Close Quarters

THIRTEEN

I woke early the following morning and ran a visual check of the outside of the hotel in case Rambo and his friends or Ivkanoy had got lucky and found the car. But the area looked quiet and deserted, and if either of them had been around, I doubted they would have waited for me to show myself; they’d have come in hard and fast and gone on the attack.

Sleep had been elusive but I was rested and ready to go as soon as I got the call from Langley. Anyone experienced in action knows that sleep is a luxury rarely enjoyed to the full; there’s too much tension, too much adrenalin and sometimes too much of everything but peace and quiet. But occasionally there’s silence, which is worse. It leaves you wondering about what’s going to happen, with nothing to focus on but your innermost thoughts and fears, until sleep finally claims you.

Every person deals with it in his or her own way. I rely on breathing exercises to reduce my heart rate. It sounds more mystical than it is, but was a technique I picked up in West Africa from a Vietnamese Foreign Legion corporal. It’s cheaper than drugs, easier than drink and healthier than both.

While I waited in my room I checked out the list of addresses the Langley comms support officer had messaged to me. There were five in all, in various cities across the country, including Kiev. The nearest was here in Donetsk. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to use them, but that might not be my choice to make. Given the choice I would have Travis in the car and be driving west as fast as I could.

Thinking about the car, I went outside and checked the Toyota was in one piece. In the cold light of day the red colour was an eyesore. But at least the dark last night would have made the colour less likely to be remembered by Rambo and his pals. In any case, there wasn’t much I could do about it right now. Hopefully if everything went to plan I wouldn’t be in the Donetsk area for long, anyway.

News reports on the television showed the political situation locally was deteriorating further, with uniformed militia sympathetic to Moscow openly parading their numbers and armaments on the streets, and several clashes around the city outskirts with Ukrainian army units. Further east a helicopter had been shot down and a number of pro-Russian separatists had been killed, but the figures were unverified. As usual, it was the claim and counter-claim culture of all armed conflicts, where mind-games aimed at the world’s media were almost as vital as ground gained or lost in combat.

I decided to take a trip back out to the airport. If anything kicked off, I might have very little time to get close enough to Travis to watch his back.

The roads were uneasily quiet and traffic-free, save for the usual military vehicles, and when I got close I found the area around the hotel was a mess, with trucks and APCs parked up wherever there was room and troops standing around in bunches, smoking and watching a couple of planes taxiing out ready for take-off. More worryingly, as I cruised along the perimeter road, I noticed four trucks with blanked-out markings parked in a deserted lot in front of a hanger. About a dozen men were standing close together and on the alert, overseen by an officer.

I recognized the type as soon as I saw them: they were Spetsnaz, Russian special forces often attached to the FSB (Federal Security Service) or the GRU (Military Intelligence).

The air close to the hotel was choked with diesel fumes, with a thick layer of sooty-grey exhaust smoke hanging close to the ground. Aside from the trucks, it was strangely quiet for an international airport, and I wondered how much longer it could continue to operate with the current unrest before the authorities decided to close it down altogether.

I was circling the airport and trying to keep a low profile when my cell phone buzzed. It was Callahan.

‘The situation’s changed,’ he said. ‘Our local cut-out in Donetsk has gone silent. Without him we can’t get a message to Travis and Travis isn’t answering his phone. We may have to delay things. How’s it looking on the ground?’

‘Forget it,’ I told him. ‘If you want your man out, it has to be now.’ I described the build-up of troops and militia, which added to what he knew already from satellite over-flights and news reports. But what satellites can’t do is to give a sense of the tension around a conflict zone, that electricity that crackles in the air during the build-up to something momentous happening. And right now I was feeling that electricity like a live force. ‘This place feels like it’s going to blow any minute. And Travis is stuck right in the middle.’

‘If that’s your assessment, I understand. Do you know who’s holding him?’

‘Not yet. But he’s not in the hands of the good guys, I’m pretty sure of that. The longer he stays here, the more likely he is to get sent further east.’ Even though Travis was here under a cover name, Callahan had said it was highly likely people knew he was connected to the US, British or European governments. If it came out that he was from the US State Department his situation would be even more delicate than it already was. In fact I was surprised it hadn’t already been made public by one side or the other for propaganda purposes.

Callahan agreed. It was a definite problem. Then came the kicker.

‘Can you get to him?’

It was a moot point. From what I’d seen of the guards, there was no way into the building without running a gauntlet of security checks and questions. In a normal busy hotel, I would have simply walked in and booked a room. But so far I hadn’t seen anyone enter or leave, so normal was out of the question.

‘I’ll try.’ It was the best I could say. It was as risky as hell, but it was what I was there for — to take risks.

‘Good man. Did you get the cut-out addresses? You might need to check the first one yourself and see what the situation is there.’

I signed off and thought it through. If I got to Travis, I’d have to hope I could get him out of the building and away without being stopped. After that I would be playing it by ear and relying on speed and luck. I’d already decided that we’d have to head west, away from the trouble spots where we could be stopped at any time by random vehicle checks. That included not going anywhere near Kiev, the capital. But that left a lot of territory in between here and the border with Moldova. My best bet was to plug Travis into the cut-out line as quickly as possible. At least they could move him with far more detailed knowledge of the terrain than I had, and I’d be able to focus on watching over them to make sure he stayed out of trouble.

I approached the airport again and found even more trucks had arrived, choking off the roads by parking wherever they pleased. Staying with the car was too risky, so I left it near some old maintenance sheds and made my way on foot towards the hotel. I left my bag in the car and trusted to luck in openness and innocence; if anyone stopped me, they’d see that I wasn’t a threat.

I reached the front entrance and saw one of the four blanked-out trucks I’d spotted earlier was now in front of the main doors, with at least a dozen fully armed soldiers in the back. The guards I’d seen earlier were watching them, but they looked nervous and didn’t seem as if they wanted to tell them to go park somewhere else.

I veered off and walked round to a yard at the rear of the building, where there was a loading bay with a closed roller shutter and a clutch of rubbish skips. The sound of splashing was echoing around the yard, and I looked up to see a stream of water spewing from a broken pipe on the fourth floor.

A uniformed guard with an AK-74 slung across his chest stepped out from beneath a tree and told me to get lost, that the building was off-limits. He was big and unshaven and I guessed he’d been here all night and was feeling hostile.

‘I’m looking for work,’ I told him. ‘This is a hotel. I’ve worked in lots of hotels.’

‘Big deal.’ He nodded back towards the front of the building and the road beyond. ‘Leave, now.’

Just then a picket gate to one side of the loading bay clanged open and a chubby man in a creased shirt and tie emerged and stood staring up at the overflow, which was gradually turning his loading bay into a swimming pool. He swore loudly and glared at the guard as if it were his fault. Which, as it turned out, by association, it was.

‘How can I operate when my staff can’t get to work?’ he yelled in frustration. I guessed he was the manager and was clearly too mad to be intimidated by the sight of the gun, and happy to vent his anger on the only military representative he could see close by. ‘I need my maintenance engineer here right now.’

‘Not my decision,’ the soldier replied. ‘Ring those in charge.’

He might as well have told him to ring someone who cared. The manager looked ready to have a fit. ‘Huh? Who do I ring, smart-arse? You think there’s a directory I can pick up and find out who’s responsible for stopping public transport? Is there a person I can shout at for bringing this entire city to a standstill?’ He waved a hand which told the soldier what he thought of the whole shooting match and turned to go back inside.

‘I could fix it,’ I said.

He turned back. ‘Who the hell are you?’

The soldier decided to help calm the situation and get the manager off his back. ‘He’s a hotel worker,’ he said, ‘looking for work.’

The manager hurried towards us and peered at me, checking my clothing and making an instant assessment. ‘Is that so? What sort of work? Don’t say waiter — I’ve got waiters coming out of my arse.’

‘Maintenance, electrical, repairs — whatever,’ I said. ‘I don’t have any tools, though. I wasn’t allowed to bring them with me.’

‘Of course you weren’t; with all the military might standing around here, think of the damage you could do with a screwdriver and a wrench!’ His angry sarcasm was wasted on the guard, who merely shrugged and picked at his teeth. ‘We’ve got tools. Plenty of tools.’ He looked at the guard. ‘I’m allowing him in. You OK with that or do I have to ring Moscow and speak to the judo player?’

If the guard minded the reference to Putin, he didn’t let on. ‘Do whatever you want. I’m off duty shortly, anyway. Not my problem.’

The manager grabbed my arm. ‘Have you eaten this morning? I bet you haven’t. You fix that damned overflow and I’ll send you to the kitchen and you can have a meal. At least we still have some food. How’s that? Then we’ll see what we can do about keeping you on for a few days to sort out some other problems.’ He hustled away through the side door, beckoning me after him and slamming the door behind us.

I was in.