Zero Hour

11

‘Found him!’ She held up the iPhone. ‘He’s quite the Mr Lover Man. At least, he seems to think so.’

She expanded the first picture with her thumb and forefinger. Viku Slobozia was giving it some in a bar, in full eighties porn-film gear. He clearly thought he was Daniel Craig. He’d not held back on the hair gel, but the frizz remained defiant. The dickhead even had Aviators on indoors.

She scrolled down. ‘Here we are.’

It was the photo I’d seen at the uni, the one where he’d mistaken Lilian’s face for a pie. She scrolled some more. Lilian was only one in a cast of dozens. Mr Lover Man had many ‘chicks’. There was a different girl in every picture. He either had a giant appetite, or they didn’t stick around long. I couldn’t blame them. Maybe Tresillian was right about all this social-networking shit. It made you look a dickhead, and for ever.

She pointed at a caption. ‘It says: “Viku loves the ladies.” ‘

I bet he did. But I still couldn’t believe the ladies loved him. I went back through his gallery of conquests. Lilian included, they all looked younger than him. Maybe that was his secret. He was a post-grad who only hit on first and second years.

The next three pictures had me worried.

I expanded one of Slobo sitting in an old-style silver Merc convertible, one of the little two-seater jobs with a steel roof that folded back and tucked into the boot. A machine like that should have been way beyond his student grant.

What he cradled in his hands concerned me more. He posed side-on to the camera, gangster-style, the barrel of a chrome-plated Desert Eagle semi-automatic pistol aimed at the ground about ten feet away. There was no mag in it, but that didn’t matter. The thing was still so heavy he couldn’t hold it straight. Fully loaded, it would hold nine .50 rounds to fuck people up with. The weapon fitted his profile, of course. As a bad-boy brand it was up there with Mercs and magnums of Cristal champagne.

‘Why don’t you email him, Anna? Get a date. Looks like he’d give a warm welcome to a new girl in town. Just stay away from his mouth.’

Her brow furrowed as she scrolled to the end of Slobo’s picture library. ‘Don’t you think there might be an age issue?’

‘We’ll worry about that when the time comes. He’s not going to know until he meets you, is he? By then it’ll be too late.’

She hesitated a few seconds while she gave it some thought. Then the thumbs got moving again. ‘This guy’s so vain he’s got to be checking his page ten times a day.’ She smiled. ‘I bet he replies inside an hour.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘I don’t think Mr Lover Man will turn down what I’m saying is on offer.’

12

We could hear Lena gobbing into her phone from half a street away. That thing never left her ear.

She swept in like a tornado, grabbed the first available piece of paper and started scribbling. Irina was just behind her. She looked down at the coffee-table and saw no mugs. ‘You haven’t had coffee?’

‘Didn’t even think about it. We were checking files. We thought we’d have a look in case our guy was tucked away in there somewhere.’

She looked almost offended, like we’d spurned her hospitality. ‘I’ll make some.’

Lena accepted one of Anna’s cigarettes and they both lit up. She finally finished the call as Irina came back with the brews and placed her mobile carefully on her desk. ‘The mother broke down with joy. I’m trying to arrange a call between them. The mother has no phone. They’re poor. They have nothing. But, hey …’ Her hands went up in the air to signal a change of subject. ‘So what do we know about this Viku Slobozia?’

She listened intently as Anna tried to explain how we’d found him on Facebook. Her eyes narrowed. She wasn’t having any of it. ‘This doesn’t ring true. There’s more to it. Why didn’t you tell us you were going to the university? Irina could have gone in for you straight away. We’re here to help.’

There was no way I was going to let Anna bring up Lilian’s name. I jumped in. ‘It was my fault. I’m trying to protect people in London. I didn’t want anybody here to know what we were doing. And then I met you two. I didn’t want to affect what you’re doing, or add to your workload. But I realize now that I could have messed things up.’

Irina took a sip of her brew. ‘What next?’

‘I’m waiting for a reply.’ Anna looked up from her iPhone screen and grinned. ‘I’m an innocent seventeen-year-old today, new to the city. He’s in for a shock, isn’t he?’

They didn’t like the joke. They both looked concerned. ‘He might have contacts in London, but who cares about them? It’s the contacts he’s got here you have to worry about.’

I shifted in my seat. ‘It’s the only way, Lena. He likes linking up with young girls. But don’t worry, I’m not going to put Anna in danger. I’ll take over before he gets his tongue out.’ I didn’t mention his Desert Eagle.

Anna’s iPhone kicked off. ‘I told you.’ Her face fell the moment she opened it up. ‘Shit. He wants my Facebook page.’

‘Tell him you haven’t got one.’

Lena cut in: ‘No, tell him your parents wouldn’t let you have one. But now you’re free of them and in the city, you want to put one together. You want to get as many friends as possible. Maybe he can help you do that. If he’s a trafficker or he’s moving you on, he’s going to take the bait. It’s perfect for him. No Facebook, no trace. None of your friends are going to be worried about you because you haven’t refreshed your page.’

Anna thumbs bounced around and she hit send.

We had less than a minute to wait. The phone vibrated again. Anna wasn’t impressed. ‘Now he wants a picture.’

Irina stood up, pulling back her hair. ‘Use me.’

‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘You don’t want to go that route again.’

Lena gave a sad smile. ‘It’s all right. It won’t be the first time Irina’s posed as a potential victim to flush these fucks out.’

Irina nodded. ‘Nick, it’s not a problem.’

‘That’s all well and good, but if he wants to meet, it’s going to be Anna or me standing there. What happens then?’

Irina smiled for the camera. ‘That’s easy. I’ll meet him for you.’

Anna hesitated before pressing the button. She looked at me.

‘Too dangerous. He’s got a weapon.’

Irina walked back to the desk. ‘Where do you think you are, Nick?’ She dug around in her small black leather handbag and pulled out a .38 revolver. ‘Meet this country’s only reliable policeman.’

Then Lena pulled aside her grey cardigan to reveal a shoulder holster. I didn’t recognize the weapon from the grip but I knew it would still go bang and kill people. ‘In our business you need these things. If Irina wants to go, let her. She knows what to do.’

Irina was back in pose mode, still waiting for Anna to do her David Bailey number.

I pointed at her bag. ‘Have you used that thing?’

‘Three times. And if I ever see the friend who sold me, it will be four.’

13

19.55 hrs

The border crossing into Transnistria was at a place called Bender. It would get us into Tiraspol, the capital of this breakaway state, just thirty minutes later. As Viku said when he replied to Anna, he was chilling out at home for a while. Why didn’t Anna come and spend some time with him, see some sights?

That was exactly what a much younger Anna was going to do tonight. Irina had taken over the communication on Anna’s iPhone. She said she was new at the university. She was coming in from Moscow and was suddenly getting cold feet because she had no friends in Chisinau. She’d come across him on Facebook and wondered if he’d help her out. He looked a fun kind of guy.

Anna had been at the wheel of Lena’s Skoda estate for the best part of an hour.

Irina bounced around on the back seat. The roads were unsigned, potholed and totally unlit. We’d had close shaves with tractors, pedestrians and livestock. Anna’s eyes were glued to the small pool of light in front of us as yet another minibus taxi overtook us on a blind corner, packed to capacity with people and suitcases.

‘You have the presents?’

I patted the four hundred US dollars’ worth of lei in my jeans, two hundred in each pocket. Irina had changed some for us both. She’d lost ten per cent on the deal because her USD bills weren’t in absolutely pristine condition.

The headlights picked out a sign that said we were coming to the border. Anna slowed. A pool of light bathed the rutted tarmac about two hundred metres ahead.

‘Look bored, Nick. Who knows? They might just let us through. Irina, be asleep.’

Six or seven guys were sitting in the middle of the road on fold-up chairs. One got slowly to his feet as we came into view. He indicated for us to park up behind them.

‘Shit.’ Anna wasn’t impressed. ‘We’re visiting a friend in a bar, remember. Use his real name, Irina.’

I nodded. I’d leave it to her to explain why her boyfriend was British and didn’t speak a word of her language.

Two older guys stepped forward. They had parkas with the hoods up, and orange armbands to show they were official. One of them came round to her side of the vehicle. Anna powered down the window and tried being short, sharp and aggressive.

They didn’t buy it.

Irina produced an ID card. Anna pulled her passport out and I followed suit. My guy had a grey beard but I couldn’t see much else of his face. With his hood up, he looked like something out of South Park. I smiled as he took it away. I couldn’t tell if he’d smiled back. I doubted it.

He walked round to the front of the wagon. I hated this. I hated losing control of a passport, even for a few minutes.

We were held as a couple of people-carrier buses screamed straight through. The bearded one was joined by his mate. They had a chat about the passports. He came back and gobbed off in Russian at Anna. He handed Irina back her ID card, but he pointed at me. Then he pointed at the bonnet.

‘Give me two hundred, Nick.’

I passed over the two notes from my right pocket and the passports were slipped back through the window. Transaction complete. Simple as that.

Up went the windows and we moved off.

‘All that nonsense just for a bung?’

Anna manoeuvred between two trucks. ‘They said it was a car tax to cross the border. That’s a new one on me. Normally it’s a fine for some kind of driving offence.’

‘Why do they sit in the middle of the road? They got a death wish or something?’

Irina’s head appeared between us. ‘Moldova refuses to build an official checkpoint because it considers Transnistria a break-away province. But at the same time they’re not too thrilled about having their eastern border wide open. So …’

No sooner had Anna accelerated than she had to slow down again. We entered a massive concrete anti-tank chicane.

Irina stayed in tour-guide mode. ‘These were put here by Transnistria in case the Moldovans came across again. It gives the one thousand Russian “peacekeepers” time to get to the border to help.’

Anna prepared her passport for another outing. We emerged from the chicane to see two uniformed Russians in camouflage parkas and furry hats, AK47s slung across their chests. They looked severely pissed off at being on stag at this time of night.

‘They’re part of the Fourteenth Army, the so-called “secret Russians”. You can’t move for them over here.’

Ahead of us, on a straight bit of tarmac, there was another pool of light. More lads sat outside on chairs, but this time there was a Portakabin close by.

‘This one’s trickier. Same story. Visiting a bar.’

More Russian soldiers milled about. They’d pulled in a few of the newer-looking wagons but the rest screamed through. The Transnistria flag, ripped and tattered, flew above the door. It was just the old Soviet red duster with the hammer and sickle in the top left-hand corner and a green stripe across its centre.

We joined a queue. Three Russian soldiers took our passports and Irina’s ID. Their condensed breath hung in the air. They ordered us out and pointed to the Portakabin. Vehicles honked their horns and the smell of diesel fumes filled the cold air.

A trestle table groaned under a pile of brown-paper forms. Anna picked up a pencil. ‘I’ll do it.’

My passport was causing quite a stir. Maybe they’d never seen a British one. They were probably working out how much they could get for it on eBayski. Word had got around. The commander made a special guest appearance, a high-peaked hat cocked on the back of his head and a cigarette clamped between his lips.

He beckoned Anna over. The two of them exchanged pleasantries, and then they got down to business. Whatever it was he’d asked for, she wasn’t going to give up without a fight. Finally they seemed to agree.

I dipped into my left pocket. She held up her hand. ‘He wants four hundred. He’s going to let us stay until two a.m.’

‘It’s by the hour?’

‘Welcome to Dodge.’

I handed over the money, and fished another two notes from my wallet. He accepted the cash before getting one of his underlings to stamp the form about six times.

Anna took it and we got back into the car. None of us said a word as we left the checkpoint and almost immediately crossed the three-hundred-metre-wide Dniester River into Transnistria. I expected to see Checkpoint Charlie at any minute.

The roads here were even worse than Moldova’s - stretches of concrete and tarmac that looked like they’d been carpet-bombed. Maybe they had. We passed the burnt-out shell of a building, crumbling walls stained brown where its rusting iron skeleton poked through.

Anna shook her head. ‘This place depresses me so much. It’s like the Wild West. There are no international aid agencies here. Why would they risk their people? It’s bandit country.’

With one hand on the wheel she flipped open a cigarette pack, lit two and passed one back to Irina. ‘Have you heard of Viktor Bout?’

‘The world’s biggest arms trafficker? He still in jail in Thailand?’ I powered down my window to lose the smoke. She smiled and did the same.

‘He operated out of Tiraspol. Same as the Russian and Ukrainian Mafia. They come here to hide. The police are a joke. Even when families are afraid their daughters may have been trafficked they don’t report it. They just don’t trust them.’

For the next two kilometres, we passed factory after factory. Even at night, some were still online and belching fumes. Minging cars filled the parking lots, along with the occasional Merc. There was plenty of foot traffic. The young lads sported cheap tracksuit tops, jeans and trainers and wore their hair white-walled around the sides. The occasional whore patrolled a street corner. Ancient Trabants kerb-crawled alongside them. I could almost see the hot breath on their windows.

‘Whatever they manufacture here, they do it away from the prying eyes of the international community.’ Anna flicked her butt out into the darkness. An old guy at the roadside looked tempted to go and pick it up. ‘The border with Ukraine is only a kilometre or two away. It’s unmarked and unguarded. All sorts of goods are smuggled across, from cigarettes and alcohol to serious weapons.’

Irina nodded. ‘Smugglers load up and head for Odessa. From there they can ship whatever they have to the rest of the world. This place is—’

‘Anna! Stop!’

She braked hard and pulled over to the side of the road.

‘Over there …’

I stuck my hand through the open window and pointed. The tank was mounted on a ramp in front of the factory.

‘That’s the building.’

‘You sure?’

‘I’ve seen a picture of it.’

She tilted her head to get a better look at the sign on the wall. ‘Well, he isn’t making tanks.’

14

I reached for the door handle. Anna grabbed my arm. She knew exactly what was on my mind. ‘We only have twenty minutes.’

Irina’s head reappeared between our seats. She looked confused.

I smiled. ‘This is where one of the girls used to work. Maybe they can help. I’ll pop in and find out.’

‘At this time of night? There won’t be—’

‘Do a circuit and I’ll meet you here in fifteen, OK?’ I fastened my jacket and stepped out into the drizzle. I didn’t want Irina to get rattled, or Anna asking what she should do if I wasn’t here when they got back.

Light leaked through the narrow slit windows that ran the length of the building. Trucks were parked up in what looked like a large loading bay to my right. Apart from one slowmoving vehicle in the distance, there was very little sign of life. The main entrance, to the right of the tank, was a gate in the chain-link fence. I approached the security area. A body, fat and bored, sat reading a paper. I veered away to the left.

Fuck knew what I was going to achieve in the time. I wanted to find out what Tarasov was making in there. Tresillian might have sounded like a straight talker, but that didn’t mean what he was saying was straight.

I climbed the three-metre fence. It was simple enough. I was soon kneeling on the wet verge the other side. The factory didn’t have high security or cameras. Crimes against property would be almost non-existent in a place like this. Thousands of Russian troops were based in this narrow strip. If they couldn’t catch a thief and deal with him, the local Mafia would. Anybody intent on doing some nicking probably drove across the border for the night.

The building had large steel air ducts. Steam escaped from a jumble of smaller pipes that looked like a gang of eels clinging to the blockwork. Two cars were nosy-parked against the wall. I rattled in between them for cover.

One of the windows above me was open. I gripped the brackets holding the air ducts. The steel was cold and slippery. An uncomfortable film of sweat gathered on my back as I climbed. I checked my G-Shock. I had less than ten minutes left. I had to get a move on.

A vehicle turned the corner below me. In a couple more seconds its headlights would catch me in their glare. I hauled myself up level with the window and scrambled through.

The corridor had a glass wall that ran the length of the building and overlooked the works area. There was movement down there: three or four people in blue nylon boiler-suits, with hoods and gloves and white wellies. They all had full-face masks attached to a filter hanging from their belts. The place was quiet, apart from the hum of the heaters. There was no clunking of machinery, and not a spot of oil in sight. You don’t need oil when you’re soldering microprocessors onto motherboards.

Further along, the rectangles of silicon and pressed steel were being packed into green, foam-lined aluminium boxes. White stencilling on the sides probably indicated wherever they were bound. I couldn’t be sure - it was all Greek to me.

I pulled the BlackBerry from my jacket, checked the flash was off and activated the zoom. Then I inched forward until I could hold it against the glass. I angled it downwards, and took five shots in a panoramic sequence.

A third vehicle had pulled up beneath the window. Its lights were off. I pulled myself over the sill and onto an air duct, then scrambled back down the pipes to the ground. It was a 3 Series Beamer. That wasn’t a big deal. We’d seen plenty of them. But this one had the low-rider trim. And its registration was C VS 911.

15

Tiraspol

20.15 hrs

The Cold War had never stopped in this city. I’d seen more government propaganda billboards than in Cuba and North Korea combined. There were still more statues of Lenin than you could shake a Red Flag at. Yet another tank was mounted on a ramp beside me, the third T55 I’d seen as a monument to Communist glories since we’d crossed the border.

Heavily armed police loitered on every street corner, twiddling batons and pushing up their peaked caps. Old women in headscarves and long, threadbare coats shuffled past. Rainwater dripped from gutter pipes that disgorged their contents straight into the street.

Irina and I sat double-parked on Constitution Street, staking out Manik. Anna had gone in to check if Slobo was already at the bar. The right-hand side of the road was pulsating with life. On the left was the inky blackness of the graveyard where some of the fifteen thousand dead from the USSR’s eight-year war in Afghanistan lay. A massive billboard hung above the gates. This one featured the hard-line president, Igor Smirnov, shaking hands with Dmitry Medvedev, the president of the Federation. It looked like an ad for a sci-fi convention. With his big eyebrows and bald head, Smirnov was the spitting image of Ming the Merciless, Flash Gordon’s nemesis, and Medvedev was a ringer for Captain Kirk.

Neon lights splashed the bar’s name across the night. It was one of dozens along this stretch. Tinted-glass frontage had fucked over the ground floors of the faded ex-Soviet stucco buildings. It sounded like each bar was trying to out-music the last. The noise poured out onto the cobbled street like a demonic DJ’s mix.

BMWs and Mercs waited outside with their engines running. Each of the new Mafia elite who piled out of them had a couple of heavy-looking lads to keep an eye on them. This was where some of the millions of dollars changed hands each night that made it a dangerous town.

A lone figure moved down the road towards us, leaving a trail of smoke in her wake. The tip of her cigarette glowed with each inhalation. Her blonde helmet and long dark coat began to take shape as she got closer.

Anna opened the passenger door and jumped in. ‘I felt like a grandmother in there.’ She shivered as I powered down her window. She got the hint and threw out what was left of her cigarette. ‘He hasn’t shown yet.’

Brake lights glowed, then sidelights, in the middle of the line of cars nearer the bar. I fired up the Skoda’s engine to take the space before anyone else. I glanced at her. ‘Now we wait, yeah?’

Anna kept her eyes glued to the bar entrance. Irina leant forward. ‘I hope Mr Lover Man hasn’t stood me up.’

I pulled into the kerb and closed down the engine. ‘Maybe he had second thoughts. Maybe you’re too old for him.’

My reward was a punch in the arm.

We settled down and watched in silence.

I opened my window a few inches to cut the condensation. I could feel the bass notes pounding through the darkness. Lights flashed and bodies gyrated in the bar’s murky interior.

A group of men came past us, leather-jacketed and smoking. They made their way up the three concrete steps and through the double glass doors.

‘Don’t take any chances, Irina. This guy has a weapon.’

‘That makes two of us.’ Irina stretched her legs along the rear seat. ‘Don’t worry about me. I will do my part and we will nail him together, yes?’

A flash of red bounded up the steps. I had a glimpse of kneelength coat, fat face and a mop of frizzy hair. ‘We’ve got a possible.’

I kept focused on the entrance. ‘Where did he come from? Anyone see his car?’

Neither of them answered.

Irina was already reaching for her door handle. I leant back and gripped her arm. ‘Anything that isn’t right, just walk. OK?’

She nodded, but not convincingly enough for my liking. ‘Let’s hope our friend likes what he sees.’ She slipped out of the car, along the short stretch of sidewalk and disappeared inside.

I peered at my G-Shock. A quarter of an hour later, she was still nowhere to be seen. I unpeeled a stick of gum and popped a couple of Smarties down my neck at the same time.

‘Anna?’

We both kept eyes on the bar.

‘I’ve been thinking about what you said … You know, Moscow and St Petersburg … Sounds a good plan.’

She looked at me, waiting for the catch. ‘That would be … lovely. How long for?’

‘I don’t know - a month or so?’

I wanted to keep on talking, to tell her everything, but felt like I was standing in front of the phone in the kitchen all over again. I knew what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t get the words out.

Irina came out of the bar. Thank fuck for that. Slobo was close behind her, downing the last of a beer before tossing the bottle over the wall. He looked very happy with himself. They turned towards the Skoda. He was porkier than his pictures suggested. His baggy jeans were hardly baggy at all. But you had to hand it to him. He certainly knew how to make the best of a bad job.

They were both laughing. She slipped her arm through his as they passed us, flirting away in Russian.

They crossed the road and walked under the Flash Gordon meets Star Trek billboard, then through the gate into the Afghan graveyard. The darkness swallowed them.

Anna and I jumped out of the car. I locked both doors the old-fashioned way and handed her the keys.

We fell in behind the two of them, close enough to hear their murmurs and giggles, but far enough back not to breathe down their necks.

16

They carried on past a row of slate slabs surrounded by gravel, then slowed and stopped. It looked as if Slobo had picked the spot for his big moment.

Anna was still a few steps behind me. I moved just near enough to make out their silhouettes. I wasn’t going to jump in and fuck things up. Irina knew what she was doing. All I hoped was that she’d know when to call for help.

Slobo turned to face her. I watched his hands reach inside her coat. He grabbed her arse, pulling her towards him. Irina put her hands on his waist. They kissed briefly, and then she pulled back, toying with him. I could hear her murmuring gently as Slobo’s hands moved up inside her coat and fondled her breasts. She kissed him again. She was holding him static, waiting for me.

This was as good place as any to grip him and get it over with. We could be heading back across the border within the hour.

I took a few paces towards them. They had stopped kissing and Slobo was now almost dragging her along the path. The tone was still playful but it was starting not to look like much fun. I checked behind. Anna was with me.

They moved beneath a dim light suspended over another gate. Beyond it was a narrower street than the one we’d parked in. It, too, was lined with cars. There were no neon invitations on this one, just grey apartment blocks that looked even greyer in the drizzle. A lot of the rendering had given up the struggle, exposing the blockwork beneath. TVs flickered behind net curtains and watery light seeped from windows steamed-up from another night of cabbage-boiling.

We watched from the shadows as they left the graveyard and crossed the road. Slobo kept a hand on Irina’s arse. He seemed to be steering her towards the cars. One of them was the old-style silver Merc convertible.

‘Fuck it - I’m going to have to take him now. Let’s go.’

As they neared the car I broke into a run.

Not straight towards them, but diagonally across the street.

He was more concerned with her arse than his own security. I couldn’t see him getting any keys out and there was no flashing of indicators.

I reached the pavement as they slid between the front of the Merc and a knackered van. The entrance to the apartment block was less than three strides away. She stalled him some more with a kiss. I didn’t know if she could see me or not. He fumbled around with some keys, trying to get one of them into the lock while still copping a feel.

They tumbled into the hallway. I ran forward as soon as they were out of sight and jammed my foot in the closing door. I waited for Anna to catch up and then followed.

We eased past a rusty old pram, a bike and a pile of bulging bin bags. The stench caught in the back of my throat. Maybe it was garbage day. Or maybe it was just a hangover from the bad old days: the belief that though anything inside your four walls was your responsibility, everything else was the state’s.

The clatter of footsteps, punctuated by the occasional giggle, echoed down the dank stairwell - Irina’s way of letting us know where she was. There were about twelve steps up to a landing where the flight turned back on itself. We hit a set of fire doors that had long since come off their hinges. TVs blared and families screamed at each other somewhere down the corridor.

I heard the jangle of keys as I reached the next landing. I took the stairs two at a time and ducked my head quickly around the corner. She had him pinned against the wall, trying to kiss him again, but Slobo had done with foreplay: he wanted her inside.

He shoved her away so hard she banged against the opposite wall. He pushed open the door to his apartment and gripped her by the arms. The laugh wasn’t friendly any more. He had her where he wanted her. He twisted her around and pushed her through the entrance. Fuck that. Playtime was over. I ran towards them. He still had his back to me as I crossed the threshold. He was totally focused on the prize. She stood to my right by a small table and a couple of plastic chairs. Her hand reached into her handbag as he advanced on her.

I barged into the room.

I grabbed his shoulder, spun him round and swung my open palm across his face. The sound of the blow was as loud as his scream.

He crumpled, both hands on his cheeks. I pushed him down onto his arse on the dark blue carpet with my boot. He looked up, wide-eyed with shock. A good slap can be far more effective than a punch. It takes you straight back to your childhood, to the time your dad let you know who was top dog. Most kids don’t step up to the plate and risk any more. They withdraw, feel sorry for themselves. They take the pain and never want it to happen again. That was the way it was for Slobo. From the look of anguish on his face, I reckoned his childhood must have been much the same as mine. No fighting back, no retaliation, just withdrawal. But I knew that wouldn’t last for long.

I kicked into his back. I wanted to keep his jaw in one piece. He keeled over completely. I searched him as Anna handed the car keys to Irina and signalled that it was time for her to leave. She’d wait for us in the car.

Irina stopped for a moment and stared down at Mr Lover Man with a look of the purest hatred. She patted her handbag. He might not have known what it contained, but he got the message loud and clear.

A split second later, as the door closed behind her, the subservience had gone. He gave it full revs with the Russian abuse. I didn’t have to be a UN interpreter to understand his I’m-going-to-kill-you-you-will-pay-for-this shit.

I kicked into his chest to shut him up and put my boot firmly on his neck. I powered up his mobile. Scrolling down the list of contacts, I found ‘Lilian E’. I pressed dial. There was nothing. No ring tone; no message service. I memorized the number and checked the call log. Only a handful of local numbers and one international. I memorized that too.

I leant down to make sure we had eye-to-eye. If he spoke English I’d soon know.

‘Tell him if he stays still and answers my questions I won’t hurt him.’

His eyes were fixed on mine. I could see what he was thinking. What the fuck was an American, Brit, Australian or whatever doing here? I moved behind him, out of his direct sight. I hoped it would make him flap a whole lot more.

17

Anna spoke gently to him. She sounded almost motherly. The only word I could make out was ‘Lilian’.

I got the impression she was casting me as the bad guy. She was the good one, the one he could trust and confide in, the one who wouldn’t rip his head off his shoulders. But his shoulders still tensed as she reached into her coat pocket. They relaxed again as she pulled out her cigarettes and lighter. She tapped out a couple and offered him one.

As she lit hers, I saw the reflection of the flame glisten on her cheek. She was crying. As she talked to him now, there was a sadness in her voice that almost made me reach for a Kleenex.

Slobo sucked down a lungful of smoke.

I turned away and started ripping the place apart. The flat might have been small, but he had an expensive iPod dock and flat-screen TV. The stack of well-thumbed DVDs next to it would have taken a month to work through. Mr Lover Man must have kept them for a quiet night in. I didn’t think German farmyard stuff and hard-core bondage was the way to a girl’s heart.

The wardrobe was stuffed with clothes that reeked of tobacco and cheap cologne. I glanced round. He was listening intently to Anna, but looked more interested in her cigarettes than in keeping us up to speed on Lilian’s travel plans.

‘How’s it going?’ I tipped out a shelf full of rip-off Armani underwear.

‘He’s telling me nothing.’ She said it matter-of-factly, as if we were discussing the weather. ‘He just keeps saying that he saw her a couple of weeks ago and hasn’t heard from her since.’

I opened the bedside cabinet nearest the bathroom door. The drawer was stuffed with packets of condoms and lubricants, four or five chunky square watches and a pair of handcuffs that Irina would no doubt have been treated to if he’d had his way.

I found his Desert Eagle in the cupboard on the other side of the bed. I lifted it out and pulled back the top slide to check if there was a round in the chamber. There wasn’t. I hit the magazine release catch with my thumb. The empty mag fell into my hand. The weapon was a bit of a metaphor for this dickhead. All bling, no substance.

He’d probably bought the Israeli-made pistol before he discovered he couldn’t get hold of the ammunition. Or maybe he thought it went nicely with the handcuffs. Perhaps it was a sex thing, the closest he could get to a hard-on.

I showed Anna the weapon. He turned and looked at me. He was worried, but not yet fearful. He knew it wasn’t loaded. He said something, but it sounded like he was still trying to weasel his way out.

‘Anything?’

‘Still the same story.’ Her tone was starting to change.

I dropped the weapon onto the black, imitation-satin sheets. I knelt down and pulled a large clear plastic storage box from under the bed. Inside it was a small digital camera, Kodak printer, and a carton of photographic paper. I picked out six or seven five-by-eight pictures. The face had been cut neatly out of every one, but I could see that they were all of the same girl. I recognized her shape and the pale, almost translucent tone of her skin. I also recognized the background. Lilian had been posing against the battleship grey wall of the room we were in. I stood up with the pictures in my hand. ‘Anna …’

She took one of them, knelt down and thrust it at him.

Slobo’s head jerked back and he spat in her face. She didn’t flinch. She rose slowly and stood over him as he fired off another volley of Russian. She shook her head and went through to the bathroom to clean up.

‘Bring back a towel.’

I picked up the handcuffs. Slobo guessed what was about to happen and started to get up. He’d finally realized he was going to have to take me on. I wasn’t about to encourage him. I dished out another hard slap across the head and took him down with a kick in the solar plexus. I crunched my knee on his neck to keep it on the floor, grabbed his hands and snapped on the cuffs behind his back.

I grabbed him under his elbows and dragged him to his feet. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t need to. He had to comply or he was going to be in huge pain.

I turned him round and shoved him, back first, onto the bed so his cuffed wrists were beneath him.

I ripped the case off a pillow and shoved it over his head. He wriggled and cursed. I gave him a punch to the side of his face. ‘Shut the fuck up!’

He fell silent. He might not have known the words but he got the message loud and clear.

I left him there. He wasn’t going anywhere except maybe back on the floor. I went over to the sink and opened the cupboard underneath. The biggest pan I could find held about three litres. Home cooking obviously wasn’t part of Slobo’s seduction routine.

Anna emerged with a striped bath towel. She saw me filling the pan from the tap.

‘No, Nick, not that …’

I walked towards her with the full pan. ‘If we don’t, we’re going to be here all day.’

‘You might kill him.’

‘I’ve had it done to me. I know what I’m doing. You just think you’re dying.’

18

I put the pan down beside the bed and dragged him round by his shoulders so his head hung over the edge. I jumped onto his chest. He tried to fight me but with his arms behind him he was fucked. I reached across and picked up the pan. ‘Put the towel over his face. Hold it firmly either side.’

She hesitated.

‘Anna, we have to crack on. No one has ever lasted more than a minute with this. That’s the way it works.’

She placed the towel over his face but wasn’t really holding it.

‘It’s got to be tight. We want to find her, don’t we? This won’t kill him. It’ll just … give him some motivation.’

She wasn’t at all happy with it, but pulled down either side on the towel. He tried to writhe from side to side. I gripped his face with my left hand under his jaw. ‘Pull harder, for fuck’s sake!’ The towel tautened and became almost like a strap around his head.

I started to pour, making sure the water fell evenly and constantly over his nose and mouth. It wasn’t long before he was gagging. The reflex was automatic. There was nothing he could do to stop it.

‘Anna, hold it tight.’ I controlled him with my weight. ‘Hold it, keep it there!’

The gurgling and choking continued under the material. He couldn’t breathe. His body went ballistic, kicking out, trying to buck free of me. He thrust out his elbows in a frantic attempt to pull free of the handcuffs. He was probably ripping his own skin. I certainly had when it had been done to me.

I motioned for Anna to lift the towel. I peeled back the pillowcase far enough to expose his nose and mouth. He coughed up a mixture of water and alcohol-rich vomit.

I gripped his head with both hands and nodded at the pan. ‘Go and fill it up. Hurry…’

Slobo couldn’t see anything because the pillowcase was still over his eyes. His chest heaved up and down for oxygen. His brain couldn’t work out that he was getting all he needed. Waterboarding is guaranteed to get the victim telling everything he knows, and even some things he doesn’t - anything to keep breathing. Physically, it’s like being trapped under a wave, but that’s fuck-all compared to the psychological hell. Your brain screams at you that you’re drowning, that you’re going to die.

Anna returned with the water. ‘Get ready with that towel again.’ I pulled the pillowcase back over his mouth and took the pan from her.

He’d be telling himself to keep calm. But he’d know that he couldn’t. He’d already had one taste of this. The second was going to terrorize him.

I started pouring. His body jerked like he was being Tasered. Then, suddenly, as if someone had thrown a switch, his strength ebbed. He had nothing left to fight with. He knew that death was just seconds away. He’d given up.

I let Anna take the towel off and pulled up the pillowcase. He puked water and bile.

‘Ask him where the fuck she is.’

Anna bent closer to his ear, still talking slowly and gently. His chest heaved beneath me.

I could make out the word ‘Lilian’ again, and then something like ‘Christmas’ or ‘Christine’.

It was just starting to get interesting when there was a thunderous crash at the door.

I looked up. Another of those and it was going to part company with its frame.

19

I rolled off Slobo’s supine body. ‘Anna! The bathroom! Go in the bathroom!’ Anything to keep her out of the line of sight of whoever was about to bomb-burst into the room.

She dived over Slobo and scrambled across to the other side of the bed.

I rolled onto the floor and jammed the web of my right hand onto the butt of Lena’s revolver in the waistband of my jeans.

Two crew-cut monsters exploded through the door, pistols drawn down, heads swivelling, trying to work out what to do next.

I sucked in my stomach, wrapped my thumb and three fingers round the grip of the revolver and pulled it out.

The boy to my left turned and brought his weapon into the aim. My eyes didn’t move. My hand came up and his face blurred as my foresight became pin sharp. I squeezed the trigger as hard as I could to overcome the double action of the hammer. The round kicked off.

The other one dropped to a semi-squat as the back of his mate’s head splattered against the grey wall behind him. He started firing. I had no idea what at.

Where was Anna?

I focused on my foresight once more. The hammer was back in the full-cock position. He brought his weapon round. It completely obscured his face. It didn’t matter. I pulled my trigger and he went down.

‘Anna! Anna!’

She piled through the bathroom door as I got up.

Slobo was writhing on the bed. He’d taken some rounds. Our second uninvited guest must have seen the Desert Eagle within his reach and decided not to take any chances.

Anna looked at the two bodies. ‘The BMW?’

‘Tarasov’s guys. The car was at the factory.’

Anna looked at Slobo. ‘Oh, God …’

His chest was still heaving, but not enough to keep him alive.

‘Do you know where she is?’

‘Yes.’

The noise from the corridor was even louder now. TVs had been cranked up to full volume so Slobo’s neighbours could say they hadn’t heard a thing.

‘Did you get her new name?’

‘No.’

‘She must have one. The photos - they’ve got to be passport photos.’

His eyes rolled. ‘Tell him we want her new name. Tell him he’s not in good shape, but I can save him if he gives us the name.’

I eased his head up to help him speak. This time, Anna didn’t fuck around. Slobo was definitely on his last legs. We needed the answer fast.

‘Tell him I can save him—’

‘Sure, Nick, I’ll tell him you’re Florence Nightingale. Now shut up.’ Her earlier tone had disappeared completely. She was giving Slobo the good news with both barrels.

He slurred a few words. Saliva dribbled from his mouth. His head went limp and his eyes stayed open.

‘Did you get it?’

She nodded.

I let him go.

I stepped over the bodies and checked down the corridor. There was nothing that would slow us down.

I came back and looked her in the eye. ‘Take a breath. Are you ready?’

She nodded.

‘Good.’ I gestured towards the first one I’d dropped. ‘Check him for car keys.’ I frisked the other guy’s long leather coat and came up with the Beamer’s.

We headed out into the corridor, the weapon still in my hand in case we had a drama. We ran down the stairs and out into the street. I pointed Anna to the right and I headed left, eyes peeled for a glint of blue.

She called out to me.

I turned to see her pointing at a vehicle that I couldn’t see. Too many others were in the way.

I ran towards her, hitting the key fob until lights began to flash. ‘You drive.’ I threw her the keys. ‘Lena’s. Go, let’s go!’

20

Anna turned about four corners before we hit Constitution Street again. I kept a look-out for any major drama on the street.

‘I hope Irina’s OK.’

Anna swerved to avoid an old guy on an unlit bike. ‘You think they might have got to her first?’

The Skoda was where we’d left it.

She slowed down. Through the rain-slicked windows I could see the silhouette of a body in the driving seat. It wasn’t moving.

I powered down my window. Irina raised her head and wound down hers.

Anna leant across me. ‘Irina, he was a trafficker.’

She got it straight away. ‘Was?’

‘We need to split up now. I’ll keep Lena’s weapon. I’m going to dump it. Will you be OK making your own way back?’

She gave me a dazzling smile and fired up the Skoda’s engine.

‘Nobody saw us or knows about us, OK?’

Irina nodded. She came out of her space and stayed behind us until the next junction. Then she peeled off to the right.

I quizzed the Beamer’s dash. ‘Half a tank. Will that get us to the ferry?’ We had to get out of this place, but I wanted to avoid the airport. Ships are less secure and easier to get onto than planes.

‘It’s two hours maybe, not far.’

‘We’ll give the hotel a miss.’

‘I’ll call them later and they’ll bill me. What about the Polo?’

‘We just leave it.’ An oncoming vehicle’s headlights splashed across her face as she concentrated on the road. The rain was heavier now. The wipers sounded like a drumbeat.

‘And the pistol?’

‘I’m going to keep it as long as I can - at least until Odessa.’

We hit a pothole and the Beamer’s skirting scraped the tarmac.

‘What did Mr Lover Man say about Lilian?’

‘She’s gone to Copenhagen. A place called Christiania. Have

you heard of it?’

‘No.’

‘It’s a commune inside the city. Slobo said she needed to get

away for a while. She was pissed off with her father.’

‘Does that mean he knew who Tarasov is?’

Anna kept one hand on the wheel while she fished in her pockets for cigarettes. ‘I don’t think so. He just said “her father”. But he cut off her Facebook, and he moved her along with a new ID. She may think she’s taking a break in Hippie Land, but I think Slobo had other ideas.’

I powered down my window a quarter of the way as she lit

up. Spots of rain peppered my face. ‘Do we have an address?’ ‘He didn’t know it. Or if he did, he wasn’t telling me.’ I sparked up my BlackBerry. ‘What’s her new name?’

‘Nemova.’

‘How did she travel?’

She took a drag of her cigarette. ‘He didn’t say, but I didn’t ask. It wasn’t exactly coffee and chat.’

My screen lit up and showed four bars. I hit the time and date app. It took a second or two to load. I tapped in Julian’s number. There was a long tone and a short break as he began to receive the call. The green padlock icon would signal secure mode. It rang three times.

‘Nick?’

‘She’s been trafficked. She’s in Denmark. Some kind of commune, maybe. She’s got a new name. Lilian Nemova. I’ll spell: November - Echo - Mike - Oscar - Victor - Alpha. Worth checking the visa applications again?’

Julian didn’t answer immediately. He was probably still writing it all down. ‘I’ll get somebody on it. Then I need to inform Mr Tresillian.’

A deep growl cut in. ‘Already here, Julian. Now listen to me, Mr Stone. Excellent work. Go to Denmark. Find her. A contact and a safe-house will be arranged once you’ve discovered where she is.’ There was a pause. ‘A commune? A fucking commune? I didn’t even know they still existed. Do these people think the world owes them a fucking living?’

Jules and I weren’t sure who was meant to answer.

Tresillian filled in the gap. ‘Anyone got anything useful to say?’

‘I wouldn’t mind dropping out myself one day.’

The jokes still weren’t welcome. ‘Not on my watch, Mr Stone. Next time we hear from you I trust it will be good news.’

The phone went dead. Obviously Julian didn’t have anything to say. Or if he did, tough shit.

Before closing the BlackBerry down I shifted the cursor to the camera icon and clicked on ‘View Pictures’. I spent a few moments willing the minute Cyrillic script to magically translate itself into plain English and leap out at me. ‘I took these of the shipment stacked inside Tarasov’s factory. You see the stencilling on the nearest case? Can you read what it says?’

She zoomed in on each photograph in turn. ‘Just a series of numbers and letters - the product serial ID, maybe.’ She looked up. ‘Why not run them by Julian? He’ll be able to blow them up on a big screen.’

She wasn’t wrong. I thought of the one on the wall behind Tresillian’s head. And I thought of the look on Tresillian’s face when I’d asked about Lilian’s dad. ‘My orders were to steer well clear of Tarasov. And if the boss of bosses is listening in to Jules’s incoming calls …’

She squinted harder at the BlackBerry’s tiny display. ‘I can’t - no, hang on … here, in the corner …’

‘What?’

‘Some kind of shipping label.’

‘Russia?’

She zoomed in further. ‘Yes and no. It’s shipping to Moscow but it’s marked “for onward transit”. There’s an end-user company mentioned. I don’t recognize the name - but I know somebody who might.’ She pulled out her iPhone. ‘Is there anything else about Tarasov I should know?’

I couldn’t tell her. I didn’t know myself.

She pressed the speed dial. It didn’t sound like there were any pleasantries. The exchange was short. ‘He’ll call back when he’s done some digging.’

21

‘Anna?’

‘About an hour and a half, I think.’

‘No, not that. I was thinking about you, back in the flat. Those tears, the way you brought them on like that. What was that all about?’

‘It’s what I do, Nick. I get people to talk. I told him I was her sister. I told him I didn’t care what he was doing, why he was doing it, who he was doing it with. I just wanted her back.’ She flicked the stub of her latest cigarette out of the window. ‘Not that it got me far this time.’

The city was way behind us now. The arc of the BMW’s fullbeams cut into the darkness ahead.

‘How do you manage cry-on-demand? Do baby journalists have to go to acting school or something?’

‘Sort of. I learnt the trick from an American reporter in Bosnia. It came in handy sometimes at road-blocks. She used to think of something really sad. Her mother’s death, maybe.’

‘And you?’

‘I’m sure you can guess.’

A grim silence filled the car. The pulse in my neck quickened. I pictured a twenty-one-year-old kid on a mortuary slab with the back of his head removed by a tumbling missile fragment. I was just going on what she’d told me, but the image was astonishingly vivid - maybe because I was no stranger to scenes like that.

It was 1987. They were young. They were in love. They’d started dating when she was just sixteen - a schoolgirl. He was almost nineteen and in the Soviet Army. And then he’d gone to Afghanistan. She waved goodbye to him at the station, and the next time she saw him he was in a coffin. Even now, she still went to the station sometimes when she wanted to remember him.

‘Grisha was an idealist.’ I remembered the sadness in her voice as we’d walked along a windy Moscow prospekt and she’d told me the story. ‘He loved poetry. That’s how we met. His family lived in the same apartment block as mine. One evening when I came back from school I found him sitting on the front steps. He was reading Pushkin. I love Pushkin …’

They’d got talking. He wanted to go to university to study literature, but his family didn’t have the money or the influence to send him - in those days you couldn’t do it any other way. He would have been conscripted anyway, to fight in Afghanistan, so why not get a university education from the army as well? It meant signing up for five years, but then he’d be free of it. He wanted to become a teacher.

Anna’s father didn’t approve of the relationship. But, then, he didn’t approve of anything much. He was an alcoholic. The Soviet system had killed his love of life. He worked in a factory that made machine tools. He hated it. Anna’s mother was scared of him.

Anna was his only child. He wanted her to make something of her life, and study, study, study, he said, was the only way to achieve it. She had to see Grisha in secret. He had a motorbike, so they could escape every so often for a few hours on their own.

When he’d joined the army, Grisha had gone away for almost a year. In that time Anna saw him only once. He didn’t talk about his training, but she could see that it had affected him deeply. It was only after the Chechen war, years later, when she’d helped families who’d tried to discover what had happened to their dead or missing sons, that she’d found out what they did to recruits. There was systematic abuse. Punishments had nothing to do with performance. If the officers and the NCOs in charge were having a bad day, they beat you. If they were bored, they beat you. When Grisha had come home that summer he was a changed man. He didn’t want to talk about the army, just kept telling her that it wouldn’t be long - another four years - and then he’d be free of it.

It was Grisha’s father who had bought the motorbike, a beaten-up old thing from the Great Patriotic War, and restored it for him. The only times she had seen Grisha happy that summer were when he and his father had worked on the bike and when he had taken Anna out on it.

It was her eighteenth birthday while he was still on leave so they had decided to hand in their application to get married. Russians didn’t have engagements and rings. They applied to ZAGS, the department of registration. But the wedding had never happened. He was sent to Afghanistan before ZAGS had given them a date.

Grisha used to write a lot when he was in Afghanistan. In February 1989, the month the war ended, so had the letters. The army told her he was missing, presumed dead. She wrote requesting further information, but the authorities had never replied. It was like he’d never existed.

Almost a year after they’d lost the war, Grisha’s father had got a call from a man who claimed to be from the military forensic medical laboratory that had performed an autopsy on his son’s body. He wanted to meet; there was something he needed to ask. But Grisha’s father was too scared. This was Soviet Russia.

Anna had said she would go. ‘I had nothing to lose. I’d left school and was waiting to go to university. I met this man - this colonel - at a cafe. He told me about himself - told me that he had served in Afghanistan and what an utter, godforsaken waste of life it had been. People like Grisha, he said, deserved better. Then he showed me some pictures.

‘The autopsy had been carried out at a medical laboratory in Kazan. They’d flown the bodies there, the bodies of everybody who’d been in Grisha’s armoured personnel carrier. The first picture showed him almost as I remembered him: face up, eyes closed, like he was sleeping.

‘The colonel told me the carrier had been hit by an anti-tank rocket. A fragment had pierced his eye, hit bone and tumbled. In the next picture, I saw the exit wound. There was nothing left of the back of his head - just a big black congealed mass of blood, brains, bone fragments and matted hair.’

It was a Soviet missile. The army had found a whole cache of them soon afterwards. The boxes had identified the manufacturer. Someone had sold them to the mujahideen.

Grisha’s father worked for the Soviet Union’s biggest arms manufacturers. Weapons that he had helped to build had killed his son. Grisha’s death drove them both - him, until his death, to unearth arms trafficking; her, to champion the underdog at every turn.

I turned my head. Anna was weeping, and this time the tears weren’t on demand.

‘Walking through that graveyard made it easy. Those places always make me cry.’

‘Pull over, Anna, I’ll drive. You navigate.’

She bumped to a halt. Three trucks thundered past us, just metres apart. She hardly noticed. She had both hands on the wheel, head down.

‘I try to move on, Nick, I really do. But it’s … hard …’ She turned to face me. ‘Do you understand?’

I put a hand gently on her shoulder.

22

About half an hour out of Odessa, Anna glanced towards me again. ‘When you asked about the tears, Nicholas, what were you trying to tell me?’

Jesus, this girl didn’t miss a thing. ‘Nothing really. I was just—’

She pulled into the side of the road again and swivelled in her seat. ‘OK, we can play this one of two ways.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Either you carry on treating me like one of your army friends - and we pretend there’s nothing wrong - or you tell me why you look like shit and what those little red pills are for.’

I didn’t say anything for a moment. ‘Anna, I thought … I thought … if you still can’t hold back the tears every time you think about Grisha, then what right have I to—’

‘You don’t really understand this at all, do you? Grisha’s story is about the importance of telling the truth, however painful it might be.’

Her beautiful, sad eyes bored into me, and stripped me back layer by layer. And for the first time since I could remember, I didn’t cut away. I told her about the headaches and the visit to Kleinmann. I told her about his prognosis and the Smarties and the fact I had binned all the other treatment on offer. Finally, I told her about sitting in the flat, desperate to make a call to her, but being unable to do it. I told her I was too scared of her reaction, that I didn’t want her to bin me.

Then I sat, arms folded, not daring to look at her, and stared out into the darkness.

I felt her fingers gently brush my cheek.

‘You idiot …’ She was shaking her head. ‘I would never walk away. Surely you know me well enough to know that?’

I nodded, letting my hands drop, and tried to smile.

A tear had formed in her eye, and I watched it roll down her cheek. I’d done that. Her first chance of moving on and I’d fucked it up for her.

‘You can understand, can’t you? I wanted this one last kick at it before I go. Wouldn’t you do the same?’

‘The treatment - we can fight this …’

‘It’ll just delay the inevitable.’ I pulled the Smarties out of my jeans. ‘At least I can take these in front of you now.’ I flicked it open and stared at the shiny red pebbles inside. I let the silence lengthen. ‘I don’t want to be a lump of dribbling jelly, depending on you, making your life as miserable as mine would be. You don’t deserve it. Fuck it, better to burn out than fade away, eh?’

She moved her mouth closer to my ear. ‘You stupid, stupid idiot.’ She kissed me on the temple, then took two Smarties from the case and gently popped them into my mouth. ‘We’ll do this whichever way you want. But promise me one thing: be open to the idea of getting involved. It feels just as scary to me.’

We held each other close. A wave of happiness washed over me. She murmured in my ear, ‘I’m glad you told me. I want to be with you.’ She kissed me on the cheek again. ‘And it doesn’t matter for how long.’

Bulgari was still there, on her neck, though much weaker than this morning. Or maybe it wasn’t there at all, and I just wanted it to be. Fuck it: it still felt comforting, reassuring and safe.

She was the one who pulled away. ‘We have to get back on the road, Nicholas. Let’s move, or we’ll never get to see those White Nights.’

She spun the wheel and we carried on heading south.

PART FOUR

1

Copenhagen Tuesday, 16 March

11.15 hrs

The Turkish Airlines Boeing 737 was on its final approach. The three-hour flight from Istanbul wasn’t full. Anna found herself a spare row of seats and slept all the way, cuddling her pack of 200 duty-free Camel. We were dressed in the same clothes we’d been wearing when we’d left the Cosmos yesterday morning and the Bulgari was a distant memory.

Less than two hours after I’d called him, Julian had come back to confirm that Lilian had obtained a visa under the name of Nemova and flown to Copenhagen ten days ago. She had booked the ticket in person at a travel agency on Nicolae Lorga Street in Chisinau. The Malev Hungarian flight was the cheapest available, departing Moldova at 05.45. It arrived in Copenhagen at 09.15 after a one-hour stopover at Ferihegy in Budapest.

Lilian had asked for a window seat. She hadn’t booked in conjunction with anyone else. Nor had she checked in with, or asked to sit next to, anyone else. She’d paid cash for the US$693 return fare.

The return was booked for one week later, but she’d never checked in. Her mobile hadn’t been used since the night before her departure and couldn’t be traced. It had disappeared off the face of the earth, just like her.

Shortly after Julian’s call, Anna heard back from her contact. The company in Moscow that Tarasov’s shipment was bound for specialized in radar technology. He didn’t yet know who the end-user was. For that last piece of the jigsaw puzzle, he would have to dig some more.

We’d arrived at the port in Odessa to discover that the ferry to Istanbul only sailed on Saturdays and Mondays, and took a couple of days. We’d rerouted ourselves in the direction of the airport and spent the rest of the night in the car. I dropped Lena’s pistol into a river and ditched the Beamer, then walked the last two K to the terminal.

We took the Aerosvit Airlines 07.00 flight to Istanbul, arriving at 08.35. We caught the connection to Copenhagen, leaving at 09.00, by the skin of our teeth. There wasn’t a problem with visas. Brits and Russians don’t need them, and Anna smoothed over the minor hiccup caused by the absence of both a Moldovan exit stamp and a Ukrainian entry stamp with a story about us taking the wrong road out of Transnistria and missing the border post. The immigration guy accepted the explanation, together with all the lei that Irina had exchanged for us. This was another former Soviet republic, after all.

While Anna slept, I’d thought about Lilian.

She’d bought herself a return ticket, but that might not be significant. She was bright enough to know she’d have problems at Danish Immigration if she couldn’t show an intention to leave. I bet Slobo had told her that.

Anna had told me that citizens of the Republic of Moldova can’t just rock up at the check-in desk and jump on the first plane to the EU. Pre-2007, they’d had to report in person to the Danish embassy in Bucharest, in neighbouring Romania, for a tourist visa. Post-2007, an EU Common Visa Application Centre had been set up in the Hungarian embassy in Chisinau to simplify travel to Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium and twelve other ‘Schengen treaty’ countries.

The Schengen visa was designed to make travelling between its fifteen European member states - which aren’t the same as the EU countries - much easier and less bureaucratic, but they’re still not issued on the spot. They take ten days to process.

Travelling on a Schengen visa means that the holder can travel to any or all member countries, avoiding the hassle and expense of obtaining a new one for each country. This might have been good for Lilian, but it could be a problem for us. She could have landed in Copenhagen, but then been moved on to Austria, Germany, Belgium, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, or the Netherlands.

There was something else Julian had got from the Hungarians: a scan of all three pages of Lilian’s Schengen-visa application form. Besides all the usual personal details, she had had to state the main purpose of the journey (she’d put tourism); duration of stay (up to thirty days); whether her fingerprints had been collected previously for the purpose of applying for a Schengen visa (no, they hadn’t); intended date of arrival in the Schengen area (3 March); intended date of departure from the Schengen area (10 March); and surname and first name of the inviting person(s) in the member state(s). If that wasn’t applicable, then the name of hotel(s) or temporary accommodation(s) in the member state(s), and the address and email address of the inviting person(s)/hotel(s)/temporary accommodation(s). She’d put Hotel d’Angleterre, 34 Kongens Nytorv. Was the cost of travelling and living during the applicant’s stay covered by the applicant himself/herself? Yes. Means of support? Credit card.

None of her responses meant very much. Plenty of people bluff in their visa applications and she’d had Slobo helping her on her way.

At the bottom of the form, she’d had to sign that she was aware of and consented to the collection of the data required by this application form, the taking of her photograph and, if applicable, of her fingerprints.

Julian had already checked. They hadn’t taken her fingerprints, but she had supplied a photograph; he sent it to my BlackBerry. She looked more or less the same as she had outside the factory. Her hair was a bit longer, that was all. Or it had been. It might be short again by now.

So all we knew was that she had landed in Copenhagen. Julian had been able to confirm she hadn’t taken an onward flight. But that also meant jack-shit. She could now be on a train or a car to anywhere in Europe. The only good thing about her being trafficked rather doing a runner was that someone, somewhere, knew where she was.

We didn’t have a choice. We had to find the next link in the trafficking chain, then follow whatever we could wring out of him.

2

The moment I saw the Hotel d’Angleterre I knew we weren’t going to be finding Lilian’s name anywhere on the register. A big, imposing building overlooking an elegant square in the heart of the city, it was clearly a five-star establishment with fuck-off rooms that would cost at least two thousand kroner (three hundred dollars) a night. When she’d seen she needed a name for her visa application, she must have done a quick Google and chosen the most distinguished. Maybe Slobo had told her it carried a lot more weight than a B-and-B in the hippie quarter.

I parked up.

Anna had gone to book us into an airport hotel while I got a serious wad of kroner from an ATM, organized the car, bought a city guidebook and cajoled a shedload of coins from the shopkeeper. Once we’d checked in, I’d gone to the hotel business centre and bluetoothed Lilian’s picture to a printer. Fuck the shower and shave: we’d buy new kit later.

We now had an A4 colour copy each, as well as a map of Christiania downloaded from the Internet and printed off.

The d’Angleterre was as grand inside as out. It wasn’t the sort of place to have pictures of its clientele on the wall, but I knew from Anna’s Googling that everyone from Winston Churchill to Tony Blair had stayed there when they were in town.

To the left was a cocktail bar. Reception was to the right. The uniformed guy behind the desk greeted us with an efficient but not over-friendly smile. ‘Equality is entrenched in the Danish psyche,’ Anna told me. ‘Staff don’t go out of their way to establish rapport with customers, in any sort of business.’

And there was me thinking they were just miserable.

I produced Lilian’s picture and passed it over. ‘Have you seen our sister? She would have checked in here ten days ago. We haven’t heard from her and - well, we’re getting a bit concerned, to be honest. She’s travelling alone.’

He studied it hard. He was in his twenties himself. A guest as attractive as Lilian would have registered. I watched his eyes not his lips as he replied. He didn’t recognize her. I could have asked if there was anyone else I could check with, but there didn’t seem much point. If all other avenues ended in dead ends, we’d come back here and start all over again.

We went back to the car.

‘I’ve been thinking about your treatment.’

‘Lack of it, you mean.’

‘Why not in Moscow? We would have more time together.’

‘More time dribbling and shitting myself. What’s the good of that? I don’t want it. I certainly don’t want you exposed to it.’

‘Isn’t that my choice?’

‘Maybe. But the way I see it, I go on until it’s too painful or just too much for us both. Then I take a couple of bottles of pills, we lie down and only you wake up.’ I hit the key fob. ‘What do you think?’

She opened her door and stared across the roof at me. ‘Brilliant. And I get left to clean up the mess.’

3

Christiania was a short distance away. While I drove, Anna scanned the guidebook. In 1971, the abandoned eighty-five-acre military camp at Christianhavn, on the eastern edge of the city, had been taken over by squatters who proclaimed it the ‘free town’ of Christiania. The police tried to clear the area, but it was the height of the hippie era and people looking for an alternative lifestyle poured in from all over Denmark. The following year, bowing to public pressure, the government allowed the community to continue as a social experiment. About a thousand people had settled in, transforming the old barracks into schools and housing and starting their own collective businesses, workshops and recycling programmes.

‘A thousand people on an eighty-five-acre site.’ I glanced across at her. ‘Where would a concerned sibling start looking?’

‘She’ll have turned up needing somewhere to stay. There’s nowhere you can pay to stay in Christiania. I think Slobo promised to help her do the runner, told her this was the perfect place to hide, and finished off with the oldest trick in the trafficking book: saying he had a friend who would help her and even get her a job.’

‘Whatever, she’d also have needed to eat and drink. Even if she’s already been moved on, someone must have seen her.’

She ran her finger down the page. ‘Car-free Christiania has a market, some craft shops, and several places where you can get coffee and something to eat. The main entrance is on Prinsessegade, two hundred metres north-east of its intersection with Badsmandsstraede. You can take a guided tour of Christiania. There’s a Pusher Street information office next to the Oasen cafe.’

‘Can you get us to that intersection?’

‘We’re almost there. Left in four or five blocks.’

‘Does Pusher Street mean what I think it means?’

She nodded. ‘Since 1990, the story of Christiania has been one of police raids on Pusher Street. The police, decked out in riot gear, have patrolled Christiania regularly, staging numerous organized raids leading to some ugly confrontations and arrests.’

She went back to the map page. ‘This is the one. Left here.’

I found a space on a street full of bars and cafes just off Prinsessegade. I pushed enough coins into the machine to last us a few hours and stuck the ticket on the dashboard.

We walked a couple of hundred yards to an alleyway. A short way down it, a big wooden sign announced, ‘You are entering Christiania.’ On the reverse, for our benefit on the way back, it said, ‘You are entering the EU.’

An information board told us that guided tours left from there at three in the afternoon. Another showed a camera with a red slash through it. The dealers had never gone away, Anna said. No dealer likes a camera in his face.

We walked between walls plastered with graffiti and murals. A familiar smell hung in the air. The slightly sickly, pungent scent of cannabis thickened the further we went. A woman cycled past us on a bike with a huge wooden box on the front containing a pair of muzzled Rottweilers.

A young guy with dreadlocks stood guard by a fence, radio comms in one hand, oversized spliff in the other. I guessed the system worked like the one the Amish had in the film Witness. One call and the community came running - or, in Christiania’s case, the dealers. The guidebook had said that the narcotics police, backed by the Riot Squad, had raided Pusher Street several times, arresting any of the dealers who didn’t pack up and run fast enough.

‘Does it say why they don’t just close the whole place down and be done with it?’

‘There would be riots. The hash market turns over millions a year.’

Anna read some more from the guidebook as she walked. Perfect. It made us look like tourists in search of a ‘sanctuary for anyone who is tired of the consumerism and routine of everyday life’.

It must have sounded idyllic to a girl raised in an environment of chaos and gangsterdom after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Slobo wouldn’t have had to sell this one too hard.

‘Turn on, tune in, drop out - whatever. Lovely until the money runs out and you realize you have to get a haircut and some work clothes and earn a living.’ I grinned. I was starting to sound like Tresillian.

Graffiti covered every inch of wall.

Living to lower standards for a higher quality of life.

Loud music bounced out at us from somewhere out of sight.

A guy in a sweater full of holes ambled towards us.

‘Pusher Street?’ Anna showed him the map.

He pointed wearily. Christiania was Copenhagen’s second biggest tourist attraction after the Tivoli Gardens and every one of them probably wanted to be able to tell their friends back home they’d dared visit Pusher Street.

‘Have you seen this girl?’

Anna produced her picture but he’d already gone.

4

We came to a small market. Three or four stalls sold T-shirts, hats and scarves. Anna showed the stallholders Lilian’s photograph but none of them recognized her. I wondered if they would have recognized their own mothers. Everybody looked slightly dazed.

Anna spotted a bar. ‘As you said, she had to eat and drink …’

We went in. The big airy room was full of guys with wispy beards and woolly hats with earflaps. It was us who looked weird. We did what any concerned family member would do. We went up to the bar and held out Lilian’s picture. The girl had pierced eyebrows and a nose-ring. Her hair was bleached.

‘Have you seen this girl?’

‘I’m sorry, no.’

‘Do you mind if we ask your customers?’

‘Be my guest. But please buy something.’

I ordered a couple of beers and handed over a fistful of kroner. We left the bottles on the bar and started to circulate. The first table responded to the photo with shakes of the head. So did the next. People did look, but I got the feeling they wouldn’t have told us even if they had seen her. I put it down to rage against the machine. ‘This is shit, Anna. Let’s try that information centre.’

As we turned to leave, a ruddy-faced man in his sixties hauled himself to his feet, as if to follow us out. Then he seemed to think better of it and sat down again. Maybe he was just too stoned or pissed. He had long white hair that needed even more of a wash than we did and a beard that Gandalf would have been jealous of.

I caught Anna’s eye and we headed back to his table. She sat opposite him, and I stood alongside. He concentrated very hard on his glass. Everything about him suggested he’d downed a good few whiskies before he’d got to this one.

He nodded at the pictures. His watery eyes seemed to loosen in their sockets. ‘Your … child?’

‘No, my sister. She’s run away. She came here, maybe ten days ago. You’ve seen her?’

He pulled out a packet of Drum and some papers but seemed in no hurry to open them. Anna took the hint and pulled out her readymades. He feigned delighted surprise and helped himself to three.

‘You know, many people say that this place saved them when they were at their lowest ebb and had nowhere else to turn.’ His English was accented but faultless. ‘I’m one of them. I left home when I was fifteen and drifted until I found Christiania.’

He paused to light the first of his recently acquired Camels and sucked in the real deal with the kind of pleasure that only smokers know. Me, I wished we were still in the EU where this shit was outlawed. Anna sparked up too, adding to the pollution.

Gandalf waved his free hand around the commune as if it were his kingdom. ‘In the early days we built our own houses in the woods or renovated the old barracks. We had a right to build as we chose. This place is all I know.’

I wasn’t sure if the smile that lurked behind the hair was fuelled by happiness or cannabis, but it showed off the three or four yellow tombstones that still clung to his gums in all their glory.

I stuck a finger on Lilian’s chin. ‘Her name is Lilian Nemova. You seen her?’

‘Russian?’

‘Moldovan.’

His eyes wobbled as they moved down her picture once more, but only for a fleeting second. ‘You do not sound like a Moldovan, brother.’

Anna was getting as pissed off with him as I was. ‘He’s helping me find her.’

He took a swig from his glass.

I kept an eye on people coming in and leaving the bar. You never knew.

‘We were hard-working people here. Artists, socialists, anarchists - people who drank and smoked too much, but we had rules. We have bad people preying on the weak and lonely.’ He waved in the vague direction of the free town outside. ‘It was the dawn of a new era. A new way of living. Then it all changed. We’ve even had a murder here - here, in Christiania!’ He pointed a wrinkled finger at the sugar bowl in front of him like it was the root of all evil. ‘It’s wrong. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.’

He necked the last of his drink.

‘But have you seen her?’

He shook his head; he didn’t want to look at the photo again. ‘These are sad days. Turkish gangs, Palestinian and Balkan gangs, Russian gangs. They are all here.’

I crouched down, elbows on the table, trying for eye-to-eye. ‘One of the gangs - the Russians maybe - would they have her?’

He stared into his empty glass and kept shaking his head. He started to cry. Saliva dribbled into his beard.

‘Fuck him. Let’s get out there. The more people we hit, the better the chance that whoever lifted her will front us.’

Anna wasn’t too sure. ‘You think that would be the best thing to do? We might get very dead, very soon.’

‘Got a better idea? People aren’t exactly falling over themselves to help us, are they? We could be here for days waiting for this twat to get sober.’

5

Back on the street, I studied my map. ‘That way.’

There were no signs to tell us we’d arrived, but it wasn’t long before we found ourselves on Pusher Street. It was like we’d crossed the border between the fairy kingdom and the land of the trolls. The atmosphere changed abruptly. These were mean streets. Cannabis fumes hung more heavily in the air. Aggressive-looking skinheads, some hooded, stood round flaming metal barrels, furtive and menacing. I watched a young guy approach one group and be steered down an alley. Their job seemed to be to direct buyers and keep an eye out for police.

Everywhere I looked, pit-bull terriers wandered unleashed.

‘It’s an old Russian trick.’ Anna nodded at a dog that should have had tattoos on its front legs. ‘They’re trained to whisk the stash away from a police raid.’

Large canvas parasols covered makeshift stalls. I stepped under one and eyed the merchandise. Lumps of cannabis and bags of skunk were displayed on a tree trunk and a wooden barrel. I showed the stallholder Lilian’s picture and asked in English if he’d seen her. He was about her age. He was dressed in grimy old German Army gear that hadn’t been washed since Stalingrad.

As he started to answer, a skinhead with a black sweatshirt strode over from one of the braziers. ‘Fuck off!’ He yelled it straight into my face and gave me a shove. I nodded and retreated, hands raised. Too many hard faces were glaring at me to play it any other way, too many pit-bulls at their heels. So much for the Summer of Love.

My anxious sister clasped my arm and guided me away.

I tried my best to look scared, and part of me was. ‘If she’s shacked up with one of those arseholes, Anna, we could have a problem.’

6

There were hundreds of buildings in Christiania and Lilian could have been holed up in any or none of them. Almost all the businesses, shops and restaurants were located in Christiania City. A network of footpaths and bridges connected the sprawling residential sectors. North of where we were, the town gradually gave way to woods.

The main barracks had been converted into an apartment building called the Ark of Peace. It was the largest halftimbered house in northern Europe, and housed more than eighty people. Then there were another eighty-five acres of old army buildings, run-down trailers and modern self-build wood and brick cottages. Even if everyone was at home, it would take the two of us days to cover the ground.

‘We’re going to have to split up, Anna. Are you OK with that?’

‘No problem.’

I unfolded my map. ‘Why don’t you start at this vegetarian restaurant, the Morning Place, and the after-school centre, the Raisin House, and carry on down the road into the green residential area? I’ll do the bars and clubs round Pusher Street. If we get jack-shit, we RV back at the bar at last light anyway.’ I touched her face. ‘Any drama, just run.’

Anna gave me a hug and I watched her disappear down the street. Just a few yards away, two roaming dogs suddenly had a turf dispute that erupted into a full-blown fight. Their owners ran over with chains to subdue them. I was in no doubt of what kind of welcome we’d get if we did track Lilian down.

7

The Opera was a music-venue-cum-community-centre in an old brick-layered building at the top end of Pusher Street. The Cafe Oasis was on the ground floor. Above it was the information office.

I went inside and tried the girl at the till. ‘She might have cut her hair. She might have dyed it.’ I doubted Lilian would have spent her hard-saved cash on a visit to the stylist, but if she had fallen foul of a trafficking gang there was no telling what look they’d have opted for, and I needed to get people’s brains in gear. I scanned the other customers while I was talking. You can concentrate so hard on looking for the next person to quiz or the next bar to go into that the target could walk straight past without you noticing.

The girl shook her head.

I stuck my head inside the music venue. A high ceiling supported by tall, decorated wooden pillars and a red and white dance floor in the shape of a starburst gave it a circus feel. Sofas and armchairs were arranged living-room style along the furthest wall, in stark contrast with the shit and rugs outside. The place was deserted.

I went upstairs to the information office. I drew a blank there too, but at least the guy suggested pinning up a photocopy. I hadn’t brought any. I thanked him and said I’d come back later if I’d had no luck.

The Children’s Theatre and the Jazz Club also shared the building. Nobody was in either of them. Immediately across the road was a clothes and ethnic handicrafts store, and Marzbar, an Internet cafe. I visited them both, keeping my eyes skinned.

A long, three-storey grey-stone building that had once been the garrison’s arsenal now housed the music venue, Loppen - the Flea - along with a restaurant, a gallery, some hobby workshops, a youth club, and, down by the entrance, the Infocafe and the Christiania post office. It took me more than an hour to cover every option with Lilian’s picture.

Back out on Pusher Street, I went into the Sunshine Bakery, the laundry, and behind these, the community kitchen and a bar called the Monkey Grotto. Nothing. I just hoped that people would be starting to hear about the two dickheads bouncing about trying to find a girl. Maybe it would get to the gangs before we started turning up the temperature tonight.

I dropped into another bar, Woodstock, a bit further on, and the tattooist opposite. I bought a grilled-vegetable sandwich in a small gallery and eating-place next door. I moved on to Nemoland, a cafe and outdoor music venue, with a bar inside and outside, bench tables and parasols, an outdoor stage, and a bistro serving Thai food. There were palm trees, Greek- and Chinese-style decorations, lots of blue bench tables, but not one sniff of recognition of Lilian from the locals.

I began to think it might be time to take another route. Plan B was double-edged. It might lead us straight to Lilian - or fuck us up so completely that we’d never get anywhere near her.

8

I headed for the RV just before last light. Noisy revellers, a lot of them already the worse for wear, were streaming into Christiania for a night of music, drink and drugs. Outside in the city, the street-lights would be burning. Here in the free town, bare bulbs hanging behind windows struggled to do the same job.

Moving as fast as I could without drawing attention to myself, I jinked down a series of lefts and rights, stopping only once to check the map. I ran into Anna on the way.

‘Anything?’

‘Nothing. But I did get a call from Moscow. He’s found out the end user.’

‘A company?’

She shook her head. ‘A country. The radar is for the Pantsyr-S1E and heading for the Iranian military. You know what an S1E is?’

‘Yeah - ground-to-air missile. Tarasov’s making the boards for the missile systems.’

We carried on towards the RV arm in arm. Guys with radio comms and roll-ups the size of RPGs lingered in the shadows, their pit-bulls snarling at their heels.

We eventually got bored with pushing our way through groups of dithering tourists and local teenagers toking their heads off and darted down a side street.

A figure stepped out from the shadows, a white guy in his early twenties in a black leather jacket and old army cargoes. His head was shaved. Even in this light I could see his eyes were bloodshot and out on stalks.

‘You want cannabis?’

‘No.’

‘Cocaine? Heroin?’

It sounded like a threat rather than an invitation to sample tonight’s special.

We didn’t break step. ‘No.’

Walking backwards just ahead of us, he gestured towards the rear of a nearby building. ‘Come with me, come down here. I can get you anything. Ice? Ket?’

I shook my head. ‘We don’t want anything.’

‘If you don’t want to buy, what are you doing here? You cops?’

Anna was just as sharp with him. ‘We don’t have money.’

He flexed his fist. ‘Yeah, right, and I don’t have a dick.’

We kept going.

He slid his right hand into his pocket. ‘I’ll cut you both. Buy some stuff or fuck off, cop.’

It wasn’t a knife he tugged from his pocket, but a radio.

Anna pulled out the picture. ‘Have you seen her?’

He didn’t even bother looking. ‘Fuck you.’

We carried straight on past him. He wasn’t going to follow us onto the main. Darkness was where he lived. ‘Fuck you, bitches - got no money. Suck my dick and I’ll give you a freebie. Hey, everybody, look out - cops.’

We were opposite the entrance to the alley that led back to Prinsessegade. We were going against the flow. People were pouring past the sign that told us we were entering the EU, three or four abreast.

9

Gandalf was in the corner where we’d left him. It looked as though his glass had been refilled a good few more times. An ashtray was piled with roll-up ends. The one in his mouth had gone out and its ash had taken up residence in his beard.

He looked up blearily to see who had come into the not-so-busy bar and went straight back into waffle mode, as if he’d only finished his last sentence to us a few seconds ago. ‘Gangs. Violence. It’s the government’s fault. We used to sell the best hash in Europe here, right here in Christiania. But then the politi bust the trade. Then the gangs …’

Anna sat down at his table. ‘Maybe you could tell us a little more about the gangs. Where are the Russians? Do you know where we can find them?’

I sat beside her as Gandalf continued his rant. His eyes wobbled and bounced like a one-armed-bandit display but never made contact with either of us.

‘We are citizens of Denmark. We pay our taxes—’

I thought he was going to end his sentence but he started a new one instead.

‘Our music halls and art galleries have contributed to Denmark’s culture and commerce. We have a free health clinic. We shelter and look after addicts, alcoholics, even homeless …’ He raised a nicotine-stained index finger to make sure we understood the full weight of the next category. ‘… and madmen. The cops still do nothing but hassle us. But do they do anything to the gangs? No! We are used by them - what can we do?’

Anna pulled out a pack of Camels and offered him one. ‘Do you know where the Russians are?’ She pulled out Lilian’s picture again. ‘Where can we find them?’

He refused the cigarette. ‘Why do you think I would know? I know nothing.’ He was angry or scared, it was hard to work out which.

His fist went down hard on the table; hard enough to make the glass rattle. ‘Nothing.’

His head went down again. Tears rolled from his eyes. ‘I just cannot take any more …’

We left him to it, and ordered coffees and open salmon sandwiches at the bar. Money upfront, of course.

‘I think we’re going to get a big fuck-all tonight. She may already be drugged up and fucked up, but we won’t find her on the street. Those lads out there on Pusher, they’re the low end of the market. They’re not catering for the kind of customer who’s looking to drop his Armani trousers, and they’re not traffickers. We won’t get near the Russians via them. We’ll just rub them up the wrong way and find ourselves on the receiving end of a pit-bull.’

Anna was waiting to see where this was going. ‘So?’

‘So, get your mobile out.’ I closed my eyes, trying to visualize the international number on Slobo’s call register.

‘Check the code for Demark. Is it four five?’

Her thumbs clicked away as I got my head in gear. It wasn’t exactly instant recall, but it didn’t need to be. I tended to remember the shapes of numbers rather than the numbers themselves.

‘Yes - plus four five.’

‘Slobo had one international number on his mobile. It began with four five.’

‘Couldn’t Jules have traced it?’

Our brews arrived and I waited for the bartender to put some distance between my mouth and his ears.

‘Anna, Jules has given me the all-singing, all-dancing BlackBerry, but it doesn’t mean I want to get in touch with him and Tresillian every time I need Directory Enquiries.’

I buttoned my lip as the sandwiches appeared.

‘The other thing you should know is that I think Jules is a good guy - but I don’t know Tresillian well enough to trust him, so until I find out what this shit is really about, I’d rather tell them both as little as possible.’

I reached for Anna’s iPhone as she started to eat and tapped out the number on her keypad until its rhythm felt right in my head.

‘This call could fuck up Lilian for good. I don’t know for sure what we’ll find at the other end. But I do know that we’ve already rattled a few bars on a few cages - and maybe one in particular.’

‘Do it.’

I dialled and waited for the ring tone. It sparked up a few seconds later.

Nothing for three rings.

Anna raised a hand. ‘Hang up.’

I did as she asked. I knew she’d have a good reason.

‘Now dial again.’

I dialled and she waited until the ring tone sounded in my ear, then pulled the phone away. The nineties Nokia ring tone fired up across the room. This time it woke Gandalf up enough for him to reach into his pocket.

‘Hej?’

I closed down. He gave his mobile a shake, had another listen, then shoved it back into his coat.

Then he looked up and saw us both staring at him from the bar, Anna’s iPhone still in my hand.

He knew he’d fucked up. He got to his feet and headed for the door.

Anna made to follow but I held her back. ‘He won’t get far. We don’t run. We walk.’

The dim lighting in the street was still effective enough for a quick scan to reveal Gandalf’s whereabouts. He might have thought he was doing a Usain Bolt, but his ageing legs and pissed-up brain were letting him down.

He took the corner as we started to push our way through the crowds. It took no time to catch up and push him onto a muddy patch between two barrack blocks.

I pulled him up from the shit by his arms.

‘Please, please … Kill me - yes, please kill me. I cannot take any more guilt. They make me do it … Kill me, please. I beg you, end it …’

I shoved him against a rotting wooden panel, which shut him up long enough for Anna to start questioning him.

‘Where is she? Where did she go?’

He looked at me, wild-eyed. ‘I don’t know. They took her. I don’t know where she’ll be now.’

‘Who took her? Who?’

More tears fell. He clasped his hands together in prayer. ‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I just meet the girls, that’s all. I meet them and escort them. They make me do it. I have no choice. Please, I can’t take any more. Kill me now …’ His hands parted and he brought them up to cover his face.

Anna moved in closer. ‘Who are they?’

‘Russians.’

‘Where do you take them?’

‘To the green house - the house near Loppen.’

I grabbed Anna’s arm. ‘I know it. Let’s go, fuck him.’

He fell to his knees and grabbed me as I turned. His arms tight around my legs, he sobbed into my jeans. ‘All those young girls. The lost, the hiding. They sell them. They fill them with drugs and they sell them.’ His shoulders heaved.

I pushed him off me and he fell back into the mud.

‘I have nowhere to go. They would throw me out of Christiania. I wanted to tell the politi, but what would they do? I had to do what they told me.’ He looked up at me, still pleading. ‘Please, please, kill me. I am dead now anyway. I am so tired. Those girls, those poor girls …’

He curled into the foetal position. I bent down and rolled him onto his back.

Anna tried dragging me away. ‘Nick, no - don’t!’

I shook myself free, wrenched aside his beard and gripped his neck. My hands started to tighten.

‘Thank … you … I am so … sorry …’ His voice rasped, but there was relief in his eyes.

I leant closer, my mouth alongside his ear. ‘Fuck you. You’re living. You can remember every girl you’ve handed over to those arseholes. You had a choice, and you took the easy way out. But not this time.’ I fished in his pocket for his mobile before letting go of him. Then I took Anna’s hand and headed back out into the street.

10

I followed Anna up the flight of broken wooden steps and onto the veranda of the house with flaking green paint, keeping a few paces behind her as a good BG would. I’d quizzed the call register on Gandalf’s phone before binning it, not expecting anything much. He was either more switched on than he looked, or - more likely - his trafficker mates weren’t taking any chances.

The house was long past being a home. A rusty fridge sat discarded by the front door. The wood under the peeling paint was rotten. The place looked more like a crack den than the HQ of an international business enterprise.

I stayed close as Anna banged on the glass panel in the top half of the door. Light filtered weakly through the minging net curtains that hung behind it.

Footsteps echoed on bare boards. The curtains twitched and the door opened just enough to show a chin unevenly coated with bum fluff. Its owner nodded at whatever Anna said, but still went to close the door on us. Anna’s foot shot into the gap. She bollocked him in fast, aggressive Russian. The runt gave up. He nodded and closed the door.

Anna waited, not looking back at me as more footsteps thundered towards us. I could hear voices, then saw movement and shadows through the netting. She had told me that these guys were greedy. That, above all, they were businessmen. A sale was a sale. We were about to find out if she was right.

The door opened. Two, maybe three, bodies filled the hallway. The first one’s hands reached out. Anna tried to duck out of the way but was too slow. He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her in, a pistol jammed into her neck. There was nothing I could do now, except follow.

She stumbled through the entrance. The runt already had a weapon on me. A second body reached out and gripped my coat. He shoved the muzzle of a weapon into my neck and pushed me down onto the floorboards as the door slammed shut behind me.

All three extra bodies were well into their thirties and wore black North Face parkas with fur-lined hoods. Anna went ballistic at them and they couldn’t give a fuck. I heard the rustle of nylon as they went about their checks Russian-style. She kept up the bollocking, as you would if you were in the business. I tried to look completely unconcerned as my jeans pockets were pulled out and the BlackBerry was lifted.

There was an old wooden staircase dead ahead, uncarpeted, dimly lit by a bulb with no shade. A dank smell filled the air, strong and sickly, as if the house hadn’t been aired for years.

The biggest of the North Face boys got his dibs on Anna. He leered at his mates as he ran his hands over her body. She glared back at him. The stream of Russian that poured out of her told him that she was ready to bite. He seemed to like whatever she was saying, though, and gave her breasts an extra frisk so he could hear more.

The runt was obviously in charge of storage. He stood there enjoying the show, with both of Lilian’s pictures, our maps and mobiles clutched in his hands.

I heard movement at the top of the stairs and looked up to see two wide-eyed teenage faces. The girls were on their hands and knees, trying to hide from view, but captivated by the aggression on the floor below. Apart from oversized T-shirts - one from a Guns N’ Roses concert, the other a plain grey that had once been white - they were naked. Their hair was a mess, but pushed back far enough for me to see that both had thin, painted eyebrows that made them look like dolls.

They almost jumped out of their skins as Mr Big caught sight of them. They shot from sight as he dragged himself away from Anna’s breasts and double-stepped it up there, shrieking like the world’s angriest parent.

Anna and I were hauled to our feet and pushed against the wall. These guys were big and aggressive, but what was more worrying was their air of who-gives-a-fuck. They looked like they’d just as easily kill us as offer us coffee.

Anna took the lead. She began to talk to the runt. It sounded like she still wanted to meet the boss. Her tone was measured, persuasive and even - despite being punctuated by screams and shouts from upstairs as the girls got a good slapping. She had to speak up to be heard, and managed to show no interest whatsoever in the drama unfolding above us.

The runt pointed towards the back of the house, but it was clear I wasn’t invited.

She didn’t budge. She turned and pointed at me. This time it sounded like she was telling them to fuck off. Her words were quick and aggressive. The slaps and screams stopped and the girls began to beg.

The runt asked her something.

Whatever she answered, it seemed to work. He strode off down the corridor. Anna hadn’t looked at her hired help once since we walked up to the building. She was playing it well. She gave me an order in Russian and signalled what I was to do. I stayed behind her along the short stretch of corridor and as we went through a doorway at the rear. Our footsteps sounded unnaturally loud on the bare boards.

The kitchen was large and filled with smoke. A man smaller than even the runt - but clearly infinitely more powerful - was sitting with a brew, drawing hard on an untipped cigarette. The girls and Mr Big were now directly above us. I knew I couldn’t show the slightest interest in the sounds. We were buyers: we knew these girls needed to be kept in hand.

The odd glimmer of makeshift street-lighting managed to fight its way through what was left of the blind. It was obvious now why they kept their coats on. It was colder and more miserable in here than it was outside. There was no heating. This was a meeting place. People weren’t here all the time.

The only thing that looked like it might work was a Nespresso machine like the one in my flat. It sat among the general shit by the sink, next to its discarded packaging.

Anna didn’t wait to be asked. She went over to the table and sat opposite him. Bed springs started to squeak above us. I heard a muffled sob.

Anna ignored it all and kept talking, cool and calm. In case he wasn’t getting the message, she leant over and helped herself to a cigarette from the pack that sat next to an old dinner plate piled high with butts. She lit it with a plastic throwaway that lay next to his mobile.

He gave me a cursory glance, out of boredom more than anything. I looked away. He would have expected nothing less. I was Anna’s BG. My total focus was on my principal, not on trying to establish eye contact with anyone else.

Mr Big was really getting into it. His breathless shouts were followed by a couple more slaps and an anguished scream.

Anna was playing a blinder. She exuded confidence. She sounded like she really was here to buy herself some girls.

I looked around. A small bread knife lay beside half a loaf near the coffee machine. That was the only weapon I could see. The corridor was blocked by the North Face crew, who were leaning against the wall, maybe waiting their turn upstairs. The door behind Anna was bolted. If the shit hit the fan, all I could do was to hold them off long enough for her to unbolt it and run.

The springs stopped squeaking and grunts were replaced by sobs. I still didn’t move a muscle, but I made myself a promise then: for as long as I lived, I’d track these fuckers down - and their mates - and kill them.

Anna sparked up another of the boss’s cigarettes and put the lighter back on the table. The smoke curled from her mouth and nose before she spoke. The only words I recognized now sounded like names of countries. He was still calm. He lit himself another cigarette too and took such a mega-drag I could see the paper burn down like a fuse.

Anna sat and waited while he thought about what she’d said. But she didn’t wait for long. She stood up before he’d delivered his answer: she’d had enough of this bullshit.

I turned towards the North Face guys. I wanted them to know that we intended to leave in one piece. Fuck the mobiles and the other stuff. I moved into the corridor just in time to see Mr Big give his mates a very satisfied grin and put his coat back on.

The small guy started talking. Anna stopped, turned back, went to the table and sat down. She helped herself to another cigarette from his pack.

He gave an order to one of the North Faces. I heard the front door open and close.

We waited in silence. The two of them smoked. The boss checked his mobile now and again for messages as Anna sat back, picking tobacco from her lips. The sobbing above us gradually subsided.

After three or four minutes the sound of clubland laughter echoed down the hallway and a new body appeared. Dressed in a brown overcoat over a black polo neck, he was so slim his head looked as if it really belonged on someone else’s shoulders. Everything about him was immaculate. His nails were manicured, possibly even polished. Not one dark brown hair from what was left on his head was out of place. He didn’t give Anna or me as much as a glance as he headed for the small guy’s side of the table.

He jerked his head. ‘She speak English?’

He was no Russian: his accent was Scouse, deep, strong and quick.

The small guy shrugged.

The Scouser took a seat next to his mate.

Anna stubbed out what was left of her cigarette on the plate and frowned impatiently, wanting to get on with business. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Santa fucking Claus. What the fuck’s it to you? Why have you come to us?’

He wasn’t exactly cross-eyed, but they looked ever so slightly inwards. He reminded me of someone I’d known back in my battalion days. Robot was permanently AWOL. He’d always either gone to a Millwall match, or got arrested after one. His big pleasure in life was smashing up shop fronts or battering other teams’ fans with a hammer. Being in the army had messed up his social life.

I always kept clear of Robot. He was as crazy and unpredictable as he looked. One day he walked into someone in the cookhouse by mistake. Instead of ‘Why don’t you look where you’re going?’ the guy said, ‘Why don’t you go where you’re looking?’ It cracked us up, but Robot didn’t see the funny side. The squaddie he’d collided with was in hospital for weeks with a fractured jaw.

Anna relaxed back into her chair. ‘I want girls. I’m expanding into Italy, France, Germany. I want to pick them up from here, and do my own distribution.’

The Scouser leant over and examined the last cigarette in the pack. With a curl of the lip he extracted a silver case from an inside pocket. He flipped it open, selected an untipped cancer stick of his own and bounced it up and down in his lips as he spoke. ‘What’s your name?’ He reached for the lighter.

‘Anna.’ Her tone was assured. She was going for it.

The Scouser dipped into his coat and pulled out Lilian’s pictures, along with our mobiles. ‘What the fuck’s this shite about?’

Anna didn’t miss a beat. ‘She is one of mine, from Moldova.’

He smiled. ‘Not any more.’

Anna sat back and accepted the news with a slow nod. ‘Is she upstairs?’

‘Not now. Those two are just perks for the lads.’ He waved an arm towards the doorway. ‘Can’t be all work, no play. Know what I mean?’

She didn’t bother answering. ‘The hard part is getting the girls into Europe. If you can do that, why don’t I just come to you? It will make my life easier.’ She retrieved the pictures from the table and screwed them up. ‘Do you have girls for sale, or am I wasting my time?’

‘That depends.’

She pointed a finger at him. ‘I want young ones. No crack whores or ugly pigs the Turks have already finished with. I want the ones you get fresh from here. No scars, no skin ink.’ She draped an arm coolly over the back of her chair.

He put cigarette and lighter to one side. ‘Who wants them? Who sent you?’

She laughed. ‘Why? Are you with Animal Welfare? You want to make sure they go to good homes? Now, do you have some for me to see, or what? I want a good price. If I get that, we can do business. A lot more business. But young. No more than twenty-one, twenty-two.’

The Scouser flicked a speck of ash off his coat, then studied her through the cloud of smoke that still hung over the table. He finally shrugged and put his hands in the air. ‘Tell you what, give me a number. Maybe I’ll call you.’

‘No. Fuck you.’ She stood up, grabbed our mobiles and turned, ready to leave.

He waved an arm. ‘For fuck’s sake, calm down. Sit down a minute.’ He pulled out a pen and wrote on the cigarette packet.

She came and stood beside me. She wasn’t going to do fuck-all of what he said.

He threw the empty packet at her. ‘Be at that address tomorrow. I’ll see what I can do. Wear one layer of clothes. That coat. And have a fucking bath, will you? You smell and look like shite.’ He pointed at me. ‘And no fucking ape.’

She had what she wanted. She turned towards the door, confidently expecting the North Faces to part like the Red Sea.

PART FIVE

1

Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam Wednesday, 17 March

09.25 hrs

The flight from Copenhagen only took ninety minutes and landed on time. We’d followed our new mate Robot’s advice and bought new gear and day sacks to carry it in, then gone back to the hotel for a shower. Of course Anna had kept her coat.

I reached into my brown-leather charity-shop bomber jacket and pulled out my passport. I’d put it into the right-hand inside pocket so I had to use my left to take it out. The action was awkward enough to remind me I was doing something unusual: that I was Nicholas Smith, not Nick Stone. Julian’s guys hadn’t exactly pushed the creative envelope there, but it fitted my alias business cover. Nick Smith was an unemployed satellite-dish engineer. He’d only ever worked for small outfits. You never used a well-known company like Sky or BT as cover. If you did and got caught, they’d go ballistic. Apart from anything else, you’d be putting their genuine personnel at risk. They could become a target for reprisals.

In my well-worn jeans, bomber and Timberlands I was just one of the thousands of Brit workers moving in and out of Schiphol and other EU airports every day. They spilt out of the no-frills flights from Gatwick and East Midlands, day sacks and wheelies in hand so they could bypass the luggage carousels and get to work. With a couple of days’ growth, I really looked the part. Nick Smith was in good company as he approached the Immigration desks.

Being unemployed is always good cover. You don’t have to go into detail about who you work for and risk having it checked. Chances are, you won’t be questioned going from one EU country to another, but you never know. All I needed was enough to get me through the first layer of security.

Anna was four or five places behind me in the queue. My cover didn’t sit well with her in tow, and that was one of the reasons why we weren’t together. The other was that the meeting Robot had lined up for this morning was our best and maybe only chance of getting hold of Lilian. If for any reason we got lifted together, that chance would evaporate.

My passport was now in my right hand. I flicked the picture page open with my thumb, ready for the scanner. The flat screens beyond the desk by the luggage carousel showed newsreels of yesterday’s suicide bombings and Taliban attacks in Kabul. The caption said the death toll had reached double figures.

I recognized the square near the war victims’ hospital, just down the road from the Iranian embassy. It now had a massive hole in the ground where one of the car bombs had kicked off, and the buildings around it were in ruins. It was the way of things now. Back in the studio, they rounded off the piece with some new accusations that Islamabad trained and funded the Taliban, and Pakistan had refused to use US technology in their nuclear-energy systems.

I’d been there before too - and I didn’t blame them. Word had got around after the al-Kibar adventure. President Zardari and his mates didn’t fancy the Americans tripping the kill switches at Zero Hour and making free with their airspace.

The kill switches in the al-Kibar ground-to-air defences really did work. There was no illumination of Ra’am’s F-15s as they went into their attack profile. But the real reason the Americans approved the mission was to send the Iranians a clear message. Which had to be why they were getting their kit direct from Tarasov, these days.

It was my turn to approach the desk. One glance at Nick Smith’s photograph and the Dutch immigration officer waved me through.

2

I picked up the keys for a Fiat Panda while Anna headed for the Radisson, opposite the terminal. It would be easy to park in highly congested streets, and it wouldn’t draw too much attention to itself. It would blend in even more once I’d installed the baby seat that the very tall blonde woman at the Budget desk passed over with a smile. I liked the Dutch. They spoke perfect English and even looked like us. Maybe that’s why the Costa del Clog had taken over from Spain as every self-respecting Brit villain’s hideout of choice.

I handed her Nick Smith’s MasterCard. It had about PS2,000 left out of its PS5,000 limit. You can’t do without credit cards. They’re uncomfortably easy to track, but you need them for things like car hire and flights. Try to pay cash and you’ll be flagged up as a possible terrorist or, in this neck of the woods, drug-dealer or criminal.

Half an hour later, we were following the A10 north, day sacks tucked alongside the baby seat. There hadn’t been time to go to the room. All the earlier flights had been fully booked, and the clock was ticking.

Anna was navigating with the map Budget had given us. The place was heaving with blue motorway signs and glass-fronted office blocks - we could have been driving along the M4 into London. I even passed a service station with signs for BP and a Wild Bean coffee shop.

Anna told me we had a while before we hit the city exit. ‘Do you know Amsterdam? Do you know where this—’

‘Used to. When I was a young soldier in Germany, I used to go to the Dutch camp to buy stuff because everything was cheaper. A tank unit was billeted there - good lads. We played football with them and went downtown as a gang, that sort of thing. We even went on a couple of trips to Amsterdam with them, doing what young soldiers do. We out-drank them, of course.’ I gave her a grin. ‘But only just.’

‘What is it with soldiers?’ She wasn’t impressed. But she probably knew I was trying to keep her mind off the meeting and what went along with it.

I suddenly realized I had a bit of a lump in my throat. That sort of carry-on had stopped years ago, but until the day I’d walked into Kleinmann’s consulting rooms the memories of those times had always brought a smile to my face. Thinking about them now just made me miserable. Not the events themselves, but the thinking about them. Was this what happened when you knew the clock was ticking?

The sun was bright, even though it was starting to spit a little with rain. I pulled the visor down to protect my eyes and Anna handed over a couple of Smarties.

As I swallowed them, something weird happened. I started to think about the people I’d fucked over. Not work people, but the real ones - women mostly, who I’d messed around through naivety, stupidity, or just not giving a shit. What had happened to them all? Did they think of me? What did they think of me? I didn’t even know where my ex-wives lived, let alone anyone else, but should I go and say sorry, like an alcoholic starting out on the Twelve Steps?

Was I good or bad, all things considered? Was there a heaven and a hell? If there was, I knew which of the two I’d be heading for.

For the first time ever, I found myself thinking about what happens when you die. Maybe you discover all the secrets of the universe in a nano-second. Or maybe an old man with a long white beard presses your off button and then there’s oblivion. Part of me wanted there to be something that went on afterwards - even if it was in a place where you had to meet all the people you’d fucked over and try to be best mates with them. I rather liked that idea. There were a few times I should have been a better person and done the right thing, rather than what I was getting paid to do. Actually, more than a few.

I was starting to scare myself here. Fuck this. I made myself cut away. I’d always preferred action to thought. Maybe that was why I’d wanted this job: it was the one thing that could stop me thinking about that kind of shit. The fact was: I was going to die. Getting shot at, you know you stand a chance of getting killed - but you don’t know it for sure. And every second you were still alive was a bonus. I was on Death Row now, with the date of my execution pretty much in the firing squad’s diary.

I closed my eyes for a second, as if that was going to block everything. I turned the radio on, but the Dutch presenter sounded like he was clearing his throat after every syllable.

Anna had been busy with her iPhone. She was inputting the meeting place so her sat-nav app could tell us the best route.

‘This is our exit.’

I peeled off the motorway, thankful that I had to start changing gear and going round roundabouts, anything to keep the weird stuff at bay. The architecture changed from glass and steel extravagance to boring two-storey rectangles.

The coalition government had just collapsed and it was election time. Huge billboards had been erected so the competing parties had somewhere to slap their posters. The only face I recognized was the smiling blond-haired right-winger, Geert Wilders, whose anti-Islamic views had barred him from the UK.

They had the same arguments over here as we did about the war in Afghanistan, but ours hadn’t yet brought down a government. The Dutch had about 2,500 troops over there and had taken a lot of casualties. Now it looked like they were all coming home. Their mums would be pleased, but I wasn’t sure the boys themselves would be: they were good lads and wouldn’t want to leave the job half finished.

The iPhone’s GPS was up and running.

‘Another thirty minutes, depending on traffic.’

The address Robot had given her was a cafe on Herengracht, one of the three main canals. It was close to the city centre, and deep in Van der Valk country.

3

We crossed a bridge and turned left onto Herengracht. The houses looked too large for families to live in. A lot of them were offices for banks, lawyers and architects.

Anna put her phone down. ‘It’s down towards the other end. On the junction with Bergstraat.’

‘Got it.’

‘As soon as we get there we turn left.’ She checked her watch. ‘We’ve still got twenty minutes. All good.’

‘I’m going to try to park on the side road. You need to be set up and waiting for him. If anything spooks you, get up and walk. Don’t take any chances. Last night was bad enough.’

Her eyes stayed on the road.

‘Any fuck-ups and we get separated, we meet back at the hotel. No one knows about it. It’s just ours.’

‘There - up on the left, by the junction.’

I slowed down, which made a couple of cyclists very happy, but really because I wanted to give us better eyes on the cafe. It was bang on the junction.

Five or six people were braving the chill to eat their breakfast at tables outside. The canal was less than ten metres away on the other side of the road.

I took the left up Bergstraat. The street was much narrower, with houses on both sides. It was bollarded all along. There was no parking. Behind a window in one of the houses, a woman sat on a stool in her underwear. I looked at the next house. Her neighbour was in the same line of business.

I drove the fifty metres to the end of the street and turned left. I found a pay-and-display space. I did a three-point turn so I’d be facing her.

I wanted to make sure that what I’d said had registered. ‘You must keep your back to the canal, OK?’

She nodded.

‘If anything doesn’t feel right, you get up and walk.’

I got no response.

‘Don’t fuck about, Anna. We don’t know what we’re up against. Anything dodgy, just walk away and we’ll sort it out some other way.’

She nodded again.

‘Make sure he takes a seat facing the canal so I can get a good look at him.’

She tucked her phone into the glove compartment and got out of the car.

I gave her a couple of seconds, then went off and bought a ticket. The guy at the bureau de change hadn’t been happy to change so many of my kroner into euro coins, but I’d insisted. I crossed the road and walked along the canal. I stopped to admire the view. I could see Anna was already at a table. She’d taken the one right on the end by the pavement. She had her cigarettes out and a waitress had already pounced on her.

I strolled to one of the seats by the canal, about seventy metres from Anna’s back.

The street was full of young mums with their kids. Even the dogs had shiny hair. Everything was pleasant and ordered. The air smelt of coffee and grilled cheese.

Anna’s brew turned up and she smoked, drank and waited. As I soaked up the atmosphere, I checked for anyone else doing the same, staking out the meeting place before Robot’s mate turned up.

I sat and waited for another ten minutes. A bald head in jeans appeared from the direction of the bridge we’d crossed. He looked like a bouncer or a Russian billionaire. He wasn’t fat, but he could have done with losing a stone. Beneath his black-leather bomber jacket his gut strained against his shirt. He spotted Anna and went straight over. She gestured at the bench opposite her but he wanted to sit alongside.

He was going to search her.

Not a drama, but I’d wanted him facing me so I could do a walk-past, maybe grab a picture or some video footage with the BlackBerry for Jules. I would now either have to get up and walk straight towards them, or wander down Herengracht and then come back. Either way, I’d stick out like a sore thumb.

I could still walk past, then do a full 360 round the block, but I wasn’t going to leave Anna unprotected for that long. It was better to stay put and give up on the photo. Maybe there’d be a chance to follow him after the meet.

They spoke with their faces inches apart. Both of them smoked. He refused a drink when the girl appeared.

After two or three minutes he got out his mobile. He said something to Anna and she nodded. Then she stubbed out the rest of her cigarette.

My view was suddenly blocked by a crimson Lexus 4x4 with darkened windows that had emerged from Bergstraat and pulled up right next to them. I got to my feet and walked towards them.

I crossed the road in time to see her blonde hair and the bald head ducking into the back of the wagon. I couldn’t see if she was doing it voluntarily or under duress.

I was close enough now to hear the door shut, even see my own reflection in the side windows as the Lexus made a left.

I turned up Bergstraat, keeping to a slow tourist amble. But as soon as the Lexus was out of sight, I broke into a run. The women in the windows looked at me like I was a madman.

I jumped into the Panda and hit the ignition, narrowly missing a cyclist as I pulled out. I gunned it towards Herengracht and turned left.

The Lexus had gone.

4

I had to put my foot down and risk running someone over - there was no other way. My eyes were glued to the road ahead. I braked hard at every junction and stared down it for a second or two before continuing. The Panda’s engine screamed its complaint. So did the people on the pavement.

I reached the top of the street. If I went left, I’d be going into the centre. If I went right, it would be to the harbour bay and then out of the city. If I was going to top her, where would I go? I threw it right, jumping a red light. Horns honked. Fuck ‘em.

I snatched up a gear as the rev counter hit red. The traffic lights were suspended on wires across the junction ahead. They were on red too. A long line of vehicles tailed back towards me. There was nothing I could do. I was stuck.

The honkers from the last junction caught up with me and stared daggers. I jumped out and climbed onto the Panda’s roof. The steel buckled beneath my feet, but I caught a hint of crimson near the front of the queue, in the right-hand lane. The Lexus was aiming for the northern, industrial, side of the city.

The lights went green. I jumped back in and pushed forward, willing them not to change again before I got through. I was flapping even more now.

I saw the Lexus turn right as the lights went to amber. I was two cars back from the junction. The one ahead of me stopped. I glanced behind me for bikes and mounted the kerb. I eased my way past. It wasn’t a popular move. Every driver in Amsterdam stood on his horn.

I bumped my way back down onto the road and edged into the traffic heading right. There were two lanes. I pushed into the outside one, trying to get my foot down as I wove between vehicles. The Lexus was maybe four or five ahead. I had a better view of it now we were starting to go downhill. We were heading under the bay.

A sign for the next turn-off showed a graphic of a factory with a smoking chimney and the words Noord 5.

I went into the tunnel, still in the outside lane. About halfway through we all passed a police car on the inside lane. I didn’t know if we were speeding but the Lexus and the rest of the traffic didn’t seem concerned. Nobody slowed. I went for it.

The Lexus manoeuvred across the lanes, reaching the inside as we emerged into daylight. He was taking the turn-off. I glanced over my shoulder as I moved over. The police car was coming up behind me.

The Lexus took a right at the top of the hill just as the lights turned red. I checked my mirror. The police car was right up my arse. I had to sit there. The signs to Noord 5 now showed more little factories with smoking chimneys, this time with boats parked up alongside them.

The lights changed and I turned right. The police car came with me. I stuck to 60 k.p.h. We had left Van der Valk country far behind. The buildings here were local authority two-up, two-down monstrosities surrounded by muddy swathes of what might once have been grass. There were little Dutch touches like dormer windows, but the streets weren’t lined with milkmaids with blonde pigtails and clogs. All I saw were black or South East Asian women, and many more of unknown origin completely burqa’d up. The weather had changed too: Noord 5 seemed to have its own micro-climate. Everyone was wrapped in a long coat to fight the cold and the dark clouds that were gagging to dump on them.

I paralleled the long side of a rectangular market covered with plastic sheeting. Cheap clothes hung on rails next to stalls piled high with big bottles of cola and shampoo. Nearby houses had boarded-up windows and numbers painted on the brickwork because they’d fallen off the doors. Kerbs were choked with rusty, minging old cars. Sink estates are the same the world over. The only difference here was that Iranian or Turkish flags hung from every other sill.

I took the first option at the next roundabout. The police car carried straight on. The Lexus must have come this way, but I didn’t know which of the three exits it had taken.

I headed along the southern end of the market towards another, smaller, roundabout with another three exits. Where now? I had multiple options to cover. All I could do was cruise with my eyes peeled.

I went with the flow. Everyone I saw was in shit state. It was as if they’d been dumped here and forgotten.

I slowed to a crawl and stared down every side street.

Nothing.

I drove on.

5

An hour and a half later, I was flapping more with every passing minute. I kept telling myself she was a switched-on girl. She knew how to handle herself. She’d dealt with the Russians. But that meant fuck-all. I wanted to find her. I needed to find her.

For the last thirty minutes I’d been parked up by the market, as close as I could get to the stretch of dual carriageway that ran between the small roundabout and the big one - the last known location I had for the Lexus.

Last light was in twenty minutes. After that, I’d go back to the RV, the hotel, and hope that she’d turn up.

I was on the far side of the bay. North-west of here was the canal that connected it with the North Sea and the commercial waterways of Europe. That was why Amsterdam was a hub for trafficking drugs and women.

I was tucked into a line of vehicles. Kids on mopeds screamed up and down, helmets perched on the top of their heads and leaning so far back they could have been auditioning for Easy Rider. Women trundled past, laden with plastic shopping bags. Not one of them gave me a second glance. They were all too busy keeping their own shit together to worry about anyone else’s.

A crimson shape came into view, heading towards the small roundabout. It was definitely a Lexus. I wanted to start the engine and be ready to roll but had to wait until it had gone past and committed to an exit. Everything had to look normal. He mustn’t see me reacting. I guessed he was going to take the third option, towards the larger roundabout, and then right, back through the tunnel.

I couldn’t see anything or anyone through the windows as it passed. It surprised me by taking the second left, into the housing estate by the market.

I followed, engine screaming. No way was I going to lose this fucker now, until I knew if she was inside. If she wasn’t, I would have to take action with the bald head and his mates, and get them to tell me where she was. Fuck finding Lilian. That could wait.

The road widened. Some of the shops already had their lights on. The Lexus’s brake lights glowed. It looked like he was about to pull over. I slowed, ready to abandon the car at the kerb if they got out and walked.

He wasn’t pulling over. He was making a turn. He swung the vehicle right round until he faced me head on.

I was going to have to let him pass before I reacted.

I pulled up outside a kebab shop next to a rank of clappedout taxis. Lads leant against the bonnets, smoking and chatting, wrapped up against the cold. The Lexus had stopped. The rear door opened and I caught a glimpse of her jeans as she got out. The passenger window came down. I pulled out my BlackBerry and started driving. I went past slowly, the phone to my ear, trying to make it look like I was chatting away to someone as I tried to get a clear shot of Anna’s new best mate.

She finished her exchange with the bald guy and crossed the road towards the taxi rank. I stopped to let her past as he powered up his window and drove off.

I dropped the BlackBerry into my lap and carried on for a couple of hundred metres before swinging round by a dark-grey stone building. It looked like an old government institution, maybe a library or a theatre. Its big glass windows were filled with posters in Arabic. It must have been a mosque of sorts. Shoes were stacked on racks outside a side entrance.

Anna was talking to the driver of the taxi at the head of the queue. She saw me, gave the guy a thanks-but-no-thanks, and turned to walk down one of the side streets. I followed and pulled up alongside her. She looked around and jumped in. The expression on her face said she was ready for her bollocking.

‘What the fuck are you doing? I told you, didn’t I? Anything spooks you, get up and walk. Didn’t I say don’t take any chances?’

She listened to me as she fastened her seatbelt. ‘Nick, watch the road. I’ve found Lilian.’

‘Alive?’

‘I think it’s her. There were twelve girls, some of them fresh off the plane. I can show you. Go back to the roundabout.’ She lowered her window and lit a cigarette.

She took a drag. ‘It was dark. But there’s one who could definitely be her.’

‘What about Baldilocks - you get his name? Anything?’

She shook her head. ‘He’s a Brit, but he doesn’t sound like you. He’s like the one in Christiania. The one who gave us the address.’

‘A Scouser?’

‘I don’t know what that means. But he sounded the same.’ She took another drag. As we turned onto the roundabout I let down my window too.

‘Take the second exit - follow the signs for the docks.’

I checked the blue plate high up on the first building past the roundabout. The street was called Distelweg.

‘Follow the road. It twists and turns through this housing estate, and then you cross a canal. After that, it’s a dead straight line down the centre of the docks.’ She turned her head to blow out another cloud of smoke. ‘I told him I’d buy the lot, thinking that maybe I could get them all out quickly. We could find the money, couldn’t we, Nicholas? Five thousand euros. Five thousand each. They’re young …’

‘Brilliant. When do we have to deliver the cash?’

‘We don’t.’ She sighed. ‘Turns out they’ve already been sold and are due to leave this Thursday. He just wanted to show me how fresh his merchandise is.’

As we drove over the bridge and into almost total darkness I had the same feeling I’d had at the Bender border crossing into Transnistria - like I was crossing into East Berlin. In my rear-view, the canal shimmered under the street-lights. We passed four or five ropy-looking boathouses. Just forty metres later the world was pitch black.

Anna tossed out her cigarette and climbed into the back without being told. She crouched in the foot-well as I turned onto the dead straight tarmac road that bisected the dock. Potholes lined the verge where it surrendered to the mud, and stacks of wooden pallets sat outside a parade of industrial units. Watery pools of security lighting surrounded a similar group of buildings in the distance. A few trucks and vans were parked up here and there, but there was no sign of life. This wasn’t a 24/7 part of town.

All signs of habitation petered out about four hundred metres further on and were replaced by a run of steel railings. To reinforce the Checkpoint Charlie experience, it started to rain.

Anna rested her head on the baby seat. ‘OK - now we’re at the wasteground. The place I was taken is on its own, set back from the road. There’s a tower on the left-hand side.’

The Noord 5 area was on the far side of the water. Piles of rubble and twisted steel reinforcing rods glistened in its ambient light.

We passed a double gate secured with a shiny new padlock and chain.

‘That’s where we drove in.’

Droplets of rain bounced through the open window and onto my cheek. I studied the dark silhouette of the target: an imposing rectangular structure with a tower at the left end. I couldn’t see a single light.

‘I think it’s a grain silo - or, at least, it used to be. There was flour over everything. It smells like a cake shop when you go in.’

I carried on for another hundred metres or so, to a point where the road turned sharp left and then almost wound back on itself. We passed a ferry point, not much more than a slipway, too small for vehicles, just for pedestrians and cyclists. I drove back towards what I hoped was the Berlin Wall canal. With luck we’d be able to cross it and get back onto Distelweg via the estate.

The bay was immediately to my right. On the other side of it was the Amsterdam I remembered. Spires were silhouetted in the neon glow. Navigation lights glided up and down the waterway between us as tonight’s passengers tucked into a romantic canal-cruise dinner.

‘Describe the building for me.’

‘It has concrete floors. The door we went in through is on the right-hand side of the building. Inside is a hallway with four doors into offices, two on each side. The first on the right is where the girls are kept. They’re in sleeping bags on mattresses.’

‘Did you see inside the other three rooms?’

She shook her head. ‘We went straight into the first on the right. There is a staircase on the left. I could hear voices coming from the first floor. Dutch voices. I didn’t see them. There were definitely two captors, maybe three or four.’

We crossed the canal and found ourselves in another estate - narrow roads and prefab houses, painted white.

‘Did they open the main door for you, or did the bald guy have a key?’

‘It was locked. He made a call and they unlocked it from the inside. They locked themselves in again when we left.’

‘What about the gate? Was it open when you got there?’

‘I couldn’t tell. The driver got out, but I don’t know if it was locked. They might have unlocked it after the call. I just don’t know.’

‘Anything else?’

She climbed back alongside me and thought for a while. ‘It all happened so fast and I didn’t want to be obvious. When we met at the cafe, I told him I wanted to see what condition the girls were in. If they were good, we could do business. These guys are greedy, they always are.’

‘Well done, mate. Brilliant.’

She laughed. ‘But … ?’ She knew what was coming.

‘Anna, you’re a nightmare.’ I looked at her. ‘Don’t do that sort of shit again.’ I stopped the car. ‘You drive back.’

We swapped seats and I checked the BlackBerry footage I’d taken earlier to make sure Anna wasn’t visible. The quality was OK - a bit dark, but they’d be able to get a few decent sightings of the face.

Anna followed signs to the A10.

I hit the secure button and waited for the app to do its stuff. I pressed send, then dialled Jules’s number. ‘I’ve found a possible.’

He sounded surprised. ‘Is she OK?’

‘I’ve uploaded a video for you. He has the possible. I’ve got three days max before she’s being moved on. The lad’s got a Lexus, a crimson four-by-four hybrid thing. I don’t know if it’s his. I don’t even know the plate. All I know is that face. Can you find out who he is? The quality ain’t great, but the Tefalheads should be able to sort something out. If not, fire them.’

‘How difficult will it be to get to her?’

‘Hard to tell. The girls are protected.’ I repeated Anna’s description of the target. ‘All I know is, there are twelve of them, and one’s a possible. I’m going to get in there and confirm.’

Tresillian jumped in from nowhere. ‘Well done, Mr Stone. I’ll organize a safe-house and a contact. Call back in two hours. In the meantime, start planning to get in there, find the possible, and if she is our target, get her out. We need this to be done as quickly as you can. Do you understand me?’

‘Loud and clear.’

‘Stand by.’

He cut us off.

We reached the slip road onto the A10, southbound to Schiphol.

‘We’ll drop you off at the Radisson and I’ll take the car.’

‘Drop me off?’

‘I’ve got to go on and do the job. You’re not going to come to the safe-house, are you? They can’t know you’re here. So wait out in the hotel. It’ll be safer for both of us. If the shit hits the fan, it means I’ve got somewhere to go, a safe RV. And if I’ve got Lilian, it means she’s got somewhere to go as well.’

‘But can’t I drive for you or something like that?’

‘No.’ I squeezed her hand. ‘You have to be on the safe side of the fence. For both of our sakes.’

6