‘Targets on foot . . . could be heading for a multi-storey right behind. No, wait. Targets approaching dark saloon . . . an Astra, in Pavilion Road. Getting in and heading south, south, along Pavilion. Stay on that heading.’
Harry was amazed. ‘You’ve got a helicopter up there?’
‘Good timing, huh? Your boss thought they might come out like rats from a burning barn. They cruised into position five minutes ago.’ He calmly steered the BMW through the narrow streets and locked onto the course provided by the controller’s commentary.
‘They’re going south,’ said Rik.
Bruce nodded. ‘Chelsea Bridge, I reckon.’ He squeezed through a gap between a builder’s lorry and a taxi, shifting skilfully through the gears and playing the brakes and accelerator for maximum effect. All the time he sat back as though in an armchair at home.
‘How do you know it’s them?’ Harry asked.
‘Your two subjects were in all night and they were using the Astra yesterday. It’s a hire car but we haven’t got the name yet.’
‘It’ll be false, anyway,’ said Rik.
‘Makes sense. They popped out earlier for breakfast. We didn’t have the resources for a full box surveillance, so I stayed on them all the time. Easy enough job, though.’
‘Just you?’ said Harry. He knew well that mounting a full, round-the-clock surveillance was very heavy on man-power and resources, but Ballatyne had said nothing about the level of commitment given to this operation.
‘Just me. There were no stops, no drops and no contacts. Can’t tell what they were doing once they were inside, of course. The tall one’s in charge and shorty’s the driver.’ He paused to listen as the controller gave an update feed on the Astra’s location. ‘This driver’s good, whoever he is. Very good. I don’t think he knows we’re on him yet, but if he gets a sniff of us, we might have a chase on our hands. He must know the ground pretty well.’
‘He doesn’t,’ said Harry. ‘As far as we know it’s their first time here.’
‘Really?’ Bruce was even more impressed. ‘Good thing we’ve got eyes in the sky, then.’
Harry wondered at his calm demeanour, and sensed he was happier chatting, even when concentrating. ‘Do you do this a lot?’
‘As much as I can.’ He grinned. ‘I used to drive interceptors with Essex Police, in Subaru Imprezas. Then I got a transfer to this lot. This is a lot more fun.’
‘Let’s hope it stays that way,’ Harry told him. ‘You know these two are armed, don’t you?’
‘So I noticed. Bad boys.’
‘Bad enough. How did you notice?’
‘The way they walked, the way they sat, holding one hand against their jackets. Classic signs when someone’s carrying.’
A burst of chatter interrupted to tell them that the speeding Astra had crossed the river and was heading towards the south-east. Moments later, it was crossing the A3, still heading in the same direction and using back streets which were less busy. Local police patrols were being warned to stay well clear and give the men in the Astra no reason to start shooting.
‘Where’s he going?’ Bruce mused aloud. ‘There’s Heathrow, Gatwick or the Channel – that’s all there is down this way, unless he’s got another hidey-hole.’
‘Blue One, the target’s picking up speed.’ The controller’s voice was cool, economical. ‘Estimates are he’s heading for Herne Hill, Dulwich and Catford areas, then further south.’
‘Why would he pick up speed?’ asked Rik. ‘He can’t see us.’
‘He doesn’t have to,’ said Bruce. ‘He knows we’re here.’ He accelerated again, whipping past a bus and two cars, slipping past a traffic island on the wrong side before slotting back onto the right side of the road. ‘The good ones have an instinct. If they’ve done this before, they pick up the signs somehow. Same as us when we see a suspect car; it doesn’t look right. Can’t tell you why, it just does. Nine times out of ten, we’re right. He might not even be trying to outrun us – he could be fixing to get some space between us so he can dump the car and walk away.’
Suddenly the controller uttered a mild curse. ‘Signal’s going . . . we’re losing pictures. Trying to recover . . . Blue One, picture’s gone . . . last seen target was slowing down, slowing down hard. Be ready to decamp.’
‘Why no picture?’ Bruce cried. ‘And why now?’
They were fast approaching a crossroads, with minimum traffic in sight. Then, just beyond it, they saw the Astra. It had almost stopped, and seemed to be idling in the centre of the road. They were now close enough to see two figures inside. Suddenly it sat back on its suspension and pulled away hard, blue smoke issuing from the exhaust.
‘He’s off,’ said Bruce. ‘Over to you. What do you want me to do?’
Harry considered the consequences. The longer this chase continued, the more likely it was that the Russians would either panic and start shooting, or they would get away. Without the overhead camera coverage, there were too many side roads the Astra could duck into, losing their pursuers in an instant.
‘Go for it,’ Harry said. He and Rik took out their weapons and did a quick check, then sat and waited for Bruce to find a suitable place to stop the Astra. This was his expertise and they were just along for the ride.
‘Hold onto your panties, girls,’ Bruce murmured, and tramped hard on the accelerator, sending the BMW streaking towards the traffic lights, which were green and clear. The row of houses and shops became a blur, and figures on the pavements seemed frozen in mid-step.
‘Look out right!’ Rik yelled a warning just as a dark shape loomed up on that side, filling the windows.
A large 4X4 had deliberately jumped the lights.
Before Bruce could react, there was a sickening blow against the rear wing, ripping the BMW off-course and sending it into a neck-wrenching spin. The tyres shrieked in protest and a shower of glass fell around the interior of the car as the windows gave way under the force of the collision.
Harry managed to stuff his gun inside his jacket and hold on, grabbing hold of the door handle and the seat belt to stay upright, while feeling the sharp torque of the whiplash effect as the car spun and rocked on its suspension, with Brice fighting the wheel to keep it upright.
Then the world stopped moving just as suddenly as it had started, and they were left in total silence as the engine stuttered and died.
‘He’s gone!’ Bruce shouted furiously, twisting in his seat for a sighting of the vehicle that had hit them. He spat out a mouthful of blood. ‘Damn, I bit my tongue. Bastards!’
Harry unhooked his seat belt and climbed out, followed by Rik, nursing his elbow from the collision. Bruce was right, there was no sign of the other car, and the Astra had also disappeared.
‘It was a set-up,’ Bruce muttered sourly, joining them on the side of the road and stretching his neck with a wince of pain. ‘They had another car waiting to run interference.’ He looked at Harry. ‘Who the hell are those people?’
‘Foreigners,’ Harry told him. ‘They all drive like that.’
‘Blue One . . . come in. Blue One . . . you OK?’
SIXTY
‘What a shit hole.’ Serkhov shivered and pulled his jacket collar up around his chin. He and Votrukhin were standing outside an abandoned cottage with a corrugated iron roof, set against a grey, sludgy expanse of the Thames where it spilled out into the sea.
After being forced to flee the apartment in Knightsbridge, they had taken a prearranged route through south London, using small hotels for one night each while awaiting further instructions, aware that this mission was now almost certainly over.
Votrukhin in particular had been shocked at coming so close to being caught by the two security men, and had angrily asked Gorelkin how they could have been traced to that address. Gorelkin had expressed no specific opinion, suggesting in a roundabout fashion that he and Serkhov must have been careless. It had been enough to leave the atmosphere between them soured and distrustful.
&nb
sp; The next time Gorelkin called, it was with orders to make their way north to a point on the coast of Essex, just across the Thames.
‘What about the hire car?’ asked Serkhov.
‘The car doesn’t matter,’ Gorelkin insisted. ‘You won’t be returning it, anyway.’
Their destination was near Canvey Island, on the Thames Estuary. The car’s satnav guided them along a winding lane lined with houses and fields. Then the houses stopped, leaving nothing but scrubby fields and what looked like mud flats. It looked bleak and unwelcoming, driving both men into an even more sombre mood than before.
‘Wait right at the end, on the point,’ Gorelkin had told them earlier. ‘A deep water channel runs close to the shore. A trawler will pick you up and take you to Ostende, where you’ll be picked up.’
‘Why can’t we fly out?’ Serkhov had queried. He was past caring what Gorelkin thought of his questions and just wanted to get the hell out of this godforsaken country any way he could.
‘All airfields are being monitored, that’s why,’ Gorelkin had replied tersely. ‘You go anywhere near one and you’ll be picked up. Nobody is watching trawlers leaving the coast.’
It made sense and Serkhov had shrugged it off. As long as the trawler didn’t sink, he could put up with a few hours at sea. Anything was better than sitting around waiting for the British security services to pick them up.
‘We’d better wait inside,’ Votrukhin murmured, and walked over to the cottage and kicked open the door. The interior was a ruin, the brick walls bare of plaster, the floor a concrete slab riddled with cracks and littered with old bricks and planks, the roof a mass of holes. But it would do until they could leave.
‘What about the car?’
‘Leave it. People come down here to walk dogs and watch birds. By the time the boat comes it will be almost dark.’ Votrukhin piled two stacks of bricks and placed a plank across, forming a rough bench. He sat down gingerly, then pulled out a packet of mints. He took two and offered the packet to Serkhov, but the sergeant shook his head and sat beside him.
‘I still don’t get how Gorelkin arranged for us to dodge those security people,’ Serkhov murmured. ‘They nearly had us, then suddenly, gone.’
‘Don’t question it,’ Votrukhin replied. ‘We followed instructions, it got us out of a jam. End of subject.’ Even he, however, had been left wondering how their boss had managed it. From having no support whatsoever, they now had someone watching their backs and intercepting a close pursuit. All it had taken was a phone call instructing them to slow right down at a particular set of traffic lights along their route, then take off the moment they saw the other car coming.
All he knew was that it was the best piece of stage-management Gorelkin had ever managed.
They sat in silence after that, neither having much to say. After working together so long, more often than not in dangerous situations, the two men had developed the art of silent companionship, speaking only when necessary.
Through the thin walls came the sound of boats passing in the channel; small work vessels, engines clattering, the occasional fast launch crashing over the water, and heavier vessels seemingly taking an age to go by and making the ancient building shudder with their noise.
After thirty minutes, with the light fading outside, Votrukhin’s phone rang. He answered it and listened, then shut it off.
‘The boat’s on its way in. We wait inside for a signal.’
Serkhov sucked on his teeth and spat across the room. He’d been getting more and more restless, and didn’t think much of the arrangements. Nothing to eat or drink, in danger of some local idiot dog walker seeing them here and reporting them to the police, and neither of them knowing what was going to happen afterwards.
‘Seems a dull way to leave the country,’ he commented. ‘There was a moment when I thought we might go out like that film . . . Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, shooting our way out through a bunch of English cops.’
Votrukhin said, ‘You think too much.’
‘No. I’m being realistic. Your trouble is, you believe all the crap they sold you about duty for the country and service, and how being an officer lifts you up the ladder. Me, I stopped listening to that years ago. We’re still at the same shit level we were at ten years back, and it doesn’t look like getting better, after what Gorelkin put us through.’
‘So why are you here, then? You want to die a hero’s death, is that it?’
‘Well, it might be better than wasting away in a foreign prison. Or finding that we’re going to carry the can for Gorelkin’s cock-up and end up in a recycled gulag for a few years.’
‘You’ve really got a thing for him, haven’t you?’
‘You mean you haven’t? This whole trip’s been a mess from start to finish. We did Tobinskiy, which is what we came for. But it’s all been downhill from there. No real planning, no backup, no fall-back plan for when the shit hit the fan, like it seems to have done. And now we’re sneaking out like kids raiding a chicken coop – and after what?’
‘We don’t know if it failed. Gorelkin might have got the Jardine woman some other way. Anyway, when did you ever know an operation go perfectly as planned? It’s why they use us, because we can adapt.’
‘Adapt my arse . . .’ Serkhov’s head snapped up at the sound of an engine. It sounded closer and lighter than any before. ‘What’s that?’
‘Probably a tender from the boat to pick us up.’
They both stood up, and it took a moment for both men to realise that the engine noise had come from the rear of the cottage, where they had left their car, not from the sea.
‘Fuck!’ Serkhov swore and pulled out his gun. ‘This doesn’t sound good.’ He stepped across to the window and glanced out. When he turned to Votrukhin, he looked grim. ‘Four men getting out of a car. They’re armed with machine guns.’
SIXTY-ONE
Votrukhin joined Serkhov, pulling out his weapon. He peered out and shook his head. The sergeant wasn’t exaggerating. It was no contest. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, and four men with fully automatic weapons. Enough fire power to blow this rotten building off its foundations.
‘Whoever they are, they’re not here to tell us job well done.’ He paused, then did a double-take on the man in the lead, who was signalling his men to spread out, the way a good commander should. ‘Mother of God, I know that man. His name’s Brizsinsky, Breshevsky . . . something like that. He was Spetsnaz. I heard he was in V Section.’
Serkhov looked relieved. ‘That’s good, isn’t it? It means we’re going home. Let the British try stopping us now.’ He stepped towards the door, eager to be gone.
But Votrukhin wasn’t moving. He grasped Serkhov’s arm. ‘Wait. You don’t understand. V Section ran special penetration operations. Fast in, fast out. Really high-level stuff. If they’ve been sent here, it’s not to pick us up.’
Serkhov frowned. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I heard V Section was closed down a few years ago, but a few guys were kept on for special duties.’ He nodded towards the outside. ‘Including Brizsinsky or whatever the hell his name is. Nobody knows where they’re based, and they work completely off the books. They’re ghosts.’
‘I never heard that. How come you know about them?’
‘I’m an officer. We hear things.’
‘What sort of special duties?’ Serkhov’s voice had dropped several notches.
‘They’re called cleaners. They make sure bad mistakes get buried.’
Serkhov stared at him for a few seconds as the implication set in. This wasn’t something Votrukhin would joke about. ‘Go fuck a goat. Doesn’t look like there’s going to be a boat after all, does it? Bastards.’ He ejected the magazine, checking the load by feel, then clicked it back into place. ‘Now do you finally believe me? We’ve been stuffed.’
Votrukhin nodded. ‘Yes. I believe you.’ He turned and spat on the floor. ‘God, I hate it when you’re right.’
‘Never mind. I h
ad to be at least once.’ He shook his head and spat on the same spot. ‘You think we’ll be heroes back home among the other guys, for what we did?’
‘For knocking off Tobinskiy, you mean?’ Votrukhin shook his head. ‘No, my friend. Nobody will talk about that, ever. They might pretend to miss us when we don’t turn up . . . might even have a dinner at Tinkoff’s in The Arbat with the proceeds of the sale. But that’s about it.’ He was referring to the alleged custom of selling off a fallen comrade’s personal possessions if there was no family to consider. Neither Votrukhin nor Serkov had ever given time to such things as family. Not that either man had much to sell, in any case.
‘I thought that sentimental shit was for officers only.’
‘Not at all. It’s just that the rest of you scum can’t be bothered to celebrate our heroes.’
A few minutes passed, then Serkhov muttered, ‘I would like to have been a hero. So people on the base could point me out to new recruits and say, “There goes Sergeant Leonid Serkhov. He’s got the balls of a bull elephant.” It would have been nice.’
‘Are we talking about courage or size? There’s a difference.’
‘Sergeants can be heroes, too.’
‘I guess. But not often, because they’re mostly useless insubordinate bastards who prefer to get drunk. But it does happen.’
‘Up yours, lieutenant. We sergeants are the backbone of any army, hadn’t you heard?’ Serkhov reached in his pocket and took out the pink plastic powder compact he’d taken from the Jardine woman. ‘I won’t be needing this anymore, will I? Do you think pink brings soldiers bad luck? Is that what went wrong?’
‘No. But carrying that thing does make you look like a girl.’
Serkhov grinned. He bent and placed the compact on the plank where Votrukhin had been sitting. ‘Maybe she’ll get it back some day. The Jardine woman.’
Execution (A Harry Tate Thriller) Page 28
