by R. J. Dillon
‘Accident?’ Foula asked, half in hope.
‘Roadblock,’ said Nick, reaching for his Yarygin.
Dropping through the gears Foula slowed, pulling up behind a Mercedes. A couple of hundred metres ahead, trucks, vans, cars and everything with an engine were being funnelled through a checkpoint. Nick ticked off the details: warning triangles, red and blue flashing strobe lanterns, marked and unmarked police cars and two BTR-80 armoured personnel carriers facing nose to nose, providing the final gap in the checkpoint chicane for the cleared vehicles to pass through.
‘We must turn round,’ Lubov plaintively urged from the back.
In their customary disregard for lanes, Russian drivers were jockeying for position with cars and trucks on both sides blocking the Lada in. Foula was left with no choice but to crawl inexorably forward.
‘We do what?’ Foula desperately wanted to know, yanking on the handbrake, avoiding a trucker’s mean stare.
‘Climb out, move slowly around, stretch your legs and we’ll change places,’ said Nick.
‘And give me a rough count of numbers manning the checkpoint.’ Nick’s guts twisted into a complicated knot as Foula stepped quickly into the snow. Nick slid over into the driving seat, the Yarygin in his lap.
Sliding down the windscreen, snow dissolved in sizzling patches on the warm bonnet. Nick sat hunched behind the wheel, an inscrutable Buddha watching as Foula nodded and grinned to other drivers in the queue. Gunning the engine Nick wound down his window, but could only hear a woman’s shrill laugh. Passing around the Lada’s bonnet, Foula took the precaution of making an exaggerated stretch as he surveyed the checkpoint.
‘Maybe twenty, maybe more,’ he said, getting in next to Nick.
Slowly the line moved forward each vehicle and its occupants thoroughly questioned, searches made, papers checked and double-checked. There were four cars to go before it would be the Lada’s turn. Nick’s foot hovered over the accelerator pedal, his strategy played through twice in his head.
‘Get down and stay down,’ he told Foula and Lubov, tucking the Yarygin under his seat.
Nick waited for the truck in the checkpoint to start to move, the car behind to set off and take its place. Timing was everything and Nick almost got it right. Slamming down hard on the gas he swung the Lada out of line, going for high revs as he went up through the gears, the back end swishing in a cloud of rubber as he ran at full speed towards the checkpoint. The car waiting to go next never knew what hit it as Nick rammed it, careering it into one side of the checkpoint, using the momentum to force his way through. Long bursts of automatic fire lit up the tree line lifting Foula off his seat. Lobbed sideways he rolled into Nick, his arms flapping inanely around.
Yelled orders from running figures echoed inside the Lada through its shattered windows, followed by rapid flashes from automatic weapons that punctured the rear glass. Punching the accelerator for all it would give, Nick ducked down as bullets zipped in and out. He spun the wheel as the Lada’s tyres screamed, burning for a grip on a reef of ice between the police cordon and personnel carriers. With a jolt, the tyres snatched and held sending the Lada forward, crushing a troop commander against a personnel carrier. Nick’s jaw slammed shut, he bit his tongue and tasted blood. Banging into reverse, he stamped on the power and skidded clear, only for the other troop carrier to lurch forward ramming the Lada’s boot, tipping it at a crazy angle. Hitting a rough strip between the highway’s shoulder and trees, Nick swung out and on, not wanting to look behind, forcing his eyes ahead to where the highway flattened out and the darkness stretched enticingly all the way to Latvia.
The UAZ-469 Jeep came straight out of the forest and veered across Nick’s path, its wheels slapping on the highway like bare feet. Nick swung the Lada hard to one side clipping the flank of the UAZ, regaining control he pumped the accelerator again. The second UAZ hit him at speed. It caught the Lada square on crumpling the passenger door, its headlights scorching Nick’s eyes while the impact jarred his spine. A third UAZ broke from the forest and rammed him, buckling the windscreen into a cloud of glass.
Smoke and hot diesel fumes filled Nick’s throat. Bounced, skewed side-on, the UAZ flipped the Lada onto its side sliding it down the Baltic Highway in a shower of sparks. Nick gasped for breath but something sharp had jammed into his side. Creaking as it came to a rest by a drainage ditch, the Lada rocked gently and Nick scrunched into a ball, reached into the back shaking the little accountant, but he was already dead. Kicking open the rear door Nick tried to stand; in his mind he was already zigzagging low and hard for the forest, except his lungs wouldn’t cooperate and he’d a million miles to cover. Far too easily for his liking his legs buckled and he hit the cold earth ditch in a heap. With all the strength he could muster he raised his head, vaguely taking in the fact that several pairs of military boots were pounding straight at him.
• • •
In London the fate of Nick, Foula and Lubov remained a matter of speculation and conjecture. Had they crossed the Latvian border, if not, how far had they to go to reach it? All random factors added to the permutations that Jill Portland, her head screaming with a colossal ache, had to consider as duty officer, though it wasn’t Portland who’d take a final decision or make a final call.
Around a quarter to four that morning, Jane Stratton, Director of Operations and Security swept in, a large styrofoam coffee cup in hand. Once engaged but never married, Jane had taken her thirties in a rush and her happiness somehow never survived. Lean, pretty still at forty-four, there was a sharpness about her as though inside she smouldered from a lasting hurt. Her auburn hair nestled on her shoulders framing a face blessed by natural beauty and strong green eyes. There was also a sense of aloofness that some men and women find appealing; that of a sports mistress perhaps, the type who can be both cruel and kind. Calm, her confident approach reassuring Portland, she listened as the duty officer explained that GCHQ had picked up a burst of traffic they said pinpointed a position on the Baltic Highway and a precise location was being worked on.
Finally, at some point after five, Edward ‘Teddy’ Hawick, Deputy Chief of the Service put in an appearance. Not a natural early riser Teddy Hawick grunted all through Portland’s briefing, offering a discontented sigh through his nose when she informed him that GCHQ estimated that a serious incident had unfolded eighty kilometres outside Velikiye Luki, and this had been confirmed by the Americans.
‘If that is the respected wisdom from the Cousins, then I suggest we take appropriate action. You concur, Paul?’ Hawick said, nodding his small head at Rossan.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I’ll leave that in your entirely capable hands,’ Hawick announced, more or less dismissing Rossan. Thin, quite tall, his pepper-seed colour hair receding, Hawick had a silky gloss to his skin and prided himself on being something of a fastidious dresser. Only having hit his early fifties, his choice of hand-cut suits adorned with a watch-chain and fob gave him the appearance of a sixty-year-old second-tier diplomat; a man somewhat musty round the edges, though this was a deceptive foil to his very capable mind.
Twenty minutes later, Roland ‘Roly’ Blackmore, Director Corporate Affairs, strolled in. Blackmore could have been conceived and born as Hawick’s natural antithesis, his very own walking binary contradiction. Small, wiry, and compact, he moved as if he meant business. There was cunning in his ruddy weathered complexion; a fighter’s face balanced by eyes bright and fresh, though for those unfortunate to cross him, of which there was a considerable number, they could only recount Roly’s barbed wire stare. His hair had started to shrink at the temples so he brushed the whole lot back and this, with its streaks of grey, gave him a raffish, alluring air. A sharp, very elegant dresser, Blackmore signified his power through his wardrobe, which even at that early hour, had produced a dazzling white shirt and plain blue tie, all squared off inside a handsome chalk-stripe suit. Bluff and to the point, Blackmore alerted departments and placed people on stand by that P
ortland had never heard of, commandeering a secure briefing room for his base.
Taking time to make a furtive tour of what he termed Torr’s tawdry empire, Hawick eventually called a full council of war and declared that damage limitation must be the priority, the order of the day, he told them in a hundred different ways. At the same time they dare not lose any advantage, so Special Branch teams were prepped for immediate strikes on soft Russian SVR targets flagged by the Security Service, better known as MI5.
As the regular day shift arrived, Portland still had not signed off and managed to corner Stratton and Rossan as they rushed from meeting to meeting. Go but don’t go, they both said in agreement, then changed tack, until Portland came close to pulling her hair out. A yes or no, she demanded. But Rossan, erring on the side of caution, requested she remain to personally handle anything else coming out of Latvia or Moscow. Anything to confirm Nick and Foula’s status or condition, he demanded. ‘You stick to Palmer-Fenton from Monitoring like a leech,’ Rossan ordered. ‘Like a leech, you hear,’ he shouted to her retreating back.
But when Portland went down the corridor she found Palmer-Fenton’s office empty, a coffee hardly touched, a jacket hanging lopsided from a chair, a flashing row of lights signalling in-coming calls on four secure phones, all symbols of a crisis yet to hit. On her way back to Rossan and Stratton, Palmer-Fenton almost knocked her off her feet; his slack face red from the climb out of the basement lair where a direct feed from GCHQ was monitored round the clock. Cheltenham had snatched a live stream of mobile phone traffic coming out of Velikiye Luki, Palmer-Fenton said, between catching his breath. What they had and it didn’t constitute much, but apparently it’s a coded confirmation of five casualties, three of them dead.
Returning to Rossan and Stratton, Portland delivered what she just had gleaned from Monitoring. The details of which, Portland told them, were obviously vague, but they would continue to listen for more.
‘If it isn’t too much trouble,’ snapped Stratton, turning briskly on her heels.
Rossan sniffed and blew his nose. ‘Jane and Nick were really very close,’ he disclosed.
‘You’ve done quite enough,’ he added. ‘Get off home and take a rest.’
For Portland, it was more than enough.
• • •
Impatient, disregarding tired moans, the glances of frustration, Jane Stratton stalked the corridors as a woman possessed in the hours following Nick and Foula’s unconfirmed status as missing. Urging, coaxing, demanding and bullying for more results, she left no one in peace in CO8’s domain. Fatigued and utterly dejected, she had even tried to take a couple of hours of sleep as the shifts changed, as the briefings, up-dates and rumours wound inexorably on, but sleep, like Nick Torr and Alistair Foula was elusive. Bloody Nick Torr she thought, aiming for some distraction by sorting through FCO demands for ‘further clarification’.
On an ash filing cabinet in Nick’s office, a spider plant was slowly dying. Laying claim to the office as her own this side of the river, Jane carefully fed the plant a dose of water. Each CO8 team had monitored its progress every time they passed, taking bets on how much more of Nick’s tender loving care it could handle before finally wilting. Now it seemed past caring and leant drunkenly to the left.
Placed by the telephone she found a meeting request chit sent by Ruth Parfrey to Nick, the priority box ticked urgent, the time and date set for two hours before Nick’s departure for Latvia. But for some reason Nick had not acknowledged it, leaving the response boxes blank.
‘You’d better bloody come home, Nick Torr,’ she said aloud, fury churning away inside her. Suddenly she had an overwhelming desire to close her eyes, run and emerge into strong sunlight far, far away from this madness.
Restless, unable to settle, she set off in search of more updates and it was while she organised this, that Palmer-Fenton discovered her; on a meagre landing between floors delivering a severe upbraiding to a junior administration officer on the importance of following file search requests.
‘Ah, Jane, you asked for the last position on Nick and Alistair,’ Palmer-Fenton said, watching the officer scurry away. ‘It’s not the news we hoped for,’ he said turning smartly, his brogues retorting off the polished stairs as he skipped down to his domain.
Following on behind, Jane passed floors where the night always made itself at home. She’d done enough late stints over here to know how it felt as a shift dragged on for what felt a week, most floors dormant with only the odd voice carrying along soulless corridors; whispered secrets from a secret world huddling in corners. Picking up speed she almost ran the final couple of metres down the long corridor, unable to stop herself overtaking Palmer-Fenton.
Palmer-Fenton took inordinate pride in his monitoring empire; a windowless vault jammed with plasma screens, computers and a team of intense men and women in their twenties who rarely mixed with the infidels from other CO8 sections. On one wall a set of screens providing satellite support above countries where CO8 teams were actively deployed. Alongside the screens transparent plotting panels held each commander’s name, scribed in blue marker to denote their very own operational patch.
‘Here,’ said Palmer-Fenton, pointing Jane to a panel allocated to Operation Salvage.
‘We’ve created a timeline by calling up and assembling the most recent satellite images to provide a working scenario,’ Palmer-Fenton explained. ‘Though it cannot be classed as definitive by any means of the imagination, but we did have a tracker in the vehicle they took over the Russian border when they started out.’
Some of Nick’s early movements including the drive in from Latvia were highlighted in yellow, others circled in red; none of them looked particularly good from where Jane stood.
‘They must have known something was up after the collection from the way that damned car went round Moscow in circles. See how they were sat in that suburb of Golyanovo for more than twenty minutes. As far as I’m aware there ain’t no Little Chefs in that neck of the woods or if it’s a halt for a pee, someone has a serious bladder problem.’
‘And?’ Jane wasn’t in the mood for improvised laughs.
Palmer-Fenton scrunched up his nose and turned to one of his team.
‘Bring up the full sequence, Lucy, if you will.’
Lucy hit a command on her keyboard and went back to monitoring a different screen.
‘The tracker stopped there, right in the middle of the city, so I assume they bailed out and lost the car. Must have picked up a new vehicle, which was very little help to us,’ Palmer-Fenton explained as the first image appeared.
‘I can imagine,’ snapped Jane.
‘We do our best,’ retorted Palmer-Fenton, grievously wounded. ‘All we can confirm is from what we managed to pull down a few hours ago. We concentrated on the reports of a rumpus near Velikiye Luki, that is all we had to go on you know,’ he reminded her crossly.
‘And?’
‘This was the last pass we could manage and the satellite won’t be over that position again for another fourteen hours,’ he said, his earnest face assessing Jane.
‘That’s the best you’ve got?’ She demanded of the blurred image filling the screen.
‘It’s not like using a digital camera,’ Palmer-Fenton said in defence of a grainy image that had been magnified to its maximum limit. ‘And,’ he added, lowering his voice, looking around, ‘we have been encountering problems. I don’t mean jamming, or interference, but some glitch in one or two of the systems that’s been plaguing us for a considerable time. We report it of course, tell them we think we have a ghost in the machine, but nothing’s done.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Jane, studying an enhanced satellite frame revealing a car on its side. Leaning forward, she could just make out three body bags by the side of a military vehicle.
‘Casualties, I’m afraid.’
‘There’s a chance that one of them could be alive,’ said Jane.
‘A possibility,’ Palmer-Fenton
said, not committing himself. ‘If we get anything else…’
‘I’ll be across the river with Rossan,’ said Jane.
‘Right ho,’ he said, watching her hurry out.
Burning with an anger she couldn’t quite quell, she set off over the river, the stiff October air clinging to her coat and hair after her walk over Vauxhall Bridge; the peevish glare of headlights stinging her eyes as she avoided the main entrance to Vauxhall Cross where marble clashed with gleaming chrome and smoked blast-proof glass. Jane pounded on; round to a discreet entrance reserved for senior staff and swiped herself in, entering one of the gates watched over by internal security officers. Supervising Jane’s entry, a square dumpy dyed-blonde called Lorna who controlled the gate from a blast proof pod. A thirty-year old with an incurable frown, Lorna was ticking off the days to her wedding that she was assiduously planning between controlling her sets of gates, remote cameras and a section of the basement car park’s sliding mesh gates.
‘Fifty-two to go,’ sang Lorna, electronically admitting Jane after her card had been scanned once more.
‘I hope he’s worth it,’ Jane called over her shoulder making for Lift 1. Stepping out on the eighth floor the drawn faces and distinct chill that greeted her were intensified by the neutrally painted walls, done in a Farrow & Ball hue called Pale Hound. Nodding at Alison Moss, Executive Director from Personnel whose striking face was unusually tense, Jane cursed as she saw Tony Crost. A diminutive Service lawyer, Director of Legal Affairs and an inveterate snob, he was seated in a Nicca armchair in a meeting bay part way along the floor.
Striding on, Jane was hailed by Crost’s shrill call. ‘My dear Jane, what a calamity, am I correct, one hand lost and one missing?’ cooeed Crost, patting an armchair beside him.
Refusing the invite to sit, Jane filled a cup from the water cooler as Crost wheedled over to her, taking her to one side with a conspiratorial hand on her arm.
