by Andy Maslen
Under the football shirt were two pairs of jeans, old and faded, and another two pairs of black chinos. T-shirts – white, black, navy blue – were rolled and packed on top. A black zip-up hoodie and a navy fleece went on top. He rolled underwear and socks and stuffed them inside a pair of rugged, black work boots with thickly ribbed treads. Next to them, he packed an old pair of running shoes – he had no idea if he’d be able to find a gym in Tallinn, not that he expected to have much free time, but there was always time for a run. Washing and shaving gear, and a battered paperback copy of Crime and Punishment, completed his kit. He zipped the bag closed and rubbed his thumb along the three combination wheels of the lock to pin the zip-pulls together.
In his wallet, he had five hundred euros, a hundred in sterling and two hundred in US dollars. When it came to money “better safe than sorry” was his motto. And he’d often found that dollars bought answers from people who clammed up in the presence of other currencies.
Six hours later, after a one-hour stop in Helsinki, the Finnair Airbus A320 he was flying in touched down on the runway at Lennart Meri Airport Tallinn. The tyres screeched in protest at the rough landing, then all sound in the cabin was drowned out by the surge of the engines on reverse thrust as the pilot brought the plane to taxiing speed.
The girl on the immigration desk scrutinised his passport, switching her gaze from the grainy image on the page to the human face that looked back at her with a tired smile. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three, but she had none of the gaucheness of the young when asked to wield power over their elders. She slid the passport under the scanner, and Gabriel followed her right hand down to her hip, where she absent-mindedly stroked the grip of her semi-automatic pistol, a 9mm Heckler & Koch USP. The leather holster was highly polished; it looked sexy on her. Like an accessory. She seemed more than comfortable wearing a high-powered weapon. It appeared to inspire confidence, to judge from her relaxed pose. She looked up at him again and smiled, a dazzling expression that momentarily distracted him from the tedium of getting landside.
“You are here for a holiday, Mr Wolfe?” she asked, in an accent coloured with an American twang.
Did you learn by watching MTV? Or did you do a student exchange in the land of the free?
“A trip, yes. Looking up a couple of friends.”
“Are you staying in Tallinn or moving on?”
“Not sure,” he said, keeping the tone of his voice light and unconcerned. “What would you recommend?”
“Oh, you should stay here for sure. The countryside is pretty, but there is countryside everywhere, isn’t there? Tallinn is a beautiful city. So,” another smile, blue eyes twinkling, “enjoy your stay.”
Then her eyes were on the next man in line and Gabriel was forgotten. Good. That was how he liked it.
*
He checked into a chain hotel an hour later. The room was functional. Designed to a budget. White-painted woodchip wallpaper, orange and brown curtains, wood flooring. He supposed it was an attempt at a pared-down Scandinavian look. If it was, it failed. They’d pared away until nothing was left except the bed – comfortable, he was pleased to note – a small, flat-screen TV set into the wall, and a hard chair positioned under what the hotel would probably call a desk, and he would call an extended windowsill. It didn’t matter; it was a base, nothing more. The window gave onto a flat roof punctuated by an array of stainless steel ventilation shaft hoods, set, for no reason he could fathom, in small square beds of gravel. He tried it. A locking bar prevented its opening more than six inches, but a good hard shove would snap the feeble screws holding it into the frame. That was good; it was a second exit route from the room.
He changed into a pair of jeans, the football shirt and the hoodie, and prepared to head out. Time was in short supply, and he needed to start tracking the Chechens and their hostages. First, he needed to text Don the address. Two minutes later, a reply caused the phone to buzz in his hand.
I’ll have your toys delivered within 24 hours. If you’re not in, he’ll wait.
Chapter 30
Finding the area of Tallinn he wanted was easy. He flipped through the traveller’s guide to Estonia until he reached the section on Tallinn and skimmed it, looking for a particular heading.
Staying Safe.
On the whole, Tallinn is a safe city, no different from any other European capital. Common sense and keeping your eyes open will usually be enough to ensure your stay isn’t interrupted by an unpleasant encounter with a small-time thief – the most likely variety of crime you’ll encounter. The tourist areas in and around the Old Town are always busy with people, but there’s no need to worry. We recommend that you avoid the badlands around the streets of Viru and the aptly-named Sauna; this is the nearest thing Tallinn has to a red-light district and is crammed with dubious clubs and bars.
“Thank you,” he said out loud. “I’ll start there, then.”
The fifteen-minute walk from the hotel to Viru gave Gabriel time to sink into his adopted persona. He was Terry Fox, ex-infantry sergeant, dishonourable discharge from the London Regiment for hitting an officer. Served two tours in Iraq, one in Afghanistan. Looking for bar work, on the door. He adopted a bouncing walk, coming up on the balls of his feet, arms hanging at his sides. The replica shirt itched; he used the irritation to feed a sense of grievance, of entitlement. How come I do my bit for Queen an’ Country then get fucked over by the brass just for popping some Rupert in an argument over a late return to camp? He kicked an empty drinks can off the pavement with venom, swearing at it under his breath and baring his teeth. A couple coming towards him moved over as he approached, glancing at him with compressed lips and furrowed foreheads, then looking away as he met their gaze.
Arriving in the ‘badlands’, he slowed down and began appraising likely targets for an informal, in-person job application. One in particular looked promising. It was called Jonny Rocketz, and had violet and acid-green neon cocktail glasses flicking from side to side in the blacked out window. The big man outside was kitted out in standard-issue doorman rig: black trousers, black dinner jacket (not matching the trousers, ripped on one shoulder), close-cropped hair, curly-wire ear-piece, scowl. His deltoids and biceps were so massively overdeveloped that his arms dangled away from his sides, giving him a simian appearance, accentuated by the jutting jaw and small, close-set eyes.
Gabriel approached. Monkey-man straightened up, leaned forward, and looked down at Gabriel as he stood toe-to toe with the bouncer.
“I fancy a few bevvies. You gonna let me in, big fella?” Gabriel said with a wink, knowing his rapid colloquial English would unsettle and hopefully irritate the bouncer.
The giant looked down at him. “No sportswear. This upmarket club.”
“Sportswear? This is West Ham, mate. The Hammers. The old claret and blue.” he put a little slur into his voice and swayed as he spoke.
“No sportswear. Fuck off and find other club.”
Gabriel shrugged, half-turned, then whirled back and drove his bunched fist straight into the man’s throat. He collapsed, gasping and gurgling, hands clasping his windpipe, only to meet Gabriel’s knee travelling upwards. The contact between knee and jaw was solid. All the force was transmitted into the man’s skull, throwing his brain forward where it crashed into the inside of the frontal bone and immediately shut down. A few passing punters looked over at the commotion, then turned away, laughing. Just another fun night out in Viru.
Gabriel stepped over the body of the doorman and pushed through the door into the buzzing crowd of drinkers. Not taking too much care whose drinks he spilled on his journey to the bar, he reached his destination and put both elbows on the rolled sheet of zinc. If this was an upmarket bar, he’d hate to see a downmarket one. Slopped beer and soggy cocktail napkins littered the bar, the music was a blare of eighties techno, and the clientele could charitably be described as looking relaxed. He caught the barman’s eye and beckoned him with a twenty-euro note bet
ween the first and middle fingers of his right hand.
“Your boss around?” Gabriel said.
The barman looked at the blue banknote hovering in front of his face.
“Who are you?”
“I’m looking for work. You need a new doorman. Thought I could fit right in.”
The barman, twenty-four or twenty-five, frowned. He pulled on his earlobe, hooking the tip of his index finger through a white plastic grommet the size of a two-pound coin.
“Teet is on the door tonight.”
“Tit?” Gabriel widened his eyes as he crowed the word. “That’s about right, mate. He’s looking a complete tit at the moment. Sleeping on the job. Look, be a good boy, take this and then fuck off and fetch the manager.”
Sensing trouble, the barman nodded, plucked the note from Gabriel’s fingers and disappeared through a door between two rows of optics. Gabriel turned away from the bar, pushed his elbows behind him to rest them on the bar and surveyed the room. It was a useful act to show his confidence, but it also allowed him to assess any potential threats, not least Teet. He should be out for a while yet, but he was big and strong and you never really new how long an opponent was going to stay down for. Not unless you killed them.
The patrons were a mix of young clubbers, yelling into each other’s ears or texting, and a rougher looking type of drinker, lining the room at the sparse tables and nursing big mugs of beer. A couple of these gave Gabriel hard stares, but he outstared them until they shifted their attention back to their drinks. A hand on his shoulder made him turn back to the bar.
He was expecting to be facing a blinged-up Estonian heavy, all thick, gold chains, prison tats and cheap aftershave. Instead, the person looking at him was female. She was about five-five or six, slim, hair bleached white, and wearing a white vest that showed off her muscular arms. She had two tattoos he could see: a horseshoe on the inside of her right forearm and a diamond on her left shoulder with “Eternity” inscribed across its facets on a ribbon. He couldn’t read much in her face, which was devoid of expression. Her dark eyes were smudged with smoky make-up that made them look huge in the dim light of the bar. Her lips were a slash of vivid scarlet.
“You’re looking for a job? We already got a doorman. I’m surprised he let you in wearing that.” She pointed at his shirt.
“That’s my point exactly,” Gabriel said, starting to enjoy this pugnacious persona he’d adopted. “Your man Tit is asleep on the job. Go and have a look if you don’t believe me.”
She raised a hatch at the end of the bar and stalked through the customers and pulled the door open. When she withdrew her head and turned back to him, her face was easier to read. She was pissed off.
“What the fuck are you playing at?” she spat at him, as soon as she’d reached his station at the bar again.
“Listen, love. A place like this has to be ready for anything. All kinds of rough sorts are gonna want to drink in here. Stands to reason your man on the door has to be able to cope with ’em, doesn’t it? Consider it a sales demo.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Simple. He’s rubbish; I’m not. Give me Tit’s job, and I’ll keep out the undesirables. You know, people who don’t dress proper.” He winked at her and plucked at the nylon of his shirt, which was sticking to his chest and back with sweat.
She paused before answering, her eyes travelling all the way from his head down to his feet and back up again to meet his eyes again.
“Come through to the back. My office. You want a drink?”
“Jesus! I thought you’d never ask. A beer. Whatever’s good.”
She turned to the barman, who was hovering, ready to do his mistress’s bidding.
“Marek, get him a Saku Rock.”
Gabriel carried the glass of pale lager through to the woman’s office beyond the bar. It was a poky room, no more than eight feet square, most of which was taken up by a broad-topped, black desk. It was swathed in paperwork and scattered with pens, pencils and a silver paperknife with a handle made of coloured glass. An aged, black tower PC stood to one side. There was only one picture on the wall, a shocking abstract in yellow and black. It looked like what would happen if a giant wasp smashed itself to pieces on a windowpane. He hated it.
The woman motioned him to sit and turned sideways to squeeze between a filing cabinet and the edge of her desk, before she, too, sat.
“What is your name?”
“Terry Fox. What’s yours?”
“I am Silvi Tamm. I run this place. You did that to Teet?”
“Needed to get your attention, didn’t I?” Gabriel took a long pull on the beer, which was gassy and insipid, and leaned towards her across the desk, belching loudly. “I need a job. I’ve done security work all over. Army before that.”
“British Army?”
“Of course British! What did you think, Russian?”
At the mention of Estonia’s giant neighbour, the woman stiffened.
“Be very careful how you talk about Russia in here, friend. You know who owns it?”
“Surprise me,” he said, leaning back and putting his hands behind his head.
“Never mind. You’re not very big to work door, are you?”
“No,” he said, lowering his voice and drawing her towards him. “But I tell you what I am.” He slammed his left hand down on the desk with a bang. She jumped back, eyes wide, and when she looked at him again, he had the paperknife in his right hand, pointing at her chest. “Fast. And very, very good at putting people in their place.” He waited for a beat. “Ask Tit if you don’t believe me.”
She looked up at the ceiling, then back at him.
“Say I take you on. You start right now. Pay is ten euros an hour. Hours eight till three. Think you can handle that, tough guy?”
Gabriel let his lips drift upwards in a lazy, smug smile. “Let’s find out, shall we?”
“OK. Trial period. Three nights. You fuck up, you fuck off. I’ll square it with Teet, and you can get a spare suit from the staff room next door. You get a staff meal at one a.m.”
Gabriel got to his feet and stuck his hand out across the desk to her.
“Thanks, Silvi. You won’t regret it.”
She took his hand and squeezed, hard. He’d underestimated women before, to his cost, and he’d done it again. She had his knuckles lined up before he could settle his grip and she ground them together like ball-bearings in a sock.
“I’d better not.” She smiled for the first time, showing even little teeth, pointed like a cat’s.
*
That night, he didn’t learn anything of direct relevance to finding the Bryant women, but he hadn’t expected to. He did scope out a couple of the other places trying to wheedle the punters through their doors as he stood outside Jonny Rocketz, though. There was a club directly opposite called Nitro. He wandered across the cobbled street at about two, during a lull in the comings and goings from his own bar, and got talking to the two goons on the door. They were manning a tatty, twisted red velvet rope supported on four battered brass stands. He felt like a pygmy standing next to them. Both were well over six feet tall, one edging up towards seven, and built, as Terry Fox would say, “like a brick shithouse”.
“Listen,” he said, looking up at the bigger man’s slab of a face after the introductory banter had petered out, “I've been away from home a long time. I fancy a bit of English pussy to cure my homesickness. You ever see any British girls down here?”
He watched carefully as he asked his question, not so much interested in the answer as whether the reference to “English” or “British” would elicit any kind of response.” It was a good hunch. As each of the words slid from his mouth, the larger man’s eyes closed as if to shut out the reference.
“No English girls. Russian. Latvian. Lithuanian. Estonian. Is all you get in Tallinn.”
“What about Chechen girls? I’ve heard they’re up for it.”
Once more, on ‘Chechen’, the
man’s eyes blinked.
“No Chechen girls.”
“What about pimps? You ever hear of a bloke called Kasym round here? I heard he could fix a bloke up if he knew who to ask.”
The man’s impassive face hardened.
“No Chechen. No pimp. No Kasym.”
“Ah well, no harm in asking, is there?” Gabriel winked at the pair, feinted a punch at the ogre’s stomach and sauntered back to his post.
*
Back in his hotel room after the end of his shift, Gabriel lay on the bed, arms folded behind his head. He was tired and energised at the same time. Back in action. Gathering intelligence. Doing some good again. The last job he’d undertaken had been strictly money-work, protecting a fat New York banker while he took a trip to Mexico City to negotiate the acquisition of a failing baby food manufacturer. Lauren had sold him in to the bank as a “British security expert, very discreet, very experienced, ex-SAS”. He’d had the feeling from the word go that it was the “British” in that profile that had won him the gig rather than the other, more relevant words.
Those rich idiots loved to boast of the credentials of their staff, and having a “Brit” was like holding four aces. The only high point in an otherwise mundane three-day trip happened in a restaurant where they’d gone out for dinner on the day they arrived. Four loud – and loudly dressed – young men had burst into the steakhouse, causing a group of young women sitting two tables away to scream. The banker had nearly wet himself until it became clear that the men were members of a local boy band. Nonetheless, Gabriel’s hand had strayed under the table and unsnapped the catch on the holster carrying his SIG. Once it became clear that the worst he could expect was to drown in a tide of female hormones, the banker’s shoulders slumped from the position adjacent to his ears where he’d jacked them, and he resumed his monologue about the pressures he lived under “twenny-four-seven”.
