Judgement

by Fergus Bannon

  She slid one hand across the thick hairs on his chest and grasped his penis with the other. Feeling like he was in a dream he moved his hand up from her waist, pushing up her tee shirt and grasping a hard little breast. He rolled a protuberant nipple between thumb and forefinger and she moaned softly.

  Pushing him against the tree again, she stood back and took off her tee shirt and shorts while he struggled out of his own clothes. He reached for her, but again she pushed him back; and this time he felt the rough bark against his skin.

  Bending down, she took something from the pocket of her shorts where they lay on the ground. He heard a faint tearing sound and caught the glint from the silver paper as she tossed it aside.

  Then she was kneeling down in front of him. He gasped and reached up with both hands to grasp the branches of the tree as she gently unrolled the contraceptive along the length of his swollen penis. He felt her hair against his thighs as she leant in to lick around his groin.

  Standing up she put her arms round his neck. He reached down and took the firm cheeks of her bottom in both hands and lifted her up. She grasped the branches of the tree as he pushed his head forward to kiss her breasts. Then her legs came up, wrapping around his thighs and the tree. She eased herself down onto his penis with a grunt then pulled hard her with her feet, trapping him between the tree and her. He felt her strength as she increased the pressure — the muscles of her thighs tensing and relaxing as she pleasured herself. Then her hands were behind his neck and she arched her back away from him into the horizontal, her rhythm now urgent and spastic with desire.

  It felt like his neck was being pulled off. He grabbed at the branches of the tree, trying to haul his back upright.

  He guessed she came at least twice. Not a sexually passive man, he felt somehow unmanned, not in control: his orgasm would not come. Getting a good purchase on the tree he waited until she had exhausted herself. When at last she let go of the tree, he dropped to his knees and pushed himself forward on top of her, thrusting deep and hard until at last he came with a single relieved groan.

  He struggled to bring his breathing under control, aware that she was already breathing easily.

  Later, in her two-man tent, her lovemaking was less fearsome, though not entirely gentle. They struggled for the dominant position like a pair of tenderhearted wrestlers. When at last they were both exhausted he asked her if she was always like that after one of her climbs.

  'Yeah,' she said,'Life's the sweetest then. Everything feels so intense. Simple needs become overwhelming.'

  He kissed her shoulder. 'And Bill Stevens? Was he another conquest?'

  There was an uncomfortable silence. 'You're not getting heavy about this, are you?'

  'No,' he stroked a lazy hand across her stomach. 'Just trying to figure you out. Just trying to work out why he isn't here tonight?'

  She sighed. 'Because he likes me too much. It's what always happens. Men can't stand me climbing free after … this. And I won't stop. Not for anyone.'

  Within seconds she was asleep. Leith, unused to sleeping out in the open, had an uncomfortable night. At three in the morning he heard someone moving about outside. Then he heard Morgan's hoarse whisper.

  'Hey, Bob. You in there?'

  He crawled out of the tent as quietly as he could. Blinking in the harsh light of a torch, he disentangled himself from the guy ropes and stood up. Morgan took his arm and led him away from the tent.

  'How'd you know I'd be here?'

  Morgan snorted. 'I saw you and Lola heading off into the bushes. I made a wild guess. God, you're a lucky bastard!'

  Leith stopped. 'Is that what you woke me for? To tell me that?'

  Morgan shook his head. 'Naw, it's the car-phone. It woke Eve and me. You're wanted at Langley.' Morgan seemed even more impressed by this than finding him in Lola's tent.

  He was confused for a second, his talk with Nevis half-forgotten. Then he remembered.

  Behind them a muffled snort came from inside the tent.

  'Oh Jesus. A spook! I've just screwed Casper the friendly Ghost.'

  'My! What sharp little ears she's got,' said Morgan, shining the light to show them the way.

  INTERCUT 2

  Turkmenabat Missile Defence, Turkmenistan

  When Stolypin awoke, the stiffness in his limbs made him grimace with agony. He slowly opened eyelids still heavy with fatigue. Struggling to focus, he saw and felt the huddled white forms of the other men pressing against him. They lay like sacks of flour cast carelessly down in a heap. Some breathed audibly, but the others lay in a silence which Stolykin feared was that of death.

  Pain flared up from his hip and seemed to radiate through his frozen body. He slowly put a long, gaunt hand down to the ice-cold floor and tried to push himself off the wall, taking the weight off his hip and shoulder. The movement disturbed the bodies round him and produced a series of feeble moans.

  He felt sure he would die unless he increased his circulation. Feeling as stiff and feeble as a centenarian, he pushed weakly at the bodies until he could squeeze his way out. The pain from his ageing knee joints brought tears to his eyes as he rose to his feet.

  He hobbled over towards the square of blue that marked the single barred window. Exposed now, he felt the needle-sharp wind rushing in where the soldiers had smashed some panes the night before. The remaining shards reflected back an old man’s face. He looked out on a clear blue sky and a ground glistening with hoarfrost. To the right across the crystalline grass he could just see the beginning of the Command Centre where he had once worked long ago as a Senior Scientist of the Soviet Union. He watched grimly as another squad of soldiers entered his field of view heading towards Yuzkuduk, the nearest town some twenty miles north east of the missile base and the desert.

  He tentatively stamped his feet, fighting the irrational fear that they would snap off like icicles. He hugged himself hard as he watched the soldiers dwindle into the distance. Like so many Turkmenstani soldiers, they were hayseeds, peasants: he could imagine their fear and distrust of the radiation monitors they each carried. A weak smile crossed his face as he imagined them bolting for cover at the first flurry of clicks from natural radiation. If they really stumbled across what they were looking for, there would be no such ambiguities.

  'I'm glad you find something amusing.'

  He had not heard Khitrivo come up beside him. The man was smiling, but his face was covered in livid bruises from the beating he had received from Goremykin's men. He stood in his long johns hugging himself to keep warm and doing a strange little four-step shuffle. It was all so absurd, so surreal, that Stolypin felt momentarily dizzy. Like Stolypin, Goremykin was an old man, long past the age at which he should have been comfortably retired. Stolypin touched a hand lightly against his own bruised ribs: not having been struck since he was a child, he had reacted more with shock than pain when the soldier had kicked him.

  He glanced at the soldiers, then back into Khitrivo's dark blue eyes. The man was short and stocky and vigorous, despite his advanced years.

  'I don't think I could survive another night like that,' Stolypin confided.

  'We'll be lucky if we get the opportunity to try,' said Khitrivo, sourly.

  'Yesterday was just a light shower compared to the shitstorm that's heading our way.' He looked out the window, eyes narrowing after the dark of the garage. 'I don't blame you for this, old man, but when you made your little discovery you put all our backsides on the line.' He hesitated for a second. 'I doubt whether I will live through the day.'

  'And what about me?' Stolypin was ashamed to hear the weakness in his voice.

  Khitrivo smiled. 'Ah, I forgot. You were never a military man, were you? This must be quite an eye-opener.'

  Stolypin dropped his eyes to the floor then glanced back up at Khitrivo, at his sparse white hair and deeply lined face. The man who had been Commander of a missile base much like this one, back in the old days, had been beaten, stripped and thrown onto the floor of a di
rty garage to spend the night in sub-zero temperatures, yet he still managed to exude an almost tangible air of authority and calm. Stolypin felt like a child, wanting to be held and comforted by its father.

  'Why are they treating us like this?'

  Khitrivo rubbed gently at one of his elbow joints through the grimy cotton. 'They're softening us up. They hoped the weaker ones would go tits up and tell them everything. The beatings and abuse yesterday were merely shock tactics. When that didn't work they tried this,' he indicated the garage. 'And today, now that we're nice and tender, they'll start to get serious.'

  'You knew all this would happen?'

  'Scientists can be so naive!' Khitrivo shook his head again and smiled. 'In fact, if I remember correctly from what you told me, you didn't even do national service. What was it again?'

  'A perforated ear drum,' Stolypin's hand came up automatically to touch his ear.

  'Do you think Yakovlev is responsible for what happened to the missiles?'

  'No. In fact I don't think …'

  They both turned their heads towards the sudden extra daylight as the two garage doors were yanked open.

  The jet of cold water took Stolypin full in the chest, smashing him back against the concrete wall. Panning left, it hit Khitrivo, the pressure twisting him round and hurling him to the floor. Then the two soldiers holding the hose trained it on the mound of huddled bodies.

  Stolypin, gasping like a fish out of water, felt hard hands grasp his upper arms, before being jerked to his feet. Struggling to keep up, he tripped over a body and was dragged across the floor of the garage and out into the brilliance of the sun. Dropping him onto the concrete apron in front of the line of garages, the soldiers then proceeded to kick him about the back and legs. He huddled up as protectively as he could.

  Within seconds the other prisoners had been dumped around him and his beating stopped. Looking up carefully, he saw about twenty uniformed Turkmenistani with their automatic weapons trained. Goremykin, who was responsible for smuggling the fissionables into Turkmenistan in the first place, was standing back and to the side of a dour faced man wearing an expensive black wool coat, the very model of the modern Russian capitalist.

  Stolykin didn't need to remember the insignias and decorations that would have once decorated the man's chest to work out who this was. Once, Marshal Zurabov had been head of the whole Strategic Rocket Force, his face often appearing on television and in the newspapers before the fall of the Soviet Union. He must have come straight from Moscow on hearing the news, flying fifteen hundred miles in his private jet before landing at the ageing landing strip at Ashgabat. From there it was a long drive, eventually winding round the gone-to-seed gun batteries installed in the days before independence. But little had really changed since then: Niyazov was still in charge of the country, and clearly he’d had no problems with the Soviet way of running things, judging by the absolute authority and complete intolerance of opposition which were the mainstays of his rule.

  Stolykin heartily approved.

  When he had been here as a younger man, the missile base had been one of the USSR’s best-kept secrets. It could not be found on any map, and although the Americans were undoubtedly aware of it, Niyazov had done an excellent job of making it appear as if nothing at all of importance were happening here.

  Zurabov looked at the men in silence for many seconds. Then he put his hands behind his back and cleared his throat.

  'We're going to shoot you all today,' he said in a deep, even voice. He waited, letting his words take root. 'There is nothing I will not do to find out how and why you stole the fissile material from the warheads.'

  Some began to protest, but Goremykin's uniformed thugs twitched their guns at them and they fell silent.

  Despite being dressed like a civilian, Zurabov had the sleek, well-manicured look that Stolypin had always associated with high-ranking military officers, soldiers whose battles had rarely taken them further than the walls of the Kremlin. His beautifully tailored coat stood in sharp contrast to the coarse ruffled uniforms of the Kazakhstan nationals who flanked him uneasily, their hair badly cut and their faces pasty and spotty.

  Zurabov shook his head sadly. 'My men have inspected the warheads and the seals appear to be unbroken. They assure me that immense technical expertise and a great deal of time and manpower would have been required to remove the plutonium triggers, let alone reseal the warheads afterwards. This place must have been as busy as a beehive for weeks. And all, regrettably, outside of my attention. Until now.'

  He nodded at a soldier to his right. Stolypin heard the click of the safety catch and watched as the soldier brought the gun up to his shoulder and aimed it over the heads of the men on the ground. Then, in a single sweeping motion, he brought it down and fired into the nearest man. Deniken, who had been hired to take care of engine maintenance, jerked back from his sitting position. The soldier took aim again and, with the Kalashnikov in semi-automatic mode, relentlessly fired shot after shot into Deniken's twitching body.

  It took an eternity for the clip to empty. Some tiny, robotically fearless section of Stolypin's mind counted out the thirty shots. Someone behind him began to cry with great tearing sobs. Someone else gave an abrupt nervous giggle. Otherwise there was only silence. Stolypin glanced down at his crotch, which was suddenly bathed in unexpected warmth. He realised dully that he had pissed himself.

  Zurabov looked down with distaste at the shattered body, then continued in the same emotionless tones. 'In other words, this was a major operation that must have required the dedicated cooperation of almost everyone involved in this operation.' He held up a small hand and began to count off the points on his stubby little fingers. 'You were brought here because like me, you believed in the values of our beloved departed Union. You were prepared, at considerable cost to myself, to repair, upgrade and maintain these weapons on behalf of the Turkmenistani people and their forward thinking leader. And now, you have betrayed me, and thereby the memories of the men and women who once made the Soviet Union great. All of you.' At last there was anger in his voice.

  One by one Zurabov looked into the eyes of the twenty-two men. They had almost all been high-ranking personnel in similar facilities back in the old days, but now they glanced away fearfully. Stolykin saw that only Khitrivo stared steadily back.

  There was shuffling as some tried to draw back from the spreading tide of Deniken's blood. 'Stay where you are,' roared Zurabov. Stolypin watched in silent horror as blood started to soak into the fabric of the mens' long johns.

  'I'm going to keep on setting examples like this every five minutes for the next—' he consulted his watch in the needless way people do when calculating time '—one hour and fifty minutes. Or until one of you starts telling me what I need to know.'

  Another thought seemed to occur to him. 'Oh yes: Goremykin informs me that all he heard yesterday was feeble excuses like —' his voice became suddenly weak and frail '—‘the people who acquired the warheads must have had them secretly switched for dummies’, and 'I don't know, I was only ever an administrator/soldier/scientist’.

  'Let me make this quite clear: there are a dozen missiles on this base, each one of which took at least eight years to repair, re-equip and arm without the Americans, the idiots in the Kremlin or anyone else being any the wiser. At every step along the way, the missiles double-checked by my most trusted men. If anyone tells me it's not their fault, or maintains they knew nothing about what was going on, they will be shot. There and then. No chances for another lie.'

  Zurabov consulted his watch again then pointed suddenly at Stolypin. Soldiers darted in towards him. He had barely time for one surprised gulp before he was pulled to his feet and dragged out of the group. Shoving at his shoulders, the soldiers spun him round to face the others. Wide, frightened eyes looked back up at him. He felt the muzzle of a gun dig into the point where his skull met his spine. Not daring to move, he glanced to the right at Zurabov who was about twenty feet away
. The ex-Marshal held up five fingers but said nothing. Instead he reached into his coat and brought out a silver cigarette case.

  He remembered when Zurabov’s men had first approached him, in his dingy retirement flat in a part of Moscow now overrun by drug addicts and gangsters. They needed his expertise, he said, in one of the few remaining parts of the world where a semblance of the old Soviet Union still existed. The people of Turkmenistan weren’t even really Russians: none of them had even been allowed on the base back then, but Stolypin hadn’t cared as the details of Zurabov’s plan had gradually become clear. They were Soviets at heart, however they might refer to themselves now, and that was all that mattered.

  Stolypin became aware of the thick wet fabric of his dirty long johns where they clung to his body. His nipples felt hard against the cloth and it felt like every wet hair was pushing flat against his chest. The moans and crying around him faded away and he heard only the mournful sound of the East wind as it washed over the base. He saw the soldiers around him, etched against the clear blue sky, and above them a flock of birds wheeling round and round, using the wind to gain height. He thought of his daughter and his grandchildren far away in Kiev, and of his childhood in a tiny village in the eastern foothills of the Urals: the farm, the animals, the ancient creaking, heavy carts, the cheery villagers with their teasing and their poor peoples' gifts and treats. It had been a warm and happy time and he had tried to make life like that for his little girl, his beautiful, precious Anna, now long passed away. He remembered his scholarship to Moscow University, standing awe-struck in front of the soaring building. In one sweet, languid seamless memory he relived meeting Anouska, their courtship and marriage and...then, to his right, something moved.

  It was Zurabov. He was holding up a single finger.

  The world crashed down on Stolypin. His knees wobbled and he started to fall. Hands were thrust into his armpits. He smelt the milky sourness of the soldiers' breath as they struggled to keep him upright.