Gerald Seymour

by Traitor's Kiss (b) (epub)

  'I bought their freedom, theirs for his.'

  'At a price. You let the beast go free. How many more men will die because you made a deal that saved the life of my colleague? You did what was asked of you—I do not criticize—but it was a harsh price we have paid.'

  The general was turning away. It was not that Bikov had chosen the moment for maximum effect, not his nature. It was more that the moment was appropriate. It had been his intention to deliver the information quietly to the resident team of military counterintelligence, over a coffee and a beer.

  'The price is cheap, general.'

  'He walked free. You gave him back his rifle. That is cheap?'

  Bikov said quietly, 'I gave him back his rifle. In the shoulder stock there is now a homing bug, set behind the cleaning rod. It has a range of five kilometres and the power of the battery is enough for what I recommend should happen. I would not like it said that I reneged on an honest deal between Ibn ul Attab and myself. I request that you leave it for a week then go and search for the bug's signal. I would guarantee to you that, after what has happened to him, his rifle will not be more than a metre from him, night or day. In a week, search for the signal then bomb the fuck out of him. Use bombs and rockets and kill him, with his child. That, General, is the price of the deal'

  The general's face creased in astonishment. Bikov eased back the shape of his wristwatch. Under it, preserved, written in indelible ink, was a set of scrawled digits. His face was impassive. He reached out and lifted a pen from the front pocket of the general's tunic, then took the senior officer's hand, peeled off the leather glove and wrote the numbers on the clean palm. Then he returned the pen to the pocket.

  'That is the frequency of the homing bug, General. One week, then help him to the Garden of Paradise.'

  Bikov walked past the general, and heard the crescendo of laughter behind him. All he wanted was coffee or soup, straight from the stove, and then sleep. But the general had run after him and had snatched the material of his tunic. 'They have sent a plane for you, to take you to Moscow. Everyone wants you, you are a man of that importance. I could almost feel sorry for the next wretch that faces you. Almost…'

  Fifteen minutes later, Yuri Bikov was airborne. Swathed in warm blankets, naked under them, he sat in the cabin, the only passenger. His clothing was in a leaking plastic bag in the aisle. Before they had cleared Chechen air space, he was asleep.

  Two hours later, the early light seeped in the mist over Kaliningrad.

  Captain, second rank, Victor Archenko, was in the back seat beside Admiral, Commander of the Baltic Fleet, Alexei Falkovsky.

  'I was reading last night, reading history…'

  Viktor was not expected to reply. He gazed through the side window. Had he turned and twisted in his seat and looked out of the rear window, stared back at the traffic respectfully following the staff car that flew the admiral's pennant, he would have seen the black van and the red saloon. He did not turn and twist.

  'The battle of Tsushima. I had gone back to the history book for it, because all our ills come from it. You agree, Viktor?'

  He nodded. At least five times a year, Viktor was required to listen as the admiral regurgitated what he had read of the war at sea in the Far East. The battle had been fought on 27 May 1905, combat between the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Imperial Russian Navy, Baltic Fleet. Ahead of them was the regular monthly meeting in the headquarters building in Kaliningrad city of the commanders of the army, the missile forces, the airforce and the navy. The admiral used only one book of naval history and Viktor could have recited the text that had been read the previous night. At Tsushima, 4830 Russian sailors had been killed or had drowned, some seven thousand had been taken prisoner, 1862 had reached neutral territory and had been interned, and all the capital ships had been lost. Two or three times a year, Viktor and the admiral re-enacted the battle with models. Viktor took the role of Admiral Togo and Falkovsky took the identity of Admiral Rozhdestvensky, and they would pore for an evening and half into the night over their charts and models while Falkovsky cursed the incompetence of his Baltic Fleet predecessor, then made the decisions that broke history's mould and won the battle. To Viktor, the sessions were a pointless waste of time. They drove into the city, and the admiral's pennant ensured they were not delayed.

  'We still suffer because of the incompetence of Rozhdestvensky. The Russian navy, because of his stupidity, has never recovered. From the start, they sail from the Baltic, they break out into the North Sea—they are half the world's circumference from Japanese waters—they are at the Dogger Bank off the coast of Great Britain when they see small craft and open fire, believing they are about to be attacked by Japanese torpedo boats. What does Rozhdestvensky think Japanese torpedo boats are doing in the waters of Great Britain? They sink four British trawlers and consider they have won a great victory over the Japanese navy…and they sail on and it will get worse.'

  The car lurched in a pothole. Viktor had jerked his head up. They were on Prospekt Mira and had passed the Kosmonaut monument. Under his breath the driver swore. Big blocks of rabbit-warren apartments flanked the road, the concrete was stained by the rust from the metal window-frames and they had a mildew of decay about them. The driver swerved again, to avoid an addict shambling across the street. There was more heroin on the streets of the city this year than last. The base senior medical officer had told Viktor that. He watched the addict collapse on to the pavement as they swept by. He was as trapped in the city as the addict, now insensible in his own filth.

  'At last, the fleet approaches the Straits of Tsushima, six months after leaving the Baltic. They come as if for a fleet review, as if the Tsar inspects them. They make no effort to sink the Japanese scout ships that monitor them. Togo knows where they are and where they are going, and Rozhdestvensky is blind to where the Japanese are and their intentions. The man was a fool. He has the finest battleships—Kniaz, Suvorov, Imperator Alexander III, Borodino and Orel—of the Baltic Fleet, but he has allowed their gunnery to become so poor that they cannot achieve hits even when they have closed to five thousand five hundred metres. It was good that Rozhdestvensky died on the Suvorov. If he had survived he should have been hanged.'

  The sign for the zoo was behind them. They drove on Leninsky Prospekt towards the Bunker Museum, the Investbank and the big hotel where it was too expensive for a captain, second rank, to use the bar. They went by the House of Soviets: two great concrete blocks linked with two horizontal walkways, known as the Monster. It had sixteen storeys, and beneath it were 1100 sunken pillars of concrete hammered down into the marshland. Beside it were the ruins of the old German fortress of Konigsberg. That building had survived for seven centuries before the bombing brought it down, but the Monster had never lived. It sagged, was not safe to occupy, and the money had run out before electricity or heating were installed. Each time Viktor went past the House of Soviets he saw it as the symbol of the State he betrayed. Alone, far from safety, Viktor needed symbols.

  'The Suvorov is sunk, the Alexander capsizes, the Borodino explodes, the Orel surrenders—the rest are left to be massacred. He was very lucky—Rozhdestvensky was exceptionally lucky—to have died of his wounds. It was the last time we had a great fleet, and it was thrown away. With it went the future of our navy.'

  On the other side, some men fished in a canal running into the Pregel river. Viktor knew that Kaliningrad was regarded as a polluting cesspit by its Baltic neighbours. Dawn, and men already fished. He could not imagine what species survived there in its rank water. They would not catch anything, they would stare at a float stationary on the oily surface and hope they could forget what was around them. Abruptly he tossed back his head so that he no longer saw the canal. He was a fish. A rusted hook was in the gristle of his mouth. He felt the pressure of the rod and line. He tried to run and could not find the open water, tried to dive and failed, and the pressure on him grew.

  They were at army headquarters. Now, Viktor looked back.
He saw the black van slowing in the traffic behind, while the red car came past and stopped beyond the main gate. And he saw Piatkin, the zampolit, in the front passenger seat. He clasped his hands to stop their trembling, as their car turned in past smart sentries and came to a stop in front of the main doors. An aide strode forward to open the admiral's door, but the driver waved him away because his admiral still talked.

  'The reason why the importance of the navy is not recognized is because of Tsushima, and the humiliation of the Baltic Fleet. Lenin knew of Tsushima, and Stalin. The army and airforce poisoned Khrushchev's opinion of us by telling him of Tsushima, and Brezhnev's. Gorbachev and Yeltsin would have been similarly affected by the toxin of Tsushima, and today it is no different. Half a day and half a night of incredible ineptitude has cost us, Russia's sailors, our rightful position. I read of Tsushima last night so as to be better prepared to meet these shits today. Even now we are not considered equals. I tell you, if they had their way, our aircraft would go under airforce command, our submarines would go to the missile forces, our amphibious capability would go to the army. I see no future because ninety-seven years ago an idiot threw away a great fleet at Tsushima. You don't respond, Viktor. What is wrong?'

  'I agree with everything you say, Admiral.'

  'You all right? You look like death.' Falkovsky stared hard at him.

  He did not know how soon it would be before Admiral Alexei Falkovsky was informed that his chief of staff was to be arrested on a charge of treason. He thought that then the admiral—his patron—would stand in a line and queue with others for the chance to strangle him, barehanded.

  'No problems,' Viktor said.

  'Let's hit these bastards—and we give them nothing, nothing. Fucking parasites.'

  A pace behind, in his respectful place, Viktor followed his admiral into the building.

  With his target safely inside army headquarters for a minimum of two hours, Piatkin walked away from the red saloon, down to the canal's towpath, away from the few fishermen, and there he made a call on his mobile to Boris Chelbia. He was full of apologies for the cancellation of the meeting the week before. Because of the cash in foreign currencies paid him by Chelbia, the apologies were abject. Piatkin confirmed at what time in the night the lorry, supplied by Chelbia, would have access to the base, how the necessary pass for its driver would be handled, and the load that the lorry would carry out. Again he apologized for inconvenience caused by the delay. He rang off.

  He did not feel himself trapped, but he was. The officer of the FSB, Vladdy Piatkin, was owned by Boris Chelbia. He was a servant of the racketeer. He wrapped his coat tight around him as proof against the dawn's cold.

  An hour after dawn came to the Baltic, the same light fell on the Bay of Biscay. The Princess Rose was out of sight of the Spanish coast and rode the swell on low power. She pitched like an awkward, cussed mule, fell into the troughs, climbed the peaks, and rolled.

  With a mug of slopping coffee, and the message received on the radio rolled and slipped behind his ear, the mate headed for the master's cabin. The heritage of Tihomir Zaklan was far from the sea. He had been sick in the night, was always sick in a storm. He was from the Croatian town of Karlovac, eighty kilometres from the sea at Senj on the Adriatic. His training had been at war, not at a university. He had fought the Serbs to save his city, then worked the bars of Split to raise the money to travel to Hamburg for a seamanship diploma. The sea had been his escape from the war. On receiving his diploma he had applied for sixty-eight mate's positions, had written to every shipping agent in the Mediterranean, and for a year he had languished back home in Karlovac and had heard nothing or had received the posted rejections. At the end of that year, 1997, with his savings down to the last few kunar, his prayer had been answered. He had flown to Naples, had seen the ship that was to be his home tied up at the end of the quay and had immediately called her, to himself, the Sea Rat.

  He put the mug of coffee down beside the bed, and the dog growled softly at him from the floor. He shook the master's shoulder, took the signal from behind his ear and left it beside the mug. He scrambled up the bucking staircase to the bridge.

  The signal, from the Princess Rose's owners, he had left for the master perplexed him. Why, if they were ordered to Gdansk to take on fertilizer for the Latvian port of Riga, were they directed first to a position off the south-west British coast for transfer on board of a cargo of less than one tonne?

  Tihomir Zaklan was in turn confused and grateful—especially grateful. If there was work for her at least the Princess Rose stayed afloat and alive, and he had a home.

  One hour after it had nestled over the Bay of Biscay, the first light of day simpered on Central London.

  Not that it was a dawn worth waiting for. The rain came down hard on the few street-sweepers who were already out and on the lorries that removed the bagged rubbish from the pavements. The streets ran with little streams and the high gutters were overwhelmed by the downpour. It cascaded on to the windows of a building north of Leicester Square, on the fringe of Covent Garden. At street level the rain beat on the wide plate-glass window of a pizzeria and on the narrow doorway beside it. The doorway led to a staircase and on the first floor, identified by a bell and a slip of card, was a theatrical-artists agency. The second floor housed a mail-order firm specializing in novelty party toys, while the third was occupied by a small firm of accountants, whose trade was limited to clients employed in the clothing market. The top floor was the most exposed to the rain. Set under a shallow, sloping roof, its windows caught the full blast of the weather. The top floor was marked at the front door only by a bell and a grilled intercom with no name attached. That early morning, it was the only floor where a light burned behind slatted blinds.

  Alice North had the electric kettle boiling. Mowbray slept on a canvas bed that sagged under his weight.

  Locke had left an hour ago. Mowbray had been in the bathroom when he'd gone.

  'It's absolute madness, you know that?' Locke had said to Alice. 'It'll end in tears and rightly so.'

  He would be in the air from RAF Northolt by now.

  The managing director of Security Shield Ltd, Wilberforce, had been gone more than two hours. He was a man in his forties who seemed permanently to wear an uncreased suit, a clean shirt and a tightly-knotted tie, and always to be close-shaven. Alice had met him before. Security Shield Ltd provided freelancers for the Service. Bodyguards, burglars and surveillance people were on their books. Those who needed employment after coming out of the special forces units and who had the skill of close protection, clandestine entry or the placing of audio and visual bugs came to their discreet Mayfair office and were enrolled. Wilberforce had arrived at this building at two o'clock in the morning, had taken off his drenched raincoat and was immaculate underneath, as if attending a ten a.m. meeting. He'd brought a briefcase of files, studied the maps, then sifted through a list of names before settling on four files. He'd left at four o'clock. Last thing before going, he had gestured then to the files left on the table and had said briskly to Rupert Mowbray, 'If the regulars don't want to know—and, God, they're getting choosy these days—these are as good as you'll get. They left the Boat crowd under something of a shadow, something when they were together. I doubt they've seen each other since, but at least they've worked in harness. They'll be better than chucking together four strangers. What I can't say, of course, is how much persuading they'll take to go where you want them to. Anyway, if they do agree to take your shilling, my usual commission, please, and up front before they travel. They're the best I can do.'

  Locke had leafed through the files before dumping them in his briefcase. He'd had a deep frown of distaste on his forehead, but Mowbray had told him sharply not to play dumb insolent and to contribute only when he had something positive to communicate. Alice had been pleased when Locke had left for Northolt with the files.

  The kettle whistled breezily.

  Later she'd ring her neighbour, who had a
key to her apartment and knew how to disengage the alarm, and ask that she let herself in and clear the post off the mat while she was away.

  Alice North was the only daughter of Albert and Roz. Ten years before, her parents had sold their chain of Ford dealerships in Hertfordshire, Essex and Kent. They were hugely rich and shared that comfort with an enduring pride in their sole child. After a convent education at Weybridge in Surrey, the teenage Alice had walked away from the path taken by most of her school-friends, which veered between early marriage and a financial career. She had no interest in marriage, where she felt she would have quickly become an accessory to her parents' lives, breeding grandchildren for them to dote on, and even less interest in making money. She had no need for the money: she was protected by a trust fund that the stock market downturns had not dented. Albert and Roz North had bought the Docklands apartment and used it as a London base on their thankfully rare trips from the villa on the Algarve. She was thirty-four years old now, and on her visits her mother made a habit of asking when she was going to find a 'nice young man'. Her mother knew so little.

  She stirred the instant coffee.

  Alice was closer to Rupert Mowbray than to her father. Her worst day in the Service had ended when he had left Vauxhall Bridge Cross, a little unsteady on his feet, and she had carried the box with the decanter and the glasses to the taxi. On the canvas bed, he lay on his back and grunted in his sleep. His tie was loosened and his collar was grimy from the previous day. The bristle was strong on his cheeks.

  From the cupboard above the microwave she took sweeteners and dropped two into the coffee. She carried the mug to the bed, knelt beside it, and kissed his forehead.

  He had recruited her. Rupert Mowbray had given her the chance to escape the dead-hand clutch of her parents. She worked in a world where her father couldn't manage her and where she had the perfect excuse not to gossip with her mother: 'Sorry, Mums, can't talk about my day—that's the way it is.' They knew she had been in Poland, but did not know she had travelled three times from Warsaw to Gdansk; nor did they know she had four times visited Murmansk for the collection of dead drops with Mowbray, nor did they know she had wept on the night he had retired, and again when the signal had come through from Braniewo, ferret: no show.