by Andy McNab
Realizing what was about to happen.
Had he tried to climb one of the pillars? Had he felt his grip loosening as the grey stuff sucked at the crocodiles on his trainers? Then his knees?
No. They’d have drugged him. Or killed him first.
I dropped the book, lifted the SIG and gave him two double taps. In the head, and into his chest as he went down.
20
I transferred the SIG to the front of my jeans and ran through my options as I melted back into the prefab maze. I couldn’t go out the way we’d come in, and I certainly wasn’t going to climb the crane. I had no idea whether there was an exit at the rear of the site, but I reckoned that was the only route I could take. And, fuck it, this wasn’t Stalag Luft III.
I stopped by the Portakabin I’d recced earlier and remained absolutely still until I’d listened, ears pricked and mouth open, for signs of Hesco’s cavalry. The shouting had stopped. Now they’d be moving into the development. If they spotted Hesco they might slow down to check him out, but I wasn’t counting on it.
A couple of torches flicked on and pierced the night, and I caught a glimpse of a shiny bald head as they headed towards Stefan’s grave and Hesco. A shiny bald head that belonged to a man who would kill me if he ever saw me again. I guessed he’d be even more enthusiastic about that idea when he spotted his mate’s body.
A couple more beams sparked up on the far side of the pit. I didn’t wait for them to join forces again and head my way. I ducked around the back of the cabin and, treading as lightly as possible, legged it in the opposite direction.
There was plenty of stuff to lose myself in there. Piles of external wall panels, stacks of piping in all shapes and sizes, pallets loaded with brick and stone, RSJs, lintels, pre-assembled balcony sections – everything was arranged with Teutonic precision, and provided me with as much cover as I could use.
A squad of forklifts and cement mixers on wheels stood to attention along the rear fence. I transferred the weapon from the front of my jeans to the back and sprinted across to a track-mounted mini-digger, one of three parked at the corner of the site. I climbed on to the driver’s seat and swung myself up on to its roof.
I heard a shout.
A suppressed round striking steel.
The whine of a ricochet.
I didn’t look back.
I launched myself at the top of the hoarding, clambered over it and slid, feet first, toecaps scrabbling, down the other side.
I landed on a raised bank and drew down the SIG again as I scanned the ground in front of me. I was at the edge of some kind of orchard. Ten metres in I was surrounded by branches full of the world’s biggest cherries, as geometrically organized as the contents of the construction site I’d just left. I didn’t hang around to admire them. The torch beams and staccato exchanges just inside the hoarding told me loud and clear that I had to get the fuck out of there.
I sprinted a hundred and fifty further, keeping as close as possible to the trunks of the trees. The sky was increasingly overcast, but I didn’t want to risk being silhouetted in the gap between the rows. Then I went down on my belt buckle, crawled swiftly left through the long grass until I was under the neighbouring canopy, and got back on my feet. I repeated the process at thirty-metre intervals until I arrived at the far end of the plot.
Beyond it stood a huge open-sided barn where they sorted the fruit before sending it to the Fanta factory. Hesco would have felt right at home there. I glanced over my shoulder as soon as I was in its shadow. The torch beams were still sweeping through the foliage and across the ground two hundred behind me.
I skirted the back of the building, ran through another neat yard and out on to the road. None of Claude’s Swiss cousins suddenly appeared out of the darkness to hammer me with a fence post on the way.
I hung a right and a left, then did the same again. I didn’t have all night for evasive action, but I needed to approach the van from a safe distance.
The parade of boarded-up industrial units came into view. I came level with the three-pallet forecourt and went in at a crouch. The cement bags between the breezeblocks and the wall hadn’t been touched. I retrieved my day sack and, hugging the front wall of the unit, scanned the stretch of tarmac on either side of the Expert.
I was tempted to bin the thing and just stay on foot, but I needed to make distance double quick.
The road was deserted as far as the junction. That was no guarantee Hesco’s crew wouldn’t have a surprise in store, but if I waited there too long the torchbearers from the orchard would catch up and fuck me over anyway.
I got as close as I could to the front of the vehicle without showing myself in open ground, then crossed the pavement, keeping low. I paused beside the radiator grille to do a quick one-eighty behind me, then got behind the wheel. Keeping my speed down and using just gears to keep the brake-lights off, I didn’t put the headlamps on until I’d turned four or five corners. Then I put my foot down.
I followed signs towards Zürich. It seemed as good a place as any to head for to sort my shit out and decide on my next move.
I looped back on to the Autobahn and drove towards it for forty minutes. I felt I should be thinking more clearly now – but my mind was whirring.
I flipped open the Pitbull case one-handed and fed the CD into the player. Maybe I could clear my head with some angry music. I pressed the eject button before I’d heard three chords.
This wasn’t going to work.
All I could hear was Stefan yelling, ‘Pitbull is the man! This shit is for real!’
All I could see was him pumping his fist.
All I could feel was that I’d been given the world’s most important task – to look after a man’s son – and I’d failed.
21
Fuck this. I needed to get a grip.
As fingers of light began to scrape across the sky I pulled into a service station and topped up the tank with diesel. I also bought a five-litre container and filled it with unleaded.
I threw two boxes of matches, an energy bar, a couple of cans of Monster and a two-litre bottle of water into my shopping basket, then ordered a strong black coffee, a bread roll and a sausage the size of a fire hose to go. I parked up between two artics and took a bite. It had absolutely no nutritional value, but who gives a fuck?
I necked half the water before switching on Hesco’s HP.
The photograph of the Maserati kicked in as soon as I’d typed in the password, and was then overlaid by file and document icons, some with Russian labels, some with English. My first objective was to find out how many of them had been downloaded from Frank’s laptop. Every time I looked at the thing I pictured him turning his screen towards me in the green room, and showing me something that came close to sending him into meltdown.
I double-clicked on each of the top row, then a random selection, and got nowhere. Every single one had its own access code. I don’t know what I expected, but I probably should have guessed that nothing Hesco volunteered would ever come for free.
I tried his calendar, hoping it might give me a lead on Dijani’s whereabouts over the next few days, but that was also locked. Even the name of the second gate of Paradise failed to work its magic. I let my mind wander back to the Iraq prison and managed to remember the names of four or five others.
baabassalaat
baabassadaqah
baabalhajj
baabarrayyaan
None of them let me in.
There was another gate whose name I could never get my head around. But it was an eight-word sequence, and was reserved for those who hugged trees and were big on forgiveness, so that wasn’t going to be one of his favourites.
I powered down again and slid the thing back into its sleeve. I needed a computer geek to sort it out for me, and I wasn’t going to find one here.
I tried to gain access to Hesco’s iPhone. The second gate didn’t sort it. Nor did any of the others I could remember.
I slotted a SIM card
and battery into one of the Nokias and texted Moscow instead. Pasha called back when I had the brew halfway to my lips. I put the cup down on the dash and thumbed the green button.
‘OK. The first thing you need to know: the president had no love for Frank, but there’s no evidence to suggest that Dijani and Uran work for the Kremlin.’
So Zac hadn’t been talking bollocks about that, at least. If a solid Putin connection didn’t surface in the next couple of days, I’d tell Pasha to give Anna the all-clear. Maybe she’d start liking me again when she and Nicholai were back in Moscow.
‘Who do they work for?’
‘Good question. You were right about Dijani. The Lebanese bit, anyway. Once-strong affiliations with the Saudi political elite. Educated in America. MIT. But no criminal connections, as far as we know. Until four months ago.’
‘What happened four months ago?’
‘He chose Uran as his security chief.’
‘And Uran isn’t a completely law-abiding citizen?’
‘To put it mildly. Born in Lushnja. One of three brothers.’
I knew about Lushnja. It made Palermo look like Pleasantville. ‘Albanian Mafia?’
‘Albanian Mafia. Into everything. Prostitution. People-trafficking. Drug-trafficking. Brutal. Even Cosa Nostra are scared of them.’
‘Zac was on his way to Naples. So that’s where I’m going. Do you have people on the ground there?’
‘No. But I have a good contact. He writes mostly for Il Diavolo – tough, investigative stuff – but does the occasional piece for us. Luca. Luca Cazale. We Skyped this morning. He’s been on the trafficking story since the Balkan wars. It’s out of control.’
‘Sounds like Luca could use some good news. Tell him Zac is staying in Switzerland, after all.’
There was a silence at Pasha’s end of the line.
‘How long for?’
‘For good. His jet-setting days are over.’ I paused long enough for Pasha to take on board what I’d just said. ‘Mate, could you keep digging for stuff about Frank’s southern European business network? And about Dijani? He’s the key to this thing. He keeps turning up in all the wrong places. I’d also like everything you can get me on the other Uran brothers. Including imagery. Zac seems to think I’m not on their Christmas-card list.’
‘They’re Muslims, my friend. They don’t send Christmas cards.’
‘It’s a Brit expression. A joke. Kind of.’
‘Ah.’ He wasn’t laughing.
Nor was I. There wasn’t much to laugh about.
‘Do me a favour, will you? Get hold of Luca. Tell him I’ll be in touch, and soon.’
‘So you can share your English jokes with him?’
‘Something like that.’
I cut the call. Then I dialled the number Laffont had given me. I didn’t care how early it was. Frank had paid him a fortune, and he’d reversed away from Stefan at warp speed. It was time for him to get the fuck out of bed and step up.
It rang eight times before his recorded voice invited me in three languages to leave a message.
I didn’t.
I took the Nokia into the back of the van, cut the SIM into slivers that were small enough to swallow and smashed the rest of it to bits with my hammer.
The coffee and Monster had done nothing to fight the fatigue. I couldn’t afford to mess up. I needed to get my head down. Even an hour would be better than nothing. I curled up in the far corner; the only bit that wasn’t completely soaked with blood or Fanta.
‘Nick …’
‘Stefan?’
I heard my own voice echo in the load space.
‘Maybe you could be my actual dad … Would that work for you?’
‘Go to sleep, mate. I am.’
I wasn’t, though. I was caught in a place where the dead walked and talked.
‘Hard routine, Nick …’
‘This shit is for real …’
Did he say that, or was it me?
Fuck …
My head was pounding like a jackhammer. My back was on fire.
I’d had the night sweats before. It was just part of the shit I had to live with.
But I’d never had a problem snatching twenty minutes of oblivion to recoup and regroup.
Wherever.
Whenever.
It made no difference.
Halfway up an Arctic ice wall.
At the edge of a wadi.
In the tropical rainforest, with humidity so severe you didn’t know if you were breathing or drowning.
I’d done it with artillery fire overhead. With the wind chill blackening my cheeks and freezing my bollocks off.
So why not now?
Instead of tossing and turning and speaking aloud to the ghost of a half-Ukrainian seven-year-old.
Maybe it was the coffee and Monster cocktail.
It wasn’t.
Thin grey light spilt through the partition window. I cranked myself up and rubbed my eyes, then slid open the door and went back to the driver’s seat. My forehead was sticky with grease, sweat and Fanta.
I tried to swallow, but my throat was coated with sandpaper.
I scrabbled around for the water bottle, first on the seat and then in the foot well. I found it underneath my feet, crumpled but intact. I unscrewed the cap and took five or six mouthfuls, then splashed my hands and face. I pulled a small towel out of my day sack and dried myself.
Stefan’s towel.
What the fuck did it matter? He wasn’t going to need it again.
I took a long, slow breath, then another, and wiped more water over my face. My eyes stopped stinging.
I gave the final Monster a good shake, pulled back the ring a fraction and gunned it before it sprayed everywhere. I could almost feel the caffeine blasting its way into my bloodstream as I fired the van up and moved off. Troop drivers in Afghan were restricted to two cans of this stuff a day because it made them so hyper.
The boy might be dead but I wasn’t. And I planned to keep it that way.
Nothing had changed.
Find out what’s happening. Stop it. Kill it. Do whatever’s necessary to get me out of this shit now I’m the only one left.
22
I steered around the northern edge of Zürich.
The Üetliberg – the eight-hundred-metre mountain on its western flank – seemed a good place to aim for. Densely wooded and crisscrossed with hiking trails, which turned into toboggan runs in the winter, it was easily accessible and had plenty of cover. And a small train station connected it directly to the centre of town.
A viewing tower and a bunch of platforms overlooked the city, catering for people admiring the spires and the bridges at its centre, and the lake beyond it. They wouldn’t be looking the other way. So as long as I stayed clear of early-morning cyclists, sightseers and bearded tree-huggers in socks and open-toed sandals, I should be sorted.
I found a secluded spot at the far side of the hill, off the road, on the lower slopes, and replaced the SIG with the Sphinx in my waistband. Once I was certain that I didn’t have any spectators, I dug Hesco’s bags out of the toolbox and opened them over the Fanta-soaked wooden floor. The huge pool of crimson that had gathered around his head had also been sucked up by the plywood, but it wasn’t yet dry.
I pulled Stefan’s towel out of my day sack and added it to the pile, along with the Moleskine. I hadn’t needed to scribble in it for a while now, and I’d never liked it as much as they claimed Hemingway did. The deeds to the chateau, the Adler invite, Hesco’s passport and his Adler pass went on too.
I’d toyed with the idea of trying to use it to access the St Gallen HQ and have a look around, but now reckoned that the risk outweighed the potential reward. I glanced at the boarding pass for the Naples flight and wondered whether Dijani would be on the plane. Then I crumpled it into a ball and chucked it on as well.
I hesitated before binning Stefan’s passports. Fuck knew why. He wasn’t going anywhere, thanks to me.
Bef
ore I stepped out into the open again, I pulled the last two disposable cloths out of their bag. Then I removed the vehicle’s fuel cap and rammed them down the spout, leaving a nice long tail.
I slit the front seats with my knife and soaked their stuffing and the cloth bung with unleaded, then emptied the jerry-can all over the contents of the load space.
Finally, I threw a lighted match through the cab window and the sliding door, ignited the cloth, and legged it. It was burning front and back as I disappeared into the trees. Mr Molotov would have been proud of me. The diesel wasn’t going to explode when the flames reached into the tank, but the heat it generated would be intense. It would finish the job very nicely.
By the time I’d got halfway up the hill, black smoke was billowing up through the canopy. I hooked my thumbs through the straps of the day sack and carried on walking.
The sirens began to kick in as I crossed the crest and the cityscape spread out below me. I didn’t bother with the train. There were only two an hour and I wasn’t in the mood to hang around and be pinged.
As I stretched my legs on the downward path, I assembled the components of another Nokia and punched out Laffont’s number. As before. Eight rings, then his recorded voice in three languages. Maybe he was being guarded about an unknown number.
I called him again half an hour later, before I hit the outskirts. With the same result.
So I called Adler HQ in St Gallen instead. The receptionist on the main switchboard picked up immediately. I asked if I could talk to Mr Dijani. I had no idea how I was going to play things if I got through, but it didn’t come to that.
‘I’m sorry, sir. Mr Dijani is currently away on business. He won’t be returning until the middle of next week.’ She had one of those voices that made whatever she said sound like I’d just won the lottery.
‘Ah, he’s already left, has he? I was hoping to catch him before we get together in Italy …’
‘If you’d like to leave your name and number, sir, I’d be very happy to pass on your message.’
