‘Time of death?’ Girling asked. His stomach churned. The smell was excruciating.
‘The very day he was taken. It seems that from the beginning you have been wasting your time here, Mr Girling.’
Stansell stared at him from the fetid water. If there was one shred of solace for Girling, it was that Stansell’s expression in death was of infinite wisdom. Whatever answers Stansell had been seeking, it seemed he had found them.
‘Has the discovery provided any new leads? What about our embassy — has anyone there been told?’ Girling leant against the shelf, staring down at the scattered tools of the pathologist’s trade — scalpels, saws, microscopes, chemical fluids, powders. The questions had exhausted him.
‘You are off the case now, Mr Girling,’ Al-Qadi said. ‘No more questions. You are being sent home, deported.’
Girling felt himself sag. The anger, even the pain, had gone, leaving emptiness.
‘As soon as the paperwork is complete,’ Al-Qadi went on. ‘Forty-eight hours, at the most. Meanwhile, stray from the boundaries of this city, or make any further trouble, and I will be forced to detain you in less comfortable surroundings.’ He nodded in the direction of the courtyard.
The investigator looked at Girling contemptuously. ‘Khalas,’ he said, clearing his throat and spitting into the icy water of the sarcophagus. ‘It is over.’
CHAPTER 14
It was a fifteen-kilometre drive from Qena’s main runway to the outside perimeter of the base complex. Doyle drove the jeep hard.
He waited until the checkpoint had dwindled to a dot in his mirror before he opened his mouth. He told Ulm he had filed a separate report to Washington about Opnaz, but true to form, TERCOM had returned an F3 grade reply, which translated as ‘monitor, but take no further action’. His report of the Hind crash and the Soviet accusation of sabotage had met with a similar response.
‘Is that it?’ Ulm asked.
‘Not exactly,’ Doyle shouted over the whine of the jeep’s engine. ‘I took the liberty of plugging into JWICS and seeing what I could find.’ JWICS was the DIA’s Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, a classified data network for US operatives in the field.
‘Well?’
Doyle gritted his teeth as they hit a particularly deep pothole.
‘Opnaz stands for Operativniy Naznachenie,’ he said the moment they cleared it.
‘Don’t tell me what it stands for. What the fuck is it?’
‘Trouble,’ Doyle said. ‘The toughest antiterrorist squad at the disposal of the Kremlin. According to JWICS, it was formed in 1977 to deal with the potential threat of terrorism against the Moscow Olympics. Opnaz is the Soviet equivalent of Delta, or the SAS. Tough sons of bitches. Being only company strength, it was initially led by a captain. We don’t have the name of that officer — at least, he’s not listed in JWICS — but given Shabanov’s age and rank today, it’s quite possible that he was the main man.’
Ulm looked at his IO. ‘What does it all mean, Charlie?’
Doyle sucked his teeth. ‘I don’t know. If Shabanov is Opnaz, not Spetsnaz, then he’s probably the most competent and experienced special forces oper-ative alive today. Judging from some of the jobs they’ve done, Opnaz is a whole order of magnitude better than Spetsnaz, though Spetsnaz has managed to grab the headlines.’
‘Why is that?’
‘I guess the Pentagon was happy to let Spetsnaz be the chief bogeyman. They’re excellent troops, but Opnaz are the guys who get the really tough jobs — Latvia, the Transcaucasus, Uzbekistan. The only thing I can’t work out is — if Jones really did hear Bitov right — why is Shabanov taking orders from Aushev, an Army general, when he’s in the MVD, a totally different part of the establishment. And what was Opnaz doing in Afghanistan?’
‘Uzbekistan, Afghanistan… what’s the difference?’
Doyle took his eye off the road for a moment and turned to Ulm. ‘A lot, Elliot. A whole lot. You see, Opnaz is the elite spearhead of the MVD, the Soviet Ministry of the Interior, the guys responsible for keeping internal order. Officially, the MVD is quite separate from the Army. When the Army wants something special done — in Afghanistan, for example — it calls in its own special forces, Spetsnaz. The MVD is technically forbidden to operate outside Soviet borders. It’s a constitutional thing, like the rules governing the National Guard back home. And if that’s what we’re dealing with here — if we’re teamed with Opnaz, not Spetsnaz — someone ought to tell us what all the secrecy’s about.’
‘Not to mention Aushev’s role in the whole thing.’
Doyle turned to him.
‘General Aushev’s GRU — Soviet Army,’ Ulm added. ‘What’s he doing running a special forces outfit from the Ministry of the Interior?’
‘Do you get the feeling these guys are working some kind of agenda of their own?’
‘I want answers, Charlie.’
‘The embassy should be getting the big picture.’
‘Yeah, maybe.’
Doyle pinched the top of his nose. He looked studious for a moment. ‘While you’re there, ask them what’s going on in the Lebanon and Syria,’ Doyle said. ‘The DIA’s reporting movement out of Hizbollah, Fatah, and the PFLP-GC.’
‘Movement?’
‘Lots of radio traffic in the last couple of days. JWICS says it’s encrypted, but it looks like these guys are planning something. And all at the same time.’
‘And in the Lebanon, our next port of call.’
‘Have a nice day,’ Doyle said.
The door opened and for a while Girling stood there, just watching her. Sharifa was dressed in Levi’s and a T-shirt. Her hair was uncombed and she had a faintly drowsy look about her.
He watched her expression alter as her eyes became accustomed to the shadows outside her apartment door. His clothes were ripped and scuffed, one eye was blackened and his face was a mass of cuts.
Her hands came up to her face. ‘My God, Tom, what happened to you?’
He took a step forward. ‘Sharifa, Stansell’s dead.’ He gave her the briefest details.
She looked at him uncomprehendingly. He could see her trying to establish a connection between his appearance and the news. Then, as the words registered fully, his condition ceased to be important and she let out a gasp of anguish. She stifled it by biting her lip, but her eyes brimmed with tears.
He took her in his arms and felt her body give.
‘Poor Stansell,’ she said softly, her head on his shoulder.
She cried in silence, her chest rising and falling sharply as the grief flowed from her body. And then, when she was done, she pulled herself away from him and shut the door. She began to wipe away the tears, but Girling stopped her. He lifted her head and looked into her eyes. The kohl had run down her face in long, dark lines. She smiled sadly, almost apologetically.
He led her to the sofa and sat her down. Then he disappeared into the dining-room and brought back brandy and two glasses. He poured them both stiff measures and sat beside her. ‘Drink,’ he said, ‘it’ll make you feel better.’
‘How long have you known about us?’ she asked.
‘Not very long.’
She looked at him questioningly.
‘When I was going through his things,’ Girling said. ‘There was a letter to you in his desk. He must have thought twice about sending it. I’m sorry. I didn’t read more than I had to.’
‘We both knew in our hearts that it wouldn’t work, but Stansell just refused to admit it.’ The tears started to come again. ‘After he was taken, I realized that this story, the Angels of Judgement… it was his way of trying to prove himself to me…’
‘You mustn’t blame yourself.’