Silencer

by Andy McNab

  Once he’d attended to his personal grooming he waved at a small dark glass bubble in the ceiling above the sink. ‘They’re next door, keeping an eye on us. Don’t be offended, Nick, but are you carrying a weapon? If so, just say. Don’t let them see.’

  I caught his drift. If I had been carrying, his guys would have shot first and not bothered to ask questions afterwards. But I was there at Frank’s invitation. It would have been an insult for me to think I needed protection.

  I shook my head, but Frank was already moving on. ‘You have read Dr Zhivago, of course. Pasternak wrote it here, you know. In this village.’

  I wasn’t sure if he was taking the piss, but did my best to look impressed. Maybe, now that he had all the power and money a man could wish for, Frank also wanted respect. He’d bought a big slice of the great writers’ heartland. Perhaps he was now aiming to knock out a novel or two and join the immortals.

  When he spoke next, it was very quietly. ‘To find this scum – is that all you want from me?’

  ‘Frank, I want as much from you as I can get. Finding him is the only way I’ll find Katya, the only way I’ll find out what the fuck’s going on here. And the only way I’ll be able to keep Anna and the boy safe.’

  ‘Everything has a cost, Nick.’ Frank sighed. ‘Everything.’

  ‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.’

  ‘Pasternak was a master of social realism.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I like to think we also do our best to maintain certain … traditions …’ He opened the laptop and swivelled it so we could both see the screen.

  He sparked up Skype and tuned in to a webcam. I found myself looking at a naked man, plasticuffed to a chair. He was as heavily tattooed as his mate. There was a brick wall behind him, but no window. He was caught in the unforgiving glare of a mobile fluorescent lamp, the sort builders use on-site.

  22

  Frank didn’t seem remotely interested in the drama that filled his screen. The same went for whoever was behind the camera: the hum of voices sounded as if they were discussing what to have for dinner.

  ‘How did you find him?’

  Frank brushed another imaginary speck off his trousers. ‘When you look for garbage, you go to the garbage dump.’

  His lads kept chatting in the background, apparently oblivious to the loud rasps of their captive fighting to get oxygen into his lungs through swollen, lacerated lips. Frank was more concerned about his thumbnail – a fleck of varnish was starting to chip away from the immaculately buffed tip.

  I leaned forward so that I could study the boy on the chair more closely. Just like his dead mate, the runner was covered with ink. A blurred crucifix tattoo took pride of place across his torso; Christ’s feet were nailed to his belly button and his face was covered with a tuft of blood-soaked chest hair. The only other patch of blue I could make out beneath the red was a drawing of an iron cuff around his right ankle with a padlock resting on the top of his foot. The prison ink of choice was usually a mixture of soot and piss, injected into the skin with a sharpened guitar string attached to an electric shaver.

  The runner was so ravaged and swollen I couldn’t tell if his eyes were closed against the pain or so puffed up he couldn’t have opened them even if he’d wanted to. His whole body was covered with bruises that were almost the same colour as his body ink. Blood dribbled from his nose, ears and mouth, and streamed down his legs from a knife cut across the top of each thigh. The damage I’d done him with the remote control paled into insignificance alongside the workout his new best friends had given him.

  Frank gathered his empty mug and wandered over to the nuclear reactor. He didn’t offer me a refill. He’d have figured if I wanted another brew, I’d ask him for one – or get off my arse and fetch it for myself. He might have every material thing he’d ever dreamed of, and be rocking himself to sleep every night in the cradle of Russian culture, but some things never changed. Frank was Frank. I liked that. At least you knew where you stood.

  He waved his spare hand nonchalantly over his shoulder, in the direction of the screen. ‘Do I recognize this vermin? Of course I don’t.’

  ‘Does he know where Katya is?’

  Frank piled sugar into his mug as the nuclear reactor kicked off. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  He turned and headed back to the table with a look I’d come to know well – as if he had another place to be. He sat down and reengaged with the screen as he stirred his coffee. ‘The two of them are peasants. They were only there to collect your … your Cuban woman.’

  He took a sip of his brew. It looked like molten tarmac, but he seemed to like it.

  ‘Collect for who? For what?’

  ‘He says he doesn’t know why. They were each paid five hundred dollars US by a Vasil Diminetz to make sure she went to Moldova. Half now, half on delivery.’

  ‘Moldova? Why Moldova?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘That’s it? That’s all he knows?’

  ‘Of course not. They always know more. They just don’t realize it. Until they are … enlightened.’

  ‘She involved with the Moldovans?’

  He pursed his lips. ‘We do not know yet. These things can take some time.’ He tilted his head towards the wreck filling the screen. His hand went up to silence me as he listened to the slow, strange sounds emerging from a mouthful of broken teeth as the invisible interrogators fired another question at him.

  I waited as Frank listened, his hand still in the shut-the-fuck-up position.

  ‘They could not find her brother – he has become a ghost. So it seems yours is the only Moscow address in the doctor’s file. They saw you in her building … They had already seen the photograph, so …’

  Frank lowered his hand as the body slumped, chin resting on the top of Christ’s head.

  The fucking photograph. ‘So, Frank? So what?’

  He reached out a finger and poked the gel-like liquid-crystal screen, further distorting the captive’s features. ‘Diminetz called her and explained that if she didn’t come to Moldova her friend and her husband would be killed. That’s you, Nick. You and Anna.’ Frank sat back in his chair. ‘So she did. She went.’

  ‘She’s now in Moldova?’

  ‘I presume so.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It could be for many reasons. Or none.’

  ‘You know this Diminetz?’

  Frank gave me his bad-smell face. ‘I know none of these animals. I’m a businessman. These creatures live in the gutter. They are too stupid to see the opportunities that stare them in the face every day. Scum like Diminetz will never understand how to … elevate himself. They spend their pitiful lives in the gutter.’ Frank nodded towards the now motionless body on the screen. ‘Where I found him for you.’

  Somebody behind the camera shouted as Frank threw some more coffee down his neck. The prisoner didn’t respond. Another shout and whatever he said then obviously wasn’t the answer they were looking for.

  A green fleece filled the screen for a moment as one of the interrogators moved towards him. When I could see the captive again, a pistol had been shoved into the side of his head. There was a dull thud and blood sprayed from his opposite temple. The plasticuffs securing his wrists kept him from falling off the chair. Green Fleece disappeared from view, mumbling to whoever else was behind the camera.

  Frank rose to his feet. ‘You have a problem, my friend. Find this woman and make her safe, or make sure these people can never find you or your family.’

  My eyes locked onto his. ‘Can you help me?’

  There was no point in going to the police. This was Russia, and Moldova was the same but worse.

  His eyes narrowed. ‘These things are beneath me now.’

  ‘What about Anna and the baby?’

  His expression was still stony, but he nodded. ‘I am not an animal. You need to sort this out – for your family’s sake.’

  ‘Thank you. I know Genghis and Lover Man will protect h
er. I’ve seen them in action.’

  He frowned momentarily, then gave a flicker of a smile. He studied my face. ‘Things have changed for you, haven’t they, Nick? Responsibility. It’s something men like us shouldn’t be burdened with.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘But we are burdened, aren’t we? Children … They are like wounds that never heal.’

  PART THREE

  1

  Chisinau Airport

  28 August 2011

  12.26 hrs

  The automatic doors opened – and it was like I hadn’t just changed countries, I’d changed centuries. Moldova’s main airport had been built in Brezhnev’s time, and the forty years since then had taken their toll. Even the taxi drivers in their old leather jackets and baggy jeans were shabby, and the bits of cardboard they held up looked like they’d been scrawled on with lumps of coal.

  Bizarrely, though, like most places this far down the food chain, its mobile-phone coverage was way better than Europe’s or America’s. I got straight through to Anna. ‘Any luck with Lena?’

  ‘She’s been in Ukraine, but her assistant says she should be back today. I told her you’re on your way, and need some help.’

  The charity-shop fashion parade waved their pieces of cardboard at me. Big companies had learned long ago not to flash smart clipboards with corporate logos in places like this. Anyone with a mobile could Google the pick-up name. If the passenger was important, a few quid of ransom money would come in nicely – or business rivals would pay handsomely to find out where the competition was sending its top executives.

  Once I’d got past the caveman it was time to be hassled by the guys who wanted to take me to the city in their private cars. I waved them away too.

  ‘I’ll be off air for a while. I’m binning the SIM card, OK?’

  She understood.

  ‘Anna …’ I’d been brooding about it on the flight and couldn’t let her go without asking. ‘Do you know anything about Katya’s problems? How she got herself into this drama?’

  ‘People don’t tell each other everything, Nicholas. You should know that very well.’

  We said our frosty goodbyes and I closed down. I’d call her back after I’d seen Lena. Not just because I wanted updates on the baby, but also because Anna was going to be my ops room while I was on the move – flights, information, anything she could help with from her laptop. Affection didn’t seem to be on the agenda.

  I slipped my phone back into my pocket. My brown-leather bomber had seen better days too, but it was what I’d always worn for work – along with Timberlands, jeans and a sweatshirt.

  It wasn’t only the clothes that reminded me I was on a job. I hung the sort of brown nylon pouch around my neck that any middle-aged American tourist would have been proud of. It contained my passport, four hundred dollars in fifties and twenties, and two credit cards – my escape package. It would never leave my body unless I needed it to. It also had a safety-pin tucked into the back. Getting a SIM card out of these iPhones was a fucking nightmare.

  I used to wear a watch, but my iPhone had taken over. I carried its charger in another pocket, and a wallet with more USD and one card. That was my lot. The world was full of toothpaste, socks and anything else I might need.

  Moldova had slipped through the net during the post-Soviet boom years; all the high-end Western brands had given it a wide berth. Its earning potential was the same as South Sudan’s, so what was the point of investing? Starbucks seemed to be the exception – well, sort of. There was a mobile coffee stall tucked into the corner of the arrivals hall. And there wasn’t a queue.

  I headed for the stall to its left. Scores of cheap, glittery mobile-phone cases and chargers hung like decorations on a Christmas tree. I bought two fifty-dollar Moldcell SIMs and jumped into a taxi.

  The white ten-year-old Five Series Beemer stank of cigarette smoke and the minty cologne the middle-aged driver had splashed on to hide a few fragrances of his own. His hair looked like he’d greased it with what was left in the pan after that morning’s fry-up. He had about four days’ growth and an old jeans jacket, the collar stained dark where it touched his hair.

  ‘Chisinau, Hotel Cosmos, mate. Hotel Cosmos? Chisinau?’

  He grunted and we set off on what I remembered from last time was about a fifteen-K drive. The road was lined each side by fields. As in most old Eastern-bloc shit-holes, the West offloaded their DDT and any other banned chemicals and pesticides there. They’d ripped the heart out of the land. Soil erosion and third-world farming methods put the final nails in their coffin. Not only was Moldova a long way from self-sufficient, it didn’t have a seaport. Landlocked to the west by Romania and to the north, south and east by Ukraine, it depended on their Black Sea coastlines, and their dodgy road and rail networks. No wonder the locals had had to turn their hand to trafficking and extortion.

  At least the road into the city had been given a new layer of tarmac since I was last there. It meant I could replace my Russian SIM with one of the new ones without waiting between potholes.

  2

  Moldova was the Silicon Valley of organized crime in Eastern Europe. And, like Microsoft and Google, the local gangsters had bucked the current recession. When the Iron Curtain was finally pulled down in 1989, it had left a vacuum for people like Frank to fill. He was one of the guys who had a talent for being in the right place at the right time. He’d made his money and got out of the game. Well, sort of. A lot of the others just wanted more and more of what was out there – and there was plenty if you knew where to look and weren’t too choosy about who you fucked up. Organized crime accounted for 15 per cent of world trade: ten trillion dollars – two-thirds of the USA’s GDP – and it looked like Vasil Diminetz was taking his own little slice.

  I unclipped the safety-pin, fished out my Russian SIM, cracked it in half and swallowed it. Then I cancelled the call log and texts. Whatever happened, I didn’t want anyone to know who and where I’d called – inside or outside Moldova.

  Grey rectangular chunks of Communist-era apartment blocks stood in ranks on either side of us. Satellite dishes scarred every balcony like blisters, and the washing that hung from their windows looked like it would go back even dirtier than it had come out.

  There were a surprising number of shiny new BMWs and Mercedes weaving their way between the clapped-out trucks and tractors, but the road still wasn’t exactly choked with traffic. Many of the people on the streets were pretty well turned-out, particularly the young guys. We were supposed to be in Europe’s poorest country, but Moldova was the same as everywhere else in the old Soviet Union: a handful of haves and whole swathes of have-nots.

  Most people here scraped by on less than three dollars a day. Away from the towns, work was scarce. In many of the rural villages, only children and grandparents remained. More than a million people had left the country to find work – and that didn’t include the ones who’d been trafficked. No wonder Starbucks had kicked off with a small stall. No one in their right mind was going to spend a day’s wages on a cappuccino, no matter how nicely they wrote your name on the cup.

  When the tarmac stopped and cobblestones and potholes took over, I pulled out the slip of paper Anna had given me with Lena’s number. Lena had contacted CNN to try to expose the scandalous trade of human kidneys to the West. Anna had gone on to write a ground-breaking piece about every male inhabitant of a small village not far from Chisinau having the same scar on his back.

  Lena’s phone rang three or four times, then I got a very fast and very loud burst of Romanian in my ear. It sounded like she was having to make herself heard above a roomful of people.

  ‘Lena, it’s Nick—’

  She didn’t fuck around with small-talk. ‘Have you brought any Russian cigarettes?’

  ‘No one said to.’

  ‘Oh.’ She sounded crushed.

  ‘I’m in a cab, just coming into the city. Can you meet me at the Cosmos?’

  I could still hear a lot of shouting in the background. The othe
r women in her office were making the place sound like a cattle market.

  ‘Wait …’ Lena yelled whatever the Moldovan was for ‘Shut the fuck up’ and it suddenly went quiet. ‘I have to work. Do you remember where we are? Pass your cell to the driver.’

  I handed it over. The steering wheel jumped around in his left hand as the tyres rumbled over the cobblestones, but he managed to keep waffling away to her without his eyes ever leaving the road.

  3

  The cab stopped outside a graffiti-smothered apartment block south-east of the city centre. The stretch of grass in front had long since given up the battle and was now covered with wrecked cars and plastic bags, garbage spewing through the rips.

  I gave the driver a twenty-dollar bill, which seemed to make his day – maybe even his week. He sped away in case I changed my mind.

  I looked up. On each landing, rusty steel reinforcement rods poked through the crumbling remains of the concrete Stalin had sent by the trainload from the Motherland after the Germans had flattened half of the city and an earthquake had seen off the rest. Satellite dishes covered with pigeon shit were drilled onto the outside walls, their drooping cables fed in through the nearest window. The graffiti brightened the place up a bit, not that I had a clue what it said. Moldovan looked to me like a continuous stream of lowercase Us and Ns.

  I’d only been to Lena’s office once before, when Anna and I had come to her for some information about people-trafficking. I was working for the Firm then, on what turned out to be my last job. There were no kisses and cuddles when I left, no engraved carriage clock or M&S gift card – and definitely no pension. They fucked me over big-time, but I hadn’t expected anything else. Nine times out of ten, a pat on the back from the Firm is just the recce for a stabbing.