Silencer

by Andy McNab

  This one had a black jumper, no shirt. The edge of a tattoo showed at the V-neck. I pulled it up by the waistband to take a better look. His stomach and chest were covered with ink. There were the normal tribal tats – sunrises, flags, snakes wrapped around daggers – but the blurred, badly done ones were more interesting.

  He’d obviously done time and served in the military. That wasn’t unusual in this part of the world, where conscription was still alive and well. His squaddie tattoo, a tank crushing a body, suggested he hadn’t been much of a star when he was in, just one of the chorus line. That was why he was lying where he was instead of me. The other pix were of bears shagging women and rats with numbers above their heads, which would tell anyone in the know where he’d been imprisoned and why. There was one of the Kremlin and what looked like a goblin or a dwarf holding a wand and putting a spell on the place. I couldn’t interpret them in any detail, but they were obviously the story of his life. The only chapter missing was the one explaining what he and his mate had been up to with Katya.

  She hadn’t just got home when I arrived. She’d had time to take her coat off, and there was warm coffee by the answerphone. Two of the messages I’d left had been played, but not the third. Eye infection? Maybe they’d hit her, or she’d been crying. Whatever, she had a fuck of a lot of explaining to do.

  I sat on the floor beside the leather jacket and punched numbers into my mobile. As ever, Katya wasn’t responding. I punched in another set as I headed for the bedroom.

  ‘Have you found everything, Nicholas?’

  ‘More than I bargained for.’ I pulled T-shirts and nighties out of her top drawer, then swept her toiletries into a sports bag, like a burglar working against the clock. ‘You at the clinic yet?’

  ‘Sure. He’s stable and in a unit and they’re carrying out some more tests. I’m with him.’

  ‘Katya?’

  ‘No. She took a call. As soon as we got here she had to leave. She’ll be back later.’ She hesitated. ‘Are you staying here as well?’

  ‘You want me to?’ A panic alarm was ringing in my head. ‘I’ll see you both soon.’

  I felt behind the bedside cabinet for my Heckler & Koch .45 Compact. The Russians loved German kit. Maybe that was why Angela’s mob had overtaken us as the third biggest arms dealers on the planet – and its third biggest exporter after China and the USA.

  This thing was a snubby semi-automatic .45 close-protection weapon with an eight-round magazine. The frame was polymer the same colour as the leather jacket next door; the top-slide was black steel. It had been cheap, and easy to get hold of. Maybe the dealer had stuck it together from write-offs, like he did with the dodgy motors in his saleroom. I didn’t care much. It worked, and that was all that mattered.

  The Compact had a single action, once it was made ready and the hammer was fully back, but I hit the lever on its left-hand side to release it and ensure that the trigger needed a hard squeeze, like a revolver.

  With a full mag and one in the chamber I had nine rounds to kick off with, and two spare mags. If I needed any more than that I really was in the shit. I shoved it into my waistband. No need to check the safety: there wasn’t one.

  I picked up all the bags and took the lift down to my battered navy blue VW Golf in the basement.

  17

  The old guy on the desk had done his usual vanishing trick and the main door was still ajar. Rain had soaked the rough cork matting he’d laid out to protect the tiles, or what was left of them.

  I took the stairs two and three at a time. Before I reached the landing, I pulled out the HK and checked the chamber, pushing back on the top-slide with the palm of my hand until I could see the glint of a .45 case in the ejection opening. Instinct made me check that the spare mags were still in the left pocket of my jeans, with the business end of the rounds facing away from my bollocks. Nothing to do with protecting the family jewels: I wanted to be able to ram it straight into the pistol grip housing, not have to twist it around or turn it upside-down.

  I took a couple of deep breaths and did a final shake to get the rain off my hair and my face, and turned into the corridor.

  I lay down just short of Katya’s entrance, the side of my face flat against the carpet. No light spilled through the crack beneath the door. No sound, either. On my feet again, I stepped back and shoulder-barged it above the handle. The frame splintered without much complaint and I jinked right into the darkness, crouching low to present a smaller target. My HK was up at forty-five degrees, ready to react.

  I kept still. I held my breath, listening for any sound above the rain pounding against the windows. The flashing red-and-blue neon sign further down the street told me it was Miller Time.

  I straightened slowly, pushing the door shut, then hit the light switch. Her black raincoat was back over the arm of the dark blue settee. I quickly scanned her bedroom and shower room, half expecting to find her lying in the same condition as her mate in the leather jacket in our flat.

  Her clinic pass, which hung from a red lanyard because she was always forgetting it, and her flat keys were both missing from the key-press stuck to the side of the fridge. The light was still flashing on her answering machine.

  I rang her mobile and heard three rings coming from her coat pocket. The bulletin board above her landline was empty.

  I tucked the HK firmly into my waistband and legged it back into the corridor – as you do when you have a vanishing woman and a missing photo to locate, a dead body to attend to, and another attacker on the loose.

  The rain pummelled my head as I fumbled with the VW lock – the fob hadn’t worked since way back – and jumped in. The engine started at the third time of asking and the windscreen steamed up, to match the fog in my brain.

  I didn’t drive off straight away. I had another phone call to make.

  18

  Perinatal Clinic

  27 August 2011

  05.54 hrs

  I sat inches from Anna’s bed, our heads bathed in the glow of coloured lights on the ventilator and monitors. My high-backed chair stank so badly of disinfectant it was a miracle she’d managed to doze off. My boy was asleep too – or so I assumed. There had been no movement from the Perspex box on the other side of the bed since I’d got there. All I could see of him was a reassuringly pink nose poking out from a blanket. He was still wrapped up like a parcel, with the same Tubigrip beanie on his head.

  The only sound was the steady bleeping from the machines and every couple of seconds the gentle hiss of oxygen. The clinic was still in night mode and all blinds were down. The window that divided us from the corridor was double-glazed. I opened the venetian blinds a touch to allow me a clear view down towards the lift and the stairs. Anybody entering this floor would have to come that way. Right now it was quiet, apart from the occasional squeak of a nurse’s shoe on the polished floor.

  Anna hadn’t been too worried about Katya going AWOL. Everything in her private room was as it should be. The boy beside her was in good shape now, and so was she. And at last she had the chance to get her head down.

  The sight of her lying there reminded me of the moment she’d told me she was pregnant, and held my head against her chest. She’d stroked my hair and whispered, ‘I’ve got responsibilities now.’

  Stomach lurching, I’d managed to grin back. ‘Sounds like I have too.’

  I kept the HK under my right thigh and my shoulders straight against the back of the chair. Less than thirty minutes later the light at the end of the corridor bloomed, then faded. The lift doors had opened and closed. Now I saw shadows flicker against the far wall. It looked like there were three or four of them.

  I eased the weapon sideways, gripping it in my right hand and resting it between my thigh and the chair arm. My eyes were fixed on the corridor. Whoever this was, I was going to know soon. There were definitely four of them. The one in the lead was a nurse. Her shoes squeaked; the others’ didn’t.

  Frank’s men were in dark suits and t
ies, as if they’d been taking fashion tips from the agents in The Matrix. I hadn’t seen Genghis and Mr Lover Man since Frank’s private jet had dropped me in Egypt five months ago. They hadn’t wasted any time with the 5:2 diet. These boys were still big; it was part of their job spec.

  The one I didn’t recognize stood like a guardsman, eyes alert. I guessed he was ex-Spetsnaz, or at least trained by them. Mr Lover Man was a Nigerian man-mountain with nostrils like the Mont Blanc Tunnel. He always looked like he was about to inflict pain, and was probably the only black man in Moscow the right-wing gangs crossed the street to avoid. When I’d last seen him, there were blue and red beads tying off each braid of his cornrows, and a patch under his chin was pebble-dashed with shaving rash. The beads were all bright red now, and the zits had been replaced by a thin scar running up his left cheek.

  The guy beside him was only fractionally shorter and had come straight from the steppes. He looked like a painting I’d seen of Genghis Khan, but with a number-one haircut and wispy goatee. He could have been a direct descendant of the great tyrant for all I knew, but I wasn’t going to ask.

  These two weren’t big on chat, even though we had plenty to talk about. We’d flown out of Somalia together after I’d rescued Frank’s son from kidnappers. But that was then. Time flies; things change.

  Maybe that was why they stared at me now like we’d never set eyes on each other.

  19

  I slid out of Anna’s room and closed the door gently behind me.

  Frank’s men stood like statues as I put out my hand. I got noncommittal shakes back, but so what? They were there, and that was all that mattered.

  I gave Mr Lover Man my keys and the penthouse address. He studied them both for a moment, then passed them to the Guardsman. I could see Anna watching us through the blinds. Her eyes followed me back into the room.

  ‘What’s happening, Nicholas?’ Her voice was low. It was like the dim lighting toned everything down. ‘They’re not here to wet the baby’s head, are they?’

  I closed the door and took the HK from my waistband. Anna watched as I sat back down and slid the weapon under my thigh. I knew she wasn’t happy. The oxygen machine gave a sigh. I knew exactly how it felt. ‘They’ve come here because I asked Frank for help. We need his help. So does Katya.’

  I gave her the headlines. Anna showed no reaction, just con centrated on the details, until I got to the part about the body. She lifted a hand. ‘Is he still there?’

  I nodded. ‘Frank’s lad is sorting it out.’ I hesitated. ‘But we’ve got a bigger problem than that.’

  I told her I’d been back to Katya’s flat. ‘Her coat was still there, but she wasn’t. The picture was gone too.’

  Anna’s jaw muscles tightened. She got it straight away. ‘That’s why they came to our apartment?’ Her look of concern wasn’t for herself or for me. She glanced towards the incubator. ‘What now?’

  ‘You know anything? Anyone who wants to hurt her? Anything she’s said or done that you think was a bit … unusual … or out of character?’

  She took a deep breath and the sigh that followed was more about being pissed off with me than wondering what might have happened to Katya. ‘You know what she’s like. She never told me much about herself, even in Mexico.’

  ‘She have man trouble, cash problems, drugs?’

  Anna shook her head. ‘No, nothing like that – and if she did, she’d never have told me. She had a boyfriend in Mexico I didn’t know about until she let slip that things weren’t working out. I know you’ve never really liked her, but you know what? Not everybody lives in your shadowy, duplicitous little world.’

  She was wrong about that, actually, but now wasn’t the time to tell her. I hadn’t made up my mind about Katya. I just knew that she’d been lying through her teeth ever since I’d picked her up at her apartment.

  ‘I’ve got to go away for a while.’ I leaned over her, not sure whether I should kiss the top of her head. Not so long ago I’d have done it without thinking. I tucked the HK under her pillow. ‘It’s loaded, with a full mag, and made ready.’

  Anna had worked in a lot of hostile terrain and knew her way around a weapon. She knew ‘loaded’ meant the mag was inserted, even if it was empty. Made ready meant there was a round in the chamber. That way, there was no room for accidents.

  Her eyelids flickered and she pushed herself upright. ‘Does this mean I’m on guard now?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ I gestured through the blinds. ‘Frank trusts them with his own kid. And I trust them too. Ninety-nine per cent …’

  Her brow furrowed. ‘The HK’s for the other one per cent?’

  I nodded. ‘The only way I can really protect you two is to find out what’s going on.’

  She didn’t argue. ‘Where will you start?’

  ‘Peredelkino.’

  20

  I kept driving west, towards a much bluer sky than the one that still hung over the city. I’d come off the M1 a while back, and the potholes were getting more treacherous. The road was lined with trees. This wasn’t Navaho or Chelsea territory. The buildings I began to encounter were ancient and timber-framed. Dachas three storeys high with massive overhanging roofs stood behind huge walls. These were the weekend retreats of wealthy Muscovites, first built in the time of Peter the Great. Then in the early 1930s the Soviets had decided to make it a writers’ paradise and all the Russian greats had come here to do their stuff.

  I saw cedar tiles cladding a steeply pitched roof and condensation billowing from modern heating ducts. I turned through an enormous set of slowly opening wooden gates.

  The VW crunched across the gravel. Trees circled a playground, gardens and a swimming-pool. I carried on round to the back of the house and pulled up behind a Range Rover. In Moscow, real people’s cars had white plates with black letters. The Range Rover had red ones with white numbers. Diplomatic plates. You could buy them on the black market – at least twenty-five thousand dollars, more if you threw in the blue flashing lights. They let you travel in the government-designated fast lanes and beat the Moscow jams. Lads with red plates were never stopped.

  I got out and climbed the steps onto the wooden veranda. I glimpsed a face at the window before its owner turned away and disappeared.

  I knew from my last visit that three doors led off the veranda: a bug screen for the summer, a triple-glazed monster with an aluminium frame, and finally the hand-carved wooden original.

  I stepped into a shiny modern kitchen the size of a football pitch, all white marble and stainless steel. It couldn’t have provided a more dramatic contrast to the exterior.

  Frank was sitting at the white marble table with a closed laptop and a white mug in front of him. He was a small man with short brown hair brushed back and flat with a hint of grey at the temples. He looked like Dracula after a visit to the blood bank.

  He obviously liked his men to look like extras in a sci-fi movie, but Frank’s own fashion model was less easy to pin down. He sported red cords over dark-brown suede loafers. His shirt was also dark brown, and buttoned all the way up. He’d added a touch of Italian gigolo with a pale yellow sweater draped over his shoulders. He might have thought it was cutting edge, but it wasn’t a good look for a man in his mid-forties who could have done with shedding a few pounds and buying himself some socks. What was going through his mind? As with almost everything else he got up to, it was impossible to tell.

  ‘Coffee?’ Without looking up, he pointed past me to a machine the size of a nuclear reactor. It stood beside a white marble sink large enough to dismember a body in. ‘Help yourself, and sit down over here with me.’

  I walked over and pressed every button in sight, hoping that something would start coming out of one of the three spouts. Then I could shove a mug underneath and look like I knew what I was doing.

  He leaned forward, gaze level. ‘Have you heard from them? Has anyone contacted you?’

  The machine showed no sign of whirring into action. ‘If t
hey had, I wouldn’t need you.’

  ‘And how is the child?’ He’d spun on a sixpence, but with no change in his tone. His English was precise, but his accent was surprisingly guttural. He sounded like Hollywood’s idea of a Cold War Soviet colonel. His voice gave nothing away. The only time I had ever heard him become remotely human was when I had reunited him with his son. I hoped he could remember what it felt like.

  The machine suddenly made a grinding sound.

  ‘He’s doing really well. Thanks, Frank.’

  Viscous black liquid dribbled out of the middle spout. For a moment I thought I’d struck oil. I shoved a mug under it. ‘How’s Stefan? He settled in OK?’

  I didn’t look round. I wasn’t too sure if it was the right thing to ask. Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe his Somali kidnap experience had fucked with his young head. Seeing your mum’s dead body and then having to find a place in your dad’s real family was never going to be easy.

  21

  I spooned a couple of sugars into the pitch-black brew.

  Frank’s expression still wasn’t giving anything away. He crossed his legs, revealing two very white and hairy calves. He shrugged. ‘Things are good. My family has gone to embrace the whales.’

  He motioned me to sit beside him. ‘In Baja California you can reach out from your boat and touch the grey whales. Apparently they’re very friendly.’ He betrayed a hint of puzzlement. Frank wasn’t the cuddly type. In a dog-eat-dog world, he wasn’t top Rottweiler by accident.

  ‘So you’re alone?’

  He devoted his considerable powers of concentration to the task of brushing a speck of something from the back of one large hairy hand with the other. His well-manicured nails glinted in the light, but not as strikingly as the half-million dollars’ worth of Lang and Söhne Tourbograph. Sapphire crystals and a hand-stitched crocodile strap obviously didn’t come cheap. Putin had one, and the papers were all over it. Someone had calculated that he’d have to live in a cave and go without food and drink for six years to be able to afford one on his declared income. Overnight, it had become the must-have accessory for Frank and his playgroup.