Close Quarters

THIRTY-FOUR

Getting out of a hotel at speed without being noticed is no easy task. I had Travis by the arm to stop him falling over and to keep him moving, and I was ready in case Voloshyn had backup waiting. By my calculations we had about two minutes to get out of the building before Grey Suit and his cop friends had the area sealed off tight.

The woman cut-out must have been blown. It was the only logical explanation for the cops coming here like this. I felt sorry for her; she’d been in a no-win situation, and once the authorities had her home address she was done for. Just like 24d — aka Denys.

I urged Travis towards the rear stairs, ignoring the elevator. Elevators are rat-traps; once in, there’s no way out. Forget about trapdoors in the ceiling; cops watch films, too, and know all the moves.

We passed the room maid on the way and I swore at the turn of luck. She’d seen me twice now, once in a room where a dead body was shortly going to be found and now dragging a traumatized and badly beaten man behind me. If she was making for the corridor upstairs, it didn’t matter which room she got to first; the one with the late Denys or the one with the snoring and armed thug, Voloshyn. Either way she’d kick up a screaming fit and have a good fix on our faces.

I put on speed, half-carrying Travis, and we reached the rear lobby where two loaded baggage carts were sitting just inside the swing doors. A tour bus stood outside with a line of men being checked on board by a guy with a clipboard. They were all middle-aged in stiff suits and ties, and looked like a group of union leaders on a day out. It didn’t look like they were having fun. But that soon changed.

In the background the wail of a police siren drifted closer. It caused a few heads in the line to turn, sensing that here at last was a bit of excitement to brighten up a dull morning.

Twenty seconds and counting, was my estimate. But my car was out front and across the road. Right in their line of sight. We’d be like two ducks in a fairground shooting gallery.

I grabbed one of the carts and pushed Travis towards the other. ‘Head for the far side of the tour bus. Keep your head down and your face out of sight. Watch me and follow my lead.’

I didn’t wait for him to agree, but pushed through the swing doors and headed outside, letting the baggage cart go first. Down a ramp, through a puddle and across the yard, the bogey wheels rattling and a suitcase balanced on the top of the pile threatening to take a dive at any second. I could hear Travis coming up fast behind me, his breathing louder than it should have been. I skirted the rear of the bus until I was out of sight of clipboard man and the line of passengers and let the cart go. I didn’t stop or look back but continued walking, aware of Travis stumbling along behind.

We were now heading away from the rear of the hotel towards a development of small houses and a stretch of open parkland dotted with flower beds and bushes and a play area. A couple of women with small children were sitting on a bench while their kids played around a set of swings. They didn’t seem to notice us, which was good, but I veered away so they couldn’t see our faces. With each step we were getting away from the cops and Grey Suit.

I waited until I figured we were far enough from the hotel before turning and heading off on a circular route back towards the car. If we could reach it unseen and get going, we’d have a fighting chance of getting out of town before they shut the place down.

I checked Travis was OK. He was coughing and sounded like he’d just run a marathon, and I wondered at the internal effects of the beating he’d taken from Voloshyn in the hotel room. The guy had had fists like shovels and he hadn’t looked the sort to make clinical value judgements about his target before laying into him.

By the time we reached the road we were three hundred yards from the hotel and I could see the police car and jeep coming to a stop outside the front entrance. The doors were thrown open and a couple of soldiers ran towards the tour bus, waving their guns and shouting at those who were already on board to get out.

We got to the Isuzu and piled on board, and I drove away at a sedate pace, with one eye on the rear-view mirror. By the time Grey Suit and his men had closed down and searched the hotel we should be away and clear.

I drove west, keeping to the speed limit until we were clear of the town before stepping up the pace. The Isuzu engine had been worked on by an expert, and in spite of the noisy muffler it had a lot of punch under the hood. I was hoping that would help us put some distance between Grey Suit and all the others following us until we could find another ride. I’d already hung on to this one for too long, and if Ivkanoy’s reputation was what it seemed, he’d have a description out there by now.

Travis was very quiet, sitting hunched over in the passenger seat and clutching his ribs, eyes closed. His breathing was steady but I put that down to him nursing his ribs. I shook him gently by the shoulder to bring him round. The last thing I needed was for him to close down.

‘You’re familiar with weapons?’ I had to keep him in touch; if he was hurting because of internal injuries his body, dulled by the pain, would begin to shut off and his mind would follow. Then he’d be a dead weight.

He coughed but opened his eyes and looked up. ‘Weapons?’ He probably thought I was about to ask him to start shooting at people. ‘Of course. Why?’

‘Look under your seat.’ At the same time I reached down and pulled out the Grach semi-automatic I’d taken off the woman sniper.

He stared at the pistol, then did as I asked. When he pulled out the Ero and saw what it was, he looked stunned, as if he wanted to throw it out of the window. He may once have been in Military Intelligence but I guess he’d been behind a desk too long and this was all way too much on top of everything else that had happened.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘More to the point, what are you? Do you even have a name?’

I ignored him. ‘You were in the military, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘See any action?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t remember.’

That meant no. If you see any, you never forget it. ‘Doesn’t matter. Check the load.’ I handed him the Grach. ‘This, too. Don’t point them my way and try not to shoot yourself in the leg.’

I didn’t tell him about the sniper rifle in the back. I figured that might send him over the edge. I’d leave it for later.

He shook his head in disbelief but checked both weapons, hesitating only momentarily over the Ero before disengaging the magazine and counting the shells, then doing the same with the Grach. As I’d hoped, having something specific and familiar to do was helping him forget his physical ills. Quite what it was doing to his mental state was something else altogether.

‘Twenty-eight in the submachine gun and a spare magazine,’ he reported. ‘A full mag in the Grach and a spare.’ He made sure both guns were safe before placing them on the floor of the foot well. ‘Tell me you’re not going to use them.’

‘I don’t plan to,’ I told him. ‘But you know how this country is right now. There are roadblocks popping up all over, not all of them official. We may not have a choice.’ I didn’t want to break his spirit by telling him just who we had on our tails, such as cops, unnamed security police, Ukrainian special forces, pro-Russian separatists and a gang leader with a sore head. As for which faction the man named Voloshyn belonged to, that was anybody’s guess.

‘The name’s Portman,’ I said. ‘I was sent in to bring you out.’ I reached in my pocket and took out a passport and a driver’s licence, which I tossed on his lap. They weren’t in Travis’s real name but they were good enough, a present from Callahan and the CIA’s document production centre. Forgery Central on the taxpayer’s dollar.

He seemed to have trouble processing the information and stared uncomprehendingly at the documents. ‘Portman. Is that it? You don’t have a first name?’

‘I do, but Portman is fine.’ This was unfamiliar territory for me. I almost never met up with the principals I was shadowing from a distance, so names were never an issue. But the circumstances here were a little off-centre, and playing dumb on the name front wouldn’t help Travis’s state of mind or his confidence in me to get him out of here. For the time being we were a two-man team.

‘Portman. OK. But these are false documents. Can’t we just call the embassy?’

‘Believe me, they wouldn’t be in a rush to help, not now. Your presence here was known but that was before things got crazy. With everything that’s happened since, it’s gone too far and the diplomatic fall-out of you turning up at the embassy in Kiev would be uncontrollable. The separatists or whoever’s controlling them would use you as an easy counter-propaganda target and accuse you of being here to stir up anti-Russian feelings. If I can keep you out of the limelight, they won’t be able to do that. In any case, we have no idea who was behind you being taken in the first place, or who’s following you right now.’

‘It was the separatists, it had to be. You saw them. The Ukrainians wouldn’t have anything to gain by it — and besides, they knew I was here trying to help.’

No mention of the Russians, I noted, the big wolf in the room. I wondered if it was simply government-think; deny the people in Moscow had any influence or involvement with what was happening on the ground here, and everybody could be happy.

‘So who do you think controls the separatists?’ I argued. ‘The guy in the grey suit looked Russian to me, either GRU or FSB. And his men were too well-trained for separatist militia. I saw them in action. I’d lay odds they were Spetsnaz.’

He took that in, thinking it over, then turned and looked out the window. He wasn’t playing dumb, simply coming face-to-face with reality. He would know all about Russian special forces and the extent of their involvement in influencing political events in the region; everybody in the State Department would have it on their reading list.

‘I guess,’ he said eventually. ‘So where does that leave us?’

I took out the two photos I found on Voloshyn and glanced at them as I drove. The one of Travis could have been taken anywhere, but it looked like a file copy, posed and serious. Maybe even off a visa application.

But the one of me was more troubling. It took me a while to figure out where it might have been taken. It wasn’t studio quality, but good enough for Voloshyn to have recognized me from it. It showed me passing through a glass doorway and walking towards the camera. It looked like a standard security set-up of the kind you get on most government and many commercial buildings. I couldn’t make out enough of the backdrop to identify the location, so I concentrated on the clothes I’d been wearing instead. I had on a plain sport jacket and pants, and an open shirt. It was the kind of stuff I wore at home. Not that it mattered, because the location suddenly came to me. I pulled to a stop at the side of the road to make double sure I wasn’t imagining it. I wasn’t.

I put the photos away and pulled back on the road. If we could find somewhere quiet to stop, I had to ring Callahan and drop the bombshell on him.

Langley — or somewhere close to it — had sprung a serious leak.