Aggressor

1

My sleep was broken by an announcement from the flight deck I didn’t understand a word of, and the plane began its descent. I looked out of the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the city, but the cloud cover was too low and it was still pitch dark. Baby-G told me it was nearly 5.30 a.m. I just loved red-eye flights, they really set you up for a good day out.

I dug around in the seat pocket for the printouts I’d done at the internet café in Istanbul. I’d had a day to kill after Charlie had left the city, and I always tried to find out as much as I could about any alien environment I was about to go into. Apart from anything else, if I had to get out quick time, I’d need all the help I could get.

I tended to hit the CIA’s world report website for facts and figures, and backpacker chat-rooms for real-time information; it paid to get the view from both ends of the food chain. If I needed more, I’d log on to Google.

The Russian Federation, referred to in the local press as ‘the aggressive neighbour’, loomed over Georgia to the north, and the two weren’t exactly cosying up at the moment. Since the fall of communism, Georgia, always a predominantly Christian country, had become an independent state, very pro-West, very pro-Bush. Pro-Bush meant anti-Putin, whichever way you looked at it, and that definitely put the main man at the Kremlin’s nose out of joint.

What pissed him off even more was the fact that America and the UK had already given millions of dollars in arms and equipment to the Georgian military. It was the last thing he wanted happening in his backyard — which was why he hadn’t pulled out his troops, armour and artillery, which were officially still there as ‘peacekeepers’.

To the east lay Azerbaijan, one of the countries lucky enough to have a shoreline bordering the oil-rich Caspian Sea. Despite being Muslim, it too was backed big-time by the US, for reasons that weren’t hard to see. The BTC pipeline, built by a consortium headed by BP and on the brink of coming on-line, stretched a thousand miles from Baku and passed just south of Tbilisi as it made its way through Georgia towards the Mediterranean coast.

To the south-west was Armenia, a country I’d always reckoned must be completely devoid of any men between the ages of twenty and forty. They were all busy elsewhere, running drugs, prostitution and extortion in every city in the West, as well as every other racket that used to be Mafia copyright until these guys muscled in.

Also to the south-west lay the all-important Turkey, feeling pretty pleased with itself these days for owning the business end of the pipeline at Cheyhan, where fleets of supertankers would soon be waiting to ferry enough of the black stuff to keep the 4x4s of the UK and the east coast of America on the road for the foreseeable future. It probably felt very secure, too; the huge US air base at Incirlik was right on its doorstep.

A million barrels of oil a day were going to start pouring through the three-foot-six-inch-wide pipe some time in 2005. It would take six months to travel the thousand miles — not that Turkey would care. They knew they were now such a pivotal part of the process as far as the US and UK were concerned, that fully fledged membership of the EU was all but guaranteed, however reluctant the French and Dutch might be. Those EU-style number plates were much more than just optimism.

The Caspian Basin had often been at the centre of international attention. Back in the nineteenth century, when Tsarist Russia was having a bit of handbags with the British Empire, Kipling called the fight for oil the Great Game. Two hundred years later, the game was still very much on, but with a whole lot more players.

Everyone wanted a piece of the action. Russia had built a pipeline to the Black Sea coast. China was getting stuck in too. Some of the largest untapped energy reserves on the planet — an estimated 200 billion barrels — lay beneath the Caspian, and since the collapse of the Soviet empire it was very much up for grabs.

The US had military advisers in Georgia to train the army. The Brits were doing their bit by supplying equipment, transport and logistics and the whole effort was called the Partnership for Peace programme — in theory rebuilding Georgia’s post-communist army, but in practice training them to protect the ‘energy corridor’. The threat of sabotage by Islamic militants and ethnic separatists was constant. Whenever the boys were taking time off from harvesting their poppy crop, it would make an irresistible target.

The funniest thing I read was that the Russians had gone and built a base alongside each of the US ones, so the two sides just sat there eyeballing each other. So peace and harmony was not exactly the name of the game, particularly when you bore in mind that the Georgian government was rated one of the top ten most corrupt institutions on the planet. It all added up to a possible big-time fuck-up for Disco Charlie, which was very much why I was here.

The plane touched down and I rescued my carry-on from the overhead locker. Most of the other passengers seemed to be men, either large Turks in raincoats, liberating their packs of Marlboro, ready to light up as soon as they were inside, or locals dressed from head to toe in black. The only pair of jeans in sight was mine, bought cheap in the market, along with a jumper with a nice nylon sheen to it that was even scarier than Charlie’s.

I pulled up the collar of my bomber jacket and followed the other punters across the rain-lashed tarmac to the Soviet regime’s idea of a state-of-the-art terminal building, a mausoleum of concrete and glass. In the bad old days it would have been adorned with more than a few stirring portraits of the local-boy-done-good, Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. Or, as he preferred to be known, Uncle Joe Stalin.

2

The inside of the terminal had been given a bit of a tart-up within the last decade or so, but it looked to me as though it had been done by the same crew who did the railways back home after privatization — the ones who’d given a lick of new paint to the old rolling stock and fixed for us to pick up a free magazine as we got on, in the hope that we wouldn’t notice that all the carriages were still in a shit state, the toilets didn’t work, and nothing arrived on time.

The immigration hall consisted of four passport control booths, each with a smiling young woman sitting behind a glass screen. I couldn’t make up my mind whether they were a girl band in their spare time, or Maria Sharapova’s training partners. I joined the visa line. So far, this country smelt of wet greasy hair.

Ahead of me was a column of raincoated Turks, staring daggers at the No Smoking signs. They obviously hadn’t been expecting them. Behind me, maybe six or seven people back, I heard a couple of Merseyside voices. I turned as casually as possible to check them out.

There were three or four of them, two with beards, all dressed in Gore-Tex jackets and practical walking trousers, and big practical boots. If it hadn’t been for the green flowery BP logos on the tags hanging from their laptop bags, I’d have assumed they might be here to open an adventure centre or run a management bonding seminar.

I turned back. At the head of the line, two immigration officers were too busy smoking and chatting to bother helping anyone get the paperwork necessary to pass through immigration and possibly be reunited with their bags.

The Turks were really getting pissed off. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the wait, or the fact that the immigration guys were hammering through the Marlboros while they couldn’t. At last, fag break over but still waffling to each other, the uniforms starting picking up passports and glowering at their owners. Charlie wouldn’t have had to go through this yesterday; he’d been waiting in Istanbul to arrange his visa in advance. He’d wanted to leave nothing to chance; unlike me, he hadn’t fancied the idea of leaving himself to the mercy of the Chuckle Brothers and the Spice Girls up ahead.

I finally reached the front of the line. The immigration guys sat behind a glass screen, at a Formica-covered desk about level with my waist. The younger of the two grabbed my blue US passport and arrivals form without even giving me a glance. He thumbed through the passport and finally raised his head. His face was completely expressionless. ‘No visa?’

Why the fuck else would I bother standing in the visa line? I smiled. ‘I was told to get one from you.’

If I’d had the time to go and queue up all day and get one from the consulate in Istanbul, it would have cost me forty US dollars. Now that I was here, the price had gone up to eighty. That was the theory, anyway. I couldn’t wait to hear how far these boys thought they could push their luck.

He didn’t smile back. ‘Hundred twenty dollar.’

‘One twenty?’ I toyed with the idea of aiming him at the website, but immediately thought better of it.

‘Hundred twenty dollar.’

I pulled the cash from my wallet and handed it over. It wasn’t the extra dollars I begrudged, so much as the principle of the thing. He looked at me for a couple of seconds, his gaze level. ‘Hey… Why you come?’

‘To find my friend.’ The best cover stories are always based on the truth. ‘He has left his wife and is travelling here. I’ve come to take him home.’

He leaned across to his mate, who was still gobbing off to him about something or other. The old guy nodded and smiled; he’d probably clocked the fact that he could now afford to stop by a hooker on the way home.

My guy counted out the hard currency, stuck the visa into my passport, and even fixed me a receipt. It was only for eighty dollars, but at least the visa was full-page. I gave him a grin to show him I thought I was getting my money’s worth.

I picked up my carry-on and headed for passport control. The Spice Girls all wore shiny brown uniforms. Their new national flag was emblazoned on each arm: the cross of St George, with a smaller cross in each of the white quadrants. It looked like something Richard the Lionheart would have daubed on his shield before storming Jerusalem.

3

I wandered outside. A huge concrete awning spanned the area, probably built in the ’50s to celebrate a bumper Soviet wheat harvest. Beneath it, people were jockeying for position, trying to coax their pre-Stalin-era trolleys in the direction of the taxi rank. Across the road, taxi drivers stood drinking coffee outside a row of brightly lit wooden sheds while they waited for their fares.

As I stood there trying to get my bearings, the management bonding crew climbed aboard a gleaming white Land Cruiser that I imagined was all set to whisk them away to a hot mug of tea and a full English.

I wandered over to join the ever-lengthening taxi queue. A haphazard procession of square, boxy Ladas swung towards us, their signs fastened precariously to their roofs with a couple of bungees, the same trick Silky pulled with surfboards.

The Georgian women in front of me all seemed to be either skinny as rakes, or built like bowling balls. Thirty seemed to be the point when the one turned into the other, though it was quite difficult to tell; all of them, even the ones who should have been grey, had hair that was dyed jet-black, or as dark red as a plum.

My turn came for a Lada, and a very nice mustard-and-rust one it was too. I got into the back. The windows were steamed up and the radio was going full blast in an attempt to drown out the noise of the wipers scraping across the smashed windscreen.

‘The Marriott, mate. Marriott Hotel.’

The cigarette stuck to the driver’s bottom lip bobbed up and down as he nodded. But the taxi didn’t move.

‘The Marriott. MA-RRI-OTT?’

‘Marriott! Marriott!’

The penny dropped and the Lada lurched off at a rate of not that many knots, possibly because the windscreen looked like it had been on the receiving end of a burst of semi-automatic and he was trying to see through the web of cracked glass.

The meter was covered in grease and fag ash, and had probably never been turned on. I leaned forward. The driver was in his sixties, with a bushy grey moustache and grey, slicked-back hair that curled around the collar of a black polo-neck jumper.

I rubbed my thumb and forefinger together. ‘How much?’

He gobbed off at me and of course I didn’t understand a word. Most of it sounded like Swahili, with the odd click and guttural embellishment here and there.

He remembered to turn on his headlights while he was talking, and we picked out a 110 hardtop Land Rover parked at the roadside. It was unmistakably Brit military; dull green, with MoD plates.

The driver had left his wagon and was leaning against the wing. Bulked out with a blue waterproof jacket, shaved head, stonewashed jeans and very smart, still sparklingly clean Nikes, he had to be American. Maybe he was dropping off or collecting ‘advisers’ for the Partnership for Peace programme.

I was still none the wiser about the fare as we followed a wide dual carriageway towards the city centre, just over ten miles away. I only knew that because of what I picked up off the web. There were no road signs at all, just billboard scaffold over the road that had probably once carried posters celebrating the wonders of communism. Now they seemed to be saying the same sort of thing about Coke and Sony.

As we reached the outskirts of the city, drab concrete apartment blocks sprang up on each side of the road. They’d been given a recent lick of paint, but not in any colour you’d have chosen sober. Some of the giant cubes were green, some purple. One was yellow.

This wasn’t what I’d been expecting, good roads and fresh paint. To cap it all, even at this time of the morning, in the dark, there were women out sweeping the road with the sort of brooms that Harry Potter played Quidditch on.

A convoy of olive-green military trucks towing artillery pieces passed us, going the other way, as we came into the city proper. I knew Tbilisi lay at the foot of three massive, steeply inclined hills. The river Mtkvari ran through it, north to south. We were entering from the flatter ground to the east.

As it became more built up, so did the number of dogs. They were everywhere, if not loose and pissing against every car within reach, then on a leash and being treated to their early morning walkies.

A blue-and-white was blocking the way. The two guys inside the shiny new VW Passat had their heads down for a nap; by the look of things, they’d got a bit tired running stripy police tape from each wing mirror to the wall on either side. My grey-haired friend peered through his screen, cursed and hung a right.

The smoothly surfaced road immediately gave way to a minefield of water-filled potholes big enough to hide a bus in. My driver joined all the others slaloming from side to side to avoid them. I wasn’t sure how some of them managed it, without any headlights.

This was more like the Georgia I’d been expecting. Maybe the tourist board didn’t want to deprive the punters of the authentic gulag experience, and the police were there to make sure there was no chance of us missing it. At least there were a few road signs now, in Russian Cyrillic and a language I supposed was Georgian, though the words looked more like rows of twisted paperclips.

The taxi driver crossed himself every time we passed a church. I couldn’t tell if it was out of respect, or alongside a prayer of thanks for surviving the manic driving of his fellow countrymen and the Jurassic-scale potholes.

We crossed the Mtkvari, the fastest — and brownest — river I’d ever seen, to the west bank and the city centre. The Marriott was on the main drag, another stretch of flat, freshly laid tarmac that paralleled the river. It looked every bit as big and impersonal as any I’d stayed in, though I could see it was one of the newest and smartest in the chain before I’d even got out of the cab.

Chandeliers the size of hot-air balloons hung from the ceiling of an atrium eighty feet high. Everyone inside looked as though they’d just stepped out of an Armani ad before heading for their early morning breakfast meetings; all of them, both reception staff and guests, were dressed in varying shades of black.

According to the bulletin board in reception, it was the Marriott’s honour to welcome the BP Georgia conference, and they looked forward to welcoming all delegates at 2 p.m. in the St David Room. Capitalism wasn’t just being embraced in this neck of the woods; it was being bear-hugged, then having its contact details Bluetoothed into every Blackberry in sight.

4

‘Room 258, sir.’ The concierge handed me my room card.

I thanked him and turned away, but he hadn’t finished.

‘One moment.’ He searched under the counter top. ‘This is for you.’

I took the bulky envelope. On the back was written: ‘From C.T.’

I bent to pick up my carry-on, but a young bellboy beat me to it. He guided me the four paces to the lift. I hardly needed the help, but I didn’t want to upset hotel protocol and get myself noticed. Besides, there was no way he was going to let go of the bag, or the tip.

He pressed the call button. ‘You have travelled to Tbilisi before, sir?’ The accent probably came from watching American TV shows. So did the grooming; he had hair so clean and sculpted he could have auditioned for The OC, and there wasn’t a zit or hint of stubble on his cheek.

I smiled and made all the right noises as we let a briefcase-toting American major in BDUs get out of the lift before taking it to the third floor. ‘No, but it looks very nice to me.’

He nodded and agreed, but treated me to the sort of look that said he doubted I was in any position to judge, if my choice of outfit was anything to go by.

When we got to the room, he showed me how to work the air conditioning and TV, and even took the trouble to explain that the two-litre bottles of Georgian mineral water beside it were complimentary. I knew, but I didn’t interrupt his patter. I wanted to be the grey man; or as much of one as I could be in an orange-, green-, brown- and blue-patterned jumper.

After he had completed his routine, he took a bow and gave me a very big smile. I pushed a five-dollar bill into his hand before he had a chance to go for an encore. I didn’t have a clue how much that was in local hertigrats or whatever they were called, but he left a very happy bunny. Like almost anywhere, in Georgia the US dollar was king.

I took in the thick plush curtains, furniture and fittings. It made a welcome change from the shitholes I’d normally had to put up with when I was on a job. Then I peeled open Charlie’s envelope.

The Motorola pay-as-you-go cell phone was fresh from its packaging. It would have been the first thing he bought after arriving. I sparked it up; there was only one phone number in the display for me to ring, so I pressed it at the same time as I hit the TV remote. I always liked seeing if other countries had to suffer their way through the same shit programmes that I watched.

Charlie answered immediately, tearing the arse out of his Yorkshire vowels like one of the Tetley tea folk. ‘’Eh oop, how art thou, lad?’ He sounded as though he’d swallowed a fistful of happy pills.

‘Shut up, you nugget. I’m in 258. You?’

‘One-oh-six.’

‘I’m going to sort my shit out — see you in about thirty?’

‘Okey-dokey.’ He killed his phone.

RTV1 was the default channel. It was good to see that today’s Russian housewife wore the same gently exasperated expression as her Midlands cousin when she watched her boys covering themselves with mud on the footie pitch, and that Tide washed away all her problems too.

I shoved the two-pin charger plug into a socket and checked the bars. Charlie would already have done it but there was no harm in a top-up, especially in the power-cut capital of the world.

I flicked channels again. Russia’s Weakest Link looked exactly the same as the American show (which looked exactly the same as the Brit version) except that the woman asking the questions had brown hair and no facial tics.

I checked out the room safe, though I had nothing to put in it. All the US dollars I’d drawn from an ATM in Istanbul, about fifteen hundred of them in fives and tens, would stay with me. My passport would stay with me too. I only did it out of habit, in case the last guest had left me some valuables. I had probably been doing it since I was a kid checking out the coin return in phone boxes and cigarette machines. I’d never found anything then either, but you never know.

I scanned the minibar too. All the normal miniatures, but not as much vodka as I’d have thought. Coke. Fanta. A local beer covered in paperclip writing and a bit of Russian. A couple of small mineral waters with the same label, Borjomi, as the litre bottles by the TV, but without the nice little card telling me it was the pride of Georgia, and an arrow on a map pointing to a town somewhere to the west of the city. The rest were berry and fruit drinks.

I settled for a can of apple juice.

Sitting on the bed and feeling totally exhausted, I flicked through the remaining twenty-two channels. Most were Russian; a couple seemed to carry local news, and of course there were CNN and BBC. I left it on a Paperclip channel and glanced outside as I headed for the shower.

The weather was still miserable. It had stopped raining, but it was a gloomy, cloud-ridden dawn. The street directly below me was already clogged with a mixture of Western cars and trucks, and old square Ladas straining under the weight of too many sacks of spuds lashed onto their roof racks.

Beyond it were a lot of grand buildings a couple of hundred years old, which I knew from my map housed the government. A few museums, domes and church spires from even further back rubbed shoulders with the tightly packed brick cubes that lined the narrow, steeply climbing streets.

At least the communist planners had had a stab at preserving the grandeur of the centre, and built most of the crap far enough away from city hall that they didn’t have to see it. By the look of things, when their work was done here, they’d probably gone and had a crack at Hereford.

The green hills that surrounded the city soared above the rooftops, and seemed close enough to reach out and touch.

I put my fluorescent nylon socks over my hands, jumped into the shower, and used them as flannels to give both them and me a wash.

My first glimpse of the foyer had told me I should have hit some local fashion websites before I came; market gear just didn’t cut it here. But fuck it, Charlie’s job was tonight, so I’d be out of here by tomorrow…

Well, that was if I did it.

I wanted to know exactly what it was first.

And coming here was the only way I’d find out.

5

Who was I trying to kid?

I knew I had to save old Disco Hands from himself, otherwise why would I be here?

But I wasn’t going to tell the old fucker yet. He’d have to work for it.

I had a few concerns. It felt like too much of a rush. I would have preferred time to tune in to this place, but that wasn’t going to happen. And besides, it was why Charlie was getting paid big bucks.

He’d have to think on his feet. And if they started to wobble, I’d be there to hold him up.

Five minutes later I dried myself, watching what had to be the best recruiting ad for any army in the known universe. It took me a moment to realize it wasn’t a Colgate commercial. Every trooper in sight had the sort of clean-cut, sharply chiselled smile your average Georgian mum would die for; quite a few of them were busy swooning in the audience as the parade moved past them. I was expecting to see the bellboy any minute.

The music oozed serenity as the camera lingered on envious younger brothers who couldn’t wait to join up, and older sisters who only had eyes for their older brothers’ new mates. And all the while, Richard the Lionheart’s flag fluttered alongside the Stars and Stripes, the two occasionally entwining in the breeze.

It was all very moving. I had half a mind to sign up myself. And as Charlie often used to say, that was all you needed…

Leaving the defenders of the motherland saluting the flags, I headed downstairs with money, passport, phone and wet hair.

I needed a brief. After that, our plan was to be seen together in public as little as we could. We’d do our own recces, only get together for the job, whatever that was, then leave separately for the airport the next day.

Our return flight to Istanbul was at 10 a.m., but it didn’t matter if we missed it. There were flights within the following couple of hours to Vienna or Moscow. That at least guaranteed an exit from Georgia, and once we were clear, we could sort ourselves out for a plane back to Australia.

I could see if Silky was still talking to me, and he could go and die.

Room 106 had a Do Not Disturb sign on the door handle, in Russian, English and Paperclip. I gave a knock and stepped back so the silly old fucker could see me through the spyhole.

The door opened and a very smiley Charlie let me in. He’d gone for the oilman look, complete with a scuffed-up pair of US desert combat boots. The only thing missing was the green flowery logo.

He looked me up and down. ‘Making an effort to blend in, I see? You look like those blocks of flats on the way in.’

The curtains were drawn; all the lights were on. The laptop was rigged up on the small desk by the window. A town map was spread out on the bed, unmarked. Alongside was a collection of improvised picks and tension wrenches. I sat on the edge of the mattress and picked up one of the lengths of coat-hanger wire. It had a two-inch shaft, then a right-angle bend; the other end had been twisted into a circle.

‘You already done the locks recce for this little job of yours?’

‘I could see everything from the video.’ He went and sat in front of the laptop and pushed the memory stick into the USB port. ‘Have a look.’ He freeze-framed on a shot of the large double steel gates. ‘See? Piece of piss. It’ll take me about ten seconds.’

He was right. It was just a lever lock. It would be easy to defeat, even without a recce. At least that would get us into the yard and out of view.

‘What happens when you’re inside? You still haven’t told me.’

He flipped down the screen and looked at me. ‘It’s a covert CTR [close target recce]. I — hopefully we — have to open a safe and nick whatever documents are there, lock everything up again, and drop the stuff in a dead letter box. Old Baz will never know; we’ll be in and out without leaving a fart print.’

He paused.

‘It’ll be like being over the water again, eh?’

True; we’d done enough covert CTRs of PIRA houses, looking for weapons or explosives, or putting in listening devices, to fill the housebreaker’s handbook. But this was different. ‘It sounds like a lot of cash for just a bit of nicking. You know where — and what sort — the safe is?’

Charlie couldn’t help smiling. ‘Nope, and it doesn’t matter. Even a dickhead like you knows that locks are designed to be opened. Besides, why do you think I’m being paid so much?’

I stood up. ‘Do you know what you’re lifting?’

‘Nope. Just anything inside the safe, handwritten or printed.’

‘You know why it has to be lifted covertly? Why not just get a local lad to blow the thing up?’

‘Don’t know, don’t care. Could be one of a thousand reasons.’

‘He live alone?’

‘Yep, all on his lonesome, in that big old house. What a waste.’

‘You know what this Baz guy has done, or what he’s about to do?’

Charlie knew I’d be hitting him with questions like this for hours if he didn’t shut me up. ‘Take a breath, lad. Everything’s in hand. I’ll be finding out all I need to when old Whitewall turns up at nine. He’ll have to tell me; it’s too near the witching hour for him to fuck me about, and I won’t do the job if he doesn’t tell me the reason why.’

‘What’s he coming here for?’

‘I gave him a kit list in Istanbul.’

Charlie went through it all: fibre-optic equipment; big holdall of pick gear to cover all the safe options; all the other tiny details that never leave the expert’s mind.

Charlie was grinning like an idiot. He loved talking work stuff; it was like he’d been let out of the paddock. ‘Why the long face, lad? I know it’s about two donkeys’ worth of kit, but we need it to cover all eventualities, not to mention our arse.’

I was listening, but just now the kit was unimportant. ‘It’s your arse I’m worried about. And mine. Charlie, you know fuck all. You could land up in a world of shit, mate. You could get thrown away with the rubbish once this job’s done.’

6

‘I know it’s risky. That’s why I want you to come. I’m thinking if the wheels start to fall off you’ll be there to help put them back on. But I’ll know more about the job after nine…’

I didn’t answer; I wanted him to work and I wanted to know more about Whitewall and Baz, and why he needed to steal documents from a safe.

‘Look, I’ve already started to protect myself, and FedEx’d the first tape of the fat one to Hazel. I told her not to open it, just keep it safe. There’s fuck all on it, but at least it’s a start.’ He got up and headed for the brew kit above the minibar. ‘It’s all right, Nick, really.’ He pointed at the bed. ‘Park your arse and I’ll make us a nice cup of tea.’ He sounded like somebody’s granddad. Which of course he was.

I moved the map out of the way and sat down again. My face felt hot. What was I so worried about — the job, or his safety? I couldn’t work it out.

The little plastic kettle started to bubble. Charlie had his back to me. ‘So, lad. You with me?’

He ripped open a couple of sachets and dropped the teabags into two tiny coffee cups. We weren’t going to get much of a brew out of them. ‘Just like old times, eh?’

‘No, Charlie, it’s not like old times. We’re using our own passports. We don’t know what the fuck we’re heading into. We are not in control of the job.’ I stared at his back. ‘I’m not doing it unless we know more…’

I tailed off, exasperated. ‘What the fuck am I saying we for?’

Charlie liked that one. His shoulders shook so much it looked like he was chuckling with his whole body.

He calmed down after a minute or two and had another go at digging into the milk tubs with the back of a spoon. ‘You think I don’t know all that stuff? It’s why I need you here, lad, like I said. To ride shotgun.’

He turned and handed me the brew.

‘What do you say?’ His eyes had turned a bit liquid, and I wasn’t sure it was just because of the laughter. ‘Piece of piss if we’re two up…’

I took a sip of the weakest tea I’d ever tasted. ‘What’s his name again?’

‘Zurab Baz-your-father. Something like that.’

‘For fuck’s sake, you don’t even know his name. You on drugs or something?’

‘Hang on, I remember. It’s Bazgadze. But his name doesn’t matter, does it? I know where he lives and it’s not as if we’re going to see him. We do the recces today and get on with it tonight. Then we’re gone. I’ll even pick up a nice bottle of duty-free, to take home for Hazel. Do you know this country invented wine?’

I moved the map so I could stretch out, and dumped the tea on the bedside table. ‘How was she?’

‘A bit scratchy, but she knows you’re with me.’ He was all smiles again. ‘Silky was out riding with Julie.’

I realized I was smiling too. It had only been a few days, but I was missing her. I’d got used to being around her. It was certainly a lot more fun hanging out with her than with this old fucker.

Charlie had touched a nerve and he knew it. ‘If you like, you can even get back into Hazel’s good books by saying you’re dragging me back, we’re not even doing the job. What do you reckon?’ He thumbed the number into his cell. ‘Go on, give her a ring.’ He threw it on the bed. ‘I told her you’d try and talk me out of it anyway.’

I left the cell where it landed. ‘What if we can’t get in tonight? There a Plan B?’

‘Nope. Now or never. Go on, give her a call.’

He gave up his own attempts to drink the undrinkable. ‘I’m staying, lad. I’ve got no choice. She thinks we’re still in Turkey, by the way. Tell her you’re bringing me back tomorrow.’ The smile had gone. This was serious. ‘Please.’

I picked it up and hit the call button. It took an age before the ring tone started, but it got lifted after just one ring.

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s Nick.’

‘When’s your flight? Do you want us to meet you at the airport?’

‘Tomorrow. He’s seen sense at last.’

‘Thank you so much, Nick.’ I didn’t think I’d ever heard anyone sound so relieved. ‘Thank you, thank you. When are you getting in?’

‘It’s going to depend if there’s direct flights out of Istanbul. It’s a nightmare. Is Silky there?’

I heard Hazel’s muffled reply, then Silky’s voice. ‘I’m missing you, Nick Stein. You’re coming back tomorrow?’

‘Um, listen, we’re on a cell, it’s costing a bomb. I’ll call you when we get a flight, OK?’

‘OK.’

‘And Silky?’

‘What?’

‘I miss you too, box-head.’

I cut the phone and threw it back on the bed. ‘Thank fuck this isn’t a video phone.’

‘You don’t want her to see you looking miserable?’

‘No, I don’t want her to see this jumper.’

I picked up the map. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘How the fuck are we going to crack this, then?’

7

The sky was heavy and grey and busy slicing off the tops of the hills. Cars splashed their way through puddles the size of tennis courts. The pavement glistened round the bus stop where I sat waiting for Whitewall to show up. It was going to be a horribly muggy day.

I was across the road from the hotel, keeping trigger on the entrance. The plan was that I’d give Charlie early warning of any ‘possible’ going in. The camcorder was rigged up in his room to record the handover of kit, and his replies to Charlie’s questions. The tape would become a major part of our security blanket if the wheels did come off. We’d cache it — along with anything else we’d been able to get our hands on — and make sure that Crazy Dave knew we had a few shots in the locker to keep Whitewall or whoever from fucking us about.

I was right next to the front window of a gun shop. Punters waiting for their buses could check out an almost endless display of shotguns, rifles and chrome-plated pistols to meet their every need. I had already seen a couple of guys walk past with shoulder holsters over their sweatshirts, and they weren’t using them to carry their deodorant. The sweatshirts were black, of course. In Georgia, black was the new black. The men mostly wore black leather over black. Every one of them over the age of thirty looked like he’d just spent the night standing outside Tbilisi’s answer to Spearmint Rhino, fucking people off.

The streets leading uphill from the main drag all looked like they hadn’t seen a lick of tarmac since the time of that bumper harvest. There were more potholes than there were Ladas to fall into them, and the pavements had crumbled so badly there was no longer any kerb.

Hordes of scabby-looking dogs were all set to spend the day chasing bits of swirling garbage in the wind. There was enough rubbish on the ground and enough fading plastic bags caught in the trees to form a fourth hill which would enclose the city completely.

Another ten minutes went by. Except for the gun shop and the odd mobile phone store and café, the main drag seemed to be lined with bookstores. As I watched the old, bunker-shaped Russian trucks jockeying for space along the boulevard with streams of brand new Volvos and Mercs, I realized there were no traffic lights. Come to think of it, we hadn’t driven through a single one all the way from the airport. Either the drivers were very polite here, or no-one would have taken a blind bit of notice.

Just before nine o’clock, a two-tone Mitsubishi Pajero 4x4, silver bottom, dark blue top, pulled up outside the hotel. It was three up. Even from this distance I could see that the passenger in the rear was the size of a small tank. He waddled out onto the pavement, opened the back door and took out a large, light-coloured bag, then disappeared through the glass doors. The driver kept the Pajero static. There had been quite a few limos and 4x4s picking people up and dropping them off, but this felt like Whitewall.

I hit my cell phone. The SOP [standard operating procedure] for this job was to leave nothing but Charlie’s number as the last call, and I was only doing that in case I forgot it. ‘Got a possible carrying two donkeys’ worth.’

I decided to dice with death while I waited for the possible Whitewall to re-emerge, and crossed the road to get a better view of the two up front. They were side on and directly in front of me as I slalomed across the final stretch. The two boys were straight from Thick Bouncers central casting. Mid-thirties, lots of black leather. Both were clean-shaven and bald-headed, and the driver had perfectly manicured hands draped over the wheel and a pair of black-framed gigs.

The plate was pressed steel, white background, black letters before the numbers 960: a local registration, not military or diplomatic. The engine was still running, so the rear passenger obviously wasn’t intending to be inside for long.

I felt the phone vibrate in my jeans pocket. I took the first option right to get me out of line of sight and hit the green.

‘He’s on his way down, lad. See you in ten.’

8

Charlie took the tape out of the camcorder. He was already gloved up.

The CTR kit was laid out on the bed, alongside a navy-blue canvas satchel the size of Imelda Marcos’s shoe bag for us to carry it all in. He needn’t have bothered improvising his own lever-lock wrenches; it looked like Whitewall had delivered one of every type ever manufactured.

‘Whitewall had two local slapheads in tow. Mafia or oil? Makes you think, doesn’t it?’

‘Might do, if I did bother to think about it. But I’m not going to, lad. It gives me a headache.’

‘Fair one.’

I took a pair of rubber gloves from the bed and started to put them on. If Whitewall or his slap-heads had left DNA or prints on the kit, that was up to them, but I wanted it to remain sterile of Charlie and me.

‘Come on then, old man. How did it go?’

‘I told him I wouldn’t do the job unless I knew what was happening. So he talked me through it while I gloved up and pulled out the bits of kit one by one in front of him.’

There was everything a budding burglar could wish for, from lock picks, rakes and tension wrenches to mini-Maglites, a keyring torch, and rubber door wedges, but one particular bit of kit was missing. ‘Where’s the weapon, mate? Every man and his dog here has got one.’

‘Not needed. Like I said — in and out without leaving a fart print.’

He picked up the fibre-optic gear and worked the cable so that the end of it wriggled like a worm. ‘Seems our man Baz has got his grubby little fingers in just about every pie within reach. He’s in with the militants up north, and he’s taking backhanders from the Russians. Both groups want to sabotage the pipeline, which not only fucks up the supply but also puts the lives of Yank and Brit construction workers at risk.

‘Whitewall wants to knock all that firmly on the head, but first he needs to know what Baz has got tucked away in that safe of his — you know the sort of thing: who’s on the take; who’s got the Semtex hidden under their bed, and so on. Once he’s got all that int in his hot little hand, he — and I guess that means the US government, meaning the oil companies, now you got me thinking — can go to the Georgians’ top bollocks and bubble him. The appropriate authorities can swing into action and bingo, everyone can have a love fest.’

He turned and looked me in the eye. This time he wasn’t smiling. ‘Now, you happy with that? You can see the tape if you want.’

I shook my head. No need. ‘Not if you believe him.’

‘Makes sense to me. Not that it matters, either way. As I said, lad, I’m still going to do it. If those hairy-arsed militants start hitting the pipeline, people will get killed. The contractors know the risks; they’re well paid for it. But the other poor bastards don’t — the ones who’ll be guarding the fucking thing…’

I remembered the fresh-faced kids from the recruiting commercial. And then I understood. ‘I guess they’d be about Steven’s age…’

‘You’re not wrong, mate. Good lads getting fucked over; it’s the same in any language. Who knows? Maybe I can save some other parents from the nightmare Hazel and I have been through. It’s not why I’m doing this, but it would be a fuck of a bonus.’

His face lost all expression as he thought for a moment about his boy, but he managed to cut away from the feeling almost as quickly as it had come. I knew that process all too well. I always hoped it would get better with practice.

The creases in his face returned. ‘Actually, fuck the money, I should be getting a Georgian MBE for this! You want one?’

‘Whatever’s going,’ I said. ‘What’s the plan?’

‘Two options. Whitewall says Baz’ll be out the house until Sunday morning. He’s off to some national park to kiss babies, or whatever the fuck you do to win votes in this neck of the woods. So we have to go in as soon as we can tonight, and find and attack the safe. We lift whatever’s inside, close up again behind us, and go and catch the morning flight.’

‘What about the DLB? Where are we dropping the stuff?’

He’d forgotten about the DLB, I could see it. ‘Didn’t I tell you? A cemetery, about ten minutes from the house. Whatever we find goes into a plastic bag and inside a stone bench, next to someone called Tengiz. It’s no problem, he’s buried just past the main gate.’ His look changed from silly grin to friendly smile. ‘Lighten up! Just because I’m not frowning as hard as you are, doesn’t mean I’m not working.’

He opened up the map.

‘Anything else you might have forgotten to tell me, you silly old fucker? What about Plan B? You said you had two options.’

He looked slightly sheepish. ‘Plan B doesn’t exist, lad. I thought it’d sound better if we seemed to have a few options to play with.’ He liked that one. His smile was as wide as the Mtkvari, but it was clear he was still trying to recover from his fuck-up.

‘Tell you what, Charlie. Why don’t I go and do my walk-past now? You can spend some time sorting yourself out with this shit.’ It was a gentle reminder that he needed to check everything on the bed was working before his walk-past. ‘We’ll RV in the cemetery and find this DLB. Then we’ll split, and come back here for the brief.’

I nodded at the tape next to the TV. ‘What’s the plan with that? Tell you what’ — I picked up the tape and shoved it inside my jacket — ‘I’ll take it. You’ve got enough shit to carry.’

I did up my jacket. ‘You positive you want to go through with this?’

The smile vanished. He was going to give me a bollocking. I put my hands up. ‘I know, I know. This will be the last time, promise. I just want to make sure your senile fucking brain has taken all the risks on board.’

He toyed with the pick set. ‘It’s got to be done.’ He tried to extract one of the picks from its retainer but seemed to find it difficult. He dumped it quickly on the bed before he thought I’d had a chance to notice.

I turned to go, but got called back. ‘Oi, shit for brains — let’s see if anything’s rubbed off during my years of painstaking tuition. One: Whitewall couldn’t find out Baz’s date of birth — can you? And two: we need five or six towels and a couple of extinguisher inners for tonight…’

I nodded and turned back towards the door.

‘And make sure you nick them from the penthouse floor. If there’s a fire, the posh fuckers can burn…’