Retribution

THIRTY-THREE

The traffic on the way up to the canyons above Los Angeles was less frenetic, but still took over an hour, with two accidents and some heavy roadworks to be negotiated on the way. The road began to climb steadily, snaking past large, impressive properties behind high walls and grilled entrances, the grounds planted with arrays of trees, laurel, mimosa and palms. On the way they passed celebrity tour buses full of tourists, and Harry was struck by how the desperate search for privacy by the rich and famous dovetailed so well with the tourist industry.

Rik was navigating, the car’s satnav having given up en route, and called out the address Maria had given him. It was beyond the Ventura Freeway past Universal City and Glendale. According to Maria, it was a large house with extensive grounds and heavy security. She hadn’t said how she knew that.

Harry turned into the road and drifted along until he saw the house number. Up here the air was warm and less muggy compared with the city or even Venice Beach. With the occasional glimpses he caught on the way up of the ocean and downtown LA stretching away into the distance, he figured he could possibly force himself to spend some time here if the need ever arose.

Maria had been right — it was a large place. Set behind locked iron gates topped with a camera, it owed its style to Spanish and Moorish influences, and Harry wondered how many millions of dollars it would fetch on the open market.

Three cars were parked on the gravel drive, their bodywork gleaming in the sun. A man in jeans and T-shirt was hosing down a green Rolls-Royce, while alongside stood a Lexus and a muscle Jeep bristling with chrome, raised suspension and huge tyres. The porno business evidently paid well.

Harry leaned out and tapped a button on an intercom post at the side of the entrance. Seconds later a voice answered, asking his business. The man with the hose stopped what he was doing and looked in their direction.

‘I’d like to speak to Don Bikovsky, please,’ Harry told the metal box.

‘Sorry — we have no one of that name here.’ The response was immediate, automatic and, to Harry, not surprising, given what was allegedly going on here.

He tried again. ‘I’ve been advised differently.’

‘Then your information is incorrect, sir. This is a private residence. You can turn round in the entrance.’ The box clicked off and Harry heard the buzz of a camera above the gate as it focussed in on his face.

He pressed the button again. ‘Perhaps you could you tell Don that I have some urgent information for him. My name’s Tate and I believe his life is in danger.’

A short silence, then, ‘Wait. . I’ll see what I can find out.’

They sat and waited. Five minutes, then ten. The car washer had disappeared. One or two vehicles passed, glossy and exclusive, followed by the inevitable tour bus, but nobody showed any interest. Other than the faint sound of a water sprinkler and a few birds singing in the trees, the area was very peaceful.

There was a tapping noise on Harry’s side window. He turned and saw Bikovsky scowl at him. Harry lowered the window.

‘What do you want, man?’ The ex-Marine sounded irritated. If he remembered Harry, he was doing a sterling job of hiding it. He was dressed in baggy swim shorts and trainers, his naked torso rippling with bunched muscle. Whatever else Bikovsky had been doing over the years, he hadn’t ignored his fitness routine. The effect was spoiled, however, by his eyes, which looked red and slightly out of focus.

‘You don’t sound surprised to see me,’ Harry told him. He climbed out of the car, forcing the big man to step back, and looked at the house. ‘Nice place.’

‘It’s a rental. What do you want?’

‘You got my message?’

‘Yeah, I got it. So what? I don’t have to listen to you.’

‘Not even if I can save your life?’

Bikovsky jerked a thumb back at the house. ‘Try getting to the point — I’m on someone else’s dollar right now.’

In contrast to the muscled torso, Harry noticed his fingernails were grubby and bitten to the quick. There was also a smell of cheap oil in the air and a silvery sheen on Bikovsky’s arms and staining the waistband of his shorts.

‘Fair enough. I’ll be quick.’ He spoke without emotion, suddenly wanting to be somewhere else, and trying not to remember what had been said about this man. ‘You remember Orti and Broms? And Carvalho?’

Bikovsky’s face screwed up in mock concentration. ‘Not really. Why — you planning a team reunion? If so, count me out — I don’t do that crap.’ He began to turn away, but Harry’s next words stopped him.

‘They’re all dead.’

The ex-Marine looked at Harry, then bent to peer at Rik inside the car. A flicker of something crossed his face, then was gone. He shrugged. ‘You came all the way out here to tell me that? Why?’

‘Because you’re next on the list.’

Bikovsky blinked. Hard. Whatever his condition, he wasn’t so far gone that he could ignore such a statement. ‘Say what? How come? I never saw those guys after we left that shithole. If they were in a jam and got themselves hit, it don’t concern me.’

The camera whirred again, and they both looked up. Someone in the house was getting impatient. Bikovsky cursed softly.

Harry said, ‘Who says they were in trouble?’ There was no answer to that, so he added, ‘But I’m not talking about it here.’

‘Hey, man — I can’t get away just like that.’ Bikovsky’s voice was urgent, his face turned away from the camera. ‘And in case you didn’t notice, I left the military and I certainly ain’t in KFOR no more. So I don’t have to give you squat.’

Harry shrugged and got back in his car. ‘Well, if you don’t, I’ll let Eddie and Marty know where you are. You know Eddie and Marty?’ The look on Bikovsky’s face confirmed that he did. ‘Well, how would your employers like that? It would look bad on film if you picked up a few bruises.’ He started the engine. ‘By the way, Eddie fell down the stairs outside your apartment. Now they think we’re friends. . and they’re not impressed.’

‘Shit, man!’ Bikovsky protested vehemently. ‘What have you done? You can’t jam me up like that!’

‘Then speak to me. Name a place and make it soon. Then we’ll be out of your hair.’

Bikovsky swore again, but finally nodded. ‘OK. . you got it. But this better be worth it. There’s a coffee shop on Pacific called the Dolphin. I’ll be there about five this evening.’ He turned and walked through the gate without looking back.

The camera swivelled to follow him all the way.

‘Damn,’ Rik said. ‘I was hoping for a look inside.’

‘Down, boy,’ Harry said. ‘You’re too young for that stuff and your mother would never forgive me.’

The US Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID), assisted by the FBI and prodded by regular calls from Ken Deane, had moved extra quickly on lifting the prints from the knife used to kill Lloyd at Fort Benning. Second only to being sent nationwide to all FBI regions, copies were sent to Koslov at FSB headquarters in Moscow, as Harry Tate had requested.

As soon as he was notified of their arrival, Koslov took the prints along to the forensic laboratory and flagged the job as ultra urgent, to include all databases. Nothing less would get anything moving, and since he had a vested interest in the information, he had no hesitation in pulling rank over several other jobs currently being dealt with. Even so, the civilian supervisor argued as a matter of course, claiming there were already far too many urgent jobs awaiting their turn.

‘Do you have proper justification for this taking precedence, Captain?’ the man enquired primly. Plainly, to him it meant nothing if the job was done now or next week, but he evidently felt the need to defend his corner, especially with newcomers like Koslov.

‘Yes, I do,’ Koslov responded firmly, staring the man down. ‘If we do not find out who these prints belong to, I will probably die. After that, so will you, for allowing the murder of an officer through dereliction of your duty. Is that justification enough for you?’ He nodded at the man’s suddenly pale face and walked away.

Fifty minutes later, to Koslov’s amazement, the supervisor rang to say they had a match.

‘You what?’ Holy God, it had been an outside chance, but it had worked. ‘Send Dobrev up to me with the details. Immediately.’

Two minutes later Koslov was staring in bafflement at a sheet of printed paper. The details had been copied from Russian Army Intelligence files. After trying all current records, the computer had automatically switched to scanning deeper into the archives and had fastened on a name and prints. From the heading at the top of the sheet, Koslov saw the details had come originally from a specialist Intelligence unit operating in Chechnya. Their unit details had been blanked out, and he knew instantly what that meant: Spetsnaz — Special Forces. The date of 2001 told him more; it was during the period known as the Second Chechen War, which had begun two years before. Islamist separatists fighting for independence from Russia had been spreading their conflict into Dagestan and Ingushetia, drawing in Muslim volunteers from outside the area, some deliberately using the experience gained for training purposes before going to fight in Afghanistan and elsewhere. It had made identifying many of the fighters impossible, but Koslov knew the authorities had made a point of collating and recording thousands of faces, fingerprints and background details of known and suspected terrorists involved in the war. These had been fed into a database which had been kept up to date by security services archivists working for the FSB and SVR.

This man had called himself Kassim. No other name. A notation said the address he’d given was false. His age was given as seventeen years, but that was just as doubtful. Picked up in a sweep of an underground camp outside Grozny, Kassim had been taken to a local militia barracks lock-up for processing along with twenty other suspected fighters. Two days later an explosion had breached the walls and Kassim had vanished, killing one of the guards on the way out. Because of that his file had been kept active for a while, until it was moved into the archives. He was thought to have gone to Afghanistan.

The thumbprint photo told Koslov nothing. Devoid of character or detail like most police mugshots, this one must have been taken and processed by an idiot. It was just a face, nothing more, one he would find replicated outside this building a thousand times, if he cared to go out and look. He stared at the ceiling, seeing once more the face of the man in the trees. Now he knew what had been familiar. . what had been tugging at his memory. It wasn’t the man’s face, for he didn’t know him from a hole in the ground. It was his manner. . something in the way he moved and the stance of his body as he ran; the purposefulness of his gait. If this information was correct, the American soldier had been killed by an Afghan.

And now Koslov was being stalked by the same man.

He heard a cough and looked up. Dobrev was still standing there.

‘Haven’t you got things to do?’ Koslov asked.

‘Sir.’ Dobrev nodded. ‘Waiting for instructions, sir.’

Koslov smiled. Dobrev was no fool; time spent waiting here was time away from running endless errands for other officers.

‘Have you ever seen an Afghan, Dobrev?’

‘Umm. . no, sir. Not up close, anyway.’

Koslov spun the sheet of paper round so that Dobrev could see the photo, although he guessed he’d already read the text. ‘That man is in Moscow. Right now. He’s older now, of course. If you see him, let me know right away. Oh, and start running. Otherwise he’ll kill you.’