by Chris Ryan
The padlock on the double doors to the building was nothing more than a gesture and covered in ginger-coloured rust. Gardner targeted it with the butt of the Glock 17 9mm pistol he’d retained from the Presevo Valley. Had a full clip, seventeen rounds, felt fucking good to be going in armed. A single swing followed by a satisfying clank and the padlock broke loose. He gave the metal door a tug. It gave way without a fight.
This is fucking easy, he thought.
Too easy.
He found himself facing a huge room some forty metres wide and fourteen high. It was maybe sixty metres long, but so dark inside that he could make out less than nothing at the far end. Metal hooks on a looping rail system hung from the ceiling, spaced at eight-metre intervals. The tips of each hook were coated in dried blood from where slabs of cow and pig meat had once hung. Gardner could taste pig fat in the air. In between the rails were long, thin pipes. Lightbulbs dangled from the pipes. They were all dead.
Gardner took a step inside. Needles of cold air pricked his skin and bored down all the way to his bones. He shivered and looked at his feet. The ground was covered in a generation of caked blood and cow shit mixed into an dried, oily-brown paste. I’m in what used to be the meat-processing facility, he thought. Now it was barren.
Except when he looked up, he saw that it wasn’t.
In roughly the middle of the room he made out a pair of blue lights fixed to the overhead pipes, glowing softly. The light Gardner had seen outside. They spotlighted something on the floor below. A silhouette of a standing man. Gardner took a few steps deeper into the room and, still some twenty-five metres away, the lights picked out the features on the silhouette’s face.
The man’s face was pale as a pint of milk, and he had wide, arctic-blue eyes that bulged in their socket. His face displayed the hungry grin of a guy at a dog fight.
‘You must be the one with the pretty girlfriend,’ he called out.
Fucking Sotov, Gardner realized.
‘Where is she?’
‘I was quite disappointed to learn you didn’t die in the fire in Belgrade,’ Sotov said. ‘But then I always believe in looking on the bright side. And the bright side is – now I get to kill you myself.’
Gardner’s right hand gripped the Glock 17. He felt the spring pressure on the trigger mechanism.
‘It’s Aimée, isn’t it? A nice name. And a very attractive face, to go with it, you know.’ His lower lip jutted out in agreement. ‘A good choice, if I may say so.’
‘If you’ve fucking hurt her, I swear—’
‘Please, spare me your machismo.’ Sotov waved a hand dismissively. ‘Anyway you should try to forget her, my friend. You have far more important things to worry about.’
The sound of boots scraping against the floor made Gardner spin round. He’d been half-expecting an ambush. Two figures were powering towards him from the doorway. T-shirts two sizes too small or biceps two sizes too big, he couldn’t quite decide. Eyes grey and blank as rivets nailed into their sockets. The guy on the left had a scar that ran from his upper lip to his eye. The other one had a chinstrap goatee and plasticky skin. Serious-looking, probably ex-Spetsnaz.
And both were packing weapons. Scarface wielded an aluminium baseball bat. Goatee had a Remington Model 870 pump-action shotgun, the barrel sawn down from half a metre to a quarter. Scarface charged ahead of his mate. The tip of the bat was ten metres from Gardner, Scarface storming forward, angling his shoulder muscles, the bat in a two-handed grip. Winding up for a powerful swing.
Seven metres.
The Glock 17 was by Gardner’s side. The average human running speed is about four metres per second and he figured Scarface’s bulky frame put him a little bit slower than that. So he had just over two seconds to react. Enough time to raise the Glock, but not to aim his shot. By the time he’d centred his sights, Gardner’s head would be winging its way to Beijing.
Five metres, and he had his counterattack ready.
At four metres Scarface locked his elbows and flexed his forearms and the bat came crashing down, then horizontally in a swiping manoeuvre. Gardner observed its arc unfolding. Less than a second till it connected with his jaw.
Scarface is a big fucker, Gardner thought. Big – and slow. He had signposted his attack, and Gardner was going to make him pay.
Midway through the guy’s swing, with the bat’s sweet spot an arm’s length from his skull, Gardner dropped his shoulders, bent forward and tucked his chin tight to the base of his neck so that his ears were level with his shoulder blades. He felt the hairs on the back of his head flutter as the bat breezed millimetres overhead.
A half-second and the bat completed its arc. Gardner’s eyes centred on Scarface’s feet. They were lurching to the left, thrown off balance by the momentum of the swing. One second, maybe two, Gardner told himself. That’s all you’ve got.
It’s all I need.
Now he sprang up like a jack-in-the-box, launched himself at Scarface. He wrapped his left arm around the guy’s head and pulled it tight against his chest. Scarface was caught unawares; he still had both hands clasped around the handle and couldn’t free himself from the headlock. Gardner raised the Glock 17. Drove the muzzle into Scarface’s left ear. The big guy saw what was coming and ditched the bat. Too little too fucking late. Gardner depressed the trigger. No safety switch on the Glock. It used a triple integrated safety mechanism. The mechanism was automatically deactivated when the right pressure was applied to the trigger.
Gardner applied the pressure. The trigger clicked.
A bright flash followed by a hollow ca-rack bouncing off the factory walls. Scarface howled. His ear was blackened with burn marks from the discharge. Gardner felt blood and brain drenching his left arm. He had to engage all his core and leg muscles to hold Scarface up. Gardner figured he weighed north of twenty stone. But he fought to keep him vertical, because ten metres away Goatee was targeting him with the sawn-off Remington.
The shotgun’s muzzle roared. Scarface’s body spasmed, the 12-gauge cartridge slamming into his back with such force that Gardner nearly toppled over. His calf muscles burned with the effort. As he fought to regain his balance, blood slopped out of Scarface’s lower back and drip-dripped to the floor. Past the dead guy’s shoulder Gardner spotted Goatee’s left arm sliding the tube magazine beneath the barrel and unloading one, two, three, four rounds of 12-gauge ammo. Each round tore lumps out of Scarface’s back and skull. Gardner was thankful that Scarface was so fucking big. He absorbed each bullet like a HESCO block.
On the fifth round, as he grew accustomed to absorbing the shock of the blasts, Gardner managed to nudge the Glock over Scarface’s shoulder and direct it at Goatee. He put down three rounds in quick succession. Tap-tap-tap. On the first shot Goatee howled and dropped the shotgun. Blood squirted out of his bulging forearm. On the second shot he pawed at the gaping hole torn into his cheek, bits of his teeth blown out of the cavity. Then the third dropped him like a bomb over Baghdad.
Gardner let go of Scarface. Then he spun around, Glock level with his shoulders, primed to finish Sotov. His finger was halfway depressed on the trigger.
Sotov wasn’t there.
Gardner became dimly aware of a door at the southern wall. He paced towards it. Twenty metres off he saw it was a metal thing. The door was ajar.
Then he heard the voice. Muffled and frantic. Like someone being smothered with a pillow. Gardner broke into a jog. Scarface’s blood ran down his left arm and onto his prosthetic hand. Ten metres to the door and the scream became even more high-pitched. A woman’s voice.
Gardner aimed a boot at the rusted lock and kicked it hard. It smashed apart and the door buckled on its hinges and swung open. A battery of ceiling panel lights glared at him. He scrunched up his eyes, shielded his face and scoped his surroundings. He was in some kind of a storage room. Metal shelf units ran for twenty metres to the other end of the room, and between them a column of storage boxes, more than thirty in total. On the shelves were s
tacks of computers and hard disks.
Lying amid the boxes was Aimée.
She was bound at the ankles and wrists with nylon cord. A gag was tied around her mouth. The gag was tight; it dug deep into the corners of her mouth. Aimée’s eyes widened at the sight of Gardner. She shook her head furiously. She was drenched in sweat. He ran his eyes over her body for injuries. No bloodstains on her shirt or jeans.
Gardner knelt beside Aimée and unknotted the gag.
‘It’s a trap,’ she gasped.
Her eyes were fixed at a spot beyond Gardner’s left shoulder. He followed her gaze and saw a small black box the size of a webcam at waist height on the left shelf. A red laser beam projected from the black eye of the box. It cut a path across the room – until it hit Gardner’s left shoulder.
A network of wires ran out of the box and coiled up the wall and along the length of the ceiling. At the far end they descended into bulky plastic packets, each the size of a brick and off-white in colour, fixed to the walls. C4 plastique, Gardner realized.
Factory’s primed with enough of the stuff to flatten a fucking village.
The dread set in a fraction of a second later.
Gardner hoisted Aimée to her feet. She grabbed his shoulders. Her soft fingertips pressed against his muscles and sparked up something warm inside the cave of his chest. The warmth trickled down to his stomach. He blocked it out.
‘We have to get out of here,’ he said.
Aimée was on her feet, hesitating.
‘Right the fuck now!’
In Gardner’s experience sensor-trigged explosives had a time delay of around twelve seconds from the shorting of the circuit to the ignition of the primary detonator. Gardner put them at ninety metres from the factory doors.
‘Wait,’ Aimée said. She lunged at the shelf on the right and scooped up an Apple MacBook Pro laptop and two USB flash drives, each attached to a loop of cord.
‘We don’t have time!’
‘That’s it,’ she said, putting the loops over her head like a couple of necklaces. Gardner was already at the door leading into the processing room. He seized her hand and hauled her through the doorway, her feet lifting half an inch off the ground. Eight seconds.
They sprinted down the meat-processing room, Gardner’s eyes unsettled by the shift from light to dark. He stumbled once, twice; regained his balance. Thirty metres from the door, he figured they had four seconds at a push. Aimée was straggling behind him. Her breathing had more ups and downs in it than a Wall Street stock graph. Ten metres from the door and her breathing stopped altogether. Gardner turned. Aimée had tripped up. He grabbed her. Three seconds.
Pushed Aimée through the doors.
Two seconds.
‘The laptop!’ she shouted.
One.
Gardner burst through the opening. He had the laptop in his right hand. He felt the ground buckle and grind. A rush of hot wind whipped his back, a wind that bent metal and blasted mortar and broke glass, the mass of it swirling out from the epicentre, unstoppable. Debris rained over him. He was three metres outside the building, then five. Aimée was still running ahead. He increased his running speed, fighting hard not to lose his balance, and reached Aimée as she pushed through the chain-link gates. Behind them, the factory was crumbling, great fists of smoke pounding on its roof.
‘I thought… ’ – Aimée’s hands were on her knees – ‘you were dead.’
Gardner wiped smoke from his eyes. ‘You OK?’
Aimée nodded.
‘Come on,’ he said, holding out his hand, ‘it’s not safe here.’
Not with Sotov still on the loose.
4
2352 hours.
They fled down Iera Odos and hailed a taxi. Gardner told the driver to take them to any hotel where they could get a room at a quarter to midnight. The driver was slow and had a lazy manner. Gardner told him to step on it. He ferried them down the road, fire engines and police cars speeding down the opposite lane. Then he took a left at the end of the road and after six hundred metres a right at the Acropolis. Another six hundred south and they came to the Palace Hotel on Constitution Square.
The receptionist was a guy in his forties with a permanently arched left eyebrow. One look at Gardner and Aimée, head to toe in dust, blood and bruises, and the right eyebrow was soon challenging the left for top spot. But he said nothing as Gardner parted with the better part of €400, cash, for one of the better rooms, then slipped another €100 into the receptionist’s breast pocket.
‘Anyone asks after us – you don’t have to lie,’ he said. ‘Just call our room and give us a warning.’
The receptionist thought about it for a long second. His eyes drifted to his breast pocket. Drifted to Gardner’s chest. He nodded.
The room was luxurious in the old European style. King-size bed with Egyptian silk covers, an antique wooden dresser, overhead fan and a view overlooking a courtyard. In other circumstances Gardner would have been tempted to jump Aimée’s bones. But now he was curious about the items she’d insisted on recovering from the factory. Aimée paced over to the dresser, cleared away the welcome packs and tourist maps and fired up the MacBook Pro. Removing the flash drives from around her neck, she inserted them in the slots on the side of the laptop. Gardner went into the bathroom. He ran the taps and scrubbed off Scarface’s blood.
‘Mind telling me what’s on the memory sticks?’ he called from the bathroom. No answer. He sloshed more cold water over his face. Wiped his hands and face with a towel soft as a Aimée’s arse.
‘Aimée?’
‘I don’t know.’
He stepped back into the bedroom. A knock at the door. He frowned at Aimée, gestured for her to stay put. The Glock was lying on the bed. Gardner grabbed it and slipped it behind his back. He peered through the spyhole. Spied a Greek guy in his late fifties to early sixties, dressed in a butler’s outfit. Not the assassin type. He rested his hands on a dining tray in front of him. The old man looked dog-tired.
Gardner opened the door.
‘Wine and canapés,’ said the butler, wheeling the trolley in, Gardner rotating so that the Glock remained hidden from view. ‘Compliments of the hotel.’
The butler parked the trolley in the centre of the room. Tucking the Glock into the waistband of his combats, Gardner gave the butler a €10 tip. Guy didn’t even bother to smile or say thanks as he left.
‘Our lucky night,’ Gardner said.
Aimée returned to the MacBook. She double-clicked on the flash drive’s icon and a series of twelve folders displayed. They seemed to be in some kind of sequence. The first folder was labelled ML_0001, the second ML_0002, and so on, with the last folder labelled ML_0012.
‘I overhead Sotov talking on the phone,’ Aimée explained. ‘He shouted for a long time. When the call was over he ordered his men to rig explosives up to the whole building. I remember him saying to one of the men, “Nothing must survive.” Then he looked at me with this… this grin on his face. “That includes you,” he said.’ Aimée turned back to the screen.
Gardner turned to the canapés. The tray was filled with asparagus spears layered with Parma ham, smoked salmon roulades and mozzarella, cherry tomato and basil skewers. He poured two glasses of Katnook Estate 2002. He gulped some of the fruity red as Aimée opened the first folder.
It held several Word documents. Gardner leaned in while Aimée opened the first file.
Reams of seemingly random characters ran across the screen. Like hieroglyphics. Aimée scrolled down. Two pages in, the gibberish turned into some kind of a script. Gardner ran his eyes down the text. It was in Cyrillic.
‘Transcripts of mobile-phone conversations,’ Aimée said. She pointed to a row of numbers above the first line of dialogue. ‘This is the encrypted GPRS data being transmitted from the mobile to the carrier.’ Gardner studied the numbers.
‘They all begin with a seven,’ he said.
‘The international dialling code for Russia,’ Aim
ée said.
‘Do you speak Russian?’
She feigned surprise. ‘I investigate the mafya. In Serbia. Both of which have strong links to Russia. Seriously, what do you think?’
Shrugging, he said, ‘Just asking.’
‘I need a few minutes to read through and get my head around what we’re looking at.’
Gardner left Aimée to it. He munched on a couple more canapés and decided that finger food was fucking overrated. The grub hadn’t filled a divot, let alone the hole, in his stomach. He ditched the wine glass and scoped the courtyard. It looked quiet outside. More than quiet: dead. The air was hot, but a mild breeze blew through the cypresses lining the courtyard. His mind wandered back to Aimée and the way their breaths mixed in the warm space between her lips and his. He liked the thought.
‘OK,’ Aimée said, her breath shaking. ‘I think I got it.’
Gardner stared away from the window. ‘What does it say?’
‘It’s a conversation between two men. One of them is Aleksandr Sotov—’
‘The mafya guy.’
‘The other’s Maxim Ledinsky.’ Seeing Gardner’s blank expression, she went on, ‘Ledinsky heads up the Military Counterintelligence office at the FSB.’
Gardner sat down on the edge of the bed. His muscles ached for a time-out. FSB. Federal Security Services in Russia. Shit was getting deep. ‘What are they talking about?’
Aimée scanned the lines again, mouthing strange words. ‘They’re discussing the delivery of a package. Here, this conversation is from three weeks ago. Ledinsky says, “Everything is under control, but it will have to be a suitcase device rather than something bigger.” Sotov says, “Why? The Iranians expect a full-sized delivery. We give them something this small, they’ll think we’re fobbing them off.” Ledinsky says, “If something that big goes missing, it makes us all look stupid. A suitcase device – anyone can lose one of those. Besides, Reza will be glad just to get his hands on anything.”’ Aimée scrolled down.
‘They’re talking about the nuke,’ Gardner said. ‘Mahmoud Reza was the army guy trying to smuggle the suitcase bomb across the border to Iran.’ He rubbed his brow. ‘Who is this Ledinsky guy again? FSB?’
