by Dan Latus
I stood still for a few moments, waiting. Nothing else happened. I reached up and pulled the cloth bag from my head. I could see again. Not much. The light was too dim. But I could see two figures on the floor. They weren’t moving.
‘Sasha?’ I whispered.
One of the bodies moved.
Thank God!
They had been dealt with proficiently and quickly, more so than me. Perhaps time was running out when my turn had come. I slackened the cords binding Sasha’s legs and arms, and removed tape from her mouth. Then I turned to Misha.
‘Thank you, Frank!’ Sasha was breathless and enraged. ‘Who…?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
But I did. I could make a good guess at who was lurking in the shadows so very secretly and efficiently. I was even beginning to guess why. Luckily, they hadn’t been sure who we were, or we might not have been alive now.
It took a few minutes to free Sasha and Misha. Just as I was starting to say we had to try to get out and catch up with Jac, I heard the key turning in the lock. The door sprang open, a powerful light was shone in our faces and several armed men entered the room.
‘You will come with us,’ one of them said.
There was very little choice – again! We went with them.
We were taken outside and across a cobbled yard to an adjacent building that was some sort of workshop. I noted big timber benches and lots of packing material. Power tools and empty crates looked to have been in use recently. We were herded into a huge lift and pressed at gunpoint into a corner.
I contemplated making a fight of it, but not for long; the odds were not good. Besides, we still had time. If they had been going to eliminate us soon, they would have done it by now. It looked to me as if we were going to discover everything we had always wanted to know about Borovsky’s tunnel, and perhaps about Meridion as well. We were hostages again. The negotiations couldn’t have finished yet.
Looking around as we emerged from the lift, it was clear that big money had been spent here. This was no ruined Victorian tunnel newly reopened after a century of disuse. Borovsky had upgraded it into a state-of-the-art highway between Meridion House and the harbour. Modern lighting had been installed. Rails had been laid, and a miniature electric train ran upon them at a fair speed.
Some of the wagons in the train were flat-bed for carrying bulky loads. But we were installed in seats on an open-top little charabanc of the kind used in modern mines. Our guards were alert and vigilant. Somehow I felt they were not the people who had captured Jac and me, and that was puzzling. These were Borovsky’s men, not SAS. We had been handed over.
Whoever this lot were, it was obvious we were in serious trouble now. My one consoling thought was that there was a possibility that at least Jac was out of it. They hadn’t found her. I wondered if anyone had even realized we were only three now, not four.
The little train carried only ourselves and our guards. The heavy stuff must all have gone by now. My guess was that Borovsky’s departure arrangements were just about complete. What hadn’t been loaded wasn’t going. It was a pity that that didn’t include us.
When the train stopped, there was a slight delay while one of the guards checked outside the tunnel entrance, presumably for dog walkers or surfers who might have witnessed our abduction. Then we were hustled across the beach and along the jetty to board the boat. The way Meridion was throbbing and bobbing about told me my guess had been correct. She was ready to launch out into the North Sea.
I thought of the clifftop watchers. Where were they? What the hell were they doing? This was when whistles should be blown and efforts made to keep the boat where it was. But there was no sign of anyone intending to interfere with Borovsky’s activities.
The reason, I had to conclude, was that the SAS – and whatever higher authority was involved – had no intention of stopping or even staying Borovsky’s departure. The national security interest Bill Peart had referred to must be in letting him continue without hindrance.
Why would that be? If it wasn’t simply a cock-up, perhaps HMG supported what he was doing? That was a thought that gave me no comfort whatsoever. The little guy doesn’t get much consideration when affairs of state take precedence.
I wondered which part of Borovsky’s activities HMG liked – art or guns. Did they even know he traded in both?
Once aboard, we were installed in yet another prison cell. This one was below decks and pretty basic. We had exchanged a stone box for a steel box. Otherwise the facilities were the same: zero. Perhaps we wouldn’t be staying long, not that I cared to contemplate that possibility.
Sasha and Misha were quiet, surprisingly so in her case. I just hoped that, like me, they were trying to figure a way out.
I caught Sasha’s eye. She grinned.
‘I’m glad you find something to smile about,’ I said. ‘Any idea what’s going on?’
‘Borovsky will try to negotiate with Moscow, like he said. And they will say no, no trade.’
Great.
‘That doesn’t sound good from our point of view, Sasha.’
‘It could be worse.’
I wondered how.
‘The guards will return soon,’ Misha contributed.
‘Oh?’
‘They have gone to find rope, or something, to tie us. I heard them say.’
‘Handcuffs, I think,’ Sasha added.
‘Oh, good!’ I said, summoning all my enthusiasm for that prospect.
If they were right, we had minutes left to do something. Desperately, I wandered around our small cell. My conclusion was that without an oxy-acetelyne burner we would struggle to get out.
‘Frank!’ Sasha whispered.
I turned towards her. She leaned forward and pulled up her trouser leg slightly. To my astonishment, I saw the handle of a serious-looking knife sticking out of her boot.
36
Igaped at her.
‘I took it from one of the guards,’ she explained. ‘So now we have a chance.’
Perhaps we did. Not much of one, but still a chance. We’d better make the most of it.
Before we could make any plans, the door clanged and swung open. A man stepped forward, carrying handcuffs. Two more followed him, carrying automatic weapons. The two gunmen separated quickly, giving themselves space while they covered their colleague.
The guy with the handcuffs walked past me and leaned down to snap one set of cuffs to a metal loop welded onto a steel girder. Then he moved on to another beam, and another loop.
I could see what the plan was, and I didn’t like it. We were each going to be fastened by one hand to a girder. Then we were all going to be stuck here until Borovsky reached the end of his negotiations. Whatever the outcome, and whatever he subsequently decided, we wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing about it.
To hell with that!
There wasn’t much space in that cell, hold or whatever the correct nautical term for it was. With my back turned to the two gunmen, I took a pace and a half backwards to allow the guy with the cuffs more room to do his job. I hoped it was enough.
There wasn’t much time. Two of the cuffs were already snapped into place, and the third set was being raised towards the intended steel loop. Next, in a couple of seconds, the guy placing them would probably reach for Misha’s wrist, Misha being the nearest of us to him. No time left at all, really. Unfortunately, in the past thirty seconds I hadn’t been able to catch Sasha’s eye and warn her.
I launched myself backwards and spun round on my right foot, reaching for the nearest guard’s weapon. Even before I touched it, I swung my left leg hard and caught the guard somewhere with my boot. It was his shin I hit, and probably broke. He buckled forward with pain and shock. My hands wrapped round his weapon and forced it up. His finger pulled the trigger briefly before my elbow smashed into his face. He fell backwards, with me desperately trying to pull the gun out of his hands.
Nice try, Frank, but all through the microseconds in which th
e action took place I knew somewhere in my consciousness that it wasn’t fast enough. The second gunman had plenty of time to respond.
But I couldn’t stop now. The gun came free. From a crouched position, I launched myself bodily towards the second gunman.
I missed. He wasn’t there. I hit the floor hard and rolled, crashing into the bulwark on the far side. Something was wrong. I knew it by then: I hadn’t been hit.
I sprang upright, and my eyes and brain took in the scene. Then I slumped back against the wall and sucked breath back into my lungs.
‘Bravo, Frank!’ Sasha cried.
She was on her feet. Misha was bent over the guard who had been putting the handcuffs in place. The guy was struggling. Misha jerked his head up sharply. I heard his neck snap.
My eyes sought and found the second gunman. He was on the floor, and also not moving. I guessed a stray bullet had fortuitously found him.
I was wrong. I moved towards him but Sasha beat me to it. She reached down and pulled her knife out of his throat. Before I could do anything else, she stepped past me and sliced open the throat of the guard I had hit. He wasn’t going to get up again, even if his leg wasn’t broken.
‘That wasn’t necessary,’ I said, still panting heavily.
‘Just in case,’ she said briskly.
‘Thank you, Frank,’ Misha said warmly. ‘You gave us a chance.’
Some art students. Why the hell had I ever been worried about either of them?
What next?
We had a mini-conference. Escape was pretty high on my list of priorities. I didn’t know how to do it, but I was going to give it a go. Sasha had other priorities.
‘We have our duty,’ she informed me solemnly. ‘Misha and me, we know what we must do. We must stop Borovsky.’
‘We’ve been lucky,’ I snapped. ‘Let’s just think about getting out of here.’
‘Our mission comes first,’ Misha confirmed.
‘You’ll die,’ I said bleakly.
‘If necessary,’ Sasha agreed.
I felt the boat heel over as it left the jetty and began to build up speed. Soon we would be in deep water and whoever was driving this thing would really put his foot down. It was no time for disagreeing amongst ourselves.
‘So what’s the plan?’ I asked.
‘First, we kill Borovsky. Then we blow up the boat.’
‘Good luck!’ I said, as I headed for the door.
I didn’t know if we would be able to get out of the hold, never mind do what they or I wanted to do. But staying where we were didn’t seem a great idea.
‘Frank!’
I paused and looked back. Sasha came towards me, a smile on her face and the knife in her hand.
I reached out and grabbed her knife hand but it was limp. She smiled and reached up to kiss me lightly on the lips. ‘For everything,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you.’
‘Yeah. You, too.’ I gave her a hug. ‘Coming with me?’
She shook her head. ‘You go, Frank. Go!’ she added, giving me a push.
I went.
37
Ididn’t look back. Not once. They had made their decision and I had made mine. There was no time left for reconsidering anything. It did strike me that they had got a bum deal, the pair of them. It was a suicide mission. They had to stop Borovsky and they knew there would be no negotiations on their behalf. Mother Russia still set her people terrible tasks, it seemed. God knew what chance they had of doing anything but sacrifice their own lives.
My own situation wasn’t much better. The movement of the boat indicated that speed was building up. I had to get off it fast, one way or another. I headed towards the stern of the boat, thinking only that it was there that I had seen the platform that wasn’t so far above the sea.
I went straight through a couple of doors and along a passageway. Meridion wasn’t really all that big a boat. It only took me half a minute to get there.
Something must have been brewing onshore. They had taken off in a hurry and the rear end of the boat was still open. Crew members were working hard, hurriedly moving things around on the interior deck so they could get her closed up.
I walked quickly across the deck and only broke into a run when I heard the first shout. Then I ran fast – and jumped. I jumped way out to the side, hoping the boat was moving so fast it would be past me before I hit the water and gave the propellers a chance to chew me up.
Christ! It was cold. The shock hit me like a rocket. It took all the air out of me. I gasped and sank. But the propellers missed me. I knew that because I didn’t feel them slicing into me.
My brain recovered from the shock. I knew what I had to do next. I kicked up to the surface and began stripping off as many of my clothes as I could. Jacket, shoes and trousers went easily. I gave up after that and started swimming towards the shore. I reckoned I had a couple of minutes before the cold dragged me down. I tried to make the best of them.
It was grim. Waves were washing around and over my head. The cold was like icicles driven into me. But I stayed focused and swam like a man possessed. Soon, though, I grew weak. The cold sapped my muscles and my brain alike. Somehow I kept going. I kept the shore in my sights and did my best.
Then I got lucky. The shore didn’t seem so far away after all, and it was coming closer. Not much to do with me, I realized. The tide was running my way. It didn’t really matter whether I swam or not. I would get there, but would I still be alive when I did?
It seemed like hours later when I finally crawled up onto the shingle beach. I lay full length, my face pressed into the gravel. I retched sea water out of my innards and I shook like a motor inside had gone berserk. There wasn’t much left of me. I knew I was nearly done for. I raised my head and managed to crawl a few more inches up the beach, but that was all. The incoming sea lapped at my face, and I was powerless to stop it.
Then I got lucky again.
I felt myself being lifted out of the water and carried away, probably on a magic carpet. By then, I knew I was hallucinating, but I didn’t care.
The next scene was real enough. There were two of them. Inside one of the fishermen’s huts, they stripped my remaining clothes off me and rubbed me hard with some material that smelt like an oil rag. Then they wrapped a survival blanket round me, a tinfoil thing that seemed unlikely to do much good.
By then, my senses were returning. I noticed no one spoke for a while. I couldn’t, and they didn’t. One of the men lit a gas stove and heated some water, which they gave me in an enamel mug. I sipped it gratefully and felt my strength returning.
‘Thanks,’ I said, mustering all the words at my command.
‘Bollocks! You’re a fucking nuisance. I’d have left you for the crabs.’
That was nice. I looked up at him.
‘Eight weeks’ work wasted because of you!’
And fuck you, I thought but didn’t say. SAS, I had realized by then.
‘Jock!’ said his mate, who was outside the hut now and had just opened the door and stuck his head in.
Jock joined him. They both stepped outside. Something seemed to be happening. I got up and shuffled to the doorway.
Way in the distance, the sky over the sea had come alive.
‘Shit!’ Jock said with disgust. ‘That’s all we need.’
A huge aurora of incredibly bright light filled the eastern sky. Shooting stars and fiery rockets took the message even further afield. Seconds later we heard the explosion. It came rolling in on the tide, for a few moments drowning out the sound of sea on shingle.
Sasha and Misha. God bless them!
‘See what you’ve done?’ Jock said, turning to me. ‘You stupid bastard!’
I looked at him for a moment. Then I hit him. I couldn’t help myself. I hit him hard twice, once in the belly and once on the chin. He fell backwards, sprawling across the shingle. When he sprang back to his feet and I saw the glint of steel I knew I was in for it.
Then the one who was not Jock stepped betw
een us and snapped, ‘Leave it!’
Jock wasn’t too keen to do that, but the tension drained out of the moment, sapped by the voice of command.
‘Get him some clothes, so he can get out of here,’ the guy in charge said.
Jock went.
The two of us who remained went back inside.
‘What was that about?’ the boss man asked, sitting himself down across from me.
‘There were two young people I liked on that damned boat,’ I told him bitterly. ‘They’d been living dangerously for a long time, and they deserved better than what has just happened to them.’
He yawned. ‘Get some sleep,’ he suggested. ‘Think yourself lucky you weren’t with them.’
Surprisingly, I did sleep. When I awoke, there was a pile of clothing near me. The two SAS men were gone.
38
First, I went home. I walked, of course. No option. Anyway, it did me good. Stretched me out and got things into some sort of perspective.
For some reason best known to themselves, the SAS guys blamed me for … what? Meridion blowing up? Borovsky disappearing? Or just for two months of undercover work leaving them without anything to show for it?
What would a result for them have been, for that matter? I had no idea how they looked at it.
What concerned me more was that they had stopped me getting out of Meridion House. Stopped us all. Or had they? Somebody had. But now I thought about it, that arm across my face hadn’t been tough-guy bare skin, and it hadn’t been swathed in camouflage or denim either. It had been smooth as silk, the cloth of an expensive suit. Who could that have been? I shrugged. To hell with it!
Personally, I wasn’t unhappy that a boat load of munitions and art forgeries had been spread across the North Sea. A lot of lives had probably been saved somewhere as a result, somewhere in the North Caucasus, presumably. My regrets were all for a slim, tough Russian girl. And her boyfriend, too, if that was what he had been. It seemed so unnecessary, and a shitty end to a shitty day. The road home had never seemed so long. I felt like saying, Fuck it! and just sitting down.
