He’d taken three paces away from the table when she called out. ‘Wait.’ Then she was standing by his side, her breathing light but fast, as if she’d raced up a flight of stairs. Her eyes were glittering but he couldn’t decide if it was anger, frustration … or excitement. ‘You’re like a dog with a frigging bone,’ she muttered.
‘Woof. Are you in?’
‘Maybe. Have you booked a hotel?’
‘Not yet.’
‘I know a decent one. I’ll take you there. But we’re not going anywhere near Stepyanka until morning. It’s too dangerous. My car’s out front. Give me two minutes head start before you follow.’
‘Am I that toxic?’
‘Damn right.’ She paused. ‘This had better be worth it.’ Then she walked away towards the front of the terminal leaving Harry to finish his coffee.
‘So why have you been handed the job?’ Clare asked, as she took the car out of the airport and headed towards the distant lights of the city. Traffic was light but she kept to a respectable speed to avoid drawing the attention of cameras or patrolling cops. ‘If he’s suspected of spying, which is beyond absurd, I’d have thought bringing you in would be the last thing they’d do.’
‘I was their first option, apparently. They think I’m the one most likely to track him down.’
She glanced across at him, the reflected lights of other vehicles highlighting shadows on her face. ‘And if you don’t?’
‘They’ll send a team after him.’
‘They must want him really bad. What sort of team?’
Harry shrugged. ‘The kind that doesn’t have to bring him back.’
‘I don’t want to rain on your parade,’ she said, ‘but from what I saw they’re already here.’
‘Couldn’t be,’ said Harry. If that was true, it suggested Cramer’s bosses must have known Rik was on the move days ago, in which case they’d had him under surveillance.
‘Fact. As I told you, when I saw him he was being tailed through the airport by a man and woman. They looked like they knew what they were doing.’
‘Locals?’
‘No. They were carrying bags so they must have come off the same flight.’
‘What did they look like?’ It could have been a team from Six, put on him the moment he started moving. Or, given Cramer’s suggestion that he’d jumped ship, was it a Russian security team making sure he travelled safely?
‘A man; tall, slim … I thought an athlete, but I don’t know. There was something military about him. And a woman: stocky, shorter, big ginger hair. A Rottweiler type.’
Harry didn’t say anything, but stared out into the darkness. Had Rik picked up his tails from London, or were they watching him for some other reason?
Clare picked him up at eight the following morning. He was feeling edgy and exhausted from a restless night’s sleep. Itching to get up and take a cab out to this Stepyanka place before she arrived, reason had prevailed; he was in potentially hostile territory with no language skills here and no knowledge of the people or the area. It wasn’t an unusual situation for him, but putting himself in extreme danger for no good reason wouldn’t do anything to help Rik.
Clare spoke little, concentrating on the traffic which seemed to consist of heavy trucks and a darting accompaniment of cars like pilot fish, good at changing direction without warning or signals and blasting their horns at anyone who failed to move quickly enough.
The area around the hotel sported a number of large, highly-polished Mercedes military-style G Wagen 4WDs, some on the move with others parked outside the fancier hotels and shops. The vehicles all had men in suits standing by them, but they didn’t look like business types.
‘Are they what I think they are?’ Harry asked.
She nodded. ‘Prestige vehicles for those who can afford them. There are a lot of new millionaires here and they’re scared of losing what they’ve got. Don’t mess with them; the drivers are mostly former special forces and they’re always armed.’
‘And the government doesn’t mind?’
‘Of course. But most of their clients are the government. It’s all part of the new détente in this neck of the woods.’
Eventually they joined the Beltway, where Clare switched to the section heading east before it curved north on its way round the city. On the left Harry saw a number of factory units and what looked like energy plants, and beyond that a grey stretch of housing and, further over, the beginnings of high-rises signalling the progress of a modernized city. On the right lay a thick belt of trees, with glimpses of industrial rooftops in the distance.
Ten minutes later Clare turned off the Beltway and headed east again, this time taking a narrow road through the trees until they reached a junction, where she switched onto a well-used forest track.
‘Stepyanka’s up ahead by the Beltway,’ she told him. ‘I’m taking the long way round instead of the tunnel. This brings us in by the apartment block. You’ll see it in a minute.’
Sure enough Harry saw the top of the block poking up from the surrounding trees. It didn’t look prepossessing from a distance, and closer inspection didn’t help much. Clare drove through a scattering of ancient housing, most of it derelict, and parked at the rear of the block.
‘It’s safer here,’ she told Harry, then reached into the glovebox and took out a small semi-automatic pistol, which she placed in her jacket pocket. ‘Just in case,’ she said. ‘Come on.’
She got out of the car and walked over to a rear entrance, which was partially blocked open by broken bed frames, kitchen equipment and other rubbish. She threaded her way through the tangle and led Harry to the front of the building where she peered through the grimy glass of the lobby towards the mouth of a tunnel under the motorway three hundred yards away.
Harry joined her and saw figures moving in and around the tunnel entrance, and a thin pall of smoke drifting into the air.
‘That’s where we don’t want to go,’ Clare said. ‘Once was enough for me.’
Harry nodded. ‘Are they likely to come over here?’
‘I don’t think so. They’ve tried to set up squats here but a private security team hired by the developers comes along within minutes and turfs them out. When they start work they don’t want any holdups due to protesters.’
‘But there are people living here?’
‘A handful. Mostly old women. They’ve been promised help to move when the time comes, and act as wardens for the developers in return. Two of the women I spoke to were holding mobile phones, so I reckon they must have been provided by the developers to call for help. Come on. I hope you’re feeling fit because the lift doesn’t work.’ She ignored the lift and led the way up the stairs at a steady rate. There was no sign that she lacked fitness, and he noticed that she kept her hand in her pocket where she had placed the pistol.
The stairs on the first two floors were crumbling with age, stained a dull brown by rust leaking out of the metal cores, and littered with rotten wood, smashed glass and puddled water. The third floor was a stark contrast. The floor, although pitted with holes, was clean and free of rubbish, and showed signs of having been swept regularly.
Clare continued up to the fourth floor, where she pointed at a door facing the stairs. ‘That’s twenty-four,’ she said softly. ‘Before we try knocking I want to let them know who we are.’
She walked along to the next apartment door and knocked, and moments later a woman appeared. She had a deeply lined face and sharp eyes, and could have been any age from sixty onwards. She was dressed in several layers of clothing under a heavy coat, and carrying a mobile phone. She nodded at Clare in recognition and held up a finger for them to wait. She pressed a button on the phone, and when it was answered, spoke briefly before turning it off.
‘She’s just told one of the other residents who I am,’ said Clare.
‘Why would she do that?’
‘It’s the neighbourhood network. She recognized me from before and told them not to call the cops.�
��
Clare turned to the woman and gestured towards Harry, then pointed towards the door of number twenty-four. The woman rummaged in her pocket and handed over a key, before stepping back into her apartment and closing the door.
The apartment was empty, save for rat droppings and a pool of filthy water on the floor. Harry checked out each room before returning to the front door where Clare was waiting.
‘Nobody’s been here in years,’ he said. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘Maybe it was bait,’ Clare said. ‘He was told someone would be here just to get him where they could take him without fuss.’
Harry nodded. It made sense. Had Rik been led to believe that Nathalie was here waiting for him? Entirely possible if she hadn’t turned up for their meeting. Maybe she’d sent him a message about this place. Or someone else had done it instead.
Clare locked the door behind them and went back to the next apartment and tapped gently on the door. The woman appeared again and took the key.
Harry said, ‘Can you ask her if anyone else has been here recently?’
Clare nodded and asked the question. The woman pursed her lips and shook her head, then used her phone again, rattling off a question to the person on the other end.
‘She’s asking one of the other women,’ Clare explained.
The woman gave the semblance of a smile before cutting the connection. She spoke at length to Clare and held up two fingers, then pointed towards the south, away from the city. Harry didn’t understand much but he did catch a familiar sounding term: ‘Industrial’naya’.
Clare turned to him and explained. ‘Her friend downstairs saw a man arrive in a taxi, which left immediately. It sounds like Rik. He entered the building and was followed upstairs by two men she thought were security police. After a few minutes all three went back out and got into a big car – probably a four-wheel-drive – and drove south towards an old industrial zone.’
‘Do you know it?’
‘I’ve driven past it. It’s huge. Nothing but empty factories and a few squatters living off the land, too poor to move anywhere better.’
Harry nodded. It sounded as if Rik had been lured into a trap. ‘Will you thank her for her help?’
‘Of course. It would be polite to offer payment. They’re proud but it wouldn’t hurt.’
Harry handed over some money which the woman refused before relenting. As she closed the door she said something to Clare.
‘What was that?’ Harry asked.
Clare looked at him and pulled a face. ‘You don’t want to know.’
‘Humour me.’
‘She said you’d got a face like a bulldog.’ She shrugged expansively and walked towards the stairs. ‘Don’t shoot the messenger.’
Harry followed her downstairs. It was the first time he’d ever heard her make anything approximating a joke.
As they stepped outside and started back towards the car, they found four men standing in their way. They were dressed in heavy coats and beanie hats, and holding lengths of steel pipe. They didn’t look friendly.
Clare spoke to them but they didn’t move. The one who appeared to be the leader stepped forward and gestured towards the car, holding out a grubby hand.
‘He wants the car keys,’ said Clare, putting her hand into her jacket pocket. ‘And our money.’
‘Tough,’ said Harry. ‘We do that and we’re dead. Shoot him in the foot. I find that works a treat.’
Clare gave him a look. ‘That might bring a load of trouble down on us. If the cops get involved I could lose everything. Amend that – we could lose everything.’ He realized she was talking about her and Katya.
‘You’ve never heard of shoot and run?’
She huffed for a moment, but when she took her hand out of her pocket she was holding the gun.
The lead man grunted and looked at Clare with contempt, as if she wouldn’t dare. He muttered something to his colleagues and spat to one side. The other three looked less sure of themselves, but with the required machismo at stake, they shuffled up to stand alongside their leader.
‘Don’t call my bluff,’ Clare warned the man. But if he understood he took no notice and reached for her gun.
She shot him in the foot. The sound echoed in the immediate area but was largely lost in the cold air. The man howled and dropped his weapon, and fell over clutching his wounded foot and staring up at Clare in disbelief. The other three looked stunned before backing away fast, losing their steel bars in the process.
‘Nice shot,’ said Harry. ‘That’ll smart for a bit.’ He stepped past the wounded man and led the way to the car while Clare followed, the gun covering the other three men who showed no signs of going to help their colleague.
She drove the car out of the area at a steady pace and regained the track leading back to the Beltway. ‘I don’t believe this,’ she said, wrenching the wheel round as they hit a junction, scattering a welter of gravel, slush and mud in their wake. ‘You’ve screwed it for me, Tate! Why did I ever listen to you?’
Harry said nothing. It was better if she vented. She would know as well as he that if they’d stayed there and tried talking their way out they’d be rat food by now.
‘I need a drink,’ she said after a while. ‘And I’m not talking coffee. I hope you haven’t turned teetotal.’
‘Not recently.’ Harry glanced across at her, trying to gauge whether she was losing it. Being out of the game for a few years would do that to a person. It changes the response mechanisms conditioned by years of training and experience so that suddenly being faced with a stressful situation could trip the whole world out of kilter. And for some drink was a quick way to counter the shock. For others it was the beginning of a form of disintegration.
She must have read his mind. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not falling apart. I just need a kick.’
He said nothing while she followed the Beltway to the next junction and found a bar where she parked and led the way inside. There were a few customers, mostly travellers or truck drivers who barely gave them a glance. That suited Harry just fine. Clare placed their order without asking Harry what he wanted, and moments later they were sinking shots of vodka.
‘God, I needed that,’ she said at last, draining her glass and calling for refills. ‘This is almost like old times.’
Harry said, ‘You don’t normally drink?’
She gave him another look. This one almost human. ‘Who said I was talking about the vodka?’ Then she laughed, a harsh sound that gave Harry a nervous tingle up the back of his neck.
THIRTY
The weather was beginning to close in when Clare pulled up near the gated entrance to a vast collection of factory buildings that had seen better days. They were several miles south of the city in an area surrounded by a thick growth of trees, their dark stalks pointing towards the heavy sky as if sucking out all the available light.
‘Nice spot for a picnic,’ said Harry.
‘It’s part of the forgotten landscape here,’ Clare replied. ‘An old industrial area that some say was easier to leave behind than pull down and rebuild.’
Harry spotted an old metal road sign that had come adrift of its moorings at one end and was pointing down at the ground. Rust had eaten away the original name and someone had scrawled another word on top in white paint. Revolyutsiya!
‘Does that mean what I think it does?’
Clare nodded. ‘Revolution. There are some old diehards here, too, same as in Russia. Most of them are dreamers; they’d never make it anywhere near the government offices in Independence Square because they don’t have the muscle.’
Two figures were moving in the distance, made indistinct by a fading light. They looked old, walking slowly and bundled up heavily against the cold.
‘Do people live here?’ Harry asked.
‘Some. Not so much in the zone, but in the forest. They’re probably scavenging for building materials and wood to burn. There are small cottages – more like shacks, really – where
some older residents have refused to move out. Others have pushed their way in from the outside. Katya told me about it. She said it’s lawless; even the cops don’t come down here unless they have to. That’s why I’m not taking the car in.’
A great place if you wanted to pursue illegal activities without being bothered, Harry thought. He climbed out and surveyed the area, which was marginally less depressing than a giant scrap yard, and shivered now he was out of the warmth of the car. A flurry of cold needles slapped his face, adding to the depressing landscape before them.
The buildings were aligned either side of a central access road several hundred yards long and arrow-straight. The word boulevard might have been one description, but it didn’t quite fit here, lacking any form of elegance and connecting a shambolic collection of typical Soviet-era blocks; solid, ugly and uninspiring, everything built for function over style. The materials were grim, mostly concrete, brick and corrugated steel, dark in composition and stained by time, rust and neglect. It was an old story; the production monoliths of a former age had been superseded by modern industry, leaving the ancient shells to moulder into the landscape, no longer required but too costly to pull down.
‘Let’s go lookee,’ said Harry.
Clare looked at him as if about to argue, then shrugged. ‘If we must.’
She led the way through the rusting iron gates onto the sweeping concrete avenue that had probably once been impressive, but was now peppered with rubble, rubbish and large potholes where the fabric of the surface had cracked and broken away. The buildings on either side were huge; vast shells with sagging roofs, deteriorating walls and stretches of cracked or broken glass. Each one had a fenced compound in varying states of disrepair, overgrown with weeds and small trees, some with abandoned metal cargo cages and bits of large, nameless metal structures like some modern artist’s impression of Jurassic Park.
Clare read off the few factory signs that remained, rusted and battered by the elements. ‘Aluminium,’ she said, pointing in turn. ‘Trucks. Tractors. Cement.’ It was a depressing list of activities that had been here and gone, carried away by progress or change. On the opposite side of the road was a large collection of buildings like small aircraft hangars. ‘Military vehicles.’
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