Man on Edge

by Humphrey Hawksley

  ‘We need to bring out an American citizen who’s in danger.’

  Nilla’s jawline tightened. ‘Is this to do with the shit last time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who is this American citizen?’

  ‘She got entrapped over there. A doctor.’ Rake decided to tell her. Small teams in hostile environments don’t work well with secrets. ‘Her name is Carrie Walker.’

  ‘Your ex-fiancée.’ Not a muscle moved in Nilla’s face.

  ‘That’s correct.’ Rake kept his expression as flat and businesslike as hers.

  Nilla hissed, ‘You come here, you fuck me, you ask me to risk my life rescuing your squeeze.’

  ‘Sounds about right,’ said Mikki, looking out from the storeroom.

  Nilla spun round to look at Mikki. ‘Why Rake?’

  ‘Carrie trusts him, as do I,’ said Mikki.

  ‘I mean: why us? They have governments.’

  ‘She’s in trouble because there’s been a leak,’ said Rake.

  ‘It’s Finnmark and Russia, what do they expect.’

  From the tightness of her face and the edge of her voice, Rake saw he needed to do more. He took her hand and brought her toward him. She didn’t resist. He cupped the back of her head and kissed her slowly, confidently. He was not gentle, nor was he rushed. Her mouth tasted of mint gum. She kissed him back. Her hand ran down his back, pulled out his shirt to feel his skin. He did the same, feeling her warmth underneath her layers and silk vests. She shuddered, pressed herself against him, then pushed herself back, suppressing a smile, clearing her hair from her face. ‘We go get Carrie Walker,’ she said. ‘Send her on her way, then we go to my place and fuck. Tell me it’s a deal or I don’t go.’

  ‘It’s a deal.’ Rake gave her a light hug. A message came in from Harry Lucas. He checked it and moved to the map on the wall. ‘Come out from lusting over those skins, Mikki,’ he said. ‘I need you here.’ The map showed the border area with looping sled trails. Nilla and Mikki stood either side of him. Nilla brushed her hand against his leg.

  Rake said: ‘We head back north. It’s been arranged for Einar Olsen to meet us with a police vehicle at Hessing outside of Kirkenes where the road heads east to the border. He has weapons. The FSB border guards have the green light to let us through.’ He traced his finger along the route. From Nilla’s farm to Nikel as the crow flew was about twenty miles. By road it was close to sixty miles, due north, across the border, then due south. Rake circled Nikel. ‘Carrie will be somewhere here. We’ll get confirmation. We pick her up, pay the guy who’s helped her, bring her back.’

  ‘Does she have a passport to get through?’ asked Nilla.

  ‘She does,’ said Rake.

  Nilla cupped her hands around her cheeks and studied the map. ‘If we get opposition like last time, they could close the border. We’ll need an alternative route out through the fence.’ She ran her finger south from the border post toward Nikel, examining the line between Norway and Russia. ‘Don’t meet her at Nikel. Meet her here, just south of Salmiyarvi, across the bridge where the road goes down to water level. That’s on the lake, less than two miles to the border, and it’s smoother and faster than the sea ice you’re used to. The fence is broken along here. If there’s no trouble, we go back in the vehicle to the border crossing. If there is, we get across this way. We bring skis, snowshoes, and that’s how we do it.’

  Nilla pulled open the door and shouted for her brother to return.

  Stefan appeared, stamping his boots to shake off the snow. Nilla spoke to him in Norwegian.

  ‘Stefan was with FSK, that’s our special forces,’ said Nilla.

  ‘I will be here,’ said Stefan pulling a file from his laptop that showed the border fence and terrain. ‘Nilla and I, we will make sure your girlfriend will be safe and back in Norway.’

  THIRTY-NINE

  Murmansk Oblast, Russia

  Carrie’s hands rested on Rufus’ head as it lay on her lap. The child slept, breathing evenly in the air-conditioned warmth of Yumatov’s vehicle. They bumped fast along the unrepaired road. Desolation cloaked the landscape, settlements of huts and houses, dirty snow, trees sagging, bleak and endless. The dashboard showed the outside temperature as minus fourteen Celsius. A flash drive she had handed to Yumatov protruded from a USB port next to the satellite navigation screen filled with a logo, SanDiskSecureAccess. Yumatov flipped back and forth. There were instructions on how to use it, links to download, offers to sign up.

  Yumatov’s face clouded. There was cold quietness in his voice: ‘What’s this, Carrie? You take me for a fool?’

  ‘Get your tech guys onto it.’ She matched him with tense calm. When he had asked her to hand him her uncle’s flash drive, she gave him one she had bought in Moscow. ‘Maybe it’s encrypted or something.’

  ‘You have something else?’

  ‘The guy was dying. I didn’t know it was there until I was running. Search me if you want. But, yes. That’s it.’

  Yumatov sent messages on his phone. He told the driver to speed up. He made calls, asking questions, giving monosyllabic instructions. Rufus slept. The driver chewed gum and kept his eyes on the road.

  ‘Even if you do have it, Carrie, you’re not going anywhere, so nor is that drive.’ Yumatov settled back in his seat. They traveled in silence until they turned west off the main Murmansk road. Carrie asked where they were going. Yumatov did not answer. Rufus shifted on her lap. His fairy-tale book fell to the floor. She picked it up and laid it at the end of the seat. She gave time for tension to drain and tried a gentler approach, ‘Why not tell me what’s going on, Ruslan. Where we’re going, what’s happening? Maybe I can help you.’

  Yumatov turned in his seat to look at her, his face smooth like marble, his body fit, worked out, attractive even. ‘How old are you, Carrie?’

  Carrie answered straight. ‘Thirty-seven, turning thirty-eight.’

  ‘What is your sister’s name?’

  ‘Angela.’ She told herself to ride with it.

  ‘Is she older or younger?’

  ‘Younger.’

  ‘Married.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Children.’

  ‘A boy and a girl.’

  ‘That’s nice, Carrie. Family is good. Children bring stability, don’t you think?’ His tone matched hers, kind, conversational. He showed her a photograph on his phone, two children, heads together, big smiles, in a park somewhere. ‘Natasha. See that cheeky grin? She’s five. And Max. He’s seven.’ Yumatov flipped to another photograph, himself and an elegant woman, around forty, in a dark blue evening dress standing outside the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. ‘Their mother. Anna. She is a professor. I am so lucky to have found her. So, so lucky.’

  The vehicle jolted. His finger accidentally swiped the picture away. ‘I don’t know what I would do if anything happened to her. That’s what confuses me. I am forty-three. You are thirty-eight. We are children of the same generation. We understand about our broken Russia. I look at you and I hope to see an American with the blood of Russia who understands why we do what we do.’

  The vehicle swerved. Carrie steadied herself against the back of Yumatov’s seat. Outside, a reindeer carcass lay on the road. Two black crows pecked at the frozen hide.

  Yumatov tapped his head. ‘You’re crazy, Carrie. Look at you. Stinking of horseshit when you could have been showered, smelling fresh, and on a plane to New York.’

  ‘Right now, Ruslan, I would love to be in New York.’

  ‘Funny, Carrie. Very funny. You’re desperate to get away from the safe Brooklyn life your parents built for themselves. You are suffocated by the thought of being like your sister and her perfect family. You’re ambitious. I like that. That new job at Washington General Hospital.’

  A chill ran through Carrie that he was playing her with so much personal information. She felt the rhythm of Rufus’s breathing. She touched his forehead to check his temperature, which was fine. Rufus opened his eyes and gri
pped Carrie’s hand. ‘I need the toilet,’ he whispered.

  Carrie said in English, like they were a couple out for a weekend, ‘We need to stop. Rufus needs to pee.’

  Yumatov caught her eyes in the mirror and nodded to the driver, who pulled up at the side of the empty road. Carrie secured Rufus’ jacket, tightened his scarf, wound her red scarf around his neck as extra warmth, and pulled his woolen hat over his ears.

  ‘I’ll go with him,’ said Yumatov.

  Rufus looked at her, terrified. Yumatov was out of the vehicle, banging his hands together, clouding his face with condensation, looking around at the emptiness. Rufus scrambled out stood with his back to Yumatov.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Carrie asked the driver.

  No answer.

  ‘How long until we get there?’

  The driver chewed gum and stared ahead. Yumatov took Ruslan’s hand and led him back to the vehicle. Yumatov stayed outside, talking on the phone. He ended the call, got in, turned back in his seat, and ruffled Rufus’ hair. ‘Feeling better?’ he asked.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ muttered Rufus, staring at the floor.

  ‘Good news, Carrie.’ An expansive smile spread across Yumatov’s face. ‘We can relax. Your President has agreed to meet my President before the start of Dynamic Freedom. Thank God, everyone finally sees sense.’

  FORTY

  Moscow

  Stephanie Lucas watched Sergey Grizlov’s motorcade pull up under the stucco balcony of her ambassadorial residence and ended her conversation with the British Prime Minister. Kevin Slater had called about the suddenly announced US–Russian presidential summit on Norway’s royal yacht in a small town in the Arctic Circle. Slater was a life-long left-wing activist who started in office a couple of years earlier raw and over-keen. It took all efforts to stop him dismantling Britain’s nuclear deterrent and demobilizing half its armed forces. Slater became more measured and earned a reputation as a pragmatic elder statesman, a win-win with British voters who had had enough false dreams over Brexit.

  Slater told Stephanie she was to stand in for the British Foreign Secretary at the summit. ‘Ambassador is the right level, Steph, not Foreign Secretary,’ Slater said. ‘We can’t be too close to America. Can’t be appeasing Russia, and I want your expert eyes and ears on it.’

  Stephanie didn’t conceal her enthusiasm to be a fly on the wall of history. She thanked Slater as Grizlov stepped out of his limousine in the elegant nineteenth-century forecourt. Grizlov held his brown wolf-fur hat in his left hand and smoothed down his overcoat lapels with his right. He had called her less than an hour earlier asking if he could drop by. She rigged up a sound feed for Harry to listen in.

  ‘Sergey, what a pleasant surprise.’ Stephanie led him to the dining room with its huge mirrors, black marble mantelpiece, and corniced ceiling, all decorated with deep yellow gold leaf. She pulled out two red velvet hard-backed chairs, creating an informal atmosphere in a grand setting. Grizlov stayed on his feet. He hadn’t even given her a cursory kiss.

  ‘Ruslan Yumatov has gone rogue,’ he said. ‘There’s been a mass killing on a train to Murmansk. Five bodies were found in a railcar. All male, all shot to death.’

  Stephanie couldn’t blame Grizlov for being so wound up. Yumatov was his man. She kept a smooth control of her voice. ‘You’re sure Yumatov’s responsible?’

  ‘Carrie Walker was on that train, trying to escape Russia.’

  Stephanie sat down heavily, realizing now why Grizlov had come straight to her. ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘She befriended a family in third class. When Yumatov’s men came looking for her, they hid her in this railcar.’

  ‘But is she all right, Sergey?’

  ‘Her body wasn’t found in the railcar, which was under the control of the Presidential Regiment transporting horses for a ceremony in Severomorsk that is to take place after the summit. Carrie is missing, somewhere around the city of Olenegorsk south of Murmansk.’

  Stephanie let out a long, grateful sigh that, at least, Carrie hadn’t been killed or captured. Harry would have that information and would need to find a way to get her across the border. ‘What ceremony?’ she asked.

  ‘Lagutov wants to cap the summit with a parade in Severomorsk on December 30th. That was one of the trains transporting armaments and equipment there.’

  ‘December 30th is the anniversary of the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The old empire.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘What’s Lagutov playing at?’

  ‘I hope I’m wrong, Steph, but let me show you this.’ Grizlov put his tablet on the table and brought up a picture of a male corpse in a mortuary, most of the skull blown away. The body lay on its front, the back exposed showing an intricate circular tattoo. ‘Do you recognize this?’

  Stephanie did. It was a Slavic pagan symbol that had bedeviled Europe. Hitler had even stolen its design to create the swastika. ‘The Slavic Kolovrat.’

  ‘Correct, and this body belongs to a Josip Milotic, the man who stole the identity of your security guard and murdered Artyom Semenov. Someone from your embassy took him out.’ Grizlov gave her an appreciative look to which Stephanie did not react. He moved to another image of two male bodies on a night-time street and a black van filled with bullet holes. He gave Stephanie a few seconds to absorb and changed to a close-up of the bodies in a morgue. ‘See the tattoos.’

  ‘The Kolovrat,’ whispered Stephanie.

  The next picture showed Gerald Cooper’s severed ear that had been embedded in the reindeer carcass. Stephanie examined the curve of the cut and saw how it could be interpreted as a rough attempt to show the eight-sided spoked wheel. Grizlov moved to a picture of a study or office, books about Europe and Slavic history, the legends of the Kolovrat and more recent events like Russia taking Crimea and the West taking Kosovo.

  ‘We raided Yumatov’s Moscow apartment,’ said Grizlov. ‘These photographs are barely an hour old. His wife and children have left for London. She has a visiting professorship at the London School of Economics. They were given visas three months ago.’

  ‘It was planned?’ said Stephanie, wanting to say something more sensible, but not knowing what.

  ‘Yumatov went to the President in August last year and sold him the same line that he sold me, about Russia’s need to ally itself to the West. Lagutov gave him a hand-written note asking me to work with him.’

  ‘And his real aim was the exact opposite?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But why kill Cooper, why the severed ear, why such an elaborate show of brutality?’

  ‘A message of power. Just because he is intelligent and well-read doesn’t mean that violence is not Yumatov’s natural home. He is clever to use Slavic nationalism because it goes wider than Russia. It includes Central and Eastern Europe, the old arc of Soviet power, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, a lot of countries that are turning authoritarian. We know from military flight records that Yumatov traveled from Moscow to Severomorsk on the afternoon that Cooper was killed. Milotic was stationed in Severomorsk. They both flew to Moscow the next day. They had worked together in Syria.’

  Her strength back, shock subsiding, Stephanie stood up and swiped the tablet images back to the shot-out van and the two corpses. ‘But these are Yumatov’s men. Why would he kill them?’

  ‘He didn’t,’ said Grizlov. ‘Yumatov told me an Asian crime syndicate was out to wreck any détente we had with you guys. What he didn’t say was that, here in Russia, he is leading it. We asked the CIA and your people what they might have and heard nothing. But the Japanese got back to us straight away. There is such an Asian organization with broad plans as Yumatov outlined.’

  Afternoon winter sun fell onto the table. Stephanie played her fingers in and out of its dancing patches of light while sorting through what Grizlov was revealing. At the center stood Ruslan Yumatov, who planned to use Asian money and a revival of pan-Slavic nationalism to change the face
of Europe. Even if Yumatov was just another man with a gun looking for relevance, it was a theory that should not be underestimated. The bloodshed in the Balkans and the origins of the First World War carried similar Slavic symbolism. Stephanie steadied a rising panic that Carrie wouldn’t get out, that she would be murdered on some frozen steppe for an ancient pagan symbol and flash drive with a big swinging dick.

  ‘Then it’s not Yumatov who’s gone rogue.’ Stephanie took Grizlov’s arm. ‘He’s working with the Kremlin. Soviet ideology might be dead, but Russian Slavic nationalism isn’t. December 30th we’ll see a ceremony with tanks, missiles, and horses and the symbol of the Kolovrat. Isn’t that right, Sergey. Isn’t that what all this about?’

  Grizlov glanced down at her hand then at her. His skin was pale with a deep crease across his brow. But his eyes shone with energy. She had seen him like this, physically drained and mentally driven, back against the wall and excited about a way out. He took her hand off his arm, but kept hold of it, part affection, part in a formal handshake. He leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek. With his mouth close to her ear he whispered, ‘Carrie has a six-hour window to cross into Norway. Until the end of the current FSB border guard shift.’

  The Kasatka, Northern Fleet, Russian Navy, Barents Sea

  Andrei Kurchin detected the small Gotland-class Swedish submarine Halland north of Vardø as she made her way to Kirkenes from the country’s main naval base in Karlskrona in the south of the country. She was traveling at seventeen knots, without using her air-independent propulsion system and other stealth measures that would have slowed her speed and made her more difficult to find. The Gotland-class was one of the world’s quietest and most nimble submarines, which is why Kurchin had chosen her for their target.

  The Halland’s timing and location, thirty miles north of the Norwegian island of Vardø, was so precisely accurate that Kurchin yet again marveled at the reach and professionalism of Yumatov’s network. Kurchin knew only a fraction, something about Yumatov that he admired and feared.