“Goodbye, Major, and wishing you well.”
Which startled Lavrenti. Something warm and something genuine. He noticed that the security man wore, proudly, a line of medal ribbons. “Thank you, and you.”
“Because we need more like you, Major. Combat men. Those who have fought in the name of the Fatherland. Been on active service. Not these desk warriors, fuck them – excuse me, Major – but more who have been at the front line, need them. Done time there.”
He was saluted. He went outside, into the drifting spat of the rain. His minders had not seen him. He walked to the gate. The guard there was admitting men and women who were probably in the delegation of the governor’s office but had come in different cars. He was delayed but it did not seem important. He paused in his stride and saw, through the bars, that the traffic on the Prospekt was light. He did not look back at the building, had no more time for it, but was unsettled by the greeting as he had given over his lanyard, and the warmth of it. More like you, Major… combat men, and so few knew.
Gaz saw him.
The officer came out, crossed the space in front of the building but could not push past the delegation entering the gate. He paused. Was wearing his cap and his camouflage tunic and had a bag across his shoulder, and his khaki drill trousers were pressed and had a knife-sharp crease, and his shoes were polished. The same glower in the eyes and the line that had been bloodied when Gaz had last seen it and now was faint but visible. Still the goons with the car, as recognisable as the major, had not seen their man. He flicked with his fingers, cracked them, and Gaz watched the response as the goons turned and gazed through the ironwork fence and jettisoned their cigarettes, and… Gaz was running.
Out from the bus-stop, along the street and past an apartment block entrance, and to the next corner. Looked for the Fiat, found it… a good boy, his Timofey. True to his word. Brought close to the corner, the engine ticking over. The girl was sitting in the back… the most chaotic call-up that Gaz had ever done. That it worked was miraculous… a delegation had gone through the gate and then into the building via a single door, and the officer had been forced to stand and watch, and his own car had not been ready. He did a sharp, short whistle, and the Fiat was coming fast towards him.
A door opened, foul smell hitting him. A jerk at his arm and he was pitched down into the front passenger seat, cannoned down and was bruised. Had only half closed the door when the boy accelerated away… He said it was the black car. They braked hard at the main intersection. The driver scanned. Gaz had seen the officer for a full ten seconds. He had seen the goons, who had once been minders, for an hour, a little more. All put together like a jigsaw. That should have been a moment of rare pleasure for Gaz. Should, mentally, have been thrilled enough to high-five the kids and punch the air.
There had been a four-day stake-out in Helmand, and he had been the lead of a reconnaissance team, had had a full sergeant working to him, and had identified a local hitter, a man with the reputation of having filled coffins to go back to UK for a hearse journey up the High Street in Wootton Bassett: the man was supposed to be an expert in the dark art of building the IEDs that either killed outright or made living a pained misery for survivors. Easiest cliché: they all look just the same and might have been true except that Gaz was the one who had detected in previous surveillance stills that the target tied his turban loosely and with a side knot, not a central one, and it had been enough. A man convicted, sentenced, and executed with a Hellfire strike on the compound from a fast jet and all done because the tying of a knot had been picked up by binoculars half a mile away. Knacker and his crowd would not have relied, just, on Faizah’s identification, of a Russian officer in a changed location and different uniform. Needed his training, what Gaz brought to the table. Had previous, had form, history… If Gaz spotted a man, and identified him, working in the sort of theatre that was his playground, then the man was dead. Not, of course, by Gaz’s hand, but he had that level of power.
Needed more. Needed a location. Needed a quieter street and a backwater location. Needed a better place for the hitters to get to work. The BMW was starting to move away from the kerb. Timofey had pulled out into the traffic and a car almost hit them, and a collision with a motorcycle was narrowly avoided. Gaz glanced behind him and saw the girl sat on top of a drunk.
Her voice was rich in contempt. “His father. His father went to tell them. His father was too drunk to get a hearing. His father is a traitor to us. This is his father. We should put a weight on him and take him to the docks, drop him in the river.”
Which he supposed was the way of the jungle they lived in… an arrogant thought, so he bit at his tongue and said nothing… just pointed ahead and Timofey had locked on the saloon and followed it easily. It had the speed to surge away from them, but it was that time in the late afternoon when the road filled and the offices slopped out. The shops would soon be shutting, the pavement was crowded. Murmansk was on the march and it suited Gaz well. He had no indication that the saloon’s driver used tradecraft, was aware of them, nor did he seem to practise any of the procedures laid down for the evasion of a tail. Their size helped them, a compact little vehicle that could shift between lanes and be hidden by the bulk of buses and lorries. Fact was, it was turning out ordinary and simple. The boy drove well and seemed aware of the risk of showing out, but the drunk’s stink from the back was sharp and Gaz was aware of a dilemma: did not know what, in the world from which the drug-dealing kids emerged, would be the fate of a father wanting to tout on his son. Timofey had his eyes on the roof of the saloon and swinging at lights, going right and climbing a steep and narrower road, and going back often enough to his mirror. Asked, “What is it now that you want?”
“I want him to go home. I want to see his home.”
“Only that?”
“Yes.”
“And he is?”
“He is Major Lavrenti Volkov. He is FSB. Before he worked here he was in Syria. I have to see him, locate him. Because of what happened in Syria.”
“What happened?”
“You don’t have to know. It is another story.”
Timofey persisted. “My father, who did he speak with?”
Gaz said, “He tried to speak with the guard at the gate. He tried also to speak with men who came from the building. Many people came but none wanted to hear what an alcoholic said. Nobody stopped, nobody listened. He had drunk too much, was not heard. If he wanted to betray you, then he failed. That is your problem, and I am not a part of it.”
He had said it easily, was practised at shedding responsibility. It was the way of a reconnaissance trooper. He carried no burden of ‘consequences’, would be far gone from Murmansk when it was decided how to use the information he provided. What happened to the drunk, Timofey’s father, was separate from him. By the following day he would be travelling back towards the island of Westray, and hooking up again with a mobile, calling customers, telling them that he would make up the time on their lawn cutting and the repairs he had promised for them, and maybe heading for the hotel and a beer, and might wonder if the mission had cleansed him of the attentions of the black dog days, and would meet again with Aggie…