Aggressor

1

I came out of the hotel and turned right along the main drag, checking the town map I’d got from the front desk. Everyone else on the street was either a local draped in black or a Westerner in regulation Gore-Tex jacket, polo shirt and Rohan trousers. It had certainly been dress of the day in the Marriott. The reception was full of them emerging for breakfast; the café was a sea of Outward Bound.

I followed the main drag, paralleling the river somewhere to my right. It was 11.26 and a lot busier now as I passed the spruced-up opera house, theatres, museums and parliament. They were beautiful buildings, hailing from an era before Joe Stalin turned up with a few million truckloads of ready-mix. I couldn’t understand it: from what I’d read there were still a few statues to him left standing, and plenty of old Soviets who rated him their greatest ever leader — pretty scary considering he’d massacred a million or so of his devoted comrades.

Above me, just before the cloud cut off the sky, was a telecoms mast the size of the Eiffel Tower, beaming out pictures of US flags and smiling Russian housewives 24/7.

There were quite a few locals out and about at this time of the day, and I definitely wasn’t the grey man. I didn’t have the sort of skin that tanned in five seconds like theirs did, my hair wasn’t black and my eyes were blue. I was blending in like Santa in the Congo. People were looking at me as if they all had come to the conclusion that I must be a spy, or there to do any number of bad things to them.

A police blue and white Passat cruised past. The two guys inside had AKs on the back seat. They both looked me up and down before the driver gobbed off to his mate about the weirdo. Fuck ’em, I’d be out of here soon enough. Besides, they were probably just jealous of my jumper.

All the same, I was beginning to feel more worried about this job — or, more truthfully, about Charlie. Which probably meant I was a little worried about me, for being stupid enough to go along with him. I couldn’t quite work out how he could rattle off the kit list, yet forget about the DLB…

Then I thought, fuck it, so what? I’d see this through. Charlie needed me. He was all that mattered. He might have disco hands and have difficulty remembering what the fuck he was up to, but at least he was still here. Every other friend I’d ever had, whether we’d still been at the embryonic stage or reached the point where we were wearing each other’s clothes, was dead.

I was doing this for Charlie; he was doing it for Hazel. I couldn’t let him down. He was in the hotel at the moment, probably flapping a bit about whether or not I’d noticed that there were times when he couldn’t even pick his own nose. Maybe he was flapping big time, not knowing if he was going to be able to keep his shit together long enough to see the job through. The thing he most needed right now was to know that he could depend on me, and that made me feel good.

Maybe I’d also be doing my bit to save a young squaddie or two on the pipeline. I’d seen what happened to a family when their much-loved son was zapped, and I realized I didn’t like it one bit.

I had a shrewd suspicion that I was really trying to concentrate hard enough on Steven and Hazel to allow me to avoid thinking about Kelly and me, but I just didn’t have the bollocks to admit it to myself. So I thought of Silky instead and that felt much better. I knew I’d rather be on a beach with her than fucking about in a Georgian politician’s backyard.

I crossed the road and passed an English bookshop/café/internet joint. A high-pitched American female voice screeched through the open door: ‘Oh-my-God… that-is-sooo-cool.’ I made a note to give the place a miss.

I felt myself smiling. The fact was: I missed Silky. Months of sitting on a psychiatrist’s couch hadn’t cleared my head anywhere near as effectively as bumming around for a few months with a freewheeling, freethinking box-head.

Maybe I’d just get back to her and crisscross the continent in that van for years to come. Maybe this job would be my swansong as well.

I passed the city’s newest landmark. No doubt about it, the new McDonald’s was the glossiest, brightest building on the main drag. Its brown marble walls were extra shiny this morning after their coating of rain. New converts lined up with their kids for a Georgian McBrunch.

There weren’t too many Ladas parked up outside. Being the new thing in town, it was the domain of dark-windowed Mercs, and even a Porsche 4x4. You didn’t get cars like that by working for a living in this part of the world. Their drivers-cum-bodyguards were gathered under a nearby tree, dragging on Marlboros and pausing occasionally to flick ash off their obligatory black leather sleeves.

An old man in an even older black suit jacket pointed at parking spaces with a small wooden truncheon, as more shiny cars full of rich kids came to stuff their faces with American imperialistic calories. I was even thinking about getting supersized myself.

It wouldn’t be long now before I turned off the main; it was easy to tell because McD’s was featured big-time on the map. Just as well, because I couldn’t read the street names in Russian and Paperclip.

My plan was simple. If possible, I would do a full 360 of the target house, until I’d seen as much of it as I possibly could. My priorities were defences and escape routes. That was if I didn’t get picked up by one of the VW blue-and-whites. They buzzed around the city like flies, or just sat there, lurking in lines of parked cars while their passengers watched and smoked.

I turned left on the second junction and walked uphill into a swathe of narrow roads and cramped houses that hadn’t had their wash and brush-up. Suddenly I was in the real Tbilisi, the part that was poor and decaying, and I realized that I felt at home in it, away from the land of fresh paint and shiny new tarmac.

Small bakers sold bread and cakes from a hole in the wall. Cars swerved round potholes and pedestrians who’d stepped into the road to avoid craters in the pavement. Abandoned vehicles and bulging bin bags littered the kerbs. Maybe it was garbage day. Or maybe it was just a hangover from the communist era: the belief that anything inside your four walls was your responsibility while anything outside was the state’s had come hand in hand with the hammer and sickle.

It was easy enough finding the house numbers; they were stuck to the wall on two-foot-square plastic panels that also carried the street name in Paperclip and Russian. It felt like another depressingly uniform throwback to the old days, but I guessed at least it meant the postman wasn’t going to make a mistake with the Christmas cards — unless you lived in one of the fancier places. They seemed not to have to advertise themselves.

Electric cables ran in every conceivable direction above my head, emerging from what looked like home-made junction boxes stuck on trees. Maybe they were; when the electricity supply is as erratic as it was here, people will always come up with ways of making sure they get their share. Rainwater dripped from gutter pipes that disgorged their contents straight into the street. I was starting to get an uncomfortable film of sweat down my back as I climbed.

I carried on uphill, the sweat now flowing freely. After navigating three crossroad junctions I got to what I hoped was Barnov Street. The target house was along here, on the left somewhere.

Old, once-elegant buildings stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the odd modern lump of glass and steel. Without exception, they were protected by high walls, some plastered and painted, some just rough concrete blocks.

I passed the French and Chinese embassies. A small hut stood outside each of them, complete with bored-looking security guard reading the morning paper. Despite appearances, and the holes in the road, this was obviously the upscale end of town.

Ladas weren’t the limo of choice up here, either. The only badges I’d seen blocking the narrow pavement in the last few minutes were VW and Mercedes. But strangely, not many of the drivers were wearing black. A lurid Hawaiian number went past in a Saab, smoking a cigar and shouting into his mobile, but still finding the time to check his slicked-back hair in the rearview. He didn’t look like he was en route to an ambassadorial reception.

This had to be mafia land. Good for them, but not good for Charlie and me. There was going to be an unhealthy amount of protection around this neighbourhood.

2

I didn’t know its number, but I could tell I was at the target house from what I remembered of the bag-fit video footage.

The top of the ten-foot-high wall glistened with broken glass. Not a problem to climb over if we had to, just a little bit time-consuming. And I was right, no number boards for the posh houses up here.

I passed the rusty sheet-steel gates on my left. So far I hadn’t seen any more on this recce than the film had shown me, except some fresh Paperclip and Russian graffiti had been daubed on the gates. The keyhole was a simple three-lever device that Charlie’s bits and pieces would defeat in seconds.

I caught a glimpse of a blue vehicle in the gap between the gates. There were two inches of clearance at the bottom, and a bolt at the base of each was rammed into the ground on the inside. Unless there was another exit, chances were Baz was at home.

The high wall continued for about three or four metres before it turned left at the junction. I followed it, and immediately saw that I still wasn’t going to learn any more about the target than I already knew.

On the other side of the road was a nightclub/ restaurant/bar called the Primorski. The neon was dead, but pictures outside its big black doors showed dancing girls straight out of Las Vegas, feathers in their hair and hardly any other kit on.

The rendered wall gave way after a few metres to bare concrete blocks, before turning once more onto a new road. I didn’t follow it left. A blue-and-white was parked up. I headed right instead, towards the cemetery. In any case, Charlie would be coming up that parallel road and would see exactly what I could from where I stood: that the crumbling buildings were crammed together so tightly, the target might as well be a terraced house with another row behind it.

If we fucked up and needed to do a runner, the easiest escape route was going to be up onto the high ground, towards the telecoms mast. There was no habitation up there. We might even be able to move along the higher ground under cover of darkness until we got level with the Marriott, and then down to get a taxi for the airport.

I now had to check the cemetery DLB, which was up on the higher ground ahead. We might even be able to see inside the target’s yard from there. I walked past a parade of shops that seemed to sell nothing but shoes. I texted Charlie: Bring binos.

I got back an OK, deleted it, and headed up the road.

The very last shop sold food. I stopped and bought a bottle of water. It was the same stuff as they had in the Marriott minibar and on top of the TV, the pride of Georgia.

At least Charlie had remembered one thing correctly. The cemetery really was no more than ten minutes away, and it was simple to find. All I had to do was follow the old folks hobbling there on their sticks, against the flow of a funeral procession heading home.

Cars that looked more abandoned than parked filled a large open area of hard-packed mud on the opposite side of the road. Maybe they were waiting to fill up at the brand new, jazzily lit petrol station to the right, so freshly opened the concrete forecourt was still white. I entered the cemetery through a knackered iron gate attached to the remains of a broken-down wall and ran the gauntlet of the dozen old women selling flowers and long skinny candles.

The cemetery itself was as busy as a mall, and unlike anything I was used to in the West. Instead of neat lines of headstones, this place was a labyrinth of large family burial areas, each fenced off with wrought iron or low brick walls.

Men and women sat chatting away to each other, cradling flasks of tea or coffee, at tables fixed to the ground close by the graves. One old guy was drunk, even this early in the day, and ranted at one of the stones. I had the feeling he was getting his own back for a lifetime of nagging.

Water taps were sited every twenty metres or so along the central path, and people were either washing out their cups or refilling vases at most of them.

A woman sitting at a table full of candles tried to sell me a few when she saw me empty-handed, but I kept on walking, keeping to the central path. The most luxurious areas, I noticed, were immediately adjacent to the pathway. You obviously paid a premium in this country to keep your shoes clean. Off the pathway, people had to squeeze between other family plots to get to their own. One had a glass-covered oil painting of a dancing clown set into it. A fine, black granular substance was spread on the ground between the plots, and it obviously worked. There wasn’t a weed in sight.

I tried to look like I was doing the same as everyone else, browsing at other people’s tombstones as I made my way slowly to my family plot. I was looking for Tengiz’s final resting place. All Charlie had been told was that it was along the main path. I had no idea if I was looking for a man or a woman, not that it was going to matter. We’d be fucked either way if the inscription was in Paperclip.

Our luck was holding. I came to a large black marble headstone in a square plot covered with white stone chippings, cordoned off by a newly painted white wrought-iron fence about two feet high. I saw now why Whitewall had chosen it. Engraved portraits of four defiant-looking men stared out at me, with the single English word Tengiz chiselled beneath a whole load of Russian and Paperclip.

There was a black marble two-seater bench with a solid-looking base, and a rusting, galvanized rubbish bin, full of dead flowers, set off the pathway to one side. If it was left there permanently, I’d use it as a marker.

A line of women were sitting by the next plot, knitting and chewing sunflower seeds. They were gobbing off at warp speed, and there was a fair amount of tutting and eyes raised to the clouds as I passed. I wondered if it had anything to do with the jumper.

I checked the rest of the main path just in case there were another five Tengiz plots to choose from, but there weren’t. It was time to see if there was a vantage point up here from where I could look down into the target yard. If there wasn’t, we’d be going in blind.

I spotted a place, right on the edge of the cemetery, where a lone wooden bench faced out over the ghetto. There was a sheer drop of about twenty feet down to the road below; the main gate would be along the road to the left somewhere. To get there, I had to pass rows and rows of quite recently installed headstones, each engraved with a picture of a young man or woman who seemed to have died in 1956. It looked as though, after the fall of communism, the bereaved had at last had a chance to commemorate some of Stalin’s million or so victims.

I reached the bench and sat down. All I had to do now was try and work out which house belonged to Baz.

I called Charlie, who was still shopping for binoculars. ‘I’ve found a possible on the path. We just need to check that the block supporting the slab isn’t solid, otherwise I’ve got the wrong one. If you follow the perimeter left from the main, mate, I’m up on the high ground.’

3

Charlie joined me on the bench about twenty minutes later. By then, I had worked out where the target was, and could just about make out the blue vehicle in the yard and most of the front of the house that faced the yard, and us. There was a front door with a window each side and another two directly above them on the first floor. But from this distance, we’d need binos to see any detail.

He had a carrier bag in his hand. ‘Fucking hell, I thought graveyards were supposed to be havens of tranquillity. It’s like a fairground here.’

‘What do you reckon on the DLB, old one?’

‘The four guys eyeballing God by the flower bin? It’s got to be the one. The bench support is a square of four sections. It’s got to be hollow inside. Anyway, I’ll find out tonight, won’t I?

‘I picked up a comic for you at the hotel. Something to keep you occupied while I do all the work.’ He fished a newspaper out of the bag, followed by a pair of green miniature binos, still in their packaging.

It was the Georgian Times, an English-language weekly that came out on Mondays. I studied the front page as he unpeeled the binos.

George Bush was to visit Tbilisi on 10 May, on his way back from the VE Day celebrations in Moscow. TBILISI IN ANTICIPATION OF GREAT VISIT, yelled the headline. Then: TBILISI LOOKS LIKE A PARROT.

It seemed the locals were honking about the yellows and pinks being splashed all over buildings to cover the grime.

‘It all makes sense now. Dubya on his way, new tarmac roads. I bet he’s like the Queen, thinks the whole world smells of fresh paint and floor polish.’

Charlie snorted with laughter. ‘Thought you’d like it. Maybe the rush on this job has something to do with his visit. You know, sort out any local difficulties before the main man shows up.’ He shifted the binos up to his face and got busy focusing them.

I flicked through the rest of the paper. It didn’t seem to go a bundle on world news. Most of the spreads were devoted to groups of smiling people shaking hands outside some local company’s HQ, with a caption saying wonderful things about partnership in enterprise, and the importance of spreading the message of Georgian business worldwide. One small article announced that the government had demanded yet again that the Russians pull back their forces. But yet again the Russian answer was yeah, yeah, like we said, wait until 2008 — or words to that effect.

I scanned the rest of the page. ‘Hot pipeline news,’ I said. ‘Says here it’s coming in on time. It’ll start pumping by the end of May.’

‘Not my cup of tea, lad.’ The binos were lined up on the target. ‘I went straight to page three. Check it out — lovely pair of peaks.’

I turned back. ‘Oh yeah, good one.’ I was looking at a picture of the hills of Borjomi National Park. ‘That’s where the water comes from.’ I read the piece more closely. ‘Oh dear, seems somebody’s fucked up. The pipeline goes straight through here, and a fuck sight too close to the natural springs. Georgia’s biggest export will be history if there’s a landslide and the pipeline fractures. There’s shit on in the government. “Pressure groups demanding an inquiry,” it says here. The World Wildlife Fund are leaping up and down. There’s all sorts going on. Did you find the horoscopes?’

Charlie was still studying the target. ‘Fuck, Nick.’ The binoculars trembled in his hands. ‘Looks like there’s proximity lighting — and a couple of cameras covering the inside of the courtyard. Here, what do you think?’

I swapped him the paper for the binos. A group of old women passed behind us, each with a burning candle in one hand and a bunch of flowers in the other. They were all dressed in black and bundled up in headscarves.

I looked down at the house.

‘That his Audi?’

‘Yep, blue and in shit state. I even have the plate for later on. If he’s on the take like Whitewall says, you’d think he could afford a decent motor.’

He was right about the lighting; the corner nearest us had CCTV and arc lights mounted on both front corners of the house. Under each arc light was a black plastic cylinder that we’d have to assume was a proximity detector. We hadn’t seen any of it during the walk-pasts because they were at first-floor level, hidden by the wall.

One camera on the right-hand corner was angled in the direction of the gate and another covered the side of the house, aiming towards the rear, just like the camera on the left-hand corner. There’d be another one at the back, no doubt. I studied the gates.

‘I still think the bolts are manual.’ I lowered the binos. ‘Did you see them on your walk-past?’

‘No. What do you reckon about the two outhouses?’

The binos went back up. The only windows that would get any light into the ground floor would be the ones by the front door. There was a gap of no more than two metres between the wall and the house at the sides and rear. Maybe the building had originally had a fence and no neighbours.

Two small brick outbuildings faced the house, about ten metres across the cracked concrete courtyard. If we came in through the gate, they’d be down to our right, the Audi dead ahead and the front door to our left. ‘Good place to hide while we sort our shit out? If he’s in, at least we’d have somewhere to sit and think.’

The front of the house was flat. Three steps led up to a recessed porch. The door was solid natural-coloured wood, with two lever locks on the right, one a third of the way up, the second a third of the way down, and a handle in the middle. From this distance I couldn’t tell if the handle also had a lock. The floor was lined with cracked, blood-red quarry tiles and a coir mat.

I felt a few specks of rain on my face. Mist was rolling in from the other side of the city. Three young guys walked past. They had their hoods up on their multicoloured nylon shell suits, and they were trying hard not to look furtive, but failing.

Charlie grinned. ‘Looking for somewhere to try out a bit of home-grown poppy from the north, I fancy.’ He wiped the moisture from his cheek. ‘So the house — piece of piss, or what?’

‘Don’t know yet. I need to give it some thought once we get back to the hotel. You?’

‘Easy. Chances are, any motion detectors down there are just for the lights, maybe they even kick off the CCTV as well. Why rig them up to the alarms? They’d go off every time a bat flew past. Poor Baz’d be up all night, wouldn’t he?’ He took the binos from me. ‘Know what, lad? I think we should just go for it. Street lighting is shite. Through the gates, do the old anti-detector crawl, up to the main door. I’ll get that open, do the business, and then we’ll get our arses up here and DLB the lot. Then it’s back to the hotel in time for breakfast. A nice early one, mind, because I’ve got a very important appointment with Air Georgia.’ He brought down the binos and grinned at me. ‘That sound like a plan?’

‘Sounds like a fucking nightmare.’

He pulled open his jacket and shoved the binos inside. ‘Give me a few. I can walk past that nightclub for any escape routes round the side.’

I picked up the paper again. ‘OK, I’ll follow in fifteen.’

Charlie stood up and rested his hand on my shoulder. ‘Listen, lad, I want to say thank you…’ He paused, and seemed to have difficulty swallowing. ‘For a while there I thought you weren’t coming. That worried me. I really do need your help, so thanks.’

I didn’t know what to do. My head sort of froze. Fucking hell, what was he going to do next? Kiss me? ‘I hope you remember the way back, you silly old fucker…’

Charlie smiled; he knew it was just a bit too much for me. Man to man, my comfort zone with emotions didn’t extend much further than the message on his glass tankard.

‘Maybe, maybe not. If I get lost, I’ll ask a nice policeman. Fucking enough of them about, aren’t there?’

He walked away and I instantly regretted not telling him how I felt. He was my friend, and of course I would never have left him. But that was another of my many problems. I only ever knew what to say after the event.

I looked at the paper for another ten minutes, my mind full of what-ifs. What if Baz was in the house? What if he met us as we were trying to go up the hallway? What if there wasn’t even a safe?

To me, three hours of planning for three minutes’ work was always time well spent. But maybe Charlie was right. What was I worried about? We would go through the plan, and all the what-ifs, at the hotel.

I found myself thinking of Silky again, and concentrated hard on all the positive stuff. It took about another five minutes to realize it wasn’t working. Try as I might, I couldn’t overcome my biggest concern: that Charlie might forget what the plan was once we were on target.

I got up from the bench and started walking down the slope, past row upon row of the young smiling faces of the 1956 dead. They all looked about the same age as Steven was, when he, too, became a good lad fucked over.

4

The rain had stopped, and there were even a few stars pushing their way through the breaks in the cloud.

I made my way past the opera house, taking the same route as earlier. It was my job to clear the area from the direction of the hotel; Charlie was doing the same from the other side of the Primorski.

The streets and pavements were still busy, even half an hour before midnight. Most of the shop lights were on, and McD’s was heaving. I’d hoped Tbilisi wasn’t a city for late-night people so our life would be easier, but no such luck.

I’d left the hotel at about 8.30, after asking the concierge for a couple of suggestions for places to eat. It sounded perfectly normal, as the hotel was jammed with the Gore-Tex version of the UN. The BP Georgia conference had ended and the restaurant and bar boasted even more European languages than polo shirts.

Not that I was in any position to take the piss. Charlie had been in charge of buying us both some oilman kit to change into for the flight. We’d be getting wet and shitty later on, trying to make entry, so would need to smarten up a bit before we exited the country. I had a rather fetching blue sweatshirt with matching Rohan trousers and a slightly padded khaki jacket to come home to. With that on tomorrow, I should be close to invisible.

I had checked that the screechy American had left Prospero Books, the English bookshop, café and internet place, and went and logged on with a hot chocolate and sticky bun. It seemed to be a general meeting place for Brit and US expats working on the pipeline, and at their respective embassies. Or it might just have been the only joint around that had its own generator, so when the power failed they could stay online.

My first big question for Google was Baz’s date of birth. With luck there’d be a list of Georgian politicians somewhere, with personal information; whatever, I’d just get in among the web and find it.

One approach to cracking the combination of a safe is to crack the psychology of the owner. Surprisingly often, combination locks are left on their factory settings — usually 100, 50, 100. I wasn’t too up on eastern bloc defaults, but Charlie would be.

If you bin the default and choose a new combination, chances are you’ll spend the whole time flapping in case you don’t remember it; it’s the same as it is with PIN numbers. So people tend to use numbers they know, like their birthday, car registration or phone. If they choose random numbers, they are almost certain to write them down somewhere. An address book is usually a good place to start looking.

It was easier than I could have hoped. The Georgian government had a website, and they published personal details. Baz was only forty-five; he was born on 22 October 1959. He must have had a hard life, though; his picture showed a balding man with a few wisps of grey hair, skinny as a rake. He could have done with a few of the sticky buns I was getting down my neck.

The small sign above every PC kindly reminded users that they must not erase their history. Maybe the shop had to hand a printout to the police every twenty-four hours, or perhaps they checked it after every user. Trying to cover up my history as comprehensively as possible, I wiped it clean then had a quick look at today’s helping of doom and gloom on CNN’s website.

Two junctions past McD’s, I took the left and headed uphill towards Barnov. The river was behind me, the big telecoms mast up to my half-left, its warning lights blinking red. The ambient glow from the main drag faded as I moved further into the residential area, and nothing much took its place apart from what spilled from behind curtains and the occasional car headlamp. Up here the street lighting wasn’t just poor, as it was around the target; it was non-existent.

My cell vibrated in my jeans pocket as a blue-and-white cruised downhill. I pulled it out and hit green.

‘All clear my side, and the obvious is pretty busy.’ He had cleared the road that paralleled the target street, leading to the obvious, the Primorski club, checking there hadn’t been a murder or anything that might persuade the blue-and-whites to pile in and block off the street. He’d said he wanted to be there fifteen minutes before me; team leader and all that. It wasn’t my place to argue; he was the mechanic; I was the oily rag.

Charlie was carrying all the MOE kit in the satchel, over his shoulders. All he needed to complete the mature student look was a roll-up and a woolly hat. To help me blend in, I’d bought myself a black Tbilisi Dynamo basketball cap. It also covered the black ski mask that was folded on top of my head, just in case we fucked up and kicked off any of the CCTV cameras we could see, or any that we couldn’t. So confident was he that I was going to stay, Charlie had bought it for me before I’d even got there.

I started to feel the trickle of sweat down my back once more as I made my final checks. I ran through my jeans pockets, just in case I’d inadvertently kept some loose change since leaving the bookshop, and made sure my clear rubber gloves were still there. It wasn’t as if they were going to jump ship on their own, but it made me feel better to check again that they had-n’t. Check and test, check and test; that was what this game was all about.

I had the gloves but no change; the charity box in the bookshop had done well out of my tradecraft skills. Everything else was in the room safe, and my entry card was shoved behind the toilet next to the hotel’s restaurant. Going on a job sterile was something that always felt uncomfortable to me. Not having my passport meant not having a means of escape. But if we got caught, we lost our passports and they knew who we were. This way, if we got caught and escaped, we still had a chance of making it out of the country. I also had $400 in cash rolled up in my jeans pocket. Not for any particular reason, it just made me feel a little better.

I made sure the mini-Maglite was in my bomber jacket’s left pocket. If I tested it any more, I’d run the battery flat. The heavy steel CO2 canister from one of the fire extinguishers was secure in my right. It was about nine inches long and as effective a truncheon as I could wish for.

Charlie had the other one I’d extracted from the pair of fire extinguishers I’d borrowed from the top floor of the Marriott. They were our make-like-burglars kit. If we did get compromised, the ‘actions on’ would be the same as we employed over the water: fight our way out and nick something, maybe even mug the person who compromised us.

I had a final look at my boot soles for stones, and after a quick jump up and down to check for noise and to make sure the canister wasn’t going to fall out, I was ready. I just wanted to get this over and done with and start listening to flight attendants with Australian accents as soon as possible.

5

The French and Chinese embassies were lit up like Christmas trees, and their guard huts leaked wailing, almost Arabic music. The odd set of headlights cruised up or down the street, but Barnov was mostly shrouded in darkness.

The target house was coming up on my left. No lights from the top windows. No neighbour’s windows lit that overlooked the gates or yard. So far so good.

I called Charlie. ‘Clear.’

‘Still clear this side. See you in two.’

The phone went dead and this time I’d memorized his number so I deleted it before powering down. Everything was now clear on the phone, not that it would mean much if we got lifted. They could still trace numbers in and out.

I watched the mature student coming downhill from the Primorski end. The street looked clear behind him. I had no idea what was going on behind me, but that didn’t matter. If Charlie saw a problem, he would just carry on walking when he got to the gate. Same for me. We would then do a complete circuit and come back and try again.

He got to the gates before me, unshouldered the satchel and placed it gently on the ground. A new layer of Paperclip graffiti had been sprayed on them since we’d been there earlier. At least it covered up the rust. He did one last check round, then dropped to his knees. I got my back against the left-hand gate and kept checking the area as I put on my rubber gloves.

Charlie was peering through the two-inch gap at the bottom. It must have been OK the other side. The Audi obviously wasn’t there, because he pulled his home-made tension wrenches from the satchel and got to work on the lock. Maybe it made him feel better to use his own kit rather than the one-stop-shop option that Whitewall had delivered. Who cared, as long as he got us into the yard in quick time?

There was the faintest scraping of metal against metal as he began to attack the lock. It really did feel like old times. I even had a moment of déjà vu, back to a time when we were operating over the water, doing a CTR together on a house in the Shantello estate in Derry. We were looking for a PIRA timing device that they planned to add to four pounds of Semtex and plant in a community centre on the other side of the river. A team in the Bogside, a couple of miles down the road, were watching a player and his wife who were out on the piss. Before closing time, in an hour, we had to try and get into their house, find the device and make sure it would never finish its job.

We got in through a back window, and the first objective was to clear all the rooms to make sure they hadn’t left kids asleep upstairs, or someone in the front room with headphones on listening to music.

We finally got to the attic landing. I climbed onto Charlie’s shoulders, lifted the trapdoor, and heaved myself into the loft space. His job was to pass up a Maglite so I could have a good look around before I committed myself to the search.

I dangled my hand ready to receive, but nothing happened. I leaned down further, in case he couldn’t reach, and then a little more, to the point where I was nearly falling out of the hatch. I looked down to see what the problem was, and realized he was moving the Maglite lower and lower, just for the hell of it.

Charlie had to block his mouth with both hands to stop himself snorting with laughter. At least he thought it was funny. In the end, like with most CTRs, we found fuck all. The pubs closed and we had ten minutes to get out and leave everything exactly as we’d found it.

Charlie was taking for ever. A lever lock is very basic; even with improvised gear, it should have taken no more than thirty seconds to open. I took my eyes off the road and gave him a gentle kick. ‘For fuck’s sake, get on with it, you senile fucker.’

His shoulders rocked with silent laughter just as headlights came downhill from our left. I broke away and started walking up the road towards the Primorski. I knew that Charlie would be getting to his feet and following suit, hands in his pockets, as I had, to hide the gloves. We’d both do a circuit.

The vehicle, a big Merc, hung a right, down towards the Primorski, just as I made the same turn. It pulled up at the kerb, and three girls in their early twenties got out, followed by a man of fifty something. The girls were dressed in spangly gear that sparkled and dazzled in the pink and blue neon. Maybe that was why Grandpa still had his sunglasses on. Wafts of high-octane perfume and cigar smoke filled the air as I walked past. The club’s black doors were held open for them by security and I heard a low rumble of talk, music and laughter.

I turned left to carry on with the circuit. I was worried about Charlie. It had been taking him far too long to open the gate. I sparked up the phone. If he’d remembered, he would have done the same. ‘Listen, are we going to get in there, or what? Get your finger out and get on with it.’

A car passed him as he replied, but I swore I heard him laugh. ‘Let’s give wisdom and experience one more go, then bull-headed youth can have its chance.’

The phone went dead but I kept it in my hand. A couple more cars bounced and splashed their way across the potholes. I eventually got back onto Barnov.

I called Charlie. ‘That’s me back on the main.’

He’d have been making his circuit on the other side of the street so we didn’t pass each other too closely. Sure enough, I could soon see him in front of me, crossing the road so that he was on the target side. A Lada rumbled past from behind me, missing the club junction and heading uphill.

Charlie wasted no time as we reached the gate again. Down on his knees, he kept the satchel over his shoulder this time. I looked down and saw he was fighting two battles, one with the locks and the other with his hands. I gave him a nudge in the leg. ‘For fuck’s sake, get on stag. I’ll have a go.’

He looked up and shrugged. We swapped places. ‘Fucking hell,’ I muttered as I got to work. ‘This lock’s nearly as old as you are.’

The tension wrench was still in place. I felt the pressure of the lever against it at the top of the lock before it turned, then the gate was open. I pulled out the pick and handed it to Charlie.

I slipped off my baseball cap, rolled the ski mask over my face and put the cap back on. Charlie did the same. I didn’t worry about anything else; that was his job. If he saw anything untoward, he’d deal with it.

I pushed the left gate inwards very gently, just enough to squeeze myself through the gap. There was no telling how sensitively the motion detectors had been calibrated, or what their range was. I inched my way along the right-hand gate, heading for the wall. As long as you’re far enough away from the sensor and against a solid background, nine out of ten times you can get away with it.

Once I hit the wall, I stayed flat and waited for Charlie. He moved his head and shoulders back against the gate and pushed it gently to, without locking or bolting it. This was our only known escape route, and we wanted to keep it that way.

A loud, male Paperclip monologue fired up close by in the street. I couldn’t hear a reply; he was probably mad, drunk, or on the phone.

I looked to our right. We were about three or four metres from the outbuildings that were going to cover us while we tuned in to the target and carried out final checks before making entry.

Hugging the wall, I started moving. Slowly, really slowly.

The band in the Primorski struck up with Boney M’s ‘Brown Girl In The Ring’. The audience’s polite applause was followed a few seconds later by a volley of raucous cheers. The Vegas girls must have made it onstage.

Aminute or two later we were safely behind the outbuildings and Charlie’s mouth was against my ear. ‘I like this one. It’s Hazel’s and my song.’ His shoulders did a little jig. ‘Brings back a few memories.’

I stifled a laugh. ‘I’m very happy for you both. But let’s not have those hands of yours doing all the moves.’

He was probably grinning like an idiot under his ski mask, but I knew he must be as worried as I was about his condition.

He turned his head and spoke gently through the fabric. ‘We’ll give it just a bit longer, then go and have a decent look at that door lock, eh?’ Charlie had always tried to make ops like this sound like nothing more than a bit of DIY, but he was overdoing the nonchalance now.

He retrieved the binos from the satchel and peered round the corner of the brick sheds. He passed them to me. They weren’t NVGs [night-viewing goggles], but they certainly helped my night vision. I checked out the CCTV first, then the door. Nothing had changed.

The band segued from Boney M to Sinatra. A group of three or four highly excited male voices moved past the gates. Maybe they were looking forward to dislodging a feather or two, or maybe they just thought New York was their kind of town.

We checked yet again that our phones were off and nothing was going to fall out of the satchel, and Charlie put his mouth back up to my ear. ‘’Eh oop, lad, we might as well get on with it, mightn’t we?’