Close Quarters

by Adrian Magson

  I told him my name and heard an intake of breath. Then the words came out in a rush. ‘Mr Portman, what can I do for you? The exchange was good, I hope?’ He was trying to sound breezy but it didn’t work.

  ‘You know damn well it wasn’t, Max. What’s the deal with Ivkanoy?’

  ‘What do you mean, Mr Portman?’ He was trying to sound normal but his voice slipped off the scale and I knew something was wrong. For a Berlin wheeler-dealer, Max could lie about as well as I play the harpsichord. I was sometimes amazed he managed to stay in business, but maybe everybody knew he only ever told the truth.

  ‘You’re a lousy kidder, Max. If you don’t tell me about Ivkanoy, I’m going to come right over there and rip your tongue out.’

  Over-dramatic, sure. But with some people it’s the only method that works. And Max hates the idea of violence.

  ‘Seriously, Mr Portman, I am saying the truth. It was not a thing I knew.’ He was babbling, and when he babbles, his English goes to shit. Same when he lies.

  ‘It was a simple enough transaction, Max. A car and an extra, for cash. We’ve done it before, you and I, and you’ve arranged other deals like this in your sleep.’

  ‘Yes, I know—’

  ‘Only Ivkanoy wasn’t ready to play. He tried to rip me off. Why was that?’

  ‘Please, Mr Portman. I can only apologize. I was not to know this.’ He was rattled, the words tumbling out of his mouth in their haste to escape. ‘I was given his name as a reliable supplier of … services. The kind you, as you have said, are asking me to arrange before. But this man, this Ivkanoy, he is not what I believed. He is …’ He hesitated, gasping for air and a decent explanation that would get him off the hook.

  ‘He’s what?’

  ‘He is a cousin of a man in Volgograd. A leading businessman. I swear on my mother’s life I did not know Ivkanoy would do this to you.’

  A businessman. In Volgograd. What Max really meant was Ivkanoy’s cousin was a member of the Russian mob, which by association, family ties and plain criminality in their blood, made Ivkanoy one, too.

  I should have guessed. Volgograd, formerly called Stalingrad, lies across the border in southern Russia, and the connections with eastern Ukraine run deep and deadly. And the Russian mob has never been good on borders.

  I took a deep breath. Max should have known, if he’d done his homework properly. The people I deal with, the suppliers of the kind of material I use from time to time, like Max, are always freelancers. There are two reasons for this: a supplier with ordinary gang affiliations is too restricted, even unimaginative and unlikely to venture far from the home nest. It means they’ll take the easiest route, the cheapest and least reliable. They also don’t care about repeat business so they rarely stick to an agreement. If anybody complains, they can always call in a favour for a couple of heavies to provide backup.

  But tie that supplier to the Ukrainian or Russian mob and that’s a whole different level of no-go in my book. I was surprised Max hadn’t worked it out; or maybe he’d got caught into trying to cut deals using the mob to further some other business interest he had on the go.

  It explained a lot about Ivkanoy’s attitude. To him I was just a mark passing through his territory, to be fleeced and disposed of, my travel documents and anything else he could use to be sold on in the city. He’d have known that anyone wanting to hire an untraceable vehicle and a weapon, cash down with no questions, would be in no position to complain to the authorities if they didn’t get the deal they expected. And in the worsening atmosphere that had taken over the region, with more guns and guys keen to use them per square mile than anywhere outside of the Middle East, he’d reasoned that there was no chance of anything coming back on him if I simply disappeared.

  ‘How bad is this, Max? What’s the likely fall-out?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Don’t play dumb. You’re already scared, I can hear it in your voice. How deep in with them are you?’

  He coughed. ‘Scared, yes. Of course I’m scared. You know me, Mr Portman. I do not get into bed with such extreme people normally. Never. But I was made an offer I could not refuse … as also were others in the same business here in Berlin and Munich.’

  ‘So it’s a takeover.’

  ‘I believe, yes. Two who refused have gone, disappeared. Now since I hear what you have done to him, I am hearing that Ivkanoy is blaming me! He says I must pay restitution for the damage and the car. I have tried to refuse but two times now I am having telephone calls with nobody speaking. Just breathing.’

  I felt almost sorry for him. He was in a low-end business where most of his suppliers were crooks, gang-bangers and thieves, not hard-core mafia. On the outgoing side he had clients like me who were selective about their sources of supply. It was a difficult place to be. And now the Russian mob were muscling in and dictating how and with whom he did business, and threatening to break legs or worse if he didn’t play ball.

  ‘What else have you heard, Max?’

  ‘That you have hurt him … that you have harmed his reputation. That you stole a car and you make him look foolish.’

  ‘He tried to screw me, Max. It was a set-up. He was ready to beat my brains out.’

  ‘I am sorry. Really.’ He hesitated, then added, ‘I believe he will come for me soon. For this reason I am leaving town. It is too dangerous to stay, even here.’

  He was right to worry. The Russian mob’s reach wasn’t confined to within its borders, but worldwide. And Berlin was right on their doorstep. Getting someone to pay Max a visit would take a simple phone call. I was surprised the heavy breathing hadn’t escalated to something more deliberate already.

  ‘I am sorry, Mr Portman. This Ivkanoy will not stop. Others of his kind will know what happened, and he will follow you until his honour is satisfied. Until you are dead.’

  THIRTEEN

  I woke early the following morning and ran a visual check of the outside of the hotel in case Rambo and his friends or Ivkanoy had got lucky and found the car. But the area looked quiet and deserted, and if either of them had been around, I doubted they would have waited for me to show myself; they’d have come in hard and fast and gone on the attack.

  Sleep had been elusive but I was rested and ready to go as soon as I got the call from Langley. Anyone experienced in action knows that sleep is a luxury rarely enjoyed to the full; there’s too much tension, too much adrenalin and sometimes too much of everything but peace and quiet. But occasionally there’s silence, which is worse. It leaves you wondering about what’s going to happen, with nothing to focus on but your innermost thoughts and fears, until sleep finally claims you.

  Every person deals with it in his or her own way. I rely on breathing exercises to reduce my heart rate. It sounds more mystical than it is, but was a technique I picked up in West Africa from a Vietnamese Foreign Legion corporal. It’s cheaper than drugs, easier than drink and healthier than both.

  While I waited in my room I checked out the list of addresses the Langley comms support officer had messaged to me. There were five in all, in various cities across the country, including Kiev. The nearest was here in Donetsk. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to use them, but that might not be my choice to make. Given the choice I would have Travis in the car and be driving west as fast as I could.

  Thinking about the car, I went outside and checked the Toyota was in one piece. In the cold light of day the red colour was an eyesore. But at least the dark last night would have made the colour less likely to be remembered by Rambo and his pals. In any case, there wasn’t much I could do about it right now. Hopefully if everything went to plan I wouldn’t be in the Donetsk area for long, anyway.

  News reports on the television showed the political situation locally was deteriorating further, with uniformed militia sympathetic to Moscow openly parading their numbers and armaments on the streets, and several clashes around the city outskirts with Ukrainian army units. Further east a helicopter had been shot down and a number of pr
o-Russian separatists had been killed, but the figures were unverified. As usual, it was the claim and counter-claim culture of all armed conflicts, where mind-games aimed at the world’s media were almost as vital as ground gained or lost in combat.

  I decided to take a trip back out to the airport. If anything kicked off, I might have very little time to get close enough to Travis to watch his back.

  The roads were uneasily quiet and traffic-free, save for the usual military vehicles, and when I got close I found the area around the hotel was a mess, with trucks and APCs parked up wherever there was room and troops standing around in bunches, smoking and watching a couple of planes taxiing out ready for take-off. More worryingly, as I cruised along the perimeter road, I noticed four trucks with blanked-out markings parked in a deserted lot in front of a hanger. About a dozen men were standing close together and on the alert, overseen by an officer.

  I recognized the type as soon as I saw them: they were Spetsnaz, Russian special forces often attached to the FSB (Federal Security Service) or the GRU (Military Intelligence).

  The air close to the hotel was choked with diesel fumes, with a thick layer of sooty-grey exhaust smoke hanging close to the ground. Aside from the trucks, it was strangely quiet for an international airport, and I wondered how much longer it could continue to operate with the current unrest before the authorities decided to close it down altogether.

  I was circling the airport and trying to keep a low profile when my cell phone buzzed. It was Callahan.

  ‘The situation’s changed,’ he said. ‘Our local cut-out in Donetsk has gone silent. Without him we can’t get a message to Travis and Travis isn’t answering his phone. We may have to delay things. How’s it looking on the ground?’

  ‘Forget it,’ I told him. ‘If you want your man out, it has to be now.’ I described the build-up of troops and militia, which added to what he knew already from satellite over-flights and news reports. But what satellites can’t do is to give a sense of the tension around a conflict zone, that electricity that crackles in the air during the build-up to something momentous happening. And right now I was feeling that electricity like a live force. ‘This place feels like it’s going to blow any minute. And Travis is stuck right in the middle.’

  ‘If that’s your assessment, I understand. Do you know who’s holding him?’

  ‘Not yet. But he’s not in the hands of the good guys, I’m pretty sure of that. The longer he stays here, the more likely he is to get sent further east.’ Even though Travis was here under a cover name, Callahan had said it was highly likely people knew he was connected to the US, British or European governments. If it came out that he was from the US State Department his situation would be even more delicate than it already was. In fact I was surprised it hadn’t already been made public by one side or the other for propaganda purposes.

  Callahan agreed. It was a definite problem. Then came the kicker.

  ‘Can you get to him?’

  It was a moot point. From what I’d seen of the guards, there was no way into the building without running a gauntlet of security checks and questions. In a normal busy hotel, I would have simply walked in and booked a room. But so far I hadn’t seen anyone enter or leave, so normal was out of the question.

  ‘I’ll try.’ It was the best I could say. It was as risky as hell, but it was what I was there for – to take risks.

  ‘Good man. Did you get the cut-out addresses? You might need to check the first one yourself and see what the situation is there.’

  I signed off and thought it through. If I got to Travis, I’d have to hope I could get him out of the building and away without being stopped. After that I would be playing it by ear and relying on speed and luck. I’d already decided that we’d have to head west, away from the trouble spots where we could be stopped at any time by random vehicle checks. That included not going anywhere near Kiev, the capital. But that left a lot of territory in between here and the border with Moldova. My best bet was to plug Travis into the cut-out line as quickly as possible. At least they could move him with far more detailed knowledge of the terrain than I had, and I’d be able to focus on watching over them to make sure he stayed out of trouble.

  I approached the airport again and found even more trucks had arrived, choking off the roads by parking wherever they pleased. Staying with the car was too risky, so I left it near some old maintenance sheds and made my way on foot towards the hotel. I left my bag in the car and trusted to luck in openness and innocence; if anyone stopped me, they’d see that I wasn’t a threat.

  I reached the front entrance and saw one of the four blanked-out trucks I’d spotted earlier was now in front of the main doors, with at least a dozen fully armed soldiers in the back. The guards I’d seen earlier were watching them, but they looked nervous and didn’t seem as if they wanted to tell them to go park somewhere else.

  I veered off and walked round to a yard at the rear of the building, where there was a loading bay with a closed roller shutter and a clutch of rubbish skips. The sound of splashing was echoing around the yard, and I looked up to see a stream of water spewing from a broken pipe on the fourth floor.

  A uniformed guard with an AK-74 slung across his chest stepped out from beneath a tree and told me to get lost, that the building was off-limits. He was big and unshaven and I guessed he’d been here all night and was feeling hostile.

  ‘I’m looking for work,’ I told him. ‘This is a hotel. I’ve worked in lots of hotels.’

  ‘Big deal.’ He nodded back towards the front of the building and the road beyond. ‘Leave, now.’

  Just then a picket gate to one side of the loading bay clanged open and a chubby man in a creased shirt and tie emerged and stood staring up at the overflow, which was gradually turning his loading bay into a swimming pool. He swore loudly and glared at the guard as if it were his fault. Which, as it turned out, by association, it was.

  ‘How can I operate when my staff can’t get to work?’ he yelled in frustration. I guessed he was the manager and was clearly too mad to be intimidated by the sight of the gun, and happy to vent his anger on the only military representative he could see close by. ‘I need my maintenance engineer here right now.’

  ‘Not my decision,’ the soldier replied. ‘Ring those in charge.’

  He might as well have told him to ring someone who cared. The manager looked ready to have a fit. ‘Huh? Who do I ring, smart-arse? You think there’s a directory I can pick up and find out who’s responsible for stopping public transport? Is there a person I can shout at for bringing this entire city to a standstill?’ He waved a hand which told the soldier what he thought of the whole shooting match and turned to go back inside.

  ‘I could fix it,’ I said.

  He turned back. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  The soldier decided to help calm the situation and get the manager off his back. ‘He’s a hotel worker,’ he said, ‘looking for work.’

  The manager hurried towards us and peered at me, checking my clothing and making an instant assessment. ‘Is that so? What sort of work? Don’t say waiter – I’ve got waiters coming out of my arse.’

  ‘Maintenance, electrical, repairs – whatever,’ I said. ‘I don’t have any tools, though. I wasn’t allowed to bring them with me.’

  ‘Of course you weren’t; with all the military might standing around here, think of the damage you could do with a screwdriver and a wrench!’ His angry sarcasm was wasted on the guard, who merely shrugged and picked at his teeth. ‘We’ve got tools. Plenty of tools.’ He looked at the guard. ‘I’m allowing him in. You OK with that or do I have to ring Moscow and speak to the judo player?’

  If the guard minded the reference to Putin, he didn’t let on. ‘Do whatever you want. I’m off duty shortly, anyway. Not my problem.’

  The manager grabbed my arm. ‘Have you eaten this morning? I bet you haven’t. You fix that damned overflow and I’ll send you to the kitchen and you can have a meal. At least we still
have some food. How’s that? Then we’ll see what we can do about keeping you on for a few days to sort out some other problems.’ He hustled away through the side door, beckoning me after him and slamming the door behind us.

  I was in.

  FOURTEEN

  The manager’s name was Yuriy and if he didn’t slow down he was heading for a seizure. He didn’t ask to see any papers but marched me down a flight of concrete stairs to the basement where there was the usual mishmash of equipment, stores and furniture awaiting repair. It smelled of damp and the drip-drip of water was echoing along the corridor.

  ‘That bloody pipe’s causing me serious problems,’ he muttered, gesturing at a growing pool of water on the floor. It looked fresh, without any covering of dust, and I guessed it was finding its way through the fabric of the building from the outside. ‘You need to stop it quickly. Can you do that?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll turn off the water supply and fix the pipe. It shouldn’t take long. Where are the stopcocks?’

  He waved me towards the far end of the corridor. ‘I believe the controls are all down there. But you can’t turn them all off.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it would screw up the heating. There are important people staying here.’ He made rabbits’ ears at the word ‘important’ and pulled a face to show his disgust. ‘They’ll have my balls if they can’t have their little luxuries. Try and find a way round it, can you? Isolate that damned water pipe.’ He checked his watch. ‘Look, I’ll have to leave you to it. Just do what you can. The tools are in a room down the end.’

  I watched him go and checked for security cameras. There were none that I could see, but I made a show of grabbing a toolbox from the workshop just in case and made my way up the back stairs towards the fourth floor where I’d seen the broken pipe.

  The layout on each floor was the standard design of a hotel: stairs and elevator, lobby and fire doors leading to a corridor running the length of the building with rooms on either side, with emergency stairs down the back. I checked each level through the glass panel in the doors but couldn’t see anyone. In spite of the manager’s comment about VIPs staying here, the place looked and felt deserted. I chanced a stroll down the corridor on the second floor and found no sign of occupation save for a couple of locked doors near the elevators.