The Moscow Cipher

by Scott Mariani

  Valentina glanced nervously up at Ben. Unnoticed by the others, he broke his stone-faced act for a brief moment to give her the world’s smallest wink. It was all he could do to reassure her. No child should be brought into a place like this. No child should be made to witness the things she had seen, and would see. But that was the way it was. There was no turning back. Ben kept his hand on her shoulder all the way.

  The four men from the van led the way inside the half-derelict building. Its interior was every bit as lugubrious as the outside, smelling strongly of mould and decay and dimly illuminated by a few naked bulbs crusted with dust and dead bugs. Ben kept a firm hand on Valentina’s shoulder as the six of them climbed a sagging, creaking wooden stairway that went up three flights towards, he presumed, the boarded-up windows whose light he’d seen from outside. Halfway up the second flight the lights flickered and dimmed for a few seconds, and a desolate wail of pain sounded from somewhere upstairs.

  It was Yuri’s voice. A couple of the Russians laughed at the sound of torture. Ben felt Valentina go rigid and falter in her step. She let out a whimper. He urged her on with a push, worried that she might turn around and say something that would give the game away. If she did, he’d already decided he would shoot the four men before they had a chance to react. Then as the alarm was raised upstairs and downstairs, he’d find a safe room in which to hide Valentina while he faced whatever odds came at him and hoped for the best. It was a dangerous proposition that came with a very high chance of Yuri getting killed, if not all three of them.

  Ben’s tension was rising with every step. This was turning out to be the strangest, probably the riskiest and without a doubt the most unsettling rescue mission he’d ever been involved in.

  And it was about to get worse.

  Chapter 52

  Yellow light glowed from around the edges of a closed door at the end of a dingy, mouldy landing on the third floor. As they walked towards it, the door suddenly opened and a large, hefty man stood framed in the doorway. Ben guessed his age at somewhere either side of sixty-five. He was grizzled and ugly, a steely-silver stubble covering his scalp and unwinking eyes set deep into a wide, florid face with broken veins laced across his cheeks. And very obviously in a foul mood. He made a big show of looking at his watch, and growled something in Russian that to Ben’s ears was most likely something like ‘You fucking well took your time getting here.’

  Ben instantly recognised the gravelly voice as the same one he and Valentina had heard on the phone. So this was Chief Bezukhov, Yuri Petrov’s nemesis and former employer, in the flesh. And a big mound of flesh it was.

  Valentina was frozen in fear at the sight of him. Bezukhov’s gaze took her in as though she were just an urgently awaited parcel turning up on his doorstep, then flashed up at Ben. The small hard eyes narrowed for an instant as though he were trying to place Ben’s face and wondering why he wasn’t succeeding. Ben’s heart stopped beating momentarily. The chief might very well be one of the few individuals who could flag him as an impostor. Or worse, as himself.

  But then the moment passed. Bezukhov was too agitated and in a hurry to worry about a forgotten face. He motioned impatiently for Ben and the others to bring the girl inside the room.

  And they stepped into hell.

  Ben had seen rooms like this before, and long hoped in vain that he’d never have to set foot in one again. The torture chamber seemed to physically reek of the agony of all the nameless, faceless victims who had suffered and sweated and bled and died here. Men, perhaps women too, who had hung manacled from the iron rings set into the walls while their interrogators got to work. Throughout all of human history the application of severe pain, or even just the threat of it, had been the preferred method out of all the ways a person can extract secrets and confessions from another. If prostitution could be said to be the oldest profession, that of the torturer came a close second.

  There were nine people already inside the room, including Bezukhov, his gang of men, and their guest. The four from the van filed in behind Ben, blocking the doorway. Still tightly in Ben’s grasp, Valentina let out a cry of horror and despair when she saw her father. Yuri was sitting chained up to the legs and frame of a metal chair in the middle of the room. His head hung limply at a downwards angle so that his chin touched his chest but his face was visible, terribly ashen and gaunt, like that of an old man. His eyes were shut, a smudge of dark circles around them, and his clothes and hair were soaked and dripping.

  Ben took in the entire scene at a glance. The wires that were hooked up to the chair by large crocodile clips ran across the floor to a splitter box connected to the mains and a control unit in the hands of one of Bezukhov’s heavies, a shifty-eyed weaselly-looking fellow who looked as though he’d been richly enjoying himself. One of his comrades stood beside a wooden packing case that literally overflowed with torture implements like bolt croppers and blowtorches and ice picks, the sight of which made Ben feel sick. Another sadistic-looking individual with a beefy face and a moronic grin hovered behind Yuri, wearing thick black rubber gauntlets and clutching a bucket of water he’d been sloshing over the victim to keep him wet. Ben guessed the water was heavily salted, to allow the current to zap poor Yuri through the metal chair and his drenched shirt and trousers.

  The rest of the room’s occupants were spectators, clustered around their chief or lounging against the walls, smoking and idly watching the show. Everyone was armed, as if somehow they expected a man half-dead from hours of electric shock torture to jump up, break his chains and violently attack them. A few short-barrelled shotguns and submachine guns stood propped against the walls or hung from the backs of chairs. A pall of cigarette smoke hovered and curled around the single bare light bulb. Evidently the show had been going on for quite some time and most of the assembly were getting bored.

  Which, given the contents of the crateful of torture implements and the potential for horrific damage they offered, told Ben that his guess had been correct. They’d been hurting Yuri, but holding back from inflicting too much harm. He wasn’t a hard man. Their greatest worry would be that they’d too easily push him over the edge and he’d take his secret to his grave.

  Which was in one way a good thing, because it had preserved Yuri’s life thus far.

  And in another way a bad thing, terribly bad, because Valentina’s presence now gave Bezukhov a whole new kind of leverage over Yuri Petrov. One neither the chief nor his crew would hesitate to implement. And it was going to start happening any time now. They would cheerfully fillet her like a fish in front of her father to make him talk, and only Ben could prevent the unthinkable from unfolding right there in front of him.

  Voices echoed in his mind. ‘Are they going to hurt me?’ she’d asked him.

  ‘No, Valentina, I swear that won’t happen. I’m here to protect you,’ he’d replied.

  ‘You shouldn’t make promises you cannot honour, my friend.’ Yuri’s words lanced through Ben once more.

  Ben pushed all doubts and fears aside. His resolve tightened. A racing stopwatch began counting down inside his head, ticking off the seconds. He felt his heart slow and his body relax, the way it always did in the moments when battle was imminent and he was primed for action.

  Valentina began struggling to break away from Ben’s grip and go running to her father, but Ben couldn’t let go. The tears flooding down her cheeks wetted his arm as he pinned her tightly against him. There were a few laughs among Bezukhov’s men at the sight of her extreme distress. Anticipation was rising. The spectacle was about to become much more entertaining for them and they couldn’t wait.

  Yuri’s eyes fluttered open. The look on his face when he saw his daughter was one of far worse pain than anything his torturers could have inflicted, no matter what they’d done to him. He began struggling wildly in the metal chair, calling her name. He looked to Bezukhov in desperation and shouted words of Russian whose meaning was easy for Ben to guess. ‘Please! No! Don’t harm her! You can�
�t do this!’

  ‘You left me with no choice, Yuri,’ Bezukhov said calmly. ‘Now it’s too late.’

  Yuri howled with rage and grief. Then his ghastly dark-ringed eyes turned on Ben, and the strangest look of bewilderment came over his face as he recognised the black-clad guard clutching Valentina with a pistol pressed to her. He blinked, as if he thought he was hallucinating. His mouth opened and closed soundlessly.

  But none of Bezukhov’s men noticed the odd change in Yuri’s expression, because all eyes were now on the girl. The chief snapped a command at the weaselly-looking man holding the voltage control box, calling him ‘Vankin’. Ben could easily guess what the order was, too. And Vankin seemed only too happy to abide by his boss’s wishes. He set down the control box. Stepped towards Ben and Valentina, putting out a hand to grab the child’s arm.

  Bezukhov motioned to the man standing near the crate of implements. ‘Smyrnoi.’ Smyrnoi needed little prompting, and like Vankin he appeared delighted to obey the command. He reached inside the crate and pulled out a large pair of secateurs, the kind gardeners used for clipping hedges. The handles were padded with soft foamy rubber. Extra grip, for when the blood started flowing and things got slippery. He snapped the blades a few times for effect. His eyes twinkled.

  The ticking stopwatch inside Ben’s mind had now become a fast-burning fuse wire, its sparkling white flame hissing and crackling wildly as it raced towards the stack of dynamite that was about to go up like a volcano. This was it. Any moment now.

  Vankin snatched Valentina’s arm and tugged her harshly away from Ben. He started pulling her towards the middle of the room. She screamed and thrashed in Vankin’s steely grip. No longer acting. Her terror was dreadful to watch. Yuri was going berserk and would have rocked over the metal chair if its feet hadn’t been screwed down to the floorboards. Smyrnoi stepped closer. Snapping the secateur blades. Clack. Clack. Clackclackclack. His eyes were burning bright and his teeth were bared in a leer of sadistic pleasure at what he was about to do.

  Or what he thought he was about to do. Ben had no intention of letting anything remotely like that happen. All he’d wanted was to be in the same place as Yuri and the whole gang of his tormentors. Now here they were. And here we go , he thought.

  Unnoticed by anyone around him as they were all too intent on watching the fun, he slipped the second Grach pistol out of his belt.

  Between them, the pistols had fired three shots since their last reloading. One for the guard Ben was impersonating. One for the small guy who’d posthumously donated his bulletproof vest to Valentina. And one for the unfortunate Katya before that. By Ben’s count, he still carried a combined payload of thirty-three rounds in his magazines, plus two in each chamber. It wasn’t exactly enough to kick off World War Three.

  But it would do to be getting on with.

  Ben thought, fuck it, and raised his right-hand pistol and shot Vankin in the back of the head. Then he raised his left-hand pistol and put a bullet smack through the centre of Smyrnoi’s forehead.

  And then, all hell started breaking loose.

  Chapter 53

  When Aubyn Calthorpe had said he had business to attend to for an hour that evening, what he’d really had in mind was a speedy dinner in the classy, old-world surroundings of his favourite Moscow restaurant. His driver had whisked him from the disused military facility, one of several dotted around the edges of the city, to Café Pushkin on Tverskoy Boulevard. There he enjoyed a beautifully presented, if somewhat rushed, meal of grilled trout with fennel and lemon accompanied with a light salad, which he washed down with a glass of fine Sauvignon blanc before he had to hurry back to work.

  Throughout dinner and in the car, Calthorpe had been musing over his mixed expectations as to whether or not Ben Hope would agree to the deal he’d been offered. Whichever way it went tonight, so be it. It would be a pity to have to eliminate such a promising potential recruit, but Calthorpe was confident he would find a suitable replacement. As for the girl and her recalcitrant father, there was no way out for them, no escaping their fate. Whether or not Antonin Bezukhov succeeded in learning the whereabouts of Object 428 and the microfilm, the pair would be dealt with as planned. Calthorpe felt little compunction at the thought of killing a bright, beautiful little child. She wouldn’t be the first.

  And whether or not Ben Hope opted to become an agent of the Ploughshares Program, a rogue ex-SAS killer offered the perfect patsy for the murders of Yuri Petrov, his twelve-year-old daughter and his friend Grisha Solokov. The evidence would be overwhelmingly conclusive, showing that the deranged and semi-alcoholic former soldier, possibly suffering from deeply repressed post-traumatic psychosis stemming from his past military experiences, had tracked Petrov to a remote farmhouse deep in the countryside, attempted to blackmail him in return for letting him go free, then brutally slaughtered the two men along with the child and burned the house to hide the evidence of his horrific crimes. The murderer had been shot by police while trying to escape Russia. If indeed Hope was dead by then, the circumstances of his death would be contrived to fit neatly with the story. If it so happened that he was still breathing, by then he would be working for Calthorpe under a fabricated identity, shackled to his new employers by the threat of exposure and unable ever to return to his former life.

  And so, with the prospect of most, if not all, of the loose ends being neatly tied up and a more or less successful end to his mission, Calthorpe returned from his dinner break in a relatively cheery state of mind.

  It didn’t remain that way for long. As the Colonel strode back inside the building, ready to get back to business, it quickly dawned on him that something was terribly wrong. Where on earth were the bloody guards? Where was everyone?

  With a mounting sense of dread and a thumping heart, Calthorpe rushed to the room where Dr Arkangelskaya – not her real name, needless to say – had been minding their young captive. He found an empty chair, and a cupboard containing two dead men and the “doctor” bound and gagged. His worst fears weren’t fully realised until he ran to the cell where Hope was supposedly under lock and key, only to find it occupied solely by two more Russian corpses. One had been stripped of his bulletproof vest. Both had been beaten about the head and then efficiently, very professionally, strangled to death. He instantly recognised the hallmarks of a seasoned SAS veteran.

  Calthorpe turned white and let out a groan, partly in pain as acid washed over his stomach ulcer and partly in dread at the thought of the wrath his superiors would unleash on him if he screwed up. He swallowed a handful of pills, vented some of his anxiety by cursing and yelling, then ripped out his phone. To stand any chance of extricating himself from this nightmare, his only option was to go right to the top of the tree, come clean and pray for leniency.

  Very few people had the privilege of a direct, very secure, line to the man known only as ‘the Chairman’. Calthorpe was authorised to contact him only in the very direst of emergencies. This was definitely one of those.

  ‘Sir, I’m dreadfully sorry to disturb you at such a late hour. But it would seem that our plans have a hit a slight, ah, snag …’

  ‘I had been given to understand you had this situation under control, Colonel Calthorpe,’ the Chairman replied after listening in grave silence to the details.

  ‘I’m afraid we may have underestimated our man’ was the best way Calthorpe could describe his predicament without sounding like a complete failure.

  ‘It would certainly appear so’ came the Chairman’s slow, measured tones, a little buzzy over the long-distance line. Calthorpe could picture him sitting in the splendour of his secluded English country home.

  ‘Then he must be a special individual indeed,’ the Chairman continued. ‘More so than you anticipated.’

  ‘Requiring special measures to deal with this contingency,’ Calthorpe said. ‘I’m going to need reinforcements, and fast. All that we can spare.’ It daunted him to speak with such audacity to the Great Man.

&nbs
p; The Chairman considered the request. ‘Unless I’m mistaken, Colonel, we’ve already expended far more of our local assets on this situation than you had led us to believe would be necessary.’

  ‘But we still have some reserves,’ Calthorpe said, working hard to eliminate the squeak of desperation that threatened to creep into his voice. ‘Don’t we?’

  The Chairman breathed a heavy sigh and pondered in silence for a further moment or two, before he replied, ‘This is turning into quite a mess, Calthorpe. I have to say, I’m extremely disappointed in you. And I believe the rest of the committee will share my sentiments.’

  Calthorpe gritted his teeth as a fresh torrent of stomach acid burned another hole in his belly. ‘I can make it right.’

  ‘Then shut up and get the bloody hell on with it,’ the Chairman said, and the call was over.

  Chapter 54

  The firefight on the third floor of the old hospital was as brief as it was furious. In its opening salvo Vankin and Smyrnoi collapsed dead to the floor, rapidly joined by the moron with the rubber gauntlets and the bucket as Ben’s follow-up shot plugged him between the eyes.

  Ben quickly stepped in front of Valentina, shielding her with his body the way he’d told her he would do. She did as she’d been instructed and clasped herself as tightly as she could against his back, hanging on like a little limpet. They’d have to shoot through him to get her. He was less concerned about a stray bullet finding its way to Yuri, who was safely out of the crossfire.

  After a stunned instant’s delay, the rest of Bezukhov’s men exploded into action and were reaching for their pistols or making a grab for the weapons they’d propped against the walls and hung off the backs of chairs. Ben took down two more men before they could snatch up their guns. Then the four from the van, blocking the doorway to his right. Wielding dual handguns against multiple moving targets that were shooting back at you really required two brains and two pairs of eyes, one for each pistol. Failing that, an awful lot of practice. That was something Ben had had plenty of. Firing alternating shots with each hand he could rake the room with a rate of fire not far short of a machine gun.