by Will Jordan
Drake’s mind wasn’t on the decor at that moment, however. His attention was focused on the sharp-suited man as he strode forwards and perfunctorily shook hands with Miranova. There were no cordial smiles from this guy – he was all business.
A few words were exchanged in Russian, with Miranova doing most of the talking. Judging by her deferential body language, she was very much subordinate to this man.
Having apparently been briefed to his satisfaction, his attention turned to Drake, his pale grey eyes shrewd and assessing as he surveyed the younger man.
Miranova handled the introductions. ‘Ryan, this is Ivan Masalsky, regional director of FSB activities in Chechnya.’
His suspicions had been proven right. Masalsky was the FSB’s top man in Chechnya, responsible for keeping a lid on the simmering melting pot of racial tension, infighting and attempted terrorism that much of the country had become. Drake certainly didn’t envy his job.
‘Director Masalsky, this is—’
‘You are the CIA agent leading the investigation into Anton Demochev’s murder,’ Masalsky interrupted, forgoing any actual greeting. His English was about on par with Miranova’s, which was to say it was excellent. ‘Ryan Drake.’
Drake nodded, hoping he looked less apprehensive than he felt. ‘That’s right.’
‘I understand you have been tracking one of the suspects.’ It was phrased less as a question and more as a challenge.
‘We think so, sir. We’ll know more when his flight lands.’
There was no point in guaranteeing something that wasn’t going to happen. By being non-committal at this stage, Drake was hoping to let him down gently when the time came.
‘You think so?’ Clearly he was neither impressed nor shy about letting Drake know it. ‘We are about to shut down a major airport based solely on your evidence, Mr Drake. I would hate to think it was all a false alarm.’
‘So would I, sir,’ Drake said, deciding to play the wounded-pride card. ‘I flew five and a half thousand miles to get here in time for this.’
Sensing the tension between the two men, Miranova jumped in. ‘The flight will be landing shortly, sir. We need to be in position when it does.’
Masalsky grunted something that might have been grudging acceptance or disgust – Drake couldn’t tell which.
‘Then you had better come with me,’ he said. Without waiting for a reply, he turned and strode off down a corridor leading deeper into the building.
‘I see you’re working your usual magic,’ Mason remarked with a wry smile. Thus far he had managed to stay out of the discussion, and therefore Masalsky’s line of fire.
‘Fuck it,’ Drake decided in lieu of a more rational course of action. ‘We’re here now. Let’s just get it done.’
‘Great plan. You worked out what you’re going to do if you see her?’
He’d thought about almost nothing else on the flight out here. Indeed, it was during the flight that a possible solution had first come to mind. It certainly wasn’t a foolproof plan, and it would involve Mason sticking his neck out more than he would have liked, but it was the only one that had come to mind.
‘I’ll need you to run interference for me again,’ Drake said quietly as they hurried to catch up with Masalsky. ‘If you catch my drift.’
The look on Mason’s face told him that he did.
Chapter 22
Norilsk, Siberia
If McKnight had thought the smelting complex daunting when viewed from a distance, it was even more so now that she was inside one of the main buildings. The place was truly immense, reminding her of old WW2 pictures of town-sized Soviet factories churning out munitions night and day.
Situated in an overseer’s office three floors up, she was able to look out on the vast operation as if it were a huge model laid out before her. Smelting furnaces glowed with intense heat, conveyor belts moved constantly, bringing in unrefined ore to be melted down, while machines worked to crush and compact and sort it all. Loaders and forklifts rumbled back and forth, their exhausts venting diesel fumes. Steam and smoke shrouded the entire area, rising to the vaulted ceiling high overhead to form ominously glowing clouds.
The men whose job it was to keep the vast operation running seemed tiny by comparison. Small, dirty, forlorn figures moved amongst the endlessly toiling machines, virtually hidden by the smoke and exhaust gases.
Dragging her eyes away from the industrial nightmare beyond the windows of the small office, she turned her attention back to the man sitting opposite. An overseer of the mining and smelting operation, he was one of the more senior managers on hand when she had arrived with her FSB escort. He was also the one who had filed the police report on the missing explosives, which made him an ideal point of contact.
He was a small, thin man with greasy dark hair and a thick moustache that made him look a lot older than he was. His face was lean and angular, his complexion darkened as if the airborne dirt had somehow become part of him. Most workers spent three or four years here before moving on, but this man must have been around a lot longer to have risen to his current position.
‘You said the explosives went missing from your storage warehouse here,’ she began, going over his official statement. ‘I assume there’s no other way they could have stolen it.’
‘We always have some in the mine itself for blasting, but most of it is kept under lock and key,’ Stav said, acting as interpreter for both parties.
He might have been jovial and garrulous on the flight out here, but it was a different story now they were on site. Stav had his game face on as he stood blocking the door to the small office, dark eyes watching the shift manager like a hawk, his broad rugged face immobile as if carved from granite. He’d explained to her in advance that he’d act only as an interpreter, saying nothing in between for maximum intimidation. Judging by the way the manager’s eyes kept flicking towards him, it was working.
‘And the warehouse has security guards?’ she continued.
He nodded, throwing an anxious glance at Stav. ‘Of course. We questioned all of them, and so did the police. None of them saw or heard anything suspicious.’
McKnight frowned. They could question the guards again, and with Stav on board they might well learn more, but she wanted to consider other possibilities first. ‘Who’s responsible for moving explosives from the warehouse to the mine?’
‘Whichever foreman is on duty for that shift. They have to sign for everything they take. There are three of them in total, plus their assistants.’
‘Could one of the foremen have requested the explosives and then offloaded them on the way to the mine?’
His thick brows drew together. ‘He would have to falsify the log afterwards to cover his tracks.’
‘But it’s possible?’ she pressed.
Swallowing, he looked at Stav again, then nodded.
She was getting somewhere. Now she had to narrow down her list of suspects. ‘Do you know if any of the foremen are from Chechnya?’
The flash of recognition in his eyes told her he did. ‘I am not comfortable with these questions.’
McKnight glanced at Stav for a moment before going on. ‘Maybe not, but I need you to answer. Lives could depend on it.’
She suspected Stav had added ‘including yours’ or something similar to the end of her translation, because the colour seemed to drain from the overseer’s face.
A hard, unblinking look from Stav was enough to demolish whatever remaining reticence or loyalty he might have felt. Coughing uncomfortably, the overseer turned to his computer and set to work, calling up several personnel files. It took a minute or two to compare their records, not helped by his apprehension as Stav moved in close to watch what he was doing, but soon enough McKnight had her answer.
‘I am not responsible for hiring the foremen,’ he hastened to remind them. ‘But one of them has family in Chechnya. His name is Borz Umarov.’
McKnight folded her arms, giving Stav a look of gratitude b
efore resuming her interrogation. ‘We need to speak to him.’
‘He is on shift today,’ the manager said. ‘I can summon him here …’
‘No need,’ McKnight cut in. ‘We’ll go to him.’
Chapter 23
Grozny, Chechnya
The civilian terminal at Grozny airport was about as far removed from the sleek, modern and efficient FSB building as it was possible to be. With walls stripped down to the bare concrete beneath, cracked tiled floors and cheap lighting overhead, it reminded Drake more of an underground car park than an airport.
Still, it was obviously a work in progress. Scaffolding had been erected here and there, on which electricians and carpenters clambered like very slow worker ants. Some had removed whole sections of the false ceiling to fit new cabling and heating ducts, while others were repainting walls and patching over damaged sections of concrete.
For what felt like the hundredth time, Drake glanced up at the arrivals board overhead to confirm the ETA of Anya’s flight from Moscow. Ten minutes out.
Right now it would be on final approach.
‘Would you stop looking up at that thing,’ Mason said, taking a sip of his beer.
Drake looked over at his companion. Normally drinking on the job was a big no-no in their line of work, but considering what Drake might need him to do in the next few minutes, he supposed a little Dutch courage wasn’t unwarranted.
‘It’s an airport,’ Drake replied quietly, not wishing to draw too much attention to the fact that he was speaking English. There weren’t many non-Russians in this neck of the woods. ‘People look at arrivals boards.’
The two of them were seated at the edge of the arrivals area in a small bar, café and restaurant all rolled into one. It was a lively place that sold everything from Shashlik kebabs to cheeseburgers, with some kind of bizarre Russian folk-pop combination blaring from speakers overhead.
‘I know. It’s just irritating, that’s all,’ Mason explained, taking another drink. ‘Oh, and for the record I think your plan sucks.’
Drake couldn’t blame him. All eyes were on them at that moment, Masalsky having seen to it that every surveillance camera in the airport was now under FSB control. Nearly a dozen agents were spread out across the arrivals lounge, all waiting for the same thing as Drake and Mason.
Well, almost the same thing. The difference was that the target they had been given didn’t exist. On the other hand, the woman Drake had come all this way to find was very real. The difficult part was going to be getting to her without every man and his dog realising what he was up to.
If he spotted Anya amongst the disembarking passengers, he was going to need Mason to draw attention away from him while he made contact. And the only way to do that was to fake a sighting of their target.
It certainly wasn’t going to win them any friends amongst the FSB, but with luck it would buy Drake enough time to get close to Anya. He’d pretend to bump into her as he pushed his way towards the ruckus created by Mason, and with luck he’d be able to slip her a little piece of paper advising her in no uncertain terms to call his cellphone if she wanted to be alive tomorrow. She would be unarmed in the airport, and perhaps more inclined to listen to him if she thought he might call in the big guns of the FSB.
As for what he would say to her when the call came, he didn’t know.
‘Answer me one thing, Ryan,’ Mason went on. ‘You ever ask yourself if this is all worth it? If she’d do the same thing for you?’
‘She’s already risked her life for me, more than once,’ Drake said, keeping his eyes on the board. In Afghanistan just a few months earlier, at great risk to herself, she had infiltrated a heavily guarded compound to stop the man intent on killing Drake and his team.
‘Very noble. But you know, somehow I can’t imagine her taking a bullet for me.’ A pause, probing, demanding. ‘What do you think about that, Ryan?’
Drake could feel the tension growing within him, just as he felt Mason’s eyes boring into the side of his head. Mason’s injury had happened during the mission to rescue Anya from a Russian jail, so it was perhaps inevitable that some of his resentment and bitterness was directed towards her.
‘I think you need to get your game face on, mate,’ he replied tersely. ‘Remember why we’re here.’
‘I know why I’m here, Ryan.’
Mercifully, Drake was spared further barbed remarks when his concealed radio earpiece crackled with an incoming transmission.
‘Ryan, it is Anika.’ Miranova’s voice sounded tinny and hollow through the little speaker. ‘Acknowledge.’
She was posted in the building’s security centre alongside Masalsky and several other FSB staff, their eyes no doubt glued to the feeds from countless security cameras located throughout the airport; all searching for anything out of the ordinary.
The transmit button was hidden inside the cuff of his jacket. Reaching over, Drake gently pressed it. ‘Go.’
‘We just had confirmation from air traffic control. The plane is on approach now. Five minutes.’
He felt his heart start to beat faster, though he managed to keep his voice calm as he spoke his reply. ‘Copy that.’
Five minutes.
In five minutes he would risk his career, his freedom, even his life, for a woman who might or might not be willing to listen to him. Who might or might not try to kill him if he got in her way.
Mason had asked him if this was all worth it. Soon enough he would know.
Anya was uncharacteristically tense and agitated as the aircraft ploughed through low-altitude turbulence, grey clouds whipping by the window at hundreds of miles an hour, just inches from her face. The pilots had given them the weather forecast as they started their descent – low cloud, rain and gusty wind.
She was no stranger to adverse weather, but she preferred to endure it on the ground, standing on her own two feet. Not hurtling through the sky and being thrown around inside this oversized tin can.
Her only consolation was that, according to her seat-mounted TV screen, they were less than five minutes out from their destination.
In five minutes she would be on the ground. It couldn’t come soon enough.
The seconds seemed to tick by with agonising slowness as Drake sat at his table with bad music blaring from the cheap speakers overhead, all his attention now focused on the corridor at the far end of the arrivals lounge. At any moment the automatic doors would shudder open and the first groups of passengers would start to appear.
Once again his radio crackled into life. ‘The plane is at the gate. They will start disembarking now,’ Miranova said. ‘Stand by.’
‘Copy that,’ Drake replied.
He looked over at Mason. His friend, his former teammate, once one of the best specialists he knew. Now a desperate man with suspect motives, a worryingly insubordinate streak and 18 months’ worth of pent-up resentment to contend with. For better or worse, he was the only person within 1,000 miles that Drake could trust.
‘Ready?’
The older man nodded, his eyes now clear and focused. The experienced Shepherd operative ready to go into action once more.
The only question was what would happen next.
As soon as she was out through the doorway and clear of the plane, Anya quickened her pace, eager to escape the slow, death-like procession of weary travellers trudging up the jet bridge. She had places to be, and the one place she didn’t want to be was right here.
Her only belongings were stuffed inside a small canvas satchel slung over one shoulder. She had no luggage to collect, allowing her to breeze straight through baggage reclaim while her fellow travellers dawdled and waited for the conveyor belts to disgorge their suitcases.
Anya always travelled light these days, ready to leave wherever she was staying at a moment’s notice, and rarely carrying anything that couldn’t be easily replaced. Even the contents of her satchel could be dumped without causing any real problems. She had committed any important phone
numbers, names, locations and other operational details to memory as a precaution.
She was a ghost, existing for most people only as long as she was within their line of sight, and vanishing again when they parted.
She supposed it had been that way for most of her life. She had never been inclined towards sentimentality, never desired mementos or keepsakes to mark the things she had done. It was just as well, because her world had been turned upside down so many times that she now possessed almost nothing of the life she’d been born into.
No evidence of the person she’d once been, and could have become.
Passport control was another hurdle easily overcome, the bored-looking customs officer giving her only a cursory glance before swiping her fake passport through the electronic reader. Passports were becoming more sophisticated these days and therefore harder to forge, but there were still a few people with the skill and the resources to produce reliable forgeries. And Anya knew most of them.
With her documents returned, Anya adjusted the satchel on her shoulder, tucked her passport into the front pocket of her jeans where no one could get to it without her knowing, and strode eagerly towards the arrivals lounge.
‘This is it,’ Drake hissed as the automatic doors shuddered open and the first crowd of passengers emerged into the arrivals lounge. Few were moving with any great speed or urgency, not that he could blame them. If he called Chechnya home, he wouldn’t exactly be excited to be back.
Nonetheless, he was thankful for the relatively slow pace as his eyes darted from face to face, desperately seeking the one he needed. Anya was no stranger to disguises, and he expected her to have altered her appearance, but he was sure he would recognise her. There were some things that went far deeper than superficial looks.
‘You see her?’ Mason whispered, scanning the new arrivals. He too had encountered Anya during her rescue the previous year, though it had been brief to say the least. Drake had little faith in Mason’s ability to spot her, disguised or not.
