by Andy Farman
At no time during the following forty minutes did any of the surveillance vehicles follow directly behind the target. There were always at least two genuinely innocent vehicles between the ‘eyeball’, and the target as he wound his way home.
By 3pm that afternoon the Commissioner was satisfied their suspects had been ‘housed’, and returned to his office to make a telephone call to the Chief Constable of Surrey.
Moscow: 1610hrs, same day.
Udi had been late for work and the dressing down he had received from his shift supervisor had jarred his hung over state.
Unshaven and having slept in the same clothes he had worn the previous day, Udi had hardly presented a picture of the reliable worker.
Udi had weathered the storm and made the right noises about it being a one off lapse that would never be repeated. Apparently satisfied that Udi had gotten the message the supervisor had handed across a work order.
Udi had been scheduled to monitor the ongoing surveillance at the centre for the next two days, so he was surprised.
“Zinayev is handling that, I’m not having you looking like a tramp and stinking like a distillery whilst the auditors are here.”
Fortunately there was little enough blood in Udi’s features that the rest draining away was not noticeable.
“The auditors are coming today?”
“They are here already; now get a move on before someone sees you.”
After all the worry over the impending audit, Udi felt a calm resignation replace the shock of the news that it had at last arrived.
Udi had travelled to Noginsk, 100 kilometres from Moscow, and removed surveillance devices from the home of yet another senior officer to have displeased the premier.
No stealth or guile had been required to enter the house; it had been emptied of its occupants by the arrest team that had come with the dawn for the late Admiral Petorim’s wife and children. Udi was not to know that the entire family had been executed within hours, but he shivered and looked over his shoulder several times as he worked, so certain had he been that the eyes of the dead were upon him.
It took only an hour to complete his task, and then he had returned to Moscow, to his apartment where he had half expected to find internal security awaiting him, but the flat had held no unwanted visitors.
He had forgotten to switch off his computer the previous night, and had left for work so hurriedly that morning that it had continued to chalk up an increasing debt on the meter. However, the thought of the state power company attempting to extract payment from his corpse now gave him some amusement.
The atmosphere in the house at Noginsk had not prevented him from raiding the well-stocked larder there, filling one of the late families suitcases with cheeses, hams and other delicacies, which he now gorged himself on before approaching the keyboard and monitor.
If he was going to be shot for spying on those in power, he may as well get his money’s worth. According to his monitor, the program had completed its task of wiping the download free of interference, so he opened two windows on his monitor’s screen, allowing him a view of the hallway and upstairs room.
It was apparently quite warm in the occupied room, Torneski had removed her greatcoat and unbuttoned her tunic, and sweat speckled the brows of the young officers.
All four occupants heard the main door open, and Torneski gave a nod to the men who removed their uniform tunics and quietly took up position behind the door, so that only the KGB chief would be in view once the girl opened the door to the room.
So, thought Udi, the girl thought she was there for a meeting with the KGB chief but was about to get herself beaten or killed.
Udi expected the girl to jump when the door was slammed closed behind her, but her languid stride never faltered. In the centre of the room she halted, with feet set apart, hands on her hips and her weight resting over on one leg, where she turned at the waist to speak to the three officers, and he got to look at the face of a girl who was heart-stoppingly lovely. From the top of her head to the tips of her toes, via the firm breasts and drum flat belly of course, she was pretty damn perfect as far as Udi was concerned.
All three looked from the girl to the woman, for some kind of instruction, but her face projected anger without a muscle twitching, and Udi realised that she had been out manoeuvred by this girl.
Turning back to Torneski the girl smiled.
“So Elena, what shall we talk about today?”
If looks could kill, this girl would have died on the spot from Torneski’s expression as she sprang to her feet, and for a moment Udi thought she was going to strike the girl, but she snarled at the men instead.
“Search her.”
This was not the cowering girl they had expected, she was not supposed to have walked boldly in, but two of the young officers held her arms by the biceps as she obediently allowed the third to search her.
He came to the old style the walkman last and after listening for a moment to the sensual tones of Lauren Wood singing Fallen, he was about to drop it with the boots, but then tossed it onto the soft surface of the nearby mattress, after pressing the stop key.
That act of thoughtfulness enraged Elena Torneski, who lashed out with a kick at the man before ordering all three outside.
There was definitely history there, Udi thought, and quite plainly some of it was bad, but what, he wondered would happen between Torneski and the girl?
As the last officer, a major of KGB Spetznaz forces, pulled the door closed behind him Svetlana’s whole persona altered, gone was the saucy wiggle as she strode past the KGB chief and plucked the greatcoat off the back of the chair, draping it across her own shoulders, to be held closed with her fingers.
“Did you agree to this meeting just to work off a grudge?”
Torneski did not reply, but began buttoning up her tunic instead.
“The American’s have offered you twenty million dollars for the premier’s location, but it is both negotiable as well as being a limited offer.”
It was Torneski’s turn to laugh.
“Ha, and how long do you think they will prevail…we have almost broken NATO in Germany, and the Chinese are poised to begin their invasion of Australia any day now.”
Udi’s finger stabbed the pause key and he gawped at the monitor for a long moment before rewinding and listening to the exchange once more before pausing once more.
So there was a conspiracy, or at least a covert contact between the Americans and the head of the KGB, and there was only one reason why the Americans should want to know the premiers whereabouts, in order to kill or capture him, although assassination was by far the most likely option.
Taking a pen and paper he started the recording again, now ready to write down any names that could be mentioned in the next few minutes.
“And how long can you prevail Elena?” Svetlana looked the older woman in the eyes. “How long before the premier decides you have failed him, how long before he orders your death?”
Denied the revenge she had long promised herself, Torneski had to work hard at keeping a clear head and it was a few moments before she responded.
“The money is not enough, I want forty million and I want it in gold.”
“For twice the money, they will expect more from you.” The girl explained.
“They could be merely clearing the way for someone with like ambitions to take over the premiership, so they would want some means of ensuring that eventuality didn’t come to pass too.”
Torneski was silent as she considered.
Svetlana retrieved her Walkman, clipping it make into place before closing the greatcoat again and probing further. “Are there any politburo members who have such ambitions?”
The premier’s great plan had been many years in the making, and potential rivals who could thwart, or even hijack it, were definitely not amongst its designs. There was not a single one left with the balls to even privately consider such a possibility.
Udi put himself
in the KGB chiefs’ shoes and being one of life’s cynics, to his mind if she answered truthfully then there was nothing to stop the Americans from striking at the premier whilst she was in the same location, and therefore saving themselves twenty million in gold.
“Perhaps, yes there are two, maybe three who could take over the reins if the premier were to be removed.”
“And?”
“And yes, I can neutralise them.”
Udi watched and listened as the business of high treason was concluded with the exchange of information. From the girl came the bank details of where the money could be found. The Swiss bank in question would verify that the money existed, but the access codes would not be forthcoming until after the deed was done.
It briefly passed through Udi’s mind as he recorded the details on the writing pad that he could possibly find himself in a position to become very, very rich indeed. However in reality he knew he would exchange this disc for his life, and be grateful for that.
The girl called Svetlana repeated the longitudes and latitudes of three secure locations, the premiers present hiding place and two alternates, along with the date he was expected to relocate and the signal which would identify the location.
She wrote nothing down and apparently her memory was sufficient for the task. A handy skill for a spy, but Udi wasn’t in that league and had to play the segment back twice before he got it all.
On the monitor Torneski was stood silently for a moment of thought, before breaking that silence.
“Tell me Svetlana, are you and Major Bedonavich lovers?”
“It always burned you to think of me with a man didn’t it Elena, and I never did really understood why you made a point of accompanying the examiners on my test nights, unless it was to feed that broad streak of sado-masochism?”
Elena returned a cold smile.
“I’m sure the future will bring you all the happiness you deserve with him, my dear.”
The girl paused for a second, her brow furrowing as she studied Torneski, and then departed
Back in the room upstairs, Torneski switched off the heating and lights and listened to the girl leave. She laughed a cruel little laugh as if she had played a malicious joke that could not fail to work, as she descended the stairs and switched out the lights in the hall before then departing.
According to the on-screen timer, Udi knew that it was at this point that the interference had suddenly ended, and he was no wiser as to the source. He wasn’t to know that at that point Svetlana had depressed the same stop key on the Walkman as the officer had, but she had kept it held down for several seconds.
Udi stopped the program and removed the disc, placing it in its clear plastic case and tore off the sheet of paper from the pad, folding it and placing it inside the case also. His problem now was one of sounding plausible when he handed over the disk, because he certainly couldn’t mention an illegal bottle of beer had played a large part in his original actions. He had to come up with a story about suspecting the loyalties of his immediate colleagues and line managers. He had no friends at the centre and felt only a momentary twinge of conscience at the thought of casting aspersions on their integrity, and the longer he stared at the monitor the more credible that line seemed to him.
Pulling on his topcoat and slipping the disk in its case inside a pocket on the jacket beneath, Udi decided he would blame paranoia on his actions when he presented the disk to his department chief, and the time to do that was right now.
He would get a cab to the suburb where the man lived, and hope that he didn’t see the audit as the reason for Udi’s late revelation. He juggled the cursor to the top left of his screen and left clicked his mouse, ordering the system to begin shutting down, and headed for the door realising that unless he got a promotion for bringing the information forward, the next month was going to be very frugal once the electricity bill was paid.
Down in the street below his apartment, two men emerged from the back of a van. The flickering light of a monitor screen illuminated the interior, and this blue tinged light gave the men’s features a cruel, deathly aspect as they reached back inside the vehicle for a holdall and a large heavy rucksack.
As Udi’s system finished powering down, the vans screen no longer mirrored everything that Udi had been watching. The vans occupants had tuned in to the radiation emitted by the monitor in Udi’s apartment, and in this way had avoided the danger of detection had they used a surveillance device or line tap.
Udi opened his apartment door and found a man stood immediately in front of it, his brain registered recognition of the face before him even as the blow landed, crushing his larynx and sending him sprawling backwards into the room. His attacker caught him before he could fall, laying him on the worn sofa and quickly, though quietly pushing the door to.
As he fought against the threatening blackness, Udi cursed himself for not having considered that someone on the auditing team would have informed the head of their organisation that her home was bugged.
Udi Timoskova was still alive when his attackers colleagues from the van arrived silently inside the apartment moments later, and through his agony he recognised them also as being with Elena Torneski that night in the dacha.
After putting out the blaze that had gutted an apartment in a Moscow suburb, its watch commander wrote up his report concluding that a faulty component overheating inside the owner’s computer had caused the fire. Neighbours had already told him that they had heard the hum of the machine day and night in the past few days, whenever they had past his door, which concurred with his long years of experience which pinpointed the charred and buckled base unit as clearly being the seat of the fire.
The apartments occupant had apparently been asleep on a sofa when the fire had broken out. A heat cracked, and smoke charred vodka bottle on the floor beside the body meant that he had probably been oblivious to the danger, and would have expired from the smoke before the flames had reached him.
Vormundberg, Germany: Same time.
Oblivious to moves behind the scenes back home, the Hussars, Gunners, Sappers, Paratroopers and Guardsmen were still preparing for their next fight.
“How’s it going?”
CSM Probert stopped swinging the pickaxe and leant on it, getting his breath. The inquisitor was Oz; kneeling in the mud beside a hull down position for an MBT being finished off by a half dozen men with entrenching tools.
“I’d say it was going down the pan fast, if it’s got to the point where a Company Sarn’t Major is navvying away, and a mere sergeant isn’t!”
Oz tapped the tops of the ammunition boxes he had brought up the hill.
“I’ve got some of the lads bringing more up.” He nodded toward an SF kit, the tripod in its webbing bag that sat a short distance away.
“You be careful with yer rates of fire Oz, a GPMG in the SF role goes through rounds like Guinness and curry go through a white man…be a shame if after the first hour the most you had to reply with was harsh language.”
They both heard someone calling the CSMs name and Colin climbed from the hole, using the pick like a climber’s ice axe, to see who it was. Struggling uphill through the mud was one of the battalion clerks, fulfilling his other role as COs runner.
“Oye, Radar…up here!” The TV series ‘Mash’ had stuck all clerical staff with that nickname, even the dyslexic ones.
The young man panted his way up to them.
“Sir…warning order for you, O Group in…” he looked at his watch. “…in fifteen at the company CP, platoon sized ambush patrol, you can borrow three men from 2 and 3 Platoons, and no move before twenty hundred hours.”
The CSM looked at his own wristwatch.
“1530…cutting it a bit fine?”
Dropping the pick he retrieved his weapon and webbing from where he left them, within arm’s reach of where he’d been digging.
“Sarn’t, can you do the honours and pick twenty four good ones please, make sure we don’t get palmed off wi
th lame ducks and dead wood from 2 and 3?”
Oz nodded and turned, and called out the name of his first choice, the man who would also warn the rest.
“Robertso…” but stopped before completing the name, embarrassed and momentarily at a loss. Confusion ran across his features for a second or two and then he seemed to mentally shake himself. Colin was silent as he watched his friend, seeing the first visible sign of a stress fracture appear. The runner had a bemused look on his face, and was about to correct Oz when he saw the Company Sergeant Major giving him a steely look.
“Haven’t you got some typing or something to be doing?” He snapped.
The clerk nodded and headed back toward the CP, pissed off at the CSMs comment. If senior NCOs couldn’t remember who was still alive and who was dead, then it was not his fault, so why take it out on him?
Colin made the decision then and there that Oz would not be coming along tonight, he couldn’t give him two weeks R&R but he could let him get his head down for one night.
On his way to the CP Colin passed the gun group on their way up, weighed down with Claymore mines and grenades. He paused for a moment.
“I made a start on the gun pit before moving on to the tankies holes.” He pointed uphill in the direction of the gun pit. “Once you get past the mud the grounds still frozen, but there’s only a foot or so still left to do…then crack on with the shelter and ammo bays, ok?” Once they had acknowledged him he carried on down the reverse slope at a jog.
The company commander greeted him with a tired nod of the head, and pointed to a spot away from the activity around the CP. They tramped across the mud to a fallen tree trunk where Colin sat before removing his notebook and map, and then heard about a soviet recce patrol that had found its way into the rear area, and what they were now going to do about it.
It was growing dark as Major Venables arrived in the location, crawling along at 5mph with a broken down Chieftain in tow. He let the two crews and REME fitters manoeuvre the older tank into its fighting position and wandered over to where some of the infantry were rehearsing for something. He had to cast his mind back to his Sandhurst days to work out what they were preparing for, and then identified the cut offs, rear protection and killer groups.
