by Tom Wood
‘That’s a rather pessimistic view to take.’
‘It’s an accurate view.’
Coughlin said, ‘If you have that team, why do you need us? Why not just have them kill Prudnikov?’
‘Excellent question, Mr Coughlin,’ Leeson replied. ‘Security at the consulate isn’t likely to admit a group of Chechens while hosting an exclusive reception. It’s invitation only. Fortunately, we have one courtesy of the lovely Francesca, who by legacy of her late father is invited to such gatherings.’
‘Who is Ivan Prudnikov?’ Victor asked.
Leeson said, ‘He’s Russian intelligence.’
‘FSB or SVR?’
‘SVR.’
‘He’s the head of the SVR, isn’t he?’ Victor asked. ‘You want us to kill the chairman of Russia’s foreign intelligence service.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘That’s suicide. It would be suicide even if we had months to plan. Security at the embassy will be insane.’
‘We’ve had months to plan,’ Leeson said. ‘And we have an excellent plan thanks to Mr Hart’s tactical brilliance. Mr Kooi, you will accompany Francesca and enter the embassy ahead of the assault team. You will go under the guise of a British businessman, George Hall, using his invitation as he is unable to attend in person thanks to Francesca’s charms and an unfortunate encounter with Mr Dietrich and Mr Coughlin. And they say Rome is such a safe city. Once inside you are to have a good time: mingle, drink champagne, help yourself to the caviar. Dance with Francesca. Then, at precisely nine p.m., you are to approach Mr Prudnikov and kill him.’
‘That’s not even a plan,’ Victor said, looking from Leeson to Hart and back again. ‘Dietrich could come up with something better than that. There’s no indication in the materials as to how many bodyguards Prudnikov will have. He’ll be surrounded by SVR operatives. It will be almost impossible to get close to him without alerting his security. Unless I can get to him inside a bathroom – and there’s no way to guarantee that is possible at a specific time – then it will have to be done in the main reception area. There’ll be chaos. Extraction will be next to impossible, and even if I do get out then a hundred people will have seen my face. And how am I supposed to kill him? There’s no way of getting a gun in there. You need to delay the job by at least six weeks to develop a new plan and new preparation.’
‘That’s impossible, Mr Kooi. The party is tonight.’
‘Then you should have hired me months ago.’
‘Perhaps I can offer you an incentive.’
‘No amount of money is going to get me to partake in something so poorly conceived.’
He was arguing as himself, but nothing in Muir’s intel on Kooi suggested the Dutchman was foolish enough to agree to what Leeson was suggesting. No careful and competent professional would take on such a dangerous assignment under these circumstances. For all Victor knew the job was a bluff, yet another test set by Leeson to determine Kooi’s mentality, or perhaps his trustworthiness. If Victor agreed, maybe that would be all the evidence Leeson needed to know Victor wasn’t who he claimed to be.
But there was something in Leeson’s expression. He wasn’t staring at Victor as if to read his thoughts. He was excited. He was excited with anticipation. Not because of the job; there was something more immediate. Something that was about to happen.
Here it comes, Victor thought as he analysed the chances of making it to the door before someone could draw a weapon and use it.
‘Killing Prudnikov is going to be a lot easier than you might think,’ Leeson said. He gestured to Hart, who picked up a bag from the floor and began unzipping it. ‘All you have to do is get within twenty feet of him. You don’t even need line of sight.’
Hart removed something from the bag.
‘Mr Jaeger has kindly constructed a suitable weapon for us,’ Leeson said, and drew his SIG.
It was primarily of canvas, reinforced by leather. It had pockets and straps to keep in place the plates of explosive and the parcels of ceramic shards.
‘What the hell is that?’ Coughlin asked.
‘It’s a suicide bomber vest,’ Victor said.
Leeson pointed the gun at Victor. ‘That’s right, Mr Kooi. It’s in your size too.’
‘Then you’d better shoot me now,’ Victor said. ‘Because I’ll kill anyone who tries to put that on me.’
‘Oh, I don’t think it will come to that.’
‘Then you really are insane.’
‘What about if I give you something precious? What if I could offer you something beyond material wealth? What if I could offer you the most valuable thing of all?’
Victor remained silent. He thought about the five camp beds and the four men in the room. He thought about the white panel van and its precious cargo. He heard the big double doors open in the antechamber. Everyone else heard too. Like him, they looked in the direction of the sound and watched the open entranceway.
The fifth Chechen appeared through it. He was a little older than the others but otherwise just like them. He wore jeans and a sports jacket and moved like a civilian, but one who had known violence and was ready to know it again. He held the grip of an AK-47 in his right hand, the barrel resting against his shoulder. With his left hand he guided two people into the room.
A woman and a child.
The child was a boy. The woman’s hands were tied together with duct tape and her mouth was gagged with it.
Questions were immediately answered in Victor’s thoughts. So much he hadn’t understood now made sense.
‘Mr Kooi,’ Leeson said with a wide smile. ‘What if in return I were to offer you the lives of your wife and son?’
FIFTY-FIVE
The woman looked at Victor with the same surprise he felt, but hid. She seemed about the same age as Kooi had been, but appeared older because of acute stress and tiredness. She had blonde hair and pale skin. Her hair was greasy and uncombed and her clothes were creased and marked. Victor made her for a strong woman, mentally and emotionally robust, used to the knocks and setbacks of life, aware and cautious but afraid of little. She looked terrified.
The strip of duct tape over her mouth kept her lips sealed and prevented her from shouting out what her eyes were screaming:
He’s not the man I married.
The duct tape that bound her wrists looked clean and shiny and had few creases. The strip across her mouth was the same, and flat, with no trace of the corners curling. So Victor knew both had been applied not long ago. The state of her clothes and hair said she had been held captive for longer, but no more than two or three days. It would show in her appearance if she had been held for more than that. Unless they had given her clothes and provided her with basic means of sanitation. But the clothes fitted exactly as they were supposed to, matching and suiting her too well to have been given to her by someone who didn’t care what she looked like. She had been captive for two or three days but had only been bound recently.
The boy next to the woman was about seven, but could have easily been a small eight-year-old or big for six. Victor wasn’t sure. He didn’t know much about children. The boy wore trainers, jeans and a T-shirt with dinosaurs embossed on the front. The boy wasn’t bound and he wasn’t gagged. Like his mother’s, the boy’s hair was a mess and his clothes were dirty. He didn’t look scared. He didn’t shout out that Victor was not his father. He just stared at Victor, intent and curious.
They had been captive for two or three days but the woman had only been recently bound. Because the circumstances of their captivity had changed. The need for security had intensified. They’d been moved from one captor to another or from one prison to another. Or both. Victor remembered Hart’s arrival at the farmhouse and the white panel van with precious cargo in the back that only he had been trusted to deliver. That precious cargo being Kooi’s wife and child, kidnapped two or three days ago and transported here to the olive mill, where they had been taken from the van and held somewhere else under the guard of
the five Chechens, who had gagged and bound the woman. Because she had given them problems. Because she had tried to escape and they couldn’t hurt her. Because if she was hurt it could change the dynamic of the threat. Kooi might be too angry to comply rather than scared.
‘Is that it?’ Leeson said. ‘You’re just going to stand there? No tearful greeting? No rushing for a hug? You’re a cold man, Mr Kooi, but I didn’t think you were that cold. But just as well, because I’m afraid there isn’t time for an emotional reconciliation.’
The woman was shaking her head and mumbling behind the tape, struggling against the fifth Chechen who gripped her by the arm. Only Victor knew what she was trying to achieve. The boy stared at him, eyes quizzical and searching.
‘Let them go,’ Victor said.
Leeson said, ‘It would hardly make much sense to go through all the considerable efforts we have made to bring them here and then to release them immediately on your request, now would it?’
‘They mean nothing to me,’ Victor said.
‘Really?’ Leeson asked. ‘Lucille and Peter mean nothing to you?’
Lucille. Peter.
Muir hadn’t known about them. She hadn’t known Kooi was married. She hadn’t known he had a family. Kooi had lived alone in Amsterdam. Lucille and Peter must have lived elsewhere, outside Holland. They must have married in another country with Lucille keeping her maiden name. But it hadn’t lasted, otherwise Muir would have known about it. When the separation occurred Kooi moved back to Amsterdam, the marriage not showing up on his Dutch records.
‘That’s right,’ Victor said. ‘They mean nothing to me.’
‘They mean nothing to you, yet you pay their extortionate rent and Peter’s school fees using a Swiss bank account belonging to a shell corporation registered in Indonesia?’
Victor’s mind worked fast. Kooi had separated from his wife and walked out on his son, but supported them financially. Yet he had no contact with them – Muir would have seen the pattern of flights or calls. Peter’s T-shirt had a dinosaur design. Back in Algiers Kooi had bought a statuette: a carved wooden reptilian man. Juvenile design. Victor had thought Kooi to have strange tastes, but he’d been wrong. Kooi had bought a present for his son.
So Kooi hadn’t abandoned his family. He had stayed away from them because he operated in a dangerous world and he had been protecting them from something like this. But he’d failed.
The clicking of heels announced Francesca’s arrival before she stepped into the pressing room. She wore an A-line black dress made from crushed velvet that reached her ankles. It had a slit that opened almost to her hip. Light sparkled on the jewellery adorning her ears, wrist, fingers and neck. Her dark hair was pulled back and held up with clips. She’d never looked better.
Victor ignored her and said to Leeson, ‘What do you want?’
‘For you to do as requested. Wear the vest. Accompany Francesca to the party. There is no metal in the vest so you will have no trouble getting through security. Then simply plug in a mobile phone, stand within twenty feet of Mr Prudnikov and when the phone makes or receives a call: boom. You won’t feel a thing. In return, your family will be driven back to Andorra and they can carry on with their lives.’
‘Let them go,’ Victor said again. ‘Let them go and I’ll kill Prudnikov. I don’t need the vest.’
‘You said it was impossible.’
‘I’ll find a way. I can do it. Just let them go.’
‘I’m afraid that’s no good to me. One does not assassinate the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service if he values his own life and liberty. As you said, it’s suicide. I have no wish to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. The only way to pull off such a job is if no one believes an assassination has taken place, which they won’t if Prudnikov just happens to be one of the many unfortunate victims of a terrorist attack by Chechen nationalists. After you have blown yourself up these five fine nationalists right here will use the ensuing chaos to storm the building. In the aftermath those that matter will believe the bombing’s primary role was to give the team a means of entry. No one will ever think – nay, ever imagine – that it was an assassination. So you see, it wouldn’t work to have you kill him any other way than to blow yourself up. But don’t think of it as killing yourself, think of it as saving your family. After you’ve used the vest to kill Prudnikov, Lucille and Peter will be released without harm. Fail or deviate from the plan in even the smallest way and they will be killed. Refuse to comply and watch them die right now. But I’ll do you the kindness of letting you be the one to decide in which order they take their final breath.’
There was nothing to gain by revealing he wasn’t Kooi. He had met Leeson as Kooi and pretended since that moment to be Kooi. Denying it now would seem like desperation, the kind of desperate claim a man fearing for the lives of his loved ones might make. Or perhaps he would convince Leeson of the truth, but that would achieve nothing save his immediate death and the deaths of Kooi’s wife and child.
‘How do I know you’ll let them go if I do what you ask?’
‘You don’t,’ Leeson said, like a reasonable man might, ‘but I have no reason to kill them unless you force my hand. I assure you I have no desire to be responsible for a child’s death if it can be avoided. But if you don’t believe me they are certain to die.’
Victor looked at Francesca. ‘You’re going along with this?’
Hart laughed. A deep, malevolent mirth. ‘Going along with it? Funny, kid. Using your family was her idea.’
Francesca said, ‘I told you I didn’t need your help, Felix. I don’t really know why you thought I was so different from you. Maybe I used to be a good person long ago, but where does that ever get anyone?’
‘You want the death of a child on your conscience?’
She shook her head. ‘Of course not, but if you do what they tell you to do then I won’t have one.’
Victor turned to Coughlin, who said, ‘Don’t even bother, okay? Just do your job and I’ll do mine.’
Dietrich laughed. ‘Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person, your majesty.’
Leeson held up his hands. ‘Enough, children. We’re all professionals here, so let’s all behave with some professionalism. Mr Kooi has a simple job to do, and if you do it Lucille and Peter can go back to their lives knowing you really did love them. Peter can go back to school and play with his friends and grow up and chase girls and have a family himself one day. He’ll always know what his father did for him.’
Peter was still staring at Victor with the same quizzical gaze. Not frightened or overwhelmed with emotion. But curious. Then Victor understood.
The boy didn’t know his father. He didn’t know Kooi. He didn’t tell his captors the truth because he didn’t know the truth. His parents must have split long enough ago that the boy couldn’t picture his father’s face.
He thought Victor was his father.
Leeson squatted down on his haunches before the little boy. ‘They say if you come down to their level so you can look them in the eye they’ll trust you.’ Leeson brushed the shoulder of the kid’s T-shirt. ‘Do you trust me, Peter?’
The boy called Peter didn’t answer.
‘Maybe I should start hurting him now. Would that encourage your cooperation? I wonder how loud he would scream if I cut off his thumb?’
‘Let them go,’ Victor said.
‘Kill Prudnikov and they’ll be released,’ Leeson said. ‘There is nothing more to discuss. All I need from you is your agreement. Otherwise, by proxy you will give me your consent to have the ones you love butchered.’
Victor looked around. Dietrich, Coughlin and Hart surrounded him in a loose circle. Leeson and Francesca stood between him and Kooi’s family. Five Chechens stood at the periphery of the room. He had a single advantage: they thought the woman and the boy really were his family whom he supported and protected. Leeson believed they were Victor’s priority. The men in the room were positioned to stop him try
ing to kill Leeson or rescue the captives. They weren’t concerned about Victor escaping because they didn’t consider he would want to.
‘You’re probably wondering why this is happening to you,’ Leeson said. ‘Well, quite simply, Mr Kooi, reliable suicide bombers aren’t that easy to come across, and those that are reliable aren’t exactly the kind of people who can get into a Russian embassy and in range of a specific target. So it had to be a professional. You weren’t the only candidate, but you were so very calm when we met in Budapest, which we need you to be in that embassy, and of course you have such a lovely family to use as leverage. You need to make a decision, Mr Kooi. Right now. You’re going to die. There’s nothing you can do to stop that. But you don’t have time to grieve for yourself because you need to answer a question. You need to ask yourself whether you would rather die alongside your family or whether you’ll die to save them.’
