by A P Bateman
Rashid shouldered the rifle and aimed at a spot on the wall. He worked the bolt, took up the tension on the trigger and dry-fired on an empty chamber. “That will have to do,” he said. He took the rifle apart and smiled. “Thanks, it’s the thought that counts…”
“When are you heading out?”
“First thing.”
“It’ll be dark.”
“It’s dark all the bloody time up here.”
“Twelve to three if the sky is clear. That’s all the light I’ve seen so far.”
“They hire snowmobiles at the desk if you have a driving licence. I’ll nip down in a moment and get one ordered. Then I’ll go back to my room and get my kit together.”
“Your room? Not sharing, then?”
“No. The consummate professional, me.” Rashid smiled. “Marnie has her own room. We thought it would be better to resist mixing business and pleasure.”
“Yeah, you lucked out there,” King grinned. “I heard all about it. Women talk.”
37
The Inari Falls Paatsjoki River Hydroelectric Plant
Russia
Natalia had set the shower as hot as it would go. She had used neat sanitiser on the wound and scrubbed it with a rough flannel. She had used the sanitiser all over her body, wincing as it stung at her private parts, the wound and her eyes. She had then scrubbed herself almost raw and soaped all over until the whole bar of soap had worn down to a piece so small that it washed away down the plughole. She had been in the shower for almost half an hour. She had wanted to cry, but there was nothing there. She was beyond hysteria, merely as low as she thought it possible to be. She had lost track of time, passing like it was merely a few minutes.
When she finally stepped out from the shower, she wiped the heavy condensation from the mirror and studied herself closely. Some would describe her as pretty, but she had never laid stock in that. She wore her reddish-brown hair to her shoulders and never bothered with makeup. There was precious little reason to up here. She was slim and well-toned. She used the gym and ran through the woods and along the lake’s shore in the summer months. Occasionally she would swim at the shore of Lake Inari where the super-heated water pumped out from the turbines. It was warm through the summer months and kept an area around the size of an acre from freezing throughout the winter.
She gently touched the wounds on her abdomen. Nothing more than a couple of scratches, really. And she had scrubbed them raw with the sanitiser and then the soap. Surely, she would be ok? It was with a heavy heart that she realised that she was being absurdly optimistic. But what could she do? To speak to anybody here would mean certain discovery of her antics. And she had seen how former employees had been treated. No, she needed to get out. Whomever she took her secrets to would have, or soon have the means to treat her. An antidote. It was her only option. She needed to bring forward her defection and get to the prearranged rendezvous early. She simply needed to flee this place before it was too late. The harsh elements would make it difficult, but surely not impossible?
The laboratory would be under lock-down, if not now, then imminently. They would play the footage back to see what had happened, how their subjects - or experiments - had gotten free, and when they did, they would see that the USB was missing. She imagined the unit would record digitally as well, recording over its own memory at certain stages, maybe weeks or months later, the USBs changed regularly to create a permanent log. She even wondered whether the footage saved itself to a cloud storage facility, in which case, the recordings would be infinite and accessible.
She had planned to leave in the morning. That would tie in with her rendezvous. But she knew she had little choice but to move now. The shift would be back by now. They would see the chaos and they would start working on their protocols.
She packed her rucksack with spare clothes, what few possessions she could not contemplate leaving, and a few supplies she had been taking over the past few weeks. Chocolate, UHT milk, tinned ham, long-life bread rolls and canned beans. Enough food for a few days if the rendezvous did not go according to plan. She had no money. The company paid into her St. Petersburg bank account and she had a debit card for transactions. She had some money saved but had been told by her contact to destroy her card and make no more transactions. It was a sure-fire way of being traced. She would be taken care of financially in her new life.
Natalia grimaced as she zipped up her suit. The wound itched and there was a distinct feeling like that of pins and needles. A strange feeling to experience from a scratch. She tried to ignore it. She had been stupid. But it wasn’t over yet. She wasn’t just bringing what she had been asked for, but a whole lot more. Up-close footage of the results of what was being created here. A secret facility producing quantities of substances the nation had signed and agreed not to manufacture. Biological weapons - and that was what her contact had been adamant was being produced – were illegal to create and stockpile. The fact that Russia was doing so was an act of war. The deadly agent Novichok that had been used in Salisbury on an ex-KGB defector and his daughter was just the tip of the iceberg.
She would be missed soon, so now was the time. She swung the rucksack over her shoulder and checked that she had the compass and map in her pocket. She removed the sim card from her mobile phone and dropped it down the plughole in the sink. She would have no communication now, not if she got into trouble – and out here that was a risk in itself - but in doing so she could not be traced either. The phone held all the evidence, and along with the USB, would be her bargaining chip – her fee for safe passage and a new life in The West.
38
“The coach is optional, Sir,” the manager paused. “But I would advise you take it. The storm is imminent. Reports are showing a first wave later this morning.”
“So, being on the road will be riskier,” said King.
“The coach will leave at eight-AM. The driver assures us he will make it to Kittila in time, and the report is saying that the storm should break over the White Sea and head straight for Archangel, in Russia. Kittila has been declared a safe zone.”
“Should head for Archangel?” King asked. “That’s quite a gamble. And why now?”
“Excuse me?”
“Why is there a coach available now? This place was the last refuge to all and sundry earlier today. The Sami, for instance.”
“It’s been arranged, that is all I know,” said the manager tersely. “Shall I book you and your… lady friend, on it?”
“No.” King said sharply and turned around. He made way for a family, both parents looking concerned. It was evident they wanted to be on that coach at all costs. Fair enough, thought King. But he had other matters on his mind.
He found Caroline in a conservatory-style room on the east side of the building. The glass was triple-glazed, and the square, open fireplace burned fiercely in the centre of the room. It was a curious looking fire, with a rack resembling a train track running from floor to ceiling on both sides, at a forty-five-degree angle. Each track held a row of logs, which were gravity-fed and constantly feeding the fire. King imagined the tracks could be filled with logs in the morning and run for twenty-four hours, simply dropping a log into the fire after the last log burned enough to make room for the next.
Caroline stood at the window. She held a saucer in her left hand and was sipping from a cup of coffee in the other. She glanced at King as he walked in.
“Fancy a bathe in a hot tub later?” she smiled, and he could tell she wasn’t serious.
King stood at her shoulder and looked down on the arrangement of wooden hot tubs, each heated by its own log stove with a stainless-steel flue. Great clouds of steam drifted into the air, and the Northern Lights on the horizon danced across the sky, making the steam in the icy air take on a green hue. There were a few couples in the hot tubs, but they could see that the vacated tubs were being covered and the fires extinguished by maintenance men in bulky snowsuits. It seemed impersonal, but the remaining couples di
d not seem to hurry. It was clear that the maintenance staff were readying for the storm.
“I doubt we’ll get the chance,” King said. “They’re trying not to be rude, but they’re shutting those things down as quickly as they empty. I imagine they’ll start chaining them down soon.”
“How cold is it out there?”
“Minus thirty,” he replied. He pointed to a row of red lights towards the ice hotel. “Those are saunas, and can you make out the piles of snow?”
Caroline struggled to see against her own reflection in the glass. “Yes,” she said eventually. “Just.”
“The snow has been loosened and sieved so people can run out of the sauna and dive into the piles.”
“Oh my god!” She laughed. “Forget that!”
King smiled. “It might have been a thought, had we not been on official business and there not be so many people around.”
She rested her head against his broad shoulder. “What are you like?”
He put an arm around her and pulled her close. “Sometimes I just want to get off the treadmill.”
“I know,” she said quietly. “I thought my sabbatical with Interpol would be a bit like that,” she paused. “I was hell-bent on seeing this trafficking thing through, but it’s just another perpetual situation that will never change, never be any different. Like what we do for MI5.”
“Same shit, different day,” King mused.
“Something like that.”
“So, this must be the woman Alex King has gone all soft for…”
They both spun around, but King had recognised the voice before he had started to move. The silence in which the man had entered the room was unnerving. Hard floors, yet no noise. It took a while to master. But then King remembered the man had once been the best there was. Maybe he still was.
“Caroline, this is Peter Stewart.” King looked at him and added, “Peter, this is Caroline Darby.”
Stewart walked over and extended his right hand. Caroline shook it and smiled. “Alex has told me a lot about you,” she said neutrally.
“All good?”
“Not at all.”
“Well, he’s probably right.”
“I’m sure he is.”
Stewart released her hand and looked back at King. “Sharp one, this.” The comment could well have been construed as humour, but nobody kidded themselves. “How about a drink, then?”
King nodded. “I’ll get them in. What are you drinking?”
“Scotch, of course,” Stewart said. “Neat and warm.”
“Let’s go to the bar, then. It’s a bit quiet in here,” replied King.
“I thought that’s how you liked it,” the Scotsman said sardonically.
“Not when I’m trying to spot the players.”
“There’s no players,” Stewart said as he followed them out of the room. “Just a lot of scared people trying to book themselves on a coach, and a few curious thrill-seekers who want to see what two-hundred mile an hour Arctic winds looked like.”
“Two-hundred miles per hour?” Caroline asked, somewhat incredulous.
Stewart ignored her and said, “There’s someone of interest coming in. From the power station on the Russian side. There’s no hard border here. No more than a rusted fence put up in the fifties. From a look on the map, there are only three places where crossing makes any sense. My money is on just one of them. It’s the most obvious. Fitzpatrick knew this, but he had worked out an exact rendezvous point with the first defector. We’ll have to cover the other two.”
“And Fitzpatrick wound up dead,” King said sharply. “So, don’t tell me there are no players up here. That Sami hunter tried to kill us. And he tried to kill me earlier, or at least tried to scare me off. And he was with another man. That’s two hostiles.”
“Well, one more possible, at least,” Stewart corrected him.
King caught the waitress’s eye and she came over. He ordered Stewart’s Scotch and a coffee for Caroline. An Americano. He settled on a tall ginger ale with ice. Despite the cold outside, the hotel was overly-warm. Stewart frowned at their orders but didn’t say anything. He’d always drunk alcohol no matter the operation. King had never seen the man drunk. He must have been immune or weaned to Scotch from the teat.
“Yes,” King said as the waitress left with their order. “Shame we couldn’t question the Sami.”
“Well, you should have put him down swiftly,” Stewart countered. “Getting soft, from what I see,” he added, glancing at Caroline.
“Or perhaps it suited you better for him to die?” King said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Just musing.”
“Muse away,” Stewart said tersely. “But if you’ve something to say, laddie, then best get it said.”
King said nothing as the waitress arrived with their order, but he watched Stewart intently. Had he rattled him? He hoped so. The waitress set down Caroline’s coffee first, then Stewart’s Scotch. King held out his hand for his drink and took a deep mouthful. The room was hot, and the air was dry. The waitress asked for his room number and King shook his head like it didn’t matter. He wasn’t about to give his room number away in front of Stewart. He gave her a twenty-Euro note and told her to keep the change. He doubted it would amount to much considering the hotel’s prices.
“What’s your plan, then?” King asked.
“I thought MI5 were handling this?”
King shrugged. “Sure, we’ll take it from here. I’ll get you booked onto the coach.”
“Nice try.”
“Can’t have it both ways,” Caroline interjected. “Your man was killed, MI5 are on the scene, for whatever reason or political agenda, so like Alex said; we’ll take it from here, enjoy the ride back.”
“She gets sharper,” Stewart said to King, swallowing his Scotch in one gulp.
“I’m right here,” Caroline glowered.
“Clearly,” Stewart said as he stood up. “We must do this again sometime…”
“Not likely…” Caroline sipped her coffee, turning away to look at the fire.
“I suggest we use your resources to cover the bases,” Stewart said. “There’s enough of you milling around here to have someone on all the possible locations.”
King smiled. He didn’t reply. Stewart may have been bluffing. He knew that the man would know Neil Ramsay. Ramsay had said to bank on as much. He doubted Stewart had spotted Rashid.
“Neil Ramsay is here,” said King. “He’s not really a field man. So maybe you can work one location, I’ll take another, and Caroline will cover the remaining possibility?”
Stewart shrugged. “Works for me,” he said. “We’ll get out there after an early breakfast. I’ll hire some snowmobiles.” He looked down at Caroline. “Just make sure you’ve got a map and a compass as well as your clutch bag.” He turned his gaze to her shapely legs and smiled. “You might want to wear something a little warmer, too.”
Stewart turned and walked out of the bar and headed towards the reception desk.
Caroline downed her coffee and looked at King. An expression somewhere between sympathy and bemusement. “And that was the best you ever came to actually having a father figure?”
King shrugged. “Yeah, it sucked to be me,” he said. “But I’m over it.”
Caroline linked her arm in his and pulled him closer. “You don’t need him, that’s for sure. Come on, lets find a place to people watch,” she said and led him out of the conservatory and into the foyer.
At the far end of the conservatory, the tall, thin man with the hooked nose sipped his vodka, the wing-backed chair still hiding him from view. He had watched the entire scene in the reflection of the window. He had heard more than he should have and certainly more than he expected. But not as much as he wanted. He smiled, catching himself in the reflection of the glass. The players in a deadly game had presented themselves to him. He was ready to make his move.
39
The Inari Falls Paatsjoki Riv
er Hydroelectric Plant
Russia
He hadn’t had much time. A moment’s notice. He had gathered a team together, but it had been a hastily conceived task and he had still been communicating with Moscow via the satellite phone of the helicopter flight over to finalise his orders. He would have preferred to work with tried and tested men, men he had fought with, killed with and bled with before. But time was a valuable commodity and he was in deficit. Still, they were good men. They were security contractors who the Kremlin had recruited, vetted and deemed worthy to protect something he had no wish to know about. He had a mission, and that was all he cared about. Track, recover or kill Natalia Grekov. A thirty-two-year-old engineer who had fled the plant with Russian federation state secrets. An act of treason, terrorism and war.
He looked at the file, learning more about his team. Some had fought as insurgents in the Ukraine, others had played their part in Syria in the cold war against Britain and the United States. All had faced battle, and all knew that to be called for, to work under this agency’s banner was not to be taken lightly. They were all black-ops initiated, and they knew what had to be done.
In front of him, the table was loaded heavily with the tools of his trade. He had stood back and watched. He had briefed them, now wanted to see how much they knew. What they selected would tell him how good they were. He would leave behind those who failed. But this was the darkest of operations, and those who did not make the grade would get the short walk down the long corridor. Enough steps for him to draw his pistol and shoot out the back of their neck.
Two men approached the table. They had already put on their white snowsuits, gloves and hats tucked into their belts, zippers left open while they waited.
“Colonel,” one of the men nodded, though did not salute.
The Colonel nodded back. “Call me Vasily, soldier. We are all private citizens here…”
Both men nodded. They knew him, of course. They were all ex-soldiers and one was ex-Spetsnaz - Russian special forces - they would know the legend, if not the man. And his reputation was fearsome.
