Timebomb : A Thriller (9781468300093)

by Seymour, Gerald

  Their feet crunched on broken glass, and once his Bossman slipped on the corridor floor. Carrick thought he might have stepped in a dosser’s shit, or a dog’s.

  They went through a door hanging crazily and on to the floor space that had once been a factory with machinery, all stripped out. More rain came down from the high roof’s skylights, spattered and bounced. Must have been the noise they made, but when they were in the middle of the open space there was a shout that echoed in the emptiness. His Bossman turned towards it.

  A partition of wood sections was in front of Carrick. The shout came again. His Bossman looked behind him, seemed to bite his lip, then headed towards it. At the end of the partition, Mikhail waited for them. He stood in front of Josef Goldmann, made him check his step then pointed to the side. The eyes glistened, were on Carrick, and he gestured behind him. A chair was in the centre of the space.

  There was no exit route. The chair was screwed to the concrete floor and had thick, strong arms. It was like the one his grandfather had had in the dining room where the family had eaten only on Sundays after morning worship, but his grandfather’s carver did not have leather straps with buckles nailed to the arms. There were dried stains at the feet of the chair that had not been scrubbed away. Mikhail gestured for Carrick to go to the chair. He saw a table with a cordless drill on it, and a small chain-saw half under it.

  Reuven Weissberg sat close to the table and Josef Goldmann went to him. Carrick saw that the light, life and blood had gone from his Bossman’s cheeks.

  He stood in front of the chair, Mikhail before him. Carrick saw a wart on the right side of his nose, a scar on his cheek, and all the places where acne scabs had left craters. He smelled the man’s breath and thought Mikhail had eaten strong salami not an hour before. His arms were yanked out, and Mikhail’s foot went between his legs to kick them a little further apart. He was frisked. Thick muscular fingers were under his arms and at the small of his back, the waist of his trousers, fingering the stitching, and down to the crotch, pushing up into Carrick’s groin. It was as good a search for a wire as would have been done by police. There was no wire, no microphone, no recorder or transmitter, no battery pack for him to find. Mikhail stepped back and motioned for Carrick to sit.

  Carrick did not sit.

  It had been what they called in SCD10 a ‘dust-down’. The instructors preached that any undercover must expect to be searched for a wire, and they taught a response. The response was hammered at recruits.

  There was a moment when surprise clouded Mikhail’s face, and he tried to push Carrick into the chair. His fist brushed Carrick’s chest.

  No exit route. No way to call for back-up. Carrick took a half-step forward, fast and sudden.

  Reuven Weissberg saw the blur of movement and the shock spreading on Mikhail’s face. Saw it, and enjoyed it. Two fighting cocks put against each other, or two starved rats, and good sport – except that the matter was more important than play-acting.

  Carrick yanked Mikhail’s arms up, turned him, shoved him against the partition wall, then kicked his legs apart. Reuven understood. ‘I permit it,’ he called.

  The man, Carrick, he had been told, was a former soldier. He thought the turning of Mikhail, his bodyguard, was done in the military fashion. He wondered when, last, Mikhail had been subjected to a body search, fingers into the groin and armpits. The weapon was taken, Mikhail’s pistol, from the shoulder holster, checked, cleared, then thrown – as if casually – towards him. Reuven caught it.

  He did not know about a dust-down as a response to suspicion.

  It was brilliant, theatre. He put the Makharov pistol on the table. The man, Carrick, had searched Mikhail for a wire as if he, too, threatened as an infiltrator … Incredible. Carrick nodded as if satisfied, went to the chair and sat, but Reuven noticed that his knuckles whitened as his fingers gripped the chair’s arms. Mikhail had demanded it, Viktor had supported Mikhail. Josef Goldmann, the launderer, had backed away from involvement. Should have had a fucking opinion. Josef Goldmann had brought the man.

  Reuven turned to him now. ‘Speak for him.’

  He despised Josef Goldmann. Reuven thought he provided a service but had never taken a strategic decision, was merely there, a lapdog at his heel. He ordered Goldmann to repeat the story.

  He despised Josef Goldmann because he had admitted his debt but only vaguely stood in the corner for his man. He should have raged at the insult to his own judgement that his saviour was treated in this way, an object of suspicion. Reuven sat back. This was work for the men who had been with him since the early days of building roofs in Perm. Fifteen years before, he himself had led the one-time hard men recruited from State Security, and they had followed. For Reuven Weissberg, they went down into the gutter.

  Questions came.

  How had Carrick been approached?

  What had Carrick done before the approach?

  Why had he chosen to work for Josef Goldmann?

  Tricks thrown into the game. Who did Carrick report to? How often did he report? Tricks mingled with questions … It was difficult for Reuven to understand the English-language questions posed by Mikhail, some with aggression and some soft-spoken, but he was less interested in the answers than in the face of the man who sat in the chair.

  When had he left the military? How long between leaving the military and his first work as a bodyguard? How many employers? How much did the employers pay him? Viktor scribbled the answers. He would be on the telephone to Grigori, giving him details for checking. How often had he seen Simon Rawlings before the suggestion of work was made? How often had he met the contact? How much did he know of the business dealings of Josef Goldmann? He did not see a mistake made, or recognize evasion – but it was early.

  Carrick was told to produce his mobile phone. He did so, and Mikhail passed it to Viktor. Questions, most of them repetitive, were asked as Viktor hit the keys and opened the memory. Answers, all repetitive, were offered. Reuven was interested that the man, Carrick, used statements of few words to explain himself. Did not ramble, did not say in four ways what could be said in one, offered minimal explanation. Viktor leaned towards him and whispered that no calls had been made on the mobile since Carrick had reached Berlin, and no calls had been received.

  But it was early. A cordless drill lay on the table and a chain-saw underneath it.

  ‘You are too convenient. You came too easily. You do not explain it.’

  ‘I have explained it.’

  ‘What to you is Josef Goldmann?’

  ‘My employer.’

  ‘To die for?’

  ‘Do what I am paid to do.’

  ‘And report to a senior officer? How many times?’

  ‘You’re talking shit. You know nothing.’

  ‘How often did you meet your controller?’

  ‘You were a policeman once?’

  Reuven saw Mikhail flinch. ‘I ask—’

  ‘You were a crap policeman. We had interrogators in Iraq and you wouldn’t even have made a junior.’

  Mikhail spat, ‘You are the angel when someone steps off the street and supposedly attacks Josef Goldmann, and you have the chance to shine … That was convenient. Yes?’

  ‘Never been in a combat situation? No? Well, you wouldn’t know, would you, how a man reacts? Too fucking ignorant.’

  ‘The story, I tell you, is too good.’

  ‘Ask Mr Goldmann. He was there and you were not.’

  ‘And the angel – what we have to believe – is prepared to give his life for a man who is a stranger to him. Why? Why?’

  Viktor had been close to Reuven. He moved now, edged away and stayed close to the partition wall, moved cat-quiet to be behind the chair, was poised to strike … and Josef Goldmann did not speak up for his man.

  The answer was quiet. ‘If you had been in combat you would know, but you haven’t so you do not.’

  Reuven thought the man, Carrick, had not made a mistake, but still it was early. It intereste
d him that the man hit back, was not intimidated – should have been if the suspicion was justified.

  Molenkov asked the question that had circled in his mind since they had driven from the garage. ‘What’s it for?

  Beside him, Yashkin frowned, ‘What’s what for?’

  ‘We take the thing, sell it, we—’

  ‘You can speak the thing’s name – it doesn’t bite. A Zhukov, as you know, is a Small Atomic Demolition Munition. It has a serial number of RA-114. It is, for the moment, benign. You can talk about it.’

  ‘You always interrupt me. I was thinking aloud. I—’

  ‘You were rambling like an old fool. I repeat, “What’s what for?” Tell me.’

  The one-time political officer had been able to allow his thoughts to flow freely because the engine of the Polonez ran sweetly. Their wallets were half empty but he fancied the car had received a better and more thorough working-over than it had had for ten or fifteen years. Flat countryside slipped behind them, with little to engage him – less to compete with burdens that seemed to flourish like a virus in his mind – nagging and unwelcome.

  He stumbled through what he had to say. ‘We’re paid, that’s the deal – it was agreed. We get paid and—’

  ‘We get paid a million American dollars. We divide a million American dollars into two equal parts. The story ends.’

  ‘Security officials are always arrogant. They interrupt.’

  ‘And a zampolit? Is a political officer not arrogant? The most unpopular and disliked individual in a camp is a zampolit. True or false? True.’

  ‘I concede. I don’t want to fight. There are two unpopular and disliked individuals in a camp. You were one and I was the other. Nobody loved us, and we didn’t care. It’s ridiculous for us to bicker … What’s it for?’

  It was, of course, long gone. He could think, sometimes, of who Colonel Igor Molenkov had been. If a call came for an official, a scientist or manager to attend at a specified hour the office of the zampolit, any man, however senior, sweated, fidgeted, lost sleep and went over in painstaking detail what he had said to whom in an unguarded moment, in an aside with sarcasm – and had that individual reported him? His only friend had been the security officer who had had the same power to destabilize a man’s confidence: a quiet remark in a canteen about documents rated classified having been taken out of the secure zones could reduce anyone working at Arzamas-16 to a trembling wreck. But they had no power now.

  ‘What’s what for?’

  ‘My friend, you don’t make it easy for me.’

  ‘Beat my ear, why don’t you? And warn me of the right turning at Trubcevsk, and the road for Pogar. I’m listening.’

  Molenkov breathed hard. ‘A half-share of a million American dollars, what’s it for?’

  No answer.

  Again, Molenkov tried. ‘What will I do with a half-share of a million American dollars? Is it for a tin under the bed? Is it for an apartment in Cannes or Nice, or on the Black Sea? Is it for hoarding or spending?’

  Yashkin kept to the centre of a straight and narrow road, lips pursed, forehead knotted, but did not respond.

  ‘I am now sustained by anger,’ Molenkov said, ‘bred by what was done to me. Dismissal. My pension paid only erratically. My status taken. Cold to freezing in the winter because of the cost of fuel, hungry throughout the year because I have to scavenge in the street market for the cheapest food. All around me is corruption, an anarchy of criminality, the disease of Aids and the affliction of narcotics … and so, my friend, what will I do with a half-share of a million American dollars?’

  Past sodden fields, and a river about to burst its banks, past dripping forestry, the horizon short, misted by low cloud.

  ‘We talk about it, make jokes, and dream of the apartment in Sochi or above the Mediterranean, and the wealth that comes from the sale of it … My friend, would you leave Sarov? Your wife wants her remaining years to be spent close to the monastery, to be in the quiet company of St Seraphim. She’ll want to sweep the floors there and bring flowers, meditate on the story of his sainthood, when the thieves beat and crippled him , when he argued before the court that mercy be shown them. She would wish to be in Sarov to celebrate the day of his birth and the anniversary of his canonization. Not important to you or me, my friend, but she won’t go with you. Will you abandon her? Will you take the money, drive back to Sarov and put the money in a tin? Spend it slowly for fear of attention being attracted to new-found and unsubstantiated wealth? I ask you, what’s it for?’

  Yashkin said, ‘I think we’re close to the turning. The next village is Trubchevsk, and I think the road to Pogar will be off the main street.’

  ‘Can’t you answer me?’ With growing desperation, Molenkov hurled the question at Yashkin. ‘Or won’t you?’

  Yashkin said, in a flat monotone, ‘It’s important we don’t miss the turning at Trubchevsk or we’ll have to go many kilometres off our route.’

  Molenkov said, ‘Tell me, because I want to hear again, how you took the thing out.’

  He was told. The detail never changed. A dozen times in the two months since Viktor, the friend of his dead son, had come to Sarov, Yashkin had told him the story. All bullshit, bluff and the authority of rank, the creaking cart, the grunts of conscripts and the salutes of the sentries. He had to laugh.

  Molenkov said, ‘Today, surely, it wouldn’t be possible to get one out.’

  Yashkin said, ‘Then there was a window, and it was wide open. I assume now that it’s closed. Then, as I did, you could walk through it.’

  That day, at that hour, an American general of the Strategic Command was the guest of a Russian general of the 12th Directorate. His tour was of the storage zones and silos at the Federal Nuclear Centre outside Sarov in the Nizhny Novgorod oblast. The American regarded himself as a trusted friend of the Russian and had escorted his opposite number to missile installations in the Midwest of the United States. As military men of experience, they talked a similar language. A coffee break had been called, and an opportunity for a comfort stop. The American used the time to speak quietly into the portable Dictaphone he carried, the better to remember his thoughts when it came to writing up a report that would be studied by a congressional committee.

  It was a whisper. ‘I believe old suspicions and anxieties about security at Sarov are now groundless … I have seen, in an action exercise, Special Forces troops who are now deployed on the base perimeters, and they were working with gunship choppers. They are élite troops, well motivated and well paid … Old stories of scientific personnel taking to the streets in demonstrations and, in effect, striking on the grounds of non-payment of wages are surely a matter of the past. I have been shown sections of outer and inner fencing around the storage zones, which are fitted with high-technology security sensors donated by the US and identical to those in place at our Los Alamos installation, New Mex, and I am assured that minor thefts of equipment and material are now blocked. One silo for nuclear warheads in storage was opened for me. It was behind two steel-reinforced doors, which were sufficient to withstand any conventional or nuclear bomb blast. I am informed that the military of the 12th Directorate have a good handle on the personnel in sensitive positions, and they’re thoroughly vetted. Conclusions on the visit here: Sarov is in the hands of serious, high-quality people. I do not believe leakage is possible, and it is denied with emphasis that any such leakage of warheads or materials took place in the past.’

  ‘This is it. Go right. This is the Trubchevsk turning,’ Molenkov said.

  Yashkin thanked him. His friend had said the previous day that he promised to try not to talk of the thing, but might not honour his promise … and in the centre of that community, where no signpost stood, he swung the wheel and turned right.

  Could the man not stop talking?

  Molenkov asked, ‘Where, friend, will it be hardest?’

  Yashkin answered, ‘At the border. We cross it tomorrow. Molenkov, do you talk to hear your own voic
e when you’re frightened, or because of the profundity of your opinion? Tomorrow we face a challenging difficulty. Tomorrow we cross the border. Don’t ask me what’s at the border on our side or on the Belarus side because I don’t know. I have no knowledge of the equipment there. If there’s equipment for detection I don’t know how sophisticated or sensitive it is. Please, my friend, can we just drive?’

  ‘After the border we have five hundred more kilometres to go. How will you feel then?’

  ‘Excellent. We’re going to the river where we’ll meet your Viktor’s employer. I think him to be a man, at his trade, of ability.’

  ‘He’s criminal scum, no more or less. However, he’ll be carrying a million American dollars.’

  ‘My knowledge of such people – obviously limited – tells me he’ll be careful, and all the people with him. The border is the difficulty, not people who are careful with their security. Molenkov, please, give me some fucking quiet. Such people understand security in a way that I never – and I don’t hesitate to admit it – did.’

  Viktor had him by the throat, but that was Viktor’s second movement.

  Mikhail had given the signal, and Viktor’s first movement had been to a wrist, then to the straps and his fingers had wrestled the buckle into place. Mikhail had fastened the other wrist to the chair arm. He had long missed Viktor, his old friend and fighting companion. It had been a bad day when Viktor was ordered to London.

  He had the chain-saw started. Fumes in his nostrils. It had taken four pulls to wake the engine and he had revved it so that the chain raced on the cogs. Now the saw was near the Englishman’s feet, but out of reach of his kicks. It idled and spluttered. Mostly the chain-saw was for show, and he didn’t like using it because of the blood it threw into his face, but he had used it when he thought it necessary in Perm, Moscow and in Berlin.