Zero Hour

by Andy McNab

  ‘With Tresillian at the helm of both, the demarcation lines are blurring.’

  I swallowed another couple of Smarties as he glanced back down at Lilian’s picture.

  ‘As Tresillian said, nothing must stop you finding her. Of course we’re going to deny anything to do with the operation, but you will have secure comms with me at all times. I’ll help you as far as I can, but we cannot be seen poking around in-country. It wouldn’t help our relationship with Lilian’s father, and certainly not with the powers that be.’ He gathered up the paperwork. ‘Why don’t we get some coffee while I give you the lowdown?’

  I followed him to the door. Bright light flooded into the room.

  I couldn’t help smiling to myself. I was back at work. One last kick at life.

  And I now had a really good reason to phone Anna.

  PART THREE

  1

  Monday, 15 March

  10.47 hrs

  The International Airport Chisinau is the biggest in the Republic of Moldova. It’s a member of Airports Council International (European region), the massive posters in the revamped terminal proudly proclaimed, as well as the Airport Association of CIS Civil Aviation and the ALFA-ACI (L’Association des Aéroports de Langue Française Associés à l’Airports Council International). What was more: The main priorities of the personnel’s activity consist in providing a high-level of flight safety and qualitative services.

  But for all its fancy new associations with the West, old habits died hard. I was held by three Customs guys in a side office ten seconds after they saw a European passport and no mates tagging along. There was a special tax I needed to pay. Since I was only carrying a day sack, they pegged it at thirty dollars.

  I’d now been waiting for Anna’s flight from Moscow Domodedovo for close to five hours – the last two because her Air Moldova flight was delayed. This was probably the eighth time I’d gone back to the coffee shop in Arrivals, treated myself to a milky Nescafé instant, and soaked up the propaganda as I sat and sipped it.

  I’d even resorted to reading the warnings on the packet of Nurofen I dug into occasionally. Long-term kidney damage wasn’t high on my list of concerns, so I popped another couple out of the blister pack, grabbed some more Smarties and washed them all down with a swig of coffee.

  I’d transferred my two-week supply of shiny red pills into a plastic Superdrug case. It was easier to shove into my pocket than a big fuck-off bottle. Also, the label had my name on it and I couldn’t be arsed to scratch it off.

  It had taken me seven hours from Heathrow with a Munich connection. Normally that wouldn’t have been much of a problem; I was used to living in airports. You just find some seats, lie down, read posters, drink brews. If you’re lucky, you go to sleep. But that wasn’t going to happen. My head was pounding – but I think it was mostly about seeing Anna again.

  Fetch up in Moscow, with the biggest collection of billionaires on the planet, and you can’t move for fancy foreign labels. Moldova’s old split-level Soviet-era airport had had a major refurb, but Starbucks and all the high-end brands had still given it a miss. Jules had told me that its earning potential outside the small capital was the same as Sudan’s, so I guess it was no surprise.

  Despite Julian’s briefing, I wasn’t exactly sure where Moldova stood in relation to the rest of the planet. Some guys immersed themselves in demographics and GDPs and could tell you the ten most popular names for girls and boys wherever they fetched up, but I never saw the point. This place was land-locked, and had a population of five million. The industrial strip, whose name I kept forgetting, ran along its eastern border. That was all I knew, and all I needed to know. All I had to do was find the girl, grip her, and hand her over.

  I took out my new BlackBerry and checked for messages. The Tefalhead at GCHQ who’d briefed me on the encryption system and then got Mr Lampard to sign for it had been very pleased with his toy. Apparently it contained both a hardware and software-based secure communications solution that protected GSM cellular communications with a unique authentication service and advanced end-to-end encryption software. I hoped it worked better than the one I’d been issued with three years ago.

  ‘Combined with a secure mobile authentication solution it is capable of ensuring that all mobile voice and SMS communications, as well as data-at-rest within the device, are fully protected. It offers security against any attempt to intercept active communications both from inside a telephone network as well as over-the-air.’

  That was all well and good. I just needed to know that, when I switched it on and pressed the security app icon, Jules and I could talk without anyone else listening in.

  The security technology was based on encryption algorithms as well as a user/device authentication process, the Tefalhead explained. I could pretty much grasp that. But I got lost when he started talking ciphers and 128-bit block sizes.

  ‘Your BlackBerry uses these algorithms simultaneously as well as a 4096-bit Diffie-Hellman shared secret exchange to authenticate each call/device/user, in order to provide multiple layers of security and an effective fall-back inside the crypto-system design.’

  I’d nodded enthusiastically and his face lit up. ‘So, to recap . . . I press the app icon if I want secure speech. When a call comes in I wait for the app to give me the go-ahead, and both sides can talk in real time?’ I can’t have been the brightest pupil he’d ever had.

  I took another sip and looked around. Moldova might be in shit state but at least they were trying to get out of their hole. Most of the arrivals coming in from other flights were suited. Most of the guys with wheelies and mobiles stuck to their faces gobbed off in Russian, but I picked out a few European and American voices. A couple of the local papers sitting in the newsstands were English editions. They’d binned visas for people like me and I didn’t even have to show a return ticket. Anything to get new money into the country. But for all that, the staff still mooched about like throwbacks to the old order. They’d brightened up the buildings and forgotten to refurbish the employees.

  At long last the Moscow flight flagged up as landed. It was show time. I suddenly worried that I should have cleaned myself up a bit in the last five and a half hours.

  I got up and walked over to the sliding doors that stood between Customs and the arrivals hall. I knew she’d be one of the first out. Like me, she travelled light. The rest she’d buy when she needed it.

  I felt my stomach flutter. At first I tried to blame it on the drugs. But I couldn’t escape the fact that I was excited – for the first time in as long as I could remember.

  Then the real world kicked in. She’d agreed to come when I’d finally got round to phoning her, but only after I’d waffled and begged and lied about needing her help with a K and R. Perhaps she was only here to find yet another poor girl ripped out of her world, drugged up, beaten and fucked on the other side of the planet. That was the sort of thing that made Anna get up in the morning. I just happened to be along for the ride.

  As the first wave of wheelie bags swept past, I almost had to stand on tiptoe to look beyond them. The doors half closed, then pulled back again to reveal a blonde in a black woollen coat, with a haircut that looked like a German helmet.

  I locked on to her eyes but she seemed to look right through me.

  2

  I tried to read her expression as she came through into the hall. She scanned the faces beyond the barrier, trailing a wheelie behind her. When she finally spotted me, there was no instant smile or greeting.

  I blurted out the first thing that came into what was left of my head. ‘You’ve had your hair cut.’

  ‘I thought I’d ring the changes. More practical for my next job. Well, the one I was going to take.’

  She’d been approached by CNN to cover women’s issues following the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in some of the former Soviet republics. She knew the subject matter and this part of the world like the back of her hand. CNN must have liked the hairdo: they’d g
ranted her a two-month deferment.

  She let go of her wheelie and it toppled over. She left it where it was, finally treated me to the smile I was hoping for, and ran the last four or five paces towards me. She threw out her arms, wrapped them around me and held me tight. I did the same. I really couldn’t get enough of this girl.

  Her hair brushed the side of my face. ‘Mmm . . . Nice smell.’ I took in another lungful of Bulgari. I’d bought her some in London during her last visit.

  She moved her head a little so she could get her mouth closer to my ear. ‘I love it.’ She kissed me on the cheek. ‘You know what, you idiot? I missed you . . .’

  The pain in my head leaked away, along with the tension in my shoulder muscles. Anna’s perfume was more effective than any number of Kleinmann’s Smarties. I hadn’t been able to gauge her mood on the phone. She’d immediately offered to help, but didn’t overcook things on the emotional front. I understood that. I was the same. Unlike me, she wanted to save the world. Maybe you could only do that if you kept yourself just detached enough from it to stop all the shit stuff swallowing you up.

  On past performance, I knew that anyone I got involved with wouldn’t stick around too long. Now I also realized that a tiny part of me hoped she might be able to save me too – or at least give me the chance to avoid flushing the last couple of months of my life down the toilet as well as the rest.

  She took half a step back and gave me a long, hard look. ‘You have the picture for me?’

  I righted her wheelie and she took my arm as we walked towards the coffee shop. I opened up my secure BlackBerry and clicked on the blow-up of Lilian. I left her studying the image at the square plastic table as I went and bought more Nescafé instants with hot, sweet milk. They cost twenty lei each, but the woman was more than happy with a couple of dollar bills. Hard currency still said more about you than the local stuff ever could.

  Anna’s eyes were still fixed on the screen when I came back to the table. ‘Does Julian know I’m here?’

  ‘What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. And it won’t hurt us.’

  She turned the BlackBerry screen towards me. ‘She’s very pretty, beneath all that anger. Trafficking has to be the strongest possibility.’

  ‘But she binned her Facebook account before she went AWOL. And she’s a uni girl, switched on, not some pointy-head from the sticks who’ll fall for the nearest scam.’

  Anna smiled like a mother whose kid has just said something naïve. ‘You know nothing about this country and its people until you understand about trafficking. I’ll take you to see someone who will help you understand.’

  ‘Have you ever come across the name Hector Tarasov? He’s her father. He has a factory in Transnistria. A factory with a tank outside.’

  She shook her head and reached into her coat pocket for her iPhone. ‘I can Google—’

  ‘No need, mate. I’ve already had a look. Nothing. It doesn’t matter, just background.’

  She sat back, not touching her brew, and tilted her head to one side, studying me.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m still trying to work out why you’re here, Nicholas.’ She’d started calling me that recently – told me I deserved all three syllables, especially now I’d got a penthouse and a Porsche. I knew she was taking the piss, but I rather liked it. ‘You should be enjoying your life. You have no more reason to do this sort of work.’

  I thought we were made of the same stuff: she wasn’t going to hang up her Crusader’s shield any time soon. I was surprised she felt the money might have changed things for me. ‘I am enjoying my life. But I don’t want to just fade away.’ I laughed slightly uneasily. ‘I want to die with my boots on.’

  She gave me a puzzled look. ‘I know you’ve taken some punishment over the years, but you should be able to survive a straightforward K and R job . . .’

  I took another sip of coffee and decided that eight cups was already more than enough. I couldn’t quite bring myself to look her in the eye.

  ‘Except that this isn’t a K and R job, is it, Nicholas? When have you ever been involved in the commercial world?’

  I’d known it wouldn’t be long before she rumbled that one. Recovering kidnap victims is quite a business. If the victim is recovered alive, you can cop a percentage of the premium that would have been paid out by the underwriters in the event of a death, or on any ransom demand. It wasn’t entirely risk free, but Anna was right – it was a long way from being on the receiving end of an RPG.

  ‘I’m doing it for Jules.’ I shifted my chair closer to hers. ‘I couldn’t tell you over the phone.’

  She lifted a hand and stroked my face. ‘You look really pale, Nicholas. You sure you’re feeling OK?’

  ‘Sure. Too many planes, that’s all.’

  She got to her feet. ‘Why don’t you fix the car? I’ll phone and check the hotel reservation, then call Lena. I’ll wait for you outside.’

  ‘Lena?’

  ‘There’s nothing Lena doesn’t know about trafficking.’

  I walked away with a bit of a spring in my step. The only negative so far was that there weren’t any hotels at the airport. If we did find Lilian, we might have to hole up somewhere with her until Tresillian sorted out the safe-house. The beauty of an airport hotel is that all you have to do is scan the departures board, see which plane’s leaving next, and leg it to the sales desk.

  3

  It was only fifteen Ks into Chisinau. There were a surprising number of shiny new BMWs and Mercedes weaving their way between the clapped-out trucks and tractors, but the road still wasn’t exactly choked with traffic.

  The fields on each side of us looked absolutely knackered. As with most of the old Eastern bloc the heavy use of agricultural chemicals, including banned pesticides like DDT, had ripped the heart out of the land. And severe soil erosion from diabolical farming methods had fucked whatever chance these places had of being self-sufficient.

  Anna grimaced as we passed a police car. ‘I’ve been to more than fifty different countries and I’ve never seen cops as corrupt as the ones here.’

  ‘They certainly don’t hang around. I had to cough up a fistful of dollars to get through Customs.’

  ‘I was stopped here twice in two hours once, both for completely invented offences. They target locals the same. They don’t even wait for people to do something wrong. The moment they’ve finished fleecing one victim, they flag down the next.’

  Anna was on a roll.

  ‘And it’s not just about driving. Their favourite trick on a slow night is to stop foreigners at random for “looking suspicious”. Two hundred lei is the standard fine. If we get stopped on the street you’ll be asked for your passport. The law says that foreigners have to carry them at all times. Photocopies aren’t good enough. If you’re alone, keep saying you don’t speak Romanian or Russian. There are no guarantees, but if you’re lucky they’ll be too lazy to pursue it.’

  We hit the city proper. Many of the people on the streets looked pretty well turned-out, particularly the young guys.

  I nodded at a fancy-looking restaurant. ‘I thought we were supposed to be in Europe’s poorest country. Who can afford to eat in a place like that?’

  ‘You don’t want to know. Moldova’s the same as everywhere in the old Soviet Union. There’s a handful of haves and a whole nation of have-nots.’ She stared out of the window at the wide concrete esplanades. ‘Most people in Moldova don’t live like this. They scrape by on less than three dollars a day. Away from the towns, work is scarce. I wrote a piece about a small village a few kilometres from Chisinau where every male had sold a kidney to the West. In lots of villages, only children and grand-parents remain. Over a million have left the country to find work. That doesn’t include the numbers who’ve been trafficked.’

  ‘I take it Tarasov is one of the haves?’

  ‘For sure.’

  ‘And how do we explain all the Mercs and Hummers?’

  ‘The Moldovans like t
o claim Transnistria can’t function independently. They say it doesn’t have the industry or infrastructure – but they do, and not just through weapons manufacture. There’s a 480-kilometre border with Ukraine and it’s not controlled. As well as the sale of old Soviet military machinery, extortion of businessmen and money laundering, there is huge trafficking in arms, drugs and, of course, human beings. About two billion dollars are being laundered every year in Transnistria and no one wants to give that up without a fight.

  ‘But what should really have the rest of the world sitting up and paying attention are the dozen or so companies that produce arms around the clock. They’ve turned up in Chechnya, Africa, all over – even in Iraq in Saddam’s day and now Afghanistan. International organizations don’t accept that Transnistria even exists, so they can’t visit and investigate. There, Nicholas – next right.’

  Anna directed me off the main. A couple of turns later, we pulled up outside another drab Soviet-era monolith a dozen storeys high. ‘Forget the arms business. Everyone should just have shares in ready-mixed concrete.’

  The Cosmos was pretty much in the centre of town. I could see a bank with an ATM, a shopping centre, restaurants, and a Western-style supermarket with a multi-storey attached.

  I parked in a guest space and walked towards the entrance, my day sack over my shoulder. She trundled her wheelie a step or two ahead of me.

  ‘To be fair to Stalin, the city had to be totally rebuilt after the Second World War. The little the Germans left standing was flattened by an earthquake.’

  As we approached the reception desk she stopped for a moment. ‘I stay here a lot. They know me. That’s why we’re in separate rooms.’ Her eyes suddenly sparkled. ‘Besides, we’re working. See you back in the lobby in fifteen minutes. Lena isn’t that far away.’