by Andy Maslen
The women looked disorientated. They’d be docile enough. And Elsbeta could always administer a couple of sisterly slaps if they showed signs of skittishness. Somehow, violence was always more disturbing when it came from a woman. In Esbeta’s case, it was a fact at least thirty Russian troops had become acquainted with, to their great misfortune.
Outside, the temperature had dropped. He didn’t really mind the cold, but the two women were shivering. Probably more shock than anything else.
“Come on,” he said. “I can hear the boat.”
Together, he and Elsbeta herded the two women towards the concrete barrier separating the access road from the water. He carried both holdalls so the three women could travel ahead of him. They stepped over the low moulded blocks of concrete to see a sleek white cabin cruiser, its motor burbling as it bobbed on the incoming tide. A name, ‘Anja’, was painted in neat, black script on the prow. At the wheel stood a tall man with long, untidy black hair and a bushy black beard: Makhmad. Standing on the foredeck, holding out his hand, was a shorter, fatter man: Dukka. The three men were former comrades in arms, fighting against the Russians. Now they ran a number of “lines of business” as they liked to call them: extortion, protection rackets, kidnapping and assassinations. All to fund ongoing actions against the hated Russian authorities.
Before they climbed down onto the boat, Kasym put out a restraining hand on Sarah Bryant’s forearm.
“A moment,” he said. “Your phone. Please.”
He held out his calloused hand.
Watched her as she looked at his outstretched fingers.
Registered her look of surprise, the mouth dropping open involuntarily.
The first and middle fingers were missing their top joints. The skin closing the wounds was puckered, like tiny pursed mouths.
“Not very pretty, are they?” he said. “I was captured for a while in Afghanistan. This was just the start of what those savages had planned for me. But Dukka – who you will meet in just a minute – he rescued me. Shot them down like dogs. Then removed every single finger and toe and stuffed their mouths with them. He is not someone to cross. Just a friendly warning. Now. Your phones.”
He twitched his fingers upwards a couple of times. Sarah Bryant reached into her handbag and pulled out her phone, a sleek silver model – something bespoke, he’d not seen one before – and dropped it into his palm. Without waiting to be asked, Chloe placed hers, a Samsung in a turquoise silicone case, on top of her mother’s.
He pocketed the phones. “Thank you. Now, let’s get onboard.”
Kasym was glad to see his crew. He’d operated outside Eastern Europe several times, but preferred the familiar territory of home. Similar culture, similar languages, better food, more drinking than in the prissy, health-conscious West. And always a good living to be made for a man prepared to be entrepreneurial and violent in equal measures. As he got down onto the deck and handed the women’s bags to Dukka, he sighed happily and hugged the round man tightly, kissing him on each cheek.
“Dukka! I’m glad to see you. Those Swedes and their herrings. I thought I was going to turn into a fish if we had to stay there another night!”
“Come below, Boss. I got some steaks cooking. And cold beers.” Then, as if noticing the women for the first time, he jerked his chin. “What you want to do with them?”
“Show them their berths. And the heads. Give them food, drink. Make them comfortable.” Then, loud enough for the women to hear, and in English this time. “And if they try anything funny, use your knife.”
“Sure, Boss. Ha! I’ll slit them like fish. Flopping on the deck. You got it!”
Dukka was simple, but loyal. He’d saved Kasym’s life on three occasions, and Kasym felt a powerful love for the squat, smiling man. And for his innocent joy in despatching Russians or anyone else Kasym asked him to.
He opened the door to the cabin.
“Kasym!” the tall man at the wheel roared. “I thought you’d decided to move here permanently. Those Swedish girls, eh? You could spend your life fucking them and not get tired.”
“No way my friend. After a month, you’d feel like you were eating cakes and pastries all the time. No meat on them. Give me a good strong Chechen girl any time. You have a course laid in for Tallinn?”
“Say the word, my Captain.”
“OK. Let’s go. I’m tired of this fucking country.”
While the women slept, Kasym briefed his team on their next steps.
“Elsbeta, when we get to Tallinn, you and Dukka take them to the safe house. Get them settled. Then go out and buy some food and a newspaper. Dukka, you stay with them. Makhmad and I have some rents to collect.”
“Boss?” It was Dukka. Loyal, faithful Dukka. Kasym smiled at him. Like an overgrown child, only with the strength of a bull and a temper to match.
“What is it?”
“Supposing, I mean, those women. If they try anything. What you want me to do with ’em? Like a slap or something. Maybe more?”
The big man’s wide open eyes pleaded, as if he were half afraid of angering the boss and half desperate to please him.
“No. Don’t hurt them. They will be quiet, I promise you. I’ll have Elsbeta give them their instructions. You just need to watch them.”
“Like a hawk!”
Kasym leaned across the table and patted the big man on the back of his huge hairy paw.
“Yes, Dukka. Like a hawk. You remember, we used to watch them at home, in the forest?”
“Oh, yes, Boss. Beautiful, weren’t they? So high. We wanted to fly like them too.”
“We did. And one day we will, I promise. But for now, we need those women alive and well so that’s your job, my friend.”
They finished their steaks, drank some beers and, apart from Makhmad, settled down on the thin cushions to grab such sleep as they could manage, as the big motor cruiser powered east, through the Baltic Sea towards the Gulf of Finland.
Chapter 4
Gabriel’s coma, caused by the collision with Dain Zulfikah’s delivery truck, then maintained by his doctors, lasted for nineteen days.
He sat up in bed and immediately wished he hadn’t. Fireworks exploded in his head, sending pink and white stars fizzling around the periphery of his vision and igniting a charge in his skull that made him groan from the pain. He sank back onto the pillow. Maybe a less abrupt recce would be more sensible. He inched his head to the left. There was a big sash window, through which he could see an expanse of striped lawn, dotted with benches. Some of the benches had men sitting on them. Men with odd, glistening limbs that twinkled in the sun. Men crying, and being comforted by nurses. Men playing chess, gripping the black and white pieces with two fingers, or between their toes.
He turned to his right.
In the next bed, a man lay, staring up at the ceiling. His face was badly bruised and scraped, and half his hair was shaved away. A long wound bisecting his scalp was closed with dozens of black, spidery stitches. He was humming a tune. Gabriel recognised it. It was the theme from an old war film.
“Hey,” Gabriel croaked. “Where are we?”
The man stopped humming, mid-bar. He turned his head towards Gabriel. His pale-blue eyes were wide open but they didn’t focus on Gabriel’s.
“Audley Grange.”
“Audley Grange? But that’s military. I was in London. How the hell did I get here?”
“How did any of us get here? One minute you’re flying at 10,000 feet, the next you think your cockpit’s full of talking spiders and then you go blind. Just like poor old Eddie.”
“Jesus! Is that what happened to you?”
The man sighed. “I remember it like it was yesterday.”
*
Squadron Leader Tom Ainsley smiles as he pulls the throttle lever on his Typhoon all the way back. He glances left, then right. He flicks the switch to light the afterburners and whoops with delight as the additional thrust kicks him hard in the back. Climbing vertically, he checks
the instruments: everything is fine. Christ! I’m a lucky guy, he thinks. He looks behind him, at the chequerboard fields receding into a fine-grained mosaic of green, brown and yellow. Up beyond 3,000 feet he shoots, into the untried zone. He can feel Gulliver, or thinks he can, coursing through his bloodstream. Tom popped the two blue and green tablets half an hour before take-off and now someone has lit the afterburners in his brain, too.
He looks to his left and sees the curvature of the Earth. Every detail is etched with a fine point: he can identify individual trees and buildings over what must be forty or fifty miles. The air mixture being fed through his mask smells wonderful, like strawberry ice cream. The engines are singing to him. Tom can feel individual synapses firing in his brain, their microscopic bursts of chemicals leaping the gaps between the nerve fibres and transmitting his wishes from mind to controls instantaneously. Now he thinks about it, the plane is anticipating his will, adjusting bearing, speed and trim at the precise moment he begins evaluating the correction.
Tom nudges the control stick and sends the jet into a sharp turn to port, then back the other way, rolling over a wingtip. The jet flips up into a tight reverse loop before barrel-rolling out of it and resuming its climb.
At 7,500 feet, Tom feels something clambering out of his right boot and pattering around the outside of his olive-green flight suit. He looks down at his lap. A spider sits there: its fat, brown body is as big as the palm of his hand and covered in black and red hairs. Its eight eyes are looking up at him. They are the red, white and blue roundels painted on the wings of his plane.
Tom dismisses it. You don’t get spiders in the cockpits of fighter jets. Anyway, he’s in the mood for some fun.
“Time for more aerobaticals my chums, my mates, my pearly gates, let’s see . . . what can we show the boffins? I know, an inside-out stall turn. Here we go, my gorgeous, look lively.”
The second spider is harder to ignore. He is holding its tawny body in his hand instead of the control stick. As he screams, other spiders show themselves, swarming out from under the ejector seat and skittering their way into the sleeves of his flight suit.
Tom screams some more. The spiders have long, amber-coloured fangs. The biting doesn’t hurt but he can’t feel the controls any more.
When his vision snaps off like a dead TV set he moans with despair and tries to reach his eyes, but his hands are too heavy and they hang uselessly between his legs.
The Typhoon twirls towards the ground. Tom sees nothing, but he hears the spiders forcing their way into his brain and laughing at him.
“Pancakes for tea, Tom,” they giggle.
He finds some deeply-hidden reserve of strength and pulls the black and yellow ejector seat release handle between his thighs. Then the lights go out.
*
“I totally forgot my training. Every single page of the manual turned to vapour. Didn’t panic. Didn’t choke. Took my flight helmet off at some point. Then some little part of me got clear-headed enough to eject. I went sideways. Hit a copse while the rockets were still firing, hence the mess I made of my face.”
Then he started weeping. Fat, translucent tears rolled sideways out of his eyes and into the neck of his pyjama jacket.
“And I’m blind. They say it’s temporary but that that’s just the MO trying to keep my spirits up. I’m never going to see again. Never going to fly again.”
“But what happened? It sounds like you were tripping. You weren’t on anything were you?”
Gabriel knew from his days in the SAS that drugs and soldiering – or flying – just didn’t mix. You’d be out on a dishonourable discharge if they caught you with so much as an oversized Rizla paper in your kit.
“Of course not! I dreamed of flying since I was a kid making Airfix kits in my bedroom. That’s how come I got onto the Typhoon Programme. Look,” he said, leaning awkwardly across the gap between the beds, “keep this to yourself, but we were recruited onto a drugs trial. Totally hush-hush. Performance-boosting meds you take thirty minutes before take-off.”
“And you think this was a side-effect?”
“I don’t know. We’d tried them groundside for months in prep. All kinds of test rigs, static line parachute jumps, sensory deprivation chambers. Christ, we popped so many of the damn things we used to rattle. But they were so good. I used to zone in playing Tetris and just fry the damn thing. A mate halved his reaction time. Halved! That’s just not possible, normally. It would mean whole seconds in a dogfight. Life, instead of death.”
This speech seemed to exhaust the man and he levered himself back onto his pillows and resumed humming. His sightless eyes remained open.
The room had two other beds, but they were empty. Gabriel tried to sit up again. He was rewarded with another starburst, but the pain was a little less this time. He twisted around and saw what he was looking for. A red button set in a cream plastic surround. Above it, in white capitals pressed out of blue plastic tape, a single word: CALL. He pressed it hard and left his thumb there for a count of ten.
The door hissed open on damped hinges. A plump young woman in nurse’s whites and rubber clogs strode into the room. Her hair was the colour of polished copper. Her face was set in a frown, but she smiled when she saw Gabriel sitting up in bed.
“Was it yourself who pressed the call button?” she asked, her accent a lilting melody from somewhere in Ireland.
“Sorry. I just, this is all a bit confusing. He said this is Audley Grange. Is that right?”
“It is. And do we know why we’re here?”
“We were in London at the National Portrait Gallery. We had to get some fresh air. Next thing we know, we’re lying here with an axe buried in our skull.”
The nurse sat on the end of Gabriel’s bed, tutting at his sarcasm. She smoothed out a crease she’d pulled in the blanket as her weight settled onto the mattress. She spoke softly, as if to a child worried about monsters under the bed.
“First of all, do you know your name?”
“Gabriel Wolfe. The Prime Minister is . . .”
She laughed. “No need for that. You had a bad concussion and a fractured skull. The ambulance took you to St Thomas’ and when we heard about what happened, we whisked you up here to lovely Warwickshire. You’ve been in a coma, my love.”
“What? How long for? And why am I here? I mean, on whose authority?”
“You’ve a lot of questions. I’m going to leave someone else to answer them. He’ll be here directly once I tell him you’re awake. But it wasn’t just fresh air you wanted in that gallery, was it?”
“What do you mean? It was hot in there, I was wearing a suit. I just felt . . . off.”
The nurse smiled, a little sorrowfully. “Annie told us you were staring around you like you were having a night terror. Then you ran out of the gallery and practically fell under the wheels of a truck. It’s a miracle you’re not dead, so it is,” she said, crossing herself. “Now, you sit tight, young man. I’m going back to the nurses’ station to make a call.”
Gabriel lay back against the pillows, massaging his temples, trying to stop any more charges detonating in his brain. He focused on his breathing the way his childhood tutor Zhao Xi had taught him in Hong Kong. “Slow, like the tide turning,” Master Zhao had said, patiently, as the teenage boy in front of him had huffed and puffed. Now, he felt the muscles each side of his neck start to unclench. The anxiety squirrelling around in his stomach started to fade, and he felt a delicious calm settling on him like a cool sheet on a summer night. What had happened, really? He’d seen the portrait of Davis Meeks. Then he’d seen Mickey “Smudge” Smith, carrying the fatal wounds he’d sustained in a botched operation in the African jungle.
Gabriel’s superiors hadn’t thought of it in those terms, of course. They’d judged the mission a success. Yes, Trooper Smith’s death was unfortunate, his unrecovered body, regrettable; but the leader of a bloodthirsty militia was dead and his plans secured. They’d wanted to decorate Gabriel for the action, b
ut he’d told them he would refuse to accept any medals. That was when the nightmares had started, and he’d resigned his commission not long afterwards.
Now he was back in the protective bosom of the Army. Audley Grange was the specialist hospital for all British and Commonwealth veterans of conflicts, domestic and foreign, stretching from Belfast to Bosnia, Zambia to Zagreb. The men he’d seen outside wore the latest prosthetic limbs, developed specifically to deal with the traumatic injuries inflicted by IEDs in the Middle East. And psychiatric care was always on hand for any serving or former soldier who woke up one day afraid to go out, or to climb outside of a bottle.
His reverie was interrupted as the door swung open again. He recognised the man who entered. He was in mufti – tan trousers, a forest green V-necked jumper and open-neck white shirt.
“Sir! I—”
“Now, now. None of that ‘Sir’ business. You’re on civvy street now and I’m quite happy with Don.”
The speaker was Gabriel’s former commanding officer.
“OK, Don. Please can you tell me what’s going on?”
“I’ve been here for a couple of days. Waiting to do just that. Are you up for a tootle round the grounds?”
“My head’s not so good but sure, why not?”
“Wait there. Just going to liberate a chair.”
Webster left the room and returned a few minutes later pushing a wheelchair.
“Hop in. I know you were mobile troop, but if the old bonce is giving you gyp, probably better to let me drive.”
Gabriel swung his legs over the side of the bed and half dropped, half levered himself down onto the black vinyl seat of the wheelchair.
Chapter 5
“Boss! We’re here!” It was Makhmad, calling from the cabin.
Kasym knuckled his eyes to get the sleep out of them, and stumbled forward to see where they were.
Ahead, he could see the lights of Tallinn. Red and green navigation beacons marked the official entry channel to the port, but they weren’t using them. With their shallow draught and unorthodox cargo, they motored on a virtually closed throttle up to a private dock behind some blocks of flats well to the west of the customs officers, police, dockers, ships’ crews, fishermen, crane drivers, truckers, foot passengers, tourists, locals and all the other opportunities for their hostages to cause trouble.
