Red Notice

45

Sambor and his men jumped off the Shuttle, as it ground to a halt near the midpoint of the tunnel, and prepared for phase two of their operation. So far everything was going to plan. They had been trained well, and years of experience had honed their skills. Fighting, killing and dying was the only life they knew.

Sambor located the nearest CCTV security camera and, hugging the wall, used the curvature of the tunnel and the pall of smoke to conceal his approach to it. Reaching up, he hacked into the cable feed with his knife. One of his team swung a backpack off his shoulder, fished out a steel probe and pushed it against the wire core. A torrent of sparks burst from the camera housing above their head, and from all the others, the entire length of the tunnel. He’d sent an electromagnetic pulse surging through the system.

Sambor shouted for his men, motioning them across the track in front of the train to a green metal door set in the concrete wall that connected the UK-bound tunnel with the service tunnel. He opened it and signalled to his men to follow him out of reach of the sprinkler system.

One hundred metres away, separated from his brother by the thickness of the tunnel wall, Laszlo clambered down from the motionless Eurostar and crept back along its flank, using the dim glow of the emergency lights from the carriage windows a metre above him to find his way through the darkness.

He soon saw a green metal door in the wall ahead. He ran to it and slipped into the service tunnel where Sambor and his men were waiting in the gloom. Sambor grasped him in a bear hug and planted a kiss on both his cheeks. Laszlo was just as pleased to see him. It wasn’t only because of the plan they had made: the siblings were close; they trusted each other with their lives — and had done so many times.

‘Little brother!’ Laszlo returned the affection, happy to be talking in his mother tongue once more. It was always a relief. During their youth as ethnic Slavs living in South Ossetia, they had been constantly pressured by the dictatorship to refer to themselves as Georgians, and to speak Georgian. Georgia controlled their country, but they never forgot they were Ossetians, that Russia was their motherland, and Russian the language of their ancestors.

Laszlo and Sambor had been raised in a lawless nation that had descended into a constant state of conflict after the South Ossetians had declared their independence from Georgia in 1990. Their parents had tried to protect their sons by keeping their heads down and muddling through as best they could. Just finding enough food was a constant battle.

It had been clear from an early age that Laszlo was a gifted student, and his parents had known that the only place for him to further his education and be clear of the violence was with their fellow Slavs in Russia.

Sambor had had to stay at home: he wasn’t bright enough to follow in Laszlo’s footsteps, and they couldn’t afford to send both boys. But there was no bad feeling between the two. Laszlo was the leader; he was mentally strong, just like their mother, the one who would lead the family out of poverty. Until then, they would carry on keeping their heads below the parapet and trying to survive.

Laszlo had not let his family down. He had achieved a PhD in physics, with a dissertation on gas-pipeline engineering; he had emerged from Russia a fervent nationalist. Given the poverty and death that he’d witnessed in South Ossetia under Georgian control, his fervour had its roots in genuine concerns.

Upon his return home, he had been unable to find work despite his skills. The few jobs available went to the ethnic Georgian minority. It was then that Laszlo had decided to follow a different path from the one his parents had planned. He had taken Sambor with him. They would keep their heads below the parapet no more.

‘You kept your promise.’

‘Of course.’ Sambor held his brother at arms’ length, but only so he could admire Laszlo’s new facial hair. He hadn’t seen him like this since the old days. ‘Did you ever doubt it?’

‘Not for a moment.’

‘Are you ready to greet some of our old friends?’ Sambor gestured towards the two men closest to them, both carrying belt-fed machine-guns. They stiffened proudly as Laszlo cast an eye over them and the rest of the warriors he had commanded when they were all Black Bears.

Sambor presented the grab bag to his brother, as if it were a coveted award.

Laszlo checked that its contents were still intact, then put the strap over his shoulder. ‘Thank you, brother.’ From this moment, it would not leave his side until the triumphant conclusion of their operation.