by Alex Dryden
But before they had left the area’s mobile network and entered the first of the canyons, Burt put through another call to Larry who had by now mastered his fury.
Again in code, Burt conveyed the message he had apparently been waiting to receive before the Cougar entered the Black Sea. It held an importance for Burt that was a mystery to Larry and even to Dupont who, as ever, concealed his frustrations with Burt’s methods. The message was simple, just a date. “It’s the first of May,” Burt told him. And it was the date of the planned assault on the Pride of Corsica. “This has great significance,” Burt added to impress Larry in an unusual outburst of explanation. “I believe it is the day we, too, need to act.” But act in what way, Burt did not reveal. His explanation of the significance alone was judged by him to be enough. “Just tell Anna,” Burt said, and abruptly ended the communication. There were to be no questions.
It was afternoon by the time the four members of the team, kitted out now as campers, entered the canyon that Anna had made her base. When they arrived, it was agreed they should move on, a change of camp every two days. That way they would keep apart from others and the curiosity they might conceivably arouse. Larry also judged that, in order to avoid the park rangers who occasionally came into the park to check whether campers had the correct licences, they should decamp to a more remote place where there were no footpaths. On a satellite map provided by Cougar he’d already found a narrow defile, with a seasonal stream, that was difficult to reach and even more difficult to negotiate. But it was far enough away from anywhere that they would be able to have a fire here. The nights were still cold in the mountains and the temperature had gone below freezing two days before.
When Larry informed Anna of the date of the assault, she walked away from the new camp for half an hour to be on her own. She seemed to be calculating the time between now and the assault—just three days—and to need this time now, alone, before making a decision that would turn out to be irrevocable.
“What’s so important about the date?” Larry asked her when she returned.
“I don’t know yet,” she replied. “Just that it’s when they’ll make their move.”
“The Russians?” Larry asked, and took her silence to be an affirmative.
But she explained no further and when she announced in the early evening that she was going to the city, and that she was going alone, Larry guessed that it was to rendezvous with Balthasar.
“I should be there,” he said. “There’s too much risk. We don’t know if he’s sincere.”
“He’s had the chance to betray me,” she answered.
“That doesn’t mean he won’t now,” he replied. “We know nothing about him.”
“I know enough,” she replied. Then added, “I have to take the risk. There’s no time left.”
And whether Anna had any loss of nerve beneath her cool exterior, Larry couldn’t tell. “It’s as if she dares them to take her,” he said to the others after she’d left, and as he settled into a night of wakefulness and tension that he didn’t share with her. He took on, in a closely adoptive way, the anxious feelings he thought she should have in the current circumstances, and he tramped around the perimeter of the camp until dawn rose. “Worrying makes him calmer,” Lucy said to the others. “He wouldn’t know what to do without anxiety. It fills some hole in him.”
By the time Anna descended into the city, darkness had fallen. She walked away from the embankment by the city’s harbours and kept to the smaller roads above it. She was unwittingly within two hundreds yards of Logan’s hotel at one point and she continued up the hill to a small café bar that was her rendezvous with Balthasar at 9:25 every evening if they could both make it.
She saw Balthasar sitting in an alcove at the far end of the bar. He looked as composed as she felt, sipping occasionally from a cup of coffee, a local newspaper opened in front of him, the pages of which he turned as if he was reading it. He was like the other occupants of the bar, just another solitary man at the end of a day’s work and comfortable with being alone. She sat down in a seat opposite him and ordered a coffee.
“The date is the first of May,” she said.
“I found out the same thing this afternoon,” he told her. “From our side.”
“Then that’s when we can expect something to happen in Sevastopol. According to Miller.”
“I agree,” he replied.
He picked up her hand suddenly in his and appeared to study it, but it was his own hand feeling hers that was his “vision” of it. “You have a great tendency to independence, Anna,” he said, running his thumb between her thumb and forefinger. “We’re alike in that way. How is it we’ve spent so much of our lives doing the bidding of others?”
“It takes time,” she said, “to overturn a lifetime.”
And then he said, “It’s my birthday. The first of May. A good time for change. To close the book on my beginnings.”
And then they paid for their drinks and left the bar to walk up the hill farther from the port, he sometimes holding her hand, she watching the long slope of his step or the back of his brown neck as they walked up a narrow stone stairway. Neither of them spoke. Once, he stopped and turned to her and put his hand on her cheek. “I’ve a lot to thank you and your mother for,” he said, but he turned and walked on before she could reply.
When they reached Trinity Church, with an ancient, round, ruined wall tower on a small cliff above it, which was called Kalamita, they both turned and she surveyed the city below. For a long while, neither of them spoke. The lit dockyards were spread below them. The Moskva was still moored at the end of the main quay, and the train that contained the submarine batteries waited like a sleeping monster farther down the same quay.
“Wait for me up here,” Balthasar said at last. “I have one thing to do this evening. My contact at the base is expecting me to check in. I must see him, even more so now. We need to find what is out of the ordinary about the first of May.”
He let go of her hand. She watched him standing and apparently watching the sea. Then he turned to her. “Don’t think that I won’t come back alone,” he said, “but I don’t need to tell you that, I hope,” and then he turned to retrace their steps to the city.
There was a bar on the embankment where the Russian sailors went. The Ukrainians tended to go to another one, farther along the front, since fighting between the two had become a regular occurrence. Military police were evident on the stone embankment, leaning against motorbikes or chatting on the wall. An uneasy agreement between Moscow and Kiev had been reached in order to keep the peace.
Balthasar flashed his KGB identification at two Russian marines who stood guard at the door. They saw its “Special Purposes” elite stamp and the implication was immediately noted. “One of you come with me,” Balthasar said.
The inside of the bar was noisy and close, the smell of beer and men and smoke mingling in a wash of stale air. Music was playing loudly in the background. For a moment Balthasar felt disoriented, the noise and crush of people interfering with his fine instincts.
“Is there a table at the back?” he said. The marine walked away a little, then came back and said to follow him.
When he was seated, Balthasar dismissed the man. He sat still, collecting his hidden senses, and began to form a mental picture of the mass of sailors around him. A waitress came and he ordered a beer, sitting at the edge of his seat, his antennae working overtime until he felt he could comfortably “see” the layout of the men and the bar’s interior. Then he sat back and waited, taking a small sip of beer, careful not to draw the attention of anyone.
At just after 10:30 he felt someone sit down opposite him. There was a coded greeting, softly spoken, which he returned. It was all correct, as it should be, as it had been on three occasions before. He sensed his contact’s mind and began to focus on the man’s thoughts and behaviour. The man was afraid of him, Balthasar noted, but he also felt a thread of contempt to be deferring to a blind man. He
couldn’t understand Balthasar’s importance. It made little sense to him, and by now it was late in the evening, and he didn’t want to be here. He was tired, perhaps. The man was bored, Balthasar realised. There was nothing much happening in Sevastopol and there hadn’t been since the early 1990s when the nuclear submarine bunkers had been closed and then reopened as a tourist attraction, and the steady decline of the Russian fleet continued, apparently without concern to the Kremlin. Earlier in the day, in fact, Balthasar had noted that there were just two modern warships in the port—the Moskva, an aircraft carrier built at the beginning of the 1990s, and the Lazarev, a destroyer built just before—and two submarines. The rest of the fleet was past its usefulness.
“Your superiors at the Forest want to know why they haven’t received the go-ahead from you,” his contact stated with a hint of defensive aggression. “What’s the problem?”
“The group is suspicious, that’s all,” Balthasar replied. “They’re worried that taking money may link them to something undesirable.”
“As it undoubtedly will—but only you people know what. Why do they think that?”
“Maybe they’re just cautious.”
“And maybe something else.”
“They haven’t survived this far without being careful,” Balthasar replied. “The Qubaq are a clean organisation and they want to hang on to that reputation.”
“There’s been a change of plan. The payments need to be made on the second of May,” the contact said. “That’s in four days’ time. Not before and not after. The second of May exactly. We need account numbers and we need a document from them requesting that the money be paid.”
“I always said that a document was unnecessary,” Balthasar replied. “The money could simply be paid into their accounts without them even knowing. They’re still implicated.”
“Nevertheless, the Forest wants it done this way. They want it to look like an approach was made. That ties it up neatly. No one can deny it afterwards.”
Balthasar didn’t reply. He sipped his beer thoughtfully and waited.
“So when are you going to overcome their caution?” the contact said impatiently. “It’s a matter of days, we haven’t any leeway.”
“What’s so special about the second of May?” Balthasar replied slowly.
“It’s the first of May that’s special,” the contact said. “The payment on the day after is crucial so that it looks like a reward.”
A reward for what? Balthasar wondered. But he didn’t pursue his line of questioning. He felt the man lean in across the table.
“I spoke to the fleet commander this morning,” the contact said. “In Moscow, Putin is holding the biggest May Day parade since 1989. And here? Nothing. The Black Sea fleet might as well not exist. All they’re doing on the first of May are special drills on land and maintenance work in the harbours.”
Balthasar shrugged. “Oh yes?”
The contact didn’t say anything further. Balthasar’s head was thumping from the music, and he couldn’t focus as he was used to doing. But he knew this would be his only chance to keep the contact talking.
“There are special operations in the harbour that day,” Balthasar said matter-of-factly. “They’re a celebration of Russian power in themselves, surely.”
“You’d know,” the contact replied.
“And the fleet commander would know most of all.”
“All right,” the contact replied. “So you know all about it. On the first of May they’re switching off all the sonar in the harbour for an hour at midday. Something to do with maintenance on the sonars, they say, but I don’t believe it.”
“Why not? It seems perfectly logical to me,” Balthasar replied.
There was a further silence. Then Balthasar felt the contact lean in towards him again.
“What am I to tell them at the Forest?” he said.
“Tell them that arrangements will be made. The account number, the document—they’ll have everything they want by the end of the day on the first of May.”
When the man had gone Balthasar sat and sipped the beer in the now half-full glass. He listened and with his acute hearing picked up conversations. He felt his sensory powers begin to strengthen and a map of the bar room and its occupants—their feelings and thoughts—began to take shape in his mind. After a while, by now thoroughly oriented, he rose from his seat and walked carefully past groups of men and to the side of the bar on the left where there were tables. He stood and listened to two or three conversations at different tables and then went to the middle one. He stood over it, felt the eyes and attention of its occupants slowly turn towards him, and took out his KGB identity card. They saw the special clearance and the note at the foot of the card that all knew—though it didn’t state so—as the imprimatur of Department S.
Balthasar felt an intake of breath from the four men at the table and then felt their attention completely caught by his presence.
“Which of you is with the PDSS?” he asked.
There was a slight pause. Finally one of the men spoke. “The two of us here,” he said, and pointed to the man sitting next to him on the bench. In his mind’s eye Balthasar formed the picture of the two of them.
“I’d like to talk to the two of you alone,” he said. Then turning to the other two men on his side of the table, he said, “Excuse me. I’ll just be a few minutes.”
He felt them drag themselves to their feet. A thumping Russian dance track reverberated across the bar as Balthasar took a seat at the table. He sipped his beer again and relaxed back into the seat. The PDSS were the special spetsnaz group of frogmen that every naval harbour possessed. They were there to protect Sevastopol’s harbour. Once, there had been submarine nets, but they had been taken away in the 1990s. Now the PDSS and the fixed sonars in the harbour and in the sea lanes leading from the Black Sea into Sevastopol were the port’s main defences.
“I’m here for the first of May,” Balthasar said. “Will you all be on duty?”
There was a pause. The men were reluctant to divulge their orders to someone they didn’t know, even someone as important as a colonel from Department S.
“No,” one of the men grudgingly replied at last.
“No sonars and no frogmen,” Balthasar said. “My department thinks that’s rash.”
“You’re from the SVR,” the second man said. “That’s your view, maybe. But we’re with the GRU. Nothing’s going to happen in an hour with them switched off.”
“All the sonars—passive and active—all the way down the coast?” Balthasar said. “It’s very unusual.”
“Unprecedented. But those are our orders and you have no jurisdiction with the GRU.”
“General Antonov should know,” Balthasar said, and felt the men stiffen at the mention of the GRU boss. “It’s irregular.”
“I imagine he already knows,” the first man said.
“What will you be doing on the first of May?” Balthasar said.
“Screwing and drinking, most likely.” The second man laughed. “What’s your business here, anyway? Why don’t you get lost?”
But Balthasar had gotten to his feet. “You may find your orders will change,” he said.
“Not by you, they won’t,” the first man replied.
Balthasar walked away to the bar and finished his drink as his mind turned over the possibilities. He felt one of the PDSS men brush past quite close to him and take the attention of another man at the far end of the bar. He felt the eyes of both these men fix on him. Then he put down the glass, empty now, and walked out of the bar and into the street.
After walking for thirty yards or so, he felt three men following behind him.
31
NOW LISTEN CAREFULLY, LOGAN. Eric is a veteran of the war in Algeria. He pulled out countless fingernails there, didn’t you, Eric?” Laszlo paused and surveyed the bound, gagged, and terrified Logan who sat upright in a wooden chair, his eyes wild and his head raging with whisky and fear. “It may be fort
y years ago,” Laszlo continued, “but he’s lost none of his old skills. And believe me, the fingernails were the soft end of his talents.” Logan’s eyes rolled sideways at the hulking figure of Eric who stood over him like an attack dog, the sleeves of his T-shirt rolled up over his shoulders and his big fists clamped together so that the knuckles were white. “Claude is much younger, maybe even stronger, and has more”—Laszlo paused—“more modern techniques, shall we say. And he’s even more effective. Claude has spent a great deal of his life being punished and now—once we found him and took him under the wing of the DGSE—now he likes to deal it out. Get his own back.” Laszlo stood up and walked over to a window. The curtain was drawn but he stood as if he was gazing out at something. He’d changed his suit since the three of them had gotten Logan out of the hotel three hours before, hanging half drunk between Claude and Eric and fully stunned. Now Laszlo was wearing a crisp, dark blue, fitted designer suit of the kind worn by multimillionaire footballers. “Okay, do it,” he said.
He heard the blows raining in on Logan and stayed turned to the curtain. No sound came from the gagged figure of Logan but the snap and thud of knuckles on flesh and bone.
“That’s enough,” Laszlo said, and turned when the beating had stopped.
He saw agony in Logan’s eyes. “Untie the gag,” he said.
The two embassy security men carefully undid the knot, one handling the gag, the other ready to clamp his hand over Logan’s mouth. But Logan hung in the chair as if suspended from the ceiling and his breath came in agonised rasping pants followed by a death rattle noise from the bottom of his throat.
