Satisfied that he was where he ought to be, he got up, kept low, moving forward in a high crawl, conscious that every step on twig and leaf would create a sound distinct from the blanket of birdsong. By moving in a radius of almost ninety degrees, he reckoned to be in direct line with Ivanov’s outdoor pool. Along that same continuum, Darke would be holed up lower down the valley, tracks concealed, probably in a hide, his view of the target narrow and limited. It would be a difficult shot but doable. Tallis wondered on the choice of weapon. If it were his decision to make, he’d go for a Swiss-made SSG550, a heavy-duty gun with bi-pod and telescope and anti-reflective screen to cut down air disturbance, but it would be a bastard to carry so maybe Darke had selected something lighter and more portable. Tallis estimated that whatever weapon Darke was using, he’d need to be within a range of five hundred metres.
Tallis arced swiftly round then dropped right down onto his hands and knees, slowing the pace, moving with extreme caution and in silence. A quick glance at his watch told him he had twenty minutes to make the deadline. Painfully slow and covering only a short distance, he took the Glock from his holster and, keeping his eyes fixed ahead, saw a silhouette on the ground. Either it was a bird spotter or Darke had broken an elementary rule: he hadn’t factored in the sun’s movement or the change of light behind him.
Tallis edged forward again, a mental clock ticking in his head like the countdown to a bomb going off. Sweat was pouring off him, even though a biting wind blistered through his body, a definite disadvantage for the sniper. He was on the point of taking another look through his binoculars when he sensed a presence and froze. As the chill of cold steel connected with the base of his skull, he knew that his fortunes had been reversed.
‘Graham,’ he said, without moving. ‘This isn’t a good idea.’
‘What? Killing you, or killing Ivanov?’
‘Both.’
‘You’re right,’ Darke said calmly. ‘Put down your gun and crawl slowly to the left.’
Tallis did.
‘Good,’ Darke said, squatting down next to him. He was wearing full camouflage, with a soft green cap on his head to give a blurred outline of his head. The dark glasses on his face gave him a sinister appearance. ‘How did you know I’d be here?’ There was no challenge in his voice, no animosity. It sounded more like a friend talking. Except a friend doesn’t normally address you with a pistol in his hand.
‘Something happened to you out in the mountains. One moment you were hell bent on staying, the next you wanted to come back. I think you knew then that you wanted to exact revenge, and when you found out about what was really going on, how you’d been betrayed, and then, of course, there was Fazan and his damned order.’
‘He told you?’ Darke frowned.
‘Didn’t need to,’ Tallis said, eyeing the gun, a SIG-Sauer with, using firearms speak, a moderator. Using layman’s language, a silencer. ‘I worked it out from Numerov’s account.’
‘Always were the smart one,’ Darke said almost fondly.
‘Strange. You always called me a fool.’
Darke’s smile was chill, as if it were of no consequence. ‘This isn’t personal, you understand?’ Killing Ivanov, or me? Tallis thought. He said nothing. ‘I’ve got my orders,’ Darke insisted.
‘From a man who has intimate reasons to have Ivanov removed,’ Tallis pointed out.
‘You know Fazan was the British agent in the Motova case?’
‘The Chechen journalist who happened to be Ivanov’s lover? Yes, I know, and crime passionel is as old as these hills, Graham,’ Tallis said, glancing around, ‘but usually the aggrieved party carries out the killing. The job isn’t normally handed out for someone else to fulfil.’ Unless you worked for the security services. He supposed that’s what spies were really all about.
‘That’s not why I’m doing this,’ Darke protested, sounding mightily offended. ‘And you, of all people, should understand. You saw those FSB guys in action, how they behave—like animals.’
‘And the Chechens? What about Akhmet and his men, their treatment of Russian soldiers, teenage lads, their cruelty?’ And yours, he wanted to say.
But Darke was not to be persuaded. ‘Don’t you get it? Throughout Ivanov’s reign of terror, twenty-five thousand Chechens have either lost their lives or gone missing. As for native Russians, the State has eliminated any number of journalists and even detectives, to say nothing of ordinary people who get a knock at their door in the middle of the night.’
‘And the State has waged a silent war on its own people in order to create hatred and distrust,’ Tallis cut in. ‘Come on, Graham, that’s no reason for you to take the law into your own hands. What are you going to do next, turn your attention to the despots of failed African states?’
‘If I have my orders,’ Darke said, glacial, a resistant look in his eye.
Orders were all Darke had left, Tallis realised. ‘You never used to do as you were told.’
‘I do now.’
‘Because of your loyalty, or because you’re a washed-up nobody without prospects?’ Tallis ground his jaw, watched as Darke’s expression flared with anger, half expecting a bullet in the head. Recovering with mercurial speed, Darke flickered a smile.
‘Seeing as you’re here, I have an idea.’
Let’s hope it means I get to stay alive, Tallis thought.
‘I’m prepared to spare you, to give you a sporting chance,’ Darke said, a glittering light in his eyes. ‘In the spy game you have to be constantly flexible and ready to adapt plans on the hoof.’
‘I didn’t think being merciful was part of the strategy.’
‘It isn’t usually.’
‘So is this for old times’ sake?’
‘It’s because you’re a better shot.’
Tallis felt the colour bleed from his face.
‘Your call,’ Darke said, indicating for Tallis to move. ‘Either you kill Ivanov, or I kill you.’
Tallis stared at him, half-stunned, seconds ticking by like a slow drum-roll in his head. What sort of a choice was that? Kill or be killed? Except he doubted that Darke would spare him and even if he did, what future would he have after carrying out such a monstrous act? ‘Alright, fair trade,’ he said, sounding eminently reasonable. ‘I guess I didn’t much like the bloke anyway.’
‘Thought you’d see it my way.’
Darke motioned Tallis forward to where he’d set himself up. Tallis crawled slowly along on his belly, Darke’s gun trained on him, his mind racing. There was a sheet of green scrim netting on the ground designed to break up any physical outline. The gun was the deadly Soviet Dragunov, effective to a thousand metres. ‘Fitting, isn’t it? From Russia with love,’ Darke said with an icy smile. ‘Ivanov is due to take the air in roughly three minutes. The range isn’t great but, with luck, you should be able to slot him.’
‘You know as well as me that I’m not going to be able to take the shot if I think the next second you’re going to blow my head off.’ It was critical he have a steady reliable yet relaxed shooting position, and he needed to be able to breathe without hyperventilating.
‘I’d love to say fair point but, frankly, not my problem.’
‘Your problem if I miss.’
Darke gave him a hard-edged look. ‘What do you suggest?’
‘Lower your weapon, shut up, and don’t sit on my tail.’
‘Two out of three, best I can do. You’ll have to put up with me standing behind you. I could spot for you, if you like.’
Tallis hesitated fractionally. With Darke guiding him, the shot would be more accurate. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m alright.’
Rather than using the netting, Tallis pulled it away. The last thing he needed was to get entangled in the weave.
He took the gun, lay prone and spread his feet comfortably apart then rolled down slightly on his left side, putting his elbow forward and placing his left hand well forward, the rifle resting in the natural V formed by his left thumb and forefing
er. With his right hand, he grasped the stock, thumb over the top, his right elbow lowered to the ground so that his shoulders were in line. Next, he adjusted the setting of the sight. This was when he was at his most vulnerable. Any hint of the Dragunov’s barrel and exposure to the Russians, and it would all be over.
He looked through the sight again. The distance between him and the swimming pool was roughly six hundred metres. A body viewed by the naked eye at that distance appeared wedge-shaped, but to Tallis it would seem as if the target was up close and very personal. But that didn’t mean emotions came into play. It was important to be focused, determined and without fear—in sniper-speak, in the zone.
The aquamarine-coloured modern fence around the perimeter, although transparent, was made of bulletproof material, unlike the gap through which the bullet was to pass. Narrow in the extreme, it was double the width of a slit in a medieval castle. To target Ivanov, Tallis needed him to be near the pool’s edge, or about to get in, a shot in the water too difficult to pull off.
Seconds ticked, Tallis aware of Graham Darke standing right behind him, within easy reach of a weapon should he decide to change his mind or trick him. Bang on cue, two thick-set men, part of Ivanov’s close-protection team, judging from the earpieces, stepped outside, fully dressed, followed by Ivanov who was wearing an open towelling robe over a pair of skimpy, skin-tight white swimming trunks. Tallis took a deep breath, ensured the cross-hairs were level, that the butt of the rifle was close in, resting in the hollow of his shoulder, his body ready to absorb any recoil, and that his right cheek was fixed on the spot formed by his right thumb. Around Ivanov’s neck was a thick gold chain with a St. Christopher hanging from it, the medallion lying against his breastbone, presumably to protect him yet in reality providing the perfect bull’seye. Ivanov was sharing some joke with the others then another man stepped out of the house bearing a bright green inflatable, already blown up in the shape of a chair with a holder for a drink. He rested it down on the water, holding it while Ivanov disrobed, exposing his muscled torso, and climbed aboard like a Chinese emperor mounting an eighteenth-century sedan. Beads of sweat broke out on Tallis’s brow as he zeroed in—the further a bullet had to travel, the higher the trajectory.
Ivanov pushed off a little from the side of the pool, floating silently towards the killing zone. As Tallis watched, a roll-call of the damaged and the dead drummed through his head—Ruslan, Asya, their father, Dmitri, the countless numbers of Chechen and Russian soldiers, the Vladimirs and Viktors, the Lenas and Katyas, the children made orphans, the wives made widows, and all the people in between. It would be so easy to kill him, he thought, this man with blood on his hands. He took a breath, released it a little, holding the rest while he took aim, knowing that in less than ten seconds it would be finished.
With the cross-hairs over the target, he touched the trigger and fired, Ivanov toppling down into the water at the same time as Tallis rolled and instinctively grabbed the netting, literally pulling the ground from underneath Darke so that his premeditated shot missed him by millimetres. That’s when he recognised the true nature of the man, the emptiness in the eyes, the moral detachment, the dreadful toll the mountains had taken on him. As Darke lifted the Sig to fire another round, as fast as a viper Tallis shot Graham Darke in the face at point-blank range.
As Tallis got up to run, he could hear all hell unleashed behind him as the Russians dragged their prime minister, cursing and shouting orders, out of the pool, the tattered remains of the inflatable already sinking to the bottom.
When, fifteen minutes later, an RAF helicopter swooped low, Andrei Ivanov had no idea that the man who’d rescued him was on board, or that the man had shot his oldest friend in order to save him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Thames House, MI5 Headquarters, London
‘THE Russian Prime Minister sends a personal message of immense gratitude.’ Asim beamed.
It was two days after Tallis’s trip to France. When he returned he reported back and slept the clock round in an expensive hotel near Bays water. He thought about calling home on a couple of occasions to talk to Lena but feared she would ask about Ruslan. Unless essential, breaking that kind of news should never be done on a telephone.
‘I’m touched,’ Tallis said, unsmiling. He hadn’t enjoyed saving him, still less killing Graham Darke to do so. ‘And Fazan?’
‘I’m flying out to Berlin tonight.’
‘To hear his side of the story? I told you Darke was adamant he was following Fazan’s orders.’
‘And Fazan is equally adamant that Darke was acting off his own bat.’
‘He denies everything?’ Only idiots denied everything.
‘He doesn’t deny that from a human point of view he won’t be sorry when Ivanov fades from power. He thinks it would be healthier for both Russia and international relations.’
‘Clever,’ Tallis said. ‘He’s admitting to some kind of motivation but giving it an interesting slant.’
Asim tipped the palm of his hand up.
‘You believe Numerov’s testimony triggered Fazan’s response?’ Tallis knew that he was shamelessly fishing, but what the hell.
‘Let’s put it this way,’ Asim said, his eyes hooded, ‘there is absolutely no need for you to worry about it.’
Worry? That was hardly the word he’d have used to describe a whole host of feelings he hadn’t even begun to process, but Tallis felt too knackered to argue. ‘Which brings me to another question. Does Ivanov know it was Darke?’
‘Naturally. He was quite relieved to hear that Musa is dead.’
Tallis met Asim’s eye. And so are you, he thought. At a stroke it devalued the story of the SIS agent fighting alongside Chechen rebels. Tallis knew that he’d had no choice but to kill Darke but it still made him feel shoddy. ‘And what did the French make of it? It’s one thing to allow free access, another to have assassination attempts on their doorstep.’
‘Franco-Russian relations may stall for a while. As far as the French are concerned, Darke was an Algerian national with excitable views.’
‘You swapped bodies?’
‘It happens,’ Asim said airily. ‘You may be interested to know,’ he continued, looking like a lion fed a huge chunk of wildebeest, ‘that as a mark of the Russians’ desire to form a better relationship with us, they’re prepared to wind down their current programme of assassination.’
‘What about Ivanov’s obsession with the Chechens?’
‘Miracles take a little longer, but I think you’ll find Ivanov’s near-death experience has had a suitably salutary effect. I think he’ll quit messing, at least, in the short term.’
Probably do no more than get that gap in his fence fixed, Tallis thought. He asked about Grigori Orlov’s contribution.
‘Fulsomely recognised by the Prime Minister. I gather Orlov is in line for some sort of presentation as a mark of his loyalty to the motherland,’ Asim said, clipped. Tallis smiled. Orlov definitely played on the wrong side of the tracks, but he was no pawn of the state and Tallis still harboured a sneaking admiration for the man, if only for his sheer originality.
‘And what about that lead I gave you?’
Asim smiled. ‘Wondered when you’d get round to that. It gave us another bit of leverage, I must say. Would you like to do the honours?’
‘Hasn’t the bird already flown?’
‘Only as far as Shobdon.’ Asim glanced at his watch. ‘We’ve a helicopter on standby. You could be there in forty minutes.’
Shobdon, Herefordshire
The airfield was buzzing with activity. Tallis had never seen so many people. Aside from mechanics and pilots out in force, dozens of punters were standing around, waiting patiently for their turn to take to the skies. Serious buyers were easily distinguishable from enthusiastic visitors. Came down to the cars they drove: Astons held sway over Astras.
A number of helicopters were waiting to take off while a couple took their turn to come in to land. Tall
is couldn’t help but stare at an impressive Eurocopter EC 155, a beautiful twelve-seater beast of a machine costing millions, with four fuel tanks, the noise from the helicopter shrouded by a low-vibration main rotor and a specially designed Fenestron tail rotor. The contrast with two-seater planes, swathed in tarpaulin, snoozing silently in the afternoon sun couldn’t have been more apparent. A very British scene of excitement and geniality, Tallis thought, dragging himself away and crossing purposefully towards Tiger’s offices.
And he was about to ruin it.
Reception was no less busy. Phones were ringing. Smoothly dressed thirty- and forty-something males were vying for attention from two attractive girls manning the desk whose job was to note potential clients’ details and book test flights or appointments with sales staff. The atmosphere was hard-edged and slightly frantic. About to walk upstairs, he caught sight of Ginny Dodge, dressed in a dark navy flight suit. She was ushering two men into a suite, presumably to close a deal. Tallis returned to Reception and, politely apologising to a tight-faced man with a petulant manner, more used to interrupting than being interrupted, asked to be informed when Ginny was free.
Upstairs, he was given a decent cup of tea, helped himself to the free food on offer and made himself at home. It soon transpired, as if he hadn’t already worked it out, that he’d arrived in the middle of an open day. Two hours later, his mobile rang. Ten minutes following that, and after making a single call out, he made his way back outside, heading for the bar adjoining the canteen.
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