done. Everything’s checked, everything’s secure.’ Dobrynin.
‘Good.’ Kuznetsov’s voice was lower. ‘We need to clear up the mess inside.’
‘I’ll do it with Leok and Ilkun.’
‘We’ll all do it.’
By the mess inside Purkiss presumed he meant the body of the man he’d shot on the steps. He pressed himself closer to the wall. A few seconds later he heard several sets of feet and the rolling metallic grind of the hangar doors being pulled closed. After an age the job was completed. The footsteps seemed to be receding. Glancing round the corner, he saw four of them making their way towards the office building: Kuznetsov, Dobrynin, Ilkun and a man he didn’t recognise. Leok, he assumed.
Purkiss slipped back along the wall to the side door and peered through the crack. The lights were still on in the hangar, but the interior was dimmer now that the doors had been closed against the floodlights outside.
He pushed the door further, having to force it, wincing at the jagged sound. He squeezed through the gap, covering right and left quickly with the SIG-Sauer. There was no movement within, no sign of life, but he noticed this on an instinctual, animal level, because what caught his attention was the centrepiece, all sixty feet of it, the span of its rotors almost as great.
And he knew what they were planning to do.
Thirty-Six
Google Earth identified the location as an airfield, some eighty kilometres outside Tallinn along the coast to the west. A quick further search revealed that it was disused. It made sense.
If Purkiss had got free, he could still put a stop to the mission. This meant that sitting in the flat and waiting fatalistically for Kuznetsov to pull off the operation was no longer an option. The Jacobin had to stop Purkiss. Everything else, all his worries about Kuznetsov contriving to implicate SIS in the plan, had to come second.
The wet smell of the city was bracing as the Jacobin loped out to the car. Over to the east, the faintest shading on the horizon was beginning to colour the darkness. The Jacobin placed the laptop on the seat beside him. There was of course no way of maintaining the connection while he drove, which meant he wouldn’t be able to see if the signal from the phone moved. It had remained stationary all the while he had been pinning down the location of the airfield, so perhaps Purkiss was holed up somewhere.
Eighty kilometres, in half an hour. It was possible.
The man whom Purkiss had winged, Yuri, disappointed and disgusted Venedikt. Slumped against the wall at the far end of the corridor, legs splayed and shirttails wadded against the wound in his chest to staunch the flow, he gazed up at Venedikt. His pained eyes at first seemed to show respect, understanding, but when Venedikt drew his gun and gripped the man’s shoulder with his free hand and murmured, ‘Your sacrifice will be remembered,’ Yuri had begun to blubber and thrash. The shot hadn’t been a clean one, clipping his head eccentrically so that one side of it was blown asunder. His legs continued jerking for several beats.
Beside Venedikt, Lyuba swallowed drily but stayed silent, as did Dobrynin and Leok. They knew there was no time to tend to a man with such injuries, and no justification for the risk involv
ed in delivering him to hospital and the authorities. Yuri himself should have known that.
While Leok and Lyuba dragged the body into one of the offices, Venedikt and Dobrynin descended to the basement. The man Purkiss had overpowered on the steps, Tattar, stood guard over the bound man in the chair. Tattar straightened as Kuznetsov entered. Having suffered the humiliation of losing the other prisoner as well as his phone and his gun, he was not about to add sullenness or self pity to his list of offences.
The Englishman, Fallon, stared up at Kuznetsov through the one eye he was at least partly able to open. He was almost unrecognisable, plums blooming above his cheekbones, lips engorged to resemble twin kidneys.
‘What is the plan? With Purkiss, now that he has escaped?’
The Englishman didn’t react, not even to brace himself for a blow. Kuznetsov shook his head.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ He motioned with his fingers and Dobrynin produced a boxcutter and cut the cords, grabbing Fallon as he toppled forward. He swiped the blade across the ties at his ankles and hauled him to a standing position. The Englishman staggered at once, his feet twisting beneath him. Dobrynin hooked an arm across Fallon’s back. Kuznetsov stepped aside and Dobrynin half-dragged, half-walked the Englishman towards the steps.
*
The space was small and cramped and Purkiss was bent so that his knees were almost against his chin, his feet pressed against the box that occupied half of the interior of the bench. There would be far more room if he just took the box out but it would be noticed and would immediately give him away. The bench he assumed was for troops to sit on during transport. Its seat doubled as a lid for an interior that could be used for storage, thus economising on space.
He knew something about helicopters, including the Black Hawk, but not enough to call himself an expert. He was aware, however, that the stub wings at the top of the fuselage were significant. Designed to carry extra fuel tanks, they were equally useful for supporting ordnance. And what he saw on the stub closer to him when he stepped nearer was certainly not a fuel tank.
It was a missile, the length of a man, perhaps a foot in diameter, its phallic shaft surmounted with a silver head. Four squared-off wings radiated around the shaft towards the back. Quickly he peered around it at all the visible surfaces, but there were no markings. He ducked round to the other side of the helicopter and saw a featureless metal rod attached to the other stub, similar in length and width, but a plain cylindrical shape, unadorned by wings or head. A dummy, he suspected. A counterweight, without any other function.
One missile. Which meant there was something special about it.
He called up the camera facility on the phone he’d taken, and snapped the helicopter and the missile from as many angles as he could manage. He tried calling up an internet connection. There was still no signal. From some distance away a sound rocked the night. He tensed and crouched, almost dropping the phone. A gunshot. Had they decided to kill Fallon?
In the corners of the hangar were old pieces of machinery, rows of collapsed shelving, a sea of canvas tarpaulins. He could easily have found somewhere to hide, but Purkiss knew there was only one course of action worth considering. He pulled open the door of the helicopter and stepped inside.
It was more spacious than he was expecting. He remembered the Black Hawk took three or four crew members, two pilots and one or two crew chiefs, and could carry around a dozen additional troops. He wondered how many would be coming on board on this trip.
Once inside the bench compartment he lay curled with the SIG-Sauer in one hand and the phone in the other. He waited, the rasp of his breath sounding so loudly in his ears he imagined he felt the helicopter tremble.
*
Dobrynin and Leok dragged the stumbling Englishman across the gravel towards the hangar, Venedikt following behind. They hadn’t bothered hooding the man this time. Instead of going with them all the way into the hangar, Venedikt veered off down the slope towards the wall which separated them from the field beyond. Bobbing in the field were dots of torchlight.
He made his way to the shed door that served as a ladder and climbed to the top of the wall. He cupped his hands round his mouth and called, long and loud. One of the lights detached itself from the invisible string, began heading toward him. It was Raskov.
‘No sign, sir.’
‘There are trees over there.’
‘Yes. We’ve looked. Ditches, too, a network of them, which you can’t see so well from here. If he’s lying low in one of them it could take us forever.’
After a moment’s pondering Venedikt came to a decision. ‘All right. Tattar’s operational, I’ll send him over to help. You bring one of the men and get ready to leave for the boat. The rest stay here and continue the search.’
‘If we don’t find him in time…’ Raskov’s tone wasn’t defeatist, just curious.
‘We have to find him, but if it’s not before…. the event, it won’t be disastrous. There’s no cell phone reception, so he won’t be able to summon help. If he has taken cover he’ll have to stay there, he can’t risk an open dash across the fields with four men looking for him, especially as it’ll be getting light soon. Find him if we can, but as long as we can keep him pinned down until we’ve done what we’re going to do, it’ll be enough.’
His men had rolled open the doors of the hangar and inside Venedikt looked at his watch. Six forty-five. He itched to be at the location early, but recognised that the longer they were in the air, the greater the risk of their attracting unwanted attention. The Black Hawk had fuel enough for eight hundred kilometres of flight, plus the auxiliary tank. Eight hundred kilometres was nearly ten times the distance they would be travelling, especially now that the journey was going to be one way only.
Once again he was inwardly proud of his decisiveness. He strode over to the door of the helicopter. In the cabin the Englishman, Fallon, was seated on one of the benches, trying to keep his head from lolling. Lyuba was securing his feet together once more. She glanced up at his face. Venedikt saw in her eyes a hate so keen it almost made him grimace. A woman betrayed, if not exactly spurned.
Leok was seated in the pilot’s seat, Dobrynin standing by Lyuba, awaiting instructions. Venedikt made sure he looked each of them in the face in turn.
‘We go now.’
As they took their positions and a crackle of tension and excitement began to connect them in its web, he grabbed each one by the shoulder and squeezed.
His people. Together they were going to change history.
*
Through the lid of the coffin – Purkiss couldn’t help thinking of it as such – the words were indistinct. He knew from the heavy creak above him that someone was sitting on the seat above him. His face was inches from the wood. Claustrophobia began to grip him and he smothered it.
Something was pushing beneath him. After a moment he realised it was the movement of the fuselage below. He gained a sense of directional motion as the helicopter rolled forward, had an impression even of a change in the timbre of the sounds penetrating the box he was in, as the chopper emerged from the hangar into the expanse of the early morning. For want of something more productive to do he checked the phone. Still no signal.
Another noise began to seep through, one accompanied by a tactile dimension. A rhythmic sweeping thud was followed in each beat by a gentle but distinct shake in the body of the helicopter. The rotor was starting up.
The throb of the blades gathered pace until a steady state was reached. Then there was the pressing of the base of the cavity he was lying in against his side, as the machine began to rise and they became airborne.
Seven oh three.
Thirty-Seven
The reporter had to raise her voice against the background surge, enthusiasm infecting her tone as she delivered more platitudes.
A real sense of camaraderie…
A feeling that the past is being let go…
This momentous day will be imprinted on our memorie
s for years to come…
The Jacobin heard, yet didn’t hear. He was staring at the sky, where the shape, black against the lightening ceiling of cloud, was rising, buoyed by the thrumming of its rotors.
He pulled over quickly beside a hedge, killed the engine to get rid of the exhaust fumes. He peered upwards. The helicopter had stopped ascending and hung, raptor-like, before swinging away to the north.
He’d thought he would be too late. In a sense he was, because the helicopter had taken off before he’d got there. But didn’t that suggest Purkiss himself had failed to stop it? The Jacobin reached for his phone, into which he’d copied the web address of the tracking site. No internet connection.
A car was emerging in the distance through the gates of the airfield. It stopped beyond the gates and a man got out and closed them behind the car. The Jacobin started the engine of his car again. It wouldn’t do to be noticed sitting in a stationary vehicle this close to the airfield. Nor would it be a good idea to turn round immediately and drive away, in sight of the car. The Jacobin continued along the road that ran past the airfield.
As he approached the other car, which was heading towards him, he glanced at its occupants, as one would naturally do when passing another vehicle on such an empty road. Three of them. Although none was familiar, he recognised the type. Kuznetsov’s people, soldiers by background, grim faced. They wouldn’t recognise him, had never met him before. No sign of Purkiss in the car. They would be the backup, the Jacobin assumed. The crew who were to meet the chopper out at sea.
To follow them, even at a distance, would invite suspicion, and if they turned on him the odds were hardly in his favour, not just numerically. He punched the address of a location he knew on the coast into the car’s satellite navigation system. It directed him to continue the way he was heading. The Jacobin put his foot down, glancing every now and again at the display on his phone.
