Spy Out the Land

by Jeremy Duns

  Paul Dark looked down at Utö, glittering in the twilight. He was still several miles away, but he could make out the jetty and the lighthouse. As he approached he saw that a large motorboat was moored to the jetty, and a man he didn’t recognise was on the deck. A few agonising seconds passed, and then Claire emerged, clutching Ben in her arms, and he felt the relief flood through him.

  The motorboat turned and headed back the way it had come, trailing a thin wake of surf behind it. Then Dark registered another disturbance in the waves, and his eyes followed it out until he saw the other boat, which was fast approaching the jetty. His heart heaved again, and he pushed the stick forward and started to descend.

  Claire and the other man were now running towards the lighthouse, Claire slowed down by having to carry Ben in her arms. The second boat reached the jetty and a group of men disembarked. They wore black clothing and face masks, and one of them started firing up at him with a machine-pistol. Dark swerved out of the way and came in again, lower this time, and he noticed that the men were also wearing gloves. Then he realised that they weren’t gloves, but that it was their skin – they were black men.

  One of them threw a grenade into the air and a few seconds later it exploded below him, buffering the helicopter off course and sending spasms through Dark’s neck as he crashed into the side of the cockpit. He righted himself and pulled back on the stick. Once he had managed to steady the helicopter, he stuck his head out of the window and looked down again.

  Now the men had reached the entrance of the lighthouse, and Dark fought a feeling of helplessness as he watched them enter it. He had been so intent on getting here that he hadn’t really considered what he might do once he had. He had thought he would be able to land on the jetty, but now he saw that the idea was madness: five winters had taken their toll on it and the strip of wooden planks looked much thinner than he remembered. The roof of the lighthouse was far too narrow, and the only other alternatives were to try to land on the water or to run aground on the rocks, both of which could easily kill him. The jetty was his only hope, but could it take the weight? He slowly started to bring the helicopter down vertically, craning his neck muscles so he could see below to position the skids directly over the planks.

  In the corner of his eye he caught a blur of movement by the lighthouse – the men were coming out. One of them held Ben, who had started screaming, and the others had Claire, who was doing the same, her face twisted with fear as she looked up at the sky, searching for him.

  Dark watched with horror as Gunnar and Helena came running out behind them, waving their arms. One of the men holding Claire turned and fired at Gunnar, hitting him in the chest. As he fell, a volley of further shots peppered him. Then there were more shots, and Helena fell too, her body and Gunnar’s now suddenly horrifyingly still as they lay next to each other.

  The men reached the boat and stepped aboard with Claire and Ben, then set off in a wide arc, leaving a wake of surf churning behind them as they headed back the way they had come.

  Dark looked down and realised with a jolt he wasn’t going to be able to land the helicopter: he was coming down too fast to judge the angles correctly and it was going to hit the jetty. He unstrapped his belt, grabbed the pistol from his jacket and dived out of the cockpit, stretching his legs as far as he could to clear the rocks surrounding the jetty.

  He came to the surface with his head pulsing from the shock of the impact and the cold. The M57 had fallen out of his hands, and he couldn’t see it anywhere. He wiped his eyes and blinked up to see the landing skids crump into the rear of the jetty, and then the tail rotor tipped back and unbalanced the rest. He went back down and swam towards the rocks, pushing against the weight of his clothes. He scrambled ashore and limped over to where Gunnar and Helena lay. Both were dead, their blood staining the ground. Seagulls wheeled overhead, shrieking.

  Dark looked back at the jetty and felt the heat as the rear of the helicopter caught fire. A few moments later, an explosion rocked him onto his back.

  When he sat up again, he thought for a moment he was hallucinating, as he heard the sound of rotors and saw the silhouette of the helicopter emerge, totally intact, from the smoke of its own explosion. Then he saw that it was a different colour, orange and green: the Finnish coastguard had arrived. A voice shouted down at him through a loud-hailer and men in dark fatigues rappelled from the cockpit to where he was crouched. They removed the rifles strapped to their backs and pointed them at him. He saw himself reflected in their face visors.

  Dazed, he placed his hands above his head. His mind was still on the motorboat speeding away from the shoreline back towards Sweden, and he was wondering whether he could somehow reach the coastguards’ helicopter and catch up with it. But even as he thought it, in the pit of his stomach he knew that it was useless. He’d come too late, and they were gone.

  Ben and Claire were gone.

  Chapter 14

  Claire woke into darkness.

  She was lying on a low cushioned bench, her hands and feet tied tightly with rope and her mouth bound with tape. The rocking motion beneath her and a throb of pain in her left bicep reminded her of what had happened: she had been dragged on board a boat, and one of the men had sedated her with a needle.

  She heard a muffled whimper from nearby, and knew instantly that it was Ben – no doubt that was what had woken her. She sat up and hopped on her buttocks towards the sound. It seemed to be coming from an adjacent room. It didn’t sound like he was in pain, but she winced inwardly. Would they feed him, and if so, what? Suddenly, his whimpering stopped. Milk? A biscuit? Or had they perhaps given him another shot with the needle?

  Her eyes were slowly adjusting to the darkness and now she could see the door of the small room. She moved towards it and pressed her back against it, but it was, of course, locked. She lay on the floor and tried to clear her head.

  Someone had found her. It had been her greatest fear, the background noise to her life for nearly a decade, ever since she had fled Rhodesia. She had been escorted across the border to Zambia by men loyal to her father, and from there she’d been placed on an aeroplane to Geneva with a wallet filled with dollars and a false Zambian passport. Looking up at a departure board in Geneva airport, she had chosen Sweden as her next destination – one of her fondest memories from childhood was reading the Pippi Longstocking books her father had brought back from a trip to London, which had taken her to a distant fantasy-land that had blossomed in her mind.

  On arriving in Stockholm she had claimed refugee status under her new identity. That first harsh winter hadn’t at all resembled the carefree summers of pancake-making of Astrid Lindgren’s books, but she had nevertheless felt a little like Pippi, dreaming of her father the pirate on the other side of the world. And then she had met Erik, and everything had changed.

  Yes, now she had finally forged a new life for herself, found someone, and started a family with him, someone had found her. She didn’t know who they were, but she presumed they were enemies of her father. He’d had plenty of those, but she had been happy to place all that in the back of her mind. In Rhodesia she had been a girl whose only responsibilities had been to her father’s household, and she had barely thought for herself. In Sweden, she had studied at night school, explored the worlds of art and literature, begun a career at a newspaper and eventually settled into society, earning her own keep in the process. She hadn’t forgotten her past, but she had grown up and become someone else. She felt guilty at the realisation, but part of her resented not just the kidnappers but her father for having dragged her back into his world. She chided herself immediately. Of all the selfish reactions to have! After all he had done for her.

  Her thoughts turned to how Erik had reacted. The more she pondered it, the more it seemed to her that his insistence she and Ben leave Stockholm was important. He had acted almost as though the men were after him – indeed, that must have been what he had believed. In a strange way, the realisation didn’t surprise her
as much as she thought it would. Something un-communicated had always lain between them. She had presumed it was the shadow of her own past that hung in the air, that he could sense she was withholding information from him, but now she knew she had deluded herself. He had been hiding secrets from her, too, and somewhere deep down she had known it. She had simply never let the idea form in her mind for fear of sabotaging their relationship.

  He would be suffering, too, she knew, for the mistake he had made. And he would do everything in his power to put it right, she was sure. He would come and get them.

  He had to.

  Chapter 15

  They searched his clothes, removing his sodden jacket, then directed him to the ropes and up into the helicopter. One man took the stick, while three others sat in the rear of the cramped cockpit and covered him with their rifles.

  Dark did as he was told with a mounting sense of despair. Every second that passed was taking him further from Claire and Ben, but his entreaties that they turn round because his girlfriend and son had been kidnapped and were heading in the opposite direction were met with silence: either they couldn’t understand Swedish, couldn’t hear him over the noise of the engine, or were pretending not to. Their expressions were invisible behind their visors, and it was like shouting at statues. After a few minutes he fell silent himself, his thoughts spinning helplessly.

  He had never panicked before. He’d been frightened, even terrified, many times, but he had never experienced sheer, blind panic. Now he found he couldn’t think coherently for more than a couple of seconds before he was flooded with the reality of what had happened again. And it was his fault. It was his stupid, thoughtless, arrogant fault that Gunnar and Helena had been murdered, and that Ben and Claire were now in the hands of . . . whom? He had no idea.

  The helicopter juddered along the coastline. After around twenty minutes, the outskirts of Helsinki hove into view below. In normal circumstances, Dark would have found it beautiful, the trees and lakes bathed in the dusk. But now the sight sickened him. He knew he had to formulate a plan, fast, but he was coming up empty. Surrounded by this sort of firepower, there was nothing he could do.

  The helicopter landed on the roof of a large brick building, which he guessed was the coastguard’s headquarters. They hurried him out, and he watched as the pilot took off again: another avenue closed. He was taken down a metal staircase into a boxlike room, where they positioned him in front of a camera on a tripod. The flash blinded him momentarily, and then they were on the move again, the men frogmarching him down another flight of stairs and along a narrow corridor, past a succession of heavy steel doors with small grilles in them.

  They unlocked one and pushed him into it. Concrete walls, a metal-framed bed and a bucket in the corner. The sharp vinegar reek of urine rose into his nostrils. He asked if he were under arrest, but they ignored him and marched back out. The door slammed shut, and he banged on it with his fists and called out in protest until he realised it was futile.

  Chapter 16

  John Weale paced the floor of the living room, glaring at the members of his team.

  ‘Is there any chance they might survive?’

  Peter Tandi shook his head. ‘But we had no choice. They could have stopped us taking the targets.’

  ‘Two elderly lighthouse-keepers?’ Weale laughed bitterly. ‘Now we’re going to have the whole of Sweden looking for us.’

  ‘Finland,’ said Makuba. ‘We were in Finnish territory, and the helicopter that picked the boyfriend up headed that way.’

  Weale stopped pacing and fixed his stare on him, unimpressed. ‘So the Finns and the Swedes will be looking for us.’

  He walked to the trestle table by the sofa and picked up the bottle of Hine VSOP that Voers had bought from the government shop when they’d moved in. He had been looking forward to toasting the success of the operation with the team, but now that idea seemed spoiled. He found a glass anyway and poured himself a measure, then tilted his head back and gulped it down. The others watched him in resentful silence, as he knew they would, and as he had wanted them to. Operating out of uniform could give the impression that rank didn’t matter, but right now he needed them to understand he was their leader, and even such small gestures helped. And he had needed the drink.

  He reached inside his pocket and found a pack of cigarettes. He drew one out and lit it, then walked over to the sole armchair and lowered himself into it.

  ‘So what tipped her off?’

  The men shifted on their feet. Weale waved the cigarette in the air, indicating he expected an answer. It was vital for it to appear that black Africans had been responsible for the kidnapping – the point of using black Scouts with him keeping out of sight for the duration was so that even if they were spotted suspicion would fall on ZANLA, ZIPRA or one of their splinter factions. Any indication of involvement by the Rhodesian government would be catastrophic both domestically and internationally, so if someone was on to them he needed to know.

  Tandi glanced at Makuba, then decided to speak. ‘I don’t believe anyone tipped her off. We were as careful as we could possibly be. But we always knew there was a chance she’d realise she was being watched. There always is.’

  Weale looked at him through the cloud of smoke, one eye now half-closed.

  ‘What about the boyfriend? What was he playing at? And how the hell did he get hold of a helicopter?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Makuba.

  Weale sighed. ‘How are the targets now? Has the boy been any trouble?’

  ‘Not so far. We gave them sedatives on the boat and now they’re in the basement with Sammy and Joshua.’

  ‘All right, I’ll go and see them and introduce myself.’ He gave a sardonic smile. ‘There’s an SAS flight to Johannesburg leaving at eight o’clock, so we’ll head to the airport shortly. But first, I’m going out to report to the Commander.’

  Tandi and Makuba nodded, an informal salute. Weale took the cognac into the kitchen and placed it out of sight, then grabbed a chunk of loose change and let himself out of the flat. The men visibly relaxed once the door had clicked shut, and seated themselves on the sofa. Makuba drew the trestle table nearer and removed a deck of cards from his jacket, smiling at Tandi.

  ‘Okay if I deal?’

  Chapter 17

  The door opened and two men carrying Beretta machine-pistols entered the cell. They prodded him down a corridor into another room, which was empty but for a desk and two chairs bolted to the floor. They indicated he sit in one of the chairs. Dark thought of a field on an estate in the Scottish Highlands, and a man with a high-pitched voice and tattoos on his forearms. He had still been in his teens when he’d first encountered the fearsome Tommy MacFarlane, and in the following months he and the other SOE recruits had learned more from him about the techniques of violence than most men did in a lifetime. But even MacFarlane would have counselled caution when faced with two heavily armed men in a closely confined space. Dark seated himself.

  Several minutes passed, and finally another man walked into the room. He was in his early forties, in a crisp white shirt and lightweight grey woollen suit, with very fair, almost white, hair brushed over his forehead and heavy-framed tortoiseshell spectacles. His muscular forearms were tanned and overlaid with the same whitish hair. A Browning Hi-Power was pushed into his waistband, and he gripped a slim brown leather briefcase in his right hand.

  Dark disliked him instantly: the vanity of his clothes, the unholstered gun, the irritatingly placid expression on his blandly handsome face – he looked more like an architect than an interrogator. Dark imagined he went for long bicycle rides in the forest with his impossibly blonde wife and their impossibly blond children. Thoughts suddenly crowded in on him, of Ben on a plastic tricycle, and of Claire running behind him in the park . . .

  The man gave instructions to the others in Finnish and they left the room: Dark wished he had understood what had been said, but it wasn’t a language he knew or even had a foot
hold in – it was utterly unlike all the other languages in the region. The fair-haired man strode over to the table and seated himself in the chair opposite. He took something from the briefcase, and Dark saw that it was his wallet, taken from him when his clothes had been searched. The man removed his identity card and held it up to the light, reading from it.

  ‘Erik Daniel Johansson—’

  ‘Sorry, but who the fuck are you?’

  The man glanced down, his expression blank. Then his features settled and a half-smile crossed his face, as though amused at being pulled up for his manners.

  ‘Detective Heikki Kurkinen. I’m investigating today’s events on Utö.’

  He spoke Swedish with a strong Finnish accent. Dark nodded at the wallet. ‘You don’t have to tell me my name – I already know it. Let me out of here. I need to do some investigating myself.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible at the moment.’ Kurkinen replaced the identity card in the wallet, taking his time, letting Dark know that interruptions were not going to hurry him. Then he tossed the wallet lightly onto the table and leaned forward, his pale blue eyes under the ash-white eyebrows reminding Dark of a small, furrowing mouse.

  ‘First I need some answers from you, Herr Johansson.’ The stress on the surname suggested that he didn’t believe it was genuine. He reached into the briefcase again and removed several items, each of which he placed carefully on the desk in a row. Dark gazed at them impassively. They were the passports he had been carrying, their pages wet and clumped together.

  Kurkinen prised open the cover of one of them with his fingers. A photograph of Dark’s face stared up, and beneath it was typed the name ‘Eduardo Ballini’.

  ‘Five passports, all containing your photograph, showing you with Swedish, Italian, Swiss, Spanish and American nationalities.’ Kurkinen leaned forward again. ‘So perhaps I can ask: who the fuck are you?’