‘No problem,’ the officer said with a smug glance over his shoulder. ‘They’ll be licking their wounds for a long time. You’re safe with us.’
‘Come on, you two,’ the driver said with a jovial laugh. ‘We’ll give you a lift. You’re in luck, we’re heading back to Moscow.’
As the truck rumbled off down the road, Tallis and Darke scooted across and to the other side, their destination a plain on the outskirts of Kurchaloi, one point of the triangle of death, according to Yuri Chaikova.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THEY didn’t stop to rest. They didn’t stop to eat. Sleep was a stranger to both of them. Senses strained to the limit, their journey was one of watching and waiting and moving in quick bursts. By the time they covered the relatively short distance to Kurchaloi, the sun, a high shimmer in a sky of deepest metallic blue, had been and gone, the road behind and ahead a mass of checkpoints and military manoeuvres. Tallis got a bad vibe. Something serious had taken place to result in this much bellicose activity.
With Grozny in their sights, less than twenty miles away, they moved off again. From the capital they planned to make contact with the security services, if possible, and find a route out. But Tallis had other more pressing reasons—he needed to see Katya, he had to tell her about Ruslan’s death.
Finally, they found themselves in a remote stretch of land on a lonely track, fields as far as the eye could see, with farm machinery and isolated barns and huts dotting the evening landscape. If this had once been a village, Tallis thought, there wasn’t much left of it. Up ahead lay the road and the familiar sound of helicopters, and, tempting though it was to bed down for the night, they decided to keep advancing and take their chances. Tallis was glad. In spite of the desolation, there was something not quite right with the place. It had an air of sacrifice about it as if there might be human bones in the soil.
‘Got company,’ Darke muttered out of the side of his mouth.
Tallis narrowed his eyes, making out a white vehicle, no number plate, with four men inside watching their approach across the track with sinister interest. They were parked next to a lodge—though that was probably too extravagant a description—on the edge of a road behind which nestled a number of barns and farm buildings. Tallis glanced to his right, caught sight of a stretch of ground where the earth had been dug up in piles at various intervals, revealing what looked like ponds of thick green water. To his left was an orchard of apple trees. But the air was not scented with either fruit or foliage. It stank of oil. Then he tumbled to it. The ponds were not ponds at all. At the same time as he made the connection, a tanker started to rumble down the road towards them. The noise of the approaching helicopter grew louder. And they were totally exposed.
Then everything went into slow motion.
Four vehicle doors flew open. Four swarthy armed men got out, Tallis hard-pushed to tell whether they were cops or gangsters. Two darted towards the tanker and alerted the driver, the stance of the remainder clear: weapons raised, signalling hostile intent. Tallis let off a round, killing one man, wounding another. Darke, meanwhile, bounded forward. Then, without warning, a helicopter appeared, lights blazing, swooping dangerously low. It wasn’t a federal helicopter—smaller, no armour-plating, Tallis thought. Two men were hanging out and let rip a salvo. Tallis threw himself to the ground and watched as bullets spat stone and earth on either side of him, the chatter of automatic fire punching his ears. He looked up briefly. Darke had also dived for cover. Couldn’t tell if he was injured. Next came a long burst of machine-gun fire zipping over their heads.
Got to get out, Tallis thought, rolling to one side. The tanker was backing up into the field now. He could hear the engine revving. Nothing must stop it. Men were running towards them, firing, and the helicopter was coming back for another attack. With a gasp, Tallis watched as Darke stood up and, with metal-plated balls, lined up the men and dropped them with two single shots. Exultant, Tallis leapt to his feet. The sky was illuminated as the helicopter made its deadly approach so low he could see the pilot. Tallis swung the Dragunov round, looked through the telescopic sight, the helicopter showing up like the Empire State Building through the image-intensifying night sight. Cool, he made the necessary adjustments, his concentration on the biggest piece of human surface area: the pilot’s torso. Keeping the crosshairs dead on target, he fired straight into the helicopter and hurled himself to the ground.
There was an almighty sound of shattering glass, followed by roaring as the helicopter dropped out of the sky, tilted and ploughed into the earth. Above his head a rush of heat and air like he was caught in a tornado. Seconds later, a desperate, ear-blasting explosion with pieces of metal and shrapnel flying in all directions.
Tallis warily raised his head, hardly able to believe what had occurred, and looked behind him at the burning wreckage, and charred remains of human beings.
‘Come on,’ Darke said, dragging him to his feet. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’
They ran across the field and onto the road. The tanker, lights ablaze, was slowly going about its work, the driver seemingly unperturbed, determined and without fear. Tallis thought it strange until he saw what lay ahead: a military convoy filled with soldiers, several of whom were out of the vehicle and heading their way. These were no callow youths, or young men on the wrong side of puberty, Tallis thought. These were older, experienced, venal-looking individuals. They had the surly, fuck-off expressions of lifers with no chance of early release.
‘Leave this to me and follow my lead,’ Darke muttered, striding calmly towards them, keeping a close hold of his AK.
Wish you luck, Tallis thought. To all intents and purposes, they were Chechen rebels who, only days before, had fought these very same soldiers and killed their mates. Christ knows what they planned on doing to them. And if Darke told them the truth, revealed their real identities, the outcome would be cataclysmic. Watching Darke, Tallis was reminded of years ago when Graham had tried to explain to Tallis’s irate dad why he was late home. Graham talked a good talk. Tallis’s dad had calmed down and become quite reasonable—a rare event. Hadn’t lasted long. Tallis had received a hell of a beating once Graham had gone.
‘Throw down your weapons. Hands on your head,’ the lead officer said. He had a thin face, poor skin and long bones with legs that walked with a twist and swagger as though he were on stilts. The head honcho clearly fancied himself, Tallis thought. Not that he was about to express that view. With several pairs of weapons trained on them, there didn’t seem much point in opinion let alone argument. He wanted to stay alive. God knew what Darke had up his sleeve, but he hoped it was something.
‘You know who we are, soldier?’ Darke said, speaking fluent Russian. The officer stared back with steely disdain. ‘We’re officers in the Federal Security Service.’
‘What?’ The colour drained from the man’s face, giving him a sickly green sheen.
‘And we don’t take kindly to being shot at,’ Tallis said, adopting his most stony-faced expression.
‘So get the hell out of our way and let us get on with our job,’ Darke said, waving the barrel of the AK to make the point.
Some of the soldiers began to shuffle and move out of their way. It should have worked brilliantly, but a short crackle and burst of information on the soldier’s radio changed all that. Tallis sensed immediately that the tables had turned. He watched the man’s face, saw his expression morph from humiliation to surprise to fury. ‘Seize them,’ he raged.
With so much overwhelming firepower ranged against them, they had no option but to comply and go quietly. As soon as they were disarmed, they were pushed onto the road, faces ground into the dirt by several pairs of heavy boots.
The familiar demand for papers was made.
‘They were destroyed when we left our village,’ Darke said, staying calm, speaking Chechen, a huge miscalculation, Tallis thought.
‘Destroyed?’ The officer spat into the dust, turning to his sidekick, a blok
e with a shaved head and jowelled features. ‘You’re rebels,’ he said, kicking Darke viciously in the face. Tallis heard the crunch of cartilage snapping.
‘We’re shepherds,’ Darke moaned, blood spurting onto the officer’s boot. The man kicked him again, wiping his boot on Darke’s trousers, and let out a highpitched laugh. ‘Does a shepherd carry a Dragunov?’
‘It’s to protect ourselves. Our herd were killed by rebels,’ Tallis explained, for which he, too, received a kick in the face that made his teeth rattle and lips bleed.
‘You know where you are?’ the officer squatted down, dragging his hand through Tallis’s thick mane of hair, yanking him up.
Tallis shook his head, mainly because talking was too painful. However, he was beginning to get a rough idea. They’d just stumbled into an illegal oil complex.
‘You are on privately owned land with important commercial interests, which is why it is patrolled by security forces, forces which you have just eliminated.’
‘It was in self-defence,’ Darke protested. ‘We—’
Tallis saw it coming: one heavy swipe with a rifle butt at the back of Darke’s head, knocking him out cold. Next it was his turn.
Tallis came to, feeling groggy. He sat up a bit and gingerly touched the back of his head, which felt as though someone had thumped it with a hammer. In other words, it hurt. The floor on which he was sprawled was concrete, as were the walls. It was damp and dark and the only light was through a narrow metal grille high up. The measurements were tight. At six-two, he reckoned he had about three extra feet around him. He was reminded of an ancient cell he’d visited in Sparkbrook Police Museum in Birmingham, except the Midlands piece of Victoriana was more welcoming. He didn’t have long to appreciate the distinction.
There was a rattle of chain and key outside. The bolt flew back. Two soldiers stepped in and hauled him out, dragging him roughly down a corridor to another room where the bloke who’d hauled him up by his hair was waiting. Tallis still hadn’t quite worked out why the soldiers hadn’t just killed them on the spot. Neither had he worked out how they’d got their information. The thought that Pyotr or Sergei had betrayed them was not something he wanted to think about, but it had to factor as a possibility. And did he blame them? Not really. The boys had suffered too much to get moody about their actions.
So what did these guys want from him? he asked himself. Information? An icy chill swept over his body. This is where they’ll put a bag over my head, electrodes to my genitals, and beat the living daylights out of me. Instead, he was treated to a sly smile. ‘You are being transferred and moved to more appropriate quarters.’ Tallis got the picture. Money had changed hands.
‘Just me?’
‘You and your friend,’ the officer said, glancing at his watch. ‘In ten minutes.’ Nice of you to keep me up to speed, Tallis thought. And that’s what bothered him. ‘We are turning you over to the department you said you represent,’ the officer added, with malignant hostility.
They were handcuffed, blindfolded and forced outside to a warm day spitting with rain, and pushed into the back of a military truck. It was made clear that they would be shot should they try to escape. Tallis somehow thought it unlikely. To kill them would mean welching on the deal. Not that he had any intention of testing his theory. The journey took, he estimated, no more than fifteen minutes, which meant they hadn’t travelled that far. Next, they crossed a checkpoint. The truck rumbled along again for a thousand metres or so then pulled up. The tailgate released, Tallis and Darke were hurled out into the dust. That’s when the pain started.
Nobody spoke. Although he hadn’t seen a face, or heard a voice, everything about the exercise suggested serious player. From the direction of the blows, he reckoned there were three of them. Armed with batons, they knew exactly where to hurt—kidneys, groin, ears, ribs. And they hadn’t even got them inside yet. This was no more than a kick-about in a yard.
Muzzy and on the point of passing out, Tallis felt two sets of hands grab hold and lug him through into a building that stank of disinfectant. He cursed as his knees and feet were dragged along a concrete floor. Compound chic was starting to seriously piss him off. In his head, he wanted to call out to Darke, make sure they hadn’t overreached themselves and killed him, but his words got tangled in his brain somewhere and the resulting noise that came out of his mouth was a low, incoherent groan.
Doors opened and closed. Steps down. More doors. Must be some sort of detention centre, he thought, before being yanked into a room, one shoulder colliding painfully with the doorframe, and dumped. Cold, thirsty, exhausted and in serious pain, he lost consciousness. Hours or minutes later, he awoke to the sound of a man screaming. Sweat coated his body. Dream or for real? he thought, trying to re-create the noise in his head. Could he distinguish Darke’s voice in the agony?
Then they came for him. He paid careful attention to the layout this time, working out the distance of each corridor with the number of steps taken, and counted the number of doors they opened and closed. Moving stiffly, but still moving, he became aware that his injuries were less serious than he’d thought—for now.
At last he was brought to a room and swept into the centre. Some kind of silent, mimed charade took place before he was secured to a low wooden seat. He was aware of at least one other person in the room, if only because of the acrid smell of a newly lit cigarette. His heart sank. Was he to be tortured? Essentially, he was a terrorist and, in general, terrorists in that part of the world rarely came to trial. They didn’t usually survive long enough.
‘Good morning, Paul.’
The voice was hauntingly familiar. The man was Russian but spoke English.
‘Remove the blindfold, please,’ the voice said, reverting to Russian. ‘Then you may leave us.’
Tallis blinked, one eye so swollen he could barely focus. At first he saw a plain table on which rested a telephone and a lamp, a window, blind open, with a view of a brick wall. There was a swivel chair behind the table on which a man perched, his rear resting on it. Jesus, Tallis thought, he’d know those urbane if not downright thin and effete features anywhere. At once he was transported back to Orlov’s party, to the balcony where he’d engaged in a toxic exchange with the man from the FSB. For a second Tallis swore his heart stopped beating. Fear in all its guises came to visit him: fear of not knowing what was to come; fear of what he might reveal, and fear of what had already been revealed. Strangely, he had a sudden urge to laugh. ‘So this is what you do for the State, Timur.’
‘Amongst other things.’ Timur snatched a cold smile. ‘But this isn’t fair, Paul. You have the advantage.’
That’s not how it looks to me. ‘How do you work that out?’ he said, trying to sound game.
‘You know where I work and for whom I work. But I haven’t the faintest idea who you serve.’
Tallis opened his mouth to reply. Timur got in first. ‘Do not insult me by saying you are employed by a helicopter company.’
‘I wasn’t going to.’
‘Or that you are employed by the State,’ Timur said with a dead-eyed expression. ‘You almost got away with that tale you told the kontraktniki. It is an offence, I think, in your country to impersonate a police officer.’
Tallis swallowed, said nothing. Timur blew out a fine plume of smoke. ‘Perhaps I’ll let you into a secret.’
‘Please do.’
‘Your brother-in-arms…’ Timur paused, and tapped out some ash, then fixed on Tallis’s face. ‘He has already admitted his involvement in the murders in Moscow.’
No, it wasn’t true. Impossible. Darke wouldn’t have cracked, Tallis railed inside. Darke was stronger than that. This was gamesmanship, trying to get him to confess to something he had no part in, unless…
‘But as for the attempt on the Prime Minister’s life, a plot that failed, I might add, sadly he could not help us.’
‘Attempt? What?’ Tallis felt as if his veins ran with acid. The conference, he realised. Asim’s fear
s had very nearly been realised.
‘Very good,’ Timur said. ‘Your surprise is quite authentic.’
‘No, I—’
‘Know nothing because you are going to tell me that you have been up in the mountains these past few days, fighting with the Chechen rebels, the rebels, I seem to recall, for whom you have a touching sympathy.’
‘Sympathy, yes, but it doesn’t make me an assassin.’
‘You think not?’ Timur elevated a curiously thin eyebrow.
Fuck, Tallis thought. Timur knew a lot more than he was letting on. How the hell did he know?
‘Let me refresh your memory,’ Timur said, his eyes hard. ‘You engineered a meeting with our Prime Minister, Andrei Ivanov.’
‘I did not. I was an invited guest.’
‘You pursued him.’
‘On the contrary. I had a short conversation with him, which he initiated.’
‘During which you brought up the Chechen problem.’
‘It’s not a crime.’
‘Yes, it is. Furthermore, you’re a firearms officer.’
‘Not any more.’
‘Which means you have the necessary skill required for assassination.’
‘Ridiculous.’
‘And is it ridiculous that you were seen outside a prison where an FSB officer had his throat cut? Is it hilarious that a man answering your description was seen in a café in Rostov-on-Don where two security officers were shot dead and their bodies concealed? Did you yourself not take part in an attack on a military convoy only days ago? Did I imagine that you and your friend killed four Chechen police officers as well as a team of security experts?’
‘Look,’ Tallis said, conciliatory, ‘let me tell you something.’
‘No, let me tell you something,’ Timur said blackly. ‘I know about people like you. I recognised it the first time we met. You’re arrogant. You’re superior. You think you can come into our country and treat us like children.’ Tallis was on the point of protest when Timur reached inside his jacket and took out a mobile, punching in a number, letting it ring twice. Seconds later, the door flew open and Sprite, or Aslan, strode inside, one arm heavily bandaged. So it was Sprite who’d tracked them through the mountain, Sprite who’d killed Dmitri, and who’d tried to kill him. It was also Sprite, Tallis realised, who had betrayed Akhmet and his men at the police station, leading to dozens of deaths on both sides of the divide.
Land of Ghosts Page 25
