Olga Sarapenko, wrapped up in her fleece coat, came back into the lodge. She had said she wanted some fresh air and had taken a cigarette outside.
‘Did you see Vorobyeva?’ asked Buslenko.
She shrugged. ‘No. But I was only out on the porch. Maybe he’s further down the drive.’
Buslenko looked at his watch. ‘He’s late. He’s never late.’ He picked up the two-way, hit the transmit button and called Vorobyeva. Silence. He called again. Still no reply.
Buslenko didn’t need to give the order. Tenishchev and Serduchka unzipped the large canvas holdall in the corner and started passing out brand-new Ukrainian Vepr assault rifles and clips before taking a couple of AK74Ms for themselves.
‘Lights!’ Buslenko said, unholstering his Fort17 handgun. The night filled the lodge. The moon was not yet full, but reflected brightly off the snow. It traced the snow-smoothed edges of the drive and Buslenko followed its sweep round to where it disappeared into the dense forest. No fresh footprints. He looked at each one of his team in turn. Now he would find out how good they were. He signalled to Tenishchev who passed him the night-vision scope. Buslenko scanned the forest and the fringes of the drive for movement. Nothing.
He used hand signals to order the team to spread and search. He indicated that Olga should stay in the lodge.
It was impossible to move without making a noise. The snow had stopped falling, but the night-time drop in temperature had given it a sparkling crust which twinkled in the moonlight and crunched underfoot. Anyone waiting for them would be able to see and hear them. Buslenko’s mind raced. He knew something was wrong. Vorobyeva was now well overdue. He sent two teams of two out on either side of him: Tenishchev and Serduchka to the forest side of the track, Stoyan and the Berkut officer, Belotserkovsky, on the river side. He walked along the middle of the track, exposed, while the others covered him, their weapons sweeping from side to side. Buslenko strained the night for any sound of an enemy hidden in the forest, the sound of the river to his left became deafening.
He followed the track around the corner. The river was now behind him and thick forest on either side. He waited until the others flanked him, sheltered on the edges of the forest. About three hundred metres down the track he found fresh bootprints in the snow. Vorobyeva’s: he was the only member of the group who wore Russian OMON boots. Buslenko crouched down and signalled for the others to follow him twenty metres behind, on either flank. He followed the bootprints into the forest and deeper snow. He could tell that Vorobyeva had swung across here to check something out. Buslenko felt his heart pound. He was only a few kilometres from his old home town, yet he knew he was at war. Clearly Vitrenko had decided not to wait until Buslenko travelled to Germany before finishing him off. He froze. About twenty metres ahead was a clearing in the forest, illuminated like a stage by the moonlight. He took aim at the figure kneeling at the edge of the clearing, not moving. He drew closer, trying to minimise the sound of his progress through the snow and the forest debris, always keeping his aim locked on the kneeling figure. He was ready to fire if any sound he made caused the man at the edge of the clearing to turn. Buslenko’s foot sunk into a snow-filled hollow, making a slow crunch that the kneeling man must have heard. But he didn’t move. Buslenko moved further forward; from this distance he could recognise the black parka, its hood pulled over the man’s head.
‘Vorobyeva!’ he hissed. ‘Vorobyeva… are you all right?’ Still no answer. He moved further forward. ‘Vorobyeva!’
He signalled for the others to join him. Stoyan and Belotserkovsky appeared like ghosts from the undergrowth.
‘Where are Tenishchev and Serduchka?’ Buslenko asked.
‘They were there a minute ago…’ said the Tatar.
Buslenko scoured the forest to their right. There was no sign of the other two Spetsnaz. No sound.
‘Cover me,’ said Buslenko. ‘We’ve definitely got hostiles.’
Buslenko crawled through the snow. He reached the kneeling figure.
‘Vorobyeva!’
For the last three minutes Buslenko had known what to expect. The snow in front of the kneeling Vorobyeva was stained dark. Buslenko touched the figure’s shoulder and Vorobyeva toppled backwards. His throat was gashed open and glistened a cold crimson-black in the moonlight.
‘Fuck!’ Buslenko turned his attention like a searchlight on the fringes of the clearing, scanning them for any sign of the enemy. He moved back to where he had left Stoyan and Belotserkovsky.
‘He’s dead. Vorobyeva was one of the best in the business. Whoever’s taken him by stealth must be even better. We’re in trouble.’
‘Vitrenko?’
‘God knows how he tracked us here, but that’s who’s behind this.’
‘What about Tenishchev and Serduchka?’ asked Belotserkovsky. ‘Them too?’
Buslenko suddenly remembered Olga Sarapenko. ‘We’ve got to get back to the lodge. Now!’
4.
He looked down at the corpse on the table.
For Oliver, death held no mystery. He had become accustomed to it: so many dead over the years. He could still recall his first, how he had looked into her face and had seen the person instead of the flesh; someone with a history, who had had a life and a personality, who had dreamed and laughed and felt the sun on her face. He had seen the stretch marks of distant pregnancies, the scar on her knee from an even more distant childhood injury, the lines around her mouth from a lifetime of laughing. Then he had pushed his knife into her and had begun to cut her up and she had ceased to be a person. After her, after his first, it had become so much easier. He still looked at a face before he started to cut, but he never looked into one. Now they were all simply so much cold flesh: doubly chilled from death and from their refrigerated storage until Oliver was ready for them.
He drew a deep breath before starting. The dismemberment of a human body was much harder work, physically, than most people imagined. Deprived of its vitality, a corpse was a heavy, dead mass, its density varying radically from the almost liquid, to gristly, to the solid and unyielding. Organ and bone, skin and fat, cartilage and sinew: cutting through the material of a human corpse required robust tools, some even power-driven. Oliver had all he needed to hand. Breadknife. Electric saw. Hand-held saw. Shears. Scissors. Knife.
He started as he always did, walking around the table and observing the lifeless body. The dead man was still fully dressed and Oliver noticed that some of the material from his blood-soaked T-shirt and kitchen overalls had been forced into the deep gashes. Oliver counted the cuts out loud, some of which gaped open, exposing the subcutaneous layer of pale marbled fat and the darker, denser mass of sinew and muscle beneath. Some of the slashes exposed white bone and as Oliver leaned closer to examine the wounds he saw where the bone had been chipped by the cleaver, the primary evidence of sharp-force trauma.
There were two other men in the room; together they helped Oliver turn the cadaver onto its belly. He examined its back. There were fewer wounds there, but they were still significant.
‘Let’s get him undressed,’ Oliver said and the two other men helped him cut and remove the dead man’s clothes. After the body was naked, Oliver repeated his observational circuit of it, again speaking his thoughts out loud.
It had been one of the first things Oliver had learned as a forensic pathologist: to take time and use his eyes. To make observations. He had often compared his work to that of an archaeologist, where technology, science and professional skills combined to uncover a complete history. But first, like an archaeologist viewing a landscape and identifying a likely dig site, you had to know where to look.