Patriots

by Kevin Doherty

‘You are. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Sorry to trouble you, comrade General. It’s on a rather personal matter. May I speak freely, or would you rather call me back?’

  Well, the tape recorders had never been much of a secret.

  ‘You may speak freely, comrade Superintendent.’

  ‘It concerns a young woman we’re holding in custody, sir. She was arrested earlier this morning for defacing one of the paintings in the Tretyakov State Gallery. The fact is, we’ve not been getting a great deal of sense out of her. But she’s given us your name.’

  Serov closed his eyes and listened for another minute, speaking only in reply to the policeman’s occasional questions.

  ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can, Superintendent,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll leave right away. Thank you for calling me.’

  He broke the connection and called Sergei.

  ‘I’m leaving at once. Find Gramin and tell him to have the car outside. I won’t be back today.’ An afterthought struck him. ‘Cancel my appointments for tomorrow.’

  He took a few moments to bundle the paperwork into a drawer, then gathered up his coat and jacket. Just as he reached the door the phone rang again. He swore under his breath at Sergei, then retracted when the bell repeated and he realised it was his direct line. It bypassed the switchboard, Sergei and the banks of tape machines, and was as close as anyone could come in the building to a secure line. Few enough people had its number, and they knew to use it sparingly and with discretion. The calls it brought were never lengthy.

  He had to answer it. He went back to the desk and threw his overcoat down. A third ring.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My friend who’s been ill.’ The voice was Gramin’s. ‘The one in need of medication. He’s ready to see you personally, for further advice.’

  ‘I want you outside with the car at once. We’ll agree something on the way into town.’

  He smashed the phone down, grabbed his coat again and was gone.

  *

  The heavy van waited outside the Aragvi restaurant until the food was ready, to the consternation of the maître d’ and his diners. At last a trolley appeared and was pushed to its rear doors. Rich Georgian dishes, on lidded platters sealed with foil to keep them hot, began to be loaded under the weary gaze of the driver and the three sergeants who accompanied him.

  Three hundred metres away, store director Gulyaev had climbed through the open window of his outer office and was hoisting himself precariously to his feet. His face, though drained of colour, had regained its expression of superior disdain. He sneered down at Vladimir Chernavin’s officers as they crammed arms and shoulders into the window and tried to snatch at his trouser legs. Then he turned away, glanced down briefly at the pavement below as if to take his bearings and, closing his eyes, bent slowly over at the waist until he felt his balance go. Only then did he allow himself to push against the windowsill with his toes, launching himself out from the building by a metre or so. He fell gracefully and in silence, head first, like a diver but with his hands locked behind his back and his legs straight. It was only two floors but the precision of his technique was enough to make sure that no cell in Lefortovo would ever hear him disclose the identity of his black-market contact.

  When the van driver arrived in Gorky Street from the side road running up from Soviet Square, he swore at the shambles that blocked his way. Pedestrians milled around everywhere, there were militia cars at crazy angles across the road, and an ambulance was trying to park on the pavement. The van driver pounded his horn, an illegal act for civilian drivers, and yelled out of the window. It did no good and only got him a foul look from a militiaman trying to persuade the crowd to disperse.

  ‘As if I hadn’t enough to worry about,’ the van driver moaned to the sergeants. ‘Some bastard uses me to run his errands. Now I’ll be blamed for letting his food get cold.’

  6

  The Middle East

  As dawn broke over Saudi Arabia’s vast southern desert, the Ru’bal-Khali, a DC10 took off from a private airfield west of Sharurah. On the aircraft’s tailfin, in white on green, were depicted a date palm and crossed sabres, marking the aircraft as belonging to the royal house of Saud.

  Three hours later it landed at Cairo and taxied to a quiet spot on the eastern fringe of the airport. Flanked by two large hangars, a commercial charter plane was waiting, its engines already turning. Four Bedouin Arab men dressed in traditional white robes and woollen cloaks disembarked from the DC10 and crossed the tarmac to board the charter. They were the only passengers. Within a few minutes their modest baggage had been boarded and they were gone. No waybills or traffic dockets recorded their passage.

  The crew of the DC10 waited until it was safely tucked out of sight in one of the hangars, then made their way to the Meridien Le Caire in the Garden City, where they had reservations for the night.

  By the time they’d unpacked, the charter was entering Libyan air space. Three Soviet-built MiGs swooped down to investigate it. They caused the charter pilot no alarm; he’d made the trip several times before. He transmitted his call sign and the MiG squadron leader tallied it with his briefing notes and waved acknowledgement. The MiGs became the charter’s escort. An hour later the four aircraft passed over the Wheelus air and army base east of Tripoli. In a further three minutes the charter was over Tripoli International Airport. It received immediate clearance to land and touched down in the military section of the airport; the MiGs had vanished.

  The Saudis hurried down the aircraft’s steps and were met by a Libyan officer who led them to two armoured personnel carriers waiting close by.

  Within a quarter of an hour the visitors were being driven at speed through the cream-coloured gates of the Bab Al-Aziziya barracks in the centre of Tripoli.

  Inside, the complex was a bustle of activity. Jeeps and battered cars bumped along the potholed roads, driven by men and women in various degrees of battledress or as often as not jeans and sweatshirts. More were scattered on foot about the camp, some guarding the various buildings, some on leisure time. Even off duty, most of them still carried their weapons, Kalashnikov rifles or Uzi submachine guns. They mingled with unarmed civilians who went mostly to and from the main administration block. A steady din of traffic and chatter filled the place.

  Among all the stir few people paid much heed to the two personnel carriers.

  One man, however, observed their arrival closely, taking care that his interest wasn’t noted. He was black-haired and swarthy but could have been of South European or Mediterranean extraction rather than North African. He was hunched over the engine of an old Fiat car parked outside one of the accommodation blocks, tinkering at it with a spanner and screwdriver. At his feet tools and engine parts were spread out on a groundsheet. The engine chugged unevenly, sometimes dying when he opened the throttle.

  From behind the bonnet he watched as the armoured vehicles swung right at the orange-domed auditorium and drew up outside the main administration building.

  Next to this block was a half-acre patch of open ground that had once been an ornamental lawn; continuous foot traffic had worn it almost bare. It was dominated by a straggling Bedouin tent mounted on rough poles. There were six or eight of these poles, enough in that culture to denote a man of importance. Items of hunting paraphernalia hung from the poles and a hooded peregrine falcon perched on a stump driven into the earth.

  The tent had always struck the watcher as ludicrous. It was meant as an assertion of the loyalties of its owner, Muammar Al-Gadaffi, the desert Arab who begrudged every moment he spent in urban Tripoli. Yet the military hardware that protected it, including the sophisticated communications gear housed in the administration block, belonged firmly in the twentieth century. All had been bought with the profits of oil sales to the same Western nations that Gadaffi never tired of denouncing.

  The man by the Fiat sneered; he found the hypocrisy typical of Libya and its leader. As he watched, Gadaffi himself stepped from
the tent’s shady interior to receive his visitors. Today, instead of his usual khaki fatigues, he wore traditional clothing like theirs, in their honour.

  The Arab who was evidently the leader of the visiting delegation stepped forward. He was taller than the others, including his host, and had a full goatee of the sort favoured by high-caste Saudis. It accentuated his wide mouth and hooked nose. Gadaffi and he embraced, exchanging elaborate greetings.

  Eventually the guests were ushered into the men’s section of the tent, on the right. There would be the hospitality ritual of spiced coffee, saffron and corn biscuits before business could begin. The watcher caught a glimpse of the tent’s brightly patterned interior before the outer flap fell closed.

  He straightened up and wiped sweat from his forehead, shaking his head in exasperation at the engine. With a resigned air he crouched down and slid his body under the engine block until only his feet were left in view. The engine cut out completely.

  The leader of the Saudi delegation was one Saleem Ibn Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, a prince of the royal blood and half-brother of King Fahd. This much the watcher already knew. As for Ibn’s business with Gadaffi – that was what his masters paid him to find out.

  Fastened magnetically to the underside of the blue Fiat’s floorpan were a radio receiver the size of a lady’s wristwatch and a miniature cassette recorder connected to it by a thread of cable. The recorder was no bigger than a credit card and not much thicker. The watcher took a tiny earpiece from his shirt pocket and plugged it into the receiver. Everything was coming through loud and clear.

  He stayed under the Fiat until he heard the coffee and sweetmeats being cleared away. Then he switched the tape recorder on, using the tip of a screwdriver to activate the tiny key. He put the earphone away, slid out from under the car, started the engine and resumed his labours.

  *

  The worst of the day’s heat was over when he took the blue Fiat past Supermarket 102 in the downtown area. He turned into the sidestreet at the end of the block, narrowly avoiding a truck that was weaving down the wrong side of the road, and parked in the first place he could find. He strolled back the way he had come until he reached the glass facade of the supermarket. Here he moved to the edge of the kerb and waited to cross the road.

  A tubular steel handrail ran parallel to the road about a metre in from the edge of the pavement. Its end was sheared off where a careering car had mounted the kerb sometime in the past. As he waited, the man leant back against the handrail and lit a cigarette. It was the last in the packet. He scrunched up the paper sleeve and slid it neatly into the open end of the steel rail. A break appeared in the stream of cars and he loped to the other side of the wide carriageway, turning in the direction of the souk, whose babble he could hear even over the traffic noise.

  A minute later a youngish woman hurried across the road in the opposite direction. She was dressed in European clothing: brown cotton jacket, tan blouse and skirt. The cut of the skirt was modest, falling well below the knee, and the blouse was fastened right to the neck. A patterned headsquare covered her brown hair. She wore no make-up. A handbag on a long strap hung over her right shoulder and was held securely under her arm by her elbow.

  As she rushed onto the kerb her foot keeled to the side and she stumbled slightly. Luckily the handrail was just within reach; she grabbed it with her left hand to steady herself.

  When she moved off, the balled-up cigarette packet was concealed in the palm of her hand. The stumble had caused her handbag to slide down her arm, so she hooked her thumb into the strap and hoisted it back on her shoulder, reaching across to clasp the handbag with her other hand. The rumpled cigarette packet fell safely inside before the bag was snapped shut.

  *

  Half an hour later the Fiat rattled over a red dirt track traversing one of the sprawling estates of jerry-built blocks of flats that littered the south of the city. The driver peered around at the ten or twelve identical four-storey units as if trying to distinguish one from another.

  Long strings of kerbstones were concreted into position on the dirt in sweeping lines that led up to and around the flats, promising roads and pavements sometime in the future. On one of them sat a paunchy man in a windcheater jacket and with a green woollen hat pulled down over his ears. He seemed to be in charge of two small girls who were playing near him, arranging empty tin cans for a game of some kind. He nodded half-heartedly when they addressed him from time to time. As the Fiat approached, he gave it hardly a glance, yawned and went back to watching the girls.

  The driver slowed down and asked something of him, so he stirred himself to go over to the car, bending down by the window while the question was repeated. He rested his left hand on the driver’s door where the window glass had been wound down, his fingers on the inside. When the driver restated his question he nodded and began pointing out directions with his other hand.

  The driver heard him through, listening attentively, then thanked him and moved off in the direction indicated.

  The man in the woollen hat pocketed the slip of paper that had been pressed into the fingers of his left hand and rejoined his daughters.

  *

  The European woman took a circuitous route back to Baghdad Street, switching from taxi to walking, back to taxi, and then repeating the process twice. She spent over an hour on what should have been a journey of only a few minutes. By the time she reached her destination the shops and offices were closed for the day.

  She hurried along the alleyway that led off the main street and doubled back so that she was walking parallel to it. On her right a galvanised steel fence blanked off a building site, quiet at this hour, while a stone wall about two metres high ran along on her left, broken by a series of doorways. These led into the rear yards of the commercial premises that fronted the street. Bins and black plastic bags stuffed to overflowing with rubbish stood beside most of the doors, awaiting refuse collections that were never made on schedule. She picked her way carefully around the worst of the debris, keeping a keen eye out for the wild dogs that were reputed to prowl the area from sundown. Her hands were thrust deep into her jacket pockets, her arms pressing her sides in an instinctive gesture of self-protection. As before, the bag was tucked under her right arm.

  After about thirty paces she knocked lightly on one of the doors. It was opened at once, as if the person behind it had been awaiting her arrival.

  She went straight to a staff bathroom on the first floor, skirting the public area to the front of the building, with its travel posters and brochures.

  She locked the door, closed the lid of the toilet bowl for a seat and slung the bag onto the top of the toilet cistern.

  She worked with speed and dexterity. In the cigarette packet she found the four microcassettes that the watcher had put there. She bunched them together two-by-two in a tissue and swaddled the lot in cotton wool. From her handbag she took a condom, which she broke out of its foil wrapper and unrolled. The bundle of cotton wool fitted into its tip, leaving plenty of length for her to tie into a knot. Before drawing it tight she passed into it a length of fine cotton cord, then knotted the condom and cord firmly to each other. She threaded the cord through a wide-eyed leatherwork needle which she forced through the centre of a tampon, pulling the cord until the knotted condom was securely attached. She used manicure scissors to snip off the surplus length of condom and the original drawstring of the tampon. Along with the shredded remains of the cigarette packet, these were flushed down the toilet bowl.

  Fifteen minutes later she returned to the rear alleyway. Her face was now attractively made-up. The drab clothes had been replaced by a crisp, blue-grey uniform, white blouse and red silk scarf loosely knotted under her collar. Instead of the headsquare she wore a chic trilby-shaped cap. Jacket and cap were adorned by the winged hammer and sickle of Aeroflot.

  She glanced at her watch: 18:20 hours. Still two hours before SU-420 took off for Moscow via Odessa, but she would need every minute for travelling tim
e to the airport and pre-flight procedures. She lengthened her step, remembering to watch out for the dogs.

  The record of Prince Ibn’s meeting with Gadaffi was on its way to Moscow.

  *

  The dusk was thickening as the man in the green woollen hat let himself onto the flat roof through the services hatch. The street lamps on his estate, although installed and fully wired, hadn’t yet been linked up to the Tripoli grid, so the security floodlights on the roof were dead. Nonetheless he moved cautiously, crouching as low as he could, aware that his silhouette against the vermilion skyline would be visible to anyone looking out of a top-floor window of one of the adjoining blocks. This was earlier than he preferred to operate but the note had specified all urgency and he dared not delay any longer. At least the job wouldn’t take long.

  The water storage tank was about fifteen metres from the hatch. When he reached it he was able to straighten up. He eased the lid up just as much as was needed and propped it open with a slat of wood which he kept to hand by the tank.

  A nylon fishing line was tethered to one of the feet of the tank, running up its side to disappear over the edge and into the water. It was virtually invisible against the tank’s rubberised exterior. He reeled the line in slowly. Its weighty catch was a heavy-duty plastic box, waterproof to a depth of a hundred metres.

  It contained a metal toolbox. He hefted it out and weighted the empty plastic container with two bricks before returning it to the tank.

  Half an hour later he pulled his Peugeot off the road at an isolated layby on Kilometre 7 and opened the toolbox out on the passenger seat. It was the type with stepped drawers that spread apart when opened by downward pressure on the carrying handle. The upper drawer had the usual assortment of well-used tools. But the lower portion was incongruously laid out as a small numeric keypad.

  It was the work of a couple of minutes to tap out the list of digits on the slip of paper. He pressed another key once and waited fifteen seconds. A faint whirr indicated that the mini-computer was doing its work. A green light came on to signal that all was ready.