‘Some would say, Christopher, that there’s barely enough to run with – even jog with … Some would say we should aim for something more detailed, with provenance, then scatter it far and wide, let others share. But that’s not your conclusion. You’re asking me to back Haystack, and to keep the business close inside the Service. “Inside” means that if the alarm call wasn’t justified we don’t face the titters behind the hands of colleagues in other services, who would dearly love to see us fall on our faces – but “inside” also means that if your suppositions are justified we’re going after a problem with minimal resources, and if we fail we won’t easily be forgiven. It’s an interesting dilemma you present me with.’
Spoken as if the matter in hand was before the chair of the golf club entertainments committee – except that Luke Davies was not a member of any golf club.
‘Very frankly, Christopher, if this didn’t have your name on it, it would be a non-starter. But it does have your name. You’ve listed the resources and time parameters on Haystack, and I accept them. My caveat is that you must promise to call the cavalry if you acquire proof of this conspiracy. I suppose this is all down to Clipper, his legacy.’
There was then, and Luke Davies saw it, a brief smile on Lawson’s mouth, small cracks at the sides where the upper and lower lips met. Then it was gone. He had no idea who or what was Clipper.
‘So, you have met the agent, whom you call November, recruited him, and fought off the opposition of his current handlers. You’ve run more men than I have, Christopher, but I’d be failing in my capacity as leader of the Service if I didn’t point out that you are asking much of this young man. You are putting a huge weight on his shoulders – is that justified? Is November capable of achieving what is asked of him?’
They had been in the cramped living space of the narrowboat for an hour. He had watched November, hardly ever contributing, and the man had seemed to Davies to go through the gamut of reactions. Anger, hostility, then weakening, as if accepting the inevitable, on towards a modicum of pride that he was called out, and finally the clear-cut vision of November’s exhaustion. The girl had done well. Her eyes had blazed antagonism and her hands, through the long hour, had never left November’s shoulders. She had sustained their man.
Lawson said, ‘I think Clipper, from what I recall, was clear on such a situation … As I said, he’s what we have.’
‘I hear you, but the burden he’ll carry is considerable.’
Lawson stood. ‘In such times, you use what’s available. As I said, he’s what we have … I’ll be in touch.’
‘And you won’t forget the cavalry?’
‘Not if the moment is appropriate.’
‘God speed, Christopher. I have to hope, of course, that you’re wrong, and it’s a chase after wild geese. If you’re right, we face a situation that is quite appalling in its implications, but you know that. Good to have met you, Luke.’
Lawson hadn’t waited. Was gone out through the door, and his long stride already crossed the outer office. As he turned to close that door after him, Davies saw the director general staring out of the plate-glass – might have been examining the city skyline and the great public buildings, might have been thinking of the ‘quite appalling’ implications. He could have sworn it, with a hand on the Bible, that the mouth moved and said silently: He’s what we have. Davies had entered new territory, was beyond his experience.
He closed the door, hurried after Lawson. He thought the Good Old Days had returned and that the bastard revelled in their resurrection. And the bastard had a plaything to toy with, an undercover to manipulate. He fell in, a pace behind, as they went to the lift, and instructions were given him about a meeting.
They had left early, as the dawn was coming up.
They were gone, without breakfast, from Kolomna. The schedule for the day, as laid down by Igor Molenkov, called for them to cover a hundred and sixty kilometres, and their destination was the town of Kaluga. He had reckoned they would achieve only a short leg because the route he had mapped was on the side roads south of the Oka river, which were too narrow to permit the Polonez to pass a tractor and trailer, or a horse and a cart, without risking going on to the grass verges. They were overgrown with dead grass and weeds that might hide a drainage ditch. There were many potholes in the road, but he could not fault the care his friend took in avoiding them.
It was nearly an hour since they had slipped away from the hotel, retrieved the Polonez from the lock-up car park. They had not seen a police patrol, but there had been tension in the car. A BMW, new, 3 series, with metallic silver paint, would belong to an individual of status in that town. The damage caused in an accident would have been reported, and the subsequent flight of the perpetrators. Molenkov had the map across his knee. Beside him, his friend hummed a tune, again and again, but he did not recognize it.
The countryside was flat, dull, unremarkable. There were small farm settlements, wooden homes from which smoke belched, and little yards beside them in which cattle or pigs were corralled. There were birch forests, and the open fields between them were not yet ploughed. And it rained, always, and the river, when they saw it, was high, near to breaking its banks. He noted on the map that three kilometres ahead was the big junction where the back road they used crossed under the meeting point of the M6 road from Volgograd to Moscow and the M4 that ran to Moscow from Rostov-on-Don, two great roads merging.
At the end of that day, wherever they slept and midnight chimed on a municipal clock, it would be his son’s birthday. Sasha, had he not burned to death inside the hull of a tank, would have celebrated his forty-first birthday; would have been a man of middle age, in all likelihood would have had a family, receding hair and a paunch; would have been his father’s confidant. His son had been snatched from him, a forgotten statistic in the folly of a conflict far from home. There had been no coffin shipped first to Dushanbe and the base over the frontier from that shithole place and that shit war. No commander had had the time to retrieve burned bacon from a wrecked tank in an ambush site. It would have been bulldozed off the road and abandoned. His son’s body would have been left to crows, rats and the scavenging bandits who had taken his life. Because of his son’s one great friendship, with the younger Viktor, he had gone with his friend to a hotel in Sarov in the early hours of a winter morning.
More thoughts cavorted in his mind, and he barely saw the great overpass constructions where the M4 and the M6 came together. Saw instead the shock on the one-time State Security official’s face when he was told of merchandise for sale. Recalled the handing over of two mobile phones. Remembered the code that he had been told for when the first phone was used, before it was to be thrown far out into the river than ran through Sarov. It had come – ###****51332365 – and two old fools, forgetful, trembling with excitement, had deciphered it: ### was confirmation that a deal was accepted, and each asterisk represented a quarter of a million American dollars, which would be paid them on delivery, and the numbers were a grid reference, longitude east and latitude north, where the delivery should be made. That phone was in the river, the second phone – also discarded – had made the one call and given their date of departure. They went under the great roads that carried traffic from the south and southeast on into Moscow. Lorries thundered above. He saw the wry smile on his friend’s face and grimaced because he had forgotten to give the direction. Yashkin punched him. They went past a parked patrol car. Yashkin, peering over his wheel, read the signs and avoided being transported to Moscow, in a roaring traffic line from which there was no escape, or to Rostov or Volgograd. He heard the siren, and his dreaming ended.
He looked behind, but the view from the central mirror was blocked by the shape hidden under the tarpaulin. He leaned forward, saw the flash of blue lights in the wing mirror and heard the siren. He said, a hiss, ‘Fuck.’
Beside him: ‘What?’
Exasperation. ‘Are you deaf? Can’t you hear?’
A shrug. ‘I’m old.
What should I hear?’
Molenkov wound down his window, felt the rain spatter on his face.
‘Now you hear it?’
‘We broke no speed restrictions.’
‘We broke, friend, the tail end of a fine BMW car.’
‘What to do?’
It closed on them. The siren screamed, the lights blazed. It was a new saloon, and could have outrun them, probably on three fucking wheels. Molenkov swore again. He noted the reaction, immediate, of Oleg Yashkin: foot on the accelerator, chin closer to the wheel, forehead nearer to the windscreen. For what? Futile. The police vehicle came up beside them, bucked on the verge, then was spewing back mud and rainwater from its tyres and was past them. No contest. He had seen two grinning faces under wide peaked caps, and a hand had gestured for them to pull over. Just a scrape of paint off a fucking BMW, and a broken tail-light or two. What exercised the mind of Colonel (Ret’d) Igor Molenkov, as the police vehicle slowed in front and blocked them, was the item covered with an old tarpaulin behind him. He reached back. Old ways died hard and old lessons stayed learned. He groped in the side pocket of his bag, found what he needed, set his face – and thought he looked at a half-share of a million American dollars, or the rest of his life in a strict-regime penal camp.
He said, ‘Stop the car, and don’t open your mouth.’
Defiance. ‘I can ram them.’
‘Stop the car – for once do as I fucking say – and don’t open your mouth.’
He was pitched forward, almost lost them, but the safety-pin mounted on them caught his trousers. He pinned them to his chest. The Polonez stopped. It was the only tactic he could think of using.
They came out of the police car. The bigger man had a cigarette hooked to his lips, at the side of his mouth, and the buttons of his uniform shirt were undone. The smaller man, younger, had his tie loosened and was lighting a cigarette. Both wore side arms in holsters. They sauntered. On Molenkov’s chest, hidden by his arm, were three rows of medals, mounted on a plastic frame. He saw the smirks on their faces. They came to the window, his side, and ash from the bigger officer’s cigarette fell on to the Polonez’s bonnet.
He heard a practised routine: ‘You were speeding.’
And, ‘In a restricted zone you were exceeding the limit.’
‘Without the payment of a spot fine, you are liable to arrest.’
He understood the procedures of extortion. His arm still concealed the medals because he was not yet ready to display them. Neither officer had in his hand the official notepad from which a receipt could be given in return for the payment of a fine. He wondered if they were near the end of their shift. The bigger man’s cigarette was now ground out on the bonnet. The younger man blew smoke into Molenkov’s face.
‘What are you carrying, old man?’
‘Open the boot. Show us what you have there.’
He climbed out of the car and snapped upright. At full height, with the rain falling lightly on him, his shoulders back and his medals now in their faces, he surveyed them. The medals glinted. Anyone of a colonel’s rank had three rows – a medal for long service, short service, passing promotion exams, taking part in Kremlin parades, party membership, for wiping his arse with his left hand, first class, and wiping his arse with his right hand, second class, for staying alive – and they rattled as he confronted them.
He spat, ‘You are a disgrace.’
The smirks faded.
‘A disgrace to your uniform and your country. You are criminals.’
He forgot his situation, relived his past. ‘You are khuligany, the scum that steal from kiosk-owners.’
Two sets of clenched fists, then the hands went into the pockets.
‘You think that I, with my service, do not know the senior officers responsible for policing this oblast? Try me – and get your fucking hands out of your pockets.’
Hesitation creeping over them. The hands came out of the pockets, hung limp against the trousers.
‘Your appearance is shameful. You, your buttons, do them up.’
Eyes blinked, then dropped.
And again, with cold contempt: ‘Do them up.’
Fingers at buttons.
‘And you, your tie. Are you a police officer, serving society, or are you a gypsy thief? It is for the neck, not the navel.’
The knot of the tie was raised.
‘Your shirt is filthy. I would not have my dog sleep on it. Stand straight when I address you!’
They stiffened, stood taller. The bigger officer dragged in his belly and his lip quivered.
‘I have given a lifetime of service to Russia. My son gave his life for Russia, and my friend’s father died for Russia to make a place safe for shites like you to steal and besmirch the honour of the police. Put that cigarette out.’
It was dropped and burned out in the rainwater.
‘Now your vehicle. What state is your vehicle in? Don’t shuffle!’
He led them to the patrol car. There were sandwich wrappers, drinks cans and discarded cigarette packets in the two foot wells, and magazines across the back seat.
‘You go to work like that? You shame the whole of your force. You shame your uniform and your profession. Have I worked to preserve the safety of crap like you? Get that car clean.’
They did. Rubbish filled a plastic bag. When it was nearly done, Molenkov ordered that the patrol car be moved on to the grass verge, but his prayer for a ditch went unanswered. It was moved. He made a small gesture, hidden to them, and Yashkin started the Polonez. He climbed in beside his friend and shouted through the window that they should, both of them, consider themselves fortunate that he would not report them in person to his friend, a senior police official in the municipality of Kolomna. The two policemen stood stiffly at attention as they passed … and the breath sighed out of Igor Molenkov’s throat. All bluff, nothing but bluff, and if bluff was called … Yashkin gripped his arm.
‘I have seen everything. They saluted. Really. They were kids on parade, and they saluted as we drove away. I think they expressed gratitude that you will not report them.’
They laughed. Not mirth, not amusement, but hysterical cackling. They laughed without control, veering right and left on the road, then back again, and Molenkov buried his head in Yashkin’s chest, and had to be pushed away so that his friend could steer.
Yashkin said, ‘You were supreme. If ever I doubted we would get to the Bug, the doubt is gone. Nothing can stop us, nothing and no one.’
They sat in a horseshoe round Christopher Lawson, who had the bench, and listened, while a brisk wind whipped them. ‘What you have to understand, gentlemen, is that disparate personalities are called together, and have only one common character defect. They will arrive on the scene of events from many directions that appear to have no link. It is the defect that governs them. All harbour a grievance against their society. Now it rules them. No love, no loyalty is permitted to gain supremacy over the grievance. I offer up a supposition – and I do not idly “suppose”. A warhead from the arsenal at what was once Arzamas-16 is being transported out of Russian territory. A further supposition. It will be bought, or has already been purchased, by criminal elements. More supposition. It will be sold on to those who wish to detonate the warhead. I believe in supposition. Without doubt, a clear and unmistakable danger exists, has many arms, but all of the participants are chained together by the factor of grievance. Find the origins of the grievances and we will find the men. We stun the beast, then stand with a boot on its throat and cut off its head. So, gentlemen, lady, welcome to Haystack, and I will do the introductions.’
Including Katie, there were eight of them. Luke Davies sat at Lawson’s side on a folded edition of a morning paper to keep the mud off his backside. They were on the Embankment, beyond the VBX perimeter. His people, on Russia Desk, would have done the presentation in a darkened auditorium, with maps projected on to a screen and photographs. He had suggested one of those small rooms on the ground floor, where inc
rements were permitted to go under escort, and where the equipment was permanently stored, but the glance had been steely, enough to state that it would be done Lawson’s way, tried and tested disciplines, as in the old days. In the open, Davies understood the thinking, there could be no hidden microphones in walls or ceiling, no hostages given if an inquest was called for.
‘Names first. I am, don’t know why, G for Golf. My young colleague is D for Delta. We have a cuckoo in our midst, foisted on us, but whom we will attempt to welcome, so she will be C for Charlie: you will remember she is not one of us. Our man, of whom we expect great things, is N for November. The targets, the opposition, will be allocated numbers as appropriate. Target One is Josef Goldmann, and so to the rest of you. I gather the names are baggage picked up over the years. We’ll start with Bugsy.’
He was a dapper little man, tidy in appearance, and all that was remarkable about him was the size of his spectacles, the thick weight of the lenses across the bridge of the nose. He was squatted on the grass and seemed hardly to have heard Lawson’s words.
‘He does the electronics, and has been in my teams since he left college. My advice to the rest of you is never to complain of foreign food, or you’ll start him off and wish you hadn’t. He’ll also bore you half to death on the subject of racing pigeons. He will do visual and audio surveillance, bugs and tags, and if November ever gets to wearing a wire it will be under the guidance of Bugsy. Then it’s Adrian and Dennis.’
They sat on the railings with their backs to the river. One would have been late forties and the other was early fifties. They were so similar, could have come from any high-street shopping precinct, any football crowd or any business conference for low-level management. In every respect, they were average – average height, average weight, average build – were dressed in the average clothes that men of their age wore. They sat close, as if they were a partnership.
Timebomb : A Thriller (9781468300093) Page 15
