Battlefield 3: The Russian

by Andy McNab

  ‘I live for my work: why would I want to retire?’

  Kroll tried another tack.

  ‘The Chechens would kill for one of these.’

  ‘I think you could have put that better,’ Dima said.

  ‘Back to fucking work, you useless shites!’ yelled Max. The whole place had ground to a halt at the sight of Amara.

  Just visible behind the shed was an S-Class Mercedes: metallic blue with contrasting red front fenders. Dima nodded at it.

  ‘Got any more of those?’

  ‘It’s my own personal runaround. But — throw in the sister and you’ve got a deal.’

  Amara looked terrified. Max pulled his head back out of the Kamov, which he’d been checking over. He looked at the row of horrified faces and laughed.

  ‘I’m joking, you idiots! Lost your sense of humour or what?’

  ‘Yeah, good one,’ said Vladimir.

  ‘I’ll take it. And there’s a nice Volvo here. Hardly any miles on it.’

  ‘Just one old lady owner, yeah, I know.’

  In spite of himself, Dima smiled. Maybe they were going to get out of this okay. They wrapped Darwish in a tarp and loaded him gently into the rear of the Volvo.

  ‘I was hoping to get the Merc,’ said Vladimir.

  ‘You’re taking Amara and her father home. Then I’m going to need you in Paris.’

  Vladimir’s eyes widened. ‘We’re really going to do this?’

  Dima shrugged. ‘No choice.’

  Although it was not yet nine a.m., Max produced a bottle of vodka from an old-fashioned chest freezer.

  He poured the fiery liquid into shot glasses with ‘A Gift From Chernobyl’ embossed on the sides.

  ‘Valuable antiques, those.’

  ‘Bit early for me,’ said Dima, ‘But it’s the thought that counts. None for you: you’re driving,’ he said to Vladimir.

  There was no time to waste. It was two thousand ks to Moscow. Dima took Amara aside.

  ‘You saved our lives back there. And your father gave his for us. If I get through this—.’

  Amara put a slender finger against his lips.

  ‘No promises.’

  ‘Did your father say anything before he—?’

  She smiled, the tears welling up.

  ‘Just that he was “very proud”.’

  They embraced briefly and she got in.

  ‘See you in Paris. Be there by tomorrow night.’

  Vladimir nodded. ‘Adios Amigos.’

  Dima turned to Max, who looked as if Christmas had just come early.

  ‘You never saw us, right?’

  ‘Do we look like informers?’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you.’

  ‘No problem. Take care out there. And take these.’ He opened a drawer. ‘They might come in handy.’

  He handed over a set of jump leads.

  64

  FOB Spartacus, Iraqi Kurdistan

  Two MPs stood at the door. What a waste of their time, thought Blackburn. He could barely stand, let alone make a run for it, but they had still shackled his feet. He was a prisoner now, maybe for ever.

  Andrews and Dershowitz had been joined by a third man in combats and a Bruce Springsteen T-shirt. He wasn’t introduced, but the other two addressed him as Wes. He had brought with him a field laptop with a hi-def screen.

  They played the satellite footage for the third time. The full image included the chalet and the tunnel entrance, but each time they played it Wes zoomed in closer. And with each zoom it seemed to get more, not less, clear.

  ‘Okay, let’s see them groundhogs pop out one more time.’ Wes had a Texan drawl that was full of the wide outdoors, not suited to a stifling Portakabin full of perspiring men. They watched again. First Dima exiting the tunnel, recceing the hill, turning back to the tunnel, beckoning. Then Blackburn, shielding his eyes from the sudden glare. Dima lifted the phone to his ear.

  ‘Left-handed. Interesting.’

  The other two glanced at Wes.

  ‘Guys from those parts save their left for when they’ve taken a shit.’

  He fast-forwarded through Dima and Blackburn’s walk to the camo-covered remains of the shed.

  ‘Kinda touching they threw that camo over the Land Cruiser, ain’t it, like we’re gonna miss it.’

  All three of them managed to find that quite funny.

  The screen zoomed in on Vladimir and Kroll.

  ‘Kinda hesitant, that greeting. Maybe Doofus here’s saying “What the fuck ya gone an’ dragged out that there tunnel, boy? Looks to me like you gone and got yourself one United States Marine”.’

  Dima’s hands moved rapidly as he responded.

  ‘And Goofy here’s probly sayin’, “Uh-uh. This here’s a traitor to his country. He ain’t no US Marine. Fact is, this here fella ain’t even human. He’s one great big log of dawg do”.’

  Wes looked up at Blackburn and laughed appreciatively at his own improvisation.

  ‘Sheesh, we sure get some shit to deal with, these days.’

  He shook his head at the screen. ‘So “Sergeant” Blackburn. You can if you wish remain silent. What good it’s going to do you, I ain’t rightly sure, since our people will go on analysing these here bird shots till we pretty much know just exactly what you-all are sayin’ down there.’

  Blackburn’s stomach took another lurch. There wasn’t much left in it. He hadn’t eaten or drunk anything in six hours, but whatever was left he vomited into the waste bin, over the burger and Coke that Dershowitz had dropped in it.

  Wes closed the laptop. The other two sat back. Dershowitz picked something out of his nose and examined it.

  ‘It’s a crying shame, Sergeant Blackburn,’ said Dershowitz. ‘All that expensive training, son of Private Michael Blackburn, US Marine and Viet Vet, grandson of Lieutenant George Blackburn, decorated hero of World War Two: good men who gave themselves in service to their country. So what happened Henry? Where’d it all go wrong?’

  65

  The Road to Moscow

  ‘So nice to be back on terra firma, and in the bosom of Mother Russia,’ said Kroll.

  Kroll was driving, one hand draped over the wheel, a can of Coke in the other. They were five hundred ks into the drive to Moscow. Another fifteen hundred to go.

  ‘You know, I think these S-Class W220s are my favourite. This or possibly the W126. I didn’t much like the one in between — you know the one that Princess Di—.’

  Dima reached a hand round and pressed it against his mouth.

  ‘Two things, friend. One: shut up. Two: you’ll be taking off for Paris tonight or tomorrow, so don’t get too settled. Concentrate on the road and try not to get pulled over by the cops. They see the Azeri plates they’ll think we’re human traffickers.’

  It was time for Dima to make his first call to Paris. Rossin picked up straight away. Dima tried to imagine him at his favourite table in the Café des Artistes in the Marais, a covert roll-up snagged in the cleft of two fingers and his Paris Match and the Economist spread out in front of him, for the two sides of his personality.

  ‘Bonjour. C’est Mayakovsky.’

  He thought he heard the sound of a falling coffee cup.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know anyone of that name.’

  ‘Don’t be a prick, Rossin.’

  He sighed.

  ‘Your ugly Russian mug is on all the police and security websites. Apparently you’ve stolen some WMDs and are bent on starting World War Three — mainly for the purpose of shaming Russia.’

  Dima tried to sound dismissive. ‘A clerical error. The guilty party is actually an old mutual friend of ours.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You ready for this? Solomon.’

  He expected a silence. The name tended to provoke one.

  ‘Goodbye, Dima.’

  ‘Wait! Hear me out.’

  ‘I’m retired.’

  ‘You can’t afford to retire. None of us can.’

  ‘I just
did, thirty seconds ago.’

  ‘One last favour, for old time’s sake. You’ll never hear from me again. Promise, on my mother’s grave.’

  ‘Your mother died in a gulag. She has no grave.’

  ‘Just a few shreds of information. A little surveillance. Nothing more.’

  ‘Solomon’s dead. We all know that.’

  ‘We were wrong. He was biding his time. This is his big Fuck-You to the West. So just please hear me out. The target’s the Bourse. He’ll be most likely using canteen staff or security as cover — maybe cleaners.’

  ‘There’ll be over a hundred.’

  ‘Check them all out.’

  ‘How long have I got?’

  ‘Twelve hours.’

  ‘Ha ha.’

  ‘I can pay.’

  After Dima hung up, Kroll said, ‘Speaking of pay. .’

  ‘We weren’t.’

  ‘Well, I’ve been meaning to—.’

  ‘Remember about “Shut up”? I’ll remember you in my will.’

  ‘When’s that going to happen?’

  ‘Soon. By tonight I’ll almost certainly be dead. Now leave me alone while I talk to Omorova again.’

  66

  Moscow

  There was nothing pretty about the Matruska Bathhouse. It had been built in the 1930s with none of the baroque decor that adorned the other two hundred-odd facilities in the city. But even with its brutalist architecture designed to appeal to the commissariat, Stalin’s claim, just before it was due to open, that hygiene was a decadent bourgeois obsession, ensured that it remained mothballed for decades. Dima was fond of it, not only because it reminded him of his youth, but because it was almost entirely patronised by immigrants and gypsies. Despite being at the top of the world’s ‘Most Wanted’ list, he stood as good a chance here as anywhere of going unnoticed.

  He gave the steam room ten minutes longer than usual to shift the various layers of grime that had accumulated over the last few days. Then he leapt into the cold pool, did forty lengths and emerged a new man, ready to save the world. He shaved, had a hair cut and a manicure and, after slipping on the special set of clothes Kroll had procured, stepped out into his favourite city.

  He had lived in far more places than your average Russian, been a globetrotter — though the term wouldn’t have meant anything to most of his comrades — but this was one city he loved more than any other. And he hoped that when the time came, and in his business who knew when that was, that he would die here in Moscow.

  The cab took him to the Liberia Bank of Credit and Commerce. They didn’t do much in the way of credit, and commerce was somewhat on the back burner too, but they did a nice line in security deposit boxes. And that was where Dima kept his spare life. Passports: EU, Brazilian and Egyptian; Cash: Euros, US Dollars, some Yen; Amex and Visa cards; and a Makarov with enough ammunition for a small skirmish.

  The concierge gave him an odd look. But Dima’s mind was elsewhere. He went to the desk and asked for access to his box, giving the name Smolenskovitch, a name he only used at this bank. The bank clerk looked uncomfortable, but beckoned him to follow him into the vault. He had a loose sole on his shoe that slapped the carpet as he strutted ahead. He let Dima into the vault and stood at a safe distance while he watched what was about to happen. Having first clocked the security camera, Dima opened his drawer and found — nothing. Not even his spare French birth certificate. He slammed the drawer shut and marched out past the hapless clerk and past the main desk and the concierge, pushing the revolving door so hard that it was still spinning when he reached the pavement.

  He felt a blow to his chest and fell straight down. No one said ‘Stop’ or ‘Freeze’. The team leader had decided to shoot on sight, at close range, to avoid other pedestrians. One to the heart. From a GSh-18 pistol, much noisier than the PSS Silent favoured by the Special Forces, but the operator wasn’t interested in being discreet. The twenty-odd pedestrians couldn’t have missed it.

  A female onlooker screamed and screamed, almost blotting out the siren of the unmarked GAZ mid-size van that slewed to a halt beside the body. Though it was all over in a matter of seconds, some wiseass had managed to pull out their cameraphone, capture the incident and upload it on to YouTube before the van was gone. For good measure the phone guy did a separate shot of the pool of blood spread across the forecourt of the Liberia Bank.

  Inside the van, the shooter pulled off her mask and shook out her hair.

  ‘I still can’t believe I agreed to this,’ said Omorova.

  67

  Baghdad Green Zone, Iraq

  It was Blackburn’s first time in Baghdad’s Green Zone, not that he saw any of it, blindfolded as he now was. What was the point? He asked the MP who changed his plastic zip cuffs for proper shiny metal handcuffs. ‘The point, son, is that you’re a spy. And we don’t want spies seeing stuff they don’t need to.’

  A spy. And a murderer.

  They had found Cole’s body. They dug all night and most of the next day, through the rubble, the remains of the chalet and into the bunker until they came upon it. The field pathologist extracted the bullet and the forensic team took about thirty minutes to confirm that the markings on it were consistent with those on several others they had test-fired through Blackburn’s confiscated M4. And just to be sure, they dusted the rifle for prints and found only its owner’s.

  Chester Hain Jnr was a different animal from his subordinate, Wes. Hain looked like a well-born Easterner with an Ivy League education. Plus the demeanour of an American who had lived overseas long enough to have learned how to blend in a little and not draw too much attention to himself: handy in his line of work. He had a faraway look in his eyes, which Blackburn imagined had come from a life trying to read between the lines. Perhaps he could read between the lines of what Blackburn had decided to tell him.

  He had nothing to lose now.

  ‘May I talk to you alone, Sir?’

  Chester Hain Jnr glanced at the man who Blackburn only knew as Wes, who had never introduced himself, who was chewing on a stick of gum and smacking his lips in a way that Blackburn’s mother had trained him out of before he’d even started grade school.

  ‘Wesley?’ Hain nodded at the door. Wes stopped chewing, closed his laptop with a firmness that betrayed his humiliation and left without a word.

  Suddenly the atmosphere in the room was marginally less stifling, as if fewer people had inhaled and exhaled the air Blackburn was breathing.

  Hain poured two glasses of water from a bottle and pushed one towards Blackburn. ‘You’ll get awful dry in these places. Keep your liquids up just like you did on patrol, okay?’

  There was something almost parental about his manner. Blackburn picked up the glass with both hands, the cuffs made that mandatory, drank the contents down in one and set the glass back on the grey metal table between them.

  ‘May I begin?’

  Hain folded his arms.

  ‘Shoot.’

  He had expected a laptop or a notebook at the very least. Hain just leaned back in his chair with what seemed like all the interest of a customer being read a list of options from his Buick dealer.

  Blackburn described every detail he could remember, from the moment he saw Dima. He repeated their conversation verbatim, how they had pooled what they knew about Solomon and what that added up to for Dima. Blackburn described the beam falling and how Dima had struggled to save him, his gun and knife clearly within Blackburn’s reach. And then he got to the appearance of Cole. He told Hain everything about his commanding officer’s reactions to Harker, to the vault find and to the death of Bashir.

  ‘I believe Cole was testing me, Sir. He was trying to make a point, that he didn’t believe I was man enough to execute what he believed was the enemy.’

  Blackburn thought it was going well. Hain had barely blinked as he listened. He didn’t look away the whole time or change his position. His stillness seemed to be operating like a force field, sucking the details out of B
lackburn faster than he could process them. But he’d given up trying to measure his words. He was done for. The best he could hope for was some acknowledgment of the willing co-operation he had given after they’d told him about Cole’s bullet.

  After Blackburn had finished speaking, Hain looked at him for a few more seconds.

  ‘Thank you for being so candid, Henry.’

  Then he sighed.

  ‘Fact is, there are two problems with what you’ve told me. One is the WMDs. We’ve done the analysis. The device you recovered appears to be some kind of dummy. There’s no fissile material. Whoever sold it may have been some kind of con-artist.’

  Hain paused while Blackburn took this in. Then he leaned forward and and put his hands together on the desk as if preparing to pray.

  ‘The other problem you have is that the Russian Federation just issued an international arrest warrant for one Dima Mayakovsky, wanted for the theft of Russian government armaments.’

  He got to his feet and went towards the door.

  ‘You shot the wrong guy, Henry.’

  68

  Moscow

  It was dusk when Kroll surfaced from the Serpukhovskaya Metro Station with a large bouquet of flowers and walked to the apartment building two blocks down. In Brezhnev’s time, accommodation in ‘Serpo’ as it was known was only available to the anointed. Obtaining a toehold was a sure sign to the rest of the commissariat that you were on the up. Today, like many of its ageing inhabitants, Serpo was on the way down, in bad need of a facelift.

  Kroll had had a good look round the exterior of the apartment building before entering. Once inside, he flashed a GRU pass which he had helped himself to when they had sprung Bulganov’s daughter. It wouldn’t work for Paliov’s guards but it got him past the concierge. He then proceeded to try to deliver the flowers to one Xenya Moronova. Since Xenya Moronova was the name of his own estranged thirteen-year-old daughter, he knew he wouldn’t have much success, but after pressing many bells and offering the bouquet to numerous residents he had a pretty good idea of the strength of Paliov’s security detail, as well as the layout of the block.

  Twenty minutes later, Dima, in a fresh set of clothes, pulled up in the Merc and picked Kroll up.