by Andy McNab
‘He would have been conscripted anyway to fight in Afghanistan, so why not get a university education from the army as well as fight for them? It meant signing up for five years, but then he’d be free of it. He wanted to become a teacher. But to do that he first had to become a soldier.’
‘What was he? An engineer, an officer?’
‘No, he was nothing special. Just a normal infantry soldier. One of the thousands our government sent to be slaughtered out there.’
‘I had a friend, a British soldier. He’s just been killed in Afghanistan.’
‘Did you love him?’
I had to think about that one. ‘There were four of us who were close – we’d done a lot together. I’m the only one left now. You know what? I think I cared for all three of them. I miss them very much.’
She looked away. Her tear-stained cheeks glistened in the glow of a street-lamp.
I’d surprised myself talking about Tenny, Dex and Red Ken like that. I decided to cut away before it happened again. I didn’t like not being in control. ‘So, how much older than you was Grisha when you met? Was he old-enough-to-be-your-dad sort of old?’
‘No, no.’ She gave a giggle, which surprised her even more than it surprised me. ‘We’d started dating when I was just sixteen – a schoolgirl. He was almost nineteen. Like I said, my father did not approve of the relationship. But by then my father did not approve of anything much.’
She paused.
‘He was an alcoholic. The Soviet system killed his love of life. He worked in a factory that made machine tools. He hated it. My mother was scared of him. I was his only child. He wanted me to make something of my life, and study, study, study, he said, was the only way to achieve it. Grisha and I had to see each other in secret. Thank God he had a motorbike, a Ural, so we could escape every so often for a few hours on our own.’
For a second she seemed lost. ‘When he joined the army Grisha went away for almost a year. In that time I saw him only once. He didn’t talk about his training, but I could see that it had affected him deeply. It was only years later, through my work, that I found out what they do to recruits. Systematic abuse. Punishments have nothing to do with your performance. If the officers and the NCOs in charge are having a bad day, they beat you. If they are bored, they beat you. When Grisha came home that summer, he was a changed person. He didn’t want to talk about the army, just kept telling me that it wouldn’t be long – another four years – and then he’d be free of it. I had just turned eighteen so we decided to hand in our application.’
‘For what?’
‘To get married. Russians do not have engagements and rings. We just apply to ZAGS, the department of registration. They furnish a date when you can marry.’
The rain was falling harder now. She unwrapped the scarf from her neck and tied it round her head. ‘It was stupid – I was so young – but I wanted to let him know that I would wait for him. I couldn’t tell my father. But Semyon was very supportive. He became like a father to me, too. It was he who bought the Ural, a beat-up old thing from the Great Patriotic War, and restored it for Grisha. The only times I saw Grisha happy that summer – his old self – was when he and his father worked on that bike and when we were out riding on it.’
I didn’t say it, but Grisha was lucky to have had her – and Semyon. I’d never had a dad who cared enough about me to buy me a skateboard, let alone restore a motorbike.
‘We bought the rings…’ She gently played with hers, twisting it around her finger. ‘But the wedding never happened. He was sent to Afghanistan before ZAGS would give us a date…’
Her tears returned, and I thought about the three I’d lost. I’d never dwelt on how much those fuckers meant to me. It wasn’t as if we’d lived in each other’s pockets but just being with them again, even fleetingly, had made me feel good. They were my family, or as close as I was ever likely to get.
‘Anna, you still have family. There is still someone who…’
Ahead of us, lit by a flickering street-lamp, was a bus shelter. Anna stepped into it and I followed. The shelter stank of the things bus stops normally stink of. The rain drummed on the roof.
She smiled sadly and removed her scarf as I reached out and touched the ragged bruise on her neck.
An image filled my mind – of a twenty-one-year-old kid lying on a mortuary slab with the back of his head removed by a tumbling missile fragment. ‘So Semyon works for M3C. He was working in one of the companies sucked up by Brin? Weapons that Semyon had helped to build killed his son?’
She gave a shallow nod. ‘That’s why Semyon and I do what we do.’ She checked her watch. ‘Come, time to go and see him.’
Her wheelie-case bounced behind her as we carried on towards the station in silence. I could see the lights of the metro up ahead. I’d been keeping one eye on it. In the couple of minutes since I’d last looked, the crowd outside had almost doubled in size. Anna had noticed it too. In the harsh light of the entrance, over the heads of the people waiting to get in, I could see two grey peaked caps. Police were checking everyone returning from the flea-market as they passed through the turnstiles.
‘What’s going on?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe they are searching for drugs. It happens sometimes…’
‘Let’s walk to another station, yeah?’
We edged around the back of the crowd and onto a main drag.
At the time Grisha was killed, everything was still for sale. Now it was more organized, and that made it more dangerous. It was easy to see why she was a woman with a mission.
But I had one too.
And if Semyon had found out where they were staying in the city, I could be done and out of here by the morning.
100
2348 hrs
Grey apartment blocks loomed either side of us. We kept in their shadows while holding the trigger on Semyon’s equally drab concrete building. Lights pushed through net curtains on two of the five windows that made up his second-floor flat.
An old diesel truck, a product of some ancient Soviet factory, belched fumes as it trundled past. We were about eight K away from the Gucci and Prada stores off Red Square. The tarmac was cracked and potholed. Areas of hard-packed mud that had once been turf were covered with a layer of dogshit and rubbish.
‘It’s a company apartment, Jim. He has done very well. The higher he has gone, the more information he has been able to discover.’ Anna told me this was a middle-class area, but it was like the old USSR had never gone away. Communism had produced generations that couldn’t have cared less about public areas. Why should they? The Party told them they’d take care of everything. Anything the other side of their own front door meant nothing to them. They weren’t even allowed to feel any responsibility for it.
‘Do you two have any tell-tales? You know – a sign to show it’s OK to go up?’
‘Yes – it’s always at night, so he has the kitchen light on, the one to the far right.’
I checked again to see if anyone else was watching his windows. ‘You sure that’s the only way in and out?’
‘Yes, Jim, it’s an apartment block. Just the one entrance and exit. And before you ask, those are the only windows. He has none facing the back of the building.’
She was getting a little bit crisp, but so what? Questions like these kept you alive.
‘He got a car? You see his car out here?’
‘No. He uses Grisha’s motorbike. It will be in the garage.’
She dug about in her pocket and replaced the battery. ‘Let me call him.’ She started pressing away.
‘How come you use a mobile if you two need to be so disconnected?’
‘It’s a pay-as-you-go. We both bought them for cash and only use them between us.’ She closed down the mobile. ‘His isn’t on.’
I took a breath and started to move.
‘No, Jim, it’s OK. He often forgets. He is getting old, that’s all. Come, we’ll check if his bike is there. Will that make you happy
?’
I took her arm and we walked down an alleyway. The long, one-level strip of concertina garage doors ahead was covered with graffiti.
She led me to one about two-thirds of the way down, stood on tiptoe and pulled out a piece of broken concrete to retrieve a key. We lifted the door together. The smell of petrol and oily rags hit my nostrils.
Once inside and the door was down again she hit the power. A dull orange bulb hanging from a dodgy wire sparked up in the middle of the ceiling. Anna walked over to the bike. As she ran her hand over the metal it was as if her memories returned.
I knew about Urals. I’d blown a few up in Afghanistan with our IEDs. They were big, clunky pieces of Soviet engineering, a little underpowered but solid, and ideal over rough terrain, which was why the Red Army had bought them in their tens of thousands. This one still had its bullet-shaped sidecar fixed on the right-hand side, and was a mass of immaculate, gleaming chrome and black gloss – Semyon’s mobile shrine to his dead son.
Anna walked around the machine, reliving old times. ‘I come here by myself sometimes… birthdays, anniversaries…’
I felt the working parts while she sat in an old cane chair pouring her heart out. They were warm. Semyon had been using the Ural less than an hour ago.
‘I know this is stupid, but we called this old thing “Cuckoo”, after a song we loved. It was a hit when we met. Everyone used to sing it and…’ She stared into the sidecar for a few more seconds, before reluctantly getting up. We closed down the garage and headed for the apartment.
101
We walked into the lobby through a set of wooden doors with Victorian-wired glass panels. The harsh white light from the overhead fluorescents did the cleaners no favours. Hastily swished mop marks showed as plain as day across the black marble floor.
Sweet, flowery disinfectant did battle with the stench of boiled cabbage. There was no lift, so we climbed the stairs to the first floor. Anna pointed down the corridor. I counted four doors. ‘Last one on the right.’
I signalled to her to carry her wheelie. It was making too much noise.
None of the doors had a bell or a knocker. They didn’t even have numbers. Each was just a plain sheet of veneered plywood with a fake brass knob, dulled from decades of use.
We reached Semyon’s apartment. Anna’s hand was poised to rap against the veneer. I heard a dull thud inside and knew exactly what it was. I pushed Anna clear as the lock turned.
I rammed my full weight against the opening door. It only travelled a foot. I burst through to see the body behind it stumbling back into the hallway. Tattoo’s mate staggered to his feet, one hand tugging his leather jacket away from his waist. I focused on the other and jumped on him, pinning him to the floor. I grabbed his fingers a nanosecond before they could make contact with the pistol-grip in his waistband. His cologne matched the building’s disinfectant. I felt my eyes water and my throat constrict. With him in the room, the boiled cabbage didn’t stand a chance.
He bucked and kicked, trying to head-butt me off him. His stubble rasped at my neck and face.
I pushed my hands down on his, determined to keep the weapon where it was. My knuckles sank into his stomach. I felt the hammer of the revolver and found my way to its grip. We rolled about on the carpet, each scrabbling for some kind of advantage. His fist thumped into the side of my head. I tried to sink my teeth into his face or neck to cause him enough pain to disorient him.
I thrust my right hand between the weapon and his skin, searching for the trigger. At the precise moment my middle finger found the guard he raised his knee to push me away. I used the distance between us to jab my finger onto the trigger.
There was a dull thud.
The suppressed barrel put a round into his lower gut, bollocks, cock or leg. I didn’t know which and didn’t much care. I shoved my left hand over his mouth to muffle the scream.
I suddenly had enough space to draw down the weapon. I jammed the long fat barrel against his head and fired again.
I rolled off his corpse and allowed myself a couple of deep breaths before moving on. I knew there wasn’t time for more. ‘Anna?’ I got up and closed the front door.
Low-level bookcases ran the length of the corridor. Books and magazines lay strewn across the floor. The brown, swirly-patterned carpet at the entrance to the living room was wet with blood. Anna knelt, sobbing, beside Semyon’s body. He lay half in, half out of the doorway, still in his raincoat and scarf. He’d thrown up his right arm in a vain attempt to protect himself. He must have known what was coming. There was no mistaking the exit wound on the left side of his forehead, slap in the middle of his frontal lobe. It wasn’t the only one. His left arm and both legs were stained crimson where he had taken rounds.
I checked the weapon. The chamber was empty. I ran my hands over the second loadie’s body for spares. He was carrying no extra ammunition. I guess he must have brought just enough to torture and kill an old man.
I ran into the kitchen and grabbed a bread knife. Two sets of bike gear lay on the floor, along with the rest of the room’s contents. They were old waxies, 1980s-style jackets. The pockets had been turned out.
The kettle had boiled dry on the stove. Semyon must have put it on as soon as he came in. The loadie had been waiting for him, or maybe he’d just knocked on the door. Semyon had known we were due any minute.
If anybody else had been here, they’d have done their stuff by now. All the same, I had to make sure. I cleared the two bedrooms, living room and bathroom. They’d all been ransacked. Drawers had been emptied, stuff torn apart – even in Grisha’s room, another shrine, still with his teenage football teams and pop-star posters on the wall.
I checked the loadie’s pockets and pulled off his fashionably pointed shoes. I couldn’t stop thinking about Red Ken lying on the tarmac, having taken a mag from this man. It made me feel good that the front of the bastard’s head now looked like Semyon’s. I just wished I’d been able to cause him the same amount of pain.
He had nothing on him at all. He’d come to the job sterile, and there was no sign of whatever he’d hoped to find in Semyon’s apartment.
The old boy must have kept whatever he was going to tell us in his head. That was why he’d been tortured. The leg wounds were kneecappings. The one in his arm had gone through his elbow. The grey woollen scarf that hung loosely round his neck was soaked with saliva. The loadie must have shoved it against his mouth to muffle the screams as he pumped in another round.
There was more blood on the living-room sofa and two or three separate trails across the floor. Semyon had been one hell of a guy: he must have used every ounce of his dwindling strength trying to crawl into the hallway and warn us. The loadie had head-jobbed him on his way to the front door.
Semyon had probably been pinged at M3C as he’d tried to find out where the targets were staying – or to get details of tomorrow’s test firing. He must have held out and said jack shit. The loadie had decided to sit tight and wait for us to arrive.
Anna’s car was now a no-no. They’d see us coming a mile off.
I snatched the jackets, leggings, gloves and helmets off the kitchen floor. The keys were by the cooker.
I went back to Anna. Her sobs were turning into a wail and it was getting far too loud. I grabbed her under the arm and pulled. ‘There’s nothing we can do for him.’
‘No, not yet…’ She stroked what was left of his head.
‘Anna.’ I bent down and took her face in my hands, trying to get eye contact. ‘Anna, I need you to get me to the proving ground.’
She turned and grabbed me. She pulled me into a desperate hug, sobbing into my shoulder. I held her for a while, stroking her hair, comforting her. I knew it didn’t mean anything. She was just clinging to the wreckage. The muffled sobs continued as I gently prised her away from me. ‘Anna, you can’t help him here.’
She nodded slowly and her body sagged. Her arms fell away from me.
I helped her to her feet and w
e both stood there, knowing there was nothing we could do for Semyon but not wanting to leave him untended. I looked again at his head wound, the outstretched arm. My eyes were drawn to the magazine beneath his pointing hand.
I suddenly realized what he’d been trying to do.
He hadn’t crawled into the corridor to warn us, or thrown out his arm in a last vain attempt to protect himself. He’d been giving us another kind of message.
The magazine cover shot was a group photo, a row of suits in front of a shiny new glass building. I picked it up and jammed it into the bike jacket. I’d try to make sense of it later. Right now we had to get as far away from here as possible. ‘Let’s go.’
I grabbed her case under my arm and closed the front door behind us.
102
Friday, 8 May
0053 hrs
We drove along the not-so-deserted streets. Anna was riding. I was in the sidecar. She knew the bike and she knew the city. I couldn’t stop thinking about Semyon. I knew I should cut away – I’d always managed to do that in the past. Sometimes my survival had depended on it. Sometimes I’d just used it as an excuse not to look at myself too carefully in the mirror. Whatever, it wasn’t working any more.
I finally managed to grip myself. Even if I did know why he’d got zapped, it didn’t change anything. I still had no control over what Altun and Brin and the Taliban did or didn’t know. The most important thing was that they didn’t have us. I was still moving on. I still had a job to do. I still had my mission.
After ten minutes we were a good tactical bound away from the flat. I tapped her leg and pointed down a side-street. Two or three clapped-out cars parked in front of a line of locked-up Spar-type shops were intermittently floodlit by a flashing neon bar sign. She pulled in and stopped and I passed her the magazine.
