by Ryan, Chris
Peering over the pickup, Gardner scanned the streets to his nine, six and one o’clock. A guard was patrolling away from him to the left. Twenty metres away now, Gardner broke out from behind the Hilux and scrambled towards the van. Reached it in eight quick strides. He inserted the key in the lock. A red light glared above the locking mechanism. He heard the shifting of cogs within. Then the light turned green, and the doors at the rear were open.
A single object was lying on the floor of the van. It was half a metre tall and half as wide and its cylindrical shape reminded Gardner of a forty-gallon drum. Sealed inside a protective camouflaged case, it looked like the kind of thing a guy could carry as a backpack. A rectangular grey box was strapped to the object’s waist. Between loose rope ends at the top of the object, Gardner noted a battery cell, an LCD display and a key-operated panel.
Jesus fucking Christ, he whispered to himself.
He had seen pictures of this thing before. It was a miniature armed warhead – what they called a suitcase or backpack nuke – modelled on the Special Atomic Demolition Munitions system developed by the US and the Soviets at the height of the Cold War. Devices of this kind were designed to be parachuted into Soviet territory if the Russians ever invaded the West. They had, Gardner knew, a yield equivalent to several kilotons of TNT, and packed enough radioactive uranium to make Chernobyl look like fucking Disneyland.
Jesus, John, Gardner thought. What the fuck were you going to do with a backpack nuke?
Cold spread across Gardner’s back. Then he realized it was coming from a muzzle tip digging into the top of his spinal column.
‘Drop the weapon.’
Gardner released the Glock from his hand.
‘So finally you arrived,’ a voice said. ‘That is good. Now I can do what I couldn’t do before.’
Gardner didn’t turn around. He knew who was holding the gun to his neck. Could tell by the way his voice jolted and jarred, an accent that sounded like no other.
Shai Golan.
17
1418 hours.
‘I knew you would come,’ Golan said as he jabbed Gardner with the tip of his pistol.
‘Don’t tell me,’ Gardner said. ‘You’re a mind-reader as well as a cunt.’
‘Instinct,’ Golan answered, ignoring the jibe. ‘You strike me as the type of man who cannot resist the big prize. This way,’ he said, tilting his head towards the church. ‘And please, no noise. If you alert the guards, they’ll only kill us both. Neither of us wants that now, do we?’
Gardner didn’t respond. The coast was clear. Golan led him through the imposing wooden doors of the church. The building was empty and retained little of its former splendour. The pews were layered in decades-thick dust, the altar was naked and muddy light filtered through the cracks in the stained-glass windows.
‘Bald’s dead,’ Gardner’s voice echoed.
‘I know.’
Golan was behind him, but Gardner could feel the Israeli’s finger tugging back on the trigger. He imagined the gases primed to flood the chamber and propel the hollow-cased bullet out of the muzzle and into his head.
‘Now you’ve seen the bomb, I will have to kill you,’ said Golan.
‘You can’t kill me,’ Gardner said. He felt the pressure of the muzzle, as if it was drilling through to his brain.
‘Give me one good reason.’
‘Right now, there’s a dozen other MI6 agents in this area alone. Many more in Belgrade. If you kill me, they’ll fucking hunt you down like a dog.’
Golan didn’t reply.
He believes me, Gardner thought. I’ve bought myself some time—
He felt a shockwave of pain as Golan bashed the pistol butt against his temple. Gardner dropped to his knees, screams inside his head.
‘Son of a bitch!’
‘On your feet,’ Golan said. ‘This way.’
Gardner stood. His hair was sticky and warm.
He staggered into a dim room behind the altar, eight metres by six. The room was sparsely furnished: a wooden table on the left, a bricked-up fireplace at the far wall, a small statue of the Virgin Mary on the mantelpiece. A wooden chair in the middle of the room, a length of parachute cord on the floor by the chair legs.
Gardner went to open his mouth, then felt a boot connect with the small of his back. Golan grabbed him by the arms, dragged his knackered body to the chair, then bound his arms behind his back with the nylon cord. He stood in front of Gardner, wiping the lenses of his glasses with his shirt sleeve.
‘Those fucking idiots at MI6’ – he spat out the last word like mouthwash – ‘are they aware of the nuclear weapon too? Or is their so-called intelligence as inadequate as ever?’
‘You knew about the nuke?’ Gardner’s mouth was dry as sawdust.
‘Of course. Since the very beginning.’
The upper part of Gardner’s chest was tight like a belt. His head suddenly felt heavy as Golan approached the table. On it Gardner could see a number of implements. Screwdrivers, hammers, scalpels, ice-picks, crocodile clips. Golan inspected them.
‘You’re fucking insane,’ Gardner said.
‘Insanity means to be illogical,’ Golan replied. ‘But I’m perfectly logical.’
He picked up a scalpel, examined its sharp blade in the harsh light.
‘So, how about you begin by telling me where these agent friends of yours are?’
‘Fuck you!’
‘If you knew who I worked for, you wouldn’t say that.’
‘You’re not Mossad, I know that much.’
‘I work for a special division of Mossad that is secret even to the rest of the organization. Our codename is Shiloh. We draw out men from Mossad’s Collections and Research Departments. Only the top men and women are recruited. They have to be willing to kill, poison, maim and terrorize the enemies of Israel. No one is aware of our activities,’ he said, by now laughing heartily, ‘especially not MI6.’
His long hands settled on a pair of crocodile clips. Gardner felt his guts twist.
‘Shiloh learned of a plot by your friend to trade cocaine with the Russians for an easily transportable nuclear weapon. Some call it a suitcase nuke. According to ex-KGB chiefs, hundreds of these devices have gone missing in Russia. Some in old depots. Others on the black market. Your friend John Bald intended to sell this weapon on for a substantial profit.’ Golan paused. ‘To Mahmoud Reza.’
Gardner remembered the third man at the convoy. A memory hit him like a rush of blood to the head. That man was Reza, the outlawed Iranian general!
Golan went on, ‘The media reported he was killed. In Afghanistan, they said. They are fools. The Americans killed a lookalike. Reza is alive and well, and as we speak Reza is preparing the convoy for its journey. He does so with the blessing of the Iranian state.’
‘You stood back and let a nuke get into the hands of your worst enemy?’
‘Madness, yes. On the surface. But in Shiloh we look at the bigger picture. How to turn our enemies’ actions to our advantage. Most people would try to stop this deal from ever taking place. We are not most people.’
Golan brought the crocodile clips and a power unit over to Gardner. Plugged the clips into the unit and flicked a switch.
‘Give me one name,’ he said. ‘Just to begin with. One name, and then I’ll go easy on you. I promise.’
Gardner swallowed his fear. It tasted sickly in his throat.
‘Suck a dick.’
The pain’s coming, pal, he said to himself. You need to think of an exit strategy, and you need to do it fucking yesterday.
Golan shrugged, as if he expected nothing more from the man.
‘Why let the ragheads get their grubby mitts on the nuke?’ Gardner asked.
‘The Iranians are celebrating because they have a nuclear power plant,’ Golan said. ‘The truth is, the station at Bushehr is nothing. The technology is old, the uranium barely enriched, the parts supplied by the Russians, who themselves are unreliable. If Israel’s govern
ment perceived the station to be a threat, they would have bombed it long ago. As we did in Syria.’
Golan attached the clips to Gardner’s pecs. Gardner concentrated on steeling his body for the pain. He took deep breaths, trying to fill his red blood cells with as much oxygen as possible. He felt the cold bite of the clips as their teeth pinched his muscles.
‘What is most important,’ Golan went on, ‘is that the Iranians do not proceed further with an enrichment programme. For that to happen, we need more than mere sanctions and tough words from your Prime Minister and the United States. We need a catastrophe.’
Gardner squirmed in the chair. The air in the room was muggy. Oily sweat slithered down his chin and on to his groin like a dripping tap. Better rustle up a plan quick, soldier. Because Golan’s in the mood to fucking kill me.
‘You mean… an accident?’
Golan snorted. ‘I think you read my mind, friend.’
He held the power unit in his hands, his fingers skimming along the bank of dials.
‘If Iran was caught trying to acquire nuclear weapons of a much higher grade of uranium, and there was to be a tragic accident in, say, Istanbul, well. That would shock the world into action. International pressure from the UN and NATO would force Iran’s hand. Russia would have to dismantle the Bushehr plant, and a blanket ban on nuclear materials to Iran would soon follow. Its ability to develop nuclear weapons destroyed for ever.’
‘So you were going to let the nuke get as far as Istanbul—?’
‘And detonate the device early? Yes.’
‘But for that you’d need to set the timer, the codes—’
‘Obtained from the Russians.’
Gardner’s head throbbed. He felt fluid draining from his brain. His mind was filled with noise. Questions, anger, denial. He shut his eyes, trying to blot everything out.
‘Why would Bald do something like that?’ Gardner asked. ‘We launched incursions into Iran during the Iraq War. And suddenly he does business with them?’
‘Your friend was interested in profit, nothing else. One hundred million dollars,’ Golan said, and Gardner’s heart skipped a beat. ‘That’s why the ’Ndrangheta tried to hijack the deal. They knew the price Bald had received from Mahmoud Reza. Hard for any man to resist that kind of money, especially Italian mafia.’
‘But why Istanbul? Why not Tehran, or anywhere else?’ Gardner figured that the longer he could keep Golan boasting about his masterplan, the more he could delay his torture. In the dark recesses of his mind he busied himself with his escape. The table presented several weapons. Get free of the ropes and you’ve got a fighting chance, he told himself.
‘Relations with Turkey are very low,’ Golan said. ‘Because of the embargo, and the fact that the ruling Turkish AK Party is run by a pro-Islamist who freely admits he wishes for Turkey to usurp Egypt as the leader of the Muslim world. We used to be close to the Turks. They were a moderating force in our negotiations with the Palestinians. Politics and the embargo changed that for ever.’
‘When Bald died,’ said Gardner, recalling the chaotic aftermath of Brezovan, ‘the Russian mafya took the nuke. Why didn’t they just deal directly with the Iranians, rather than selling it at a cut-price figure to Bald?’
‘The mafya have close links to the Russian government. Senior figures advised them not to sell directly to Reza. If anyone did link them to the nuke, the international outcry would turn Russia into a pariah state. But the mafya couldn’t leave the nuke at the exchange, not once they’d killed everyone else. They had no choice but to deliver it here, to Reza.’
This is crazy, Gardner thought. I’ve got to warn Land. Before it’s too late.
‘They know about the plan to detonate it?’ he asked.
Golan shook his head.
‘It’s a secret. Until eight o’clock tonight, at the Bosporus Bridge in Istanbul, when the whole world will get a chance to see nuclear horror with their own eyes.’
He stepped back until he was four metres from Gardner.
‘Now,’ he said. ‘This is your last chance. Where are the other agents?’
In a flash Golan’s right hand rotated the voltage dial clockwise, and Gardner felt his bones jump out of his skin. The pain was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. It started on his skin and burned through to his inside, like acid. The first jolt was light. The second fried his stomach, as if someone was pulling out stitches. Then the jolt abruptly stopped, and his stomach was sewn up.
‘I appreciate American innovations,’ Golan said. ‘They turned execution into an art form. The electric chair is my favourite. Such a long and painful way to die. They say the average victim takes five minutes to expire. Sometimes the current cooks their body to a temperature that melts their eyeballs.’
‘Fuck you,’ Gardner wanted to say. But his jaw felt loose, as if it was hanging on by a thread.
A third charge, this one more intense than the last. The screams inside him grated, like a saw cutting metal. The hairs on his arms and chest began to burn. The smell was bitter. He felt as if he was being skinned alive.
‘Tell me,’ said Golan. ‘How long do you think it will be before you die?’
Fighting the pain was hopeless. His training in the Regiment simulated torture, but nothing had prepared him for this. The tactical part of his brain told him that Golan was a psychotic fuck who took pleasure in seeing him writhe in agony. So there’s going to be breaks between the shocks. You can use those—
The fourth wave hit. Pain ricocheted beneath his skin. Needles stabbed his bones. He clenched his jaw.
‘Come on, friend. Give me a little yell. It must hurt, no?’
A smell drifted to Gardner’s nose. Burning latex. He wondered what the hell it was. A second later he understood that he had a way out.
My prosthetic hand. It’s come loose.
He glanced up at Golan. The Israeli hadn’t latched on. Gardner hunched up his shoulders. The join between the nub of his forearm and his artificial hand was melting. Half of the lower limb had detached. He shook his elbow. Golan went to administer a fifth charge.
The next charge is the killer, Gardner thought. He buzzes you again, there’s no way back.
Then he caught a snap, and the thud of his hand against the floor.
He was free.
18
1503 hours.
Gardner went in fast, and he went in hard. He’d learned his lesson from his previous dust-up with Golan. The Israeli was an expert in Krav Maga. And the only way to fuck up someone trained in the world’s dirtiest and most effective martial art, was to beat them at their own game.
He raised his left thigh until his knee crunched against Golan’s balls. Air gusted out of the Israeli’s mouth as he lowered his hands to his squashed gonads. Gardner exploited his shoddy defence with a palm-strike to the bridge of his nose. The flat of his hand shattered the frame and lenses of Golan’s glasses, and the man howled as plastic splinters darted into the corners of his eyes.
With just the one functioning hand, Gardner was fucked if Golan unleashed a torrent of blows upon him. His muscles were zapped, fried, distended. But the taste of freedom and the early scores against Golan gave him a second wind. Energy flowed through his veins.
Gardner kicked Golan in the knee. The same right foot then swung down like a hammer on Golan’s left foot. The Israeli faltered. Gardner dealt him a two-fingered jab in the eyes. The jab became a combo attack as he followed through with an elbow to his ear and smashed his face into his left knee. Golan’s legs caved in.
Golan fell to the floor. Fucking poleaxed. Gardner delivered a succession of boots that swung into every crevice of Golan’s crumpled body. His legs, back, face, arms.
Then Golan was still. Gardner saw the pistol grip in the back of his trousers. He dug it out. A Sig Sauer P228. The stainless-steel handgun felt good in his hand. Catching his breath, Gardner drilled the muzzle against Golan’s dazed skull.
‘I know where Aimée is,’ Golan said.
>
Gardner felt something catch fire within his chest. ‘Don’t fuck with me, pal.’
‘I know… because Shiloh have been tracking Sotov’s every move.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘It’s the truth,’ Golan said. ‘Israel has a lot of friends in Russia. We have a man on the inside. Denis Popov, he… he works as Sotov’s chauffeur. He’s the one who originally alerted us to the sale of the nuke.’
‘Where’s Sotov now?’
Golan shook his head and chuckled wearily. ‘It does not work like that. If I tell you now, you’ll kill me.’
Gardner lowered the Sig.
‘What do you want?’
Golan tended his sore balls. ‘Immunity. And safe passage back to Tel Aviv – tonight.’
‘Forget it, mate. The Firm will never agree to your demands.’
‘Time is ticking, my friend. The convoy has already left. Check outside if you don’t believe me. If you want to stop the bomb, you need to play by my rules.’
Gardner shoved Golan to one side and drew up Land’s number on his mobile. One, two, three rings. Pick up, pick up! Land answered on the fifth ring. He was breathless.
‘Where are you? Did you find the nuke?’
‘Yeah—’
‘Great work, old chap, there’s a real future for you—’
‘The convoy’s already left.’
Land went quiet.
‘It’s headed for the Bosporus Bridge in Istanbul,’ Gardner said, then heard a flurry of swear words rasping down the line.
He caught a bang and pictured Land thumping his desk. For several seconds the connection was quiet. Then Land said, ‘Right. This is what we’re going to do. I’ll alert the Turks. Get them to set up a blockade at the bridge. A Black Hawk will transport you onward to Istanbul.’
‘Fuck off,’ Gardner said. ‘Send a specialist team to disarm the nuke.’
‘There isn’t one. We’d have to locate engineers, call them back from operations, brief them, transport them… There’s not the time. You’re only a couple of hours away by helicopter. And I do recall’ – Gardner heard the rustling of paper – ‘that you have experience in detonations.’
