Fire Hawk

by Geoffrey Archer

  Sam reached for his ankle. The pistol fused with his palm and slid from its binding like a greased sword from a sheath. An extension of his arm, a part of him now, it rose up in front of him. His left hand came up to join the right. Thumb slipping safety, finger on trigger, eyes on tunnel vision, Grimov turning towards him in consternation.

  The pistol kicked silently. Then kicked again. No sound but the buzz in his head. Two red rings stamped on Grimov’s temple. The monster slumped forward.

  Sam sensed movement to his right. He kicked against the floor, skidding the swivel chair back on its castors. The Skorpion swung towards him. Two more silent kicks from Figgis’s PSM sent the machine pistol clattering to the floor and Rybkin staggering against the wall, clutching his shoulder.

  Movement to the left now, the shpana diving for the Skorpion. Again Sam fired. Again some supernatural force gave him an accuracy he’d never acquired through training. The thug jerked and choked as the bullets hit his middle, blood spurting from his side.

  Sam scrabbled to his feet, the blur clearing from his brain. Sharp sounds pierced his ears now. Rybkin yelling in pain, his hand pressed against his shoulder.

  Sam stared around him in disbelief. Grimov was lifeless, the man on the floor moaning and still. He himself was trembling, the pistol shaking like jelly. Had he done this?

  But mingled with Rybkin’s yells, there was another, far more dreadful sound hammering at his ears. A gagging and choking that was cutting his heart out. He lunged at the edit bench to stop the tape.

  Then he rounded on Rybkin, bent on killing him too.

  ‘You shitbag! You are dead! Dead! Understand? Down on your fucking knees, animal!’ He scooped the Skorpion off the floor and held it in his left fist.

  ‘Listen, listen to me,’ Rybkin pleaded. ‘All what you see – it was Grimov. His idea. Everything. Killing . . . making video . . . He’s crazy for such things. Me, I just do—’

  ‘What he tells you. Don’t fucking come that one! You murdered her. Both of you. It’s on the fucking tape.’ He aimed the pistol between Rybkin’s eyes and took up first pressure on the trigger.

  ‘Don’t shoot. I can tell you things . . .’

  ‘Then fucking talk!’

  ‘Yes. I will tell you . . .’

  Suddenly the full impact of what he’d done hit Sam with a terrifying force. He backed away, looking about him. He’d killed the Odessa commander of the Voroninskaya gang. He’d done serious damage to one of his hoods, and he was stuck in the bowels of the gang’s headquarters which must have echoed like a base drum to the crack of his shots. The door was still ajar. He listened for footsteps or shouts.

  ‘First. Who else is here?’ he demanded. ‘How many others of you?’

  Rybkin blinked as if trying to decide how little he needed to reveal. Sam prompted him with a pistol jab against the old scar on the side of his head.

  ‘Three,’ Rybkin fumed, flinching. ‘But they are up. Above ground – in the office where you came earlier.’

  ‘How do they get down here?’

  ‘Elevator.’

  ‘And will they?’

  ‘Only if I call them.’

  Was he lying? Sam couldn’t tell.

  ‘Just remember, arsehole, if they turn up at that door, I blow a hole in your head. Understand?’

  ‘Understand. I’m telling you the truth.’

  ‘Now tell me the truth about the anthrax. Where’s it to be used? And when?’

  Rybkin froze, then tried a shrug, but the pain shot through his shoulder again. ‘I don’t know,’ he coughed.

  ‘You’re a fucking liar!’ Sam clubbed his head with the Skorpion. ‘Now, fucking tell me or you’re dead!’

  Rybkin regained his balance. The scar tissue on his cheek had split and begun to bleed.

  ‘I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you,’ he puffed. He looked down as if with shame, his chest heaving with the enormity of the betrayal he was about to commit. ‘I’m not sure, but I think it’s Israel.’

  ‘What d’you mean you’re not sure? You arranged transport for the drone – where the fuck did it go?’

  Rybkin looked up, his brown eyes feigning harmlessness. ‘All of this – it was Dima Filipovich. You understand? Not me. I just—’

  ‘Obeying orders. Shut up and tell me where the VR-6 was shipped to.’

  ‘Haifa,’ he whispered. ‘Container went to Haifa . . .’

  ‘God Almighty!’ Sam flared. ‘You realise what you idiots have done? If the Israelis get hit by Iraqi anthrax, they’ll nuke Baghdad. You’re mad. You know that? Totally fucking mad.’

  ‘Grimov – he decide these things.’ Rybkin mouthed, pointing at his dead boss.

  Jesus, thought Sam, he had to get out of there fast. To warn the Israelis.

  ‘But when?’ he demanded. ‘When’s the attack to happen? And why? What’s the reason for this lunacy?’

  Rybkin shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Truly,’ he pleaded, as Sam raised the Skorpion, ready to hit him again.

  For some reason Sam believed him this time.

  ‘Look, I’m bleeding pretty bad,’ Rybkin pleaded. ‘I need doctor. And for Sasha . . .’ He indicated the man sprawled on the floor.

  ‘A doctor?’ Sam wheezed, incredulous. ‘Like the one you so generously provided for Chrissie? No. The next time a doctor looks at you, chum, you’ll be on a marble slab.’

  There was one more question. One vital one he needed an answer to before he got the hell out of there. A question he was almost afraid to ask.

  ‘Why the fucking tattoo, Viktor?’ he croaked. ‘Why was Chrissie marked with the Voroninskaya logo?’

  Rybkin’s face lit up with surprise. ‘You still don’t know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you must look at the tape,’ Rybkin murmured, a glint of triumph on his face.

  ‘I just did.’

  ‘No. The rest of it.’ Cruelty crept back into Rybkin’s gaze. ‘The part Dima Filipovich spooled through.’

  The shots of Chrissie by herself. Talking . . . Rybkin’s eyes cut him like lasers. The more questions you ask . . . The Ukrainian’s warning sounded in his ears yet again, but he had to go on. The answers were here, inside that damned machine.

  ‘Show me,’ he croaked, prodding Rybkin towards the equipment. His heart felt as if it were clamped in a vice.

  Rybkin hovered over Grimov, clicking his tongue.

  ‘Get on with it,’ Sam snapped, putting the pistol in his trouser pocket.

  Rybkin leaned forward and operated the player awkwardly with his left hand. He spooled back, then touched play.

  The towel over Chrissie’s shoulders almost covered her breasts, but it failed to conceal a livid red love bite on one of them. She’d put some briefs on.

  When her voice rang from the speakers, as clear and true as if she were here in this room, Sam’s eyes began to blur with tears.

  She was shouting.

  ‘Look Dima, you damn well have to, and tha’s it.’

  He didn’t take in her words at first, except to notice they were slurred.

  ‘It’s not enough. Not for what I’ve done.’

  Not enough? Sam didn’t follow.

  ‘It is all you get.’ Grimov’s voice. Distant. Off mike. But hard and dismissive. ‘It is the price. It is what you are worth to me.’

  Worth? Price? What was this to do with her extracting secrets from the villain?

  ‘Jesus, Di-ima. How can you say that?’

  She was very drunk, her tongue, her face muscles all going slow. Sam’s eyes locked on to her lips, which were raw from the sex.

  ‘Not only is it me that gives you the most crucial piece of information for your lunatic scheme,’ she snapped, ‘you get to fuck me all over, you dirty little weasel.’

  Information? The word reached out from the speakers like a hand clutching at his throat. The nightmare he’d tried to suppress was coming true.

  ‘Weasel?’ Grimov’s voice this time, annoyed and off camera. Sou
nds of running water, as if he were in a bathroom. ‘What you say?’ Louder now, as if he’d re-entered the room. Louder and angry.

  ‘A weasel’s a little furry animal,’ she answered timidly, her slate-grey eyes suddenly meek and scared. ‘Quite sweet, really . . .’

  ‘Don’t make mistake, Chrissie . . .’ Grimov moved into shot, naked except for a towel round his waist. ‘Don’t make mistake to think we need you.’

  Need? Sam prayed he was misunderstanding, that this was some crazy, perverted piece of virtual reality.

  ‘You did need me, Dima,’ she persisted. ‘Couldn’t have got started without my help.’

  God Almighty. What had she done?

  ‘And you have been paid,’ Grimov retorted. ‘So it is finish. Understand?’

  Chrissie pulled herself up straight. ‘I’ll have to talk to Voronin.’

  ‘You begin to understand?’ Rybkin was watching Sam like a hovering hawk.

  He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. He’d slumped onto the swivel chair, the Skorpion across his knees.

  On the screen Grimov slapped her face, knocking her sideways.

  ‘How dare you!’ she protested, picking herself up. ‘If you think that what Voronin paid me entitles you to treat me like dirt . . . I’ve had to betray people. Friends, Dima, friends! Not that you’d know the meaning of the word . . .’

  Grimov’s arms hung at his sides like an ape’s.

  ‘A hundred thousand is not enough,’ she insisted, drunkenly oblivious to the pit she was digging herself. ‘Half a million is what I want.’

  ‘You are mad. You agree fifty thousand this time,’ Grimov snapped. ‘Already you have fifty thousand last year.’

  Sam curled up with pain. ‘Oh God . . .’ he mouthed.

  ‘I agreed to that before I knew what this was all about, Dima. Before I knew how much you stood to make from the deal. And before I realised just what an insanely dangerous game you were playing. Jesus, Dima . . . Anthrax. You never said anything about anthrax when I agreed to help. You realise this could lead to World War Three?’

  Sam looked into her eyes searching for some sign of shame, but there was none to be seen.

  Grimov didn’t answer her.

  ‘Listen to me, Dima. You’d bloody better pay me what I want.’ Her threat was unspoken, but quite explicit.

  Sam put his head in his hands. There were no more words to be heard now. Just the sickening smack of punches, the razor cut of Chrissie’s screams and the animal grunts of Grimov’s breathing.

  Rybkin switched off the machine.

  ‘So now you know.’ He flinched as fresh pain stabbed through his shoulder. ‘Chrissie belonged to Voronin, since a year ago when you and she were in Kiev. The tattoo is Voronin’s way with women. When they take his money they have to wear it. Like a receipt. She wouldn’t have it at first, but she agreed back in June, when she got wind there was another fifty grand on offer.’

  June. The month in which she’d ended their relationship. Ended it so she wouldn’t have to explain to him where the tattoo came from.

  Sam forced himself to his feet, clutching the Skorpion in his left hand. He couldn’t breathe in this place. Still couldn’t grasp what Chrissie had done to him.

  ‘It was she who told you I was being assigned to Baghdad?’ he heard himself ask.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then you told Naif Hamdan, so he could set me up.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And she also told you where I live in London, so that Hamdan knew where to come when he tried to kill me?’

  Rybkin sighed. ‘I didn’t know he planned to kill you.’

  Another lie, thought Sam. The habit of a lifetime. He pressed the eject button on the VCR and pulled out the tape.

  ‘Get me out of here, arsehole,’ he grunted. He stuffed the tape into the waistband of his trousers.

  Why had she done it? For the money? So she could have that goddamned gingerbread cottage by the river? Have the new BMW Clare had told him about? She’d risked his life for that?

  He remembered that tiny bedroom in Amman, her concern for him after his release from Iraq. That loving concern that he now knew had one purpose and one purpose only, to learn if he’d tumbled to the fact that it was she who’d betrayed him. He remembered too her questions about the anthrax. Not idle questions as they’d seemed at the time, but to discover how much of the plan had been blown.

  ‘Move,’ he snapped, pointing the Skorpion at Rybkin’s stomach. ‘Get me out the way I came in.’

  Rybkin caught his breath. ‘I need to go to hospital,’ he gulped. ‘And Sasha.’ Sam glanced at the man on the floor. No sign of breathing. Probably too late for him.

  ‘Move it!’

  The passageway was empty and eerily quiet. Sam pushed the Ukrainian towards the heavy steel door.

  ‘Open it and then get me into the cellar with the lockers.’

  Rybkin spun the heavy handle that withdrew the bolts and the door swung back. They passed through and the door closed shut behind them. Sam clicked on the torch.

  He was having to force himself to think ahead, to put behind him what he’d just seen and done. To turn Chrissie into history. A history that should never have happened.

  If this had been a sane country he would have taken Rybkin at gunpoint to the police, but this was Ukraine and Rybkin would have friends in the Militsia. Friends who could block Sam’s escape from the country. And escaping was what he had to do – and fast.

  Suddenly he thought of a way.

  His torch lit up the tunnel until their path was blocked by the plain metal back of the fake storage cabinet.

  ‘Open it.’

  Rybkin was too weak to prevaricate. He reached with his left hand to a patch of wall above the opening and, pressing on some invisible switch, the metal panel swung back.

  ‘This is where we say goodbye, Viktor,’ Sam growled, stepping through the gap. ‘I should kill you too, but I have a sneaking feeling Mr Voronin will soon do the job for me.’

  Rybkin scowled. The cabinet swung shut with Rybkin still behind it in the pitch black of the tunnel.

  ‘Don’t get lost, now,’ Sam chided.

  He shone the torch round the cellar to check he was alone, then he removed the magazine from the Skorpion and pocketed it. He hid the machine pistol on top of one of the cabinets. With the PSM weighing heavily in his other trouser pocket, he moved up the steps into the courtyard, then on towards the lights of the town.

  When he reached the Prymorsky boulevard the crowd had dwindled to a handful of lovers and a scattering of sailors heading back to the port. As he began to make his way down the broad sweep of the Potemkin steps, he heard not far off the wail of a police siren – and it was getting closer.

  He panicked and began to run. Rybkin had had five minutes. Enough time to get onto his pals.

  Two hundred steps, he remembered Oksana saying. Two hundred chances to miss his footing. As his feet hammered down them, his mind was spinning again. There was something not right. Something wrong with what he’d been told, something that didn’t add up.

  How could Chrissie have known? How could she possibly have known that he was being assigned to Baghdad – unless her husband had told her? Martin Kessler giving her information that was top secret. Had Kessler been bought too? A rotten apple in the hierarchy of SIS? Was this the smell he’d wanted Sam to conceal?

  He reached the last flight of steps. Suddenly he stopped. There was a road to cross to reach the entrance of the port, and parked in the middle of it was a police car. Beside him a trio of sailors was zigzagging down the last of the steps, clinging to one another for support. They were singing.

  ‘. . . never walk alone . . .’

  Sam slung an arm round the one on the end and began to sing with them.

  ‘Eh . . . ’oo are you, wack?’

  ‘What a night, eh?’ Sam muttered. ‘Fucking wiped out, I am.’

  They reached the road and began to cross, the police car just feet away
.

  ‘Yeah. But ’oo are you? Youse not with us.’

  ‘Cracking talent, eh? Odessa girls, w’hay!’ Sam turned his face away from the Militsia car.

  ‘The one I ’ad wasn’t,’ the sailor lamented. ‘Ugly as a fuckin’ robber’s dog.’

  ‘Never walk alone . . .’ Sam howled.

  On the far pavement they began lurching up the ramp to the port, two armed policemen looking over them as they passed, their eyes weary from a night of watching drunks.

  ‘What ship you from?’ the sailor asked.

  ‘Yours.’

  ‘No you’re not. ‘Ere,’ he shouted, turning to his mates. ‘This bloke’s not from the Devonshire, is he?’

  ‘Give it a rest, mate,’ Sam growled, trying to hurry them. ‘I’m a techie, sent out from UK to fix the radar.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  A footbridge led down to the inner harbour where the NATO warships were berthed. Sam let go of his new friends, now they were in sight of the ship. The sailors unlinked their arms and fell silent, trying to appear sober. Sam watched as they stomped up the gangway and saluted the officer checking names against a crew list. Then he followed.

  ‘Sorry, sir, you can’t come on here,’ the lieutenant declared, putting a hand on Sam’s chest.

  Sam took in a deep breath.

  ‘My name is Lieutenant Commander Packer. I work for British intelligence. I need to speak with your captain immediately.’

  39

  Thursday, 10 October

  The Black Sea

  THE SEA KING helicopter dipped its whirling tail rotor and descended like a predator onto the demarcated landing area at Istanbul’s Atatürk airport. Sam twisted his helmeted head against the hard webbing seat back in the cramped interior, straining to see out of the small, spray-smeared window to his left. He was relieved at having escaped from Odessa, very relieved. But what he’d seen and done in the last few hours had left him stunned.

  His arrival on the brow of the British warship last night had caused more ructions than he’d expected. He’d imagined there’d be somebody among the ship’s seventeen officers who would know him from years back – the Navy was like an extended family – but he’d been out of luck. Most were of the next generation to him, well under thirty years of age, and four of the officers were women.