by Andy Maslen
While Makhmad held the boat steady a foot or two from the ridged concrete wall of the dock, Kasym and Elsbeta flipped the blue plastic fenders over the rail to cushion the boat’s side. Then he leapt across the two-foot gap to the quay, and began tying the bow rope to an iron bollard worn smooth by centuries of use. Dukka joined him, tying up at the stern. With the boat secure, Makhmad cut the big diesel engines, the only sound now the slapping of the water trapped in the gap between the side of the boat and the dock.
It was 2.15 in the afternoon. Nobody about. Perfect for getting the women from the boat to the house. Kasym went below. Sarah and Chloe were talking in low voices. As he entered their cabin they stopped immediately and clutched each other’s hands. Kasym noticed their knuckles were white.
“Welcome to Tallinn, ladies. Now, if you will go before me, we can get you onto dry land.”
He ushered them in front of him with one arm held wide, and watched as the younger woman climbed the short ladder ahead of him. Then the mother. He resisted the urge to help her up the narrow steps with a steadying hand on her hip. Once everyone was standing on the weedy, cracked pavement, bags at their feet, Kasym pointed to an archway that led straight through a block of flats facing the water.
“Through there. Elsbeta and Dukka, you go first. Ladies, you next. Makhmad and I will come last.”
He hefted the bags, and the ill-assorted party made their way across the dusty road to the arch. Beyond, there were masses of young trees in full leaf. Whatever else Estonia had managed since throwing off its Soviet-forged shackles, it had not yet succumbed to the squalid commercialisation that always seemed to follow. The road on which he’d acquired the house was so full of trees it resembled a track through a forest campsite more than a housing estate.
He stopped at a red front door, identical to all the others save for a white number 10, painted to the left of the door on the sand-coloured bricks. Kasym looked left and right. Down the street a couple of little kids were playing in the dust with a rudimentary trolley filled with dolls. The girl, obviously in charge of her younger brother, looked up at him and smiled. He waved back. Then he unlocked the door and pointed.
“Inside, please,” he said.
They walked into the house. The hall was narrow, with three doors leading off it. Dumping the bags, he opened the first door, for all the world as if he were an estate agent and his hostages were potential buyers.
“Living room. You have a TV, VCR – sorry, out-of-date technology, I know, but this is Estonia now, not Sweden. There are playing cards, even board games. Look, Monopoly. The perfect symbol of everything the Soviets hated.”
From the sitting room, he led them into a smaller room empty save for a rowing machine and a set of dumbbells.
“I’m afraid while you are our guests, we cannot permit you to leave the house. You can keep fit in here.”
The women were mute. They were still holding hands. He noticed a look on their faces he had seen before. Realisation. Their faces were slack, mouths downturned, eyes blank. This was really happening, the expression said. He didn’t mind. It made them easier to handle, docile. Handing out rewards for good behaviour later would seem the act of a saint.
He took them through to the kitchen. It was basic, but equipped with oven, fridge, microwave and sink, so enough to live with quite comfortably for weeks, or months, as needed. Through the kitchen window, they looked out onto a small patch of garden. Vegetables grew there. Tall tangles of scarlet-flowered runner beans twined up pyramids of bamboo canes; courgettes spread their hairy leaves like umbrellas over the swelling emerald cylinders and splashy yellow flowers; tomatoes grew along the chain-link fence at the rear of the plot, heavy trusses of red and yellow fruit drooping to the ground.
Kasym pointed.
“Plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, you see. No problem with your five a day!”
Elsbeta laughed. A girlish sound, even after everything she had been through, that always made Kasym smile.
“Yes, we must keep you healthy,” she said. “Can’t send you back home with scurvy, can we?”
“OK, that’s enough,” Kasym said. “Elsbeta, take them upstairs. You have a room to share, ladies. Have a wash. Get changed. Then I want you down here in one hour.”
When Elsbeta returned, he repeated his orders from the boat.
“Elsbeta, get food and a paper. Eesti Päevaleht or Äripäev. Make sure it’s today’s edition. Dukka, you are on guard here. I have their phones, so they can’t create too much mischief. There are knives in the kitchen but I put a lock on the drawer. Any trouble, a little tap only. Got that?”
“Sure, Boss. Be nice but a little tap if they’re naughty girls. Got it.”
“OK. Makhmad. We have some money to collect from that casino downtown. Everyone, we meet back here at four.”
Kasym and Makhmad walked round to the back of the house. A battered Peugeot hatchback sat under a lime tree, its roof and bonnet spattered with droplets of the tree’s sticky sap that had attracted pollen and road dust, forming a thin velvet coating the soft beige colour of ground ginger. Kasym unlocked the car, and the two big men squeezed their frames into the front seats. With a wheezy cough, the little car’s engine came to life. Lacking Elsbeta’s finesse behind the wheel, Kasym muscled the gear lever into first and took off down the tree-lined road, turning right and heading for Tallinn’s tourist area in the Old Town.
Ten minutes later, having parked the Peugeot in a side street amongst a gaggle of mopeds, he and Makhmad entered Casino Festival by the plain steel back door, the one reserved for staff. It was too early for the place to be open, and in the light provided by half a dozen halogen spots they could see a man vigorously swabbing the floor with a mop whose shaggy head matched his own straggly blond locks.
They approached him silently. He raised his head only when the toe of Kasym’s boot blocked the progress of his mop. He was wearing headphones under his hair. Kasym reached forward with his damaged left hand and pulled the little earbuds out.
“Hey! Don’t mess with my music, man,” the blond cleaner said. Then he registered the size and facial expressions of the two men facing him. “Oh. I mean, who are you looking for?”
Makhmad spoke.
“Tell Pete, Kasym and Makhmad are here for the rent.” Then he clipped the young man round the ear with a flat, hard palm that rotated his head on his scrawny neck.
The cleaning guy retreated swiftly into the gloom behind the bar, disappearing through a scarred door.
They waited.
Thirty seconds passed, during which time Kasym and Makhmad did nothing, said nothing. Then the door swung open again and a thin, greasy-haired man in a denim waistcoat and fake leather jeans came through. He looked at them: Kasym first, then Makhmad. Coughed. Ran his hand over the bald spot at the back of his head, just in front of the place where his ponytail started.
“Oh, hey, Kasym. I heard you were away.”
Chapter 6
Outside, Gabriel and Don meandered along gravelled paths set in beautiful gardens planted with flowers and shrubs in fiery summer hues. Gabriel recognised some from his own sprawling cottage garden.
“Why am I here, Don?” Gabriel asked again.
“You know as well as I do that you were always entitled to ask for help here, whether or not you were still serving. There’s a standing instruction posted with every hospital in the UK that if an ex-serviceman or woman gets admitted, they notify us. If they’re from the Regiment, they come straight through to my personal email, bypassing everyone.” He sighed and came around the front of the wheelchair, squatting down so his grey eyes were level with Gabriel’s brown ones. “You didn’t just trip on a kerb, Gabriel. I spoke to your lady-friend, Annie? You had a full-blown panic attack and nearly got yourself killed. Want to tell me what that’s all about?”
“It was nothing, really. I just felt a bit overheated in there. Probably wearing too many layers.”
“And the truck? Forget our Green Cross C
ode, did we?”
“He was on the wrong side of the road. Must have been. Otherwise I’d have seen him.”
Don got to his feet and walked round to the back of the chair again. Started pushing.
“You’ll be signed off fit again in a while, with some paracetamol for the headache. Apparently they have degrees of coma – something called the Glasgow Coma Scale. You were between a two and a three – not the worst. They’ll tell you to report to your local doctor’s surgery to have the stitches out of your head in a week or two. But I’m telling you to think about what’s happening on the inside. Been having flashbacks, by any chance? Nightmares? Fearfulness? Bursts of anger?”
Gabriel pushed away the image of Smudge Smith and his fractured face.
“I’m fine. Really. Can we go inside, please? My head’s splitting.”
Don turned the wheelchair gently and pushed Gabriel back inside, up a ramp, along the corridor and into the room he shared with the blond pilot. A sour silence persisted between the two men. They both knew Gabriel was lying, and neither had the desire to pick the scab covering the wound that provoked the deceit.
“Look. Get yourself better. Get back home. And think about what I said. There are people here, good people who can help you. One call is all it takes. Take this.” He held a small rectangular card with simple, black script embossed on one side. “It’s not my work card, it’s my personal one. For friends. When you need me, call that number. I promise you, I’ll be ready to help whenever you do.”
Gabriel felt a sudden, overwhelming urge to cry. He fought back the tears and tried to swallow the lump in his throat. Eyes glistening, he took the card and muttered a gruff, “thanks”.
Don smiled, turned on his heel, and was gone.
“Is that you, mate?” the pilot said. “Listen, there’s something I think you should hear.”
Gabriel wheeled himself closer to the pilot’s bedside. Then he changed direction and headed for the window, which he pulled closed. Something about the way the man spoke made him feel the need for greater privacy. He looked at the man’s face. He was no more than twenty-four or five – the Royal Air Force was still doing its best work with the young. If you could ignore the scabs and scratches, and the bare scrape of scalp furrowed with that long crawling line of stitches, he was handsome. The sightless eyes were a light brown, fringed with long lashes. Odd to be able to look so closely at someone without their looking back at you.
“My name’s Gabriel, by the way. Sorry not to introduce myself before.” Gabriel took the pilot’s hand in his and they shook, awkwardly.
“Tom. Former Squadron Leader Tom Ainsley.” The way he said “Former” carried equal parts of despair and venom.
“So, tell me. What happened?”
Tom pulled himself upright and orientated himself to the sound of Gabriel’s voice. His neck muscles strained with the effort and pushed the pyjama jacket’s collar open. They seemed thick and out of proportion to the rest of him. The effect of battling extreme G-forces every day, Gabriel supposed.
“There were five of us on the programme. They called it Project Gulliver. Supposed to make us giants surrounded by Lilliputians. God knows how long it took them to dream that one up. Me, Mark Willis, Josh Harrison, Eddie Hepper and Shiona Webb.”
“Shiona? I thought . . .”
“You’re a bit out of touch, then, aren’t you? The RAF has been training women for fast jets for years. Well, not years, but they’re up there. And they’re bloody good. Calmer than the guys, the best of them.”
“Sorry. We didn’t have girls in the SAS. Carry on.”
Tom’s demeanour changed as soon as the three initials left Gabriel’s lips.
“SAS? You guys are the best. Three years ago, my squadron was flying attack missions off a US aircraft carrier. We were embedded with the US Marine Corps. Afghanistan. It meant we could support the Yanks, but the politicians got to say there were no British forces active there. Technically we were American forces. Can you believe that?”
Gabriel thought back to the conclusion of his last mission. To the casual way the Home Secretary had admitted to extrajudicial killings to clean up after an operation on British soil. Oh, he could believe anything of politicians.
“Easily,” he said. “Go on.”
“One of our pilots was shot down by an surface-to-air missile. It was a group of SAS guys who went out to rescue him. Where was I? Oh, yes. Sorry. My head’s a lot better, but I still keep tuning out. I’m not being funny, but we five were the best pilots in the RAF. Consistently aced all flight exercises, varied combat experience, more kills, better test scores. It’s just how it was. One day, I was summoned to see my CO and he just tells me I’m going to Oxfordshire. RAF Brize Norton. You know it?”
“Yes. We flew out of there a couple of times on C-130Js.”
“So, we’re gathered in a little briefing room on those really hard chairs with the thin blue cushions, and in walks our CO and this woman in a suit. Real ball-breaker, too. You could tell just by the look of her. Blonde hair tied back, red lipstick, black stilettos. And rimless glasses.” Tom shuddered. “They always give me the creeps. Don’t know why. Just those thin bits of glass floating in front of your eyes. Anyway, she’s working with the RAF on secondment from this drugs company, Dreyer Pharma. The CO introduces her as their Head of Communications, one Dr Nicola Morrison. The CO nods, and she gives us this spiel about a new performance-enhancing drug they’re developing. Not just for pilots. Anyone in an elite role. Wouldn’t be surprised if they were trialling it on a few of your guys as well. She runs us through some of the details, but it’s all neurotransmitters and synaptic firing rates, and you know what those boffins are like. You start drifting off and thinking about flying or whatever keeps you looking interested.
“Then the CO gets up. Tells us even though we’re the best five pilots, even we can’t exploit the Typhoon’s full potential. You know about that?”
Gabriel shook his head. Then cursed himself inwardly as another lightning bolt of pain crackled through his skull. “No, only that it’s our latest plane and probably had about a million percent overrun on the MOD cost projections.”
Tom laughed. A good, healthy sound. It was the first time Gabriel had seen him smile since he’d woken up in the next-door bed.
“Only a million? More like a zillion. I won’t bore you with the physics but, basically, until the Typhoon, plane designers tried to make jets super-stable. You could take your hands off the controls and they’d happily fly in a straight line till you nudged the stick. They wanted to fly straight. But it meant you had to work harder to take them off their true line. So in a dogfight, they’re stiff, you know? That slows you down, gives your enemy longer to get you in their sights.
“The Typhoon’s different. They designed it to be unstable. You let go of the stick, it’s going to flip, roll, tumble, it’s totally random, like a bucking bronco trying to throw you off. But if you can master it, it’s beautiful. It’s so fast, turns on a sixpence. You spend most of your energy keeping it steady, but when you want it to change direction, it’s . . . it’s like an extension of your mind.”
“So why the drug company? If it’s so responsive, I mean.”
“Because we were still getting caught out. We were good, don’t get me wrong. I said we were the best, and that’s true. How can I explain it? You like cars?”
“I have a Maserati at home. Does that qualify?”
“Wow. I guess you found a job that pays better than soldiering, then.”
“Actually it was from an inheritance. My parents both died a few years ago.”
“I’m sorry. Shouldn’t have assumed. How did it happen?”
Gabriel took a deep breath. He’d never told anyone about the circumstances of his parents’ deaths. But sitting here with a blind and battered air force pilot in a hospital full of maimed and traumatised brothers and sisters, it felt like the right time.
Chapter 7
“Yes. You heard right.
I was away,” Kasym said. “And guess what? Now I’m back. You owe me a month’s rent. Which, let me see, comes to ten thousand euros.”
“Yeah, well, see, here’s the thing. Business has been really quiet. You know, we got raided, on account of that little poker game we had going in the back. Plus, I don’t know, the Germans have been staying away. There’s a new club on Roseni, been taking our regulars. So, what I’m saying is, we’re a little short this month. Like, I can maybe give you five but, honestly, we’re bleeding here, Kasym. Really. I mean there’s nothing I can do to make it up. You gotta see that, man.”
Kasym smiled, then rubbed his chin. “I understand. Competition’s a fact of life, right. I mean, we all wanted freedom, right? Capitalism? So there’s a bit of give and take in the market, I understand that. I’m not some communist fossil from the bad old days, huh?”
The greasy-haired man smiled. His shoulders dropped a couple of inches, and he leaned forward to clap Kasym on the shoulder.
“Oh, man, I’m glad you understand. I’ll make it up next month. We’re going to get some girls in here, you know? Pole dancers? The guys go crazy for that shit. Stuffing bank notes in their panties. We’ll clean up.”
Kasym nodded at Makhmad.
Makhmad’s right hand shot out. He caught Pete round the throat and squeezed hard. Pete’s eyes bulged as the oxygen to his brain was summarily choked off.
Kasym closed the distance between him and Pete to just a few inches. Leaned closer still until the tip of his bulbous nose was a finger’s width from the club owner’s sharp-edged beak.
Shouting was for low-grade thugs. He had people who would shout if he wanted them to, but Kasym always favoured whispering. It ramped up the fear factor. “Get your pole dancers if you want to. There are plenty of Russian tarts who’ll strip off for a few euros more than they can make cleaning offices. But right now? You go to your office and you bring me ten thousand euros. Either that, or you put your right hand out on the bar over there and let Makhmad take one of these . . .” he held his left hand in front of the man’s goggling eyes and waggled the stumpy fingers, “. . . as the shortfall.”
