On television they showed films of FSB men and women when they charged out from the shadows and surprised traitors, handcuffed them and bundled them into vehicles. The television showed films of traitors in the courts, in a cage and facing justice. The films made it clear that the FSB always caught the spies, the traitors. It was on the television.
He would report the treachery. He would save himself. He would go into town, to the Prospekt, would find an officer, would tell him of the Italian’s visit, would stress his own loyalty – would not go to a penal colony up in the tundra, and would be rewarded, and would have drink – and would get back his own bed. He dressed in what he had worn most of the week and drained what was left in his overturned bottle. He would save himself.
Down by the Stroitel stadium, where they played ice hockey, junior league matches, the kids waited.
In Timofey’s life and in Natacha’s, going down to the stadium and waiting there was as dangerous a time as any. Freedom on a knife-edge because it was the one occasion when they were not in charge; they were there because they were told to be. The stadium, for a reason that neither could explain, was the location chosen by the Chechen boys from St Petersburg who drove up to Murmansk with fresh supplies: they had the best product. They were reliable, their prices were consistent, they were careful with their security. Wild and small and swarthy and from the Caucusus, their cruelty and brutality were unmatched. It was said that even the gangs in St Petersburg and Moscow were nervous of the Chechens. They waited.
Time drifted. The product that the Chechens brought to Murmansk was the best on the market. Timofey and Natacha had their regular customers. Never a complaint about the quality of the cut, never an accusation that the weed was augmented with fine sawdust, domestic flour or dried grass cuttings. If the Chechens in their large black van with privacy windows were late then the kids did not complain. To insult the travelling suppliers, or to antagonise them, would lead to bad consequences. Only a lunatic would trifle with the Chechens. It was the world in which they lived, but in the slow build-up to sex the night before, while the old idiot grunted and heaved and cursed in the living-room and failed to sleep, they had murmured what they would do with the money lodged in the foreign bank account, and that would be increased as a reward for the services they would provide as ‘sleepers’. They considered Red Sea resorts, the Italian coast or the Costas. Timofey carried a thick wad of notes in his hip pocket, she had more in her shoulder-bag. This was more important than where they had pledged to be later in the day; they were in place and with the money, looking out for the arrival of the Chechens, and also for the police.
They sat in the Fiat 500 – and smoked and talked and she nuzzled his neck and his hand lay on her thigh, and they kept a look on the mirror and the road behind the parking area. Maybe, Natacha whispered, there would be an opportunity, later, to get new wheels, something bigger and more comfortable than the Fiat. They had only each other, no one else cared a pinch for them. His father was a drunk and… her father was dead and in a shameful suicide’s grave.
She seldom told the story of how the death of the Kursk had killed her own father, safe on dry land when the explosion had ripped the submarine apart. He had been in the arms of his girl and had not set an alarm, had been in the warmth of a bed when the crew had stumbled from the apartments in the closed naval town of Vidyaevo on an August morning and gone to the buses that would take them to the quay where the submarine was moored. Some vessel. The height of the fourth storey of the building in which she now lived with Timofey, and as long as two football pitches, and they had sailed early with their Shipwreck and Starfish and Stallion missiles to exercise out in the Barents as if the enemy – NATO forces – were targets. First they would make an attack using a torpedo that weighed five tonnes and which was powered by hydrogen peroxide H2 02 propellant… She knew every detail of what had happened. At the moment her father had been stretching, yawning, considering the brilliance of the fuck he had enjoyed, that torpedo had exploded. The Kursk had gone down, its hull broken open. Her father, and his girl – who would be Natacha’s mother – did not learn of the Kursk’s loss for several hours. He would have pleaded influenza, and there were no telephones for the use of junior crew so he could not call in sick. Her father, after the persistence of the rumours sweeping the garrison town, had realised all his friends, colleagues, the boys with whom he laughed, joked, drank, were dead. He lived because he screwed this girl. He had taken a length of rope and had gone to the edge of the perimeter and had hanged himself. Natacha was a survivor of a sort, and managed, because of Timofey, to stay strong. And, that morning, if they were impatient, if they bugged out because the contact was late, then they would never again have the chance to trade with the Chechens, and might pay a high price for their disrespect – so they waited.
Gaz had sat in the vehicle, eyes closed and body still, and used known techniques for relaxation. There was a tap on his arm. The Norwegian to see him on his way. Gaz had no complaint that he had not seen Knacker, nor that Fee stood back and was half masked by the trees and did not speak and did not wave. No one in the regiment, about to climb up the ramp of a Chinook or scramble into a Special Forces vehicle and head off towards the sharp bit, wanted chaff talk that fogged concentration. He hooked the small rucksack over his shoulder. A change of clothes was in his bag but he was now in combat and camouflage gear and his only weapons were a flash-and-bang, and a pepper spray and a single smoke grenade. His clothing was sanitised, all labels removed and – if caught – he was expected to keep his mouth shut for thirty-six hours which would give time for what he knew to be buried, disguised. It was said within thirty-six hours, if you blundered into a patrol anywhere, here or Syria or the Province, the captors would realise the significance of who they had. After thirty-six… not worth thinking about, and the stuff he carried was for escape, creating diversion and chaos and having the bottle to break and run. But that, too, was chaff.
The Norwegian was older than Gaz – grizzled beard, cropped hair, slim and tall and fit. He led the way, carrying the small plastic bag that contained the animal hair. Gaz did not turn to see if Knacker and Fee watched him go. When they had worked out from the Forward Operating Base in Syria, and the same in Afghanistan, the Sixers always stayed back and the contacts were brought to them in a secure place. He assumed that Knacker was, in their books, a proven Russia expert, but would have bet that he had never been there. Might have looked out across country and at watch-towers, might have peered through high-powered lenses at an expanse of treetops, might have watched distant cars on the move… the Sixers were supposed to stay safe.
In a low voice, barely more than the sound of the wind in the leaves and on the fronds of the pines, the Norwegian explained why he carried the animal hair, and why he had with him a square metre of heavy leather. Made sense to Gaz. They were at the edge of the tree line. The fence was thirty yards of open ground in front of him. The Norwegian held his arm as if he did not want him to charge, not until he was pushed forward. From under his coat he produced two metal discs, each the size of a large Frisbee.