The Game

FIFTY-FOUR

Leeson led them back across the main floor of the mill and out of the building. He walked along the corridor of space between the two buildings, then to the older building with the whitewashed walls and red-tiled roof. Leeson pushed one of the dark-stained double doors open and ushered the team inside.

He was in an antechamber attached to the main mill area. It occupied approximately one-quarter of the building’s interior and looked like it had a range of purposes. There was a small kitchenette at one end with a wooden table and benches near it. There were hooks for outside clothing and crates of empty green glass bottles.

‘Through here,’ Leeson said, leading the team into the mill itself.

It was a large space, if about half the size of the modern building’s interior. Like the outside, the interior walls were painted white. The roof peaked above Victor’s head and was supported by a framework of metal posts and struts.

There were two rows of machinery: on the left were stone grinders to pulp the olives; on the right were the presses. Three thick circular stones that had to weigh at least a couple of tons each were arranged together at an angle to a central cog that turned them to crush the olive fruit and pits into a mash. As in the modern mill, all the equipment was dormant and waiting for the next harvest. But unlike the modern mill, not all the equipment was there for the production of olive oil. There were five folding camp beds and sleeping bags, backpacks and sports bags and camp chairs and boxes of ammunition, and a wooden crate with stencilled Cyrillic script sprayed on in red paint.

There were also four men standing in and around the equipment, all facing the doorway through which Victor and the others entered.

They were a mix of ages: the youngest in his mid twenties, two in their thirties and the fourth in his early forties. They weren’t Italians. They wore jeans, T-shirts and sportswear. They were unshaven and unclean because the mill probably didn’t have showers and they had been sleeping on camp beds and washing using only sinks and washcloths. They had the look of civilians not military personnel, but civilians who knew how to fight and kill. As he got closer, Victor could smell the cigarette smoke on their clothes. The room didn’t smell of smoke, so they didn’t smoke in here. He pictured the cigarette stubs by the drain outside.

Four men in the room. Five camp beds.

It didn’t look like the four had just got up on account of Leeson, Hart, Dietrich, Coughlin and Victor. They had already been standing. They could have sat on the chairs or on their beds, could even have been lying down, relaxed and comfortable. Instead they were on their feet when they didn’t need to be. Their jaws were set and their fists clenched. Their eyes were narrow, lines between eyebrows. Nostrils flared. They were pumped up and restless. Victor had seen groups of men displaying the same signs. Their adrenaline was up and they were tense and restless because they were waiting to go into action.

‘The party’s tonight,’ Victor said, almost in disbelief.

Leeson nodded. ‘That’s right, Mr Kooi. The embassy reception begins in about an hour.’

‘That’s not enough time to plan and rehearse, let alone get first-hand intelligence of the strike point. It’s nowhere near enough time.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ Leeson said. ‘We’ve been rehearsing for weeks. We’ve been planning for months. These gentlemen know everything there is to know about the embassy.’

Victor thought about the flipchart pages, curled and frayed and softened from endless use.

‘Why do you need us?’ Victor asked as he began to understand.

‘To kill Prudnikov, of course.’

‘There’s no time to plan it. Even if these four have been rehearsing for the whole of the summer’ — he gestured to himself, Coughlin and Dietrich, but not Hart — ‘we haven’t. There’s not enough time to integrate us into the plan.’

‘You’re not a part of their plan, Mr Kooi,’ Leeson said. ‘There are two teams in this room, each with their own objective. Yours is to kill Prudnikov.’

‘Theirs?’

Leeson didn’t answer.

‘They’re not following this conversation, are they?’ Victor asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Because they don’t speak English. Who are they?’

‘They are from Chechnya, Mr Kooi.’

‘They’re not professionals, are they? They’re terrorists. They’re going to take control of the embassy.’

‘Right again. You are so very perceptive, aren’t you?’ This time Leeson didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I haven’t hired them. They’re enthusiastic amateurs who are patriots looking to strike a blow against Moscow imperialism. I can’t say their cause does much to excite me, but I’m being paid very well to assist them.’

‘Have you heard of Operation Nimrod?’

‘Of course,’ Leeson said.

‘In 1980 six Iranians took twenty-six hostages in the Iranian embassy in London. They had a list of demands pertaining to the autonomy of the Iranian province of Khūzestān. Obviously, those demands weren’t met and a hostage was killed. As a result, the British government ordered soldiers from the 22nd Special Air Service regiment to end the siege. They assaulted the building, killing five of the six hostage takers and capturing the remaining man in a battle that lasted seventeen minutes. All but one of the remaining hostages were rescued. The SAS didn’t take as much as a scratch.’

‘One of the many reasons we’re not in sunny London town for this excursion.’

‘And what about when Chechens took control of the Dubrokva Theatre in Moscow?’

‘Why don’t you just make your point, Mr Kooi?’

‘It won’t work. These things never do. Whatever demands these Chechens make won’t be realised. There’ll be a siege. It will last for a few days and then the Italians will storm the building and it will be over, and anyone who goes in there will come out in a body bag.’

‘That’s a rather pessimistic view to take.’

‘It’s an accurate view.’

Coughlin said, ‘If you have that team, why do you need us? Why not just have them kill Prudnikov?’

‘Excellent question, Mr Coughlin,’ Leeson replied. ‘Security at the consulate isn’t likely to admit a group of Chechens while hosting an exclusive reception. It’s invitation only. Fortunately, we have one courtesy of the lovely Francesca, who by legacy of her late father is invited to such gatherings.’

‘Who is Ivan Prudnikov?’ Victor asked.

Leeson said, ‘He’s Russian intelligence.’

‘FSB or SVR?’

‘SVR.’

‘He’s the head of the SVR, isn’t he?’ Victor asked. ‘You want us to kill the chairman of Russia’s foreign intelligence service.’

‘That’s correct.’

‘That’s suicide. It would be suicide even if we had months to plan. Security at the embassy will be insane.’

‘We’ve had months to plan,’ Leeson said. ‘And we have an excellent plan thanks to Mr Hart’s tactical brilliance. Mr Kooi, you will accompany Francesca and enter the embassy ahead of the assault team. You will go under the guise of a British businessman, George Hall, using his invitation as he is unable to attend in person thanks to Francesca’s charms and an unfortunate encounter with Mr Dietrich and Mr Coughlin. And they say Rome is such a safe city. Once inside you are to have a good time: mingle, drink champagne, help yourself to the caviar. Dance with Francesca. Then, at precisely nine p.m., you are to approach Mr Prudnikov and kill him.’

‘That’s not even a plan,’ Victor said, looking from Leeson to Hart and back again. ‘Dietrich could come up with something better than that. There’s no indication in the materials as to how many bodyguards Prudnikov will have. He’ll be surrounded by SVR operatives. It will be almost impossible to get close to him without alerting his security. Unless I can get to him inside a bathroom — and there’s no way to guarantee that is possible at a specific time — then it will have to be done in the main reception area. There’ll be chaos. Extraction will be next to impossible, and even if I do get out then a hundred people will have seen my face. And how am I supposed to kill him? There’s no way of getting a gun in there. You need to delay the job by at least six weeks to develop a new plan and new preparation.’

‘That’s impossible, Mr Kooi. The party is tonight.’

‘Then you should have hired me months ago.’

‘Perhaps I can offer you an incentive.’

‘No amount of money is going to get me to partake in something so poorly conceived.’

He was arguing as himself, but nothing in Muir’s intel on Kooi suggested the Dutchman was foolish enough to agree to what Leeson was suggesting. No careful and competent professional would take on such a dangerous assignment under these circumstances. For all Victor knew the job was a bluff, yet another test set by Leeson to determine Kooi’s mentality, or perhaps his trustworthiness. If Victor agreed, maybe that would be all the evidence Leeson needed to know Victor wasn’t who he claimed to be.

But there was something in Leeson’s expression. He wasn’t staring at Victor as if to read his thoughts. He was excited. He was excited with anticipation. Not because of the job; there was something more immediate. Something that was about to happen.

Here it comes, Victor thought as he analysed the chances of making it to the door before someone could draw a weapon and use it.

‘Killing Prudnikov is going to be a lot easier than you might think,’ Leeson said. He gestured to Hart, who picked up a bag from the floor and began unzipping it. ‘All you have to do is get within twenty feet of him. You don’t even need line of sight.’

Hart removed something from the bag.

‘Mr Jaeger has kindly constructed a suitable weapon for us,’ Leeson said, and drew his SIG.

It was primarily of canvas, reinforced by leather. It had pockets and straps to keep in place the plates of explosive and the parcels of ceramic shards.

‘What the hell is that?’ Coughlin asked.

‘It’s a suicide bomber vest,’ Victor said.

Leeson pointed the gun at Victor. ‘That’s right, Mr Kooi. It’s in your size too.’

‘Then you’d better shoot me now,’ Victor said. ‘Because I’ll kill anyone who tries to put that on me.’

‘Oh, I don’t think it will come to that.’

‘Then you really are insane.’

‘What about if I give you something precious? What if I could offer you something beyond material wealth? What if I could offer you the most valuable thing of all?’

Victor remained silent. He thought about the five camp beds and the four men in the room. He thought about the white panel van and its precious cargo. He heard the big double doors open in the antechamber. Everyone else heard too. Like him, they looked in the direction of the sound and watched the open entranceway.

The fifth Chechen appeared through it. He was a little older than the others but otherwise just like them. He wore jeans and a sports jacket and moved like a civilian, but one who had known violence and was ready to know it again. He held the grip of an AK-47 in his right hand, the barrel resting against his shoulder. With his left hand he guided two people into the room.

A woman and a child.

The child was a boy. The woman’s hands were tied together with duct tape and her mouth was gagged with it.

Questions were immediately answered in Victor’s thoughts. So much he hadn’t understood now made sense.

‘Mr Kooi,’ Leeson said with a wide smile. ‘What if in return I were to offer you the lives of your wife and son?’