Having the Bear with her was massively reassuring. He was a man of few words, had been a company sergeant major in a commando of marines, and was the embassy’s security officer. He was fit, athletic and owned a presence.
What was the visitor’s name? Natan. Would Natan, please, stand up? The boy had done so. Would he, please, extend his arms sideways and open his hands? Liz Tremlett had watched the Bear frisk the boy. Opened hands showed he had no explosive trigger device. The Bear had crouched at the boy’s feet and slid off the trainers. He had bent them, then put them on the X-ray tray by the metal-detector arch in front of the security door. She had seen the boy shiver and known it was not cold that caused it. Watching the shaking in the shoulders, the tremor in the hands and the slack jaw, she had known that the boy had made a life-changing decision by walking into the building. Would Natan, please, empty his pockets of everything metallic? It was done: belt, spectacles, mobile phone, loose change, everyday paraphernalia. She had led, and the Bear had followed the boy through the door while the machine had scanned his possessions. Liz had reckoned that any sudden movement the boy had made would have been curtailed by a chop, closed fist, on the back of that fragile neck.
The Bear had sat at the side of the table, poised, and she had sat behind it with her pencil and notepad. The boy was on a hard chair in front of her. The Bear had murmured to her that she should keep it disciplined and under control, not allow it to ramble, that a ‘walk-in’ was likely to be some sad no-hoper with a life history of injustice. A gold-dust moment was unlikely . . . but the possibility existed.
She did as she was advised. Date and place of birth, names of parents. She might have been doing benefits in a small-town social-security office at home. Passport details – two were handed to the Bear and he’d glanced at them. A fractional wintry smile had slipped over his lips. She was given the passports and realised that none of the details they carried matched what she had already written down.
Headlines slipped on to her pages. Communications/hacker/encrypter. She found his voice hard to understand. Russian-based crime boss. The English was what she might have called ‘lazy’, a sort of vernacular and electronic shorthand. His employer was Petar Alexander Borsonov, he whispered. She had to strain to hear him. The Major. Associates were the warrant officer/the master sergeant. They did drugs, and money washing, and trafficking, and killing . . . state killing.
They did state killing and they were protected by a roof. Liz Tremlett, earnest, enthusiastic, a young woman who read every Foreign Office advisory that came to her screen, had no idea what a roof was. The question must have shown in her eyes, and it was answered. She flipped her notepad page, scribbled again.
They kill for FSB. FSB is the roof. The roof protects. The roof is the state and the state protects. They kill for the state. They cannot be harmed as long as they are the servants of the state.
She was out of her depth now. She caught the eye of the Bear and murmured, ‘Heavy stuff, if true,’ and the Bear mouthed that it was Six work or more likely Central Intelligence Agency business. She felt a brush of annoyance, as if a prize had gone beyond reach. Still the boy shivered, and she sensed he was restless, as if time had slipped too far and the fear grew in him. He’d glanced twice at his wristwatch. She understood the enormity of what he’d done, the scale of his treachery. It was true betrayal.
She said quietly, ‘Natan, I really appreciate that you’ve come to us with your story, and we take very seriously the allegations you make, but this is far above my level and— Look, where can you be contacted? What numbers can I pass to the relevant people?’
He was slight enough, and seemed to shrivel further. ‘We are gone tomorrow. We go to Constanta. You think I would allow a stranger to call me? You think I would expose myself? At five o’clock tomorrow, I will try to be in a bar in Constanta. That is Romania, where we go to do more business. Do I trust you? Perhaps, a little. Do I trust you enough to give you my life? What do you think? I thought it too difficult to go to the Americans who hide inside their fortresses, their embassies, but I thought it more of interest to the British. In Constanta, I will speak to an intelligence officer, which you are not.’
‘I can only repeat, Natan, what I said. We take very seriously what you’ve told us. It’ll be passed on, higher and—’
It was the first time the Bear had spoken directly to him. ‘Natan, why is it of more interest to us?’
The boy’s head turned. He spat, ‘He killed your man. Enough? He kicked your agent until he died. The Major did it, all three of them. Once we stopped near to Pskov and they wanted to piss. The lay-by was a dump, and there was a shop-front dummy, full-size there. They pissed and they kicked the head of the dummy, and they laughed. They were shouting, excited. I sat in the car and I heard it. Before I joined them . . . It was a Briton, an agent, and it was in the darkness. It was in Budapest. It was an entertainment, to kick the head from the dummy in the lay-by. It is why I came to you before the Americans.’
‘Bloody hell,’ the Bear muttered.
With some perception, Liz Tremlett said, ‘You hate them.’
‘Very much.’
The Bear gripped the boy’s arm, just above the raw flesh. ‘The bar in Constanta, tomorrow at five o’clock local. Its name?’
She wrote it down.
He stood, and the Bear rose with him, dominating him. He might have realised his movement was intimidating, so a ham of a fist touched the boy’s arm. The gesture was shaken away. Liz Tremlett read it: the boy wanted no favours, only the righting of a wrong, a version of vengeance. Her mind was awash with images of wrongs that could be righted only by such a degree of betrayal.
They shook hands briefly with the boy, rewarded with a loose grip, devoid of emotion. There was no bonding. They saw him walk feebly across the lobby. The plastic bag, from the chemist down the street, swung from his hand.
He didn’t look back. They went to the door, stood inside the glass and saw him shambling off. The Bear said, with certainty, that the spooks would ‘have a bloody wet dream fantasising about a walk-in like that’, then shrugged as if she should take that as an apology for his vulgarity.
She knew the answer, but asked, ‘What would happen to him, Bear, if they knew what he’d done?’
‘Just get on with the paperwork.’
The jeans were down to his buttocks, the shoulders drooped and his hair was tousled. The boy, Natan, went round a corner, and they lost sight of him. Liz Tremlett didn’t wait for the lift but went up the stairs two at a time and hurried to her desk. She slapped the pad down, then started to prepare the message she would send.
‘Where is he?’ the Major asked, annoyed, holding sheets of paper with scribbled messages. The warrant officer went to find him. The girl was in the bedroom, doing her nails. He paid the Gecko well. All men of influence and authority had a Gecko on their payroll. They were young, without social skills, initiative or women, but they had extraordinary computing ability. They knew the inner secrets of what was planned, but they were welcomed only when their work was wanted. The Gecko did not eat or drink with them when they were away, and sat apart from them on a plane. He was in the front of the car and his opinion was never asked, unless they wanted the intricate details of computer security. The Major would have been unhappy not to have him close. He thought the boy gave him a ‘firewall’ of protection.
He was brought in – must have been intercepted in the corridor because he carried a small plastic bag. He was dirty and scarred.
‘What happened to you?’ Not that the Major had much interest.
The boy said he had tripped on the pavement. He was not asked whether he wanted to go and clean up or whether his toothache had gone. He was given the notes. He could interpret the Major’s writing, knew the codes and ciphers to be used, and where the messages should be sent. Before he was out of the suite they were talking among themselves, and he was ignored.
‘I’ve typed the message,’ Liz Tremlett said. ‘What now? I
’m still shaking. What do I do?’
‘It’ll go to the cipher room and the clerk’ll shift it – he’ll know where to. I’ll run it down to him.’ The Bear smiled.
She might not have been the brightest star in Foreign and Commonwealth’s firmament, but she was not stupid. She realised that the old marine, for all that he had done combat, was as excited as he had been at any time in his career. Her printer was spilling the pages.
‘Did we do all right?’
‘I’d say, Liz, you did a bit better than ‘‘all right’’. You did well. My take on it: he made an earth-moving decision to come in off the street, with his future, his very life, hanging on it. He expected to find an intelligence guy, a professional, but likely the questions would have come like a machine-gun firing at him and he might have run. You didn’t threaten him and you started him down the hill. Now he’s in free-fall and the proper people can leech on to him. He won’t be allowed off the slide. You did well.’
It was said gruffly, and she blushed, then scooped up the four typed sheets and gave them to him. He had the disk in his hand that held the photo images of the boy in the lobby. The Bear went out. She could see, from her desk, the corner round which Natan had walked. He had seemed so vulnerable. She had wormed into his confidence, and doubted she’d ever hear of him again. She sat for a long time, very still, and wished she smoked. It was like it had never happened. She wondered how many others it would touch, when her signal hit VX, the eyesore by the Thames.
Late morning, and the sun shone on the gardens of the Villa del Aguila. He wandered slowly, contemplatively, across his lawns and avoided the area where the water spray played. Pavel Ivanov now lived far from his ethnic roots, and his new life left him with few regrets. A half-dozen passports carried his photograph – Russian, Bulgarian, Israeli, Australian, Paraguayan and Czech. They were stored in the cellar safe, along with title deeds, more than a million euros, three automatic pistols and two machine-guns, with the documents that made legal the presence in Spain of the forty-four-year-old who had once called St Petersburg home. It was where his wife and son were. They were permitted, twice each year, to join him for a holiday on the Costa.
He thought his garden looked well. Pavel Ivanov was a multi-millionaire but not yet a euro billionaire. Huge success and vast wealth left one constraint, not negotiable, on his behaviour. He should not humiliate his wife. He should not behave in any way that would cause her to be sniggered at. Their marriage, nineteen years before, had brought together a wing of the Tambov gang with a limb of the Malyshev group at a time of internecine feuds and killings over the valuable gasoline and heating-oil contracts that dominated their lives. They were more important than drugs, weapons and the protection industry, which provided businessmen with roofs. She came from a prominent limb; his wing had less influence. The match, though, had opened doors, provided big opportunities. He had been ruthless, had gained authority, had earned the name ‘the Tractor’. Had Pavel Ivanov belittled his wife, Anna, by flaunting a mistress he would have invited assassination. He did not flaunt the woman who analysed investment opportunities in his lawyer’s office, or his affluence.
It was five years, shy of three or four weeks, since Pavel Ivanov had first arrived in Marbella and been shown the villa. He had walked in the garden, sat on the patio and seen the view, the privacy the location guaranteed. He had been told its name, had had it translated – the Villa of the Eagle – and had not queried the asking price. The owners accepted five million euros and the deal had depended on the paperwork going through in a working week. In the holiday complexes to which the tourists came, it would have required three months to get more than a sniff of the keys. He was at the main patio now, built around the pool, and there were kids’ water toys. He had known of the big villa close to his at the time of purchase, that the owner was a banker of old wealth and modern discretion, resident most of the year in Madrid.
He had heard the throb of a veteran engine through the line of pines and high shrubs that marked the eastern boundary of the property. Alex had been with him – Marko had stayed to protect the open doors on to the patio – and they had gone off the lawn, through the bushes and trees to the concrete wall that had tumbler wires and coiled razor wire. Pavel Ivanov had climbed on to Alex’s shoulders to peer over the top – like the Berlin wall, before it had come down. He had laughed. An old man, in drill shorts, a sweat-stained shirt and a colonial hat, was behind a motor mower that coughed and spluttered. His immediate neighbours were Flight Lieutenant and Mrs Geoffrey Walsh, and their home was a small bungalow. That evening he had sent Alex round to collect the mower and bring it back for servicing in the garage, beside the two Mercedes. It had been returned in a week and worked a dream. The old couple existed in poverty.
It was said in Marbella, most particularly in the office of Rafael, Ivanov’s lawyer, that the views from his patio and from the main windows in the ochre-coloured villa were the most sought-after in the district. He would have thought himself at peace there, except that an email had come earlier that morning. A visit was planned. Marko appeared from the side of the villa with Alex’s wife. They went down the steps and towards the garage. The electric gates were opening. He did not have to look about for Alex, who would be armed and watching the gate.
The visit he had been alerted to was not one he could refuse lightly. The prospect made the only cloud in a clear sky. He watched the Mercedes, black, with privacy windows, slip out of the gates, which closed immediately after it. The visit would be, almost, a return to old times.
The two Serbians, Marko and Alex’s wife, were recognised at the school gate. It was a good meeting place, and the street that ran up the hill between the schoolyard and the Guardia Civil headquarters was well filled. There was a babble of conversation and the squeals of children. Cigarette smoke hung over them, parents admired their children’s art work, and they were acknowledged, as they waited for the two little ones to emerge. It was hot, and Alex’s wife wore a halter top that exposed her arms, shoulders and much of her back, her only protection a small-brimmed hat. Marko wore a poplin windcheater – there was no threat of rain but he needed something to cover his left armpit, where the CZ99 semi-automatic handgun nestled. It was now three years since his son and Alex’s daughter had been enrolled at the school.
That date had marked a major change in the lives of the Russian organised-crime leader, Pavel Ivanov, his two permanent bodyguards, their wives and children: their breakout from life inside the Villa del Aguila.
Men, most of them unemployed because of the economic crisis, greeted Marko and asked his opinion of the Málaga football team, and women talked cheerfully to Alex’s wife about the price of cooking oil and whether the chicken-pox epidemic would spread west from Fuengirola. He kept the windcheater zipped to the middle of his chest and held a folded newspaper over the left armpit. There were more children from eastern Europe in other Marbella schools, and down the coast at Puerto Banus, Estepona and Mijas, but no more at this school opposite the Guardia Civil barracks.
There were ironies and Marko – a forty-two-year-old with a hard, chiselled face, a man who oozed strength, had throat tattoos and a skull shaped like a hammer head – was not blessed with the humour that would have pointed to them. Threats stalked them at the villa on the hill. Few of the deals Pavel Ivanov had struck in the last three years had involved the transhipment of drugs, weapons, girls, or the laundering of money at which he had become a supreme expert. His business had been cleansed and he had achieved – almost – legitimacy. Threats came from others who were less successful – burglary, mugging or ‘protection’ demands. The children could have been kidnapped for ransom. Ivanov had the household’s security down to a minimum but enjoyed the loyalty of the two Serbian families. Matters involving the police, prosecutors and the specialist UDyCO team he could handle, but criminals made him anxious. So his men were always armed and well trained in the use of firearms.
The children came. He did not lift eithe
r of them, or hold a small fist, but let Alex’s wife do that. There was little point in holding a child’s hand when his own should have been dragging a handgun from its shoulder holster. They hurried to the car. It was only when they were inside the bulletproof, blast-proof vehicle, the doors were locked and the engine running, that he listened to the kids chatter about their morning’s classes.
The MV Santa Maria was now five days out of the Venezuelan port of Maracaibo and was seven days from berthing in the cargo harbour of Cádiz, on the extreme south-west of the Iberian landmass. She was Liberian-registered, listed at 10,000 tonnes, had a crew of eighteen, and her holds were filled with aluminium ore from the Los Piriguajos mine. She was in calm seas and her speed would average 14 knots on a 3,840-mile journey. Personal fortunes and futures rested on two containers forward on her decks, the contents listed as ‘hardwood furniture products’. Those who had raised the money, payment up-front, from backers for their purchase had no reason to doubt they’d made a sound investment.
A message had gone via relays on Cyprus and the Rock of Gibraltar, to the building overlooking Vauxhall Bridge. It was annotated with the code of a sub-station at Baku, and passed to a deciphering section. From there it went to an analyst, who moved it on to the Russian specialists. There, like a pebble carried downstream, it was snagged and was held for four hours. When an answer did not throw itself into a specialist’s face, he tended to move on and find material more readily accessible. A remark to a colleague, an older man, challenged by the electronic age: had he heard of a UK agent killed by Russians, somewhere abroad?
The Outsiders Page 5
