CHAPTER SIX
By the time Andy arrived, Alex was clucking for his heroin. The ex-soldier showed us the track marks in his legs and feet, whining that he needed half a dozen ten-quid bags of Brown a day to keep mellow. We promised to let him go so he could score. He shook and sweated and rolled into a ball, throwing up the food we’d given him earlier.
Andy crouched in the corridor out of sight, a black ballistic bag at his feet. The bag was full of electronic odds and ends, tools, batteries and other technical stuff that only Andy knew how to work. “Here’s the new dog collar” he said proudly, “all my own work.”
Dog Collar is the name we give to concealable GPS tracking devices. It’s not exactly top secret or James Bond: you can pick them up in any electronics store or online. This one looked like a small USB flash-drive, the type you’d plug into your laptop. We called it a dog collar because Andy used one to track his Jack Russell.
Andy picked up Alex’s dirty green jacket, looking in the pockets first to see if there were any sharps or needles. They were stuffed full of bits and pieces: string, coins, bits of paper, some broken cigarettes, an Oyster Card, keys, candies and other junk. “This crap in his pockets adds some weight to his clothes, so he’ll not notice the device,” said Andy. “We should be OK.” He picked a razor blade from his bag and gently made an incision in the inside lining of the jacket, on the hemline underneath the pocket. He activated the dog collar and slid it into the gap, sealing it with a small piece of tailor’s adhesive tape. He heated the end of a metal ruler with his lighter, touching it to the tape. The heat sealed the incision and was invisible. “Voila,” he said.
Dmitri stroked his chin, “very skilful.”
Andy flipped open his laptop, a sand-painted Panasonic Toughbook. He synched the dog collar to the tracking software. “There you go - it’s sited us at a GSM mast at 900 MHZ. I’d say it was a hundred metres from here. Let the fucker run, Cal.”
I nodded and called Oz out to join us. He pulled up his balaclava and said hello to Andy.
“That suits you” chuckled Andy, pointing at the mask.
“You’re still wearing yours, right?” said the ex-SBS man.
“OK” I replied, “let’s give Alex some cash. The first place he’ll go is either back to his Russian mate or to his dealer. We follow him anyhow. He’s only seen Dmitri’s face.”
Andy nodded and passed me the jacket.
Back in the office we gave Alex his stuff back and cut him loose. I gave him a hundred quid from the shrink-wrapped bundle. “Now fuck off” I said, “if we see you near Belov again you’re dead. Tell your Russian mate the same thing.”
“What’s the money for?” he mumbled.
“The information you gave us” grinned Oz, “you dirty grass.”
“I’m not a grass!” cried Alex, wide-eyed.
“Yes you are” spat Dmitri, pulling a suppressed Glock from his belt, “go before I kill you myself. Sergei Belov is like a father to me, a hero.”
“Why” I said to the Russian security man.
“Sergei Nikolayevich is the man who uncovered the Shakuvo scandal,” he said. “He could have let it lie, like those other thieving bastards in the Government, but he risked everything for the truth. My family lived near the reactor. Four of them have cancers from the accident. Now they have compensation, and the truth.”
“I can see why people respect him for that.”
“Of course,” shrugged Dmitri.
I put the sandbag back over Alex’s head and took him downstairs. Bundling him out of the back of the building, through a tiny courtyard, we put him in Andy’s van. Ten minutes later we took the sandbag off his head and dumped him near Westbourne Grove. He limped off towards the station in the snow.
“The signal won’t work on the tube” said Andy over his shoulder as he drove us back towards Paddington, “we’ll just have to see where he ends up.”
We parked in a back street near the empty office and chatted, the laptop open on Andy’s lap.
“What a dirty bastard” said Oz, “this Russian bloke. Gets some poor fucker hooked on gear and persuades him to nut a complete stranger.”
I grunted my agreement, “he must be very persuasive.”
“Fuck off” laughed Andy, eyes fixed on the screen, “he offered a homeless squaddie somewhere warm to put his head down, birds to get his leg across and free drugs. Makes sense to me.”
He had a point. “Quite, when you put it like that” I agreed, “but it doesn’t fit what we were told by Turov about the FSB team. I’m expecting a professional hit by Spetzgruppa, not … this.”
Oz reached into the cold-box Andy keeps in the back of the van and pulled out an apple. “Exactly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Russian woman doesn’t know about this.”
Andy pointed at the laptop, “bingo! GPS activation, it’s a mast in Tottenham. Hold on, I’ll do a mast look-up online.” He tapped away on his keyboard “One of three possible, near Tottenham marshes and the reservoir.”
I checked my pistol and screwed a suppressor onto the barrel. Oz nodded and readied his .45. Andy slid a magazine into his assault rifle.
We drove through the winter streets, the sun struggling out from behind a wall of clouds. Andy could be a London taxi driver if he ever fancied an honest living, weaving in and out of the rat-runs around the Harrow Road and up onto the North Circular. I looked at the laptop, displaying the OFCOM website that lists every mobile phone mast in the UK. There were three little flags around the diamond-shaped icon that marked the dog collar.
“Has it moved?” said Andy from the driver’s seat.
I squinted at the Toughbook. “Nope, he’s gone firm, but it looks like the signal keeps dropping in and out.”
“That’s normal,” he grunted.
“Yeah, normal for your level of technical ability” sniffed Oz.
It was early afternoon when we arrived in Tottenham. We split up and patrolled the snow-dusted side streets near the reservoir and Lee Valley Park. I didn’t know what we were looking for, except that I imagined a squat wouldn’t be too difficult to identify. We checked a couple of grubby-looking houses and an industrial estate. Then we sat in the van and drank tea, stamped our feet against the cold and bitched about our lack of success. All the while, the dog collar showed Alex where we’d originally tracked him.
On our second run through, Oz made the spot. “There’s a bloke who looks like swampy sneaking into the back of a building, to the rear of the metal recycling plant.”
“Meet you there in five,” I said, calling in Andy. It was getting dark now, which suited me just fine. We met on the corner of the road, near a junkyard and a residential street full of shabby houses. Cold black sleet splashed the pavement, keeping people indoors.
“Right, what’s the plan?” said Andy, his rifle tucked into a long green tool bag, “I’ve got stun grenades, handcuffs, plastic explosives, det cord and a timer-power unit.”
“Andy” Oz sighed, “We’re roughing up some hippies in a London suburb, not assaulting the fucking Maginot Line.”
“Be prepared” Andy chuckled, “like a good boy scout.” He dished out personal role radios with earpieces, which we switched on and checked.
I’d already walked around the perimeter of the recycling plant. The building at the back looked like a derelict Victorian pump house, the dark brick covered in Ivy and graffiti. There was no obvious way in that didn’t involve going through the chained front gate. “Andy, bring the van up to the junction in case we need to exfil, then cover the back where Oz saw the guy enter the building. We’ll go in via that route.”
“OK,” he replied, jogging back round the corner.
Oz pulled a torch from his jacket pocket and led the way, his hand on the grips of his pistol. I followed him, the suppressed SIG P250 held loosely down by the side of my leg. The doorway was concealed with a length of corrugated iron, disguised to look like part of the fencing. It was locked. The door itself was made of wood lami
nate and rotten, so I put my size eleven against the base of it and rocked it with my bulk until it popped open. Oz covered me, his .45 aimed into the blackness as he washed the interior of the building with torchlight.
We walked carefully along a piss-scented corridor, empty drinks cans crunching beneath our feet. At the end was an open doorway, a dim light flickering. Pistol up, I got the best sight picture I could and edged forward. Oz looked at me and made a hand signal, telling me he was going ahead then to the right hand side of the room.
We moved forward. The room was dark, the light coming from a guttering gas garden heater turned down low. The walls were covered with graffiti and heavy black drapes. It smelt dirty and sweet, the smell clogging my nose: unwashed bodies, skunk cannabis and takeaway food. Oz’s torch, like a searchlight, darted around the room. I saw glimpses of trash, syringes, beer cans and used condoms.
Oz fired a fraction of a second before I did, the suppressed pistol hissing at movement in the shadows, a flash of pale skin in the torchlight. Dropping to a knee, I snapped off a sense of direction shot at the same target. There was a moan, then the thud of something hitting the ground. I backed towards the wall as I heard more movement. The smell of cordite tickled my nose as my eyes focussed past the luminous tritium dots on the rear sight of the pistol.
Again Oz’s pistol hissed. Spent brass tinkled against the concrete floor.
In the wash of the torch, we saw the body of a young man in his early twenties. He wore scruffy work trousers and a donkey jacket. I saw one entry wound in his shoulder, the other in his right temple. A neat black puddle of blood had spilt out onto the floor behind his head. His hair was matted, beads and pieces of braid knotted into it. His face was bone-white. At the corner of one eye was a tattoo of a tear. I knew that was prison ink. “There” I said, pointing with my pistol. A long carving knife was gripped in the dead man’s grimy hand, the blade dark with blood.
“Fuck,” said Oz.
My eyes followed the beam of his Maglite.
Alex, the ex-squaddie, was sat with his back to the wall, facing the door. He was stripped to the waist, his chest and lap dark and sticky with blood. His throat had been cut from ear-to-ear in one quick, clean cut.
“The room’s clear” I whispered, pistol pushed out in front of me in a Weaver.
Oz held his torch next to his pistol and moved the beam in front of the corpse, “what’s that in front of him?”
At Alex’s feet lay a flattened cardboard box. There was a message scrawled on it in marker pen:
O CREATURES FOOLISH, HOW GREAT IS THAT IGNORANCE THAT HARMS YOU!
“That’s freaky shit,” said Oz drily.
I squatted down and had a look at the handwriting, as if there might be an answer there, “it’s a message.”
Oz stepped back towards the door “yeah, I agree, it says ‘let’s get out of here.’”
I dialled Harry’s number. “Harry, we need the Ops Support team at our current location ASAP.”
“How many punters have you got?” sighed Harry.
“Two, both messy, three rounds fired. The only weapon for disposal is a knife.”
“Some halfwit came to a gun-fight with you three armed with a knife?” scoffed Harry, “sounds like natural selection to me. Give me your location. Can you wait to put the team in safely?”
“Roger,” I replied. The Ops Support team was a polite term for The Firm’s body-shifters and cover-up artists. They kept two ex-cops, retired murder detectives, on handsome retainers to clean up our mess. Using their counter-forensic expertise and criminal contacts, the two bodies would be gone forever in twelve hours. Spent rounds and brass would be located with metal detectors and destroyed and all traces of blood eliminated. They were like CSI Miami in reverse.
I looked around and found the dead man’s jacket. With gloved hands I went to retrieve Andy’s tracking device. It was gone.
“Whoever found that was switched on,” I said.
“Shit” sniffed Oz, “let’s go.”
We left the room as we found it, tracing our route back to Andy’s van and mindful of being spotted as murder suspects. Given the number of people I’d killed, it would be typical for me to get pinched for the murder I didn’t commit.
Andy was drinking tea from his flask, the van’s heater chugging against the cold. “Have some of this” he said, offering us the flask.
I thanked him and told him about the body and the shooting. The tea was stewed, but milky and sweet. It hit the spot. We waited for the Ops Support guys.
“Fucking hell” said Andy, “dead tramps and weird messages. And now we’ve had to call out the Corpse Fairies. Maybe the Pakistan border wasn’t so bad after all.”
It took forty five minutes for a white Transit van to pull up. It was liveried as belonging to a hazardous material cleaning company in Hertfordshire. Its headlights flashed. The portly ex-cops, who I only knew from sight, met me on the corner of the street and nodded politely as they lit roll-up cigarettes. I showed them the entrance, made sure it was all clear and watched them sneak in wearing overalls, face-masks and carrying plastic sacks full of industrial cleaning equipment.
Andy drove back towards the North Circular, shaking his shaggy head, “freaky shit, Cal. Freaky.”
“That’s what I said” nodded Oz, “I knew this job was cursed.”
“We need to speak with Turov” I said, “because this is more Hammer House of Horror than FSB special action team.”
“We’ll all stay at my place tonight,” I said. The others nodded.
“We can sit up and tell ghost stories,” laughed Andy.
Oz pulled a face and drained the flask of tea.
I wasn’t going to tell Belov’s people anything yet. In my line of work it’s not unusual for the intelligence brief to be inaccurate, but this was something different. I was sold a search and destroy. I wasn’t sure what to call this.
Oz rubbed his closely-cropped head “poor bastards. That could’ve been me back there, living in a squat.”
I said nothing. It was true. After rehab I had nothing, home was friends’ sofas until they kicked me out too. The Firm might have given me no choice but to join, but they did give me money and a five-star roof over my head. All I was expected to do in return I was kill people. When I thought about it, the only difference between me and Alex was the quality of our accommodation and our respective vices. But I was still alive.
For now.
We stopped off near my flat and bought beer and pizza. Inside, Andy unrolled a sleeping bag on the sofa. We sat and watched the news, cleaned our weapons, chatted and ate. It was good. Andy told us some stories about Afghanistan. Andy’s stories usually involve explosions, football and sex, but happily not all at the same time.
My Blackberry trilled. The number was withheld.
“Hello?”
“It is Turov” said the SVR officer, “I know somebody tried to kill Sergei Belov today.”
“This isn’t a secure line” I replied, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We need to meet” she said, “as soon as possible.”
“OK” I sighed, “tomorrow.”
“It’s always tomorrow with you English.”
“Funny” I replied, “with Russians I always find that you prefer yesterday.”
“Hilarious” she purred, “meet me at the end of the road you picked me up on, tomorrow at oh-ten-hundred. Come alone.”
I exhaled cigar smoke. “I’ll say I’m coming alone, but of course I won’t.”
“Of course, Winter. See you then.” The Russian rang off.
Oz had my laptop in front of him. “O Creatures foolish,” he said, Googling the phrase, “it’s from Dante’s Inferno. You were an officer Cal, what’s that about?”
I laughed, “I remember quite a bit from Sandhurst, but not the lectures on Fourteenth Century Italian poetry.”
“Ah, you do know what it is,” said Andy accusingly.
“Bloke gets lost in
some woods” I shrugged, “then goes to hell.”
“We’ve all been there,” said Oz.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I stood stamping my feet against the cold outside Alisa Turov’s apartment. I wore boots and cargo trousers, my pistol in a pancake holster under my sweater, spare magazines in the pockets of my waxed jacket. Andy and Oz had parked the van halfway up the road, had already got three parking tickets. London parking attendants are like monetized, moped-borne Spetsnatz, and they never sleep.
An anonymous-looking Ford with privacy-glassed windows pulled up next to me. Turov nodded impatiently at the passenger door.
I nodded and got in. “Where are we going?”
“St. John’s Wood” she said, “to my office.” She was wearing a smart charcoal business suit, heels and smelt of Chanel No. 5. Her hair was in a glossy bob, her lips painted some shade of plum.
I reckoned Alisa Turov’s cheekbones were sharp enough to draw blood. She looked good enough to eat. I looked at my watch, “given London traffic that’s enough time for you to tell me a bit about yourself.”
“I am an intelligence officer” she said curtly, “I don’t get paid to talk about myself.” Alisa switched on Radio Three as we crossed the bridge into town. She smiled as mournful-sounding music flooded the car.
“Like who?”
“Like you, Captain Calum Aloysius Winter. You were born in London to what you British would call a lower middle-class Catholic family. Your father was from Ireland. He sold used motor cars. Your mother was Italian. She found work as an emergency room nurse.”
“I sound fascinating” I said, “do tell me more.”
“You grew up bilingual, have a natural affinity for languages. In the army you were an infantryman, then a reconnaissance specialist. You won a Military Cross in Iraq for leading a bayonet charge against an insurgent compound in Maysan Province. There is also your Mention in Dispatches from the Balkans, something very heroic about negotiating with Serb militias to arrange safe passage for Bosnian children.”
“Alisa” I interrupted, “the truth about those two incidents was lost in the fog of war.”
The Ninth Circle Page 6
