He had done well in New York, studied the people at work and play, looked hard into their faces, watched how the gangs and the cliques got things done; how they broke rules and re-made them as they wanted.
He watched how patronage and power were traded, how money was seemlessly converted into influence.
Felt familiar, so very familiar because it was just like home. The only difference was that the Americans had a soft surface. Pat them on the head and they’d lie on their back with their legs in the air. But inside they were the same duplicitous snakes as the Russians.
And they all loved a thug. As long he was their thug, killing, torturing, humbling their enemies, betraying their friends. Didn’t matter, in either country, as long as he got the job done.
But Britain would be different. Altogether more complex.
He could see ahead of him the months and years of constant probing. The British no longer believed in anything. Still less in anything they were told. Perhaps it was how small countries survived. Big countries could afford big hearts and naïve assumptions – the little ones needed to watch their back.
He knew the Brits would be wary of him. You never trust an agent who suddenly appears on your doorstep. To be frank, you never trust them at all. But the film from Leningrad would be the clincher. He’d be lauded and feted all the way to Buckingham Palace. They’d be dancing in the corridors at Vauxhall Cross.
Or maybe they wouldn’t care. Maybe an ancient grainy piece of film was too big for them to handle. Too hot … too complex.
Maybe all he’d get would be a thank-you at the local pizza place and then they’d stick him in a little, red-brick house on the bad side of a big town, with a view of a railway line, or a motorway, where nobody cared who came or went.
Perhaps they’d assign him some retired ex-cop for a while to watch the neighbours and then he’d be on his own. New name, new haircut, some regular money – not that much – and a life to spend on the cheap in scabby cafés and public libraries and the crowded waiting rooms of immigrant doctors.
Arkady shut his eyes.
Is that what freedom would look like?
Just before dawn he got up from the chair and lay down in the bedroom. What had happened to his spirit, his ambition?
To make it in the KGB, as he had done, you didn’t do negative. You were confident and unflinching, utterly ruthless in the execution of your duties.
He wasn’t going to the West as a broken victim. He was a prize catch and he would prove his worth. He’d meet the prime minister; there’d be high tea and sherry; they’d pay him handsomely for the risks he’d taken and the gift he had brought.
Brits still had a sense of what was right. A sense of justice, fair play. Didn’t they?
Christ only knew.
Arkady breathed deeply, trying to slow the engine in his chest.
Today he would leave Moscow for good, his head held high. After a lifetime of Russia, like a ball and chain around his leg, his fate was his affair – and his alone.
He smiled at the darkness around him. Freedom was a state of mind.
He was already free.
SYRIA
The contact couldn’t remember if he’d slept. Perhaps a few minutes. No more. His right hand had rested all night on the pistol in his pocket – the shiny, black Glock that had always got him what he wanted and disposed of what he didn’t.
He had imagined the policeman would come for him just before dawn. A single bullet in the head and they’d chuck him into one of the many graves that were dug daily across the country, with any old name spray-painted on a stone.
But the man never came. At five the contact tiptoed into the kitchen. He could hear the snoring from there. The drunken shit was dead to the world.
At six he woke him.
‘You want more money. Get the fuck up and earn it. I need some information.’
The policeman had coughed for ten minutes, thrown up and then made tea. The place was freezing. They stood over the single gas ring, rubbing their hands.
Outside, the sky was still dark, but the birds knew it was dawn. The contact couldn’t remember when he’d last heard their song. Besides, who cared? A new day was shuffling in, bringing its usual quota of hatred and violence, just as it had done for as long as he could remember. And one day, like everything else, the birdsong would cease.
He pulled on his jacket and got into the policeman’s car.
The man’s greed had woken up with him. ‘I want the money before we start.’
‘How much?’
‘Ten thousand dollars.’
The contact laughed. ‘I’ll give you two thousand now – if I get the information I want, you’ll get another two. It’s all I have.’
The man snorted, but he turned the ignition and after two tries, the engine fired.
They drove for a while without speaking. In the half-light of dawn, the contact could make out no more than a few black shapes along the streets, burkas that billowed in the wind, a dog with only half a tail that ran across the road in front of them. Many of the doorways were covered with blankets as wood was in short supply.
‘I’m hungry,’ he told the policeman.
‘Where do you think you are? New York? We don’t have hamburgers here. You take what you find.’
Down a side street they stopped at a bakery and bought warm white bread – but there was nothing to drink.
The contact looked at his watch. In a little over five hours Ahmed would be waiting for him in the same place by the border. If he had nothing to tell him, it would be a seriously unpleasant encounter. Ahmed was unpredictable in almost every way – but not when it came to violence. Those who displeased him were killed or badly beaten. The thought struck the contact that he might make a run for it – but Ahmed’s reach was everywhere. There was nowhere that was safe from him. He’d have to deliver.
They left the sprawl of the town and headed out into open country. No sign of war or destruction there, but the contact knew plenty of people were suffering. Only the odd food shop remained open. No one bought luxuries except those who killed and stole, like the fat businessmen who overcharged everyone, profiting from the shortages and the national misfortune; or the mercenaries who went off to do a day’s killing and then returned home for dinner, with the rings and watches they’d snatched from their victims, rattling in their pockets.
It was a country where the evil strutted the streets and the innocent cowered in basements. And they had called this the Arab Spring!
The contact reckoned he had known all along how it would end; had seen the brutality that had lain below the surface of every Arab society; been a part of it himself.
For all his faults, the dictator had kept a lid on the worst of it. Yes, people got tortured, even killed when they went too far. But millions of others had still gone about their business, studied at university, fallen in love, started families, made a bit of money.
Not anymore. Now everyone was losing: the people they loved and the things they’d worked for.
This was where all the stupid talk of freedom and democracy had brought them.
To the graveyard.
The policeman pulled off the road beside a line of shops. All were shuttered. He banged on a metal door but there was no response.
‘Where’s your man?’ The contact was shivering in the grey light.
‘Shut up and I’ll find him.’
He disappeared round the side of the buildings; the contact followed. Together they forced the main door open, heard the cheap lock snap and climbed the stone staircase, quietly, on the balls of their feet.
It was clear the policeman had been there before. At the second floor he branched off down the corridor, surprisingly nimble on his aging feet. He stopped at the last entrance on the left.
In the cold darkness, he whispered to the contact, ‘I’ll break down the door. You go in first, show him the gun and then he’ll cooperate.’
‘And if he doesn’t?’
‘We’ll persuade him. You remember how to do that?’
At the first heave the door gave up and buckled noisily inwards. From close by, they heard a shout of surprise, then fright and as the two of them stumbled into a bedroom, a bearded man was sitting up in bed in striped pyjamas, waving his fist and cursing their ancestors.
‘Shut your mouth,’ the policeman grunted. ‘You know who we are?’
‘A pair of thieves, too stupid to enter and leave without waking me up.’
‘Get up.’ The policeman picked up some clothes from the floor and threw them at the bearded figure. ‘We want some information and you can make some money. If you prefer to do this the hard way, my friend and I can shoot your balls off – and then you’ll have to help us without them. All clear?’
‘I’ve seen you before,’ the man nodded. ‘I know your ways.’
He threw off his blanket and struggled into his clothes. The contact thought he was probably about thirty-five. It was clear he had once cut a fat, portly figure but now the skin hung in folds and creases from his belly and the fat had gone. His arms and legs were spindly and discoloured. Much of the skin had a yellow, almost jaundiced tint. But the contact couldn’t have cared less about the man’s state of health. The only question was whether he still had a brain.
In the kitchen, they sat at a small, round table while the policeman told the beard what he wanted.
‘Friend here says a woman is on the run, probably been labelled a spy, might even be American. Chances are everyone’s after her. We need to know if there’s been any mobile traffic about her. She could be hiding up somewhere, or trying to head for the Turkish border or maybe a route into Jordan.’
The beard looked interested.
With the lights on, the contact examined his face. The man had probably been a teacher, one of the clever kind. Most likely at a university or technical college. Read a lot of books, didn’t go out. Only interested in his work, or the tight jeans of the female students. He recognized the type: quick movements, nose twitching like a rat. A man who would live in twilight and sleep through the day, dreaming algorithms, while the world was being blown up around him. Perhaps he wouldn’t even notice.
The contact leaned forward. ‘You still have your equipment?’
The beard said he did.
‘Does it work?’
Again the reply was affirmative.
‘Show me.’
He took them into the corridor and opened a walk-in cupboard. There was barely space for a single person in the windowless alcove, but shelves had been built on both sides of the wall and a desktop crammed with communications equipment, consoles, green and red lights.
The contact whistled in awe. ‘Where in the name of God Almighty did you get all this?’
‘Who cares where he got it?’ The policeman had pushed in behind them. ‘Don’t waste his time. He has it, it works … that’s all that matters. Now let him do his fucking job and we can get out of here and I don’t have to see either of your ugly faces again.’
The beard sat at his console and threw switches. Flashing lights appeared and tinny, short-range radio transmissions could be heard on a small loudspeaker. Beside him, the contact was watching the scanner screens intently.
‘How do you know who these voices are?’ he asked.
‘Got used to them. Been doing this for two years now. I also keep records.’ He hesitated. ‘Not here of course. But somewhere safe. An insurance policy.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning I’ve heard a lot of things, sitting here. Some of them pretty dangerous. Could get a lot of people into trouble. Evidence that could be used against important people. Orders given. Orders carried out. You know what I mean?’
The contact knew perfectly well what he meant. If he’d had the time he might have tried to plunder the beard’s archive, wherever it was, extract some compromising material and make some money out of it himself. But time was running out fast and he needed results.
Ahmed had no reputation at all for rewarding failure.
An hour had passed without result. The beard had swung his dials and the contact had listened with mounting impatience to the cacophony of hateful voices: crying, shouting and talking nonsense.
At times the airwaves were alive with trivia. Mobile phone talk about who might be where. What had they eaten? Orders for taxis. A doctor who could find no medicine.
And then there were the found and the lost, the hopeless and the lonely, the distraught and the dying.
Soundbite Syria at war.
Once or twice the beard pulled in a police or military report. Someone had been shot, ammunition was needed.
A soldier could be heard shouting at a unit that was under fire from rebel forces. ‘Hold the street. At all costs you have to hold the street.’ But after twenty minutes the voices had died away. So he assumed the street had been lost.
He put his hand on the beard’s arm. ‘I need to hear about an American woman. Find a mention of her, a name, even a curse. But find her for me.’
‘You ask too much …’
‘And you give too little,’ the contact hit back. ‘Get yourself together, my friend, and think fast. If this doesn’t work, you’ll see a very angry man …’
The beard picked up his mobile.
‘Wait a minute …’ The contact snatched it from his hand. ‘No calls. You talk to no one until you find—’
‘But I’ve got friends who might help. They scan the frequencies like me. Maybe they’re closer …’ he began to whimper.
‘Then do it.’ The contact slapped him twice hard across the face with the flat of his hand. The beard yelped in surprise. Time was running out. The contact hit him again, just to make sure he understood.
WASHINGTON DC
Lydia Yanayeva could tell that her husband was nervous. She knew all his moods. The silent and the more silent. The anger that could flare quickly inside him, but almost never got out of control.
If she’d been asked about his character, she would have described him as unfailingly amiable. Not a trait much in evidence with Russian government officials, who she knew to be a little too amiable when they drank, and a little too surly when they didn’t.
Yanayev had returned unexpectedly from his office shortly after breakfast and found his wife getting ready to go out.
She kissed him on the cheek. ‘I thought you’d gone for the day.’
‘So did I.’ He sprawled in an armchair. She thought he looked frustrated, uncertain what to do next.
She sat beside him on the arm of the chair and put her hand through his hair.
‘I was about to go to the Russian school – they asked whether I would give away some of the prizes.’
Yanayev nodded.
‘But I don’t have to go,’ she added. ‘I’ll make you some coffee instead.’
He joined her in the kitchen. He wanted to tell her something, wanted to share a confidence. She knew that. But she wouldn’t ask him. Let him circle and think and decide all by himself – and then he would give away his secret.
The moment came as they sipped the coffee in the atrium, overlooking the gardens.
‘I’m in a difficult position, Lydia.’
‘Talk to me. Maybe I can help.’
‘I wish …’ He raised his hands. ‘I don’t know, maybe. Perhaps no one can help.’
He looked out into the garden. An embassy cleaner was sweeping snow from the paths. Lydia said nothing.
‘I have a deal with the Americans that’s reached a very critical stage. If it works, it will bring me much credit in Moscow. If it fails’ – he shrugged – ‘if it fails, they will blame me for the whole thing …’
‘But it’s not your fault.’
‘Since when did that worry them? There are plenty of people back home who want my job. “Yanayev is too old, too stupid, too fat. Way past his best days. Time he was brought back to Moscow where we can keep an eye on him. Maybe he can run the traffic police”.’ He sighed.
‘This is the kind of thing they say about me. I have friends – not many, but a few. And they tell me these things. Any failure from my side and I can rely on the Ministry – some of the highest officials there – to use it against me.’
She took his hand. ‘But why would it fail? You always plan meticulously. You’ve never failed in the past.’
‘Too many things to go wrong. Too many people involved. And there’s danger as well.’
‘But …’
Yanayev finished his coffee and put down the cup. ‘Perhaps it’s best that you know nothing about it, my dear. They might ask questions. Even of you. They’re quite ruthless when things go wrong.’
She looked hurt. ‘And you think I’m so stupid that I can’t share my husband’s troubles with him and that I’m afraid of some cheap, state thugs who ask questions?’
He smiled and put his arm around her. ‘I know … I know.’ He got up and stood in front of her, his decision made. ‘Put your coat on and we’ll go for a walk.’
He led the way into the garden. The wind had come up, blowing snow from the trees, scattering it over her thick, dark hair.
‘Listen to me.’ He held her hand tightly. ‘The Americans have lost an agent in Syria – a woman. We’re using a contact there to help locate her and get her out?’
‘Why do we care who the Americans lose or don’t lose …?’
‘We care because of the price that Washington is ready to pay to get her back. If we find the woman, they will betray a Western agent – one of our own citizens – who is preparing to leave the country. It’s a straight swap. We extricate their agent – they give us a traitor.’
‘Only you don’t know if you can find the woman?’
‘We’re searching. Every minute that passes is of concern. I’m doing nothing else, only waiting for the call from our agent in Syria.’
‘But how good is he, Vitaly?’
‘Good?’ Yanayev shrugged. ‘Not an adjective I would use to describe Ahmed. Let’s just say the man is effective. Enormously and utterly effective. Cruel, brutal in the extreme and totally devoid of conscience.’
Fatal Ally Page 10
