A Colder War

64

Kleckner slammed the rear door, urged Jez — in fluent Russian — to ‘go as quickly as possible to the airport’, then twisted around in the back seat to see a breathless Tom Kell gesticulating at one of the taxi drivers on the rank. As the Audi accelerated along Ekaterininskaya, Kleckner opened the window and tried to organize his thoughts. If Kell had come for him, he had come with a team. SIS and the Agency would have the airport, the train station, the main roads out of Odessa wrapped up. Within moments, Kell himself would be in a taxi, giving pursuit. How the hell had this been allowed to happen?

‘Can you go faster, please?’ he urged the driver, who had a bored, contempt-for-tourists laziness about him. ‘I’m being followed. I’ll pay you. Just go as fast as possible, get off the main road. Take back streets.’

‘Da, da.’

Kleckner muttered: ‘Jesus Christ’ in English. Normally his spoken Russian impressed people, broke the ice on a conversation. Not today. Not with this one. The driver missed an obvious side street at a set of lights, continuing west along a main drag in clear contravention of Kleckner’s instructions.

‘Hey! I thought I said get off the main roads.’ He wondered if the driver was from a different country. Maybe he didn’t speak Russian. ‘You wanna let me drive?’

‘Da, da.’

Kleckner swore again, this time with greater ferocity. Yet his words continued to have no effect. The driver was immune to any sense of urgency or threat. Kleckner turned in his seat to see one of the cabs from the rank less than three hundred metres behind him. Kell was on his tail. At last the driver made a slow turn into a quieter side street.

‘About fucking time, man,’ Kleckner muttered, in English, only to be thrown forward in his seat as the driver slammed on the brakes.

Jez turned around. He had pulled the Audi over to the side of the road. There were no pedestrians in sight. The taser was concealed in the hollow recess beside his left hand. He reached for it.

‘You know what, mate?’ he said, and saw Kleckner’s eyes widen in alarm, registering the British accent. ‘Why don’t you shut the fuck up for a little bit?’

And with that, Jez reached forward, touched the taser to Kleckner’s chest, and fired.