"I was hoping to come straight back and rejoin you," I told him, 'but I'm off to the UK for a debrief first. Nobody's sure where the Chechens have taken Orange. London looks the most likely. As soon as the dust settles, I'll get my arse back to Balashika as fast as I can."
"Speak to you soon," replied Whinger laconically.
Back in England, scene after scene played through my mind as we headed westwards through the night: the chutes of the free-fallers coming in like bats out of the starry sky; the Chechens humping away the components of Orange during the snowstorm; Akula floating face-down in his own pool; the blaze from the villa lighting up the snow on the mountainside with a huge, ruddy glow.
My trouble in the debrief was that I'd already exhausted my small store of information. Talking to the CO in Hereford via Satcom from the Tristar, I'd already given all the details I could, and now, repeating my conversation with Shark for the benefit of the guys from the Firm, I felt as if the record had got stuck in the same groove.
I sat in the back of the car with one man beside me; the other, in the front, kept screwing round to talk. I could only suppose that the driver had full security clearance.
"Go through it again," said the guy next to me.
"The whole meeting only lasted a couple of minutes," I said.
"Akula just said, "You'd better send a message to the British Government."
"And?"
"That if we didn't release the Chechens who'd been arrested, London would be sorry.
"Was that all?"
'"London will regret." Those were his words exactly."
"From which you assumed he was sending Orange to London and planning to detonate it there."
"That's right," I agreed.
"Couldn't the Yanks track the plane?"
"By the time they knew what was happening it was too late.
There were several planes airborne over the Caucasus. Any of them could have been the one they wanted. The most likely candidate was a privately owned Gulfstream that went to Malta, which is one of the Mafia's overseas strongholds. We think the device may have been transferred to another aircraft there."
"What about at this end?"
"We've got a watch on all major airports. The difficulty is, a small jet could put down in dozens of different places on a private strip, anywhere."
"So you think the bomb may be here already?"
"We've got to assume that."
"And you can't search the whole of London."
The man next to me made a wry grimace. Once more I thought of the guys in furry caps, carrying the components out through the snow.
"I should have whacked them while I had the chance," I said.
"What's that?" The man in front twisted himself yet farther round, and I had to explain all over again.
Then I asked, "But do they know how to detonate the damned thing? Can the device be set off without the SCR?"
"Probably, yes. The Americans say it could be, if somebody's had the right training."
"Bloody hell!"
"Exactly."
"This Shark he didn't give any other clue?"
"He never had a chance. He might have, but Sasha rushed in and dropped him."
I described how the naked woman had come storming out of the changing cubicle, and how Sasha had drilled her through the back. My companions seemed quite unmoved by the saga: their only reaction was that the front-seat guy opened a briefcase and switched on the interior light to show me some mug shots.
"These are what we got off the disk from Moscow," he told me.
"Allegedly the Chechen Mafia's first eleven."
"Well," I said.
"That's Shark, for a start." The long face, hollow cheeks and heavy eyebrow were unmistakable.
"That was Shark," I corrected.
"You can eliminate him from your inquiries."
"What about this one?"
He showed me a photo of an even more cadaverous-looking man, but younger.
"That's the brother, Supyan Gaidar. He calls himself Barrakuda. Anna showed me that photo in Balashika."
"What about this one?"
The third villain bore a strong resemblance to Sasha, but his face was broader and shorter. I shook my head.
"Any of these guys could have been in the villa," I said.
"If they were, I doubt if they came out alive. The only one I saw was Shark."
"But this one," my neighbour persisted.
"You're sure about him?"
"Definitely Barrakuda. He's pretty much like his elder brother."
"We believe he's in the UK by now," said the man in front.
"He was last heard of heading for London.
In camp the atmosphere was no less frenetic. Everybody from the CO down came at me saying, "Where have they put it? How do we find Barrakuda?" They seemed to think that because I'd been in Moscow, I must be an expert on the Chechen Mafia.
They couldn't take in the fact that I knew nothing about the organisation's London dispositions.
Also, people were naturally worried about the safety of our guys still at Balashika, and kept asking questions about the situation there. All I could say was that, if they stayed inside the camp, they'd be OK.
After an hour's further debrief the boss at last realised that I was out on my feet, and told me to get my head down. He saw that there was nothing further we could do until we got some definite leads. So it was that at 0030 British time, 0330 Moscow time, 0430 Grozny time, and the end of the world by my biological clock, I eventually had a hot shower, lay down in my room in the sergeants' mess and passed out.
The next I knew, someone was shaking my shoulder.
"Get up, Geordie," a voice was saying.
"On your feet. They've seen him."
"Who?"
"Barrakuda."
"Ah, Jesus! Where?"
"Central London. A police surveillance team saw him go into one of the flats they've had staked out."
I blinked and stared at my watch: 6:15. "What happened?" I croaked.
"He came in a taxi, carrying a small hold-all."
"OK," I said.
"I'm with you."
Tired as I was, I knew I had to go, because I was the only person in England who'd set eyes on Orange.
Half an hour later I was heading back towards the capital, a member of the SP team, kit ted out to take part in yet another hit.
I knew all the other guys well enough to fit in, and as I'd recently finished commanding an SP team for nine months, we all spoke the same language.
As usual, our orders were unwritten but absolutely clear: our primary task was to recover Orange, but our scarcely less important aim was to silence Barrakuda and anyone found with him. If we got the bomb back and took out the immediate Mafia cell, the whole saga would become deniable. Anything the Chechens might say could be discredited. The operation was to be carried out as quickly as possible.
As our Range Rovers hurtled up the M4 at a steady 100 mph." I noticed that the traffic seemed very light, and realised belatedly that this was Sunday.
In less than two hours we had reached a small warehouse in Notting Hill that had been taken over as a forward mounting base: the wagons drove straight in, out of sight, and the guys tumbled out to get their kit sorted.
By now the Firm had secured plans of the flat that Barrakuda was using. Markham Court was a small red-brick block, dating from the 1930s, in Seymour Place, north of Marble Arch. It belonged to West End Homes, a property company, and in June apartment No. 10 had been taken, fully furnished, on a three year lease by a firm based in Malta. The area was up-market residential, central and convenient, and in recent years had been heavily infiltrated by Arabs.
The building had only five storeys, and No. 10 was on the top floor. A single lift went up from inside the front door of the building, with a staircase winding round the outside of the shaft.
Lift and stairs both gave on to small landings, with two flats on each floor, to right and left. The only other access to each apartment was via a metal fire-escape, which served a back door leading out of the kitchen area.