Aggressor

1

I was so relieved to hear his voice I burst out laughing. I felt my way over on all fours, heading in the direction his voice had come from.

‘He tried everything, the fat fucker.’ He chuckled. ‘We had Ego Up, Fear Down, the whole A to Z.’

I knew Charlie felt the same way I did, really happy to be reunited, no matter how much shit we were still in. Neither of us was going to say so, of course. If he hadn’t made a joke, I would have.

‘I gave him an eight point five for his Fear Up. Suited him better, in my view.’ I parked my arse next to Charlie, and lowered my voice. ‘Where the fuck are they?’

‘HF 51 KN.’

‘What? You lost the plot?’

‘The duty wagon. I shoved the magazine under the back seat. Better to hide it and take the chance it’s still out there than hand it to Whitewall on a silver plate, eh? All we got to do now is get out of here, go and find the wagon, and use all that shit to get us home. You up for it, lad?’

‘Big-time. Especially the get out of here bit.’

He was joking, but he was right. Fuck knows what the papers said, but as Bastard had confirmed, they were important enough for every man and his dog to want control of them. I was a wanted man — and that stuff sounded as though it was just what I needed to get unwanted. The tape wouldn’t hurt our chances either, and if Bastard really did have friends in high Georgian places, and a casting vote or two at Camp Vasiani, that stuff might be our ticket out.

‘His name’s Bastendorf. Remember him from Waco? We called him Bastard. He commanded Alpha Pod.’

‘I like the name, but I had fuck all to do with the Pods. He’s hardly one to forget, though, is he? He recognize you?’

‘No, and I want to be well out of here before he does. He’s going back to the camp. If they’ve searched the wagon and found the gear, we’re good as dead. Which is the way Bastard and his mates wanted you in the first place.’

‘You notice if the twins are carrying?’

‘Not a clue. We’ve got to assume so, haven’t we?’

He rubbed his bristles. ‘What do you say we just call them to the door and take our chances? With that wagon gone, at least the head count’s down.’

I rested my head against the rough stone wall. He was right; the longer we stayed here, the more the odds were stacked against us. ‘That just leaves Hari and Kunzru watching Coronation Street… How are your hands? They strictly ballroom tonight, or up for a bit of action?’

‘Sound as a pound.’ He clapped them together, as if that proved anything.

‘So, we checking out of here, or what?’

‘Yeah, but not your way. Fucking hell, that’s Mission Impossible. Let’s check the obvious first.’

We started groping along the walls for another door, or a hastily blocked-up window. We worked our way back round to the main door without success. I gave it a shove, top and bottom. The only resistance was in the middle, but it was solid. It was going to take a few big shoulders’ worth to open it.

I put my ear against the wood, but heard nothing the other side. I ran my hand along the wall on either side of the frame, and it closed around a loose protruding stone. I suddenly had a thought.

I gripped Charlie’s coat. ‘Remember the Stoner in Colombia? That could be our way out.’

‘Well fucking hell, you’re not just a nice pair of buttocks, are you, lad?’

We got down on our hands and knees and felt around on the ground for more loose rocks. For this to work, we were going to need a couple each, big enough to fit in the palm of our hands.

Something the size of a brick would be the business.

2

Back in the late ’80s, Charlie and I had been part of Thatcher and Reagan’s ‘first strike’ policy in Colombia. The SAS were sent as advisers to help identify and destroy the cartels’ drug-manufacturing plants in the rainforest.

We patrolled suspected areas, putting in OPs, planning attacks. We weren’t supposed to carry out the attacks ourselves; that would have been one very hot political patata. We were there to aid and guide, usually one of us to every ten local anti-narcotics police.

Every time we gave the bad guys a slap on the wrist, they’d bring in the media and the politicians to celebrate, and we’d melt into the background and go and have a brew. The snappers were never told about an attack in advance. There was so much corruption that if you reported a sighting of a DMP, everyone on site would have evaporated in less than the time it took to snort a couple of lines of marching powder.

Even as it was, the attack helicopters would fly over the target compound, more often than not, on their way to pick us up. They didn’t stop far short of trailing a banner advising the Cali and Medellin boys to leg it.

The day Charlie and I encountered the guy we came to call the Stoner, there’d been an operation that had gone as chaotically as normal. Most of the police had been chewing on coca leaves wrapped around a sugar cube, flapping big-time because they didn’t want to get shot at. Half of them were only good for barking at the moon by the time the attack went in.

We didn’t normally end up with too many prisoners during these attacks. The players stood and fought, and eventually got dropped, which suited us just fine. But this particular time one literally fell into our hands, because he’d been helping himself a bit too liberally to the merchandise. He was so out of it he didn’t know if he was in the jungle or on the first manned flight to Mars.

While we waited for the circus to arrive, we put him into one of the ‘factories’, long sheds made of wood and sheets of wriggly tin, with long, low-troughed channels where the coca was laid out and made into paste. It wasn’t exactly watertight as a detention centre. The one Charlie and I were in now was better.

Stoned out of his brain, he was still sharp enough to grab a rock in each hand. Arms wind-milling frantically, he made a run from the hut to the treeline, taking down anyone who came within range.

The four of us from the Regiment had been sitting around, making a brew; watching the police do a bit of foraging in the generator-run fridges and dead men’s wallets.

The cokehead had three guys down with severe lacerations to the skull before they gave up trying to arrest him and stopped him permanently with 7.62mm. The mixture of surprise and aggression worked well for him, and if his brain hadn’t been so fried he might have got away.

We scrabbled around for a moment or two, but didn’t have to look far. The walls were in bad shape, and the mortar was loose in places. It wasn’t long before we had a couple of big flinty stones each. I felt my way to the door and tested the side opposite the hinges, trying to visualize myself ramming it. Just thinking about it made my shoulder hurt.

Charlie stationed himself to my left.

‘I’ll try first, old man.’ I reached out in the dark, to move him back a little further. ‘I’ll give it three or four goes, then it’s your turn. Once we’re out into that courtyard and we’re not stopped, it’s got to be over the wall and take it from there. If we get split, let’s be outside the Marriott every evening, somewhere within reach of that bus stop. Wait an hour between nine and ten. If we don’t meet up after three days, we’re on our own. OK?’

‘Done,’ he said. ‘Now stop waffling and get on with it.’

‘Listen…’ I knew I was in danger of going soft in the head, but I wanted the stupid old fool to be sure of something. ‘Before it all goes ballistic I just have to say… thanks for coming with me. You were a fucking idiot not to catch that flight, but thanks anyway.’

‘You trying to get me back for what I said at the cemetery? I know, I’m a good guy, now shut the fuck up and get on with it, before you ask Hari and Kunzru to join us for a group hug.’

I reached out and touched the right side of the door with an outstretched fist. That was one pace. I moved back another two, making sure I kept perpendicular to it. The last thing I wanted to do was to charge into the wall, or hit the door at an angle. Either way, it would give Charlie a good laugh, but probably destroy my shoulder.

Two or three deep breaths, then I dropped my right shoulder and charged. The crash as I connected was so loud they must have heard it in Tbilisi. I reeled. I felt like I’d been hit by a car.

Charlie yelled, ‘Get on with it! Come on! Come on! It’s noisy now, stop mincing about.’

I took another three paces back, closed my eyes and ran again. It hurt like fuck, but the door definitely moved.

Charlie was straight in my face. He sprayed me with spit. ‘And again! Again! Come on! Get on with it!’

Three paces back and bang. The door shifted a bit more and I sank to the floor in pain. I rolled to the right, out of his way. ‘You go! You go!’

He crashed into it and the door immediately folded in on itself. The hinges had given way before the bolt.

I got up behind him, the pain in my shoulder and back masked for the time being by the adrenalin that was pumping around my body. We more or less fell into the undergrowth which lined the yard.

Two hurricane lamps jerked to and fro in the darkness as Hari and Kunzru bomb-burst out of the interrogation room.

I started running at them, windmilling like a man possessed.

The Georgians closed and I lost sight of Charlie as he went for the first one. The second got the contents of my left hand across his neck, or maybe his collarbone, I didn’t know, didn’t care. He screamed out as the rock in my right crushed his gigs against his face. The lamp slipped out of his grasp and I scored another hit on the back of his shoulder as he followed it down to the mud.

I kept swinging. I had to keep moving, keep hurting. My arms cartwheeled like a boxer on amphetamines.

I felt a hand grab my leg and I kicked it away. I brought both rocks down onto the back of his neck. The hurricane lamp rolled away, throwing wild shadows against the walls.

‘Shit, Nick…’

Charlie was in pain.

He was lying next to a limp body, trying to get up off the ground, but his left leg wasn’t helping. I couldn’t see any blood, but it was fucked. The body below me writhed in agony, too preoccupied with his injuries to care about us any more.

I shouted out to Charlie. ‘See if your one’s got the keys! Keys! Keys! Keys! Money, anything.’

I fumbled in the pockets of my one’s leather jacket and found a wallet, picture ID, empty holster on his belt, loose change and house keys. Charlie had more luck. ‘I’ve got them! I’ve got them!’

I picked up the lamp and cash and scrabbled around to find my boy’s weapon. It was a revolver, well past its best-before date, but it should still do some damage to whoever it was pointed at. I jammed it into my jacket and ran over to Charlie. He was trying to drag himself up the wall.

‘Keys, where are the keys?’

I took them from him, hoisted his left arm around my shoulder and dragged him into the interrogation room.

We’d obviously interrupted a rather cosy evening. The radio was blasting out the Georgian Hot Hundred, and there were steaming mugs on the table, along with a car battery and a set of jump leads. It didn’t take much imagination to work out how the boys planned to entertain themselves later on.

Charlie took in the brews. ‘Stop, stop.’ He poured them both into the empty thermos and we carried straight on out to a Lada estate. It wasn’t locked.

I helped Charlie into the front right and eased myself behind the wheel. We were soon doing a twenty-five-point turn as I tried to head it back down the track.

Panting for breath, Charlie ripped open the glove compartment and checked it for anything useful.

I looked over at him. ‘What happened?’

Charlie gave a not-so-convincing laugh. ‘Slipped on the stones. I can’t believe it. My ankle, I’ve twisted the fucking thing.’

‘We’ll sort it. You get any money? Weapon?’

‘Got both.’ His nose wrinkled. ‘Oh fuck, I hate the smell of wet dogs.’

3

My foot hit the floor as soon as we reached the tarmac, and the Lada’s engine made an awful lot of noise while it thought about responding. Eventually the speedo edged around the dial. I didn’t think we were going any faster, but at least it made us feel better.

Charlie put the light on to check his badly cut left hand. It looked as if some of the flint had splintered and gone into his palm, but there wasn’t much he could do about it, except apply pressure by ramming it against his leg. He opened the wallet I’d thrown at him with his right, and pulled out cash and a laminated ID card.

‘Look at old fucking bone-dome here.’

The card belonged to Hari Tugushi. A declaration in Paperclip, Russian and English confirmed his official accreditation by the Georgian government.

Charlie wound down his window and lobbed Hari’s wallet out into the night. Kunzru’s soon followed before we got stuck into the brew, trying not to spill any as the Lada rattled down the road.

‘You see that battery, lad?’

‘Yep.’ I didn’t want to think about it too much.

‘Wouldn’t want those wires attached to your bollocks, would you?’

‘No.’

‘They wouldn’t have managed mine, of course. Those clips were way too small.’

I smiled at him. ‘Makes you think though, doesn’t it? These guys weren’t fucking around. If they had their way, you’d never see Hazel and the grandkids again.’

‘It’s not ideal, lad.’ He shrugged. ‘But I’m dead anyway, remember? It’s different for you.’ He paused. ‘Don’t waste any time fantasizing about that little box-head of yours, though — you should be working out how to get us across the border. It’s your big chance to show the world what you picked up from the master.’

‘That’s the thing…’ I hesitated. ‘I have been worrying. I have been thinking about her. It’s the first time something like that has ever worried me. You’ve had it your whole life, haven’t you?’

He shifted about in his seat. ‘Fucking hell, don’t tell me you’re finally thinking of joining the human race?’

‘How did you mix it? You know, “What the fuck am I doing here? I’d rather be at home doing I don’t know what, mowing the grass or finding the cat, or something”?’

‘It was all about trying to hang on to the balance. And that meant finding somebody like Hazel, somebody who understood what was going on in this thick head of mine, and was prepared to live with it. But it’s a partnership, lad, which is one of the reasons she’s going to be pissed off with me at the moment. After all those years, she thought she’d served her time, just like me.’

He had another look at his bleeding hand. ‘But it’s that fucking stallion in the paddock, Nick; that’s what got to me. And with these fucking things starting to behave as if they’ve got a mind of their own — well, I just had to do it without her this time. If you know they understand what’s going on, even if they disagree, you don’t have to worry about the Hazels of this world when you’re in the shit. You know they’ll be counting on you to use what brain you have to get out of the shit and get back home…’ He tailed off. ‘Make any sense?’

I nodded. ‘Suppose so.’

‘Good. Remember to write it down, lad. Something else you’ve learned from the expert.’

We must have been travelling for about twenty minutes along the valley floor when the Lada’s engine started to groan and we headed uphill. As we approached the crest, I killed the headlamps and edged forward, hoping not to see a VCP looming out of the darkness below us.

It was worse than that. Less than a K away was a large cluster of American lights illuminating the rows of twenty-man tents and Portakabins. A few Ks beyond that, on the higher ground, was another light cluster. But these belonged to the Russians.

‘Vasiani,’ I muttered. ‘I suppose at least we know where we are.’

Charlie looked up from his first aid. ‘We’ll have to bin Turkey for a while, lad. We need that gear back.’ He nodded down at the lights. ‘Listen, it’ll be suicide trying to get in there and find the duty wagon. I say we go for it in the morning. At least we know where it’ll be. Let the fucking thing come to us.’

‘You think that wagon’s going to be back on the road?’

‘Course — that thing’s gonna last longer than me, lad. Whoever’s running the transport pool down there would already have slapped on new tyres and done a jet spray under the arches. Come on, it’s a fucking army, isn’t it? What they holding it back for, forensics?’

He was right. It was the duty wagon and that was that. Every vehicle was allocated to something or other, and if this one had done a bit of cross-country, so what? That was what they did.

Charlie kept his eyes down. ‘He tell you he was leaving tomorrow?’

‘Yeah — more of the futility stuff, I thought.’

‘Maybe, maybe not. But I know I’d want to get the fuck out of town if I didn’t have control of whatever we got in the back of that 110 — wouldn’t you?’

He turned to me and I could make out just a little of his face in the ambient light from the valley. ‘It’ll be a fucker, but all the more reason to go to the airport, no?’

Two or three sets of headlights fired up and moved around inside the camp. Then one of them broke away and headed towards the main gate.

‘We’d better assume the twins had phones, Charlie boy. We got the Russians or that VCP to get past. Or — you want to get out and leg it? Even you’d be better cross-country than this thing.’

Charlie reached for the dash, smearing blood onto the plastic as he started rocking backwards and forwards in a not terribly serious attempt to make the Lada go faster.

He caught my expression. ‘Russians. Got to be done. I’m not hopping over these hills all fucking night or risking bumping into that squaddie I ripped apart.’

I put my foot down. The acceleration was so feeble that his rocking actually seemed to help.

‘That’s it, lad — to boldly go where no Lada has gone before.’

I changed down into third, trying to get a burst on. The engine whined, but that was about all it did. I rammed the gearstick back into fourth.

My eyes strained to pick out the holes in the road. I didn’t get much joy from the Lada’s headlights — even on full beam they only lit up about two feet in front of us. The junction right was coming up. The other set of headlights was coming fast down the track towards it.

If we didn’t get past first, the other wagon would block us off.

‘Come on! Keep it going!’ Charlie rocked as if he was having a fit.

There was nothing I could do but keep the car pointed in the right direction and ram my foot down.

By the time we reached the junction the engine was not too far short of cardiac arrest. The other wagon’s headlights were immediately to our right, about four hundred metres away.

Flecks of saliva sprayed me as Charlie urged us on. ‘Keep going, lad, come on.’

The engine groaned again as we started to head uphill. It wasn’t steep, but it was clearly steep enough.

The whole vehicle shook as we rumbled over the rough tarmac and I threw the wheel left and right to swerve around the potholes.

‘That’s it, lad. Keep going…’

The other headlights came to the junction and turned to follow. It didn’t take long for them to start closing in.

The lights of the Federation camp were less than a K away. I changed down to try to get a few more revs out of this fucking thing, my face almost against the windscreen as I tried to read the road.

Charlie checked behind. ‘It’ll soon be in spitting distance, lad. Keep that foot down.’

As if I needed telling.

Into fourth. The engine squealed.

The Russians’ floodlights were getting closer, but the hill was getting steeper.

Our speed dropped. Into third. A burst, then slowing.

Into second. We both jerked as the gear kicked in and the engine screamed.

‘It’s a Pajero, Nick! Got to be Bastard!’

Even as he said it, the 4x4’s lights flooded the inside of the Lada and we got the first nudge. It actually speeded us on our way.

‘Is it Bastard? You sure?’

Charlie was still twisted in his seat. ‘Who gives a shit? Just keep your foot down!’

Another slam into the back. Another jolt forwards. If it was Bastard, maybe they’d do without the helis. That had been all about the duty wagon, not his shit.

Not far to the Russians now, maybe four hundred.

The next collision was to the rear nearside. The back of the Lada slewed to the right. All I could do was keep the front wheels facing forwards and my foot on the floor.

The back fishtailed and I spun the wheel like a lunatic.

‘He’s backing off, Nick, he’s backing off. Well done, lad, just keep those fucking wheels straight.’

We were coming up to the Russian camp’s fence line.

I checked the rear-view. Charlie was right, the headlights were receding. Whoever it was, he was bottling out. Charlie checked behind us one final time, then relaxed back into his seat.

The Federation flag fluttered high over the floodlit main gate. Four fresh-faced guards stirred in their sentry posts, and started to prepare a traditional Russian welcome. They were in camouflage uniforms and helmets, AK assault rifles slung across their chests. They stared at us in a certain amount of confusion as we gave them a cheery wave.

‘Maybe we should stop,’ Charlie said, laughing. ‘One of the lads might fancy making us an offer for the car.’

‘You can leave it to him in your will, you stupid old fucker.’ The lights from both the camps disappeared and we dropped into lower ground. ‘Sooner I get you back, the better.’

4

The line of taxis outside the terminal hadn’t moved much in the hour since first light. When the odd cab did leave the front of the rank, the drivers behind didn’t start their engines to shuffle forward, they just got out, leaned back in through the window, and pushed.

I had the trigger on the terminal entrance from the other side of the road. I was past the three garden sheds, sitting on the concrete between overflowing rubbish skips and four old abandoned buses in the small, potholed car park. I blended in well; I was wearing a black woollen hat I’d found in the boot of the Lada, that smelled like it had been worn by a wet bloodhound. The big ear flaps made me look like one too, but it helped hide some of my face.

Blue-and-whites had been cruising past every few minutes, and one was static right now by the sheds. The two cops inside drank coffee and smoked.

Charlie and I had come right into the lion’s den, but there was no other way. Our only chance of retrieving the papers and tape was to get into the duty wagon. There were two fixed points where we knew it would be during flying hours — at the camp and at the airport.

We could have tried to wave it down on the road, but SOPs for military vehicles usually precluded them from stopping — and after the stunt we’d pulled yesterday, every driver would be on red alert. A hijack was out of the question; instead of dead ground, you need an open stretch of road, so you can identify the vehicle before you hit it in the dark. Our current plan wasn’t perfect, but it was the only one we had.

I checked Baby-G. It was just after eight. Charlie had hobbled into the terminal ten minutes ago to get into position. He had to take the lead; I couldn’t run the risk of being recognized.

The idea was simple: the wagon turns up to drop off or pick up; Charlie sees it through the glass; walks out, lifts it, heads into the car park behind me; I’d jump in and we’d head for the border. This time he wouldn’t just bark a whole lot of orders, but rely instead on his weapon. He had a little 9mm Makharov, the sort of thing James Bond used to tuck into his dinner jacket.

Assuming there weren’t any delays, all the international flights were gone by midday. If Bastard showed up for one of them it would be one fuck of a big bonus for us, even if the 110 didn’t show.

We had gone through dozens of what-ifs. What if he turned up before the 110? We had to hold him until it came, and use him to get the gear out. What if he turned up after the 110? Well, we would never know because we’d be gone — unless Charlie managed to find out what flight he was on.

What it boiled down to was that we would have to take the situation as it came — otherwise we’d still be out in the cuds a week on Wednesday, going through thousands of options. Fuck it, let’s just get on with it and get out of here.

My revolver was also Russian, and looked like it had seen action in the Crimea. It still had seven big 7.62 rounds in the cylinder, and that cheered me up a lot. Given that our plan stank worse than the dog blankets, it was the only thing that did.

I slumped down against a skip, sliding my legs under the one in front of me. The guys in the blue-and-white finished their brew and drove off. I craned my neck to look along the building. Two more policemen had taken up position outside the terminal. After yesterday’s nightmare, word had obviously got round.

After dumping the Lada in the city at about five this morning, we’d hidden up and waited for the place to come alive a little before approaching a taxi. Between them, Hari and Kunzru had had exactly 127 lari in their wallets — about $70, as it turned out. The taxi driver had pocketed about ten, and Charlie had custody of the rest. He was going to need it to grease a palm or two at the check-in desks to see if his best mate Jimmy Bastendorf was leaving today. Charlie wanted to arrange a birthday surprise for him when he got home and wasn’t sure when he was flying. Was it today, or maybe tomorrow? In a dirt-poor country, even loose change can get you anything.

A rust- and grime-covered yellow bus pulled up at the stop outside the terminal, its exhaust pumping out diesel fumes you could cut with a knife. Most of those disembarking looked as though they were airport workers, but there were one or two others with suitcases. The airport was coming to life.

Charlie appeared through the fumes, lurching across the road like Long John Silver. His hand had been OK when he left me, just cut and sore, but his ankle had swollen like a balloon, even though I’d tried to strap it up with a couple of strips of blanket.

He had a newspaper in his hand. ‘Bastard’s off to Vienna, we’ve got him.’ He lobbed it in my direction and it fell between the skips as he carried on past. ‘Here’s the bad news.’

He had to do a circuit now, maybe check something out in the car park. Nobody just exits a terminal and crosses the road, only to cross straight back ten seconds later.

I crawled over to the paper, then back to where I could still keep trigger in case there was a drama. If ten blue-and-white Passats screamed up to the terminal and dragged Charlie away, I needed to know.

He’d chucked me a copy of the Georgian Times, the English-language paper. Folded inside was a large bar of chocolate. I ripped the foil off and popped a chunk into my mouth, but when I scanned the front page my throat went dry.

Most of it was covered by a grainy photograph of the yard in front of Baz’s house. The banner headline screamed: ‘SAINT’ SLAIN!

It went on in a similar vein, to bemoan the savage killing of the most honest and incorruptible public servant the country had ever seen. This wasn’t the picture Bastard had painted, but that wasn’t much of a surprise.

A force for all that was good and just has been callously cut down, it cried. Who has perpetrated this evil deed? The finger of suspicion can point in many directions, all of which this country needs to cut out like a cancer.

For weeks, the walls of St Zurab Bazgadze’s house had been daubed with warnings not to pursue his crusade against corruption at all levels of government, the journalist wrote. In our wretched country, many words spell wrongdoing — words like ‘minister’ and ‘militant’, ‘business’ and ‘privatization’, ‘pipeline’ and ‘oil’. It seemed Baz had been a thorn in the side of them all.

Charlie still hadn’t come back from his hobble-past. Blood pulsed in my neck as I read on.

The two other dead bodies found at Baz’s house had been identified as members of the militant gang behind the recent siege in Kazbegi. But who were the other two men caught on CCTV, one masked, one unmasked? Were they now in possession of the affidavit which the Saint had been due to swear in front of the cameras for 60 Minutes, exposing the rampant corruption in Georgian society?

According to a police insider, the safe in Bazgadze’s house had been found open, and the CCTV also showed one of the masked men taking a folder from the body of one of the militants. If this was indeed the affidavit that 60 Minutes claimed to have been waiting to receive, then exposure of its contents would be very embarrassing for the government, as the programme was due to be aired on the eve of President George W. Bush’s forthcoming visit.

I sat and chewed chocolate, my mind spinning. Good guy gets fucked over — nothing new there — but what had the militants been doing at Baz’s house?

It got worse. The inside pages were teeming with maps and photographs.

TRAIL OF MURDER: SAINT’S CAR FOUND IN TBILISI ALLEYWAY — GRISLY CARGO

If there hadn’t been a perfect artist’s impression of me under the headline I might have laughed.

It was followed by a shot of the Audi up the track, with the boot open. Witnesses had seen two men drive it to the cemetery and load a body into the boot. Beyond that, apparently, was only ‘murky speculation’.

I’d read enough. I refolded the paper and swallowed the last four chunks of chocolate.

That 110 couldn’t arrive a minute too soon.

5

As Charlie got back to the terminal, a two-tone Pajero, silver bottom, dark blue top, sped past the main doors, one up. It was too far away for me to be able to ID the driver, but the sheer bulk of the silhouette at the wheel made me stay with it as it continued past the garden sheds.

I scrabbled along the skips and watched it turn into the car park. The Pajero bounced over puddles and potholes, heading towards the derelict buses closer to the terminal. The nearside wing was damaged. I had a feeling I knew why.

I lost sight of it behind the buses, and I turned back to scan the front of the terminal. Still no sign of the 110.

I heard a door slam behind the buses.

He’d have to cross a hundred metres or so of open ground before he got to the terminal. A straight line would take him very close to the skips. We were going to be in the shit if the 110 turned up right now and Charlie carried on implementing Plan A. The driver would have to come with us; we couldn’t have any more of them running around the country.

No time to think. Bastard was waddling towards the terminal, dressed in the US business uniform for the over-fifties. He pulled an aluminium wheelie carry-on behind him. Whatever we had in those papers, it had got him all fired up. It would have been bad enough for him losing control of the papers Saturday night. But now? With the Istanbul and Marriott tapes out of his control as well, he definitely needed to do the same as us — just get the fuck out. I guessed he wasn’t too anxious to land a starring role on 60 Minutes.

I let him pass the back of the sheds, then crawled out from between the skips to get behind him.

Aroll of fat quivered above his shirt collar. Pulling my hat down low, I followed in step.

‘Oi, Bastendorf!’

I gave him a big happy face as I closed in, but stayed just beyond grabbing distance.

His face clouded. ‘How the fuck do you know my—’

‘I’ve got Kunzru’s weapon. I want our passports.’

He rolled his head back and laughed. Maybe he was amused by the hat.

‘Passports, I want them.’

‘Get the fuck! I shout out right now and you’re history, asshole. I’m walking. What you gonna do, pull steel and gun me down in front of the fucking terminal?’

‘Yes.’

You never make a threat that you can’t carry out, and Bastard knew it. He could see my hand over the front of my jacket.

His nostrils flared. He breathed very slowly and deeply. ‘I burned them.’ He enjoyed telling me that.

Over Bastard’s shoulder, I could see a 110 pull up in front of the terminal, its rear doors already opening. Charlie would be out any minute. He didn’t know we had the Pajero now; that there was now no need for desperate measures. All he had to do was bluff his way into the back and retrieve the gear.

Maybe Bastard had the passports on him, maybe not. We’d soon find out. I nodded over his shoulder. ‘You’re going to turn round and head for the one-ten.’

‘The what?’

‘The Land Rover. Move.’

I came up on his left, eyes peeled for Charlie. Cars and buses moved between us and the 110, temporarily blocking the view.

Bastard gobbed off far too confidently for someone this deep in the shit. ‘We going back to town? You thinking of turning yourself in, or do you just like stealing military vehicles?’

The wheels of his carry-on rumbled along behind us as we made our way to the road. Two guys stepped out of the 110, luggage in hand. Charlie would come out as soon as he saw them check in.

‘Get your arse moving. Go and tell the driver you were in the duty wagon a few days ago. Pull up the back seats, tell him you’ve lost something. I don’t give a shit what you say, just pick up what’s under there.’

He stopped in his tracks. ‘You fuck!’

I pushed him forward and carried on walking, eyes peeled for Charlie steaming through the terminal doors. ‘If you say anything to the driver or start fucking about, I’ll drop you. Understand? I’ve got nothing to lose.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘I’ll take that as a yes.’

Charlie emerged from the terminal. His gaze was fixed intently on the 110 a few metres ahead of him.

We started to cross the road and I could now see the front plate. HF 51 KN. Different driver but the same vehicle, apart from a brand new set of tyres.

Charlie was closing in on the driver’s door when he finally pinged us. I shook my head and he carried on hobbling.

Two police walked out of the terminal, one of them tapping a couple of cigarettes from a pack.

I could see Bastard weighing up his options as they came towards us, sharing a lighter. His eyes bounced between them and me.

I couldn’t turn away or try and hide my face. It would only attract their attention.

Fuck it; if they pinged me, there was nothing I could do about it.

I was on autopilot. It was the only way.

They passed us. Then we passed Charlie, who was waiting for a bus to pull out so he could cross over to the sheds.

Bastard looked at me. ‘What I’m reaching for now is my wallet, OK?’

I held back a metre or so as he approached the driver’s window. He started talking even before the guy had finished winding it down.

The two policemen had stopped by the terminal entrance and were leaning against the wall, enjoying their smoke break.

Bastard thrust his ID in the driver’s face. I could tell he was talking from the way the roll of fat wobbled against his collar.

I concentrated on the driver’s face. Young, Latino. Most importantly, betraying no sign that Bastard was telling him the truth.

Bastard moved around to the rear doors of the 110. The Latino turned and leaned across to help him lift the seats.

Bastard emerged with the magazine in his hand and tapped a goodbye on the window. We turned and headed back the way we had come. The policemen hadn’t moved, but they had stopped chatting and seemed to be watching Bastard closely.

I held out my hand for the magazine.

Bastard hesitated. ‘Do I get my flight now? Hey, I was going to let you go if you came up with the goods.’

‘Keep walking. We’ve got plans for you.’

I heard laughter and out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the policemen pinch a fold of skin on his neck and give it a good wobble.

A second or two later, it started to rain.

6

Nobody talked as I drove the Pajero away from the airport perimeter. You could cut the atmosphere with a gollock. I drove; Bastard was next to me in the passenger seat. He knew I had a pistol tucked between my legs out of his reach but within mine, and that Charlie had another behind him, but there was no knowing what he might do if he saw an opportunity to escape. If I was him, I’d be gone the first chance I got.

I pushed the heater to full blast, to get rid of the condensation. It had only been a short walk back to the 4x4, but we’d all got drenched.

I’d given Bastard a physical search when we got in, but he didn’t have the passports on him. Charlie was emptying his carry-on across the back seat.

I flicked the wipers from steady to rapid and threw Charlie a map from the side pocket. ‘Which way?’

He opened it out. ‘This is a fucking sight better than the one in the one-ten. Looks like just over two hundred Ks to the Turkish border.’

‘Four or five hours, maybe, as long as we don’t have to go off-road?’

He shook his head. ‘As the crow flies. But I reckon the best route’s south until we hit the pipeline, then follow it south-west.’

It was good thinking. What could be more normal than three Westerners mooching along that route — especially with official government accreditation in Mr Bastendorf’s wallet? It looked like someone had gone mad with a rubber stamp, then added, in Paperclip and English, that he was a welcome guest in their country, and should be given every assistance in carrying out his important work for the government. The added bonus was the $450 he had tucked away to go supersize when he hit Vienna airport.

I felt safer now I was in a vehicle, but I knew it was an illusion. If we hit a checkpoint we’d still have to bluff it big-time and bank on Bastard getting us through. Our two pistols should help persuade him to do that. Besides, he might be the world’s biggest arsehole, but he wasn’t a fool. He was a survivor.

Bastard coughed up a mouthful of phlegm, and started unwinding his window. He gobbed it out through the two-inch gap.

‘I don’t remember saying you could do that.’ My hand reached for the pistol. ‘Don’t make another move unless I say so, you understand?’

Bastard scoffed. ‘You think that’s scaring me? My mama done better.’

I concentrated on the road, barely visible through a near-solid curtain of rain.

My guess was, Bastard wasn’t in the FBI any more — or at least, he certainly didn’t carry any ID to say he was.

Charlie finished checking the carry-on. ‘No mobile here either.’

Bastard stared straight ahead. ‘I said I didn’t have one. Why the fuck would I need one now? The local things don’t work stateside, do they?’

‘Heading home, were you? What happened to the dream of the dusky señoritas?’

‘Go fuck.’

Even dog-legging it, we’d probably still get to the border well before last light, which would give us time to find a decent crossing point. I wasn’t going to tell him yet, but Bastard was coming with us. Georgia was in the good lads’ club with the USA these days, and probably had all sorts of pooling arrangements between police forces. Following Bush’s ‘If you’re not with us, you’re against us’ doctrine, any enemy of Georgia’s would be an enemy of America’s, and right now I seemed to be top of Tbilisi’s Most Wanted.

We skirted the city to the west and soon swapped the shiny new dual carriageway for a more familiar, knackered metalled road. Old guys sat behind tables at the verge, sheltering from the rain under trees and bits of plastic, trying to sell jugs and bottles of ancient engine oil.

Bastard scoffed. ‘Fucking stuff’s been through every truck in sight about sixteen times.’

Charlie and I didn’t respond. Bastard was trying to draw us in. He’d tried aggression, and now he was trying to lighten the mood and get all chummy.

The road ahead was flanked by giant cubes of grey concrete. Rusting steel skeletons jutted through their flaking skin. There had been no pink or orange facelift around here. Washing hung from the windows, getting a second rinse.

Bastard tried again. ‘I guess this particular boulevard didn’t make it onto the presidential route.’

We continued to ignore him. If he thought we were going to be sharing toothbrushes by the end of this trip, he was receiving on the wrong frequency.

I zigzagged round puddles for a kilometre or two, then we hit a sign for Borjomi, 151 km.

That cheered me up; the pipeline ran through Borjomi.

Dark cloud blanketed the high ground and I flicked on the lights. We weren’t the only vehicle on the road, and we were all competing in the giant pothole slalom. It could only be a matter of time before there was a pile-up in the gloom.

Puddles the size of bomb craters had claimed a couple of dilapidated Ladas. They still had exposed spark plugs, Charlie Clever Bollocks had explained to me, and flaked out nineteen to the dozen once they encountered a bit of moisture.

I glanced back at Charlie again. He seemed all right, no shakes, just sitting there, staring out of the window. Four or five hours from now, I could get him and his disco hands on a plane home.

7

The air con was still doing its stuff to keep the windscreen clear on the inside. We were well out of the suburbs, up in the high ground and shrouded in mist, when the tarmac stopped abruptly and we hit a wide gravel track.

Charlie sparked up from the back. ‘How are Hari and Kunzru?’

Bastard shrugged. ‘How the fuck should I know? I got the call; at least one of them was still breathing. I was heading back there when I saw you guys on the road. Anyway, fuck ’em. Welfare ain’t my responsibility.’

The mist cleared as we wound down the side of the mountain. A wide, fast-flowing river sparkled in the sunlight below us. Apart from the vivid brown scar that cut across the lush green of the valley floor, we were back in Sound of Music country.

Bastard jerked his thumb towards the point at which the line of freshly turned earth cut back towards us and started to run level with the road. ‘There’s your pipeline.’

‘Where’s the metalwork?’ I’d been expecting to see something above ground, as I had in the Middle East.

‘They’ve buried it. Makes it a whole lot tougher to blow up.’

Charlie leaned between us. ‘Our old mates the militants?’

‘Militants, Kurdish separatists, Muslim extremists, Russian assholes, you name it. They all either want a piece of the action, or to use the thing as a bargaining counter.

‘The Kurds wanna split from the Turks: you give us our country, we don’t fuck with your pipeline.

‘The Russians, well, they just want to fuck the pipeline up, period. Perestroika, my ass; the cold war never ended for those guys.

‘And closer to home, there’s the Georgian politicos, doing side deals with whoever comes within reach — and charging the oil companies a fucking fortune to give the pipeline house room in the first place.’

Charlie nodded. ‘And we have a few bits of paper tucked away explaining where our late lamented friend Mr Bazgadze fitted into all this.’

Bastard glowered at him. ‘Don’t count on it, asshole.’

The rain started again. I flicked the wipers back into overdrive, but still had to press my face against the windscreen to see where we were going.

Bastard squinted through the curtain of water ahead of us. ‘But who gives a shit? My job was just making sure things ran real smooth.’

‘Fucked up there then, didn’t you?’ Charlie tapped the package in his jacket pocket. He’d wrapped the camcorder tape and the documents from Baz’s safe in a plastic bag he’d found in Bastard’s carry-on. ‘And I’m no expert here, but the local media seem to be painting a rather different picture than the one you gave us…’

Bastard couldn’t help himself. ‘Hey, I only told you what I’d been told myself.’ He gave a deep, frustrated sigh. ‘I’m not the decision-maker here. I’m like you guys; I’m a worker bee — a worker bee who just wants to get the fuck out of here.’

I’d promised myself to stay out of this, but my blood was starting to boil. ‘Worker bee, my arse. You’re a fucking maggot. You feed off situations like this, and leave the real worker bees to pay the price.’ I changed down to take a bend. ‘Remember Anthony, the Brit you slapped around at Waco?’

He went quiet for a moment. The rain was now hammering so hard on the Pajero’s roof it sounded like we were trapped inside a snare drum, but I could almost hear his mind whirring. ‘Anthony? Anthony who? I don’t remember slapping any Brit at Waco.’

‘Yes, you do.’ My eyes were fixed on the mud-covered gravel ahead. The Pajero was starting to slip and slide, and I had to fight the wheel to correct it. ‘He designed the gas you used, but shouldn’t have, remember? He committed suicide about a year afterwards. He couldn’t live with the guilt.’

‘Oh, that Anthony…’ Bastard ran an index finger over his moustache. ‘Sure I remember him… fucking Limey fag. He shouldn’t have been there. Never send a boy to do a man’s job…’

I swung the Pajero up a track that suddenly opened up to the left. We bucked over the pipeline towards a stretch of trees.

I shouted back at Charlie. ‘Let’s see if this arsehole’s bollocks are as big as his mouth.’

I braked hard at the treeline, killed the ignition and shoved Bastard towards the passenger door. ‘Get the fuck out! Now!’

I swivelled in my seat, leaned back against my door and kicked at him with both feet as he scrabbled for the handle. ‘I was there, I was with Anthony. I saw the whole fucking thing…’ I kicked him again as his door swung open and he slithered out into the mud.

He picked himself off the ground, his face a mask of fear and indignation. ‘It wasn’t me who gave the order. That was way above my pay scale.’

I followed him out while Charlie rummaged in the back of the wagon.

‘I thought you’d got the message about that worker bee shit,’ I yelled through the rain. ‘None of those kids stood a chance, and you enjoyed every fucking minute!’

‘Bingo!’ Charlie gave me the thumbs-up, slammed the rear door and headed for the Pajero’s bonnet.

‘Wait until I’ve climbed aboard him.’ I brought my pistol up. ‘I’m going to have this fucker.’

Bastard backed away until he was pressing against the front wing. ‘Hey, I knew it wasn’t right. I knew it was wrong to kill those people.’ He raised his hands, half pleading, half trying to make me keep my distance. ‘Those were American citizens… my own people…’ He pointed at me. ‘Our people.’

‘Down! In the mud! Now!’

He slid down the side of the vehicle and slumped against the wheel. The rain kicked up the puddles all around him. We were both soaked to the skin. My sleeve weighed heavily on my arm as I raised my pistol to his head.

‘Who are you working for?’ My first kick caught him square in the ribs. ‘Who gave the order to drop Charlie?’ My second disappeared into the mountain of flesh that spilled over his waistband. ‘What’s in those documents? What the fuck happened at the house?’

Charlie had released the bonnet and was now standing on the other side of him.

Bastard heaved air into his lungs and his face tilted up towards me, eyes screwed up against the rain. ‘What you gonna do, son? Pull that trigger? Fuck you, then. Just get on with it. ‘

Charlie shook his head, then leaned down and clipped one of the Pajero’s jump leads onto the roll of fat above Bastard’s collar and held the second against his ear.

Bastard screamed and his whole body shuddered. He collapsed like a rag doll, legs splayed out in the mud.

The jump lead was still clamped to his neck. Charlie handed me the other and slid into the driver’s seat.

I gave Bastard another kick, just because I wanted to.

Charlie fired up the ignition, and gave the pedal a squeeze.

Bastard said nothing, just lay there whimpering, listening to the steady throb of the Pajero’s engine, staring down at the mud. He was starting to get the message.

8

‘Look at me.’

He kept his eyes down.

I jammed my clip against the top of his ear.

He squealed, arched his back and collapsed again.

I leaned over him. ‘Look at me…’

He stayed where he was, but this time his eyes came up to meet mine. Rain streamed off my chin and onto his face.

‘This is very simple.’ I waved the jump lead in his face. ‘You talk, and I keep this away from you.’

He jerked his head to dislodge the crocodile clip from his neck, but it stayed right where it was.

I kicked his hand away as he tried to reach up and grab it.

When he started to talk, I could hardly hear him above the sound of the rain. ‘It was a simple operation that got fucked up. We just needed those papers, no hassle, everything clean.’ He scrabbled in the mud and hauled himself back up against the wheel. ‘It’s out of my hands now. That’s why I was getting out of this shithole.’ He stared into the trees.

I moved the clip back into his line of sight, and held it no more than a centimetre away from his nose. ‘You’re not answering the questions. Who the fuck are you working for? Who are these powerful friends of yours you said can make things happen?’

‘The politicos, man. Same old story. The guys Bazgadze was gunning for. That’s why they wanted what was in his safe. That’s all I know.’ He glanced up at me. ‘And all I wanna know.’

‘You still with the Bureau? Is this some covert FBI fuckabout we’ve been sucked into here?’

He shook his head slowly and his gaze dropped back towards the mud. ‘Those fuckers spat me out four years ago. Chewed me up and spat me out, with just enough of an annuity to buy myself a cigar every Fourth of July. Why do you think I ended up in this goddam shithole?’

I wasn’t buying the sympathy card, and brought the clip a fraction closer to let him know.

‘I was in the job thirty years, and for what? Jack shit, man. So when these guys step in and offer me a retirement plan—’

‘What happened at the house?’

‘The guys I work for, there are six of them, OK? Partnership for Peace isn’t high on their list of priorities; well, partnership gets their vote, but peace can go take a dump. They want to keep things exactly the way they are. US dollars are flying in by the planeload, and a lot of them get diverted their way. They pay the militants to threaten the pipeline, just to keep things on the boil. Nothing bad, nothing physical — just the occasional firework display. Nobody gets hurt. It’s just good, old-fashioned commerce. I’m just there to—’

‘Yeah, we know,’ Charlie said. ‘You’re just there to smooth the way…’

Bastard looked up at him and risked a smile.

I kicked him. ‘Get on with it.’

He slid his legs up as close to his chest as his gut would allow. ‘This Bazgadze guy, he’d been getting more and more of a problem. The whole sainthood thing wasn’t good for business. And neither was getting found out just before Bush arrives to rally the troops for the war on terror. So the plan was, steal the papers, find out what he knows. Lean on the guy. Warn him off…’

He raised a hand to the jump lead still clamped onto his neck. ‘Can I take this thing off? I’m fucking helping you here.’

I shook my head. ‘You’re helping yourself. That still doesn’t explain what happened at the house, or at the cemetery. Who the fuck were those guys?’

‘Bazgadze wasn’t any more popular with the militants than he was with my politicos. There’s this fuck, Akaki, he runs them. He just couldn’t wait. If Bazgadze had proof he was on the take, he wanted him dead. He’s a fucking psycho, he’s out of control. It’s not the way to deal with guys like Bazgadze — he’s a fucking god around here.

It’s gotta be subtle.’

‘What, like you?’

The rain was so hard it felt like a madman with a staple gun was attacking the back of my neck.

Charlie wasn’t happy — and not just with Bastard’s explanation. ‘We better start getting a move on.’ He pointed beyond the trees, where mud and loose debris were breaking away from the side of the hill and gravity was doing the rest. ‘The road’s taking a pounding.’

I kicked Bastard to his feet.

‘So what happens now?’ he said.

‘What happens now is you shut the fuck up, or we connect those jump leads to your bollocks. You’re coming with us, and later on, when we’re in Turkey and out of this shit, you’re going to call a few of your high-powered mates. We’re going to make a little deal, and this time you’re going to be the broker.’

9

The curtain of water in front of us was now so solid I had to slow the Pajero to a crawl.

The noise was horrendous. We’d had to open all the windows, to try to deal with the condensation from our soaking clothes. The heater was going full blast, but it didn’t stand a chance.

Bastard was trying without success to shift some of the mud off his clothes and skin. He looked like he’d just crawled out of the black lagoon. He paused mid-scrape and had a crack at getting back into the good lads’ club. ‘Hey, Nick, believe me, I’m sorry about that Anthony guy. I’m sorry about the whole goddam thing. It was a really heavy time.’

‘But it didn’t have to be, did it?’

Bastard fidgeted some more. ‘It wasn’t like that. Just think what would have happened if Koresh and his buddies had gotten away with giving the finger to the ATF. Law and order would’ve lost all credibility. A thing like that couldn’t go unpunished. Anarchy, lawlessness — gotta be nipped in the bud, or you end up like this shithole.’

Rain crashed onto the car like breaking waves. The wipers were on full power, and still I couldn’t see a thing.

Charlie had arranged himself across the back seat, weapon tucked under his arse, legs draped over the carry-on. It was one of those airtight, fireproof, everything-proof aluminium things that come with a lifetime guarantee and a thousand-dollar price tag.

I got to thinking about what Bastard had said when he was plugged into the mains, and it didn’t stack up. When it came to being fucked over, I was the world’s leading expert, and the smart money didn’t say anything like Bastard wanted us to think it did. There was something a whole lot more serious going on here than a little light spring-cleaning before the US President arrived.

I kept an eye on the pipeline scar to our left; more often than not, now, it was the only way of telling we were still on the road. The river had burst its banks an hour or two ago, and raged along the bottom of the gradient to our right.

Bastard glanced over his shoulder and leaned towards me, as if he had a secret to share with his best mate. ‘Nick, listen. What about you and me making a deal? Let me go with the papers and tapes when we get to Borjomi; I’ll call my guys, see to it you’re off the wanted list, and make everything cool once you two get into Turkey. We’ve had enough of this shit, don’t you think?’

He nodded at Charlie, whose head was wobbling from side to side as I bounced the wagon along the track.

‘Just tell him I got out for a dump and made a run for it. Hey, how’s he to know…’

Things weren’t looking good out there. Brown slurry cascaded off the high ground to our left, carrying rocks and broken branches across our path.

Bastard wasn’t giving up. ‘You and me, Nick, we’re both really in deep shit. We’re singing off the same hymn sheet here.’

‘Why don’t we start with Swan Lake, lad?’ Charlie sparked up from the back. ‘We’ll hum it, you go jump in it.’

I glanced in the rear-view. He’d turned onto his side, knees bunched up, and was chuckling quietly to himself. ‘You’ve got two problems with your plan, Fat Boy. One’ — he tapped the top pocket of his jacket — ‘it’s all in here. Two, running isn’t exactly your strong suit. You couldn’t even bend over to run a bath, for fuck’s sake.’

There wasn’t time to laugh.

Ariver of mud ten metres wide sluiced off the hill and hit the wagon broadside, pushing us to where the road fell away to the river below.

I swung the wheel to steer us into the skid, but nothing happened.

‘Charlie, out the wagon!’

The mudslide gathered weight and momentum, and started to spill in through the open windows.

I grabbed the edge of the roof and hauled myself out of the gap.

Bastard was sliding his fat arse towards the passenger door. He could look after himself.

The Pajero was beginning to tip. I wrestled the rear door open and dragged Charlie clear by the shoulders.

He tumbled out on top of me as the vehicle slewed another couple of metres, then finally succumbed to the sheer weight of mud and cart-wheeled down towards the river.

A dozen or so metres away, Bastard struggled to get himself upright.

Charlie blinked as the rain lashed his mud-caked face.

‘Papers and tape?’

Charlie tapped his pocket and nodded.

We both heard a sound like an approaching train.

I looked up, but before I could shout a warning the knee-high surge of mud and debris had gathered Bastard up and swept him over the edge.