The Kremlin Device (31 page)

There was a moment's silence. Although nobody spoke, I know we were all thinking the same thing: that our guys were going to get badly knocked about. They were in for a hard time, whatever happened. And if they refused to talk, there was a high risk they'd be topped. We needed to find them fast.

We had local maps out on the table, but they were precious little use.

‘Let's think where they're likely to put the thing,' said Johnny.

‘Lock-up garage, probably,' Whinger suggested. ‘Leave it in the car, drive in. Easy.'

‘What about its alarm signal?' Mal asked. ‘Will that still reach the satellite if the device is inside a building?'

‘I don't know. Toad could tell us. Listen, I'm going to call Anna. She can get a search going.'

‘What are we going to tell her?' Mal, ever careful, had been making notes with pencil and pad.

‘That two guys have been lifted.'

‘What about the bomb?'

‘Not a whisper.'

I had to use the local line, which I knew was insecure. But that now seemed the least of our worries. I tried the emergency number she'd given us, and got some Russian-speaking female.

‘Anna,' I said several times. ‘Anna Gerasimova.'

A torrent of Russian came back.

‘
Ya Anglichani
,' I went. ‘
Ni ponemayo
.'

Another incomprehensible rush of words. For a moment I half-wished Rick was with us. At last the woman stopped and said, ‘
Moment
.' A second later a man came on, speaking slow, heavily accented English.

‘Anna no here.'

‘Can you give her a message, please?'

‘A message? Yes. It is what?'

‘Telephone Zheordie immediately.'

‘Zheordie?'

It was beyond me to spell the name in Russian letters, so I repeated it several times, gave the number slowly, and rang off.

‘Jesus!' I gasped. In the state I was, any small delay seemed a massive aggravation.

‘What about Sasha?' asked Pete.

‘Good idea.'

As the number rang, I thought of old Lyudmila and her bloody great cat, tucked up there on the eighth floor.

‘
Da
?'

‘Sasha, it's Geordie. Sorry to bother you, but we're in big trouble.'

I told him what had happened. As soon as he got the gist of it, he said, ‘No, it is impossible. Not real.'

‘It's real enough,' I told him. ‘They've gone.'

‘I come in.'

‘Well, if you can.'

‘No problem. Twenty minutes.'

‘Thanks.' I rang off and said to the lads, ‘Sasha's on his way. Watch yourselves when you're speaking to him. This is where we need to start juggling the story.'

‘The Embassy,' said Whinger. ‘What about them?'

‘Christ, yes. Better inform them.'

‘What about the bomb?' Mal asked in his voice of doom.

‘Same thing. Not a whisper.'

‘They know you went in to collect kit,' Mal persisted.

‘OK, we collected it.'

‘So where is it now?'

‘It was in the car that got through.'

Even as I dialled the Embassy number on the secure link, I felt amazed at how easy it seemed to be to invent plausible falsehoods. They were fairly whipping off my tongue. At the same time, I was aware of how easy it would be to make one fatal mistake and bring the whole edifice of lies crashing down.

‘British Embassy,' said an unfamiliar voice.

‘Geordie Sharp,' I said. ‘I need to speak to the Chargé.'

‘I'm sorry. He's not here. It's the duty officer speaking. Can I help you?'

‘I need to talk to him urgently.'

‘I'm afraid he's not available on this system.'

‘Can you ask him to come in, then?'

‘Is it that urgent? Can't it wait till the morning?'

‘No.'

There was a pause. Then the guy said, ‘All right. In that case, I'll pass the message. Has he got your number?'

‘He'll have it there in the office, yes.'

I rang off, thinking of Hereford. Where the hell was the boss? He was taking his time to come through. Maybe he was out at a party. By now it was midnight – 9.00 p.m. in the UK. Not late.

Mal looked up from his notes and asked, ‘Who's controlling the tracker satellite?'

‘The Americans,' I told him. But his question prompted a sudden idea.

‘Jesus!' I exclaimed. ‘That's a thought, Mal. I'm going to call Tony Lopez right away.'

‘Who's he?'

‘American, ex-SEAL. He was seconded to the Regiment before you joined. Now he's working for the CIA. It was him who put the ferrets in after Rick's girlfriend's sister. But he's a hundred per cent on side. He'll help. What time is it in Washington?'

‘Five o'clock,' somebody said. ‘Correction. Four.'

‘He'll still be in the office.'

I jumped up, dug out his number and punched it in. Two rings, and an American voice answered.

‘Tony!'

‘I'm sorry, sir. Major Lopez is in a meeting.'

‘Break in on him, please. This is an emergency.'

‘May I ask who's calling?'

‘Just say Geordie.'

‘One moment, sir.' The guy had that ultra-polite, deferential American manner that gives me a pain in the arse.

I put my hand over the mouthpiece and said, ‘He's coming.'

A second later Tony was on the line – but he didn't sound himself. His voice was quick and sharp.

‘Tony,' I began, ‘we're in the shit.'

‘OK, I know what it is.'

‘You
know
?'

‘Sure. Hereford have been in touch. That's what we're discussing right now. The satellite tracker system's up and running.'

‘Thank God. Can you let us know if you get a line on where they've taken the thing?'

‘Sure can.'

‘OK. I'll speak to you later.'

As I replaced the receiver, the phone rang.

‘Geordie?' It was the night comms clerk in Hereford. ‘I've got the CO for you.'

‘Put him on.'

The first thing the boss wanted to know was which two guys we'd lost.

‘Pavarotti and Toad,' I told him.

‘Toad!' he said. ‘Jesus!'

‘Exactly. The next thing's going to be a ransom demand. We've got to recover Orange, and fast.'

‘The Americans are tracking it already.'

‘I know. I just spoke to Tony Lopez in Washington. He seems to be on the tracking team. Boss – what do you advise?'

‘Very difficult. You'd better stand by to come out. The political situation's extremely volatile. The Director's coming here for eight tomorrow morning. We're going to take a decision then on whether or not we pull you.'

‘We can't come out with two guys missing.'

‘I don't know. We might take the view that it's better to lose two rather than risk losing nine. The shit's hit the fan in London as well.'

‘Why's that?'

‘The computer disk you got. The information on it has sent the police ballistic, in London and New York. They've made fifteen arrests in London alone.'

‘Russian Mafia?'

‘Leading players.'

I took a deep breath. Then I said, ‘How does that affect us?'

‘Too early to say. Your kidnap could be a reprisal for the arrests in Europe. But losing Orange complicates the issue still more. We've got a QRF on standby. We may establish an FMB in Berlin in any case. That would put them within three hours of you.'

I told him I'd be through again if there was any news, and hung up. Seconds later Sasha appeared, and we started going through everything again. He was upset about the disappearance of our guys, and kept apologising.

‘Come on, Sasha,' I said, forcing myself to smile. ‘They're not dead yet. We'll get them back.'

Before he could answer, the satellite phone beeped again. It was Tony.

‘We got it!' he announced triumphantly. ‘Your hardware's still with you.'

‘Wait one.' I looked up and saw Sasha watching me eagerly.

‘Sasha,' I said. ‘It's our base in Hereford. This may take a few minutes. Could you get on the local line and set up a police search?'

‘
Konechno!
Immediately!' He sprang to his feet and headed for the other phone. I felt a turd, lying to his face –but what else could I do?

‘Tony,' I said. ‘Carry on. Where is it?'

‘In the south-western sector of the city. We can give you the location within a couple of hundred metres.'

‘Fantastic! Can you give me the co-ordinates?'

‘Sure. Ready?'

‘Fire away.'

He read out a series of figures, which I took down and checked back. ‘Brilliant,' I said. ‘Let me know if it moves.'

‘Roger – and good luck.'

‘Miracles of modern science,' I told the lads. ‘Correlate these on to a street plan and we can go right in and get them.'

‘Wait a minute,' said Mal. ‘How do we know this? I mean, what are you going to tell Sasha?'

Once again a plausible he rose effortlessly to the surface of my mind. ‘Pav has a tracking device fitted into his jacket,' I said. ‘Some of our guys always do, in case this very thing happens.'

‘Yeah, but if we organise a hit, with the Russians, they're going to find Orange at the end of it.'

‘We'll play that one when we get to it . . .' I broke off because Sasha reappeared.

‘General police alert,' he announced. ‘All Moscow forces to search. I give car number. And Zheordie, I make suggestion.'

‘What's that?'

‘We can stop training course, freeze everything. Instead of lessons, we make students rescue your hostages.'

‘Great idea!' I went. Privately I thought, Christ!

Luckily I was distracted by yet another beep from the secure phone.

This time it was the Chargé. Hell, I thought when I heard his voice. I can't send Sasha out again. Then suddenly I realised I didn't need to: the Embassy knew nothing about Orange.

I started into the whole spiel again. I said that Sasha had got a search under way, that I'd been through to Hereford, and that we were expecting a decision about a possible pull-out in the morning.

‘Yes,' said Allway. ‘Your people were talking to us earlier in the day.'

He nattered on for a minute about the general situation, which he described as ‘jittery'. As he spoke, I was thinking, Do I tell him we've traced the signal? No, I decided. If we get our guys back, yes, of course, we tell him, but there's nothing definite enough yet.

It was just as well I didn't bother, because within five minutes of that call Tony had come through again to say, ‘It's moving.'

‘Ah Jesus!'

‘Yep. I've got it on a computerised map screen. Heading south-west. It's already five miles out from the location I gave you. You want to stay on the air till we see what's happening?'

‘Sure. I've got the map in front of me.'

‘OK. It's coming up to a place called Vnukovo. Hey – wait a minute. That's marked as an airfield.'

‘Vnukovo,' I said to Sasha. ‘What is it?'

‘Main airport for southern departures.'

‘Tony,' I said. ‘It's Moscow's airport for the south.'

‘Then I guess they're putting it on a plane. Target now stationary. Can you organise an intercept?'

‘What – in the air?'

‘No, on the ground.'

‘I'll ask.'

I put the question to Sasha. He frowned at the size of the problem, but headed back to the local phone.

‘How far are you from that field?' Tony was asking.

‘At least an hour. Our Russian contact's phoning the police down there.'

‘Target still stationary. If it is Mafia, they'll have a big armed escort round it.'

‘Precisely.'

‘There's a major highway heading out of the city due south-west. Which side of that is the airfield?'

‘Immediately to the north.'

‘That's it, then. They're on the field.'

He went quiet for a few moments, then added sharply, ‘Signal lost. Wait a minute . . . no. Confirm signal lost.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘Most likely they've loaded Orange into a plane. That would mask the transmission. Yep. It's gone dead. I'll come back if we get it again.'

‘Thanks, Tony.'

I found Sasha glued to the other phone, talking hard, as if he was having to galvanise the police into action against their inclination. I left him at it, returned to the mess room and called Hereford again.

‘Boss,' I said. ‘It looks like they're being taken south.'

He already knew that the moving signal had given out at Vnukovo, and had come to the same conclusion.

‘What destinations does that place serve?'

‘Rostov-on-Don, Sochi, other Black Sea resorts.' I reeled off names that Sasha had told me, and added, ‘Word here is that the villains could be Chechens.'

‘Who says that?'

‘I don't know . . .' I hesitated, suddenly aware that I was on the point of dropping myself in the shit by revealing our participation in the bust on the flat. ‘The idea came from Sasha, our main contact here.'

‘Chechnya!' went the CO. ‘Bloody hell. If that's where they're heading, we'd better scrub Berlin and start looking for jumping-off points further south.'