by Henry Porter
They made for wasteland near the Linnahall, much of it under water, and skidded to a halt between Harland’s Volvo and the pick-up. Harland was already out of his car. Samson pulled Crane out of the Porsche and held the gun at his chest while Harland bound his hands behind his back with tape. Holding the Glock Compact with one hand, Samson opened the bullet-pocked door, reached in, picked up the iPad folder and held it aloft, which prompted Naji to dash from the Volvo. They both knew that, if Crane hadn’t switched off the device before the gunman opened fire, it could still be accessed without a passcode. Naji opened it and gave Samson a thumbs-up. He’d now be able to change the auto-lock setting to ‘Never’.
They left the Porsche on the wasteland, and with Samson now at the wheel of the pick-up, they followed Harland’s car at a sedate pace on to the road that circled the old town to the south. Vuk was in the back with a gun pressed to Crane’s temple, a length of pipe in his right hand.
Several police cars passed them going in the opposite direction with flashing lights and sirens, but very soon they left the lights of the city for the motorway. Apart from one or two trucks toiling eastwards, there was very little traffic. Samson glanced in the rear-view mirror. ‘Who’s trying to kill you, Crane?’
‘I’m not Crane,’ he said.
‘Right, you’re Aleksis Chumak. You kept the same initials for the all-American Adam Crane. And by the way, if you’re not the man known as Adam Crane, what the hell were you doing with Gil Leppo – the guy who was pleading with you for Anastasia’s life earlier today?’
There was no answer.
‘A lot of people must want you dead,’ continued Samson. ‘Who was that in the street?’
‘I assumed you had arranged the attack to get me into the car?’
‘I don’t go round killing innocent people like that doorman. That gunman wanted you dead. He was after you. Who was it? Maybe it was your Russian masters, who knew you were skimming their money and decided to do away with you now that your operation is over – huh?’
Crane looked sourly out of the window and said nothing. Samson examined him in the glow of the light from the footwell. Gone was the swagger of the previous evening, and now Samson noticed he looked heavier than in recent photographs and his hair was much shorter. He had the pallor and edginess of the all-night gamblers his father used to mix with. It looked like he’d been drinking a lot.
He prodded Crane again. ‘If we don’t get what we want tonight, we’re going to kill you.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. The accent was corporate America with no hint of the Ukraine.
‘You kidnapped Hisami’s wife in Italy to stop him publishing what he knew about your operation, giving you time to clean up your books and cover your tracks. But he wants her back. If that doesn’t happen in the next twelve hours, Vuk here is going to put a bullet in the back of your head. Before that he’ll make sure you suffer, just like you made Daniel Misak suffer in London.’
Crane shrugged and glared at Samson’s reflection in the mirror. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
Samson engaged his eyes. ‘Well, whatever happens with you tonight, you should know that tomorrow we will publish everything we have – the bank-account numbers, the phoney shell companies in London who you’re giving money to and what they are going to do with it.’
‘What do you want?’ he said.
Samson had his attention. ‘I told you. We want Anastasia back, and you’re going to make the call to save your life. Otherwise, I’m going to let Vuk here get to work on you. Vuk comes from Serbia and is currently being hunted for war crimes. He likes to keep his hand in.’ Vuk snarled, perhaps a little too theatrically to have effect.
The Volvo was slowing and had its indicator on. Samson cursed, followed Harland into the motorway service area and saw Naji leap from the Volvo and disappear into the shop. ‘What the fuck are they doing?’ murmured Samson, and went to park on the far side of the forecourt. A few seconds later, the phone reserved for Macy Harp started vibrating.
Macy’s first words were, ‘You know what to do with the phone after this call?’
‘Yep,’ said Samson, getting out of the vehicle and into the rain.
‘Our former employers are hopping mad. They’re saying you wrecked their operation.’
‘Bollocks! They didn’t have an operation, and we saved Crane’s life from an attack by an unidentified gunman. The only thing they had was the intelligence they’d got from us, and that’s out of date.’
‘Take Crane back right now, or there’s a risk they’ll charge you with weapons offences, endangering life, armed kidnap, and so forth.’
‘Sorry – no.’
‘They’ll find a way of prosecuting you in the UK as well.’
‘On what grounds? Making SIS look stupid?’
‘Nyman was hit.’
‘Badly?’
‘No, he’ll pull through, but Fell’s saying you shot him.’
‘Wrong. There was a hitman with a silenced automatic spraying the street with bullets, at least forty rounds. By the way, was the gunman hit?’
‘No, there’s no sign of him now, which means they can pin all this on you, Samson. Take Crane back to Tallinn and they might just let you off.’
‘Not going to happen. You know Anastasia’s life depends on it.’
‘Well, I’ve delivered their message to you,’ Macy said regretfully. ‘Now it’s on you. They mean business.’
‘Fuck them.’ Samson hung up and saw Harland moving rapidly towards him, holding his hand up against the rain. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Naji has to keep that iPad powered up. It’s nearly out of battery. He’s making a lead out of something he’s bought in the shop and the cigarette lighter from my car. God knows! Says it won’t take long.’ The rain was dripping down his face.
They moved towards the pick-up. Samson checked on Crane and Vuk in the back. ‘Just got word from Macy that all hell’s breaking loose,’ he said to Harland. ‘They want Crane. If you need to bail out, now’s the time.’
Harland shook his head. ‘I suppose I’m bloody well in now. Did you find a phone on Crane?’
‘No, Vuk checked.’
‘So I guess we may need that iPad.’
‘That reminds me,’ said Samson. He handed Harland the phone he’d just used and pointed to a flatbed van that had driven into the service area for fuel. ‘Can you toss this into the back as you pass?’ Harland nodded. If the phone Macy had called on was being monitored by GCHQ, they’d end up tracking an old van carrying two pneumatic drills and dozens of traffic cones.
They turned to see Naji burst from the shop triumphantly holding up a piece of wire.
‘Right, we’d better get going,’ said Harland. ‘It’s a long drive.’
Samson climbed into the pick-up and noted Crane’s deadly, indifferent expression. The gangster in Crane smelled the weakness of his position. There wasn’t a plan and Crane damn well knew it. They were about to head into the vast darkness of eastern Estonia and they didn’t have a clue how to reach the people holding Anastasia, or what they would do if they failed to make contact. They didn’t even know if Anastasia was alive. But Crane knew. Samson switched on the interior light and turned round. ‘Have you given the order to kill her? Is that what’s going on here? Is she dead?’ To ask this straightforward question seemed wholly unreal to him, but the words were out and he needed an answer.
Crane met his eyes and it appeared for one moment as though he were about to smile. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’
‘Is she dead?’ said Samson.
Without warning, Vuk brought the pipe across Crane’s right knee then hammered the kneecap two or three times more, causing Crane to scream. Samson ordered Vuk to stop.
‘If you’ve got a way of contacting your friends, you’d better tell me about it now, because this guy really wants to kill you.’
Crane said, ‘I don’t know what you’re …’
‘How would you give the order?’
Vuk made as though he was about to start beating Crane about the face.
‘There’s a number on my phone. I don’t have it. I lost it in the street.’
Samson waited a beat. ‘Did you contact them before you left the bar?’ he asked. ‘A text, an email, a call – how was it done?’
Crane rocked with pain and shook his head. Harland’s car shot past them. Samson started the pick-up and followed. ‘You’d better fucking well pray she’s not dead, pal.’
He phoned Harland as he drove. Naji picked up. ‘Look on the iPad for any messages or texts sent in the last few hours.’
CHAPTER 28
She was sure the storm had kept her alive for a few hours more. They had been talking, almost normally, and she had asked Kirill about his life, especially his childhood, which, in her experience, was a sure way of inducing someone to talk. Kirill was reluctant at first but then she asked about his mother and he began to loosen up, however not before observing, with his usual casual brutality, that he knew she was only trying to make herself seem more human to him and therefore less easy to kill.
‘No,’ she fired back, ‘I am trying to make you more human, Kirill.’
They had lived on the outskirts of St Petersburg. Kirill was the eldest of three. His father was mostly absent then vanished for good when he was thirteen. His mother was pretty but, unlike many of the women in the huge apartment blocks around them, she didn’t seek to supplement the family’s income by selling herself, although she had many offers. She had worked in a government office and was of an austere nature that became cold and punitive as the years went by. Kirill’s youth was spent outside the apartment with young thugs on the street. Reading between the lines, Anastasia guessed he hadn’t been a particularly impressive boy to look at and that he had learned to survive with brains as well as cunning, qualities that after a few brushes with the law eventually recommended him to a nameless secret agency. The pleasure of Kirill’s boyhood was in outsmarting his peers, seeing the strong boys bend unwittingly to his will, manipulating everyone around him. It became a game at which he excelled. And of course, Kirill told her with some pride, he had always known that he was destined for great things, which his contemporaries didn’t have the capacity to imagine, let alone achieve.
They talked on, and he gave her brandy and she hinted that sex with him was not out of the question, but he curled his lip and said she looked like a diseased hooker and, besides, she smelled like a pig.
He kept checking his phone while stamping about on the concrete. Around midnight, he received the text he had been expecting and issued orders to two men in parkas who had been hanging around in the dark smoking. He became distant and removed himself from her. Then the rain came and the wind tore through the massive structures around them. Kirill ordered the men to break the padlocks on a sliding steel door to the building nearest them. They cut the ties that bound her leg, marched her inside and at the entrance made a fire out of old tables and chairs, for it was clear the storm was going to last some time. Trying to rekindle the conversation, she asked if he might get into trouble breaking into a state facility, and Kirill replied, ‘I am the state.’
The rain eased off a couple of hours later. The fire was put out and the embers kicked from the doorway to fizzle in the water still gushing from the buildings. No one said anything. They dragged her from the shelter and she began to weep. They went about three hundred metres into the trees, where arc lights had been set up around a pit. She struggled to escape but the men held her fast and placed her at the side of a deep grave that had been dug with shovels which now lay on a mound of earth ready to fill the hole. She was shaking and weeping and pleading with them. Kirill took out a gun and held it to her head.
‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Now I have better idea.’ And he brought out his phone and gave it to one of the men with some instructions. ‘We show Samson how you die,’ he said.
The only things Anastasia was now aware of was her utter disbelief that this was happening and an awful, crushing sorrow. She was barely conscious of Kirill fussing about the angle of the camera shot and insisting that only his hand must be in the frame. He kept going over to the man to look at the screen and check for himself that he would be able to see Samson’s face when he made the call on FaceTime. Finally, he was satisfied and ordered the man to dial the number.
Harland’s Volvo and Samson’s pick-up had pulled up on a grassy track that led to Johannes’s cabin. The ground was sodden and they decided not to push their luck by parking right by the cabin, because Harland said there was every chance they would get stuck. Beyond the cabin, they heard the roar of a river in full spate; water was everywhere. Vuk threaded his way between large pools with a torch to break into the cabin while Samson got Crane out and stood him against the pick-up with a gun to his chest.
Samson’s phone sounded with the FaceTime ringtone, but he didn’t immediately register it. He pulled the phone awkwardly out of his pocket with his left hand, pressed to answer and was bringing it up to his face when he saw the pathetic image of Anastasia with a gun at the back of her head.
A voice said, ‘Now you must say goodbye, Anastasia.’ For a second, Samson didn’t react. ‘Say goodbye to lover!’ demanded the voice.
‘Wait!’ shouted Samson. He dragged Crane into the headlights, forced him to the ground and held the gun to his temple in front of the phone. Harland didn’t see what was happening but Naji understood straight away and rushed over to take the phone from Samson.
Samson yanked Crane’s head up. ‘You know who this is. If you harm her, I will execute this man.’ He thrust the gun into Crane’s eye and said, ‘Talk!’
Crane looked into the camera and said, ‘He will kill me.’ Then he mumbled something in Russian.
‘Speak English,’ Samson ordered.
He placed himself in the frame with Crane and looked at the phone. ‘Get her out of the damn mud! Pick her up! Help her up!’
Nothing happened for a few seconds then two pairs of hands seized Anastasia under her arms and lifted her from her kneeling position in the mud. ‘Now, keep the phone trained on her so I know she’s all right. And show yourself or I will kill him. Now!’
A man wearing a hat and a cravat appeared next to Anastasia and raised a gun to her head.
Samson allowed himself no emotion. He had to control the situation. ‘If you do everything I say, Chumak, or Crane, or whatever you call this bastard, may live. Now, give her something to cover herself – she’s cold.’ The face vanished. And someone put a jacket around her shoulders. ‘Show her my face and let her hear what I say. One false move and I will kill this man.’
Anastasia stared blankly at the phone. She looked as though she hadn’t eaten for days. Her face was drained of life, her lower lip trembled and her eyes did not focus, but she began to free herself from the dread and, in a few seconds, recognition dawned. ‘Is that you?’ she asked.
‘Yes, it’s me. I want you to keep it together and we’ll get through this.’
‘I’m here,’ she said. What that meant to him was that the woman who had fought so hard to survive was still there.
‘I want to speak to the man with you,’ Samson said.
‘What do you want?’ asked Anastasia’s executioner.
‘You will give her food and warm clothing. That is to happen now. Any divergence from my instructions and I will kill Crane. You are in Russia. We are in Estonia. We will exchange Crane for Anastasia at the border.’
Crane said something rapidly in Russian. Samson cuffed him on the side of the face. ‘What did he say?’ he shouted to Harland, a fluent Russian-speaker.
‘The iPad has to be included in the swap,’ replied Harland.
‘We want device also. No device, no deal,’ added the Russian in the hat, who had now passed out of the frame.
‘Okay,’ said Samson. ‘Where on the border?’
‘Narva,’ suggested Harland. ‘The bridge at Narva.�
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‘You hear that? The bridge at Narva in two hours.’
‘Two bridges at Narva – we will go to bridge for trains.’
‘Right, the rail bridge at Narva,’ said Samson. Harland nodded.
‘Now you’re going to give me a number and I will call you to arrange the exchange. If you don’t text me, he dies.’
‘Then beautiful girlfriend dies also.’
‘Text me the number,’ said Samson.
‘Three hours. You bring my friend and his device. Then we talk,’ said the Russian.
‘Two and a half hours – a hundred and fifty minutes. If I don’t have Anastasia alive with me on the Estonian side of the border by that time, I will execute this man and throw his body into the river.’ He hung up and, a few seconds later, a text message arrived with a number.
It was on.
Samson moved quickly to put Crane in the pick-up and was joined by Vuk, who had returned to fetch a tyre iron to break into the shed. As they took Crane to the open rear door, Samson said in his ear, ‘That was dumb, to mention the iPad. Now we know how important it is to you. If things go wrong and I have to kill you, I get to walk away with valuable material. British intelligence will be grateful.’
Crane looked up as they bundled him into the back seat. ‘You’ll never win. The world is …’
‘Shut the fuck up,’ said Samson, slamming the door shut before he could finish. He went round to stand by Harland, who was looking out into the night. A pair of headlights was moving slowly along the road they’d taken from the motorway and which passed the end of the track. They turned off the lights of the pick-up and the Volvo and watched. The vehicle paused at the junction with the track then continued along the road until the lights vanished to the south. ‘Could be someone wondering about Johannes’s place, but I’m not confident of that,’ said Harland. ‘We need to recce the bridge at Narva as soon as we can. They may call for help on this side of the border, which will be inconvenient, to say the least. This isn’t going to be easy.’
