by A P Bateman
She had met Marnie briefly, and decided she liked her. The woman had no agenda. She had bought Caroline a selection of clothes and underwear, and she had bought well. No under sizing, nor over sizing – simply the right size and suitable for the occasion. It could have been so easy to buy too small and feign surprise that they would not fit or buy too large and look as if she had sized-her up wrong. Caroline had experience of such women all her life, and it was a refreshing change, especially as Marnie was at least a size larger than Caroline. Her taste in clothes suited Caroline, and she imagined that given the opportunity, or completely different circumstances, they could become firm friends.
Caroline looked up as she heard the knock on the door. Sharp and business-like. For a fleeting moment, she had jumped at the shock, unnerved. She imagined she would react that way for some time. She walked over, stood to one side.
“Yes?”
“It’s Neil, let me in.”
Caroline could hear a tone in his voice but was unsure how to read it through the door. She flicked off the security chain and opened the door. His face showed concern, but she imagined he would think he hid it well.
She walked back a few steps. Ramsay looked at her, nodded approvingly.
“You look better.”
“Thanks,” Caroline replied indignantly.
“Oh, I didn’t mean anything,” he said.
“Forget it,” she said coolly. “What’s up?”
“There was a triangulation on Rashid’s phone,” he paused. “Further down the coast. It’s a monied place, not so much a poor man’s Monaco, as a place where the rich and criminally wanted choose to hang out. Much like the Costa Del Sol in the eighties and nineties. Only Russia’s rich and criminally wanted. Georgia affords them both a police force and regional governments who are susceptible to bribes and turn a blind eye to criminal activity.”
“And you think Rashid is there with Alex?” She sat down on the bed and crossed her legs. Marnie had picked out a tastefully cut silk blouse and Caroline had paired it with dark, tight jeans and a cream lamb’s wool cardigan. The jeans were tucked into tan leather knee-length boots.
Ramsay glanced at the boots as Caroline crossed her legs. “Crikey, that’s the budget gone this month!”
“I do hope so,” she replied sardonically. “Marnie did well.”
“I’ll have to have a word.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” she said. “And I think I’m due a pay rise.”
Ramsay nodded. “I suspect it will be on the cards.”
Caroline nodded. She knew they’d reassess her status – just as long as she promised not to talk to legal or sell her story someday. Standard. They had made her sign all sorts of papers when her fiancé Peter Redwood had died in a terrorist explosion. She hadn’t been thinking straight, both relieved she had lived, and crippled with grief at the same time. The legal department at MI5 knew how to pick their moments.
“Marnie is running software on Rashid’s phone,” Ramsay paused. “The moment the man switches it on, we’ll know where he is to within two square metres.”
“You’ve tried messaging him, or ringing?”
“Of course. But you know how it is. If you leave a couple of messages, then leaving more won’t make them ring you sooner.”
“Enough of your love life,” she grinned.
Ramsay smiled. He could see that she was slowly returning to her normal self. He guessed it would take time, but she would get there.
“What did you find at the farm?” she asked.
Ramsay shook his head. “It was cleaned out. The place was a shell.”
“I killed a man,” she said. “He died in a derelict barn.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“Okay.”
“You found nothing else?”
“Nothing.”
“What about the police? Forensics?”
“Rank amateurs. They will have corrupted more than they’ll ever find.”
“So that’s it? Nothing else to go on?”
Ramsay shrugged. “I think it may come down to King. He must have had a breakthrough, for the way Rashid ditched us and disappeared. He must be close.”
Caroline said, “I certainly hope so.”
63
Rashid pulled his car over in a layby behind a selection of parked heavy plant vehicles and took out his phone. He switched it on and waited for it to run through its start-up sequence. He could see that he had two text messages and two missed calls. He didn’t need to look at the call list to know who it would be. He put the phone on the passenger seat, leaned back in his seat and stared at the headlining as he sighed. He was nowhere. He hadn’t helped King – certain the man was on a suicide mission, that he wanted no part of – and he was no longer aiding in the search for Caroline or Helena Milankovitch.
He had helped King twice in the past, hadn’t really been able to reason why, other than he knew King was a man who bent the rules, acted spontaneously and had completed the gruelling SAS selection course many times. For Rashid, the selection process had been the toughest experience he had ever known, but for King, it had been MI6’s idea of maintaining fitness. King had not only completed the course, but he had been dropped into it many times for three or four weeks at a time, at every stage over a dozen years. If he was honest with his reasoning, Rashid probably couldn’t think of any other reason than that. It said more about King than anything else ever would. He supposed he respected him more than anyone he had met.
And now the man was going up against impossible odds.
Rashid punched the steering wheel and screamed, cursing a half-a-dozen times. He gripped the wheel and went to put the car in gear but stopped himself and picked up the phone. He read the curt messages. Neil Ramsay asking him where he was and to call him back immediately. Rashid looked at the time the message had been sent. Immediately had long-gone. He tossed the phone back down and drove the car out around the enormous digger and pulled back out into the road. He didn’t see the car, rather than misjudged and was almost rear-ended amid a blast of horn. He stuck up a finger and cursed again, accelerating hard down the mountain road. The driver behind pulled out around him, his modified twenty-year-old Audi blasting past with gunfire erupting from his exhausts. The driver held up his fingers like a child mimed a pistol and was gone with the exhaust popping and banging. Rashid cursed again. Cursing his own stupidity, his own carelessness. He heard his phone ringing, saw the false name he’d used for Ramsay, and cursed again. He ignored it. He was heading for civilisation and a decent road. Then he would call and speak to the MI5 man. He’d use the time to concoct a story as he drove. He had a feeling he’d be back on a desk assignment in Hereford before long, his brief career with MI5 nothing more than a fleeting memory.
64
“Damn it! No answer!”
“I’ve got a cell triangulation.” Marnie played her fingertips across the keypad and brought up the software map. It was a detailed survey map complete with topographical height increments. “Near the border with Abkhazia.”
“Bugger. That border is hot, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Abkhazia broke away from Georgia and became an independent state.”
“I remember. A horrible little war not many heard about in the west. Plenty of ethnic cleansing on both sides, but the Abkhazians had support from Armenia and Russia, who had scores to settle with Georgia for breaking away from the USSR. How close is he to the border?”
Marnie worked the keys and adjusted the map. “Close. Practically straddling the two countries.” She pushed the tiny glasses back up onto the bridge of her nose as she read. “You can’t get in without a letter of authority, which converts to a visa. It’s a relatively straightforward process but takes around five days. And you can’t fly in because the Georgians have vowed to shoot down anything flying in or out across its airspace.”
“Nice.”
“Needless to say; Georgia doesn’t recognise their
independence.”
“Nor does anyone apart from Russia and about four pacific islands they paid off.”
“And the Armenians, but they stand with Russia because of the war crimes. They need their protection from the UN.”
“I love these fleapit countries,” Ramsay said sardonically.
Marnie leaned back in her chair and sipped some tepid coffee. She looked at Caroline, who was standing in the window looking out at the Black Sea. She had been uncharacteristically silent until now.
“If Rashid is that close to an ambiguous area, do you think Helena is holing up in Abkhazia?” she asked, not taking her eyes off the view.
“It might make sense,” Ramsay replied. “It’s a tricky place to police. Bribes are commonplace, the law more easily corrupted than even this place.”
“Call him again,” Caroline said. The sun was golden above the sea, working its way west, leaving everything in its wake vulnerable to darkness. Caroline shivered. She did not like the thought of darkness and night. “Tell him you’ve found me. Tell him we need to find Alex for his own safety. There’s no pressure on him anymore. He can pull back, regroup with us and we can start anew. The hunt for Helena can now be methodical and well-planned.”
Ramsay hesitated. He looked at his phone. He had no missed calls.
Marnie looked up at him from the desk. “It makes sense, Sir,” she said. “I know I’m not a field agent, but the pressure is off. If King is doing what he is solely to find Caroline, then he no longer needs to. If Rashid is close to him, then he can be the messenger.”
Ramsay looked agitated. MI5 protocols dictated that communications were concise. Text messages were no more than a recall system. Nothing was ever discussed. It made for clear deniability. But Rashid was not answering his phone.
“We don’t know where Helena is, and we have no idea as to the locations of Alex or Rashid. But Alex has clearly been in contact with her, and Rashid has been in contact with Alex. If Rashid disappeared so suddenly like he did, it was because he knew Alex was close. This is it, Neil,” Caroline said looking at him earnestly. “It’s all going down soon. And right here in Georgia. And that is too bloody close to that border.”
“She’s right, Sir,” Marnie said. “And Caroline is safe, after all. We need to pull back. Abkhazia is a militarised zone. If anything happens on that border, then the world will soon know. And Russia will be playing the propaganda card, just like those bio-weapon attacks on the former KGB agents back home, and just like in Syria.”
“Shit!” Ramsay looked at his phone hopefully, willing it to ring.
He unlocked it, selected his messages and started to type.
65
King was used to operating alone. He’d spent a lifetime that way. From fending for himself as a child, to working menial tasks or even stealing to feed his younger siblings, he had always done what was necessary to survive. His mother had been a crack whore, his father unknown. When his mother had arranged for a client to be alone with his ten-year-old sister, a neighbour had thankfully intervened in time. The family had been put into care. King, being older and unruly, had gone through a succession of foster families, and when they eventually proved unable to tame him, children’s homes had been his shelter. Open to bullying, abuse and neglect, King had fled and grown up on the streets. His mother had died of an overdose and his brothers and sister had been successfully adopted. But King was too old, too ruined by fate and circumstance. Nobody wanted a fifteen-year-old who had already reached a shade under six-foot and looked like a twenty-five-year-old man. Prison followed, as did release and more trouble, and prison again. Nobody had ever been there for him, and he had grown to accept it. Eventually, thrive from it. Although he never saw his siblings again.
When his wife had died from ovarian cancer, King had vowed to return to his lone wolf existence. To count on and care for nobody. He did not need baggage or responsibilities. He had spent five years alone, but Caroline had changed that, had shown him there was more to life than merely surviving, and in turn, working with a team in MI5, he had grown used to the support. But he knew he had softened because of it. He had found himself giving the enemy options, relying on back-up, as he had done in the forest in France, waiting for Rashid to make his move. But no more. King was in control now. Win or lose, live or die. He was alone, and he knew the consequence. He could accept it.
No quarter given; none asked.
It was time to do what he did best.
He had parked the car, much like in Tuscany, lower down the mountain slope. Hidden from the road in a narrow track, he had cut branches and layered them over the roof and bonnet to hide it from view from oncoming headlights. He had then broken a branch on the edge of the road and folded it over so that it hung at a right-angle. It would act as a marker for him in the darkness but would hopefully be ignored by anyone else. With the car secured and more easily accessible in the event of a hasty retreat, King swung the rucksack he had bought over his shoulder, leaving the car unlocked and the keys under the driver’s wheel arch.
The hike up the mountainside was difficult; the rocky terrain was loose and jagged. He found smoother progress made following the deeper culverts which had been carved out by torrents of running rainwater. The light had faded and there was no moon at present. King estimated it would poke above the horizon ahead of him in another two hours, but he knew it would be no more than a slither, added to which, there was noctilucent cloud cover, which acted like a lace blanket, shutting out most of the stars and only letting the merest of opaque light through.
The temperature had dropped, but his exertion up the steep gradient stopped him from becoming chilled, and by the time he had worked his way over a mile, and at least two-thousand feet in elevation, he was perspiring and wishing he’d packed more water.
At approximately four-thousand-feet above sea level and at least two miles from where he had parked the car, King removed the rucksack and dropped it onto the dry earth. He finished his litre bottle of water and wedged it between two rocks rather than risk it making a noise in his rucksack. He then removed another plastic bottle, but this one had been wrapped in tape. He had earlier drilled two-dozen equally-spaced holes into some plastic tubing he had bought from the builder’s merchants. He had then marked a hole of the same diameter into the bottom of a one-litre plastic water bottle, cut it out carefully and wedged the tube in place so that it ran all the way through the bottle and out of the neck. He wedged cotton wool inside the neck and poked it towards the bottom until it was heavily packed, and the tube was even. He had then cut the length of tube and tested it against the muzzle of the Makarov pistol. Now that King had reached his insertion point, he carefully taped the bottle in place. He tested it for straightness, then applied more plumbing tape as he made fine corrections by eye. The moving action of the pistol would make this silencer a one-shot deal, but in King’s experience it would be utterly soundless. The bullet would travel out of the muzzle of the pistol and through the tube without touching the sides and the gasses that carried the sound would vent through the holes and become absorbed by the cotton wool. He had used one before to significant effect on a Ruger .22 rifle, and although the 9x18mm Makarov round was louder, it carried less velocity than a .22 round from a longer barrel. King estimated the result would be about the same. A short-range, silent first kill.
King put the rucksack back on and stood up slowly, mindful to keep his movements slow and his profile low. There were five things to remember when moving in on an enemy’s position. They were known as the Five S’s. Shine, shape, sound, silhouette and shadow. King had one thing that could shine in the moonlight, and that was his vintage Rolex Submariner watch and he made sure his sleeve was pulled down covering the stainless-steel bracelet. He kept his shape profile low and fluid, using cover when available. He would stand next to a tree, rather than away from it, or squat down and use a rock to break up his shape. Sound was a no-brainer and he watched his footsteps, choosing to backtrack a pace rather
than step on dry twigs or loose gravel, and he had emptied his pockets of coins and checked the rattle of the rucksack before setting off. Silhouette was most prominent on top of gradients, and he always avoided the skyline, choosing to traverse slopes and keep the high ground above him. The shadow element shouldn’t be a problem tonight, but a bright moon or backlight could cast shadows every bit as noticeable as on the brightest of days.
Below him he knew that Romanovitch’s property would be quiet and inactive. It was one AM and as he reached the edge of the slope he could see that there was only one light on within the house, and a faint blue hue emitted from the security hub. He watched, using the binoculars, which were assisted for low-light conditions by a lithium battery and passive infrared beam. They struggled at this distance for night capability, but he could pick out the buildings and the two cars still parked on the driveway. King checked the perimeter, tracking the fence and using his own mantra of the five S’s to see if he could spot anybody in the darkness. To look past the form of a person and turn his attention to the visible tell-tale signs they could emit. His eyes slowly tuned in. Before long, he was seeing what he had clearly not been meant to. Throughout the grounds, there were dozens of men. He could make out the DPM, or disruptive pattern material of the camouflage clothing by looking for just the lighter patterns at first, and he could see the dead-straight lines - the shapes and angles at odds with nature - of long guns. Shotguns and rifles. Under the magnification of the binoculars some rifles even looked modified and customised with scopes, lights, laser dot pointers and underslung shotguns.
They knew he was coming.
66
A diversion wasn’t going to cut it. It would bring the men running. And they would be shooting. King had seen the focus of men were placed on both sides of the eastern gable of the house. This made the driveway a column with the attack at both sides at the end. As if he were going to come up the driveway as bold as brass. Highly unlikely. The pincer movement was a fine idea, but the men had deployed parallel to the drive, directly opposite each other and not at acute angles. This would mean that in a firefight, they would inflict casualties on each other, rather than merely obliterate their intended target. It was an idea from somebody without combat experience. Which was encouraging. King had assumed most of Romanovitch’s men would be ex-military. Maybe they were, but unlike the US, UK and NATO troops, there was a generation of Russian soldiers who had served their country with no combat deployment.
