The Moscow Cipher

by Scott Mariani

  Grisha took his hand away, sat back and scratched his beard. ‘There’s an idea.’

  ‘What’s an idea?’

  ‘When you said, “Get it out of your head.” We could, like, literally cut it out of her.’ Grisha dug in the pocket of his grimy dungarees and came out with a penknife. Opening out the rusty blade he brandished it as though it were a scalpel. ‘The thing’s got to be in there somewhere. I have a rough idea where to dig for it.’

  Yuri looked at him as though he’d gone mad. ‘Grisha, are you telling us you intend to cut this woman’s skull open with that knife?’

  ‘Okay, so we might need some extra tools,’ Grisha said. ‘Old Georgiy must have had a saw and a hand drill kicking about somewhere.’

  ‘But … but … you’d be killing her,’ Yuri said.

  ‘So? She’s already worse off than dead. Look at her.’

  ‘Put the knife away,’ Ben said. ‘Before it ends up somewhere you won’t like it, pointy end first.’

  Grisha’s shoulders sagged with frustration. ‘Come on, guys, don’t you see? This is our golden opportunity to see how far the technology has come since the fifties. Think how freaking awesome that would be, to have not just one but two of these things, the old and the new, side by side.’

  Yuri shook his head mournfully. ‘I hate to tell you, Grish, but I don’t have the other device any more.’

  Now it was Grisha’s turn to stare at his friend as though he’d taken leave of his senses. ‘What? You mean you lost it?’

  ‘No, I sort of hid it. The microfilm and flash drive, too. Between here and the trailer.’

  ‘In the woods?’ Grisha looked ready to run back and start scouring their trail.

  ‘I’m not saying where. Somewhere nobody could ever find them. Not even you, Grish.’

  Grisha started waving his arms around, purple-faced. ‘Are you nuts? That was our evidence! That’s what this whole thing was about! You risked everything to get it!’

  Yuri said, ‘And if they catch me with it, they’ll just take it and put a bullet in my head. I have to stay alive for my little girl. She’s all I have.’

  His friend was so enraged he could barely speak. ‘No, Yuri, you threw away all you had. I thought you were my partner in this, man!’

  ‘I am,’ Yuri replied. ‘But my daughter is my whole life.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Grisha spat, ‘you don’t even see it. Your daughter’s taken. You won’t be seeing her again.’

  Yuri’s expression was resolute. ‘Ben will get her back. Like he says.’

  ‘Oh, so you believe that now, all of a sudden?’

  ‘Yes,’ Yuri said. ‘I do.’

  ‘Fuck!’ Grisha yelled. ‘Fuckfuckfuck!’ Then he yelled it again in Russian, several times over. ‘I can hardly believe you’d do this to me! Tell me where you hid the stuff!’

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ Yuri said. ‘Sorry, Grisha. If they catch us, you might crack and tell them. Then we’re both dead.’

  Grisha shook his head in disgust. ‘To hell with you, Petrov. You just fucked us. But guess what. I don’t need you any more. And I don’t need Object 428 either. Not after I chop open this bitch’s head and find what they stuck in there.’

  Grisha made a lunge for the inert Tatyana, knife in hand. He hadn’t moved more than a few inches before Ben levelled the pistol at him.

  ‘I still have seventeen rounds in this. I only need one for you. Cut her and you’re dead.’

  ‘What the hell is she to you, man? You in love with the bitch or something?’

  ‘Last warning, Grisha,’ Ben said. ‘Put the knife down.’

  The Glock in Ben’s hand was aimed squarely at Grisha’s head, which at this range was a pumpkin-sized target Ben couldn’t have missed with his eyes shut. And at this range a single 9mm hollowpoint bullet was all it would take to blow it right apart. Ben’s finger was on the trigger.

  ‘You’re bluffing,’ Grisha said. ‘You already bluffed twice before. You won’t shoot.’

  ‘Try me,’ Ben said. His finger tightened a fraction on the trigger. His eyes were locked on Grisha’s. He was prepared to fire, even though he didn’t want to.

  But then Grisha’s head exploded anyway.

  Chapter 38

  Right before Ben’s eyes, Grisha’s skull separated into several pieces and flew apart like a ripe watermelon. The Russian’s bulk was kicked backwards and he hit the floor with a heavy thump. Blood painted the wall behind him.

  For about an eighth of a second Ben froze as he tried to compute what had just happened. The pistol in his hand hadn’t fired. Even if it had somehow managed to go off by its own will, no 9mm handgun in the world, no matter at what range, could have caused such devastation. But that, as Ben understood another eighth of a second later, was because the shot had come from a high-powered rifle.

  The sniper shot had come from behind him, way back among the trees. It had passed through the window he’d opened earlier because of the smoke, gone over his left shoulder and caught Grisha full in the middle of the forehead.

  Then suddenly, there were more. Lots more. Gunfire smashed the remaining windows and thunked into the walls and floorboards of the house. One struck Boris in the chest, ploughing a furrow in him from heart to navel. Another hit the already dead Grisha in the thigh and laid it open to the bone.

  Ben dived across the floor and grabbed Yuri, trying to haul and shove him into a blind spot where no bullets could reach him. Yuri let out a cry, pain and fear intermingled. Ben shoved him into a craggy recess of the stone walls. Glanced back through the window. The gunfire had ceased for the moment, but the attack was only just getting started. He saw men running from the trees, many more of them than before.

  Once again, the enemy had found them; once again, Ben had no idea how. Then it hit him, in a flash of sickening realisation. He glanced across at the prone body of the woman he no longer had a name for, and understood.

  But there was no time to hang around thinking about it. Ben grabbed hold of Yuri again and heaved him towards the door. Their only chance lay in escape. If they could make it outside to where old Georgiy had kept his station wagon …

  Yuri could hardly hobble two steps on his injured leg without collapsing. With one arm around Ben’s neck he was a dead weight. Ben wrenched the door open and was almost tripped by Alyosha as the dog, driven into a panic by the noise and chaos, hurtled between his feet and out onto the broken-down porch. Alyosha leaped down the rotted steps and bolted away towards the outbuildings, barking like crazy.

  The black-clad figures of armed attackers were swarming from all directions across the forest clearing towards the house. Ben was surrounded in broad daylight with very little cover and only a pistol in his hand.

  Still clutching Yuri to his side he snapped off a couple of shots, but in the next moment the two of them were driven back inside the house by a volley of gunfire that tore up the porch and cut off all hope of escape. At least eight men, approaching in an arc, had Ben and Yuri in their sights and could have mowed them down.

  Ben kicked the door shut. They fell back.

  ‘We’re trapped!’ Yuri cried out. ‘They’re going to kill us both!’

  ‘Not you,’ Ben said. ‘They want you alive.’

  And Grisha too, except that hadn’t worked out quite so well. Ben was pretty certain that the bullet that had killed the big Russian had been intended for him. The attackers would be more careful when it came to Yuri Petrov, the man they believed was still in possession of the stolen item someone so badly wanted back.

  ‘What about you?’ Yuri yelled.

  ‘We all have to go sometime,’ Ben said. ‘It’s just a matter of when, how and what you can make it mean when your time comes.’

  With fifteen rounds still left in his pistol, he had every intention of making it mean a lot to the fifteen dead men he would leave on the battlefield before they finally took him down.

  Last stand. So be it. He felt quite calm. He’d been mentally prepared for this
moment for more years than he could remember.

  ‘Get behind the stove,’ he said to Yuri. ‘Any moment now there’s going to be a lot of bullets flying around and it wouldn’t do for you to catch one by accident.’

  ‘I’m staying right beside you,’ Yuri said. Ben shook his head, grabbed Yuri’s wrist and twisted his arm and shoved him into the nook between the wall and the cast iron range. ‘Get your head down and don’t move, or I’ll shoot you myself. Understood?’

  Ben stood in the middle of the room. He took a deep breath and aimed the pistol towards the door. He said to himself, ‘Right then.’

  The door burst open.

  Chapter 39

  Ben fired twice. The first man to come through the door went down. So did the second. More were coming. Shots cracked out.

  Ben stood his ground, feet planted, eyes on target. He fired twice more. Saw two more of the enemy fall. Once he’d piled enough of them up in the doorway like sandbags, they’d have to come in through the windows.

  And they would.

  Smoke trickled from the muzzle of the Glock. He had eleven rounds left. His heartbeat was slow and steady. Come on, he thought. Let’s get this done.

  That was when the pair of 40mm grenades sailed in through two windows at once, hit the floor at Ben’s feet and detonated.

  The blinding white flash and ear-shattering blast obliterated Ben’s vision and hearing. He felt himself toppling, the pistol falling from his hands, his body hitting the floor.

  Flash-bang. Thunderflash. Stun grenade. Whatever designation they went by, they all worked on the same principle and did exactly what their name implied. The combination of a multi-million candela magnesium flare and an ammonium nitrate explosion producing some 180 decibels of noise were enough to momentarily neutralise the strongest and most determined opponent. Ben knew all about their use. The SAS had virtually pioneered the damn things and he could testify personally to their effectiveness. Especially now, being on the receiving end for the first time.

  He fought to stand up, but the shock to his eardrums had destabilised his sense of balance. His head was spinning. All he could hear was the high-pitched whine filling his head. He could see nothing except the bright white afterimage of the flash, as if he’d stared too long at the sun.

  But he knew what was happening all around him. He could feel the vibrations and the flexing of the floorboards as the attackers came flooding inside the house. Next, a boot was pinning him down hard on his front and strong hands were grabbing his arms, yanking them painfully behind his back and binding his wrists. He sensed the commotion nearby as the same treatment was doled out to Yuri. Then he was being hauled to his feet, the cold steel of a rifle muzzle being prodded against the base of his neck.

  His captors frogmarched him through the doorway and outside, which Ben registered only as a slight brightening of the fuzzy halo that had obscured his vision. The effects would mostly wear off after just a few minutes and his senses would gradually return, leaving him with nausea, dizziness and slightly impaired balance for a few hours afterwards. For the moment, though, he was helpless, barely able to stand let alone fight.

  Through the harsh ringing in his ears he could make out fragments of voices around him. Then the rasp of a diesel engine, something large and heavy like a truck. After a lot of jostling and shoving he felt himself being loaded aboard. He wondered whether Yuri was being put on the same vehicle, or another. ‘Where are you taking him?’ he managed to mumble, the sound of his own voice distant and muffled inside his head. The faint reply was something that sounded like ‘Worry about yourself, comrade,’ followed by a nasty laugh.

  Then he was alone. He sensed more than heard the slamming doors that closed him in. Felt more than saw the bare metal walls of the back of the truck. There was a lurch, and then the long, uncomfortable journey began. He sat on the hard floor with his feet braced out to support him as the truck swayed and pitched for what seemed like interminable miles of farm track. By the time they’d reached what felt more like a proper road, Ben’s hearing, vision and balance were about ninety per cent recovered. The remaining ten per cent would probably take the rest of the day to come back.

  In any case, he had nothing to do except sit there and be consumed by his dark, bleak state of mind.

  He had fallen short on every possible count. Been sold a completely false narrative right from the start of this mission. Been tricked by an impostor. Fooled into even having sympathy for her. Now both his charges were prisoners. Not only the child he’d been tasked with bringing home safe, but the innocent man who loved her more than life itself.

  He’d failed to protect them. He’d let them down.

  And there was only one way he would ever be able to make it right.

  The road trip took hours. The monotonous droning thrum of the engine and transmission reverberated around the bare metal cage. Now and again, the truck would slow, as if they were passing through a village or encountering traffic. Ben had no idea whether the vehicle was travelling alone or in convoy with another truck carrying Yuri. But he could hazard a guess where they were going: back to Moscow, where he’d soon find out what would happen to him next.

  The most obvious prospect was that they’d take him out somewhere and put two bullets in him, roll him into a ditch and goodbye. But then, if they wanted him dead, they could have taken care of it at the farm. Had they another purpose for him? He’d just have to wait and see.

  The journey smoothed out. Ben was pretty sure the truck had now joined the Federal Highway, coming back the same way he and the fake Tatyana had travelled from the city. Then, at last, the truck felt as though it was reaching the outskirts of Moscow, all stop-start as they hacked through the suburban traffic. Ben’s ears were still ringing from the stun grenade but he could make out sounds through the bare metal walls. After a few more minutes the traffic noise diminished. Then the truck paused and he heard voices outside, and the rattle of what sounded like a heavy wire-mesh security gate opening for them to pass through. The truck lumbered on a short distance and then rolled to a halt.

  The back doors opened. Ben blinked in the sudden light. His vision was still not fully recovered, and all the detail he could make out of the two men who hauled him out of the back of the truck was that they were both squat and muscular, wore black jackets and had shaven heads. They seized his arms and walked him across a concrete yard of some kind; squinting about him Ben could make out tall metal fencing and brick walls. The place could have been a prison, or a military base, but it seemed deserted.

  Wherever they were, it was far out on the edge of the city, well away from roads and traffic. And witnesses.

  ‘This isn’t my hotel,’ Ben said. Neither of his escorts seemed amused by his brand of humour. Maybe that was because they didn’t speak a word of English.

  They marched him inside a block building with a sign in Cyrillic that he couldn’t have deciphered even if he could see clearly. The stun grenade had knocked his sense of balance out of kilter, and he was weaving down the corridor like a man trying to walk along the deck of a ship in stormy seas. Up a long, narrow corridor, they led him into a processing room where one of his escorts produced a knife and none too gently slashed the cable tie that bound Ben’s wrists. Next he was deprived of his jacket and its contents, along with his belt, watch and boots. Thankful he at least hadn’t been strip-searched and made to put on an orange jumpsuit and leg irons, Ben was then taken deeper into the bowels of the featureless building until they stopped at a plain door with no window. One of the men rattled a ring of keys. The door was unlocked and swung open. Ben was shoved through it, into a small, plain, bare room with no windows and only a hard wooden bunk for furniture, not counting the metal toilet in the opposite corner.

  ‘Thanks, boys. Now tell me, what time’s dinner served around here? I’m starving.’

  All he got in response was a smirk. Then they left without a word, slamming the door behind them. It had no internal handle and all the ed
ges were flush with the wall. Ben couldn’t have forced or pried it open even if he’d had the tools.

  With nothing else to do, he sat on the bunk under the cold, hard glare of the neon strip light, and waited for whatever was about to happen next.

  Chapter 40

  It was a long wait. As the hours passed, Ben’s vision slowly returned to normal and whatever had been knocked out of tune inside his inner ear healed itself so he could pace the length and breadth of his tiny cell without losing his balance. The tinnitus would take a while longer to go away, but you couldn’t ask for everything. No cameras were visible inside the cell, but he was sure there was probably one tucked away somewhere, through which his captors were monitoring him.

  Out of bravado as much as to pass the time, he ticked off set after set of press-ups, then hooked his toes under the edge of the bunk and forced enough sit-ups out of himself to make his abdominal muscles cramp. All the while he was keeping track of the clock inside his head. How long were they going to keep him cooped up in here?

  Finally, he heard the rattle of keys outside his door. He was standing ready for the pair of shaven-headed guards when they walked in, eyeing him warily. One was holding a pistol. It was an MP-443 Grach 9mm, current standard Russian military issue. A heavy and chunky weapon, all carbon and stainless steel, eighteen-round magazine. Reliable, highly effective, and not something to argue with. It had a stubby tubular silencer screwed to its muzzle. For those times when you might just have to blow out a troublesome prisoner’s brains in a confined space without hurting your hearing too badly.

  The other guard was clutching a bag containing Ben’s jacket, boots, belt and watch. But something told him they weren’t about to let him go just yet. He took his time doing up his boots, toying with possible ways he could overpower both guards, garrotte them with the bootlaces and make off with the Grach 9mm. It wasn’t the best of plans. He let it go and decided to let things play out a little longer.

  Once his boots were on, they made him stand up. The guy with the pistol kept it aimed at Ben’s head from a safe distance while the other one produced a pair of handcuffs and stepped closer to snap them onto Ben’s wrists. Ben allowed him to do it. Breaking the guy’s neck wasn’t much of an option right now, either.