Timebomb : A Thriller (9781468300093)

by Seymour, Gerald

  Lawson had returned, chewing chocolate, and didn’t offer him a piece. Shrinks and Bugsy were in the minibus.

  ‘What, in your wisdom, have you decided?’

  Damned if he was going to lie down. He wasn’t a bloody mongrel with a stomach for scratching. ‘This is where it will happen, if anything happens.’

  ‘That’s your considered opinion?’

  ‘It is. I don’t have, Mr Lawson, the rank or the authority to countermand you – if I did, I would – so I have to plan on the basis that we don’t have the help of the Polish agencies. Personally, I would think it could only be beneficial to be alongside the Agencja Bezpieczenstwa Wewnetrznego in this situation.’

  It rather pleased Luke Davies that he could reel off the name of the Polish counter-intelligence set-up, not have to rely on the initials, but Lawson gave him no encouragement, was impassive.

  ‘Yes, the ABW would give us additional surveillance capacity, and firepower, and would enable the area to be sanitized. The way you’re doing it, Mr Lawson, we could be in place, we could have an eyeball, and a hundred and one unforeseens could create a foul-up and we’ve lost it, whatever it is. Don’t, please, have any misplaced ideas of me thrusting myself forward and taking flak when it’s your responsibility. Then you’ll be on your own and I’ll be cheering from the sidelines. Don’t say I haven’t fronted up with you, Mr Lawson.’

  ‘Put it all in your report at the end, young man, and I’m sure it’ll receive due attention.’

  He saw Lawson walk away and the fist crumpled the chocolate wrapper. The paper was taken to an overflowing bin and laid on top of the rubbish. Lawson had walked through what was almost a dense carpet of cigarette packets, dog ends, empty crisps bags and other junk. Davies thought it the gesture of pomposity. His temper was rising, and his inability to rouse reaction hurt him.

  ‘And another thing. I heard what Shrinks said. He talked about the syndrome. I spoke to him about it. A victim of the syndrome will need aftercare, maybe hospitalization and certainly counselling. He will be traumatized and potentially scarred. It’s down to you, Mr Lawson. You’ve thrown our man, November, into the arms of a psychopathic criminal. That, too, will be in my report.’

  ‘It’ll be a weighty volume.’

  He could have hit the man. Luke Davies could have clenched his fist, swung it back and punched his full weight quite happily and he was breathing hard, towards hyperventilation. No, no, damned if he’d lose his career for this priggish, vain old man.

  He heard Lawson say to Bugsy, at the driver’s window of the minibus, ‘I think young Davies has concluded his comprehensive reconnaissance, so it’ll be safe to leave this place. It’s totally irrelevant as a location, but he’s been humoured.’

  The engine started. Lawson had taken his place on the wide back seat. A door was left open for Davies. He stamped to it. He didn’t understand where, if not here, a contraband package of the size of a warhead – if it existed – could be brought across.

  Mikhail had a GPS wedged between his legs. It bucked when his feet moved on the pedals. With gum, he had stuck a scrap of paper on to the dashboard at the base of the wheel, but the characters scrawled on it were in Cyrillic. Carrick couldn’t read them. They were off the main road.

  The track was deep-rutted, sandy soil. Trees pressed close to it, broken only occasionally by small fields in which the grass had no goodness. Carrick thought the snow had thawed only days earlier. Small houses were in the trees or at the fields’ edges, and there was a cross of white-painted stone with its arms broken off. The wide nests of storks were on high poles.

  He had seen lakes on the left side, wide and rippled by the wind. Reuven Weissberg had not spoken. Neither had Mikhail.

  Carrick could see a wide expanse of water through ranks of birch trees that sloped down to it. Mikhail passed the GPS back over his shoulder, then the paper with the numbers. Carrick understood. The numbers were longitude and latitude co-ordinates, and now they matched the GPS reading. An oath was spat behind him. Doors snapped open.

  They tripped down the slope, swerving between the trees, and reached the water’s edge. Carrick was not called and hung back. Josef Goldmann and Viktor came to him. Carrick swung to face them and saw Josef Goldmann shake his head slowly and sadly, as if it was a moment of defeat, and Viktor grimaced as if to indicate that the problem was not his, or the solving of it. The water stretched away, and Carrick saw the tops of fence posts jutting up, and on the far side of the water a dense tree line and in it a place of bright colour. He squinted to see the source better. There was a red post. He understood more.

  He understood about rain, about floodwater rising over fields, about frontier markers, about co-ordinates given for a meeting-place.

  Carrick would go to Reuven Weissberg when he was called, not otherwise. Understood that they had not taken cognizance of the flood-waters rising in Ukraine and filling the Bug river far beyond its capacity. He heard Reuven Weissberg’s howl. The volleys of his swearing seemed to bounce away over the water as if flat stones were thrown and skipped. Beside Carrick, in his good coat, Josef Goldmann sat on wet sand and leaves, and held his head in his hands.

  Carrick walked away, stepped carefully over the loose, sodden ground, and took a place among the trees. He’d thought that the banks were steeper less than a quarter of a mile from where he was, and that where the banks were steeper the river was deeper, faster and better confined.

  Storks came upstream, flew prettily with a slow wingbeat, but they veered off when confronted with the oaths, blasphemies, obscenities of Reuven Weissberg.

  He had a large-scale map of the place. The Crow had driven his hire car south-east from Hamburg and he was out in the depths of the Lüneburger Heide. The instructions given him had guided him to a point north of the town of Münster and west of Ebstorf. He turned into a car park.

  There were the skeleton frames of swings and kids’ slides ahead of him, and near the entrance to the car park was a wooden-faced toilet block. Just beyond the gravel-stopping area a rail prevented vehicles going further. One car was there, its interior light on, engine running, fumes billowing from its exhaust, but the toilets were padlocked and the play area was deserted.

  His headlights moved on the swings and slides, the toilet block, flitted over the expanse of gorse and bracken and caught the bare branches of birches at the end of their reach. Then they came to rest on the other car. The Crow’s lights had no power because the late afternoon was not yet evening, and he had only a marginal glimpse of the man in the driving seat. He thought he was young, cleanshaven, with neatly cut hair, but it was only an impression. He came to a stop about twenty-five metres from the other car but on the same side of the parking area, and switched off his engine.

  The quiet fell on him.

  He knew little of quiet. The greater part of the Crow’s life was lived among the deafening action of major construction sites. To be heard above the roar of dumper trucks, excavators, bulldozers, pile hammers driving down foundation columns, it was usual for him to shout and for that harsh voice to resonate; his voice was heard throughout the big building developments of the Gulf. When he went to Pakistan, to the crowded towns and cities of the North-West Frontier, it was his habit to hold his meetings and exchange information in the noisiest, most crowded bazaars. He was at home in noise, bustle and confusion. He moved on the car seat to ease a slight stiffness, and the squeak of the springs rang in the interior. So quiet … He wound down the window. More quiet flooded round him.

  He had no photograph and no name. The Crow knew only that the man was from the subcontinent, had no facial hair and was in his early thirties. He had been given a sentence to start, and the contact would complete it.

  He strained to hear, but there was only the low purr of the car’s engine along that side of the parking area. They could be in the gorse, or the bracken, or in the dunes where the birches grew, or behind the toilet shed. They might have weapons, high-velocity sniper rifles and low-veloci
ty machine pistols, trained on the two cars. He approached, and knew a moment of maximum danger. He knew of no operative – as experienced as himself, or as inexperienced as he expected the contact to be – who did not dread the ‘cold’ meeting with a stranger. Then the chance of compromise was greatest, and of ambush, arrest and the nightmare of interrogation. It must be done. His heart pounded. The Crow was a survivor, long term with the Organization, had adapted from the disciplines of the old central authority of the sheikh and his inner circle and taken on the broken cellular system with cut-outs and fire-walls. But he felt the hammering tension in his chest as he opened the car door.

  Cold wind hit him. Rain specked his cheeks. He shivered. He wondered if they watched him and if they had guns aimed on him.

  He walked towards the other car, and the light around him was fast fading.

  The window was lowered.

  The Crow spoke in Arabic: ‘Where was the cave in which Gabriel appeared to the Prophet …?’

  He said what he had been told to say, said it exactly in the Arabic that was so foreign to him. ‘The cave in which Gabriel appeared to the Prophet was in the mountain of Hira that is near to the holy city of Mecca.’

  Sak hoped he had pronounced it correctly. He had rehearsed it endlessly while he sat in the car in the parking area on the heath.

  He saw a man with lined skin, thin lips and scars on his face. The hands extended to him were rough, calloused. Sak had thought that the man he would meet, who held seniority, would have the appearance of a scholar, an intellectual, a thinker and a hero. His fingers were crushed briefly in the fists of a labourer – and the voice was frightening. The words had been croaked at him.

  He had waited for three hours, had agonized at the isolation of the heathland. No children had come to play here, no hikers or dog-walkers, and the fears in his mind had multiplied like bad dreams. They had stacked up, one after another. His fingers were loosed. Three hours … The man turned away. Three hours, and the contact moment, already, was broken.

  ‘Please, what should happen?’

  ‘We rest, we wait.’ The man spoke over his shoulder. ‘We wait until they come.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘They make their collection in the morning before dawn. They should be here at the end of tomorrow, but perhaps before.’

  It was said like a dismissal, but Sak pressed: ‘For the night, do I come to your car? Do you come to mine?’

  The man had not turned. ‘And you see my face better, you hear my voice better, I see your face and hear your voice? No … And we have no names, no life histories. We work and we part.’

  Sak felt as if he had been kicked. The man went to his car, reached on to the back seat and lifted clear a big plastic bag, well weighted. When he returned to Sak he had adjusted his headscarf so that his cheeks and mouth were obscured. The bag was dropped through the window on to Sak’s lap.

  He was abandoned. Often he would look across the empty space at the other car, but he never saw movement in it before the dusk thickened. He sat in the car, trembled and thought that, at last, the war he had been recruited to was real, touchable. He held the package close but didn’t open it.

  They were out on their feet, Deadeye had reckoned, but they’d done well. Now Adrian and Dennis would be in the car, one sprawled out across the back seat, the other wedged against the wheel, the handbrake and the gear lever, and they’d have crashed. They’d brought Deadeye to within a half-mile of the river. Beside the car he had slipped on his camouflage coat, then threaded sprigs and branches into the cloth slots. He wore a woven mask over his face. Deadeye had checked his appearance in the side mirror of the car and been happy. He’d gone forward.

  He’d recognized that limping walk.

  He’d seen the agent sidle away from the cars and the Russians, had recalled the little bastard he’d jumped on the step of a City of London office block, and had watched him move upstream, then settle and take a position against the base of a tree trunk. Deadeye had seen a kingfisher flash past, low over the water, a spark of colour in the gloom.

  Time to do the business.

  He did a long loop behind the agent. He would approach from the far side, away from the Russians and the main man, the target, who was still at the bank, but whose cursing was now sporadic, not on automatic. Far back in the trees, Deadeye walked quiet and easy on the balls of his feet. Coming closer, losing the dense cover and the darkness, he was bent double, minimizing the shape and silhouette of his head and torso. He tested each footfall and had the sensitivity in his toes, through his boots, to find dead branches that a sprinkling of old leaves might have covered. Shape and silhouette were important, but sound was as big on Deadeye’s check-list.

  When he was within fifty yards of the agent, Deadeye went down on his hands and knees. It would have been best to use the good old leopard crawl, but that would have disturbed too much of the detritus on the forest floor, and he’d have made a noise like a damn pig rooting. He still had the suppleness in his elbows, shoulders, pelvis and knees, good at his age, to match a crab’s advance, and his stomach was held at a constant couple of inches above the leaves and twigs beneath him. He couldn’t see the agent’s face, only the top of his arm and his kneecap.

  He had learned to survive off cold meals-ready-to-eat, to wrap his faeces in tinfoil, to defeat the interest of sheep, cattle and farmers’ dogs, to be a hidden creature on the move.

  He reached the agent, was behind him.

  ‘Don’t make a fracas, mate,’ Deadeye whispered.

  The head twisted, eyes raked him.

  ‘Don’t jump, shout. Keep still.’ He pulled the mask netting off his face. ‘That’s right, mate, nothing sudden and nothing loud … like nothing’s happening.’

  The package, light, narrow cloth straps and the box, which was the size of one for safety matches, had been snug in his pocket. He lifted it out.

  ‘Now, mate, without a fuss, swing yourself round a bit, body this side of the tree.’

  The agent did. Well, that was a shock for Deadeye. He’d seen the man at a distance – in Berlin, in Warsaw, in Chelm that morning and in Wlodawa that afternoon – but it was the first time he’d been up close to him since the pavement in the City. God, he’d bloody aged. ‘That’s good, mate. Now your coat off, easy movements, nothing sharp.’

  The agent had that haunted look in his eyes, a pallor on his skin, and the lines at his mouth were deeper set. Then the light was in the eyes, and they blazed.

  ‘Look, mate, I don’t have time to mess. Just get the coat off.’

  The straps and the box, the tracker beacon were in Deadeye’s hand. The eyes were on him, recognition knotting the forehead, but the fingers fumbled for the jacket fastenings.

  ‘You were, I saw you – you …’ A stammering voice.

  ‘I was, mate – doesn’t matter. That’s right, coat off and shirt open.’

  ‘In London, you were … The gun. You tried to—’

  ‘Nothing’s what it seems, mate. I didn’t try much. It was you did the action. Now, arms out.’

  He reached inside the shirt and started to thread the straps of the harness across the agent’s spine and over his shoulder.

  ‘You fired twice, you tried to kill …’

  ‘Easy. You gave me a bloody great kick in the goolies. Not black still, but bloody yellow.’

  ‘You fired twice. It was to murder—’

  ‘You know nothing, mate.’

  ‘Two bloody shots. I know about that.’

  Deadeye grinned. God, the agent was an innocent. He shifted him, worked the straps round the spine, then tightened them for the Velcro to grip. And when the agent shifted, Deadeye saw the pancake in the belt, and the butt of a handgun. God, the agent was an innocent and had gone native. Didn’t think Mr Lawson would like hearing that November had packed a weapon provided by the bad guys, wouldn’t like that at all.

  ‘That’s it, nice and steady, just fastening it up. You’ve led the survei
llance a fair old dance. They can’t keep it up, have to kip, so we need the tag on you. Very nice, good fit.’

  He eased his hands back. Didn’t like the handgun, and Mr Lawson wouldn’t … The harness was close to the agent’s vest, and he smelled – and Deadeye smelled. Probably they both smelled equal to well-hung ducks, or like the badgers’ carcasses that were tossed into the ditches alongside roads. He saw anger build in the eyes.

  Wasn’t for Deadeye to button up the shirt and refasten the jacket. ‘So, mate, that’s it. Oh, so’s you know, we’re all with you. It’s a good job you’re doing. Keep at it, mate.’

  The hiss in the voice. ‘You tried to kill my boss. You fired twice. He was dead if I hadn’t intervened. I could have taken a bullet. I was unarmed, my boss was – I reckoned it rivals, hoods, mafiya, not my people. Two men, defenceless … That makes you a right bloody coward.’

  ‘Dead? Ooh, yes. Coward? Right you are, mate. Great imagination.’ Those who knew him, had worked with him, didn’t regard Deadeye as chatty, thought of him as a man of few words, usually necessary ones. Not just Adrian and Dennis who were tired. Deadeye was too. Hadn’t slept properly in four nights, hadn’t slept at all in the last forty-something hours, and was pretty much at the end of his tether.

  ‘Imagination? The weapon discharged twice.’

  Deadeye had the agent’s shoulder in his fist. ‘That was blanks. Didn’t you know that? Thought you were a paratrooper. There was nothing real. Only thing real was the kick in my goolies, and the bruises. The worst the blanks could have done was singe you. It was to push you, give you the shove into their arms. It worked, just as the guv’nor said it would. Don’t call me a coward.’