Two large black sports bags lay inside. One was empty except for a few electronic cables. The second contained tiny cameras and microphones, likely identical to the ones hidden throughout the Presidential Suite of the Hotel Europe. They were battery-powered with wireless transmitters, very small, very concealable, and very high tech. There were more cables, tools and other surveillance paraphernalia.
Victor took the bag and climbed back into the driver’s seat. The odometer read 91,000 kilometres travelled. Beneath the odometer, the trip meter read 49 kilometres. If the rental company had reset the satnav’s trip log, it would have reset the trip meter too. Europcar rented vehicles out from Minsk National Airport, which was approximately 41 kilometres from central Minsk. That left about 8 kilometres unaccounted for. Either they had got significantly lost on their way into the city, which Victor doubted, or they had been somewhere beyond the hotel.
It was unlikely they had all travelled together on the same flight to avoid attracting undue attention. As there were four, he expected two might have flown in, and the other two arrived in Minsk by some other form of transport, probably train as they would have had to bring the surveillance equipment, which wouldn’t get through airport security without difficult questions being asked. The two who had flown in had arrived second, otherwise the Saab’s trip meter would have read at least 82 kilometres. The suite next to the Presidential had two double beds, so only two would have checked in, again to keep a low profile. The other two team members had to sleep somewhere.
So, 8 spare kilometres, assuming they’d made no mistakes on the drive. If they’d only completed one journey between the hotel and the safe house, that was a radius of 4 kilometres in a straight line. In a city, where there were few straight routes, that reduced down to maybe a 2.5 kilometre radius, or a circular area of 18 square kilometres. The centre of Minsk. Somewhere in that area was another hotel or even safe house used by the two team members who hadn’t stayed at the Europe. Such a distance could have been covered on foot or on public transport, but with the surveillance equipment to move, a car had been necessary. Plus maybe they’d intended to follow Yamout or Petrenko after the deal was completed and they went their separate ways.
Victor circled the Saab, examining the bodywork. It was mostly clean — recently waxed by the rental company — but on the windshield, outside the swathe of clear glass from the wipers, was a thin layer of pale grime. Victor ran a finger over it. The substance on his fingertip was slightly moist. He rubbed it dry with his thumb until he was left with a fine grey powder the consistency of talc. He re-examined the bodywork, finding no evidence of the powder except for a few thin pale streaks on the front bumper and residue in the grooves on the bonnet and grille.
Victor took the bag of surveillance equipment, but left the car. If the police weren’t looking for it yet, they would be soon. At an internet cafe he compiled a list of hotels in central Minsk within a 2.5 kilometre radius of October Square, then used a payphone to dial each one, asking for the names he had from the Belarusian driver’s licences he’d procured from the team, but no hotel he called had any guests matching those names. He checked hotels further out but with no result.
If they hadn’t stayed at a hotel they must have used some other kind of establishment. That wouldn’t be a hostel, as they would have required more privacy, but it could be a private residence.
He thought about the grey powder. Had time allowed, Victor would have set off on foot, but with an 18-square kilometre area to cover he couldn’t hope to complete the task before he needed to leave. He had to find the location before the cops did, if they hadn’t yet. He hailed a taxi.
The driver was a plump Belarusian woman with glasses and the biggest smile he’d seen in a long time.
In Russian, pretending not to speak the language well, he asked her, ‘Do you know where the, uh… build site is near here, on…’ He trailed off, as though he couldn’t remember or pronounce the name of the street.
‘Kirova… Nemiga?’ she offered slowly, helpful and smiling.
‘Kirova,’ he said, with a smile of his own.
She dropped him off at the east end of the street and he walked west, quickly realising that she’d misunderstood him, or he hadn’t made himself clear. Roadworks were taking place. It looked like they were fixing a water main. He hailed another taxi.
‘Nemiga,’ he said to the driver.
As they turned into the street, Victor saw scaffolding framing a building halfway down the block. He had the driver pull over. Nemiga was in a rundown neighbourhood approximately half a mile from October Square. The street was lined with narrow-fronted townhouses painted in pastel shades. Victor approached the building with the scaffolding. He heard the sounds of busy work emanating from the property — shouting, banging, and the rumble and whine of power tools. A cement mixer was set on the sidewalk outside.
The Saab didn’t have to be parked near the mixer to get cement dust on its windshield, depending on the wind that day. Not that where the car was parked helped him much. The team would have taken a spot wherever it was available, if the space outside whatever building they’d used wasn’t free. There were maybe twenty houses on each side of the street, forty in total, thirty-nine potentials after discounting the house being worked on. He could knock on every door, and further reduce the potentials by crossing off any house where someone answered, but even then he could be left with twenty-five or more properties to break into. But there was a simpler way of narrowing down his selection.
He looked at the sky. The clouds were dark and had been all morning. The ambient light was limited. Victor walked along the sidewalk until he found the only house with all of its drapes closed.
It had a good deadbolt, but Victor had been picking locks for fifteen years. He closed the front door behind him and dropped the lock picks back into a pocket. He stood in the hallway and listened. There was no alarm, but Victor hadn’t expected to find one. If someone broke in the team hadn’t wanted the police to show up and start asking questions they didn’t want to answer. In the days when Victor had his own house he’d gone with the same philosophy.
He didn’t know if this was a safe house owned by whoever they worked for or somewhere that had been rented just for this job. It was dark. The hallway was narrow with a threadbare carpet and flaking paint on the walls. The ceiling light had no shade. A set of stairs led up. A door stood in the wall to his right. The hallway opened up into a kitchen ahead of him. He opened the door first, finding himself in a small lounge with a two-seater sofa, armchair, TV and little else to suggest it was anyone’s home. A camp bed was set up in one corner with a small suitcase opened out next to it. The bed hadn’t been made. The suitcase contained clothes and toiletries and nothing else. A side pocket was open, but empty.
Victor tried the kitchen next. The fridge was a quarter full with milk, cheese, sliced meats, some vegetables and orange juice. The cupboards were mostly empty, except one contained bread and canned goods. Plastic knives, forks and spoons were mixed together loose in a drawer. The kitchen led to a bathroom. Several damp towels competed for space on the rail.
Upstairs there were two bedrooms. The first was small, with a single bed against one wall and another camp bed against the other. Each had been recently slept in. That made three. The suite back at the Europe must have been used purely for surveillance then, with the team commuting from here, probably operating in some kind of shift arrangement, travelling back and forth to rack up the trip meter. Victor searched through the suitcase he found next to each bed. Like the one downstairs they had clothes and toiletries and nothing to tell him who these guys were. As with the one downstairs, they had open but empty pockets, one on the front of the case, the other on the inside lid.