Moscow
Just over half an hour later, Viktor Bykov switched off his computer, locked all the files in his safe, and left the building. He took a cab from the street outside and directed the driver to the apartment building where he lived.
About 20 minutes after that, he stepped back out onto the street wearing casual civilian clothes and took the Metro to a part of Moscow that he knew reasonably well. Getting there required three changes of train, which was really the point, because the convoluted route he was taking almost ensured that he would have ample time to detect anyone following him. When he emerged from the final Metro station, he took another cab at random and told the driver to make for an area on the outskirts of the city, then apparently changed his mind and stopped the vehicle just a few streets away from where he had hailed it. He paid off the driver, and then walked to his ultimate destination through the quiet and largely deserted side streets.
He headed across the road towards a quiet café, went inside and ordered an espresso, which he drank sitting at a table that offered an entirely unobstructed view of the street outside. He took his time over the drink, apparently reading a newspaper that he had pulled out of his pocket and opened up on the table in front of him, but in reality he read not a word: his entire attention was directed at the people he could see moving up and down the street outside the café, and at one building on the other side of the street. After 20 minutes, when he was absolutely certain that he had not been followed or compromised in any way, he folded the newspaper, slipped it back in his pocket and left the café.
Viktor Bykov walked diagonally across the street to the opposite pavement and stepped inside another café situated at an intersection, an establishment that he had also been watching closely, as well as surveying the people on the street, while he’d been drinking his espresso.
This café also served coffee, but the reason Bykov had selected it was that in front of every seat was a computer screen, keyboard and mouse, with the system unit off to one side. He ordered another coffee, paid for one hour of Internet time, sat down and opened up the browser. But before he did anything else, he took a tiny USB stick from his pocket and inserted it in the correct slot in the system unit. With the stick pushed fully home, it projected less than a quarter of an inch, and was virtually undetectable to anybody looking at the system unit. Despite its small size, it had a capacity of six gigabytes, more than enough for the small suite of standalone programs he had copied onto it.
Bykov navigated to the USB stick and double-clicked on the portable VPN he’d installed and opened that, selecting Spain as his apparent location. Then he started the Tor Browser, a piece of software that permitted entirely anonymous browsing, and ran that on top of the VPN. Then he used the Ctrl + C command to copy a small piece of text from the USB stick and hold it in memory.
With his location and identity cloaked as much as it was reasonably possible to be, he input a completely non-intuitive web address from memory and stared at the screen. A generic message form appeared. Bykov used the Ctrl + V command to paste the text he had just copied into the main body of the form.
Then he shifted the cursor up to the ‘Priority?’ field and typed in the codeword ‘FRANTIC’. Less than five seconds later, he had closed down the Tor Browser, exited from the VPN, replaced the USB stick in his pocket and was starting to trawl through the Pravda online archive.
Only then did he relax and finally take a sip of his coffee.
Chapter 23
Friday
Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen, Svalbard Archipelago
‘Why did he text you?’ Jackson asked, as the four of them walked briskly out of the hotel as a group. ‘Why didn’t he just call?’
‘Because I didn’t know where he was, remember, but the text he’s sent includes his address,’ Richter replied, then turned to Mason and Barber, both of whom had their rifle cases slung over their shoulders. ‘Let’s split up here,’ he said, ‘and split the opposition. You two go right, then left, and head south-west towards the Svalbard Hotel. South-east of that is a road, Vei 228, and he’s in the second building on the right-hand side. Walk, don’t run,’ he added. ‘All he’s seen so far is a couple of men prowling around the outside, looking in the windows, and we really don’t need a firefight on the streets.’
Richter and Jackson turned left as Barber and Mason headed to the right. At the end of the road they turned right on to Hilmar Rekstens Vei, one of the two main roads through the settlement that ran almost parallel to the road the two men were already making their way along. Between those two streets, arranged in a long oblong, were all of the principal retail and commercial outlets of Longyearbyen.
As they walked briskly along the road, Richter passed Jackson his mobile, so she could read the message for herself. The first two lines were the neatly-written address and directions, which she guessed Pavlov had prepared much earlier, ready for his departure from Svalbard, followed by a very hasty ‘mans outside windw look other man at dor’ message. She nodded, and handed back the phone.
Longyearbyen isn’t a very big place, and within three or four minutes they were walking past the Basecamp Spitsbergen Hotel, where Richter had been staying, and could see Barber and Mason striding down the parallel road, one of the Russian team following a few yards behind. Their own Russian shadow was even closer, perhaps only ten yards away from them.
Richter and Jackson paused at the junction with Vei 228, waiting for Barber and Mason to catch up with them. The building in which he now knew Pavlov had taken refuge was clearly residential, and Richter assumed that the Russian had made a private arrangement with the owner or tenant, a much safer option in his circumstances than staying in a hotel or guesthouse, where his name would have gone into a book of some kind. He looked carefully down the road towards the building, but saw no sign of anyone outside it. That could be good news, but just as easily be very bad news, and Richter pulled out his mobile and fired off a quick text – ‘situation?’ – to Pavlov.
There was no reply, and seconds later they heard as well as saw a window slide quickly upwards and a man clambered through it, falling clumsily to the ground before staggering to his feet and starting to limp away from the building. Almost immediately, the door of the building crashed open and two heavily built men ran out. As Richter and the others started to react they grabbed the smaller man, who struggled desperately in their grasp, trying to get away.
Then everything happened really quickly.
Richter pulled the Smith & Wesson Model 29 from the holster he was still wearing, though he knew immediately that the distance – the three men were probably 60 or 70 yards away – was far too great for accurate pistol shooting. If he pulled the trigger, he would be as likely to hit Pavlov as one of the other two men, but he would probably miss all of them.
Jackson’s priorities were different. Even as Richter started moving, she snapped open her handbag, pulled out a pistol that he recognized immediately as a CZ 75, racked back the slide to chamber a round and cock the weapon. In one fluid movement she twisted round and aimed it directly at the centre mass of their Russian shadow, holding the pistol in the classic two-handed Weaver stance.
The Russian hadn’t even started to react when Jackson had finished moving, and just stood there, his arms limp at his sides.
Richter glanced to his right, towards Mason and Barber. Barber was mirroring Jackson’s actions, and was pointing his massive Smith & Wesson 500 revolver directly at the Russian who had been following them. Mason was lying flat on the ground, his Savage rifle already extended in front of him, a bipod supporting the fore-end, and he was peering through the telescopic sight mounted on top of the weapon. At that range, the sight was probably redundant, but the bulbous suppressor screwed to the end of the barrel made it essential, because it completely blocked the standard iron sights.
The struggling men didn’t appear to have noticed what was happening on the main street, the two Russians concentrating on subduing Pavlov, who was
fighting for his life. As Richter watched, helpless to intervene, one of the Russians forced him down to his knees, and the other man drew a pistol from a shoulder holster and aimed it at Pavlov’s head.
That situation changed in an instant, when Mason fired his first round.
Suppressors don’t silence weapons – that’s why they’re properly called suppressors, not silencers – but they do markedly cut down the noise that the rifle or pistol makes when it fires. The sound the Savage made was like a heavy wet slap, perfectly audible to anyone nearby, but what it didn’t sound like was a rifle shot, and that was the point.
Whatever it sounded like, the effect on the Russian holding the pistol in his right hand was both instant and terminal.
The Savage had been specifically designed to take on the biggest and most dangerous game animals in the world, and while the Russian holding the pistol was certainly dangerous, especially for Dmitri Pavlov, he wasn’t that big. The .375 Ruger bullet smashed into his chest, tearing through his heart and left lung, destroyed one of his vertebrae on the way out of his body and continued on its way with virtually undiminished velocity to impact the hillside about a hundred yards beyond him. The Russian was dead even before he started to fall backwards.
In .375 Ruger the Savage carries a detachable three-round box magazine, and is fitted with an oversized bolt handle to make reloading quick and certain, even if the shooter is wearing gloves, and Mason had the next round chambered in less than a second, and had his sights aimed at his next target.
What had just happened to the Russian had clearly shocked both his companion and Pavlov, who had expected to die within a matter of seconds. It was Pavlov who recovered first. He twisted and wriggled out of the grasp of the second Russian, and started to run clumsily towards the road and safety.
‘Get down,’ Richter shouted in Russian, and Pavlov obediently dived to the ground about ten yards away from the Russian who’d been holding him, a man who was already reaching under his coat for his own pistol. He should have realized what he was doing was simply an unusual way of committing suicide, bearing in mind there was a man aiming a rifle at him less than a hundred yards away. Or maybe he did, and in that instant had decided that dying quickly on Svalbard was a better option than whatever fate would await him in Moscow if he returned there having failed in his mission. Or maybe he thought he could beat a bullet. If he did, he was wrong.
Whatever his reason, he pulled out his pistol, but before he could even aim it at Pavlov, far less pull the trigger, the Savage spoke again, and he tumbled backwards to lie in a sprawled and unmoving tangle of limbs beside his companion.
Jackson was a consummate professional, and despite the sounds of the shots she hadn’t shifted her gaze for even an instant from the Russian she was covering with her pistol.
‘Are we clear?’ she asked.
‘We’re clear,’ Richter replied. ‘Two Russians down and Pavlov’s OK.’
‘Good. Now I can either shoot this one as well or you can go and disarm him. Your choice.’
‘I’ll take option two,’ Richter said, then switched to Russian and called out to the man Jackson was covering. ‘Kneel down, hands on your head, fingers interlaced,’ he ordered, and silently reinforced what he was saying by pointing the barrel of the Smith & Wesson straight at him.
The Russian looked around, perhaps seeking a way out, but he was outnumbered and outgunned and he knew it. Slowly, and with obvious reluctance, he knelt down and obeyed Richter’s instruction.
‘I’ll leave the weapon,’ Richter said, carefully placing his pistol on the ground beside Jackson’s feet as a basic security precaution: never approach a dangerous prisoner carrying a weapon, because it’s too easy for a pistol to change hands. Then he walked the few yards down the road to where the man was kneeling, keeping well out of Jackson’s line of fire as he did so. He walked past the Russian and approached him from behind, grabbing his interlaced hands and then reaching inside his jacket to remove the man’s weapon – another CZ 75 – which he placed in one of his own pockets. He quickly checked that the Russian wasn’t carrying a second weapon, a back-up piece in an ankle holster or something, though he guessed he wouldn’t find anything.
Then Richter stepped to one side, again to clear Jackson’s line of fire, just in case, and walked back to where she was standing.
‘What about me?’ the disarmed man demanded in Russian.
‘Go back to your masters in Moscow and tell them what happened,’ Richter replied in the same language. ‘Or buy yourself a pick and a lamp and stay here and take up mining. It’s up to you. But right here and right now, all we want you to do is turn around and walk away.’
Richter picked up his revolver and slid it into the holster, then looked over to where Pavlov was leaning against the side of the building that had been his temporary refuge on the island.
‘Are you hurt?’ he asked, still using Russian, and Pavlov shook his head.
‘I think I just sprained my ankle,’ he said, ‘but that’s all.’
Richter glanced over at Mason and Barber, who had just disarmed the fourth Russian, then back at Jackson, who was watching the other surviving member of the recovery team walking slowly away down the road.
‘It’s what we wanted to achieve,’ Richter said to her, ‘just not the way we wanted to achieve it.’
‘It’s always the result that counts,’ she said, replacing her pistol in her handbag. ‘Now we need to get our skates on, because the shit is about to hit the fan. Plenty of people must have heard or seen what’s happened. There are only about six police officers here in Longyearbyen, but most of them will probably be heading this way right now, and you need to be somewhere else, with Pavlov, before they get here.’
As if in response to what she’d said, they both heard the atonic wail of a siren somewhere in the distance. Jackson came to a swift decision.
‘You and Steve take Pavlov to the harbour and get him on board the ship. Just make sure he’s got his dowry, the recordings he made, before you leave here. Try and find a cab to take you, but if you can’t it’s not a long walk.’
‘You’ll be OK?’
Jackson nodded.
‘The governor knows that we’re here, who we are and what we were doing. I didn’t expect it to end in a shooting match, and nor did he, but sometimes shit happens. I’ll have to argue the case and maybe get a wheel from State to lend a hand, but eventually Mason and I will walk. Now go, because that Russian you took the pistol off had his mobile phone to his ear when he walked away, and I doubt if he was just checking the weather forecast.’
Richter nodded, turned and jogged over to where Pavlov was standing, Mason and Barber beside him.
‘I didn’t expect the scope or the suppressor,’ he said to Mason.
‘Luckily, nor did the Russians,’ Mason replied. ‘I didn’t have either when we were out on the tundra, but the way things were going down I guessed I might need to do a little quiet sniping here, so I fitted them and the bipod last night.’
‘Have you got everything?’ Richter asked, turning to Pavlov. ‘Did you leave anything in the room?’
‘Only some clothes and my washing gear,’ the Russian replied, holding up three memory sticks. ‘This is what you’ll want to hear.’
‘Why are you still here?’ Jackson asked, walking over. ‘Steve, you and Paul get Pavlov away right now. John, you and I are going to stay and face the music.’
‘Figures,’ Mason said.
Richter stepped close to Jackson and handed her something.
‘My room key at the Basecamp Hotel. If you could grab my stuff I’d appreciate it. Don’t worry about the bill. It’s already paid.’
Then he and the other two men started walking quickly along the road towards the north-west, away from the site of the shooting. A handful of people had gathered near the Svalbard Hotel, and were staring over towards Vei 228, where Jackson and Mason were standing and waiting for the first of the police to arrive.
&n
bsp; As Jackson had said, Longyearbyen was not a big place, and the harbour was only about a mile away, but as they turned right out of Vei 221 Richter saw a cab just pulling up beside one of the stores about 60 yards ahead, and immediately waved his arm to attract the driver’s attention. The fare – a bulky middle-aged man wearing a parka – climbed out of the back seat as they walked up, and Pavlov and Barber immediately sat down in the vehicle, Richter taking the seat beside the driver.
Longyearbyen is an unusual place for a number of reasons. One of these is that there are almost no roads outside the settlement, so venturing into the hinterland means either making your own way using an off-road vehicle or, for most of the year, using a snowmobile. So the local taxis rarely ever get out of second gear because most of their pickups and destinations are on the paved streets in the centre of the settlement. But the road to the harbour offers drivers a chance to get up a bit of speed, and the cab started travelling much more quickly once they crossed the bridge over the Longyearbyen River and passed the silver polar bear statue. And that suited all of them, because Richter and Barber knew that there were still two armed Russians somewhere in the settlement, and the quicker they could get Pavlov aboard the ship and out of their reach the better.
‘This isn’t the way to the airport,’ Pavlov said to Richter, in Russian, sounding stressed.
‘Relax, Dmitri,’ he replied. ‘We’ve laid on a ship for you, an American ship. It’s a whole lot slower than an aircraft, but a whole lot safer. You were staying in that building where we saw you?’
‘Yes,’ he nodded, sticking to Russian. ‘When I got here I started knocking on doors looking for somewhere to stay. I told the owner of that place I needed a room and that I was a writer on a deadline, so I would be staying inside all the time, and only coming out for meals. We agreed on full board, and he was happy enough to take my money. I couldn’t afford a hotel room, and that seemed like a safer option as well.’
‘It was. It was a good choice.’
Understrike Page 19
