Cold East

by Alex Shaw

  ‘So?’ Casey asked.

  Harris shrugged. ‘From his scores on the range I see he can shoot straight. But those things don’t shoot back and sure as hell don’t move. How’s his fitness?’

  ‘I didn’t ask Doc Spence for details, just the bottom line. He’s fully recovered from his concussion; no further complications or weaknesses have been apparent. He’s given our boys a run for their money on the assault course – his times are impressive.’

  Harris still had his doubts. ‘His story checks out?’

  ‘Yep. I had Scott Lewis pay a visit to his old CO from the GRU, now retired but still very tight-lipped.’ The Moscow station chief’s story was that Gorodetski had won a green card and the US authorities wanted to carry out further background checks. It was lame, and both sides knew it, but it was an opening.

  ‘Let me guess, his lips were eventually loosened?’

  ‘Scott met the Colonel at his dacha, shared a lot of Samogon, made a large “donation” to his pension fund, and got the intel.’

  ‘So is he who he says he is?’

  ‘He was one of the youngest ever Spetsnaz captains, an outstanding sniper, unbeaten in Sambo.’

  ‘Ah, Sambo.’ Harris grunted at the mention of the Russian martial art. ‘So he’s a real warrior.’

  Casey ignored the sarcasm and continued. ‘He’s seen action in Chechnya, covert ops after the second war, mop-up operations in Dagestan, in addition to other CTU ops in the Caucasus and Moscow. He resigned his post just over three years ago.’

  ‘Family?’

  ‘Mother dead, father is a lecturer in English literature and teaches some ESL in Moscow. He had a brother, also Spetsnaz. The GRU confirmed he was KIA Afghanistan.’

  ‘So the kid’s reason for killing these Brits you told me about is real. It’s revenge, not cash?’

  ‘The kid’s actual word was “justice”.’

  ‘But he was played.’ Harris shook his head theatrically.

  ‘His loss is our gain. We have a ready-made operative.’

  ‘Really?’ Harris became serious. ‘You’re certain he’s not a ringer?’

  ‘As much as I can be.’ Casey had no problems with his second-in-command questioning him; he preferred that Harris be onboard and fully briefed. ‘I think you should introduce yourself.’

  ‘Just what I was thinking. You need a professional opinion.’

  ‘Yep, I’m just an amateur.’

  Casey stood and opened the door, and they exited and headed down the hall to ‘the bubble’. Unlike the opulent, New Jersey housewife-style drawing room, this was a clinical white box, built with a ‘shell’ suspended inside the structure of an existing room to mask any sounds from escaping. The room was bare, save for a metal table and three chairs. They sat and, within a couple of minutes, Gorodetski appeared. He had been pulled from a PT session and was wearing sweats.

  ‘James, come in.’ Casey continued to call the Russian by his American moniker; it made the rest of the team feel more at ease. ‘I have someone here who wants to meet you. This is Harris.’

  As soon as Gorodetski entered the bubble the door hissed shut, sealing the men off from any potential form of electronic surveillance. Gorodetski regarded the newcomer and extended his hand. The man was about the same height as him, looked to be in his fifties, and was powerfully built, but had a stomach that strained at his belt. What he noticed most, however, was the hair and large nose. ‘Hello.’

  Harris shook the proffered hand. ‘Have a seat, son.’ Gorodetski sat. ‘So you were thrown out of the Spetsnaz? What was wrong? Were you not good enough?’

  Gorodetski blinked. He hadn’t expected hostility. ‘I didn’t renew my commission.’

  ‘Aw, c’mon, you can tell me. What was it, shit yourself on parade, or were you caught in bed with a junior officer?’

  ‘Both. I have a bowel disorder, and I find young men appealing.’

  Harris’s nose twitched. ‘I could tell, no offence, by the way you walk – like a fairy.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’d like to get to know you better; tell me a little more about yourself.’

  ‘Why? Do you find me attractive?’

  ‘You,’ Harris said, pointing his finger, ‘are a goddamn funny man.’

  ‘That would make you the straight guy, which I struggle to believe.’

  Harris glared at the Russian for a moment before he spoke. ‘So, tell me, where are you from?’

  ‘Boston.’

  ‘Boston, Russia?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘So, why were you thrown out of the Spetsnaz?’

  ‘I told you; I left. I had to kill a man. It was personal.’

  ‘Jas Malik?’

  ‘No. I left to kill the man who murdered my brother.’

  ‘Bav Malik?’

  ‘I left to kill the man who murdered my brother.’

  ‘You assassinated Jas Malik and his son, Bav Malik – you’ve admitted this.’

  Gorodetski looked at Casey, who nodded. He fixed his eyes once again on the man Casey had called Harris. ‘Yes. I believed they were responsible for the death of my brother.’

  ‘So you killed them?’

  ‘I was told they were responsible.’

  ‘Do you believe everything you’re told, son?’

  ‘I do if it comes from a reliable source.’

  ‘Well, this didn’t. So you murdered two innocent men.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How does that make you feel?’

  ‘Empty.’

  ‘And?’ Harris could see the Russian was holding something back. ‘And, what else did that make you feel?’

  ‘Dead inside.’

  ‘So you regret what you did?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ Harris raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I do not regret what I did. I regret who I did it to.’

  ‘So for you was it just collateral damage?’

  ‘No, you were correct when you called me a murderer. I am a murderer.’

  Harris waved his hand dismissively. ‘I didn’t call you a murderer; I said you murdered two innocent men. So, back to basics. You left the Spetsnaz to find and kill the men who murdered your bother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you were used, weren’t you, son? They played you, made you do their dirty work. Pashinski had you kill two men for him.’

  ‘Yes.’ Gorodetski tried to hide his surprise at the use of Pashinski’s name.

  ‘Why did you come to the US?’

  ‘To escape.’

  ‘Who were you running away from?’

  ‘Myself.’

  ‘Why should we trust you… James, Sergey… or whatever?’

  ‘I’m not asking you to.’

  ‘Smug shit.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  Casey stood. ‘OK, James, thank you.’

  Gorodetski followed his lead and stood. Harris extended his hand. ‘It was good to meet you, son.’ Gorodetski shook hands. As he relaxed his grip to move towards the door, Harris twisted his wrist outwards and down while at the same time striking Gorodetski with a left hook to the jaw. Caught off-guard, Gorodetski stumbled right and fell to one knee. He saw the arm draw back again, but swiftly rolled to the right and stood. Now out of striking distance, he didn’t raise his guard.

  ‘You a pussy, boy?’

  Gorodetski remained silent. Annoyed. It was a test and he had failed.

  Harris jutted his chin out. ‘Aw, c’mon, give it a shot. You might get lucky.’

  Gorodetski turned to Casey. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Yes, James, you can go.’ Casey pressed a button and the door hissed open.

  ‘Have your boyfriend put some ice on that jaw,’ Harris scoffed as the Russian made for the door. Once it closed he continued. ‘He’s Russian, he’s wired differently.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘He may mouth off, but has a greater respect for authority. We own him, we can beat him, and he won�
�t bite back. As I said, he’s a puss.’

  Casey didn’t agree; ‘puss’ wasn’t the first word that came to mind. ‘And?’

  ‘He wants to make things right. He’s crippled by remorse – and this NJ shooting thing has only made it worse. He’ll give it his all, but if we ask him to do something he doesn’t think is morally right… it’ll come back and bite us in the ass. He’s a soldier not an operative, Vince.’

  Casey shrugged. Harris was no psychiatrist, but he had learnt to listen to his views, even if they were often roughly expressed. ‘Thank you for your expert opinion.’

  ‘So when does he go active?’

  ‘As soon as we need him.’ As Casey left the room his felt his Blackberry vibrate. ‘Casey.’ He frowned. ‘Now? OK.’

  Harris followed. ‘Problem?’

  ‘That was our contact at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue; the President wants me to listen in on a conference call.’

  ‘You’d better hurry; you wouldn’t wanna keep the Commander in Chief waiting.’

  ‘Thanks for that advice too.’ Casey hurried along the corridor in the direction of the secure comms room.

  Harris returned to the porch for a cigarette.

  *

  Vauxhall Cross, London

  ‘Jack, this is serious.’

  ‘I think that’s an understatement, Vince.’

  Casey snorted at the other end of the secure video-link. ‘Yes, it is. So where do you think the nuke is now?’

  ‘Our best bet is Iran or Turkey.’

  ‘That’s what your PM told my President. I’ve studied the intel and I concur with your assessment of their route: Afghanistan – Iran – Turkey – EU. And as for targets, take your pick of the usual suspects.’

  ‘Have you heard anything at all?’

  ‘Nope.’ Casey shook his head. ‘Just the same chatter as you, but I’m trying to get a bird repositioned over the Turkey-Iran border. If I can get it in place it should be able to pick up the nuke’s signature, unless it’s shielded.’

  ‘And will it be?’

  Casey paused before he spoke, making sure he had eye contact, albeit digitally, with his British colleague. ‘I’ve been authorised to inform you that we, the Central Intelligence Agency, are in possession of an RA-115A.’

  ‘How handy,’ Patchem noted with undisguised sarcasm. ‘And where did you come upon this one?’

  ‘Now, that I’m not authorised to disclose, but I can tell you it wasn’t Afghanistan. What the hell was a suitcase nuke doing in Afghanistan anyway? It’s a city weapon, for God’s sake.’

  ‘They were testing it as part of project Viru.’

  ‘Ah, of course,’ the American conceded. ‘Now, the casing of the RA-115A has been designed to prevent any radioactive signature from being detected. How effective that will be, after twenty-five years lying in a hole, is hard to say.’

  ‘We found a trace reading at the location the device had been stored.’

  ‘So that kind of answers that question, but the bird still has to be in the right place at the right time in order to read it. I’m emailing you now all we have on the nuke, its size and specs, etc.’

  ‘Thanks. Adding your intel to my old report should make it quite comprehensive.’ He and Casey had a symbiotic relationship in many ways, but both sides still had secrets. The CIA’s being in possession of an RA-115A was one of them.

  Casey grinned to acknowledge Patchem’s sarcasm as he tapped his laptop. ‘And send.’

  A bleep informed Patchem the email had arrived. He clicked ‘open’ and there was a pause as the attached document was scanned, decrypted, and displayed. Patchem speed-scrolled through the file. ‘So it actually looks just like a photographer’s aluminium case?’

  ‘Yep, but it’s slightly smaller, more like an attaché case.’

  ‘Does your one work?’

  ‘No, there’s a problem with the firing unit decoder. You’ll find the details in the file, but that begs the question – is the Al-Qaeda bomb also faulty?’

  ‘They were experimental. Did they ever operate correctly?’

  ‘None has gone off – yet,’ Casey said dryly.

  Patchem looked again at the photograph of the aluminium case. ‘The size is a moot point anyway; they’ll have removed the fissile material and packed it into a new container. Unless the Afghan one is in working order?’

  ‘Jack, I doubt it. You’d have to run a diagnostic on it and this thing is old and experimental. Why would Al-Qaeda risk it blowing up in their faces? I’d turn it into a small dirty bomb, let it off in a major population centre, and boom…’

  ‘This makes me glad you’re wearing a white hat, Vince,’ Patchem said flatly.

  Casey smirked. ‘Some would say it was grey.’

  ‘What assets have you got in the area?’

  ‘Nothing doing in Iran. In Turkey we’ve got the usual teams at the embassy in Ankara and the consulate in Istanbul. There are a few “military advisers” down south on the borders with Syria and Iraq.’

  ‘No other teams?’

  Casey adopted his poker face. ‘Jack, I’m going to be absolutely transparent with you on this. The President has put my group on standby to extract the nuke if it’s found anywhere in Europe. I’m having a team move to an FOB in Romania. I’ll order them in if the threat is confirmed.’

  ‘Thank you for your candour.’ Patchem smiled thinly. So the US had decided it was going to take care of the device once located? This suited Patchem. ‘Our priority is to locate this thing and prevent it from going bang. I don’t care who keeps it afterwards.’

  ‘Exactly, Jack. I’m not getting into a dick-swinging contest with you here. The stakes are too high.’

  ‘I quite agree.’

  ‘Let’s keep each other updated. OK, I gotta go now and break the news to my boys.’

  ‘The same here.’

  Patchem ended the video call and sat in silence for a moment as he tried to take in the enormity of his task. The internal European intelligence services could be trusted to operate efficiently and professionally, but the Turkish National Intelligence Agency and the intelligence services of Turkey’s neighbours could not. In all likelihood the device would slip through Turkey and only be intercepted in the EU, at which point it probably would indeed go ‘bang’. Patchem’s mouth had become dry and he felt the pressure building at his temples. He desperately needed to get out of Vauxhall Cross and get some air, but that was a luxury he didn’t have. A large glass of water and a handful of ibuprofen tablets would have to suffice. He exited his office and made for the staff canteen to find Aidan Snow.

  *

  In New Jersey, Casey left the secure comms room and returned to the porch. As expected, Harris was lounging against the wall. ‘Tell me it’s good,’ Harris said, flicking his cigarette butt onto the gravel where it joined several others in a haphazard mosaic.

  ‘We need to go to the bubble.’

  ‘That good?’

  ‘Not good and not great. Now come on.’ Casey led Harris for a second time through the house and into the bubble. Once the door had hissed shut he spoke. ‘Al-Qaeda has acquired an RA-115A.’

  Harris’s face lost its usual composure. ‘Unholy shit…’

  Casey briefed Harris on both his conversation with Patchem and, more importantly, the conference call between the UK PM and their own Commander in Chief. ‘You need to get your team over to Timisoara airbase by the fastest means.’

  Harris took a deep breath. ‘I’m on it.’

  Chapter 5

  Mashhad, Iran

  Al-Suri’s guests sat with heavy stomachs. He waited for the remnants of the meal to be cleared away before addressing them. Each part of the operation had been compartmentalised; al-Suri knew only of the ‘travel arrangements’ from Iran to the EU.

  ‘Tomorrow, you shall leave for Turkey. Ahmed will drive you right across Iran to Bazargan. It is a border town and there you shall cross into Turkey. The border guards will not search you. You will each be trav
elling on these Pakistani passports. So you must speak only in English.’ Al-Suri pushed a thick envelope across the table. ‘Please study them and learn your names and details. As you will see, they each display your real photograph and have both Schengen and UK visas.’

  Tariq passed each passport to its new owner. The men studied the documents wide-eyed.

  ‘What is Schengen?’ Lall Mohammad asked.

  ‘It is another name for the European Union. With this visa you can travel from country to country without any delay.’ He didn’t wish to complicate matters further by explaining that Schengen was actually the name of a town in Luxembourg where the single visa treaty had been signed.

  Impressed by the documents, Tariq asked, ‘Are these real?’

  ‘The passports were issued in Pakistan by the correct authorities, as were the visas. We have agents in many agencies.’ He smiled at his wordplay. ‘To lessen suspicion even further, before you leave you shall receive Western-style clothes, luggage, and your hair and beards will again be trimmed.’

  Tariq stroked his stubbly chin and remembered the order to shave off his beard in readiness for the passport photograph. He hadn’t been beardless since he was a boy and to him it felt peculiar, effeminate. ‘To fight the infidel we must become him?’

  ‘Exactly. No one suspects a man in a suit.’

  ‘I feel so close to the UK now, I can almost see Big Ben!’ Ashgollah Ahmadi remarked.

  ‘Once you leave here, even the Queen of England will be proud to invite you in for afternoon tea,’ al-Suri indulged him.

  ‘Then we could blow her up.’ Sharib Quyeum rubbed his hands together.

  ‘But only after tea,’ insisted Ahmadi. ‘It would be bad manners to kill her beforehand.’

  The group’s spirits were high. Tariq caught al-Suri’s gaze. Both men were experienced enough to know it was essential to get these nerves out of the way.

  ‘I would rather see David Beckham.’ Abdul Shinare was excited.

  ‘He has retired, brother,’ Reza Khan added quietly.

  Al-Suri cleared his throat. ‘On the Turkish side of the border you will be met by two taxis and taken to the town of Dogubeyazit.’

  ‘Taxi?’ Tariq raised his eyebrows.

  ‘A taxi is a very common way to travel across Turkey and will not draw any undue attention. At Dogubeyazit you will exchange your taxis for a bus and travel to Istanbul. Your contact is named Orhan.’