by Smilodon
I wondered aloud to the others as to who had planted that piece of disinformation. According to Bernie at least, Mickey the Mouth was very much a ladies’ man. Liam and Niall were holding a conversation sotto voce. My raised eyebrow brought them up sharp and Niall said,
“Professional job. Amateurs slash or hack. It takes practice and a bloody cold heart to do someone in with a single thrust. This is no crime of passion.”
Liam nodded his agreement. “Question is,” he said, “Whodunit, the Russians or Mickey’s erstwhile employers? That little planted ‘gay’ thing smacks of Vauxhall. Stupid bastards still think it’s a stigma.”
“It is, if you read the Telegraph,” I replied.
Angela looked at me questioningly and I explained. “Very right-wing, middle aged, middle class newspaper.”
She shrugged. “In Estonia also,” she said. I tried not to feel a faint liberal glow.
“Gets bloody messy if it was the Vauxhall funnies,” Niall said.
You couldn’t put it more succinctly than that. If Cornell had been taken out of the game by the Security Services, well, we were ‘up shit creek in a barbed-wire canoe’, as Liam put it. I almost groaned aloud with the weight of it. Angela looked from one face to another and saw how seriously we were all taking this possibility. Her chin came and there was steel in those fabulous eyes where I was just becoming accustomed to find love.
“They cannot kill us all,” she said simply.
Looking at her defiant expression raised all our morale.
“By Christ and all His saints, that they can’t!” Niall roared, “bugger them all and their donkeys too!”
And we grinned like schoolchildren plotting their next prank.
Liam and Niall decided it was time to call for reinforcements.
“You won’t know they’re there. It’s only a couple of mates from Hereford.”
I explained to Angela that he meant ex-SAS men, a number of whom are recruited to the Special Air Service from the ranks of the Parachute Regiment. Liam went off to make a call and Niall disappeared to patrol the area once again. Angela and were left alone in the kitchen with the dogs. Magic wagged idly and Trotsky looked at me with an enquiring air, as if he understood the situation and was awaiting his orders.
“I don’t think you two will be much help,” I told them.
Magic seemed to agree and lay down again; eyeing the breakfast things in case we had missed something. Trotsky made a rumbling noise in his throat and came to stand by Angela. She had obviously made a friend. She patted him absently and he licked her hand, the height of affection, from a husky.
Two pairs of startlingly pale blue eyes were staring at me. I looked from the woman to the dog and back again. I made some feeble joke about their swapping eyes while I was asleep, just to confuse me. Angela gave me a weary smile. The strain was showing in tight lines around her mouth. I had a glimpse of the woman she would be in, say, twenty or thirty years. Tension ages you.
On instructions from the twins we stayed indoors all morning. The dogs weren’t that happy about it but I admit I was relieved. Around lunchtime Liam came in accompanied by two hard-looking men in their thirties. They weren’t that tall but had a spare muscularity and their eyes were distant and carried a vague aura of danger. He introduced them as Steve and Bill. Steve was slightly the taller with cropped sandy hair and freckles. Bill was stockier and had a marked ‘Five O’clock Shadow’ on his prognathous jaw. The effect was to make him look slightly simian but those dangerous eyes held a lively intelligence. He smiled at us muttered “How do?” Steve simply nodded, his face impassive.
“Get yourselves something to eat,” said Niall, indicating the kitchen with a slight head movement. “Briefing in here in fifteen minutes.”
In less than ten minutes they were back. Liam pulled what looked like a wad of rubbish out of the pocket of his Barbour.
“I think we can assume we’re under surveillance,” he said.
His voice was crisp and authoritative. He saw me start to ask the question and cut in.
“I think I found where someone has been lying up. This stuff wasn’t there last night.”
Bill came forward and poked through the rubbish. He sniffed at a piece of crumpled silver foil.
“Chocolate,” he said, “very careless.”
There was some cellophane and a single cigarette butt. In place of a filter tip it had a tube of cardboard.
“That’s a Russian cigarette! “ Angela exclaimed.
“ Quite right, Miss,” Bill replied. Steve said nothing but grimaced.
Liam and Niall established a patrol routine. Bill and Steve would go out after dark to do a ‘sweep’ at some distance from the house. In the meantime, the twins would follow the same routine as the day before. If the watchers thought they had been spotted, they would be more on their guard. Angela asked if it was safe for us to walk the dogs on the beach. Liam agreed it was, provided we stayed well away from the dunes. We would be fine out in the open, he opined, and any way, they would all be watching over us.
The tide was out as we walked that afternoon and we left deep bootprints in the muddy wet sand. The low sun sent streaks of bright fire into pools of seawater and they flickered where the wind ruffled the surface with a soft, lover’s touch. It was one of those bright, fierce days where you feel you can almost see the cold in the freezing air. We were well wrapped up but still Angela’s nose and my ears were turned scarlet by the icy breeze. I love those days, dry, hard and brilliant. They invigorate me. The dull, damp, cheerless days that typify an English winter are all depression and drabness that seem to seep through your coat and into your spirit. The clear, dry frosty days are a rarity and I welcome them; even in their chill, they seem to carry the promise that the warmth of summer will return.
We didn’t talk much. I think we were both too preoccupied with our own thoughts. The sense of danger was palpable now. Cornell’s death put a different complexion on things. We knew we were in good hands with the twins but the two ex-SAS men lent a brooding presence. There was something about the way moved or held themselves when at rest that spoke volumes. Their world was one that comfortable, middle-class men in early middle age might fantasise about but, faced with the reality, shied away from. I felt a sense of impending crisis. Something was going to happen and it would be soon.
For her part, Angela seemed to have found some inner reserves of strength. She exuded defiant determination. Regardless of what was coming, she made her preparations for her new commission. Maybe it was to keep herself from dwelling on our predicament but it seemed more like she was waving two fingers at fate as if to say “Do your worst. Only art is real – the rest are phantasms.” I wished fervently that I had some all-consuming avocation to seize my attention. My focus was on keeping her safe.
Magic and Trotsky were unconcerned by such considerations. Chasing sticks or stalking seagulls was occupation enough for them. Their joyous, carefree spirits lifted ours after a while. We walked back to the cottage considerably lighter at heart then we left.
Chapter Ten
The two SAS men slipped away from the cottage as soon as it was fully dark. The four of us ate dinner together in a strained atmosphere. Liam and Niall were almost visibly quivering with anticipation. They were preternaturally alert. The speculation and the good-humoured jibes at me had vanished. Now they all business. No alcohol for them tonight. Somehow we could sense that a line had been crossed. Before, they had taken it seriously but not felt we were in any real danger, not mortal danger at any rate. All that had changed. The word ‘operational’ popped into my head. We were now ‘operational.’
I took the dogs outside for a last pee before turning in. The sky was crystal clear, a halo hung around the moon that was just a couple of days off being new. Ice particles in the atmosphere made the stars shimmer and dance. They appeared unusually close that night. I was standing in the small untidy garden at the back of the cottage, taking all this in and breathing in the tangy sea a
ir when I felt, rather than saw, Trotsky stiffen. I could just make out his pale coat in the feint light. He stood tall, head erect, the posture tense and guarded. I tried to pick out Magic but his black fur blended perfectly into the deeper shadows by the low wall.
I called them to me and pulled them quickly inside, shooting the bolts on the door, someone was definitely out there. The dogs sensed it and I caught their mood. I muttered the news to Niall and he gave a quick whistle for Liam. They waved me out of the room and then crouched, one each side of the door, against the thick stone walls.
There was a light tap on the glass and a laconic voice said,
“It’s Steve, I think you’d better let us in.”
Niall moved away, to be behind the door when it opened. Liam pushed the bolts open, taking care to keep his head and body in the cover of the wall. The door swung inwards with a crash and Steve was propelled into the room. A tall figure stood just outside of the pool of light spilling from the open doorway. A harsh voice called out, “Angelika!”
Angela flew into the room, thrusting me to one side in her rush.
“Papa? Papa?”
She let go a rapid-fire burst of what I took to be Estonian. The half-hidden figure answered in the same tongue. She turned to me, her face drained of all colour.
“It’s my father,” she said, “he wants to come in and talk. He say’s it’s very important.”
Niall looked at me and I nodded. He grimaced and then told Angela to tell her father to come in. Steve was looking sheepish. Niall raised an eyebrow in his direction.
“Sorry, boss,” he said, “I fucked up big-time.”
Liam muttered a terse “Later.”
All our attention was on the tall, slim figure that emerged from the darkness into the lighted kitchen.
It was his eyes that I noticed first. They were incredibly like Angela’s but not the same. There was a feral glint to his that Angela’s lacked. His face was grave and unlined. He had short grey hair that showed just a hint of curls. It was cut high on his forehead, emphasising the regularity of his features. He reminded me a little of the English actor, Terence Stamp, even down to the cleft in his strong chin. His face was transformed when he smiled at his daughter. He looked at the rest of us and gave a sort of short bow. Liam shut the door and the Colonel turned and smiled at him, one professional recognising another.
We all sat down at the table and the Colonel began to speak. Angela did her best to give us a running translation but at times, she was so shocked, she would utter another burst of lightening-quick Estonian before turning back to us. He spoke for about half an hour. When he finished, we were all in shock.
The Colonel told us he had been watching us for about a day and a half. He had come at first to rescue Angela but had quickly realised, this with a nod in my direction, that she was among friends who were protecting her. He had never meant for either of his daughters to become involved. When Vika had been murdered in Gothenburg, he had vowed to take revenge. He traced the man who killed Vika to London. He had found him and killed him, early on Monday morning. Mickey-the-Mouth. Then he had driven to Norfolk to make contact with Angela. The Colonel had seen Bill and Steve arrive. He had guessed what they would do; it was what he would have done. He set up the decoy observation post and had baited the trap with the assorted rubbish Liam had found, knowing that someone would have the place under surveillance. He had dug a scrape a few yards away, covered himself with camouflage netting and tussocks of marrom grass, and waited. Steve had obligingly showed up. The former SAS man shrugged and mouthed, “sorry, boss.” Liam shook his head. No use crying over split milk. Steve had been careless, overconfident.
Angela’s father had related all this in a light easy, matter-of fact tone. Then Angela had asked him the question we all needed an answer to, ‘Why?’ His voice had grown flatter, harsher somehow, as he told us his incredible story. It had started when the Colonel returned from Afghanistan in 1986. He had been bitter, disillusioned by his experiences. A group calling themselves the Estonian Democracy Committee had made contact with him. At first he had resisted their courtship but the more he thought about it, the more he realised they were right. The USSR was rotting from within. It couldn’t last too much longer. One day soon, Estonia could take back the freedom it had lost in 1941.
He did nothing, but stayed in touch. When the Berlin Wall came down and the Russians didn’t react; when one by one, the former Soviet satellite states exerted their own free will and became self-governing once more; it was the Estonian Democracy Committee who moved to fill the political vacuum left behind. Now, as the legitimate government, they approached him again. Would he go to Russia, they had asked him. He was to take a job, keep his ear to the ground. They were particularly worried about the amount of former Soviet armaments that seemed to be flooding out of the old USSR. He agreed. His daughters had left home, one to marry; the other had fled to the west to be a ‘bohemian’.
He had set up his ‘security consultancy and waited. Inevitably, his clients had been of a dubious nature, crooks, conmen, people on the make. He had picked up snippets here and there, had reported back to Tallinn. Some shipments of small arms and explosives, bound for who-knows-which ‘liberation’ army, had been intercepted and impounded. There had been a handful of arrests, no-one significant, of course, just couriers and low-grade operatives. The work was easy, he was making a good living and he had a comfortable life in St Petersburg.
All that changed about a year and a half ago. He was urgently summoned home to Tallinn. The government were in a state of near panic. It had come to light that 20 tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium had gone walkabout in the old USSR. Originally, it was ascribed to inefficiency, poor record-keeping, that sort of thing. Then someone caught a whisper. Someone else heard talk of an ‘Islamic Bomb’. Little accretions of evidence emerged here and there. Not proof positive, you understand, but enough links in the chain to get the politicos shitting themselves. He was sent back and told to dig some more.
It had taken him a while, almost a year. He had it all now. The Chechens, of course, were deeply involved. Some were in it in solidarity with their co-religionists but the majority were in it for the money. Half a billion dollars. A certain Arab country whose leader had pretensions of leading the great Jihad against Israel and its supporters provided the money. He traced the links out of Russia into the West; Germany, Spain, Britain, even into the USA. There were those, some of whom worked in their own government agencies, for whom the lure of half a billion dollars overwhelmed any scruples. He had pretended to be one such. They had rumbled him. He had fled to Sweden, faked his own death. Somehow Vika had learned of her father’s death and followed him to Gothenburg. He believed she had been sent as bait to trap him. He had avoided her. It hadn’t saved her.
At this point, the Colonel took out a roll of papers, wrapped in oilskin to protect them from the damp. He tossed it on the table.
“Five good men have died for this,” he said and looked grim. “It is all there, names, places, facts and figures.”
We all stared at the bundle. The room was completely silent. We were all shattered by the enormity of what we had heard. The Colonel’s mouth was a hard, compressed line; his steely blue eyes gazed frankly back at us. He gave a shrug. Angela continued translating.
“The problem I have is to know who to trust. There are Estonian names on that list, too. Everywhere, there are people prepared to sell their country. No! To sell the World! They must be stopped.”
I had a sudden thought.
“Ask him what he has to do with the ikon,” I said to Angela.
He laughed when he heard the question and Angela smiled when she heard the reply. She turned to us and when both father and daughter were smiling, the resemblance between them was clear.
“My father traced me through Frau Meyer. He went to see her after reading an article about her and he saw my name mentioned as one of those artists she patronised. The article had also said that Frau Meyer
was a great opponent of extremism in the new Germany. He thought she would be disposed to help him. He explained a little of the situation and suggested that she might help. They hit on the idea of putting the ikon up for sale in the UK to mislead Cornell, who was getting too close.
“Frau Meyer wanted to do more so they agreed that she would send me some bronze to work with. Hidden in that shipment is about one hundred pounds of plutonium. My father thinks it will be at Felixstowe Docks tomorrow or the next day. He stole it from a shipment and substituted plain lead rods. The plutonium is wrapped in a lead sheath and a thin skin of bronze.”
“Why send it here?” I asked, puzzled.
Angela smiled again, “It is his evidence. Anyone could come up with a list of names and things on paper. He needs our help. He wants someone to contact, someone above suspicion. Everything in the East is too corrupt; he doesn’t know who’s involved and who isn’t. Do you know anyone in the Government, Martin?”
I admitted I knew one person, an MP I had once done some work for. I hadn’t liked him much but as far as I knew, he was straight but didn’t know too much about him. Then Liam chimed in.
“Do you remember Rollo Yeates?”
I did, he had been Head Boy at school when we were there.
“Rollo’s now a half-colonel in I Corps, he might be the very man!”
I had to agree. If Rollo Yeates was now a Lieutenant Colonel in Army Intelligence, he could certainly point us in the right direction. All of this was explained to Angela’s father and he thought for a moment or two before answering. He puffed out his cheeks and then grinned. “Good, a soldier!”
