Man on Edge

by Humphrey Hawksley

  The attacker’s knife arm moved above the hip up to the sternum where he lined it up to strike Rake’s carotid, the artery that pumps directly into the brain. Rake chose to intercept between the sternum and the neck, when the Russian’s sense of revenge was at its height. He struck the elbow, then the wrist. He gripped the attacker’s wrist, turned the arm on its own momentum and guided the knife onto a ninety-degree trajectory into his right eye, the softest path for the serrated blade to plunge through into the brain. The Russian fell with a trickle of blood at exactly the moment that a high-powered bullet smashed into the Harvard academic’s face, shattering his skull like a watermelon.

  Why the professor? Was it a shot meant for Rake? The man who had shone the lamp in Rake’s eyes held a microphone rod like a rifle. Black, long, metal, round, his finger on a hidden trigger.

  Whyte pulled down the moderator and the UN official, covering them with his body. Rake jumped off the podium toward the gunman. A second shot smashed into the wall behind him. A third hit the ceiling. Mikki had thrown his knife. The gunman was down. Dark arterial blood jetted from his neck, splashing in an arc of red onto a white table. He grasped against air. Mikki pulled the bloodied knife from the dying man’s neck and turned, poised to strike again. Rake’s focus shifted to the third man. There were three in the crew, one left alive. The television camera was on his shoulder, but he was no fighter. Rake punched him in the belly, drove his fist upwards into the jaw. The camera fell to the floor. Rake pushed him down.

  ‘Clear,’ he shouted, spreading the cameraman face down.

  Whyte’s polished black shoe pressed onto the prisoner’s back. ‘One hell of a knife throw, Detective.’ He tilted his head toward Mikki. ‘We need to get you both the hell out of here.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Moscow

  Ruslan Yumatov heard a little boy’s cry for his daddy and shut down the news feed from Washington, DC. He had seen all he needed. The killing of Rake Ozenna had failed, but then he had never expected the team to get as far as it had, and the point had been made: if you fuck with Russia, you will never be safe.

  ‘Andrei, excuse me, for a moment. I have to see to Max.’ With him was Andrei Kurchin, commander of one of Russia’s quietest submarines, the Yasen-class Kasatka docked in Severomorsk and imminently scheduled to head out to sea.

  Yumatov had asked Kurchin over to his Moscow apartment to watch the feed from the Center for Political and Global Studies. Kurchin had become engrossed in the stealth-technology data on hard drives that were found in Semenov’s apartment. As soon as the vice-admiral had become airborne toward Moscow, a Zaslon technical team had searched Semenov’s home. The team broke open the safe, took the hidden hard drives, cracked the encryption, and saw that Semenov had transferred just under one terabyte of data onto a smaller, portable drive that, presumably, he now had with him. Kurchin was studying it while keeping an eye on mayhem from the conference in Washington.

  ‘Will this throw us off course?’ Kurchin asked amiably, although his expression made no secret of his concern.

  ‘I allowed for it,’ answered Yumatov. ‘It was a long shot. Russia sent a message and the fallout is self-contained. Our fingerprints are nowhere.’

  ‘I admire your balls, Ruslan, I really do.’

  Yumatov walked out of his study, closing the door and scooped his son, Max, up in his arms. ‘So, what’s all the fuss, young man.’ He kissed his forehead. Max had thick, deep blond hair and the clear blue eyes of a future leader. Tonight, though, they were brimming with tears.

  ‘Why, Daddy. Why do we have to go?’

  His wife, Anna, sat by the front door on a wooden upright chair decorated with folk art drawings that had belonged to his mother. She was elegantly dressed for the journey, her dark hair pinned back under a gray mink fur hat, and a dark-blue woolen overcoat. Natasha, dressed in a miniature manner to Anna, sat next to her, drawing in a coloring book.

  ‘The car’s here,’ said Anna with no emotion in her voice.

  Yumatov lowered Max to the carpeted floor. ‘When you’re grown up, Max, remember tonight, how you looked after your mother and little sister and helped Russia in her time of need.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Max wiped his eyes. ‘I have no friends in England.’

  Yumatov rustled his hair. ‘You’ll have so many friends in England so quickly that you’ll never want to leave.’ He picked up two envelopes from the dark wood hall table and squatted so that he was eye level with his children.

  ‘Hold out your hand, Natasha.’

  His daughter rested her crayon in the seam of the book. Yumatov upended an envelope and tipped into her hands a silver-plated brooch shaped like a shield with a woman’s face and a hammer and sickle in the middle. ‘This belonged to my mother, your grandmother,’ he said. ‘It now belongs to you.’

  ‘Thank you, Daddy,’ said Natasha turning it around in her hands. Anna opened her daughter’s overcoat and pinned it inside on her jacket.

  Yumatov turned to Max, whose hands were out waiting. He took a watch from the envelope and placed it in his son’s hands. It was large with bold white markings on a black face. ‘You can wear this when you get bigger and older,’ he said. ‘It belonged to my father, your grandfather, and was given to him by the factory where he was the foreman for many years.’

  Max hurriedly tried to fit it onto his wrist. It was too big and slipped over his hand onto the floor. The family laughed together. Yumatov picked it up. ‘Remember, Max, this watch means you are a man and you have to make sure your family is safe.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Max looked at his father for a beat, then lowered his gaze to the floor.

  There was a rap on the door. Anna opened it and pointed to a row of suitcases. Two men picked them up.

  Yumatov rested his hands on Anna’s shoulders. ‘Will you be OK?’ he asked.

  Anna gave a short laugh. ‘And if we’re not, will you stop everything you’ve planned for so long?’ She gave him a deep kiss. ‘We’ll be fine, my husband. Now, you do what you need to do and make our country strong again.’

  Yumatov embraced the children. Anna took their hands and left. Yumatov slowly closed the door, catching the last glimpse of her fur hat vanishing around the stairwell. He gave himself a moment to regain his composure before going back into his study.

  ‘All good?’ asked Kurchin. The television ran footage of the attack in Washington.

  ‘Anything new?’

  ‘The FBI have issued a statement, saying two Russians are dead and one surrendered.’

  Yumatov opened a cupboard. ‘Whisky?’

  Kurchin shook his head. ‘I won’t, if I’m heading out tomorrow.’

  Yumatov poured himself a Scottish single malt and drank it straight down. The strong peat aroma warmed his mouth and calmed him. The sight of Anna and the children disappearing down the stairwell moved him more than he had expected.

  ‘What’s your conclusion about Semenov’s material?’ Yumatov sat on the sofa next to his friend.

  ‘Can you stop him?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It is the encryption antidote to our latest cloaking technology.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘I have rigged up the Kasatka so that she transmits a false sonar signature. When we’re out there, NATO will think we are a friendly vessel. Semenov has with him codes to break through that disguise. If the Americans get this technology, they will know exactly who we are, and our mission will fail.’

  EIGHTEEN

  Moscow

  ‘Enjoy your stay in Russia, Dr Mayer.’ The immigration officer stamped Carrie’s passport. She walked briskly through customs wheeling a dark-blue hand-carry case. She spotted her driver, holding up an iPad with the name Dr Sarah Mayer underneath the logo of the Intercontinental Hotel on Tverskaya Street chosen by Harry Lucas, a big enough hotel chain to offer some protection, cheap enough not to notice a young doctor on holiday.

  They walked through the cold to the parking lot, where he
held open the door of a black Mercedes sedan. Inside were leather seats, bottled water, a copy of the English language Moscow Times, and tourist leaflets. A familiar landscape of expressway, modern buildings, and snow-covered pine trees unfolded. Carrie had been to Moscow a lot, and Russia was in her blood. Each time, she noticed something new, a bridge, a hotel, a road, but they did little to draw Russia away from its enveloping mood of gloom, anger, despair, arrogance too, too often released with drink, music, and poetry.

  The Intercontinental lay two miles north of Red Square, which Lucas had designated as her fallback should anything go wrong. She was to go to the Beluga Caviar Bar inside the GUM shopping mall, a sprawling site that was once the massive State Department Store of the Soviet Union, now lit with global brands and filled with enough tourists to give Carrie a solid protective layer. Once there, British agents would bring her to safety.

  The British Embassy, where she would be taking Artyom Semenov, was three miles south-west of the Intercontinental. Carrie was to walk it, about an hour, to ensure she wasn’t being followed. Lucas’ watchers would keep track. She would meet Semenov just over halfway outside the museum of the tragic poet Marina Tsvetaeva, who had lived through revolution, famine, exile, and the loss of her child. The location was Carrie’s choice. Her mother adored Tsvetaeva and kept her photograph framed above her dressing table. Semenov had accepted the rendezvous without objection.

  If Lucas thought it were not safe, Semenov would not be there. Carrie was to go into the museum for thirty minutes, then catch a cab to Red Square and follow the fallback plan. What if no one was at the Beluga Bar, she had asked? Call me, Lucas replied, handing her a phone; but only as a last resort. ‘And if you don’t answer, Harry?’ pressed Carrie. Lucas didn’t waver. Head for the airport. Get out of Russia.

  At the Intercontinental, Carrie was given a large room with a huge bed, great for a lovers’ weekend. She hoisted her case onto it, drew out a red sweater, leather gloves, red scarf, and black woolen hat to pull over her ears. It was just past three in the afternoon. Dusk would come in half an hour. The outside temperature was minus ten Celsius. She and Semenov were to arrive at the embassy late afternoon, after dark. She didn’t shower or change. She kept on her black thermal waterproof jacket, thick cotton pants with side pockets down each leg, and brown leather boots for rain and snow. Everything was new, even the small laptop inside the case. Everything was Sarah Mayer. Nothing led back to Carrie Walker. She splashed water over her face, cleaned her teeth, applied lip balm for cold chapping, locked the case, and put it in the wardrobe. She pulled on her hat and tied her scarf around her neck and mouth so barely any of her face was exposed. She unlocked the door, hooked the Do Not Disturb sign on the handle, and walked out to meet her uncle.

  Carrie headed toward Tverskaya metro station, two blocks south. Tverskaya, a wide, dominating, store-filled boulevard, was Moscow’s main shopping street, now shrouded in snowfall, vehicle exhaust clouds, pedestrians wrapped in coats, scarves and caps moving through each other like the flows of competing rivers. Streetlamps were snapping on, beams blurred by weather. A vehicle’s warning beep broke her thoughts. A small dirty yellow bulldozer mounted the sidewalk, causing people to jump out of the way, and drove toward a side-street junction. Sirens followed. Two police cars drew up to block the side street.

  Carrie joined a small crowd watching the bulldozer. Unlike the main road, slush and uncleared snow covered the side street, some fresh, some frozen and piled high on the sidewalk. Etched into it like graffiti on a wall were two rows of large green lettering, in Russian Cyrillic apart from the first word, which in capital Roman script read FUCK.

  Police handcuffed two men in jeans and black leather jackets and marched one to each vehicle. The bulldozer destroyed the snow wall, crushing a can of spray paint under its treads. The police shouted that no photographs were allowed. People must move on. Carrie did. There was no time to get caught up in a small local protest.

  She walked fast with added urgency. The first line read FUCK Lagutov, the ageing technocrat president, kept in office because Russia hadn’t yet decided the type of leader it wanted. The second read Grizlov for President, a reference to the polished and debonair Sergey Grizlov, the newly appointed Foreign Minister who had achieved a rock-star, champion-of-the-people status while dressing in expensive tailor-made suits, speaking English and French like a native, and being on first-name terms with American and European leaders who were slated as Russia’s enemies.

  She had half an hour of daylight left, which would give her time to get to the museum. They would do the final mile to the embassy with streetlights, easier to vanish if needs be. She weaved through throngs, took stairs into the metro, leaving crisp city winter air for a brightly lit underpass lined with stalls of souvenirs and cheap clothes. She walked back up into the cold on the south side of Tverskaya, watching for ice-patches, in awe of how stylish women, even in heels, navigated frozen sidewalks. She stuck to the route agreed with Lucas, not the shortest, but the best lit, south-west along Tverskoy Boulevard, cutting in from the main sidewalk to a foot path inside a narrow tree-lined park. Traffic noise dropped to a low hum.

  Lucas had told her the footpath would make it easier for his watchers to verify that she wasn’t being followed. At the end, she crossed busy main roads, cutting through west to get onto Malyy Rzhevskiy Pereulok, which led to the Marina Tsvetaeva museum. She was making good time.

  The museum was a nineteenth-century yellow building, well maintained with a canopied entrance outside. Carrie stayed on the opposite side of the road, walking quickly, keeping the building at the edge of her vision, as if it were not her destination. A couple came out of the main door and lit cigarettes. Pedestrians passed, a scattering, not like the crowds in Tverskaya, brisk, end of work, end of school, heading somewhere. Nothing alarmed her. There was no one hanging about and no Artyom Semenov either. The museum faced a junction. Carrie stopped as two cars drew up, then pulled out into the main road. She would walk for one minute, then loop back on the museum side of the road. If Semenov were not there then, she would buy a ticket, go in and stay until closing time.

  She was crossing the road when, as if from nowhere, Semenov fell into step beside her. He wore a dark overcoat and traditional fur hat with flaps down over his ears. Large crow claws spread from his eyes, which smiled at her, not the eyes of a man about to betray his family. Or his country. He wanted to see her. She was his niece.

  ‘Little Carrie.’ Semenov laid his hand on her arm. ‘You’ve grown into such a wonderful young person.’ He wore no gloves. Two fingers were slightly curled, some form of arthritis. Small liver spots peppered the back of his hand. He wore no rings.

  ‘Are you OK, Uncle Art?’ said Carrie.

  ‘Now that I am with you.’ His expression danced around like a child. ‘I am excited.’

  ‘It’s good to see you.’ She meant it. She squeezed his hand and took a step to start them walking south. ‘You must tell me everything. How are you? Where do you live?’ She spoke as if they had met normally, distant relatives, after a long time.

  ‘You, too, Carrie. Your lovely mother, my sister, is she happy? Is your father treating her well? My, didn’t they fight so much? And your little sister. Angela? She was a baby.’

  ‘Angie is a doctor.’

  ‘Like you.’

  ‘Yes, but she is married. Two lovely children.’

  They walked side by side. One moment Semenov gushed with enthusiasm, the next his eyes darted around, anxious. When they reached the much wider New Arbat Avenue, Semenov insisted they switch sides. ‘These crazy Moscow motorists.’ He put Carrie on the inside and him closer to vehicles speeding by.

  ‘You haven’t married, Carrie?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘But how can a woman fall in love if she is always in dangerous places?’

  ‘And you, Uncle Art?’ said Carrie.

  ‘I am divorced. Marissa is lovely. We are like old gloves. She did not like my work.
We had no children. She hated Severomorsk. It is a military place with many restrictions. I bought her a place in Moscow. I hope it makes her happy.’

  Semenov adjusted his hat and looked away as if embarrassed, sad, eyes like dark unsettled moons, his buoyant mood suddenly punctured. It was a face Carrie had seen often in bad places where people craved escape. Motive was not a question. Semenov wanted out of whatever nightmare he was in, work, divorce, age, Russia.

  Only small talk, she had agreed with Lucas. Nothing about why. No detail about Semenov’s work. Keep moving. Cover the mile to the embassy fast without running. Give him no chance to change his mind. Fifteen minutes and they would be there. End of job. Carrie would see Stephanie Lucas, maybe dinner. If Steph was busy, Carrie would cab it back to the hotel, then her tour itinerary, early morning, high-speed train to St Petersburg, there by lunchtime, a river city trip and a short evening flight to Helsinki.

  How Semenov escaped Russia, if he wanted to leave, was outside her remit. She imagined a reunion in Brooklyn, her mother cooking up a storm, Angie curious about the whys and wherefores, her doctor husband perfect with the two kids, and her father chipping in against Russia, the Soviets, and how everything was better in Estonia.

  The traffic roar at the massive intersection of New Arbat and Novinsky was too loud for conversation. Semenov took the lead, guiding Carrie into the underpass with lines of little shopping stalls, more shabby, less jammed together than in Tverskaya. He became nervous. ‘Are you sure it will be all right, Carrie?’ he asked, stopping under a florescent lamp.

  ‘I’m sure.’ Carrie tapped his elbow. ‘Only a few minutes now.’

  Semenov obeyed. They walked purposefully along Novinsky, turning right past a bright cafe into Protochnyy where volume levels dropped, traffic thinned, and snow-laden trees gave off a freshness which seemed to relax him. ‘So, it is the British,’ he said. ‘Not the Americans?’