The Einstein Code

by Tom West

  He turned the car left off the track onto a narrower, rougher path, the hard ground making the vehicle bounce and grind. A minute later they reached a clearing and stopped. On the GPS screen the red cursor hovered over the meeting point. He peered through the snow-edged windscreen, keeping the engine running, the wipers swishing.

  ‘See anything?’ Derham asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  Lou’s mobile trilled.

  ‘Yes.’

  He flicked on the Bluetooth and a deep, accented voice spilled from the speakers.

  ‘You should be able to see us now.’

  Headlights appeared along the track. They bounced as the approaching car navigated the rutted frozen track.

  ‘I see you. You have my wife?’

  ‘We ask the questions, Dr Bates. You are alone, I hope?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The lights came closer and stopped moving. The car was a black Lexus four-wheel drive. In the stillness Lou could hear the purr of its large engine.

  ‘You have the coordinates?’

  ‘I do. And a map.’

  ‘Open the door slowly and take two paces directly in front of your car.’

  Lou eased the door open, stepped out, walked slowly, leaving the door open and carrying the map encased in a plastic folder.

  Two paces in front of the Polo, he stopped, and with his left hand he shielded his eyes from the bright car beams. He strained to catch a glimpse of Kate, but he could see nothing inside the car.

  Two men stepped from the front seats. Another, armed, hands outstretched, the barrel of a pistol pointed directly ahead, emerged from the back. The two men from the front walked towards Lou. One of them removed a gun from under his leather jacket, held it with both hands, pointing it down at his side. He wore Aviators, and lank, greasy hair hung to his shoulders. The other man was older, short and thickset. He was wearing a Crombie over a suit and tie; his business shoes were polished to a mirror finish. They stopped four paces in front of Lou.

  ‘You said you had my wife. Where is she?’

  The man in the Crombie lifted a gloved hand. ‘All things at the appropriate time, Dr Bates.’ He was the man who had spoken on the mobile.

  Lou waved the folder in front of him. ‘I want to see my wife first.’

  The man considered him for a few seconds, his face completely expressionless. Then he turned to the driver. ‘What do you think, Uri?’

  Uri lifted his arms and pointed the gun at Lou.

  ‘I think that’s a “no”.’

  Lou turned and started to walk back to the car.

  ‘Dr Bates.’

  Lou ignored him, kept walking. Uri fired, a bullet hit the ground an inch from Lou’s left boot, snow spraying up his coat. Lou dived to the frozen ground, hands over his head.

  The passenger door and the offside rear door of the Polo flew open simultaneously. Derham fired his Beretta between the door frame and the car body. Fleming opened fire from the left side of the car.

  Uri flew backwards, a stream of blood gushing from a wound in the centre of his chest. The man in the Crombie dived for the driver’s side of the four-wheel drive.

  Lou scrambled across the snow. More shots rang out. A bullet hit the windscreen of the Polo, another slammed into the near-side front door. Lou turned and saw the man who had been close to the back door of the Lexus slumped on the ground, a plume of blood flying up from his destroyed face.

  Uri writhed in the snow, a swathe of pinky-red around him. The Lexus revved and spun on the icy track, the tyres screaming in protest, a wheel caught the side of Uri’s head, the left back wheel came round and crushed his body.

  Derham and Fleming stopped firing, pulled themselves up just as Lou got to his feet. The Lexus slithered around on the frozen ground in a cloud of exhaust fumes. Lou ran after it, yelling incoherently. And for no more than a second, through the miasma, he saw Kate’s face appear at the rear window. She was calling to him, her face contorted with horror.

  ‘Kate,’ Lou bellowed, the sound consumed by the damp air and the snow. ‘Kate . . .’ The sound bounced back to him. He dropped to his knees, sinking into the whiteness. Crumbling forward, he collapsed into the snow, hot tears streaming down his face and onto the frozen ground.

  44

  The phone rang three times before Lou came to, grabbed for it blindly in the darkened room and heard its dull thump on the carpet. He scrambled across the bed, reached down and found the receiver.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’d like to help.’

  Lou was instantly awake, pulling himself up against the headboard. He’d recognized the voice immediately.

  ‘Max. What do you mean?’

  ‘What I said, Lou.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We told you . . . Sergei has an Intel network at least as good as the SVR. We know where Kate is being held.’

  Lou was silent for so long Max said: ‘You still there?’

  ‘Yes. Why would you help?’

  ‘It is right that you should be cautious, my friend, but it is simply that Sergei likes you and he likes your wife. He feels a sense of responsibility. Kidnapping in his city . . . not good.’

  Lou glanced at the clock. It was 3.24. He turned to stare at the faintly lit wall opposite. Shadows and strange patterns of reflected neon played on the wallpaper. From far off in the freezing night he could hear the rumble of traffic cut through by the shallow screech of a siren.

  ‘What do you have in mind?’ Lou said, his voice little more than a mumble. He felt nauseous, his mouth dry.

  ‘Come alone. Don’t involve Fleming.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We don’t trust British Intelligence, Lou. You understand, no?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Entrance of the hotel. Ten minutes.’

  He heard the phone click, closed his eyes for a second and felt the room spin. He reached over and switched on the light, then pulled himself out of bed. As he dressed he punched in Jerry’s number and put the phone on speaker. It took a few moments before Derham’s drowsy voice spilled into the room.

  *

  ‘You did the right thing calling me, Lou,’ Jerry remarked as they descended in the lift.

  ‘They said I should come alone.’

  ‘Let me do the talking.’

  They crossed the reception. The night staff were busy at computer screens and paid them no attention. Emerging into the night, the cold hit them hard.

  Max was standing beside a car, the doors open. He extended a gloved hand and gave Jerry a hard look. ‘I said come alone, Lou.’

  ‘That will not be possible,’ Derham replied.

  Max stared into the captain’s eyes.

  ‘I’m . . .’

  ‘I know who you are, Captain Derham.’ Max turned to the car. ‘Both of you get in, please.’

  The streets were almost empty. Fresh snow had settled; only a few tracks sliced the powdery ice. The pavements were deserted. They saw half-a-dozen police cars doing their rounds close to Red Square. At a junction a few hundred yards from the hotel two army trucks, each carrying soldiers in greatcoats and fur hats, pulled in front of them. Two streets on, they turned off east.

  ‘Where is Kate being held?’ Lou asked, leaning forward. He felt overwhelmingly despondent.

  ‘A district in the south-east, Kapotnya.’

  ‘Who has her?’

  ‘Unknowns. By that I mean we can’t find any links with them and any of the major gangs . . . yet.’

  ‘We came to the conclusion that Kate was taken by someone connected with Russian Intelligence, the SVR,’ Jerry said.

  ‘Possible,’ Max replied.

  ‘We considered Sergei, briefly,’ Lou said flatly.

  Max shrugged without taking his eyes from the road. ‘No sense in it. Sergei wants his second payment. He’s hardly likely to alienate Fleming and his people by doing such a thing, is he?’

  ‘That’s what we decided. Why didn’t you want us to alert Adam?’ Derha
m asked.

  ‘I told Lou, we don’t trust MI6. Why should we?’

  ‘But you trust us?’

  Max exhaled through his nostrils. ‘Lou wants his wife to be rescued alive, doesn’t he? We will meet my people in an apartment close to where she’s being held. Sergei has put two of his best men onto it. They are excellent. You can trust them.’ He gave Lou a reassuring look. ‘This is not a good . . . what do you say? Scene? Not a good scene.’

  Lou stared out at the ice and snow-strewn streets lined with grey rectangles, faceless monolithic slabs like tombstones against the leaden sky.

  They drew into a square car park in front of a residential block. There were three other vehicles there, two derelicts and a tatty, orange Moskvitch van. From the car they made their way over a stretch of waste ground hard and rutted with frozen mud and ice. Across a stretch of pitted tarmac stood a ragged tower block. It had been thrown up in the sixties and was already falling apart; cladding missing, windows smashed. Behind it in the dark morning, they could see, stretching across the horizon, the spindly columns of the Kapotnya oil refinery, red and yellow tongues of flame dancing atop three of the refining towers.

  Max walked briskly across the snow, his boots crunching on the frozen ground. They reached the decrepit entrance to the building, steamy breath swirling around their faces.

  ‘The lifts don’t work, of course. Our men are in apartment 184, on the fifth floor. It is directly over 154, where Dr Wetherall is being held.’

  Lou’s face was red. He had not shaved, and ice crystals clung to the stubble. ‘They’re here?’ he said. ‘How, did you . . .?’

  ‘What’s the plan?’ Jerry asked quickly.

  ‘Wait until we get to 184. The guys will brief you both.’

  The flat stank of fast food, cigarettes and sweat. It looked as though the place had not been lived in for some time before Sergei’s men had arrived. In the living room, a pair of 1970s suedette sofas, worn to the foam and covered in cigarette burns, formed an ‘L’ around a scored coffee table covered with McDonald’s wrappings and boxes smeared with ketchup. An overladen ashtray took pride of place in the centre. In the corner of the room stood an old boxy TV, the screen smashed in.

  Sergei’s men sat on one of the sofas. Max introduced them as Yegor and Ilia. Ilia looked in his mid-twenties with black curly hair. Yegor could have been his father; late forties, muscular build. He had the same unruly black hair but it was cut shorter and sprinkled with grey, a stern face, a pink scar running down his face. Lou did not like to ponder how he had come by it.

  Ilia offered them a half-empty bottle of vodka. ‘It’ll warm you up,’ he said and produced a gappy grin.

  Lou was about to decline, but changed his mind. Taking a swig, he felt the fiery liquid rush down his throat, spreading burning fingers inside his stomach. ‘Jesus!’ he exclaimed.

  Ilia chuckled. ‘Da! Good!’

  ‘OK,’ Yegor said quietly. ‘This is the situation.’

  He swept aside the McDonald’s cartons and spread out a sheet of grubby white A3 on the table. A floor-plan had been roughly sketched on the paper in felt tip.

  ‘This is 154, the apartment below us. Basically the same as this charming place.’ His English was almost perfect with barely a trace of accent. ‘There are three men in there now.’ He looked up to hold Lou’s eyes. ‘. . . and your wife, Dr Bates.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Yegor glanced at Max. ‘It’s irrelevant, but we have sophisticated surveillance equipment that can pick up body heat and translate it into approximate images of the individuals. As well as this we have listening devices. We have been able to hear every word spoken in there from a few minutes after we arrived last night.’

  ‘And Kate?’ Lou asked, the pain clear in his face. ‘Is she . . . OK?’

  ‘We can’t see her, of course, but they haven’t harmed her while we’ve been here. She has spoken a few times and sounds anxious and angry; as you’d expect. But we’ve heard no sign of violence or distress, so we believe she is unharmed.’

  Lou held the man’s eyes for a long time then looked down at the paper on the table. ‘What’s your plan?’

  *

  Max, Jerry and Lou left the apartment first. Exiting through the front door, they closed it behind them. Jerry had been given a two-way radio, an earphone in his right ear, a coiled cable running down his neck to a receiver at his belt. He and Max had their guns out: Jerry primed his navy Beretta, Max carried an old Luger.

  They took the stairs slowly, Jerry in the lead. Keeping close to the wall, they twisted round into the walkway, front doors to the apartments on their right. On their left, a shoulder-high wall stretched the length of the passage. Over the wall they could see the car park beyond the rutted waste ground. Two inches of dirty snow ran along the top of the wall.

  The walkway was deserted. The sound of a TV from one of the apartments further along drifted towards them. They pulled close to the wall of the building a few feet from the door to 154.

  ‘We’re ready to descend onto the rear balcony.’ It was Ilia through the two-way.

  Jerry nodded to Max and Lou. ‘They’re ready to go.’

  On the far side of the apartment, the rear door led onto a stark narrow concrete balcony. It was identical to dozens of others the length and height of the tower block. Yegor and Ilia were poised to drop a floor from the balcony of 184, ropes attached through pulleys and keyed into the brickwork. They held Kalashnikovs close to their chests.

  Yegor gave Ilia a signal and he dropped through the chill air to land silently on the balcony wall of apartment 154. A few seconds later, Yegor joined him five feet along the wall.

  ‘Ready on your signal,’ Yegor whispered into his radio.

  At the front of the apartment, Lou stood a pace behind Jerry and Max as they took up position either side of the door. Jerry leaned in and pressed the bell.

  A fraction of a second later, Ilia and Yegor launched themselves from the top of the balcony wall and smashed through the rear window of apartment 154, glass scattering around the tiny kitchen beyond.

  One of the kidnappers was at the stove cooking breakfast. He began to turn, his hand reaching down for a pistol tucked into his belt. Ilia shattered his face with a burst from his assault weapon. The man crumpled over the frying pan and onto the lit ring.

  It was just two steps from the kitchen into the boxy low-ceilinged living area. Kate was not there, but the other two men were slouched in front of a TV in a pair of La-Z-Boys. One of the men had a shotgun in his lap. He reacted with incredible speed. Spinning to his right and off the chair, he brought round the gun and emptied both barrels. Yegor opened fire, killing him as Ilia flew backwards and crashed to the floor. The unarmed man in the other chair raised his hands.

  Jerry came round from the hall, his gun at arm’s length. Yegor dashed over to Ilia.

  Crouching low and moving fast, Lou made it past the opening and found a pair of doors to the left and right of the hall. He tried the first one – an empty room with sleeping bags on the floor. Whirling round, he pulled on the other door and almost fell into a blacked-out room. Kate was sitting on the floor against the far wall tied by ropes at her ankles and wrists, a gag over her mouth. She looked terrified, her eyes huge in the half-light from the hall.

  45

  Within minutes two cars, a Mercedes 600SL and a dark-blue BMW, had pulled up outside the apartment block. People were emerging terrified and sleepy from their flats. Max played it down, flashed a fake ID to show he was a member of the FSB, the state police, then escorted four of Sergei’s men to apartment 154.

  From the bedroom where Kate had been held, she and Lou could hear the coming and going of the men. Kate was still shaking, sipping a bottle of water.

  Jerry Derham stood in the hall just beyond the closed bedroom door and watched the men remove the dead – two of the kidnappers and Ilia, his face hidden by a sheet. Yegor glanced at the captain, his expression rigid, then he followed the m
en out onto the balcony and down the concrete stairs.

  Two men stood over the surviving kidnapper, Max was seated behind them in the main living area. Derham followed Kate and Lou out onto the balcony and down to the snow-strewn patch of tarmac that served as a parking area. The car carrying the dead was disappearing around a corner about a hundred feet from the tower block, the dark-blue BMW stood with the engine running, exhaust fumes billowing into the freezing air.

  ‘I think you should go to the local hospital,’ Lou said as he helped Kate into the back of the car and nodded to the driver holding open the door.

  ‘What I need more than anything is a hot bath, a cup of strong tea and about three days’ sleep,’ was the last thing Derham heard her say to Lou as the door of the car closed. He waved them off and returned to the apartment.

  The surviving kidnapper was bleeding, a stream of red running down his arm and dripping onto the cheap velour of the chair. The muzzles of two Kalashnikovs hung inches from his face. Max was leaning forward in his chair talking to the man in Russian.

  ‘Max, this man needs medical attention,’ Derham said and stepped over. The prisoner was a youth, barely out of his teens. He had a spotty, red face. Sweat ran down his cheeks. He said something in Russian, his voice anguished.

  ‘Please, Captain Derham, let us . . .’ Max said.

  Jerry leaned down over the kid. ‘Let me see,’ he said, pulling the prisoner’s arm up and inspecting the wound. The kid winced.

  ‘He has a bullet wound in his forearm. It’s bleeding badly, Max.’ He lowered the arm gently.

  Max nodded to one of the guards. He grabbed Derham’s arm. The captain cursed, jerked free and the man shifted position to get a fresh grip.

  ‘Please! Captain Derham!’ Max snapped and strode over. ‘Please . . .’ He pulled free Jerry’s arm and the guard stepped back.

  ‘You can’t just—’

  ‘Captain, we have our methods. Please try to remember you are a guest in our city. I would hope you would respect that.’

  Derham pulled back and sat down in a chair the other side of the tiny living area. The kid gave him a desperate look.