Beyond Recall

Chapter 12

An early morning move out, same as so many in an old life.

Timofey said that what he’d already drunk and the front door locked from the outside would keep his father quiet, collapsed on the sofa. Natacha gazed at Gaz, seemed fascinated by the weapon, had watched without blinking, as he had stripped, cleaned and reassembled the working parts, then emptied the magazine and wiped all the filth and fluff off the bullets’ casings. He doubted that he needed to know how a girl with pretty blonde hair and a smile to win hearts, and the culture of the gutter, and with unfastened buttons on her blouse, had lured a cop into handing over his service pistol. Assumed it done with the neatness of a railway station pickpocket, and with fingers on the move. How would the cop report that a bit of a kid – with that smile and the depth of those eyes – had conned, fooled him bad… almost felt sorry for him. Past five in the morning. Enough time wasted.

“How close do you have to be? To kill, how near?”

“Not exact, play things by ear. Our expression. Never box yourself into a pre-paid decision. Go with the flow.”

As poor an answer as Gaz could have offered, and he short changed her, and knew it, but it would suffice. He asked much of them, and they risked all for him – and for the cash promise – and could go to gaol for most of their natural lives. But they were not his friends, not a part of any unit he had been with. Had he been now in a Forward Operating Base, as dawn came up over the maize and poppy fields, or over the dirt expanses of central Syria, he would have been alongside Arnie and Sam and the others. All good at their jobs, knowing their mission, and each prepared to watch the others’ backs. Would have been heading off into the faintest grey light and trudging to the helicopter pad where the Chinook’s engines were warming. None of that was now in Gaz’s life, just a memory.

They left Timofey’s father on the sofa. Gaz was trained to notice little moments of interaction, was as good at that as scrutinising terrain and covert ground. What he saw was the motion of Timofey’s hand across his father’s forehead, and the alcohol had brought a type of peace to the old man’s face. Just a touch of the hand and he remembered a remark about not slitting his father’s throat even though the old guy had been prepared to denounce their enterprise – and was probably scared half out of his wits, and with cause. It was a good moment, but not sentimental. Gaz reckoned the kids were as competent as he might have hoped for, or better. The Makarov was at his waist, and her eyes never left it and they’d regained their mischief. He did not confide the plan dovetailing in his mind because to have done so would encourage debate, then counter proposals. Kept quiet: Gaz was good at that.

Timofey had a key on a chain to his belt and locked the door behind them. Gaz had the pistol in his hand. Armed it, checked the safety, heard the clatter of metal parts scraping together… would like to have fired it first, been somewhere he could gauge the accuracy of the sights and the strength of the kickback, and the squeeze required on the trigger.

They went down the stairs. Timofey led and Gaz followed, the girl staying close as if he was now special, beyond the reaches of her experience. Little nuggets of information had filtered to him, and were absorbed. She was joined at the hip to the Kursk disaster; he was the distant product of a sailor’s tumble in the stress of wartime with a local girl, and the boys on the fishing boat were running down on the time they could linger here. All were bound by loyalties to men long dead. He supposed that old faiths were the currency by which Knacker could prosper.

Timofey said he would drive, and Natacha climbed into the back seat. They would be told when they needed to know. He took a pair of pizza boxes off the floor in front of the seat allocated him, and a fag packet and chocolate wrappers and took them to a full rubbish bin and dumped them. If they had asked him why he did housekeeping for the Fiat, he would not have answered.

Gaz sank down on to the front passenger seat.

He reached across, and took Timofey’s hand, and held it tight, then released it. Then turned and took her hand and held it for a short moment. That was his gesture. They were his army, his team, his unit. They were what he had. The engine coughed into life… Not for a man of Gaz’s rank – corporal and discharged for medical complications – to consider whether the mission stank of old offal, could be justified, would make a difference, was even possible. Most would have said success was unachievable, but they were not the guys who lived in Forward Operating Bases – not the guys who lay on their stomachs with the piss trapped in increasing discomfort in their bladders; not the guys who spent half a day and more watching an atrocity staged in front of them as though they were fortunate to have views from the house’s best seats… he reckoned himself one of life’s small people. They came and fixed things that their ‘betters’ cared not to spend time on. Small people and the world seemed to need them – as Knacker needed Gaz. Would it make a difference? Decent if it did. Grimaced to himself because the small people were not that smart and not that privileged… smart people and privileged people wouldn’t lie in a ditch beside a tinfoil package of their own excreta for three days, or more.

As they headed away from their block, he said that he would like a short stop, and for one of them to get him half a dozen plastic shopping bags. Just that, and he wanted them empty.

On the first floor of a public house on a main street on the south side of the Thames, the early team were at work on the room that the Round Table used for their monthly lunches. The management rather enjoyed the secrecy that the ‘spooks’ visited on them. Word had reached them that today would be a wake replacing the induction of a new member. The deceased was one of the ‘old guard’, a founder member of the Round Table. Benny Kowalski had had access to the best document forgers in Europe, from Vienna to Helsinki. He had crossed the Iron Curtain, had passed through electronic fences and digitalised airport checks as though they were merely inconveniences. His assets in the east had ranged from army officers, intelligence men of GRU and what had been KGB, and locked in his head, inside an elephantine memory, were archives of names and contact points. At any moment of crisis, it would have been Benny Kowalski who would sidle up to a sub-committee, speak out of the side of his mouth, say if the matter was ‘real’ or just pretence, speaking fluent English but with a gravelly Polish accent. He had not attended the last several meetings and it was said that cancer had finally caught up with him. There would be much nostalgia at his passing, and Tennyson’s verses would be spoken with collegiate fervour. Respect would flow, and a yearning for the ‘old days, good old days’. The days before the bloody kids, the analysts, moved in. The supply of alcohol required for such a wake would be a delight to the public house management. Long might they last.

Dawn came, brought a silver shine to the river, and early sunlight slipped into the suite of offices occupied by the Director-General. He’d be gone by midday. His wife had accompanied him in the car that had brought him here. She would wait in an outer office while he dealt with ‘essential business’, then they would leave together by a back entrance, not making a drama from a crisis… She had said, when he had for the third time used the word ‘essential’ as justification for coming back in that dawn, ‘For Christ’s sake, you silly old thing, the morning after you’re gone the seventy-three bus will still run down the Essex Road, and next month the Test at Lords will still kick off on time. Face facts.’

Miserably, he did.

The Deputy Director-General, in an hour earlier than was his habit, was ushered to the office and they were provided with coffee and a few of the previous day’s croissants fetched from the canteen below.

“Not sure when I’ll be back.”

“Not personal, but I’ll work on the assumption that you’re not, not coming back.”

“You’ll want briefings. I believe most of your effort is in finance, staff matters, and…”

“I’ll organise them, thank you. There will be changes. Inevitable.”

“Not a case of baby and bathwater. Much of our work here has been exciting, risk-taking, innovative, and effective.”

“It has been – much of our work – free of justifiable scrutiny, piratical. Seems to me and others, to have been out of control. There will be changes.”

“I hope not to be around to see them.”

“First, right at the very top, will be the immediate closing down of the la-la-land world of these Round Table geriatrics. They’ll go in the bin, with all their childish rituals. No place for them. Rather nurtured it, haven’t you? I trust demolition will be easy.”

“Easy to destroy, difficult to build, I used to be told.”

“You’ll be out of the building when I circulate the instruction. No further resources will be committed to that Round Table. They’ll be reined in. If they don’t like it then they can go away quietly or noisily and whine or rant, but they are finished. I expect to run a tight ship, one with ethics and accountability. I wish you well. Yes, all of us do, but time for change and the extirpation of self-congratulatory people who are not team players. Good day.”

Gone, none of the croissants as much as nibbled, and the coffee pot still full. Impossible to have even begun to explain the addictive quality of plans such as those brought to him in the name of Knacker; the risks were intoxicating and the triumphs blessed and the failures heartbreaking… All madness, yet he could never refuse Knacker.

The Director-General, still holding that position by a thread, asked his PA to get Arthur Jennings on the phone.

The old woman saw them, or at least recognised the shapes of their heads.

Early on that day of the week she went to the market, always early and always the same day. The black saloon car, German, was parked close to the front entrance of the block: she always recognised a German car and sometimes – making certain she was not seen – spat against a tyre. Her father had been on the forward defence lines of Leningrad during the siege and she had been brought up to loathe all things German… But she did not spit that morning because the two minders were in the car.

The windows were misted because there was still a chill in the air. The forecast on the TV was for sunshine in the Arctic area. She did not know why the officer, only a major, had two lackeys who drove him, walked with him, opened doors for him. They slept, lolling against each other. She could hear their snoring.

She had never before seen the two men asleep in the car. And making a noise, she’d have said, that would wake a cadaver in a morgue. Asleep in the car and drunk. She was not a fool: few were in that district of Murmansk, where you needed to be tough and hard and self-sufficient. She remembered the girl… remembered her questions. She glanced at her watch, wondered what part she might have played in any event to be staged that morning, shivered, hurried her shuffling step. She had no affection for that officer, could not recall one greeting for her, one moment of consideration, but… She went across the dirt path and on to the pavement and crossed the street.

A small car pulled up ahead of her. She recognised the girl… looked away, went as fast as old legs would take her.

Delta Alpha Sierra, the twelfth hour

Gaz studied the girl’s goats.

Discomfort and hunger had beaten their fear of the noise below in the village. That is where the goats should have been; it was long past the time they were usually milked and they would have been hungry because they had not foraged well.

The girl had not spoken again in her halting English nor in her own Arabic dialect, was still sitting with her knees against her chest and her arms wrapped round them, and the two dogs had now given up on the goat herd and their heads were on her ankles.

The weather was as bad as anything he had known. They had just taken the first big lightning flash. A sheet lit the village and the football pitch where the bodies still lay by the goal, and the gully where women and men and the teenagers had been taken to be killed. Lit it up like it was a technicolour movie frame. Then thunder. Crashes of noise as if artillery were concentrated on the place. The girl did not flinch. The rain came harder, and still one small group of women and children were held inside a wall of bayonet points. There had been rain and wind before, but with the lightning and thunder came torrential rain. Gaz was not supposed to intervene, was supposed to do his reconnaissance work, forge no friendships, have no obligations to those he spied on. He was huddled inside his hiding place and the rain did not reach him. The girl was drenched but seemed no longer to shiver.

He did not need to restrain her. Her dogs kept close to her, their eyes watching hers, and their ears were against their heads as if listening for further disaster. But the goats had started to break away. It started with the kids crying and the older animals no longer nudging them to be quiet, but crying themselves and stamping; the dogs ignored them and cared only to guard the girl.

Gaz watched the Russian officer. To watch him was within his remit. Watching the goats – sweet, gentle, pretty and skittish – was not part of his work, not in the way that the Russian was. The man seemed to have neither plan nor purpose, seemed to have no recognised part to play in the savagery of the day, but yet was willing to join what was being done. He had killed, had shouted instructions, had gone into the gully where the women were taken, and might have fiddled with his belt and his flies as he emerged. The rain had dulled the flames of the burning buildings and the smoke thrown up was thicker. Now the flames guttered and the smoke hung in a pall, too heavy to be sucked away by the wind. At the second or third of the lightning strikes, when the village was illuminated, the officer’s face had been turned towards Gaz. As bright as if he stood in clean sunshine, every pore on his face visible, and the stubble and the dried narrow lips, and the cut along the side of his face, washed clean by the rain, only the line remaining. The officer stared around him. The Iranian commander was now busy at interrogation. Huddled drenched wretches, blindfolded, some still in their nightshirts, were dragged before him. The killing lust lingered and the guarded huddle diminished. Resistance had died and no more insults were chucked at the Iranians. Maybe all of them were now resigned to death. Gaz saw nothing in the officer’s face to indicate disgust with what was happening around him. The goons followed the officer, matched each step, and held their weapons ready, were as much witnesses as was Gaz.

The intensity of the storm was spooking the goats. Some sounded a trumpet call. Some bleated. Thunder still pealing, and still occasional lightning, and the day at its close was as grey as the buildings.

A militiaman at the edge of the cordon round the village, below where Gaz hid, where the girl was with her dogs and her goats, looked up. Turned away from those he guarded and tilted his head. He would have been staring directly into the teeth of the wind that whipped across the plateau and swept down the slope. He had heard the clamour from the goats. He was a sentry, at the bottom of any military food-chain, the guy stuck out on the perimeter and who had, as yet, killed no one, had stood there as duty dictated and had been a voyeur. He shouted for his NCO, and pointed up the hill, and the noise of the beasts grew louder. Gaz thought that the militiaman could have been a country boy, perhaps taken into military service from a village far from city civilisation. Could have been a boy with little combat sense but who understood the desert and the life of remote communities. Shouted for his NCO but the wind would have wafted away his call; no one came, so he did his own thing.

The militiaman edged away from his point in the perimeter line. If he was a country boy, he would have known about goats, would have realised that where there were goats there was a herder, a teenage boy or a girl or a young woman – a witness. Would have known that the killings were not yet completed, would have realised that the buildings would be razed and that all the villagers were to be killed. Would have realised, also, that one witness was sufficient to annul the anonymity of what was being done. The militiaman started up the slope. At first he slid back on the mud and was on his hands and knees, then he climbed again and toppled and used the butt of his rifle to steady himself, then slipped and slithered on to his stomach. But he was a plucky boy and tried again – and was seen and his NCO was cupping his hands over his mouth to channel his shouting.

The militiaman stared up and would have seen the dull shadows of the goats on the move and might have heard the throaty growl of the dogs, and he hesitated… If he came on up then Gaz would shoot him. If he shot him, then all of Hades would break loose. If he came on and Gaz did not shoot him then the worst of times was launched. The militiaman paused. And now the officer watched.

The load of red king crabs would by now have been transferred to the wholesalers in St Petersburg and Moscow, would shortly be in the hands of the top chefs, and would, that evening, be on the plates of affluent diners in the best restaurants of those cities. There was no justifiable or legitimate reason for the Norwegian fishing boat to remain in that section of the Murmansk harbour.

They argued. The skipper, backed by his engineer, told a story of a doubtful piston in the bowels of the engine that needed more work before they could be confident of not breaking down on the journey back to Kirkenes: dangerous to be sailing alongside that reef-lined coast, having the engine fail and risk drifting on to the rocks. The Murmansk Harbour-Master’s representative had bureaucracy to contend with. He would have to justify to his seniors, to the FSB, to border control, all of them, if the boat did not sail by the time its permission expired. A foreign ship was not permitted to sail past the Severomorsk naval quays or the submarine base at Polyarni at any time of its choosing.

The skipper had asked for the rest of that day, another twelve hours. Impossible. The Harbour-Master’s man would have the boat towed out by tugs if it could not sail under its own power. What about six hours? The minimum of what was needed for the repair to be effected. Impossible. The office of the Harbour-Master could supply engineers to verify and repair the offending piston, but it must leave in the slot allocated.

The piston was, of course, in rude health… when the engineer took over the conversation, mixing up a patois of Russian and Norwegian and technical English, the skipper gazed over the shoulders of the Harbour-Master’s man, and could see the security gate, and the deck-hand who was there to welcome the hurrying ‘crewman’ who had so obviously overstayed his shore leave. He remembered his passenger across the North Sea from the Orkneys, had liked him… which was not relevant. One hour?

“If you can repair your piston in one hour, why did you ask for a half day?”

The skipper smiled. “We go in one hour and hope to get to the open sea, and hope it lasts long enough for us to reach Kirkenes. We appreciate your hospitality.”

“You have one hour, then you leave.”

Hands were shaken, business concluded. He gazed up the hill towards the monument dominating the city, and the apartment blocks, and not even the thin early sunshine could brighten the damn place, and wondered where he was, and what had delayed him, and the stress ate at the skipper. They had all assumed there would be a party that night after they left Russian territorial waters, and a bottle of Scotch was ready: might have assumed too much.

From his window, Lavrenti saw his car.

The windows were misted which meant that the two of them were inside and probably listening to the early morning football talk show, and smoking. They should have been waiting beside the car, finishing its valeting, the motor turning over and a door open for him. Even better if one of them had been outside his apartment door and ready to carry his bag down the stairs. What he saw did little to improve his mood, based on another night’s failure to sleep. And there was their increasing disrespect. All difficult to pinpoint if he had cared to raise it with his father, but he had noted it… He was about to turn away when he noticed the couple.

He wore his informal uniform, suitable for an office day or one of those tedious occasions when he went to the border and talked with the Norwegian colonel about traffic delays on the E105 route across the frontier or access for the herdsmen who had to be brought from Norway to Russia to take home their reindeer when they cleared the frontier fence. He wore his medal ribbons, and his shoes were polished, although he had cleaned them himself. Breakfast, of a sort, would be served on the flight.

The couple were kissing. She had blonde hair, a strong nose, high cheekbones, and her arms were looped around the man’s neck. Lavrenti could not see his face; he was kissing her hard… this was something that the two men, Mikki and Boris, should have prevented. Completely wrong that two strangers – he knew, by sight, everyone who lived in the block and used his staircase – behaved so blatantly. That men and women should come to his front entrance and act like teenagers on heat was disgusting… Time to move. He could have taken a coin from his pocket and flipped it out of the window and hoped to hear it clatter on to the BMW’s roof which might have startled the bastards.

The man with the girl had no face and his clothing was non-descript. Lavrenti had passed out with high marks from the FSB’s Academy college, a grand building on Michurinsky Prospekt, across the street from the Olympic Park, and he had done particularly well in a field exercise where every salient point in the appearance of a target had to be noted. It was a paper that he had passed with honours. Lavrenti grimaced, shook his head sharply as if that were the route to a clearer head. Nothing of the man who kissed the blonde girl registered with him.

For the last time, he turned his back on the apartment and hooked his rucksack on to a shoulder. The place meant less than nothing to him, except as a cell block of anxiety, known only to him, admitted to no other. He slammed the door and headed for the stairs, and would give those men grief.

Gaz heard the clatter of footsteps on the inside stairway.

Her arms were still tight around his neck. Gaz had clamped his teeth together to keep her tongue out of his mouth. She did it like it was a game, that they were lovers, not serious, just having fun. Natacha kept her eyes open and he could see the laughter dancing in them. He broke clear. He had told her what she should do in the minutes before and she had broken from the kissing to nod her head in mock seriousness, and would have thought he joked and they would laugh afterwards. Then had gone back to kissing him again and resuming their cover… He wrenched away from her… down the street was the old woman with her laden plastic bags, coming slowly towards them. The car windows were still misted up. The snoring was steady.

The pistol was out of his belt. Armed, cocked, safety on.

The apartment block door swung open, might have been kicked. The officer filled the doorway; he was scowling and breathing heavily. Gaz read him, not difficult. He was about to bawl out his minders, still fast asleep in the car… Gaz relied on Natacha. No time to repeat instructions, no time to gaze into her face, to convey this was ‘real business’, not fantasy, not pretend.

The men’s eyes met. Those of Gary ‘Gaz’ Baldwin, corporal of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, invalided out, and those of Lavrenti Alexander Volkov, major in the Federal’nya sluzhba bezopasnosti reckoned as a rising star. A few minutes before six in the morning and the apartment block towering over them not yet stirring. Gaz staring, confirming recognition. The target, about to bellow towards the car, saw the girl twisting away from a scruffily dressed man, smaller than himself, lighter and nondescript, who blocked his way and who was snaking an arm around his back then jerking something clear. Gaz saw the scar: needed nothing else, and saw the strip of medal ribbons, and had no time to wonder which was for meritorious conduct in Syria.

Gaz caught him unprepared. He used the weight of the pistol against the officer’s neck, below and a little behind his left earlobe, hit hard and true, and the head flipped sideways. What the instructors said in the personal defence lectures, the unarmed combat sessions, was that the blow that jerked the neck and head sideways was the one that stunned. Gaz saw the desperate gulp of shock, eyes big and staring and the head lolling away to the right. The look that said, ‘What the fuck? What was that? Who are you?…’ and the pistol went up hard and under the officer’s chin. The barrel and the foresight of the Makarov were tearing into the loose skin below his jaw. The officer might have been stunned, but he was a young man trained in combat, and comprehension would come fast… he would know that a pistol was under his jaw and, if fired, a bullet would explode upwards and behind the nasal channels and into the tissues of his brain.

The best chance of breaking clear was in the first seconds, while the wannabe captors were overdosing on adrenaline and stressed half out of their minds. ‘Go for it then. Do it then because it will never be as good again.’ Could have been that FSB did the same course. The girl was slow. She was dragging a plastic bag from her hip pocket.

Gaz hit him again. A hard slug of a blow. Should not have been necessary. It should not have been the work of an SRR ex-corporal to disable a middle-ranking officer and do it short-handed. The Hereford crowd would have done it with four, minimum; trained guys, brutal and fast and ruthless, and the target out of his mind in shock, and feet not touching the ground. The second blow stunned. Gaz snatched the bag from the girl’s hand and shoved it into the officer’s mouth. Had to prise the teeth apart but dug it in and heard the coughing and retching. Natacha stared at him, then remembered her instructions, what had seemed a joke, and had the second bag ready. He took it from her and pulled it down over the officer’s head and his cap fell from his head. Gaz had the pistol under the officer’s chin and his other hand held the officer’s left arm, had it wrenched up behind his back, and was trying to run, dragging the target with him. Past the car, down the path, on to the pavement and over it, and into the road. A van came by. What would the driver do? Might just look hard at the far side of the road and see nothing and hear nothing and… what real people did who were not queuing to be heroes. The van went by. The officer might have been on the same level of course as offered by Gaz’s people. Locked his legs. Swung with his free hand. Tried to buckle his knees.

It was the first crisis. There would be more. Gaz understood that a half measure was useless. ‘Go for broke’ was what he had been lectured, ‘Don’t show weakness’ was their call. Wondered if the noise of the safety coming off, being slid across with his thumb would be sufficient for the target to realise it would finish badly if he fought back. Gaz ducked under the blow, swung blind, and had to do no more.

Natacha kicked the officer.

The pain would have spread sharp and clean in his shin, and then she kneed him. A gasping and sobbing sound gurgled through the plastic bag in the target’s mouth, and his legs went slack. She had hold of his right arm, and Gaz thought the officer was trying to vomit.

Two more cars passed them, going towards the heart of Murmansk, and neither stopped. They dragged him fast and the headlights of the Fiat flashed and he could see that Timofey was out of the car and peering up the road, would have been waiting to hear the sound of double tap, would have wondered why he hadn’t. Timofey had the back door of the Fiat open, the engine running, and stared in astonishment, a fag dripping off his lower lip. They passed the old woman with her bags of swedes and turnips, and she had to back away and give them a clear run of the pavement, or they would have flattened her.

They came to the Fiat. A group of kids were watching… the officer was pushed forward, his head cannoning into the far side of the back seat. Gaz wrenched his legs into a foetal position and grabbed two more plastic bags from the front seat. Natacha was now in the passenger seat beside Timofey. Gaz tied one of the plastic bags round the officer’s ankles, knotted, and knotted again, and the second went round his wrists, at the small of his back, knotted, and knotted again. The tyres screamed, and the Fiat was heading down the road.

“Now what?” A squeal in her voice.

“Now where?” Confusion in Timofey’s.

“What did he tell you?”

“Nothing.”

“Why did he not shoot?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why is the bastard not dead?”

“Was not told, Timofey. Used like I am a servant.”

“He was going to shoot. Kill, then we take him to the harbour.”

“That is what I thought.”

“But he did not shoot, why not?”

“Listen… he did not tell me. Did not tell me why he wanted the bags.”

“Could he have shot him?”

“It was perfect. He was body to body with him. The man had no defence.”

“Where does it put us?”

“Don’t know. I know nothing. I know nothing more than you do.”

“Will we be paid?”

“How can I answer, Timofey?”

“He took him well.”

“Took him like a fucking cat after vermin, Timofey. Took him brilliantly. Has not spoken a word to him, not one word.”

Timofey twisted, eyes off the road and looked back. “What do we do now? Where do we go?”

A quiet voice behind him. “We go to your apartment, and we organise and you do the last thing I ask of you. Then we are gone, and your part is forgotten, except for the reward paid you. I am going to take him out. End of story.”

“Were you frightened to kill him?”

“No.”

Timofey drove and Natacha had her hand on his thigh, and the laughter was gone from her and the mischief had fled.

The old woman, moving slowly and gasping under the weight of the swedes and turnips, saw the military cap. She put down the bags and massaged her hands to get the feeling back into the fingers, flexed her joints, cracked them, and wondered what she had seen and how what she had seen might affect her… But she always liked – despite a grim and grey appearance – to laugh. And did not deny herself. She picked up the cap and placed it on the bonnet of the German car. Then extracted her apartment keys from her purse. She scraped the sharper side of the main key along the door of the BMW black saloon, then kicked the driver’s door as hard as frail feet and her boots would permit. She picked up her bags and was back inside the hallway with a speed that surprised her. She was on the third floor, had hurried up the stairs, and was inside her own pocket handkerchief living-room and at the window in time to see two bleary-eyed men emerge from the car, notice the cap, scratch and fidget, and wave their arms in confusion. She went to make tea… an arrogant bastard would have been her description of the officer who had lived two floors higher in the block. But the amusement was short-lived because the taller of the minders saw her and started toward the door.

I am going to take him out. End of story.

The man was straddling him, his neck was ruptured from the blows, he felt he was suffocating inside the plastic bag, and it had taken moments before his mind had begun to clear.

Two young people at the entrance. The girl was a decoy. The man had belted him, struck him hard. Would not have happened if the idiots supposed to watch over him had not been asleep in the car. Done with swiftness and a degree of expertise… His initial fight back had been a failure. The pain was still in his privates and his shins were agony where the man’s weight pressed on them. He could not shift the plastic bags that gagged and blindfolded him, and bile had dribbled from the sides of his mouth, but he had not vomited. His wrists were tightly bound and his ankles, and he had heard the whisper of talk in the front as the driver threw the little car from one side of the road to the other. They went fast and several times there were choruses of horns as other vehicles were cut up or swerved aside.

Who had taken him? He did not know. At the Academy they taught a reasonable level of English to a favoured stream of recruits. He needed English if he went after foreign diplomat missions, and when he hunted out the western businessmen who came to Moscow and St Petersburg, and thought that Russia was a milch-cow to exploit. I am going to take him out. End of story. Not mafia. Not local environmentalists from Murmansk. Not opponents of the President’s rule who had, anyway, a negative foothold this far from the principal cities. And not mistaken identity because he wore uniform and a car waited outside for him… He had had, and scratched in his memory for evidence against the conclusion, no contact with Great Britain, with anyone British: well, other than two businessmen whom he had hustled before going to Syria, and an economist who had written hostile investment reports relating to business life in modern Russia and whose apartment he had ordered to be broken into. But… neither businessmen nor economists would have involved themselves, or had the resources to, in a violent attack on an officer such as himself. And the whispering in the front of the car, in Russian, was of death, of him being shot dead, and the opportunity had been there and not taken.

Lavrenti could not speak. Could not demand to be freed. Could not demand an explanation: ‘Do you fucking know, you peasant shit, who I am?’ Could not tell them that his father was a brigadier general and his contact list spread as high as the President. Could do nothing. Was not able to make sense of what he had heard, a flat voice, and calm. I am going to take him out. End of story.

Going at speed and quartering the roads and no more talk, and he listened for sirens as evidence of pursuit, and was not rewarded.

Off the E105 highway from Murmansk to the frontier and then the Norwegian town of Kirkenes, and on the east side, the Russian side, of the border checks at Titovka, was a slight track. It might once have led to a natural forest of trees which had long before been felled, and it might once have reached a fortified position for artillery or machine-guns in the defence of the city from the Nazi invaders. It was now used only by Jasha, the recluse. It led to his cabin. He had no power or water, no comforts, nothing of the modern world except for the metal box under his bed where many thousands of roubles were stored. He had wealth, but nothing on which to spend it except for the basic foods that he and his dog needed, and the oil for his lamp, and tobacco for his pipe – essential in summer when the mosquitoes swarmed, and ammunition for his rifle which shot the wild creatures that he sold on those rare visits to the city. His friend was his dog. He loved his dog and its encroaching age upset him. More important now was his belief that he possessed a new neighbour. He had not been out of the hut for twenty-four hours. His neighbour had been inside the hut and had searched its contents but had taken nothing, had destroyed nothing. He could not judge what relationship, other than respect, was possible with the neighbour – with the bear that he had called Zhukov.

All through the night he had heard it. A soft and gentle moaning. A light wind in the leaves of the summer birches. A cry for help. Not a scream or a shriek of agony, not a bellowing roar of anger, but the noise of pain and almost, he thought a call for his sympathy. It was somewhere in front of his cabin but he could not see it from the window. But it was a bear, wild… It had moaned for him for many hours now, and the sound of it wounded Jasha. He considered what to do, if anything were possible other than to take the rifle with the heavy bullets from the shelf high on the wall.

Knacker had slipped into the ‘waiting time’. Those were the hours that seemed to linger, once his immediate business was concluded. It was now a question of hanging about, tidying up any mess, getting ready for the departure which would be – as usual – at a scamper.

He had been to the airport and Fee had driven. Had watched from a distance. Alice had returned to their safe house, but had been up earlier and had spilled the bad news to their facilitator. Best to get it done early in the morning while the hitters were still half–asleep, half-cut, half-stoned from the previous night; they had been pitched from their pits, barely given time to dress, and were now up and away on the first leg of their flight home, and by the time that resentment kicked in and fury that the job they were recruited for had slid away, they’d be on the next stage of the journey, en-route for Amman: looking for a fast return to the rigours of a refugee camp… Not for Knacker to ladle out sympathy, but he had allowed himself one mutter of ‘Poor bastards, rather them than me’. They were gone, a headache culled.

By now, safe to assume, the trawler would have sailed. By now, also reasonable to imagine, a killing would have been completed. The waiting time was the collection of hours and minutes, seldom days, between something planned with care and the confirmation of its execution. He felt comfortable. He thought that a decent lunch, him hosting the girls and the Norwegian border ‘guide’, would be appropriate that day if a recommended place existed in Kirkenes… and his mind drifted. Up in the wild north of his own country, Maude would now be away from the temporary quarters that the diggers occupied and would be lugging her backpack along a platform at Newcastle for her train south. She would be turning her back on a Roman collector of wheat and his adversary who topped up the woad count on his skin perhaps twice a week. Would be back in New Malden that evening and saving tales of mutual derring-do on that frontier, either side of that Wall. Knacker would offer remnants of his own mission to her, tell of a fence, a barrier, a mission and a man far from help and reliant on his own skills for survival. Bugger all had changed over the centuries. She never asked but would have assumed that it had gone to plan, as he’d expect it to, and if she asked him directly ‘Win or lose, or score draw?’, he would fake annoyance and his eyes would flicker and he’d murmur across the pillow something like, ‘What would you expect,’ and they’d laugh, briefly. Funny old life and a funny old marriage, and a strong one as long as Maude realised that she took second place to his waiting times on the Russian frontiers. An acceptable one as long as he understood he would never compete with the glories of scratching in the dirt with an old toothbrush… He’d slip into VBX when he was back, first stop, and would have a sharp ten minutes with one of the Director’s team, would brief, then slip away; would hope to see Arthur Jennings and offer up good news, then would go home to New Malden. His dirty washing would make a moderate pile beside the machine – never could work the bloody thing – then back to his Yard and new plans and new thoughts and consideration of how to hurt them, the opposition, in their offices on Lubyanka Square. He had not been there, never would be. By now, the phones would be ringing, and computerised screens flashing news-bites, and senior men demanding answers from juniors, and the air rich with obscenities – and likely they’d not even know the name of James Lionel Wickes – the Knacker man. And laughed out loud, and Fee gazed at him perplexed.

A great team. One to be proud of. They turned away from the harbour and climbed the side street to the rented house. Alice would have heard them, perhaps had nothing better to do than come out to meet them. Had abandoned the preparation of breakfast, and they might just be about to broach a bubbly bottle, and Knacker saw her face. The angel quality gone from it, a hardness replacing the usual innocent prettiness, even the freckles in decline… he assumed it heralded the second stage, far worse than the first, of the waiting time.

Alice said, “It’s about knowing nothing. There’s zilch on their radio bulletins, nothing on Radio Volna and nothing on Big Radio, the principal stations, and the locals here would know if there was a security flap, would have it monitored. If an FSB joker was taken down then it would be top of the show stuff. There’s nothing. And the lift out would have sailed. Sorry, Knacker, but it is not looking great – don’t know how to dress it up.”

If he were punched in the stomach, Knacker would not react, would hide any pain. He walked towards the door, grimaced, went inside.

He had demanded they go back to the apartment because of his need for that rare item, quality time, an opportunity to think. Gaz straddled his prisoner and was satisfied that the lever on the pistol was back on safe, and kept the weapon barrel and foresight hard against the skin on the officer’s neck. What he had seen before of Timofey’s driving, Gaz would have rated him ‘high’: not now. The car skidded on bends and when overtaking, and the brakes went on late and the accelerator was stamped on: they careered through the city’s empty streets. He had seen a woman with a buggy frozen in fear in the middle of a street, unable to go back or forward and trying to protect her child from the inevitable impact. But Timofey had woven past her. Gaz had reckoned that Natacha believed herself the hard kid, a survivor of the prison system, fortified by her contempt for the regime that had failed to save her father’s fellow submariners, but she now cringed and had an arm across her face. Needed time to reflect, to consider… The kids did not understand him, and he doubted the officer would have been able to read him.

Gaz had been a trained man. Good at surveillance, at picking the hide needed for a covert eyeball position, decent on a shooting range… He would not have contemplated easing back the safety, squeezing the trigger and feeling the shudder through his whole body when the bullet was discharged and he was being spattered by blood and bone and tissue. Not his work. Which was his justification for the remark: I am going to take him out. End of story. And be thanked for it? A grim smile flickered at his mouth.