by A P Bateman
“His brother?”
“Yes,” she said. “Apparently, he was going to meet them here, hours ago.”
King swallowed. His heart raced, but years of operating on the edge had given him the ability to quell his nerves quickly. “And nobody has seen this man? His brother?”
“No. Not a soul.”
“And is there CCTV?” he asked, then said, “Sorry, as I said, I work in security.” He offered, to cover his inquisitiveness. He just hoped that there wouldn’t be footage of Stewart and himself riding in on the dead man’s snowmobile, of King hiding it down the side of the hotel amongst the spindly fir trees and concealing the man’s rifle in his jacket.
“No,” she replied. “It was all knocked out by the storm we had earlier. It was like a tornado crashing through. It was terrifying, but over in a few minutes.”
“I know,” he said. “It knocked our car off the road. We came in by foot.”
“Oh, you were lucky to get here,” she said, her voice full of concern. “It would have been treacherous.”
“It was,” King said sharply, hoping to deflect her somewhat. “I saw a man on a snowmobile, though. A Sami like them.”
“Oh, then you should say,” she said. She coughed and addressed the owner in Finnish. She spoke for a few seconds, then looked back at King and said, “Please, tell Mister Huss and these people what you saw…”
King stepped towards the desk and said amiably, “I saw a man dressed similarly to these people…” he motioned towards the Sami. “He was heading south fast on an old-style snowmobile. It was a noisy machine, more squared than the modern snowmobiles. He had a rifle on his back.”
“When was this?” Huss asked. His English was excellent, and King noted how self-assured he was.
King backed-up an hour to allow for any disparity. “About one-thirty. I tried to flag him for a lift. My vehicle was blown off the road.” He shrugged like it was no big deal and said, “He didn’t stop.”
“And he was on the road up here?” Huss asked, somewhat incredulously.
“No. Quite a way south-west of here. On the road. Like I said, he was heading south.”
King watched the man. He could tell Huss knew he was lying. That suited King, because the man would have to have a reason for this. He knew more than he had admitted, and certainly more than he had told the irate and impatient Sami.
Huss conversed with the Sami and the man nodded.
“Are you going to call the police?” King asked. “A man is clearly missing. But I suppose if he was heading south, he would be in town by now.”
Huss shook his head. “I fear it will endanger further life. We must wait until the storm has passed.” He looked at King. “There is much danger on the way.”
King nodded, looking the man in the eyes. His stare was cold and unwavering. “Then we must be ready for it.”
Huss smiled. “Always.”
Caroline caught King by his elbow and peeled him away. “Well, that was awkward,” she whispered. “He certainly didn’t believe you’d seen him on the road,” she said.
“I know,” said King. “So, let’s find out why.”
33
The Inari Falls Paatsjoki River Hydroelectric Plant
Russia
The plant made up a string of hydroelectric plants on the Paatsjoki River, owned by Norway and Russia in a shared usage agreement dating back to 1957. The first in the line, and situated at the falls of the Inari River, the plant produced electricity from the torrents of water and sent it back to St. Petersburg via the northern grid. Natalia Grekov though, knew this to be nothing more than a front. The plant did produce electricity, and it did supply much of St. Petersburg as a privately-owned enterprise with its registered offices based in the city. But she also knew that the secondary plant built twenty years ago, and operated by a separate tier of personnel, was a secret Russian government department producing something completely different.
Natalia pulled the hood of her jacket over her head and opened the door to the gantry. The windchill clawed at the exposed parts of her face, and her eyes watered. Barely twenty-feet across the gantry and she could feel the crustiness of the tears freezing to her eyelids. She blinked hard, softening her eyelids. She breathed hard through her nose, felt her nostrils stick together. As she walked swiftly onwards, keeping her right gloved hand on the rail to steady herself, she negotiated the three steps down to the next gantry. Thankfully, the designers had not put in gradients due to the build-up of ice and snow, and every fifty feet or so, two or three steps dropped to a lower level gantry, until by the time she reached the next building, she had dropped some fifty-feet in elevation. The route was more difficult on the way back, especially as she would be walking into the wind as well as climbing all the way. There was no underestimating how difficult even moderate exertion made breathing at these temperatures.
She reached the entrance to the turbine regenerator house and pulled down on the metal full-section handle. Because of the harshness of the environment and the fact that everybody wore gloves for seven months of the year, the ergonomics of the plant had been thought through with fire escape style pull down bars on the doors, wider doorways to accommodate bulky clothing and two people entering at once. Nobody wanted to form an orderly que at -30°C.
The regenerator turbine was not in use when the hydroelectric dynamos were actively spinning to generate electricity. Each time they stopped for routine safety checks or maintenance, the gas operated regenerator would fire-up and run, bringing the prop-shafts up to twenty-seven-thousand revolutions per minute, before the hydroelectric dynamos essentially geared in and took over the flow of the water. Once up to speed and running for ten minutes, the regenerator turbine shut down slowly over a twenty-minute period and finally disengaged gearing so that the only element driving the dynamos was the crashing waters of Lake Inari river falls forming the Paatsjoki River. From its elevation of almost seven-hundred feet above sea level, the river was a torrent of powerful white water all the way to the mouth of the Varangerfjord, which emptied its water into the icy saline of the Barents Sea, where the mix of waters formed mini icebergs that collected along the shoreline.
Natalia worked her way down the spiralled staircase of metal grating and descended the one-hundred feet or so to the rock-lined cavern. Now seventy-feet under the river bed, the rock walls were covered with a sheen of ice which did not defrost through the summer months. The rock had been blasted and bored, with water used to cool the blades of the boring machine that had frozen solid on the rock. A layer of permafrost which would remain frozen for millennia.
She checked her watch. She had a clear hour in which to work. She did not know who the inside person was. She had left and collected the messages from three separate dead-drops throughout the plant. She knew the person would have to be senior, but not top-tier. That would point clearly to one of four individuals. It would be suicidal for one of those to be involved. In any event, she knew once she had defected, the top-tier would be left in a difficult position. But she had weighed the situation and knew that she had little hope of leaving this place alive. Not now she had seen what she shouldn’t have. The price would be worth it. Collateral damage, the agent had called it in one of her earlier messages. And in bringing her into the fold, they had already sealed her fate. From the moment she had returned the message and not gone straight to plant security, she had sacrificed the top-tier and undermined her own safety.
There was a row of steel lockers along the wall. Some were single full-length personal lockers and others were six-feet wide and labelled with the contents. Mainly tools and parts needed for the maintaining of the regenerator. Others were fuse cupboards and circuit boards. Few people had business down here, and but for a chance encounter, she would have been none the wiser. But an errand for a friend had brought her down here and she had seen that not all the lockers were as they seemed.
Natalia made her way to the furthest wide locker and she checked behind her as she open
ed both doors to reveal the hidden door behind and security keypad. She had been given the code but had memorised it and burned the note. She couldn’t afford to be caught with such information. She punched in the eight-digit number, and the steel door opened inwards on a set of six thick hinges. She could see the rubber seals around both the door and the frame, shuddered at the thought of what secrets they would hold in here. Sealed in the airtight facility, the air capable of being sucked out under immense pressure and a total vacuum created within minutes of the alarm being sounded. Not just to kill what this facility made, but the living beings within. Personnel included. Certain death in little more than a minute.
Natalia checked her watch once more, knowing as she did so, that barely a minute had passed since she had last checked. She had been told it would be clear. Again, she wondered how this could be so without involving one of the top tier personnel. To recall security, to organise a shift pattern without an inter-lapping of personnel. But she cleared her head of such thoughts. It wasn’t her problem. An out. That was what she had been given. And through her predecessor’s contact, she had been given the chance of a fresh start. Clearly the man had failed to take all the information required of him. Or perhaps he had merely whetted their appetite? Whoever they were.
The walls were different down here. Thermal tiles lined the walls, floors and ceilings. They conducted either heat or cold and held the temperatures required for days. She was not aware, but they were the same tiles used by the Russian space program for the re-entry of their forthcoming reusable rocket. She was not aware that through what was basically a heat generating turbine that the entire facility could be heated to over one-thousand degrees Celsius, or using liquid nitrogen, could get as low as minus one-hundred and ninety-eight Celsius. Again, protocols were in place to lockdown and sanitise the facility without the evacuation of its personnel.
The next door was constructed of Perspex and was the entrance to the air-lock. She entered the eight-digit pin on the keypad and stepped inside. She took her phone out of her pocket and placed it on the bench seat, then unhooked one of the orange suits and stepped into it. She pulled it over her shoulders, zipped it up and fastened the plastic overlays over the zip. After she had put on the rubber gloves, she used the insulation tape as she had been instructed. She sealed the wrists, slipped on the over-boots and taped the trouser legs in place. Next, she pulled on the plastic helmet and mask, and allowed the attached, heavily weighted flaps to roll down around her back, shoulders and chest. She checked that the door was tightly closed behind her and pressed the button marked: Шлюз.
Air lock.
The rubber seals expanded and there was a faint whoosh, and she felt her ears pop as if she were taking off in a passenger airliner. The light above her turned from red to green, and she used the same eight-digit pin on the keypad. The second door opened, and she picked up her phone and stepped out into the laboratory.
She filmed the laboratory. The work stations, flow charts, television screens, computer terminals and monitors, and the row upon row of scientific equipment that she had no idea of its purpose. She recognised test-tubes and pipette’s, petri dishes and all manner of tools she would have associated with a medical theatre. She looked up at the bank of television screens. A vision of evolutionary terror. From tiny rhesus monkeys in cages, to chimpanzees in single Perspex units, to a lone and solitary gorilla, and to her horror – two Perspex units, each containing a man and a woman.
Her heart raced, and she felt herself go lightheaded. She couldn’t take her eyes off the screens. She recognised both people – former workers of the hydroelectric station. She had thought it odd that they had left without word, had no further presence on social media. But people moved on with their lives, and jobs like this, they were a means to an end.
Natalia caught herself, realised she had started to urinate. Just a trickle, but she stopped herself, the sensation taking her back thirty-years to a time where she felt safe and loved and secure. Her legs were heavy and leaden, she willed herself to move, but could not. She did not know how long she stared at the screen, but she knew she had lost vital minutes, and her fear of being caught now was on an entirely different scale to her first fears. She knew that she could end up here, whatever this hell was.
She had been instructed to use video only. Stills could be taken from the film later, and she could not change the phone’s settings while wearing the gloves. She filmed the television monitors, using the zoom function to give greater perspective. She filmed the last two screens longer for dramatic effect. Then she felt voyeuristic. The feeling sickened her, and she lowered the phone. She knew what she had to do, but it was at odds with what she knew she should do. She could no longer see her watch and could not take the phone off its camera setting while wearing the gloves. She looked for a clock on the wall, then relaxed when she saw eight. They were labelled: Site, Moscow, Vladivostok, Washington, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Canberra. She frowned at the significance but looked at the clock labelled “site” and realised she was well over halfway through her window of opportunity.
But what should she do? She had instructions to film the facility and map the location using the GPS of her smartphone. She imagined that her predecessor had some information that had whetted the appetite of an outside agency but hadn’t documented the smoking gun. She looked again at the bank of television monitors, a thought coming to her. If they wanted evidence, then what better than the subject of their trials? What better way to get somebody’s attention than take a witness? She watched the man and the woman on the screen. What better way indeed?
34
“So, my mini bar takes the hit?” Neil Ramsay paused. “The accounts lot are going to love that, and it makes it look like I’ve got a bloody drink problem.”
Rashid laughed. “It’s a juice,” he said. “And besides, from what I’ve seen, MI5 is fuelled on alcohol. You’d have a bigger problem if you didn’t drink!”
“But there’s wine gone as well,” he replied tersely.
Ramsay had a large suite and it had been the obvious choice to act as a meeting room. Rashid was perched on the desk, an apparently expensive bottle of orange juice in his hand. King leaned against the wall and had reverted to a cup of tea. He sipped his half-decent cuppa and smiled at Ramsay’s protests. Marnie sipped from her glass of white wine, the object of Ramsay’s protestations. She had flushed at her cheeks and was looking embarrassed.
“Make the most of it, Marnie,” Caroline laughed. “He’ll ask housekeeping not to restock it tomorrow. If I hadn’t had too much already, I’d join you.” She was seated in a chair, pouring creamer into a cup of coffee. She’d found some cappuccino sprinkles and was juggling the cup, creamer and sprinkle sachet, the cup balanced between her knees.
“Oh, sod it!” Ramsay opened the mini bar and took out a miniature of brandy and a bottle of soda. “But nobody has any of that organic chocolate… it’s ten-euros a bar!” He twisted the caps and unceremoniously poured both bottles into a glass. He took a sip and relished the taste. He looked up at King as he sat down in the chair next to Caroline. King remained stoically against the wall. “So, what have you found out?”
King shrugged. “It’s not quite as simple as that,” he said. He told them about Peter Stewart, his association with him in MI6 and their eventful journey up to the hotel. He glossed over much of his MI6 career. It was out of the bag now, and he knew it wouldn’t be the last he heard about it. He had already started to think of an exit strategy. An archipelago in Indonesia or Malaysia, maybe. Somewhere he could disappear and live inexpensively. But would Caroline be willing to cut herself off? He glanced at her across the room. She had managed to construct a passable cappuccino. He loved her. Hoped she loved him enough to leave it all behind. He shrugged off the thought. He needed to finish this first.
“Simon Mereweather filled me in about Director Amherst’s penance,” he said stiffly.
King smiled thinly. “I know,” he said. “It’s my
fault…”
“No more than mine,” Rashid interrupted. “I was the new boy, but I did my share to upset the Russians. And I guess that is what has upset MI6.”
“And it’s not like Alex had a choice,” Caroline chimed in. “What was he meant to do? Sit around and wait? It’s not like the service got any rescue operation in place before you recruited Rashid to help. Frankly, I think about what was done early doors and it makes me want to find a new career…”
Ramsay held up his hand. “MI5 had things in place,” he said a little contritely.
“Sorry to play Devil’s advocate, but from the transcripts, wasn’t it Deputy Director Mereweather’s plan all along to get Alex to work off grid?” Marnie paused, looking at everyone. She looked like she’d started something she wished she hadn’t. “Otherwise, why else would he have presented him with the letter? The news and instructions? Like a clockwork mouse. Wind it up and watch it go…”
King smiled. He didn’t know Marnie, but he liked what he saw. She was a smart cookie. “Well, I’m glad that’s out there,” he said. “I knew why he did what he did. And I think he knows it too, which is why he’s mopping this up for MI6, rather than tossing me to the hounds.” He looked at Ramsay. “In other words, we’re all in this together.”
“Look, let’s all get on the same page here.” Ramsay could see the team were tight. He hadn’t thought of them as a team until now, but this was what he saw before him. “This wouldn’t normally be our bag, but MI6 have us over a barrel. We need to get this job done and move on.” He looked at everybody in turn, then focused his attention on King. “I’m not happy with this MI6 spook, though.”
“We need him,” said King.
“We needed Fitzpatrick,” Ramsay corrected him. “What we have now is an ex-spook who’s back in the game, and lord knows what he’s agreed in order to be taken back, and a defector whose original handler is dead.”
