Fire Hawk

by Geoffrey Archer

  They ate in silence for a few moments, then Oksana asked, ‘You also, you have country house in England?’

  ‘No. It’s not that common with us. Just a small flat in London.’

  ‘And live alone?’

  ‘Yes, Ksucha,’ he said, swallowing. ‘I live alone.’

  She sighed. ‘But, you not sad to be alone? No child even . . . I have daughter at least. Though sometime I think it better not to have,’ she snorted.

  ‘What does Luba plan to do with her life?’ he asked, steering the talk away from himself.

  Oksana laughed. ‘She want to be New Russian and have money.’ She bit hard into her sandwich as if trying to decapitate a nightmare.

  Neither of them spoke for a while. Then suddenly she broke the silence.

  ‘I think maybe she want become prostitute.’

  Her words dropped out as if it was nothing unusual.

  Sam jerked his head round. ‘She can’t want to become a prostitute. That’s not a career you choose. It chooses you.’

  ‘Here, yes. You choose,’ she replied matter-of-factly. ‘Is same for many girls here. To be putanky is quick way to earn dollar. And with dollar get nice clothes, learn speak English, maybe work Europe or America. Find rich husband. What else they can do? Study five years at university then get job in office that pay less money than you need for living? How can I say, as mother, that go to university is right way and being prostitute is wrong?’

  ‘But come on, Ksucha . . .’

  ‘For young people only future is to leave Ukraine,’ she insisted sadly. ‘Because our country is . . . is disaster.’

  ‘Now, yes. But it’ll get better,’ he said unconvincingly.

  ‘Huh! Easy for you,’ she derided. ‘Easy for you to say, when you go away on plane tonight.’

  There was a new bitterness in her voice.

  ‘Tell you what. Maybe I come with you. You like to have woman who do anything for you in England?’ Her low voice and mocking smile said she was joking, but her eyes were half serious. ‘No. Better you don’t answer me that.’

  He smiled dumbly, trying to think of something he could say that would be kind but would put an end to this distraction.

  ‘I think we better go to my brother now,’ she announced, cutting short his embarrassment. She took from him the paper that his sandwich had been wrapped in and replaced it in the shopping bag so it could be used again.

  ‘Thank you for lunch,’ he mumbled.

  It was so unfair. What had she done, what had any of them done, to deserve the mess their country had sunk into?

  ‘And I’m sorry, Ksucha. Sorry that life’s so bloody for you.’

  Major Mikhail Pushkin was as tense as a caged rat when they returned to the communal flat with the passports. When he examined the visas he smiled with relief. His heart was heavy though. Starting life again in a foreign culture felt like a prison sentence.

  ‘Spaseeba,’ he whispered, pocketing the travel documents.

  ‘The flight is at eight and they’d best be at Boryspil airport two hours before,’ Sam explained for Oksana to translate. ‘The tickets have been paid for by the British Foreign Office and can be collected at the airport.’

  Pushkin nodded. Then he asked Oksana in Russian how they would get there. She explained she had a trustworthy friend with a car who could drive them.

  ‘And Misha ask, you will be on same airplane?’ she checked, turning to Sam.

  Would he? Could he leave this country without doing his damnedest to prise the truth from Rybkin?

  ‘Well, if I’m not, they mustn’t worry. There’ll be someone meeting them in London who’ll look after them.’

  Oksana gaped at his answer.

  ‘Ksucha, I have one more question for your brother.’

  ‘Yes? Tell me.’

  ‘Does he have any idea where in Odessa I would find Dima Grimov?’

  Thirty minutes later Sam was striding back through the woods towards the Metro with Oksana struggling to keep up with him. She could see he’d made up his mind, but just before they reached the main road, she grabbed his arm and made him stop.

  ‘I think you crazy person,’ she panted, her face screwed up with anguish. ‘You crazy, crazy man. You get killed.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘All this questions about Mafiya man Dima Filipovich Grimov – what you going to do? You go to Odessa to look for? You mad person.’

  ‘It doesn’t concern you, Ksucha,’ he snapped, trying to pull away, but she’d locked onto his arm like an anchor.

  ‘Yes, does concern,’ she insisted. ‘Why? Because I like you is why. I like you very much Sam. Don’t worry, that is problem for me not for you,’ she added quickly, noting his stony reaction. ‘But these Mafiya, I know what they are like. They kill without second thought. Don’t go Odessa. Please. I ask you this. Do this one thing for me.’

  She was right about the danger of course. He’d be like a mouse walking into a cage of cats, but he’d convinced himself he had to try it. If there was a chance that Viktor Rybkin would reveal where the attack was to take place in order to salve his conscience, then he had to grab it.

  And there was another reason he needed to pin down Rybkin. A reason called Chrissie. If he was ever to know peace again he had to learn the truth about her.

  Oksana saw the stubbornness in his eyes and knew that inside he was just like her brother. She would not be able to dissuade him.

  ‘Then . . . then if you must go Odessa, I will go with you.’ The words spilled out without her thinking about them.

  Sam turned to face her.

  ‘Ksucha, listen. That’s the daffiest suggestion I ever—’

  ‘Shh! You listen.’ She felt euphoric suddenly, out of control. ‘I know Odessa. I can be your guide and translator. I have cousin who live there. We can stay at his home.’ She astonished herself by the brisk, businesslike way she was saying this.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ Sam growled. ‘It’s far too dangerous, you said so yourself.’

  ‘Not crazy. I think it important for you that I go with you. Because alone you will be stranger there. And alone is more danger for you.’

  She was right of course. He would stand out like a sore thumb.

  ‘But your daughter . . .’

  ‘Is easy. She will stay with friend. No problem.’

  ‘It’s too risky . . .’

  But he was wavering. Without a translator he would be lost. His Russian was crap. She could smooth his path while he was finding his way around and keep her out of the way when things got hairy. And there was no one else.

  She let go of his arm and stood back a pace, pushing her fingers through her freshly washed hair. Her face was as open as a book suddenly, and when she spoke again it was as a woman who was resigned to her fate.

  ‘You see, I not afraid, Sam. Not afraid of Mafiya.’ Her voice tugged like a newly rosined bow on a cello string. ‘You see, if they kill me I really don’t worry. Because here in Ukraine, to tell truth, absolute truth, I don’t want to go on living.’

  33

  Wednesday, 9 October, 07.36 hrs

  Odessa, Ukraine

  IT WAS A long step down from the train that had brought them overnight from Kiev. As Sam gave Oksana a helping hand, he noticed her mascara had smudged. The crush of half-awake bodies spilling from the carriages swept them up the platform towards the terminus with the same irresistible force as the quest for answers that had driven him to this Black Sea port.

  Dawn had broken an hour ago, casting its veiled light over the endless steppe. The window blind in their second-class kupe sleeper compartment had been up throughout the journey because it was stuck. For much of the night Sam had lain awake on his top bunk, tortured by the itching skin of his healing shins and glancing through the glass whenever the flicker of lights outside denoted the passing of a town or village. Beneath him on the lower bunk lay Oksana, equally sleepless, or so he’d guessed. Across the compartment, just an arm’s l
ength away, two more berths were occupied by men.

  Last night he’d gone to Boryspil airport to check that Pushkin and his family passed through the barriers unstopped. Then, once the British Airways jet had taken off for London Gatwick with them on board, he’d phoned Figgis at home and asked him to let Waddell know that he wasn’t on the flight. His explanation that he was heading for Odessa had received a muted reaction from Figgis, followed by an insistence that Sam should meet him before he caught the train because ‘I have something for you which may prove useful’.

  When they’d met in the station concourse, Figgis had been startled to see Oksana with him. He’d dutifully passed on Waddell’s displeasure at Sam’s failure to return to London, but made no attempt to dissuade him from going after Viktor Rybkin. He’d merely handed over a plastic shopping bag and wished him luck. Inside there was something heavy wrapped in newspaper. After the train began to roll, Sam had taken it to the toilet to examine it, but had already guessed what it was.

  The pistol was of small calibre and a size that would be easy to conceal. Feeling its heavy metal grip in the palm of his hand had again brought home the risks he was running. Yet it hadn’t deterred him. If there was a chance of preventing a massacre by playing on Rybkin’s conscience, these were risks he had to take.

  They reached the station concourse, the crowd swollen by the arrival of commuter trains. Tempting smells from pastry stalls reminded Sam he was damned hungry, but Oksana wrinkled her nose saying station food was expensive and unhygienic.

  ‘Taras will have some breakfast for us,’ she assured him, her face grey with tension this morning. ‘But I hope we find taxi. Or chastnik. Private driver.’

  They paused on the front steps of the station, scanning the cars on the forecourt. An old woman in a thick woollen coat and shawl seized Oksana’s hand, begging them to rent a room from her. They pushed on down the steps but the babushka hung on. Oksana had to sharpen her tongue to get rid of her.

  ‘You spoke Russian to her,’ Sam commented. It was the first time he’d been to this Black Sea town.

  ‘Yes. People in Odessa they don’t speak Ukrainian, even if it is official language. They not so nationalist here.’

  Oksana ran a comb through the dark waves of her hair and checked her face in a mirror from her bag. Then, with her raincoat draped loosely over her shoulders, she stepped forward to the kerb. Sam looked about him tensely, aware that somewhere not far from here were the men who’d killed Chrissie.

  In a few minutes a privately owned Zhiguli pulled up, its engine misfiring and its owner looking for ways to raise money for a mechanic. Oksana leaned in through the opened door and negotiated a price. Then, putting a finger to her lips to warn Sam not to speak lest the sound of a foreign tongue turned the fare from hryvna to dollars, they climbed in. Sam placed his suitcase on the front seat next to the driver.

  They passed the vast Privoz farmers’ food market, then turned up one of the tree-lined boulevards which formed the town’s central grid. The town was a surprise for Sam with its air of Mediterranean elegance.

  Oksana sat rigidly beside him, her knees together and the small holdall that comprised her luggage hugged tightly to her lap. Although trying hard to appear calm and composed, inside she was a mess. It had been pure impulse deciding to accompany him on this suicidal mission. During the night, rocking from side to side in that bunk on the train, she’d tried to analyse why she’d done it. Part of it was simple: she liked him and wanted as much time as possible with him before he disappeared from her life again. But she’d realised there was a more serious reason too – a compelling need to ensure he didn’t get himself killed.

  The Zhiguli took a left, away from the city centre. There was a relaxed confidence in the people Sam saw on the pavements. It was as if they had more hope here than in the capital.

  They were heading now for the run-down district of Moldovanka, home to whores and junkies, Oksana had told him. Her cousin Taras had been reduced to living there after his restaurant business collapsed. Seedy today, Moldovanka had once been fashionable, and as they entered the district he saw signs of its former elegance. They drove along wide avenues shaded by plane trees. The house where Taras lived had crumbling but ornate balconies and a porch supported by Doric columns.

  Oksana paid the driver with money that Sam gave her. The man sped off, leaving them on the kerb.

  ‘We go in quick before someone see you are foreigner and steal your suitcase,’ she urged in a hoarse whisper. ‘Someone watching here. Always watching,’ She jabbed her finger on a bell push beside the entrance to a walled yard at the side of the house. ‘Every day people dying in Moldovanka,’ she whispered again. ‘Because making own drug here, called vink. Brown like soup.’ She shuddered. ‘Hope Taras not sleeping now.’

  There was no response to her ringing.

  She pressed the bell again. This time there was a shout from beyond the wall, then shuffling footsteps. The gate opened. Taras was a wreck of a man. Of medium height, with dark hair in need of a trim and several days’ growth of beard, he wore a crumpled once-white shirt over black underpants. There were livid scars down one leg.

  He let them in, breathing heavily. He reeked of alcohol. They stood in a small courtyard which was covered by strings with a vine clinging to them. Taras led them to a low building that appeared to have once been the stables to the main house. Inside its single room was a rumpled bed, a small, sticky-looking table, a couple of wooden chairs and a sofa. The place looked as if a hurricane had swept through it.

  Taras pointed to a door leading to a kitchen, then fell onto the bed, giving every appearance of intending to go back to sleep.

  Oksana gulped. This was worse than she’d feared. She put her bag on the sofa and suggested Sam did the same, then peered into the kitchen, wrinkling her nose.

  ‘Bathroom,’ she whispered, pointing past the grease-blackened cooker to a cement-floored corner. The loo was a hole in the ground and next to it was a porcelain sink. ‘Maybe better for you in hotel,’ she suggested, flustered by the state of the place. ‘But at least I think we safe. No one will know you are here.’

  That’s for sure, thought Sam, wondering where the hell they would sleep if they were still here tonight.

  ‘Now, I make some breakfast.’

  She opened the fridge, then let out a groan of despair. Empty apart from spirit bottles.

  ‘Taras,’ she whimpered, ‘maybe he have bread somewhere.’ She leaned her head round the door. ‘Taras?’ No reply from the bed. She cursed him roundly, then checked a cupboard, but it contained crockery, not food.

  ‘I am sorry.’ She was red with embarrassment by now. ‘My cousin said he would make everything ready . . .’ She shrugged. ‘I must go to shop, I think.’

  Sam gave her a twenty-hryvna note.

  After she’d gone Sam stared at the faeces-spattered toilet and decided to keep as far from it as possible. Back in the main room Taras was snoring by now. An empty wine bottle lay on its side on the floor beside the bed. Drips from it had stained the well-soiled sheet that he’d pulled over himself.

  This was not what he’d expected. Yesterday afternoon in response to his question about where to find Dima Grimov, Mikhail Pushkin had told him of a restaurant in Odessa used by the Voroninskaya as a base for their gangstery. It hadn’t been much to go on but it was all there was.

  ‘But Taras will know more,’ Oksana had assured him. ‘Taras know everything about Mafiya in Odessa.’

  Sam’s faith in Taras, however, had evaporated along with the promise of breakfast. He loathed this place. He wanted to douse it with disinfectant. Or petrol. For a few minutes he watched the almost imperceptible rise and fall of the bed-sheet and tried to tell himself that if he had suffered in the way Taras had then he too would probably seek oblivion from the bottle.

  Oksana had filled him in on Taras’s downfall while waiting for the train last night. A respected engineer under communism, when the economy collapsed the machine-
tool factory where he’d worked had closed. For a few years he’d lived on the earnings of his wife who was employed by the port administration. Then, when Odessa began to sprout imported cars, smart boutiques and the other signs of New Russian money, he’d started a restaurant business in order to get his hands on some of it. He’d taken the right first step, signing on for ‘a roof’ from the Mafiya boss who controlled protection in the district where the restaurant was to be situated. Twenty per cent of his takings went for the krysha. Despite that leaching of his profits, the business had succeeded. And succeeded well, according to Oksana. But then the revenue men had got stuck in, demanding outlandish tax payments. Finally a gang war had erupted in the neighbourhood and the restaurant had burned down. With no insurance, Taras had lost everything, including his wife a few weeks later when she moved in with one of the gangstery who’d burned him out.

  There was a grunt from the bed. The body rolled over, then resumed its snoring. Sam looked round the room. Off-white walls speckled with damp, a tacky electric candelabra hanging from the ceiling, clothes dumped on the floor. Against one wall stood a shiny veneered bookcase unit with cupboards in its base. Perched on it was a television and video recorder. Next to the machine lay a VHS tape without a box. Out of idle curiosity, he pushed it into the player and switched on the TV, muting the sound so as not to disturb Taras.

  A picture appeared, but what it was exactly he couldn’t at first make out. The tape was poor quality and damaged. Then it dawned on him that the pale shapes moving about on the screen were the limbs of several bodies locked in a complicated clinch.

  Yes, thought Sam, if he were Taras, he too might find solace in porn videos.

  He left the tape playing, idly speculating on which limbs belonged to which face. Then, before he could resolve the conundrum, the scene cut abruptly to something much simpler. A naked blonde girl was kneeling before a man whose penis was the size of a cucumber. The camera cut to a close-up as her mouth enveloped it, before rising up to give the man’s view of her increasingly active lips. In a slow caress, the camera panned over her blonde curls, then down her glistening back, coming to rest on her neat butt and the heavy metal shackles that secured her wrists to her ankles.