No Further

by Andy Maslen

  Blacksmith

  WOOLWICH, SOUTHEAST LONDON

  The man who’d chosen the codename Blacksmith, and whom the police had named Rabbit, woke once more in a green-painted cell that smelled of disinfectant and beneath that, the sharp tang of urine. The simple cot on which he lay was bolted to the wall. Its corners were all rounded. He was dressed in a Tyvek bodysuit that rustled when he moved. Even if the prisoner were desperate enough to hang himself using a rope twisted from the suit, the room contained nothing to which it might be attached.

  His head hurt. He turned it gingerly to the right. The six-by-eight-foot space contained a stainless-steel toilet, bolted to the floor, and that was it. Above him, a recessed light fitting illuminated his surroundings with a depressing off-white light.

  He closed his eyes.

  A clang from the door jerked him awake. The door opened. The woman who’d pistol-whipped him in Battersea Park stood there. Behind her, observing him over her shoulder, was a grey-haired, grey-eyed man in a dark suit. He looked trim for his age, which Blacksmith estimated at late sixties or early seventies. The woman spoke.

  “Come with us, please, Tim.”

  A Final Blow of the Hammer

  They led Frye along a featureless, windowless corridor painted the same shade of green as his cell, and into a second room. It contained three chairs and a table. A length of chain and a padlock were piled on the table. Stella chained Frye’s hands together through a large eye-bolt that protruded by three inches from the surface.

  “Where’s the interview recorder?” Frye asked.

  Don looked at Stella and raised his eyebrows. She nodded at him.

  “You’re not in interview recorder land,” he said. “You’re in tell-us-everything-and-I-won’t-kill-you land.”

  Frye’s eyes widened. His hands jerked upwards, surely an involuntary movement, causing the chain to snap tight with a metallic chink .

  “What the fuck? What happened to due process? My rights?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m not as young as I used to be. And my hearing’s not as sharp either. Did I just hear you ask about your rights?”

  “Yes. My rights. My human rights? Last time I checked, I was still living in England. I assume you’re some sort of government lawyer?”

  Don leaned across the table. He spoke in a level voice, though his heart was hammering against his ribs.

  “Last time you checked, you may well have been living in England. But right now, that’s not where you are. As of now, you are living in my land. And no, I am not ‘some sort of government lawyer.’ I am the man whose operation you betrayed. I am the man whose people you attempted to murder. Twice. I am the man who had to arrange plastic surgery for the man you caused to be tortured. And I am the man who holds the keys to your future.”

  Don could see he had Frye’s attention now. The eyes were watchful, alert. The skin was pale and sheened with sweat. He continued.

  “You know, a lot of people look at me and they say, ‘There goes the old warhorse. Used to be a proper soldier, but now he spends his days in meetings and running a slide rule over budget spreadsheets. Good old Dobbin.’ Well, there’s more than a grain of truth in that. I do spend a lot of time doing admin. And, believe me, it drives me up the wall. But the other part’s equally true. Good old Dobbin used to be a proper soldier. And believe me when I say I dealt with a lot of very nasty people. People who liked to dig pits in the jungle and line them with sharpened sticks tipped with shit. People who liked to booby trap dead bodies with grenades. People who liked to rape children then send them into battle armed with Kalashnikovs taller than they were, or shoot innocent civilians through the kneecaps for going to the wrong church.” Don paused, struggling to control his breathing, and his temper. “And here’s the thing. I’m still alive. And they’re all dead.”

  Frye leaned back in his chair. Then, slowly, his mouth curved upwards. He shifted his weight in the chair, making the chains between his wrists scrape across on the table.

  “That was a good speech. You must have enjoyed delivering it. But your silly death threats don’t bother me.” He looked at Stella then back at Don. “You’re not going to shoot me in front of a police officer, so why don’t you calm down and get me my lawyer?”

  “Death threats? Is that what you think that was? No, no, no. You’ve got the wrong end of the stick entirely. I just meant that I’ve broken people far harder and far more wicked than you. And I know what works. So let me make myself perfectly, one hundred percent, crystal clear. Either you tell me what I want to know, or I will make sure you never see daylight again. You will never read a book again. You will never have any variety in your diet again. You will spend the rest of your life locked up in a space where even suicide won’t be an option. But before that, I will send my colleague out for a break and while she’s gone, I will inflict a great deal of pain on you. Tell me, does the word kuznitsa mean anything to you?”

  Frye’s lips compressed into a thin, bloodless line.

  “I think you should answer the question, Tim,” Stella said quietly.

  “I said I want a lawyer,” he shot back.

  Don stood up and rounded the table, before squatting by Frye’s right side. He waved his hand around the featureless room then resumed talking in a calm voice. Though internally he was fighting back an urge to twist Frye’s head sharply clockwise until something snapped inside.

  “This isn’t a police station. My colleague here is helping me out, but she doesn’t want you, or anything to do with you. Whereas I, and the people I work for, do. So, if you don’t think you’d cope well with the future I just described to you, tell me everything.”

  Then he slammed both palms down on the table.

  “Now!” he yelled, right into Frye’s face.

  Frye looked at Stella. When he spoke, it was in the same infuriatingly calm tone of voice he’d been using since they brought him into the interrogation room.

  “Please. If you really are a cop, do something. He can’t threaten me like that. Fine, I betrayed his operation. But as I said, I want a lawyer. I want my day in court.”

  “I’m afraid we’re not really interested in confessions at this point, Tim,” she said, placing her hands on the table a few inches from his own, and interlacing her fingers. “I took a few pictures of you and your friend and emailed them to one of your colleagues. He identified him straight away. Maziah Gul, Head of Security at the Iranian Embassy. No doubt you also know he is effectively the chief intelligence officer there and works directly for the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security. We also have your burner. So, one last time before I go out for a nice latte and a croissant, what do you know about kuznitsa?”

  Frye turned to Don. His face was immobile as if every muscle in it had been paralysed. Then his mouth started moving. The words that emerged came out in a monotone as hard and flat as the table under his hands.

  “Did you know that back in the days of apartheid, Israel, South Africa and Russia were all in bed together? Each country faced plenty of people who, what shall we say, wished them ill? Each had certain things the others needed. Weapons systems, gold, technology, manufacturing know-how, intelligence. They weren’t friends, but they shared enemies. I wrote my PhD on their clandestine collaboration during that period. Then I joined the Russia desk. I spent three years in Moscow, and I met some very interesting people during my time there. One in particular, a veteran of the Soviets’ war with Afghanistan. They call them afgantsy , by the way. After leaving the Red Army, he found himself at a loose end and, long story short, ended up heading a criminal organisation linked to the Russian Mafiya . He did so well for himself, he expanded globally, helped by Putin. He calls himself Max, but it’s a name he got in the Gulag. He runs Kuznitsa.”

  He paused and wiped a palm across his high, smooth forehead.

  “There was a text on your burner,” Stella said. “Gul called you Kaveh . What does that mean?”

  Frye lowered his head until his forehead wa
s resting on his chained hands.

  “According to Persian myths, Kaveh was a blacksmith. He led a national uprising against an evil foreign tyrant, after the tyrant’s serpents killed two of Kaveh’s children. It seemed appropriate, somehow.”

  Something caught at Don’s memory like a thorn snagging a sweater. Gabriel had asked one of the mercenaries he’d shot who had sent them. The man had gasped out, “Blacks.” He hadn’t been talking about black people . He was trying to say Frye’s codename.

  “Why?” Don asked.

  Frye stared at him, his brow furrowed, as if curious why he was asking such obvious questions.

  “Why what?”

  “Why did you do it all? Striking deals with the Russian Mafia, betraying your country to the Iranians. Why did you go to such lengths to have my people killed? To sabotage the operation?”

  Frye leaned back and closed his eyes. He was remembering.

  Everyone in the village outside Persepolis had been killed instantly. Blown apart by the Israeli missiles and vaporised in the intense heat. The body count, had there been any bodies left to count, was ten. Two British archaeologists. Two graduate students from University of California at Los Angeles. And six Iranian archaeology students from the University of Tehran’s Institute of Archaeology.

  Only one person survived the aerial attack. Thirteen at the time, and tanned a dark brown by the unrelenting sun, Tim Frye had accompanied his parents on the dig, which they had arranged to coincide with the long school summer holiday. As the planes were approaching, he had been riding a Kawasaki KX250 dirt bike over the dunes a few miles to the west, on a bird-watching expedition. He’d heard the explosions and for a moment thought there had been an earthquake. Then reality reasserted itself as he realised the bike was still flying along sweetly over the hard sand. Feeling a sense of dread building in his chest, he slowed down, turned and then opened the throttle, racing for the village he’d left thirty minutes earlier.

  As he rode into the scene of devastation, he started crying. He wailed and shouted for his parents, for the UCLA students who’d semi-adopted him as their mascot – “Bike Boy” – and the Iranians, who made him the sweet mint tea he loved. But he knew it was pointless. Nothing was left standing above ground level. Blackened masonry and charred pieces of timber were all that remained of the village. The group’s two vehicles, an old Land Rover and a Honda pickup truck, had been reduced to twisted tangles of smoking metal.

  He dismounted, dropping the bike on its side, and ran distractedly from one end of the road bisecting the village to the other. He retched as he breathed in lungfuls of the acrid smoke drifting through the village. On the way back, a propane tank that had been used to power the simple stove exploded with a sudden bang. He flinched away from the noise then screamed as a flying piece of blue steel from the canister tore open a cut on the back of his hand.

  In shock, he pulled the bike upright, kicked it into life, and stamped on the gear selector. Throwing up a rooster tail of sand, he tore out of the village, his grimy face streaked with tears.

  Frye opened his eyes. The intervening nineteen years collapsed into a point. One moment he had been wandering through a blasted village calling for his dead parents, the next he was back in the windowless interrogation room. He realised he wasn’t going to live to see his parents’ deaths avenged. But at least he could ensure the two people opposite him would never discover why Max had been so eager to help him kill Wolfe.

  Just as Don was beginning to wonder if Frye had taken himself into a trance, he spoke.

  “It’s really very simple. The Israelis killed my parents. In 1999. A missile strike. They were archaeologists, for God’s sake. Fucking archaeologists! They were just digging in the desert looking for old bones with a couple of American graduate students and half a dozen Iranians, and the Israelis killed them all with missiles. Their intelligence was faulty. Ha! That’s the understatement of the century, wouldn’t you say?”

  Frye laughed, but to Don’s ears it had the cracked note of a man losing contact with reality. Frye carried on speaking, spit gathering in white blobs at the corners of his mouth.

  “You were going to prevent the Iranians from attacking them. I needed to stop you and give Darbandi enough time to finish his work.”

  He smiled. “You think I’m insane, of course. Who would want to destroy a city or even a whole country to avenge the deaths of his parents?” He paused. “I’ll tell you.”

  His eyes, red-rimmed, were staring, the whites visible all the way round the startlingly blue irises. Then he jumped up into a half-crouch until the chain tightened.

  He reared back, yelling at them.

  “Me!”

  Don watched, helpless, as Frye snapped forwards, jack-knifing at the waist, to slam his head down into the space he’d created between his hands.

  With a sickening crunch, his forehead met the tabletop. His torso spasmed twice, then his lifeless body slid back towards his chair. Its progress was arrested by the eyebolt, all three inches of which he’d managed to embed in his own skull.

  A lake of blood spread out across the table and began running off the edge. Don and Stella had both jumped back as Frye committed suicide in front of them. Now they took a further step away from the table.

  Inhaling the coppery smell of the fresh blood, Don turned to Stella.

  “I’ll call a clean-up crew.”

  Outside the building, an abandoned warehouse down by the Thames, Don exhaled loudly. Then he called Gabriel.

  “Yes, Boss?”

  “The mole was Tim Frye.”

  “Wow. OK. He seemed such a nice guy. What happened?”

  “Apparently, his parents were killed by an IDF airstrike in ’99. This was all about avenging their deaths.”

  “My God! He was helping them destroy an entire country for two lives lost.”

  “Well, yes. For his parents’ lives. There’s obviously a difference.”

  “What’s going to happen to him now? A trial?”

  “A funeral. He just killed himself right in front of me. Smashed his skull in on an eyebolt. I think he’d lost his sanity somewhere along the line.”

  Gabriel paused. Don could almost hear his thoughts. Good. After what he put me through, I’m glad he’s dead . So his answer surprised him.

  “It’s hard to stay sane when you lose your loved ones.”

  Debrief

  ESSEX

  It took Gabriel and Eli three hours to make the journey from Shoreditch to MOD Rothford. In Don’s office, once coffees had been procured, he steepled his fingers under his chin and favoured each of them with a long look.

  “I know you both want to hear about what happened with Frye. But I want your reports first. Do you want to start, Old Sport?” he asked – ordered – Gabriel.

  Gabriel assumed his boss already knew the bare bones of the operation from Ziff or Mizrahi. No sense in wasting time with the broad brushstrokes.

  “As I’m sure you already know, the operation was successful.” Don nodded. “We received excellent support from the Azeris. The drone swarm attack was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. If we’re not working on something similar, we should be. We could see RPGs going up, but the drones were too small, too agile. It was like watching someone trying to hit wasps with a handgun. They may have brought down a handful, but they were armed with impact-detonated warheads so when they crashed they exploded anyway.”

  “Civilian casualties?”

  Gabriel thought back to the lab full of frightened-looking Iranian scientists. He shrugged.

  “I can’t be sure. They may have evacced their lab before the drone strike.”

  Don wrinkled his nose.

  “I’m not sure I care overmuch about the boffins. I know we all need weapons designing, but chaps like that, seems to me they take an unnatural delight in their work. I meant, any real civilians? What our political masters are so fond of calling ‘collateral damage.’”

  Don’s lip actually curled as he pr
onounced these last two words. Gabriel knew how much his boss hated – had always hated – the euphemisms that turned death and mutilation into anodyne phrases that tripped off the tongue in air-conditioned meeting rooms. Civil servants, ministers and generals far removed from the horrors of hand-to-hand combat talked about “friendly fire” or “neutralising assets.” While flesh and blood men and women were firing shaped charges at tanks, aiming heat-seeking missiles at helicopters, pumping high-calibre rounds into each other, stabbing and hacking, gouging, slicing – staying alive while trying to kill the enemy. What had Angus Thorne said, back when he was collecting the GLS at Marlborough Lines? The tough Glaswegian’s words drifted across Gabriel’s mind like battlefield smoke.

  Willie jumps down into the trench and he’s just going up and down with his bayonet like a fuckin’ sewing machine.

  “Nobody, Boss.”

  Nobody? Something, maybe Gabriel’s conscience, pricked at him. At his memory. He closed his eyes, willing himself to remember everything clearly.

  I’m climbing up into the hills above Vareshabad.

  Up the goat track.

  It’s rocky and sandy.

  The heat’s intense, but super dry.

  Sweat evaporates as fast as it arrives.

  I’m watching the facility through the binos.

  Nothing doing.

  The dry heat.

  A whisper of floral perfume on the air.

  Roses.

  Nobody about.

  Not even a goat.

  Nobody.

  Not even a—

  His stomach lurched and he snapped his eyes open, feeling a cold sweat break out on his neck.

  “Actually, that’s not true. When I was watching for Darbandi out at Vareshabad before I was captured, I was contacted. A goatherd, I think. Going by his rifle, I’d say he was genuine, not an agent. It was an antique. I had to kill him. I dumped the body.”