by Andy McNab
‘D’you have a mobile – you know, a phone?’
Rose shook her head and gave a terrified squeak: ‘iPod.’
‘Give it to me, quickly.’
He took it, then removed his hands from their shoulders and fished out his own mobile. Slipping it out of its sock, he brought up voice record on the iPod and yelled, ‘Gavin Marks. This is for Sergeant Gavin Marks. Get this information to him!’
He carried on at the same volume, telling Gavin what he’d seen, heard and felt. Any int he could think of that might help. ‘And the Yankees are lined up against the windows, so you can’t make explosive entry on the glass . . .’
He then paired the iPod with his mobile and transferred the X-ray photos he’d taken through the windows.
The firing stopped. The silence was almost deafening.
‘Pretty soon – when I say – you two will have to go on without me. I’ll stay right here and make sure the bad guys don’t follow.’ He pointed behind him. ‘It isn’t that far. You must keep running all the way to the end of the tunnel, and when you get there, some men, some policemen, will be waiting to help you. It’s all right,’ he said, seeing terror on Daniel’s face. ‘They’ll take care of you. And, Rose, you must take your iPod to a man called Gavin right away. Nobody else. Ask for Gavin Marks, the soldier. Do you understand?’
The firing kicked off again. A new 200-round belt of linked 7.62 had been loaded. Tom had to start shouting once more. ‘Both of you say it: Gavin Marks, the soldier.’
‘Gavin Marks, the soldier,’ they chorused.
Tom didn’t say he wanted them both to memorize the words in case one of them didn’t make it.
The crazy fireworks display stopped again. Tom waited. In his mind’s eye, he visualized lifting the top cover of the machine-gun, placing the first four rounds of link into the feed tray, slamming down the top and cocking the weapon. He waited a few seconds more. It was now or never.
Tom handed the iPod back to Rose. ‘Go!’ he said. ‘Run as fast as you can. Go – go – go – go!’
As they disappeared into the darkness, Tom felt for the steel ladder and started scrambling up it, one hand held above his head. When it hit the cold metal of the hatch, he felt around the edge of its frame until he found two locking handles.
The gun kicked off once more. He wasn’t going to have the luxury of checking the virgin ground before he entered it. He wrenched open the handles and hauled himself up into a warmer and better-lit world. He closed the hatch as yet another round ricocheted off its underside.
71
HAUNTED BY IMAGES of what was happening to Tom and the children, Delphine choked back tears as she listened to the bullets blasting through the darkness. She fought to erase the horror from her mind. And failed. Her head twitched with every burst.
The old man lay dead beside her, along with his dreams of one more summer of love. His flesh no longer twitched from the shock of the two ceramic rounds that had torn apart the back of his head, but the blood still smeared the window where his face had been pressed against the glass. Giselle would never see her red roses. They would now just wither and die on the table by his seat.
Laszlo had switched off the mic. He wanted to make Woolf and the rest of them sweat. They, too, would be haunted by the memory of the gunfire. He was bored by Woolf’s constant attempts to play for time. He caught Delphine’s eye as he turned over the old man’s body with his boot. ‘It was almost a mercy killing,’ he said. ‘The old fool was shaking so much he nearly made me miss.’
‘Why did you not kill the woman too?’ Sambor goaded. ‘Has living in London made you soft?’
Laszlo liked it when his brother was happy. Sambor had become his responsibility now their parents were gone. South Ossetian and Russian troops might finally have won the 2008 war, but victory had come too late for their parents. Along with the rest of the elderly, the women and the children of their village, they had been massacred as the Georgians withdrew. It must have been so easy: their menfolk were all away at the front.
‘You’re a good man, Sambor.’ Laszlo held his brother’s massive head in his hands. ‘But you need to leave the strategic thinking to me.’ Then he smiled gently and hugged him, as he remembered the frenzied search in the burned-out ruin of their parents’ home, and their discovery of the two charred bodies.
Both boys had taken the deaths very badly. They had sworn vengeance against their murderous enemy. But while Laszlo could wait and plot his retaliation with infinite care, Sambor had had to lash out immediately. He had led the Black Bears on a one-night killing spree that would remain in Georgian memory for generations.
Laszlo had left Sambor in command as he’d linked up with his Russian allies and guided them to their final attack. He had had no objection to the slaughter. He had spent years killing ethnic Georgians. But now that they were so close to victory, such clumsiness had made the South Ossetians appear the aggressor, not the aggrieved. It had angered him – and saddened him too. Laszlo knew he should have comforted Sambor in his grief. He had let him down. He had let their parents down.
And so it was that Laszlo Antonov had done the honourable thing. He had allowed himself to be blamed for the massacre. He had protected his brother and his men from prosecution after the conflict had come to a swift resolution. At his trial he had been sentenced to death – unless he was prepared to name his accomplices.
Laszlo had held his silence. Despite the beatings, the starvation, the months in solitary confinement, he had never taken the easy road. That was what had made him a true folk hero. If ethnic Russians had idolized him before the war, those in the know had started to think of him as a true hero.
For more than a year he had sat on Death Row, knowing that at any moment the door might be flung open and he’d be marched in front of a firing squad.
The Black Bears had remained fiercely loyal. Under Sambor’s leadership, they’d tried their best to hatch a rescue plan. Aside from a suicidal storming of the impenetrable prison fortress, they hadn’t come up with one.
In the end, a combination of lies, bribes and promises of future positions of power had left eyes turned and keys hanging where they shouldn’t have been. And Laszlo was finally free.
He had defeated the Georgians. But the first promise he had made his brother at their joyous reunion was that, one day, they would have an even more satisfying revenge.
Their faithful followers had also waited for this moment. They had lived too long with their guilt over Laszlo’s sacrifice. They had missed the brotherhood of combat and the sense of purpose that battle provided. Better to be a small part of just one mission than to stare at an empty factory and swim around the bottom of a vodka bottle. Better to live just one more day as a Black Bear than to spend a lifetime scampering around the mountains of the Caucasus like a neutered goat.
Laszlo kissed his brother hard on the cheek, then stepped back and held up Delphine’s mobile phone. It still displayed Tom’s text message. ‘Look upon her as an insurance policy.’ He winked, and relished the sight of Sambor’s slow smile. ‘If that 7.62 fire hasn’t solved our problem, the lovely Delphine will be much more valuable to us alive than dead.’
72
SARAH GARVEY STILL hadn’t returned from the toilet. She was probably fielding ‘advice’ from No. 10 in the wake of Brookdale’s update.
Clements’s mobile began to vibrate. He picked it up, checked the caller ID, then frowned and moved hurriedly away from the table and out of the briefing room. He shot a glance at the gathering of Amandas and Gileses, the advisers and junior officials who used politicians as manure. They mushroomed in number year after year, and all seemed to have a godparent at Central Office. Now they congregated in the anteroom like petitioners at a royal court.
He turned his back on them as he took the call.
‘We have a serious problem . . .’
Clements paused before replying. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know who this is. You have the wrong number
.’
‘You know exactly who it is. You also understand the nature of the problem, and why you have to solve it quickly.’
Clements’s mind was racing. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I really don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Then let me spell it out a little more clearly for you – and anyone else who might be listening. I’m talking about Laszlo. Why haven’t you persuaded COBRA to attack? Fuck knows what he has going on in that tunnel. We now have a report of medium machine-gun fire down there. This is not a fucked-up escape.’
Clements took a deep breath. He wouldn’t be talking like this unless his line was secure.
‘If Antonov is killed, all our problems go away. But if he survives . . .?’
Clements kept his voice low and slow. ‘A very good reason to make sure that he doesn’t.’
‘Correct.’ The caller matched the seriousness of his tone. ‘It’s in your interest to pull COBRA’s finger out of its collective arse and shut Laszlo up for ever. Because if I go down, I’ll make very sure I take you with me. So you’d better crack on.’
The line went dead.
Clements stared at the Sky News screen but his eyes were suddenly glazed. So he didn’t see the presenter walking and talking along a line of parked HGVs as Operation Stack took shape.
73
CLEMENTS HOVERED OUTSIDE the meeting room as Sarah Garvey came down the corridor. ‘A word if I may, Home Secretary . . .’ He steered her to one side, checking they were out of earshot. ‘We have, shall we say, a delicate matter that needs to be addressed . . .’
‘For God’s sake.’ The home secretary didn’t have time for waffle. ‘You make the average Whitehall mandarin sound like a model of plain speaking. Enough of this elliptical nonsense. I’ve seen you at work often enough to know when you’re concealing as much as you’re revealing. What’s really going on? You said more in one hour of that meeting than I’ve heard from you in all my time in government.’
Clements stared at her in silence for a few moments, debating his reply. ‘What do the words “South” and “Ossetia” mean to you?’
Sarah Garvey studied his expression, searching for irony. ‘One of those dismal former Soviet republics, mired in corruption, run by thugs and gangsters and so poor that they haven’t even got a pot to piss in.’ Then it dawned on her. ‘And, of course, where Antonov was born and bred.’
Clements nodded. ‘That’s about the strength of it, yes. But it’s slightly more complicated than that. The Georgian government was in control of South Ossetia at the time the BTC pipeline was being built in the nineties. As you may recall, UK plc was a primary stakeholder. And, of course, it still is. We had to make sure that the thing would be up and running within the agreed time.’
Sarah Garvey had read a briefing paper on possible ramifications not long after she’d joined the cabinet. The Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline pushed a million barrels of oil a day a thousand miles from Azerbaijan, one of the countries lucky enough to have a shoreline bordering the oil-rich Caspian Sea, across Georgia, passing just south of its capital, to the Turkish Mediterranean coast.
There was no sign of the metre-high conduit above ground, unlike such structures in the Middle East. They’d buried it, which made it tougher to blow up. And, from the Kurdish separatists to the Islamist militants, there were plenty of people who wanted to.
The Turks were feeling pretty pleased with themselves for owning the business end of the pipeline, from where fleets of supertankers ferried enough of the black stuff to keep the 4x4s of the UK and the east coast of America on the road. The US were keeping a weather eye on things from their huge airbase at Incirlik, right on Ceyhan’s doorstep.
The Turks knew they were now such a pivotal part of the process, as far as the US and UK were concerned, that fully fledged membership of the EU was all but guaranteed, however reluctant the French and Dutch might be to have them aboard. The EU-style number-plates some had already fitted to their vehicles were down to much more than mere optimism.
Everyone wanted a piece of the action. Russia had built a pipeline to the Black Sea coast. China was getting stuck in too. Some of the largest untapped energy reserves on the planet – an estimated 200 billion barrels – lay beneath the Caspian. Since the collapse of the Soviet Empire, it had been very much up for grabs – and the UK and US hadn’t wasted any grabbing time. They were pumping west as fast as they could.
Sarah Garvey had the kind of itching in her head that often acted as a prelude to the loud ringing of alarm bells. Oil and war criminals made for a volatile mixture.
Clements continued: ‘Unfortunately, there was resistance from some of the rural population that fell within the pipeline’s footprint. Antonov’s job was to help us to make sure the resistance in Georgia was . . . er . . . dispersed.’
The home secretary’s face showed her distaste. The alarm bells were initiated. ‘And how did he achieve that, exactly?’
Clements gave her a thoughtful look. ‘Are you really sure you want to know, Home Secretary? Sometimes it’s better to remain in ignorance of certain . . . details. I always feel it adds an air of plausibility and conviction to any denials you might be forced to make. If, that is, Antonov is allowed to live.’
She had had enough of his games these past two days. She raised her hand, her forefinger just inches from Clements’s face. ‘Stop!’ Her eyes bored into his. ‘Give me what I need to know. I have hundreds of people who may die at the hands of that madman or those of our own military. Cut the bullshit and get on with it.’
‘Home Secretary, if you insist . . .’ Clements paused. He was very pleased with himself. He’d thought it would be harder for him to convince this home secretary that she was forcing information out of him. ‘Very well. Antonov was recruited and empowered as our advance man, if you like, clearing pockets of resistance – local politicians who were against the pipeline crossing through national parks, villages and towns that opposed it crossing their land or destroying their buildings, resistance to population relocation, that sort of thing. He . . . er . . . cleared the way to allow construction to proceed smoothly, without interruption and to schedule. His engineering knowledge, combined with a deep-rooted ethnic hatred for the Georgians, meant that he was extremely efficient.’
‘Efficient? At what, exactly?’ The home secretary knew she had to ask even though she feared she knew the answer.
‘I’m sure you can guess his methods. But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he was trained and equipped by us. As you can appreciate, Home Secretary, HMG cannot afford to be too squeamish about the way we ensure that our energy needs are met – and, of course, it’s our duty to ensure that our companies always have an edge. Our competitors don’t mind getting their hands dirty when it suits them – and many of them are much less likely to be held to account by domestic politicians and the media.’
Clements paused again, making sure she was primed and ready.
‘As you know, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office makes greater use of Special Forces in pursuit of UK government aims than any other department. Antonov and his men received arms, explosives, training and mentoring from SAS personnel.’ Just in case she hadn’t got the picture fully, he added, ‘On our behalf.’
Clements always felt he was at his most magnificent when he went in for the kill. The weaker and less-experienced politicians often crashed and burned without his even breaking a sweat. ‘Surely the last thing any of us wants is for Antonov to be put on trial. Can you imagine if Hussein, Gaddafi, or bin Laden had gone into the dock and dished the dirt?
‘Can you see the situation the government would find itself in should Antonov be given the platform of a trial at The Hague? He would reveal British involvement in rape, murder and ethnic cleansing – the very war crimes of which he himself stands accused. We created Antonov. We, the UK, are just as responsible for the Black Bears massacre as he is. We showed him how. We created him. We created the Black Bears.�
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There was more to come, but now that he had stuck the first couple of inches of his knife into her, he waited, letting the initial pain register before she experienced the full thrust. Clements couldn’t help but feel a surge of pleasure at finally getting her to do what he wanted. Not just to protect his country but, even more importantly, himself.
The home secretary shuddered at the thought. ‘Were you part of this?’
Clements knew he needed to hide his pride. He also knew it was time to inflict more pain. Laszlo wasn’t the only one who knew how to achieve compliance through fear. ‘Indeed, Home Secretary. I was the London contact for certain interested parties. They needed to know when an area was safe to go into, so they could negotiate the land-rights contracts.’
He allowed himself a moment of reflection. His mind wandered back to the days when people like him were not asked what they were doing for the UK. It was enough for a home secretary to know he was doing what he thought was right.
‘In some respects the way Antonov has turned out is quite unfortunate. He cost an incredible amount of money to support. He would still be a rather excellent asset if he hadn’t gone off the rails. The SAS did an extremely good job training him and his men.’
She clearly couldn’t believe what she was hearing, which was exactly the reaction Clements wanted. The truth always got politicians in a stew.
‘Home Secretary, so far the fact that the SAS were involved in this operation has never come to light. However, Antonov is a very thorough and professional operator. Not only could he expose their and, of course, our co-operation with him, he also made it his business to obtain the real names of all those who trained him and his men and, in particular, he knows the real identity of the officer who took part in those illegal operations, even helping to command and control the atrocities on the ground.’
