The Kremlin Device

by Chris Ryan

  myself crouching beside the door, Nikolai on my right, Igor on my left. Even in the relative shelter of the balcony the wind was blustering loudly, and there was no need to keep my voice down when I reported in.

  "Red leader, on target. Blue, report your state."

  "Blue, preparing charge," came Whinger's voice.

  "Wait out."

  "Red, roger." My heart was going like a hammer. I imagined Whinger deftly taping a length of det cord down the centre of the door. I glanced either way at the dark, helmeted faces beside me and gave a reassuring twitch of my head. The lads had heard Whinger in their earpieces, but naturally hadn't understood what he said, so I made taping motions round our own doorway. Both got it, grinned back and nodded.

  But I was wrong. Suddenly I heard Whinger say, "Blue. We have a problem. I can see through a glass panel in the fire-escape door. There are two guards sitting outside the apartment, in the corridor. Wait one."

  I made an instant decision.

  "Red. You'll have to drop them.

  I'll use your shots as the signal to go."

  "OK," said Whinger softly.

  "Ready when you are.

  "Red. Roger. Control is Black on schedule?"

  "Da, da. Chyornii goto vi came Anna's voice. I could tell that the excitement was getting to her as well because for a moment she forgot to translate. Then she said, "Yes. Black ready."

  "Red. Starting countdown now. Sixty, fifty, forty .. ." I imagined the Black team wagon speeding towards the Mafia entrance, silenced weapons at the ready. The gale was certainly going to help mask any noise they made.

  "Twenty.. . ten.

  Jesus, I was thinking, I hope this goes our way, because we shouldn't be anywhere near here.

  "Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five... Stand by, stand by. GO!"

  The hammer of rounds going down in the corridor came clearly through to us. With my charge held flat to the glassed upper half of the door, I knelt with my head tucked down, away from the blast, and squeezed my clacker.

  BOOM! The blast made the inner wall shudder. I raised my head. The entire glass panel had vanished. Through the hole I lobbed a stun grenade and ducked again, eyes averted.

  BANG! A sharper, louder explosion. I came upright again.

  Pieces of glass were tinkling down. The lights in the room had gone out.

  "Poshli!" I shouted at Igor.

  "Go!"

  In he went with a wild yell, head-first through the gap. I heard a thud as he hit the floor and scrabbling noises as he scuttled sideways. Then Nikolai was at the opening, hammering long bursts into the room with his Gepard. He was screaming obscenities too.

  Hardly had he opened up when there came a second explosion as Whinger blew the door from the corridor. More rounds started going down inside the flat bursts of seven or eight. Too long to be properly selective.

  Empty cases cascaded on to the floor of the balcony beside me. Nikolai threw down an empty magazine, smacked home a full one and continued to fire. For a moment I felt a bit of a prick, lying there against the safety of the wall while guys were risking their lives inside.

  Then the bursts of fire died away. Single shots cracked out one, two, three, four. I knew what they meant: the assaulters were using their pistols to pop rounds into the heads of their victims, making certain they were dead.

  One more single shot, then silence except for the wind.

  "Boris!" I shouted.

  "Yestj?"

  "Da, da."

  "Khorosho!"

  I held in my press el and called, "Red to Blue all secure at your end?"

  "Blue," came Whinger's voice.

  "Affirmative. All inner rooms secure.

  "Red. Roger. This side secure also. You can come on through."

  Standing up, I walked in through the shattered window-door.

  The air in the living room was hot as hell and thick with cigarette smoke, shot through with the sharp reek of cordite. Something had caught fire, ignited by the stun grenade. The blaze wasn't serious -just enough to give flickering illumination and light up the gory scene. The lights had gone down and for the time being I let it burn.

  The Mafiosi must have been in conference round a rectangular table. Now, overturned chairs and five bodies lay all round it. Igor, crouched in the left-hand outer corner of the room, was still covering Nikolai as he scuffled round checking each one. The door into the hallway was closed, so I went straight over and called through it, "Whinge?"

  "Yeah, yeah. We're here."

  "OK. I'm opening up." I turned the handle and pulled, to find the door was locked. Peering down, I saw the key was in the lock, spun it and pulled the door towards me. The two teams -were safely reunited.

  "Red leader to Control," I called.

  "Target secure.

  "Vas pony al went Anna.

  "Roger."

  "Piece of cake!" said Whinger.

  "What's the Russian for that?"

  "I don't know. How many have your guys taken out?"

  "Four. The bodyguards. Two in the passage, two more watching TV in the end bedroom. We got them as they came out the door." He flashed his torch into the bedroom doorway, and I saw two bodies lying across each other on the floor.

  "No casualties on your team?"

  Whinger shook his head.

  "The stupid bastards never got a round off The two outside were asleep on their chairs, and the others had left their main weapons in the hallway. There." He shone the beam on a little stack of sub-machine guns in a corner.

  "Didn't even have time to draw their pistols."

  I found myself shaking with reaction.

  "Jesus!" I said.

  "What happens now?"

  After a hit of that kind in the UK, the assault teams would be instantly spirited away from the scene in a hostage reception van, and any prisoners would travel with them, to get the whole lot clear before any journalists or TV crew turned up. Then a quick reaction force would move in and take over. The most important guy in the aftermath would be the SOCO, the scene-of-crimes officer, from the police. Until he arrived, the key rule was that nothing must be touched or moved.

  Not so in Moscow. Satisfied that all the villains were dead, Igor got up, walked over and kicked one of the bodies contemptuously, rolling it over.

  "Stop!" I called, waving my hands about to tell him to lay off But that was the limit of my Russian, and he probably thought I was crazy.

  Somebody found the electricity control panel. A trip switch had been thrown by the blasts, and once it was flipped back up enough of the lights went on for us to survey the wreckage.

  It looked as though four of the sitting-room victims had been gunned down where they sat at the table. They were all flabby looking middle-aged men with bellies bulging out into their shirts and their sleeves rolled up. Their faces had probably never been pretty, and they certainly weren't now, because Nikolai had gone round and popped each one with a bullet through the head.

  One had an eye out on a stall; another had spewed out half his teeth. Pools of blood were spreading over the pale carpet.

  Their jackets, still hanging over the backs of their chairs, had been riddled by bullets. The fifth guy, a younger man in a dark blue polo shirt, had got half-way to the door before being dropped. On the right-hand wall, looking from the windows, water was dripping from the shattered remains of a glass fish tank and the wretched occupant was flapping its last in a puddle at the bottom. Another victim was an old tabby cat, which lay in a corner without a mark on it and seemed to have died of fright.

  The table was covered with papers, evidently the subject of the meeting, and expensive-looking briefcases sat on the floor beside the chairs. The fire had started in a waste bin containing more paper, and I had no problem stamping it out. But I'd hardly finished when there was a commotion outside the door and in strode Ivan the Bear, with Sasha at his heels.

  Ivan advanced towards me, grinning, and said something which Sasha translated as, "Breelliant! He
congratulates you very much."

  "Your guys did it." I gestured round.

  "They were first class.

  Ochen khorosho."

  Ivan accepted the praise with a nod and turned his attention to the bodies. Almost at once he gave an exclamation and began to talk at speed into a mobile phone.

  "It is Keet the Whale," Sasha translated, pointing at the corpse of a huge man with close-cropped grey hair that lay on its back almost under the table. As he was speaking, Ivan bent down and unceremoniously ripped open the perforated, bloodstained shirt to reveal a foot-long tattoo of a whale's head and open jaws, tilted upwards towards the man's left shoulder. From the half open mouth the feet of a human being were protruding. By a horrible fluke one round had gone in almost exactly through the whale's eye, leaving a bloody hole.

  With a jerk on one arm Ivan rolled the body over and kicked the shirt up round its head. There, between the shoulder blades, was a tattooed portrait of Stalin.

  "Old Uncle Joe didn't save that bugger, did he?" Whinger was staring at the effigy, fascinated. Then, as he surveyed the scene, he added, "I like the delicate way they handle things round here, I must say.

  Ivan brought out a pocket knife, slipped the blade inside one leg of Whale's trousers, at the ankle and slit the grey material open to half-way up the thigh. Then he pointed contemptuously and gave a short laugh.

  "He has stars on the knees," Sasha translated.

  "Like I told you.

  The sign he would never kneel."

  It seemed that all the villains bar one were known to Ivan. By any standards it was a terrific coup for the security forces: five godfathers at one hit, plus four bodyguards and a haul of incriminating papers. Nor was that all. The two most fancy briefcases crocodile leather by Gucci, no less were closed with gold combination locks. Ivan picked one up, laid it on the table and started trying to open it. Frustrated, he called to Igor, who produced a small jemmy.

  "Hey, wait!" I said, thinking of Toad and Pavarotti.

  "That thing's worth a few grand. One of our guys will open it without wrecking it."

  But Ivan wasn't in a mood to wait, and in a few seconds he'd burst both locks. When he lifted the lid, everybody who could see gave a gasp, because the case was packed solid with fifty dollar bills done up in little paper sleeves holding bunches of twenty notes: a thousand bucks a throw.

  When you see cash in that kind of quantity, you realise how little space it takes up: I could have put ten grand in my hip pocket, no bother.

  As if reading my thoughts Ivan plunged a hand into the case and brought out a fistful of bundles, holding them in my direction.

  "Take," said Sasha.

  "He wants you to have it."

  "No, no." I waved it away.

  "Yes, please. He inseest. He thinks like Russian soldiers you not being paid well. You need more."

  Looking round under the table, Ivan spotted a far cheaper briefcase made of imitation black leather, with a flap closure and no locks. Having tipped the papers it contained on to the table,

  he proceeded to stuff it with handfuls of fifty-dollar bills and thrust it at me.

  From this point things became more and more surreal.

  Somebody discovered bottles of special, high-octane vodka in the freezer compartment of the fridge, brought them out and began pouring slugs into short, squat glasses. Whinger and I declined, but as the icy spirit went down other people's throats in repeated doses, the volume of voices rose. While a minion collected up the papers from the table and stowed them away, Ivan himself carefully removed gold watches from three dead wrists and a couple of crocodile wallets from the jackets still on the chairs.

  "Present to English friends!" he beamed, holding a watch out in my direction.

  "No, for fuck's sake!" I exclaimed.

  "Spasibo but keep them."

  Then some of his guys arrived with body bags, and at last bundled the corpses out of sight.

  Outside, in the corridor, there was a great commotion as other inhabitants of the block argued with the guards on the door, trying to get in and find out what had happened.

  "Let's get the hell out of here," Whinger muttered.

  "There's going to be a monster piss-up."

  "We'd better sign off with Ivan."

  "He's busy. Another day."

  "OK."

  I looked round for Sasha and beckoned him over.

  "We need to get back to Balashika," I told him.

  "Can someone give us a lift?"

  "Konechno. I drive you."

  "How many vodka shave you had?"

  "Vodka? Nothing! Two only."

  So it was that we pushed our way past the new guards on the door, through the crowd outside and into the lift. Downstairs there was a heavy military presence on the entrance to the block, but Sasha spirited us through it, found the car he'd been driving, and set off I felt plagued by guilt first by the thought that we should all have been in a formal debriefing session, recalling and recording every move of the raid; second by the knowledge that we had lost a man; and third by the fact that I was carrying a small fortune of ill-gotten gains in a Mafia briefcase.

  "Misha," I said.

  "He was dead?"

  Sasha nodded.

  "Absolutely. We found his body. How did he fall?"

  "Just lost his nerve."

  "It is a pity. But nichevo!" He smiled broadly.

  "We have beeg victory. Like in football Arsenal nine, Tottenham Hotspot one!"

  He gave a merry laugh and drummed his hands on the steering wheel. Then he added, "Only one problem."

  "SXJhat's that?"

  "Mafia bosses will be angry. For sure, they make counterattack."

  "On Omon?"

  "No, on government. The President, the Vice-President, the Minister of the Interior. Perhaps one of them will be their next target."

  NINE.

  I thought I was going to have nightmares, but in fact I slept like the dead, and woke up unable to remember where I was. Until I heard Whinger snoring, that is: then everything flooded back.

  "All in a day's work," I'd said cheerily to Rick when we came in the night before and a hell of a day we'd had. But it had been exhilarating too, and a sharpening change from the routine of training.

  Naturally we'd had a wash-up with our own lads as soon as we had come in: they'd got a brew on, and we'd sat up till after midnight analysing the hit. We had also had a discussion not quite an argument about what had come to be known as the 'diplomatic bag'. A count had shown it to contain 110,000 dollars.

  When the lads saw that amount of money tipped out on the kitchen table they uttered, "Firekin ell!" in a kind of chorus.

  If there's one thing that makes SAS lads take leave of their senses it's money. Normally they're pretty straight-up, but somehow the sight of cash sends them bananas.

  "There's my Jag!" Pavarotti cried with his eyes glazing over.

  "Bugger the Jag!" Pete told him.

  "What about my kitchen extension?"

  "Bet it's all forged," said Dusty, ever the cynic.

  "Never," Mal told him.

  "Big Mafia players wouldn't be carting fake stuff around. Whose is it, anyway? Geordie's and Whinger's, I suppose."

  "No, no," I said.

  "If it belongs to anyone, it belongs to the team.~ "Buy a team Mere," said Pavarotti.

  "Get a five-hundred or something. Smoked-glass windows. Then we can take on the hoods at their own game. How much did you say they had?"

  "Meellions," I said, imitating Sasha.

  "Christ knows. It was a big briefcase and it was jam-packed. This lot was only a fraction of what we saw. There could have been stuff we didn't see as well.

  We never looked in the other croc briefcase or in drawers or cupboards. The flat could have been full of money. Drugs too, I daresay. God knows what they were at: it looked as though they were carving up their empire."

  It was Rick who produced the idea of sending the cash back to the UK.
<
br />   "Put it in the Diplomatic Bag," he suggested.

  "Then at least it'll be safe, and a nice little bonus for when we get home."

  "Bollocks to that," said Pay.

  "Split it up now. Then we can go out and start spending."

  "What on?" demanded Dusty derisively.

  "Rotten onions?

  Crappy cabbage? You'll get fuck-all else in Balashika."

  "Funny," said Mal.

  "At Sandhurst it's the other way round. It's the students who have the money. Arabs slip their instructors gold watches to get an early look at exam papers. Here, the students are penniless and the instructors are loaded."

  Whinger, who'd been keeping quiet, butted up and said, "They offered Geordie a gold Rolex as well."

  "You bastard!" roared Pay.

  "Where is it?"

  "I told him to keep it."

  "Bloody idiot," Pay cried.

  "I'd have taken it."

  "I know you would," I told him.

  "But the person who needs money is Sasha. I bet that mean bugger Ivan didn't give him anything. The poor sod hasn't been paid in months."

  I brought up the saga of my having to buy clothes for him in Hereford, which the lads hadn't heard, and finished with, "I vote we slip him a couple of grand, anyway."

  Our Chinese parliament passed the suggestion unanimously with the exception of Toad, who, as usual, was lurking at one side of the room, outside the main circle, listening, watching. He said nothing just gave us a sly look so I considered him over-ruled and said, "Right then here's a couple for Sasha," and separated out two of the little bundles.

  "What about the rest?"

  In the end it was agreed that we keep it all together for the time being, and send it back to UK as Rick had suggested.

  "All right, then," I said.

  "It's going in a Lacon box for now, and the next time we go in to the Embassy, it heads for home."

  Next morning Sasha was on top of the world, beaming at everyone, bringing thanks and congratulations from Omon's highest brass. He also brought a personal invitation.

  "My mother," he began, as we stood in the sunshine outside the back of our building.

  "She would like so much to meet you.

  She asks, please come to supper one evening."

  "Sasha! You haven't told her about yesterday?"