Amara pointed.
‘The Range Rover — that’s Kristen’s.’
‘So she’s free to come and go?’
‘Only with minders.’
‘For the world’s most notorious arms dealer, he’s not exactly overburdened with security,’ said Kroll. ‘Either he’s smart enough to know that it just provokes the wrong sort of attention, or he’s mad enough to think he’s untouchable. Maybe both.’
‘Facts would be a lot more useful than speculation,’ said Dima.
‘Only trying to help.’
‘Right,’ said Dima. ‘First golden rule: stay in touch.’
Each of them had a radio headset. The plan was to send in Amara, with Zirak and Gregorin. They would scope the place, give Dima a sitrep and pinpoint Kaffarov. It was the sort of operation Dima relished: a plan made on the hoof using whatever available assets there were — in this case Amara and a small tight crew of utterly dependable men all capable of thinking on their feet. They had stayed with him on this, when many saner people would have bailed out. He watched them walk up to the house. The young blonde from the photos waved ecstatically from one of the balconies.
It all looked much, much too easy, he thought.
The first rocket landed exactly where Kristen was standing, as if it had been aimed right at her. She didn’t even have time to react. One moment she was waving, then she was gone. The balcony disappeared in a cloud of atomised concrete that engulfed Gregorin, Zirak and Amara below. He heard Amara scream, then the second rocket smashed into the mountainside fifty metres away. Dima felt himself flying backwards, then cartwheeling, until a wooden fence brought him to a halt just in time to see the two gun towers flattened by another strike.
Dima was up first, looking for Kroll and Vladimir. They were pulling each other to their feet. He pointed at the downed gun towers.
‘Get to the AAs. See if they still work. Whoever’s up there, stop them — now!’
He was moving towards the chalet, not thinking about Gregorin and Zirak or Amara and Kristen: only Kaffarov and the nukes. That’s what he’d come for. He’d made it this far, paid too high a price not to collect his prize. No one was going to take it from him now.
He picked up speed as he got to the pile of rubble, and found some steps, half broken, jutting out from the facade. He scrambled up them on to a chunk of balcony that immediately broke away when he stepped on to it, nearly sending him crashing to the ground with it. He could hear someone screaming under the rubble. A fire had broken out inside the building, belching acrid smoke. No mask, shit. All the kit was still in the SUV. All he had was his AK and a knife. He climbed through a window, grabbed a shredded curtain which he tore a strip from and wrapped it over his face.
A big drawing room, with nice paintings on the walls. A Matisse. And a Gauguin: two voluptuous island girls, topless, gazing out at him. Could they be real? Maybe that was what the non-Muslim heaven looked like: quite possibly not virgins, but he wasn’t fussy. He saw a giant marble chess board on a glass coffee table the size of a lake: a game midway through. No players in sight: white two moves from checkmate. From a doorway, a huge man with cheeks that squeezed his eyes into slits was aiming an Uzi at him. Yin or Yang? Dima would never know. His knife thudded into the man’s carotid artery, making a mess of Gauguin’s Tahitians. He hoped it was a fake.
Dima jumped on him, retrieved the knife, grabbed the Uzi and tore off his radio. Another blast echoed deep inside the building — the boiler or a fuel tank? The floor lurched and half a wall collapsed, sending a huge mirror down like a guillotine on to the expiring Korean. He saw the chess set glide away: game over. Four rooms on this floor. Two completely blown away. Kaffarov could be under the rubble as well. Two more — a library. He didn’t dare think about what precious first editions might be in there. A desk and a laptop, but a small one, white. Kristen’s? Check it later. He found the internal stairs. Intact. Took them three at a stride. Outside he heard the AA guns. A short sharp burst. Someone conserving their ammunition: Vladimir. He marvelled at how you could identify someone by the way they shot.
Bedrooms: one untouched, fresh flowers in a vase. Roses. A swimsuit on the carpet — wet. Tch, tch. A towel as well. Young people today, never clear up after themselves. His mother’s voice. You would have liked this room, mother. Silk cushions, triple-mirror dresser with matching curtain along the front: all the things you never had. A masked man in each of the mirrors. Himself. The en suite bathroom all marble: massive.
A rumble from outside, high up. Helicopter? There was a pad on the roof. Wrong noise. Plane? Both: Osprey. Keep the Marines away, Vladimir: I’m not done here yet.
Seven more bedrooms: all empty. They’d seen the G-Wagen: Kaffarov had to be somewhere. No sign of an office, nor even another laptop. Where was it all? Kaffarov never stopped, always trading, always in demand. Food, water and weapons, the three basic needs of humanity, in his case definitely not in that order.
The engines were close, slowing now. The Osprey doing its magic trick, switching from flight to hover, a fourteen-second process: fourteen seconds to take aim. Bam. Right on cue, another burst of AA fire, then an explosion, engine revs rising to a scream, struggling to do the work of the stricken second engine.
And suddenly Dima was down, smothered by a huge bulk. How did something that big move so fast, so quietly? His face grated against brickdust. Heat pressed in on him, and garlic sweat. The lone remaining twin was perched on top of him. From behind a hand curved round his forehead, gripping his brow, fingertips pressing against his eyeballs. He tried to open one eyelid, saw a window. Outside was the Osprey, its bulk falling to earth, the remaining engine losing the battle. And in extreme close-up, a flash of blade in the other hand curving toward his neck.
45
Dima didn’t hear the order. It disappeared under the sound of the Osprey falling among the trees, slamming into the ground and pulling with it more of the half-destroyed chalet. The blade hovered in the air as its owner struggled to reconcile the desire for revenge with the need to obey orders. His boss won that one. The blade disappeared, for now.
‘Hold up his head.’
Yin or Yang wrenched Dima’s head up and to one side. Kaffarov bent down slightly and Dima got his first close-up look: a Tajik, dark-haired and pale-skinned with a thin neck and a pronounced chin. Without all the hired muscle he might be a pushover, but right now Dima lacked the opportunity to find out.
‘He doesn’t look American. Take him to the pool.’
‘Thanks, but I haven’t got my swimming kit,’ said Dima.
The twin yanked him up by the scruff of his coat and dragged him across the room like a recalcitrant dog. A door, with nothing to distinguish it as such, opened silently in the wall. And there was the rest of it: a whole parallel universe carved into the mountain behind the facade of the chalet. Dima tried to walk but the twin held him down, so he was forced to let his feet drag behind him, and be pulled along the corridor like a toy.
Another door opened — the gym — and leading off it, a room full of screens. They stopped in the gym. Dima tried to turn his head to see more of the other room, but was yanked forward again. There was a brief glimpse of an aquarium: did people like Kaffarov keep piranhas, or was that only in films? Then he smelled the chlorine. They didn’t start with a question. The huge Korean just stuffed his head into the water and held it there. Twenty seconds. A taster. Yanked him up. Kaffarov’s face was close, calm, expressionless, his pupils tiny dots.
‘Who sent you?’ He spoke in Farsi, then repeated the question in English.
Dima replied in Russian.