by Tom Wood
Cheap veneered tables that matched the chairs were arranged into a large square in the middle of the room. On top of the tables stood a model. It was made of white plasticard, meticulously cut and glued and arranged to form a scale reproduction of a building. The model was about three feet long by two wide and two high. It had a roof, but that roof sat next to the rest of the building so its interior could be seen: individual rooms, open rectangles for doorways and stairs. The floor could be lifted out to reveal the one below it and the ones below that. The building the model represented was a grand structure, similar in dimensions to a grand country villa or hotel.
Victor had seen models like this before, if not for a very long time. He remembered memorising layouts and angles and likely danger spots and the best points of cover and concealment. He would stand silently with men just like him as they were briefed on the coming mission.
The group spread out around the model without being told. Coughlin and Dietrich stood closest to the arrangement of tables so they could get a good look at the model, leaning over it to see inside and ducking down to peer through the windows.
Victor ignored it because the corners of the flipchart pages were curled and the covers creased, the whiteboards were smeared and marked and the wastepaper bin was full with scrunched-up balls of paper. He moved to a position a couple of metres back from the model, at an angle where he could see without having to turn his head the door through which they had entered and the far one.
‘Gentlemen,’ Leeson began, ‘this is the strike point.’
FIFTY-THREE
‘What is it?’ Dietrich asked.
Victor looked at Leeson as he said, ‘An embassy.’
‘He’s right,’ Hart said.
Leeson smiled. ‘How very perceptive of you, Mr Kooi. But I can’t say I’m surprised at the speed of your uptake.’
There was something dangerous in his voice.
‘Whose embassy?’ Coughlin asked.
Leeson looked to Victor. ‘Any astute guesses?’
Victor shook his head because he knew who it belonged to.
‘It’s the Russian embassy,’ Leeson explained.
‘Where?’ Dietrich asked.
‘In Rome, of course.’
Victor saw Hart watching for his reaction. He ensured there was none.
‘The target?’ Coughlin asked.
Leeson strolled to one of the flip charts and pulled up the cover. ‘This is the gentleman whose demise we’re all being paid to ensure arrives before nature intends.’
Four eight-by-ten photographs had been affixed to the first page of the flipchart. They all showed a man in his fifties. He looked short and overweight but otherwise likely to live naturally for a long time yet. The first photograph was head and shoulders, blown up from a wide-angled group shot. An arm belonging to someone else was draped over the target’s shoulder. The target was wearing a dinner jacket and smiling, a fat cigar nestled between his teeth. The second picture showed the target in safari gear, holding a rifle and smiling next to the corpse of a lion. In the photograph the target was sitting on the terrace of a restaurant with a younger date. Like the first, the photograph had been blown up to focus on the target and only a slice of the woman opposite him was included. The last picture showed the target’s profile as he walked along a busy street amongst out-of-focus passers-by.
‘Who is he?’ Victor asked.
Leeson said, ‘His name is Ivan Prudnikov. Mr Prudnikov is a Russian bureaucrat and is to be a guest of the Russian ambassador, a personal friend of his, who is hosting one of his famous receptions at the embassy for all manner of industrialists, delegates, politicians and dignitaries. They say there’s enough cocaine at these parties to drop a horde of elephants.’
‘Why kill him inside the embassy?’
‘Because that’s what the client is paying for, Mr Kooi. The specifics are of no relevance to you.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong. Every aspect of the job is of relevance.’
Dietrich said, ‘Why don’t you stop being a pussy and let the man finish?’
‘Though I don’t exactly approve of Mr Dietrich’s language, I agree with his sentiments. Perhaps, Mr Kooi, you would be so good as to leave any questions you have until the end?’
Victor remained silent.
‘As I was saying,’ Leeson began. ‘The client wishes Mr Prudnikov to be killed while in attendance at the upcoming reception at the Russian embassy in Rome. Here is a scale model of the embassy so you can familiarise yourselves with its layout. The flipcharts contain further intel on the target and the strike point.’
‘Any stipulation as to the means of death?’
‘I’ll come to that later, but for now I’m going to leave you all for a little while so you can get better acquainted with some of the facts of the mission, instead of listening to me drone on. I’ll be back before too long.’ He gestured to Francesca. ‘Come along, my dear.’
He left through the second door, Francesca following.
Victor walked over to the flipcharts and began examining the one Leeson had opened, to which the photographs of the target were attached. On the other pages were more photographs, extensive biographical information in the form of printed documents stuck to the flipchart pages, photocopies of Prudnikov’s passport, driver’s licence and birth certificate and copies of his handwriting and fingerprints.
The embassy was the focus of the second flipchart. There were schematics and blueprints and photographs of the interior, hand-drawn diagrams and names of staff and security and descriptions of procedures and protocols. Between them the two charts contained a wealth of information that must have taken a considerable amount of time and resources to compile. It would take days to become familiar with it all, endlessly flipping back and forth between the pages of the two charts – making the bottom corners of the pages curled and soft and frayed. It must have taken a week to build the model.
Victor turned away. Coughlin was examining the other flipchart while Dietrich’s interest was fixed on the model. He’d taken out the two upper floors and was peering down at the ground floor. Hart was standing on the other side of the room, leaning against the wall by the door through which they had entered, watching the other three men, but mostly Victor.
‘What are your thoughts?’ Hart asked.
‘That you already know all about this.’
‘I meant about the job: the target and the strike point,’ Hart said.
‘I know what you meant.’
‘Looks good,’ Dietrich said to Hart.
Victor raised an eyebrow. ‘In your expert opinion?’
Dietrich didn’t respond.
No one spoke further. Victor went back to examining the background on Prudnikov and the intel on the embassy. Hart continued to watch.
Leeson returned an hour later. He looked relaxed and confident and in charge and content. Francesca wasn’t with him.
‘How are we getting on?’
‘Fine,’ Dietrich said.
Coughlin said, ‘Not bad.’
Victor remained silent. As did Hart.
‘Fabulous,’ Leeson said. ‘I take it you’ve all had the opportunity to familiarise yourselves with the particulars of the upcoming assignment. To repeat: the objective is to kill Ivan Prudnikov while he is in attendance at a reception at the Russian embassy here in Rome. Gentlemen, I’d like to hear your initial impressions.’
Victor gave Dietrich and Coughlin a chance to speak. They didn’t. It was beyond their comfort zone; beyond their thinking. They followed orders. They didn’t plan. This wasn’t what they did.
‘It can’t be done,’ Victor said.
Leeson asked, ‘Why not?’
‘Many reasons: firstly, we’ll be going in with no weapons because the embassy will have security with metal detectors and wands and will possibly conduct personal searches. And even if we could get weapons inside the building – which I don’t believe is possible – there will be security personnel in the
crowd at the party and important foreign dignitaries will have trained aides and bodyguards. Even discounting that, we can’t possibly know Prudnikov’s movements during the party. Just because he’s been invited to the reception doesn’t mean he won’t be powdering his nose with Bolivia’s finest off the breasts of a hooker in the ambassador’s private quarters. So that means we need two triggermen in different positions, ready to move in independently depending on where Prudnikov goes and who he goes with. But the embassy is a big building with lots of rooms and there’s going to be lots of people there, so we’ll need dedicated watchers not only to keep eyes on the target at all times, but also to watch embassy security and look out for unexpected problems. Which there will be, given this is to take place in an enclosed public space that’s also heavily guarded. With Hart and I as the triggermen—’
‘Hold it right there,’ Dietrich interrupted. ‘Who died and made you god of planning? If anyone’s going to be one of the shooters, it’s me.’
Victor ignored him. ‘With Hart and I as the triggermen, and Jaeger dead, that leaves just Dietrich and Coughlin as surveillance, and they’re simply not good enough.’
‘Fuck you,’ Dietrich said.
Coughlin glared.
‘We need more men,’ Victor said. ‘We need at least one more inside the embassy to provide surveillance and backup. Then we need watchers outside the building to keep track of who comes and goes and to provide continuous updates to those inside. That’s at least another two men. Whether it ends up loud or stays quiet, there needs to be another member of the team providing the means of extraction. And ideally another still if we want to disable the embassy’s security cameras and/or delete the recordings. That’s another five required, based on the current level of competence, if any of the operators actually wants to walk away without getting killed or captured.’
‘Don’t listen to him, Mr Leeson,’ Dietrich said. ‘We can do the job, no problem. Kooi is just scared.’
‘And we need more background information on the target. We have a lot about him but nothing about his work.’
Dietrich frowned. ‘What does it matter what the guy does for a living?’
Victor ignored him. He said to Leeson, ‘You said he’s a Russian bureaucrat. That’s a very general term. What part of the government does he work for? What does he do?’
‘You make some interesting points,’ Leeson said to Victor. ‘There are some facts that you aren’t yet privy to that might change your evaluation of the task at hand. Come with me, please. Everyone.’
Leeson motioned for the group to follow him out of the door they had entered through an hour ago. Coughlin followed first, then Dietrich. Victor hung back to let Hart go next.
‘After you, compadre,’ Hart said.
FIFTY-FOUR
Leeson led them back across the main floor of the mill and out of the building. He walked along the corridor of space between the two buildings, then to the older building with the whitewashed walls and red-tiled roof. Leeson pushed one of the dark-stained double doors open and ushered the team inside.
He was in an antechamber attached to the main mill area. It occupied approximately one-quarter of the building’s interior and looked like it had a range of purposes. There was a small kitchenette at one end with a wooden table and benches near it. There were hooks for outside clothing and crates of empty green glass bottles.
‘Through here,’ Leeson said, leading the team into the mill itself.
It was a large space, if about half the size of the modern building’s interior. Like the outside, the interior walls were painted white. The roof peaked above Victor’s head and was supported by a framework of metal posts and struts.
There were two rows of machinery: on the left were stone grinders to pulp the olives; on the right were the presses. Three thick circular stones that had to weigh at least a couple of tons each were arranged together at an angle to a central cog that turned them to crush the olive fruit and pits into a mash. As in the modern mill, all the equipment was dormant and waiting for the next harvest. But unlike the modern mill, not all the equipment was there for the production of olive oil. There were five folding camp beds and sleeping bags, backpacks and sports bags and camp chairs and boxes of ammunition, and a wooden crate with stencilled Cyrillic script sprayed on in red paint.
There were also four men standing in and around the equipment, all facing the doorway through which Victor and the others entered.
They were a mix of ages: the youngest in his mid twenties, two in their thirties and the fourth in his early forties. They weren’t Italians. They wore jeans, T-shirts and sportswear. They were unshaven and unclean because the mill probably didn’t have showers and they had been sleeping on camp beds and washing using only sinks and washcloths. They had the look of civilians not military personnel, but civilians who knew how to fight and kill. As he got closer, Victor could smell the cigarette smoke on their clothes. The room didn’t smell of smoke, so they didn’t smoke in here. He pictured the cigarette stubs by the drain outside.
Four men in the room. Five camp beds.
It didn’t look like the four had just got up on account of Leeson, Hart, Dietrich, Coughlin and Victor. They had already been standing. They could have sat on the chairs or on their beds, could even have been lying down, relaxed and comfortable. Instead they were on their feet when they didn’t need to be. Their jaws were set and their fists clenched. Their eyes were narrow, lines between eyebrows. Nostrils flared. They were pumped up and restless. Victor had seen groups of men displaying the same signs. Their adrenaline was up and they were tense and restless because they were waiting to go into action.
‘The party’s tonight,’ Victor said, almost in disbelief.
Leeson nodded. ‘That’s right, Mr Kooi. The embassy reception begins in about an hour.’
‘That’s not enough time to plan and rehearse, let alone get first-hand intelligence of the strike point. It’s nowhere near enough time.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ Leeson said. ‘We’ve been rehearsing for weeks. We’ve been planning for months. These gentlemen know everything there is to know about the embassy.’
Victor thought about the flipchart pages, curled and frayed and softened from endless use.
‘Why do you need us?’ Victor asked as he began to understand.
‘To kill Prudnikov, of course.’
‘There’s no time to plan it. Even if these four have been rehearsing for the whole of the summer’ – he gestured to himself, Coughlin and Dietrich, but not Hart – ‘we haven’t. There’s not enough time to integrate us into the plan.’
‘You’re not a part of their plan, Mr Kooi,’ Leeson said. ‘There are two teams in this room, each with their own objective. Yours is to kill Prudnikov.’
‘Theirs?’
Leeson didn’t answer.
‘They’re not following this conversation, are they?’ Victor asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Because they don’t speak English. Who are they?’
‘They are from Chechnya, Mr Kooi.’
‘They’re not professionals, are they? They’re terrorists. They’re going to take control of the embassy.’
‘Right again. You are so very perceptive, aren’t you?’ This time Leeson didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I haven’t hired them. They’re enthusiastic amateurs who are patriots looking to strike a blow against Moscow imperialism. I can’t say their cause does much to excite me, but I’m being paid very well to assist them.’
‘Have you heard of Operation Nimrod?’
‘Of course,’ Leeson said.
‘In 1980 six Iranians took twenty-six hostages in the Iranian embassy in London. They had a list of demands pertaining to the autonomy of the Iranian province of Khūzestān. Obviously, those demands weren’t met and a hostage was killed. As a result, the British government ordered soldiers from the 22nd Special Air Service regiment to end the siege. They assaulted the building, killing five of the six hostage takers and c
apturing the remaining man in a battle that lasted seventeen minutes. All but one of the remaining hostages were rescued. The SAS didn’t take as much as a scratch.’
‘One of the many reasons we’re not in sunny London town for this excursion.’
‘And what about when Chechens took control of the Dubrokva Theatre in Moscow?’
‘Why don’t you just make your point, Mr Kooi?’
‘It won’t work. These things never do. Whatever demands these Chechens make won’t be realised. There’ll be a siege. It will last for a few days and then the Italians will storm the building and it will be over, and anyone who goes in there will come out in a body bag.’
