‘How big is what they’re bringing, sir?’
‘Perhaps fifty kilos. The size would be nearly a metre high and nearly a half-metre across. Then I assume it has extra protection round it.’
‘Can it get wet?’
‘I don’t think so. That cannot be risked.’
‘Can the men who are bringing it take responsibility for getting it to this side?’
‘No. They are old.’
Carrick remembered how the officer had planned the crossing of a river in spate in the Brecon mountains. He asked, ‘Could you, sir, find a small boat?’
‘I think I have seen one.’
‘It’s a small boat we need, sir, for you and me.’
And Johnny Carrick, beside the Bug river, which was huge and flooded with the rain falling on central Ukraine, did not see that his loyalties had blurred and slipped.
Chapter 17
They were beside a lake. To reach it, Carrick reckoned they had walked three miles.
He had thought it remarkable that Reuven Weissberg, the Russian who had lived variously in Perm, Moscow and Berlin, could follow trails and tracks through the forest, could move there with the latent confidence of an animal whose place it was. He had followed as exactly as possible under the trees. His target had stayed as the centre of Reuven Weissberg’s back, and when he lost it, the penalty was to blunder into tree trunks or have his face whipped by low branches.
Carrick had been alerted that they approached the lake by the splashes and call of water fowl. Near to it, they had moved along a track wide enough for a tractor and trailer, and he had fallen into one of the deeper ruts left by a tyre. He had been pitched forward, his momentum catching Reuven Weissberg’s haunches. For a moment, then, a hand had been at Carrick’s throat, tight, hard and squeezing. He had choked once, then heard laughter. He had been on his knees and the hand had left his throat and lifted him … Strange laughter, and not from a world Carrick knew. The same hand had gone to his shoulders and gripped them; then they had gone the last yards and the lake had been in front of them. Remarkable — no map, no compass and the GPS not used. Carrick thought that Reuven Weissberg knew the forest and the routes through it as a native would, or as a boar or a deer.
The tree line ran right to the water’s edge.
He was told, ‘I was here once. A man had been fishing. I did not speak to him and he would not have known that I watched him. He brought a boat to this place and tied it, then left it.’
He was not told why Reuven Weissberg had been in the forest, moving with the secrecy of a hunter or a beast.
The moon found a cloud gap. The water shimmered and there were ripples to match the squeal of the birds. They went to the very edge. He thought of those few seconds when his throat had been gripped, then freed, and when the fist had taken hold of his coat and the strength of the man had lifted him, of the ferocity of the first seconds and the kindness that had followed. The boat was there. Old abilities had returned. His vision in the darkness, augmented by the moon’s glow, was more complete than it had been when they had begun the trek through the forest. Light reflected up from the water.
There was a small inlet in the bank, a little gouge, and there was a tree with submerged roots at its mouth that would have given shelter to the place. Across the inlet was the angled black shape. He could only admire the faith Reuven Weissberg had shown in his judgement and memory. That faith had bred certainty. He followed.
He murmured, ‘I’ll do the business, sir. I will.’
Carrick eased past. He held on to the splayed sprigs of branches as he went down and into the water. His hands groped the length of the boat — well, not so much a boat, more a small punt. It was the sort of craft that some towed behind a narrowboat while navigating the Thames or the Grand Union Canal. There were times when it was easier to moor on an open bank, perhaps where cattle were, and then a punt was needed to paddle across the river or the waterway to get to a pub or a mini-market. He thought of a failed loving on a narrow-boat during the night that he’d been recruited, volunteered, and of her in the arms of the young man who had come with the old bully. His fingers found the punts dimensions, narrow and squared off at front and back, and there was a single board across its centre where a man could sit, paddle or fish from. He reckoned that the sides of the punt were some nine inches, less than a foot, above the water line. He knew little of boats. They had no place on the Spey near its mouth. The water was too fast, there were too many submerged and lethal rocks, and the anglers going after salmon used chest waders to get to the head of a prime pool. Paratroopers did not do water and boats, left them to what they called the ‘cabbage hats’ — paratroops called anybody not wearing a red beret by that title, emphasized it for marines with their green headgear — and reckoned small craft were show-ponies’ toys. There was a rope at the front of the boat and it was hooked to a ring, then looped up to a thick branch. It came away easily.
He took it and pulled the boat round, then laid the rope on his shoulder and heaved. It came up more easily than he’d have thought likely. It slithered out of the inlet, then up the shallow bank. The mud helped it.
He tipped it over and rainwater dribbled out. Carrick said, his voice a whisper, ‘That’s good, sir. It was holding water — it means it’s sound. Know what I mean, sir? It doesn’t leak.’
But he had nothing to boast of. The river in the Brecon mountains had been a fifth the width, maximum, of the Bug, and the flow had seemed strong when the officer candidates had crossed it but that strength was little compared to the rush of the Bug when he had sat above it. The plan was his. He, Carrick, had suggested it, had not kept his mouth shut. The punt, on the bank and at his feet, seemed so small, fragile, for the job.
‘With this boat, Johnny, it will happen? We can cross?’
‘Yes, sir.’
He saw, in that faint light from the moon scudding in the cloud base, that Reuven Weissberg had gone to the front of the punt and lifted it. Carrick asked for a minute’s delay, moved off and went into the trees a few yards down the lake’s bank. It didn’t seem a big action to him, or a matter of great importance. He took off his coat, dropped it, and was satisfied that his actions couldn’t be seen. Then he unbuttoned his shirt from neck to waist, and tugged at the Velcro on the straps. Not big and not great.
When he was back, that minute used up, he took a grip on the punt, and the weight was shared. They started to go back the way they had come.
On the little screen, Bugsy had the co-ordinates. With the numbers there was a green light that was constant, not flashing, and the numbers hadn’t changed. Also on Bugsy’s lap was the map, and he used a pencil torch with a small, narrow beam to check the coordinates against a location. He dozed and drifted into sleep, then out of it. If the co-ordinate numbers changed and the bug moved — as it had earlier — the light switched to red. He had its position.
In the minibus, Adrian and Dennis had taken the front seats. Every few minutes one of them would wake and Bugsy would put a hand on the shoulder, lean forward and murmur in the ear of whichever had woken to get back to bloody sleep. The poor sods needed it. Fantastic, they’d been, with their foot surveillance and vehicle tailing, and they needed the rest. His bug worked a treat.
Bugsy was beside Mr Lawson, the guv’nor, squashed up against the door while Mr Lawson had a full two-thirds of the seat. He’d tried a couple of times to shift him further back across the seat, once with the gentle prodding of his elbow and once with the sharp use of his toecap, but had failed to achieve more space for himself. In the back, behind him and wedged in with the bags and the gear, the jump seats folded away, were Deadeye and Shrinks. Shrinks slept, but not Deadeye. Bugsy thought that if they were going to repeat this caper and sleep in the vehicles again, they’d need to get to a ditch or a stream and get some dhobi done. He’d have smelled pretty grim on his own, but there were six in the minibus and the accumulation of them, their socks and underwear stank it out. Socks and underwear needed washing. Well, no one had known how long they’d be gone.