Death Train

One

It was to be the culmination of months of planning. The assassination of General Konstantin Benin.

Dawn on Monday morning shone only a bleak grey light over Moscow and it looked as though the weathermen would be right in their prediction of rain by midday. The national six o’clock news had just begun when the blue transit van pulled into one of the numerous lay-bys on the hard shoulder of the southbound ringroad. Lena Rodenko killed the engine and turned off the monotonous drone of propaganda. She pushed a cigarette between her dry lips then fumbled in her coat pocket for a lighter and, cupping her trembling fingers around the flame, lit it and inhaled deeply. She was naturally attractive but took no interest in her personal appearance. Her short red hair was crudely shaped in a wedge and her pallid cheeks and small chin were peppered with unsightly acne. She glanced at her brother sitting beside her and managed a weak, nervous smile. Vasili was twenty-two, three years her senior. His hair, by contrast, fell untidily to his shoulders and his patchy beard looked as though it had been stuck on at random. She took a cassette from her pocket and slid it into the machine. The tape was of an English band, given to her by Vasili for her last birthday, which had become her most cherished possession. Neither of them understood the words but the music represented all that was fair and just. Democracy. As she sucked thoughtfully on the cigarette her mind wandered back to the contents of the dossier they had prepared on Benin.

A graduate of the Red Army Academy in 1950 he was recruited by the KGB four years later but first came to prominence in 1961 as one of the architects of Fidel Castro’s Direccion General de Inteligencia. The two men were to remain lifelong friends. He then spent several frustrating years as a military attaché in Brazil, a move rumoured to have been spearheaded by his superiors fearful of their own positions, before returning to Moscow as head of the Surveillance Unit. He then spent a brief spell on the staff at the Gaczyna spy school before being sent to Angola in 1974 as a senior military adviser; three years later he took over as commandant of the notorious Balashikha, a centre on the outskirts of Moscow used for the training of international terrorists. He was subsequently appointed deputy director of Directorate S, the most sinister division within the KGB. Its functions were abduction, assassination, sabotage and terrorism, both at home and abroad. He was promoted to director in 1984. It was said, even within the confines of the Politburo itself, that he was responsible for sending more people to their deaths in the Siberian concentration camps than any other KGB officer in living memory.

They had encountered one setback while compiling the dossier. Apart from his graduation picture there was no other known photograph of Benin. In retrospect Lena could see the ingenuity of his ploy. He had become just another faceless bureaucrat. This had initially seemed to be an insuperable problem until someone said that his face might not be familiar but they certainly knew his car. More like a bulletproof tank, someone else said; it would take an anti-tank missile to get at him. She hadn’t heard the rest of the conversation. In her mind she was already formulating a plan of action

She looked at the cracked face of her cheap wristwatch and swallowed nervously. It was almost time. As though in response to her thoughts the two-way radio in Vasili’s lap crackled into life. They had the all-clear sign. She struggled to start the van and just when she thought she had flooded the engine it spluttered into life and she eased out into the road. She stopped the van seventy yards further on beside a steel drum and slipped the gear into neutral, leaving the engine idling. Vasili checked the time. They had a little over four minutes. They climbed out and hurried round to the back of the van to open the doors.

Gennadi Potrovsky still found his good fortune hard to believe. Two days earlier he had been driving troop carriers at Kuchino, one of the KGB’s training centres outside Moscow, and now he’d been asked to drive for General Benin no less. He had been ordered not to tell anyone, not even his pregnant wife, until the letter of appointment made it all official. She would be the first to know, then he would throw a party to tell his friends who had graduated from the Red Army Academy with him the previous year. They would celebrate with him but he knew they would be envious. After all, Benin was the legend of the academy.

It was Potrovsky’s first day of official duty. The previous day he had had to drive the route over and over until he knew it perfectly. There was to be no inconvenience to the General, he had been repeatedly told. Not that he had even seen Benin, hidden behind the opaque dark windows in the back of the Mercedes. Even the partition between the front and back seats had been blacked out. Benin was there, though, always preferring to be in the car first. An aide had told him it was just one of Benin’s little idiosyncrasies. Potrovsky had waxed and polished the car the night before and had even gone as far as to iron the two pennants which flew on either side of the bonnet. He was determined to impress Benin.

He touched the brake gently as the Mercedes reached the bend and although he saw what lay ahead of him he had only a split second in which to react – a blue transit van parked in the slow lane of the dual carriageway and, kneeling beside it, a youth partially hidden behind a tripod-mounted anti-tank launcher. Potrovsky stamped on the brake pedal violently and the Mercedes was still slewing across the icy road when the missile struck it broadside. The car disintegrated in a sheet of searing flame and chunks of contorted metal were flung hundreds of feet into the air, landing in the snow-laced pine forest on either side of the carriageway. All that remained was a deep, jagged depression where the Mercedes had once been, encircled by burning fragments of mangled debris.

Lena was transfixed by the gaping trough in the road. Vasili shook her shoulders violently then slapped her across the face. A single tear escaped from the corner of her eye but she made no move to look away. He pushed her aside and unclipped the 33lb launcher from the tripod then carried it to the back of the van where he dumped it on to the grey blanket which they had used to cover it. He tossed the tripod in after it and banged the doors shut. Grabbing Lena’s hand he pulled her to the front of the van and bundled her into the passenger seat. In his haste to get away he grated the gears and the wheels shrieked in protest when he failed to balance the changeover between clutch and accelerator. The van jerked forward but he managed to keep the engine from stalling and within seconds they had turned into a sharp bend and the grotesque crater was no longer visible in the rearview mirror. He glanced at Lena. She was still in a state of shock, her eyes locked on to an imaginary spot in the centre of the windscreen. He had always said she was too young to be involved but had taken her with him at her own insistence. The bitter irony was that the whole plan had been her idea right from the start. His main priority now was to get them to safety. Safety being a dacha in Teplyystan, a village ten miles south of Moscow. The dacha was owned by a doctor who, Vasili reasoned, would be able to snap Lena out of her trance; then the two of them could set off for Tula on the banks of the River Don where they would lie low until, with time, the investigation wound down.

He suddenly became aware of a white Mercedes behind them. Where had it come from so quickly? Road signs were supposed to have been erected at the mouth of the carriageway as soon as Benin’s car had passed through, warning motorists of an impending dynamite blast and rerouting them on to another section of the motorway. His eyes continually flickered towards the rearview mirror as he monitored the Mercedes’ progress with mounting apprehension. He willed himself not to panic: surely there was a logical explanation? The moment he emerged on to a flat stretch of road after negotiating a particularly tight corner the explanation was obvious. A roadblock. A Mercedes and a Zim, bumper to bumper, blocking both lanes of the carriageway and behind them the menacing silhouette of a T-72 tank, its barrel aimed directly at the oncoming van. Vasili glanced over his shoulder, his foot already on the brake and his hand dipping towards the gear lever. The Mercedes had straddled the road, hemming him in, its two occupants now standing beside it, AK47 rifles in their gloved hands.

Four of the five men manning the roadblock were similarly armed. Vasili reluctantly switched off the engine and the unarmed man stepped forward and pulled open the driver’s door. No sooner had Vasili’s feet touched the ground than a pair of tight-fitting handcuffs was snapped around his wrists. He watched helplessly as Lena was hauled from the passenger seat and she too was handcuffed before being led away to the waiting Zim. The unarmed man then produced a buff-coloured plastic ID card and held it up in front of Vasili. Directorate S.

The back door of the Mercedes opened and a tall, craggy-faced man climbed out. He tugged a fur-lined hat over his cropped white hair as he approached the transit van, his eyes riveted on Vasili’s face.

‘Let me introduce myself. General Konstantin Benin.’

Vasili wasn’t surprised. The whole plan had gone horribly wrong, but when? He voiced the question.

Benin reached into the van, turned the music off and ejected the cassette before answering.

‘Women and drink should always be treated as chalk and cheese in this business. Fortunately one of your colleagues didn’t know that.’

‘Who?’ Vasili instantly regretted having risen to the bait.

‘You’ll find out soon enough. Most of your fellow conspirators are already in detention.’

‘How long have you known?’

‘Right from the beginning. Your flat’s been bugged for the past two months.’

‘General, take a look at this.’ The unarmed man was gesturing to the back of the van. ‘It’s not one of ours, sir.’

‘No, indeed.’ Benin peered inside the van and ran his hand over the British-made Carl Gustav missile launcher.

Benin turned back to Vasili then gripped the cassette in both hands and snapped it in half, allowing the tape to spill out on to the road. He stuffed the two pieces into Vasili’s anorak pocket.

‘Anatoli?’ he called out after Vasili had been led away to the Zim.

Benin’s deputy hurried round from the back of the van.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘I want you to deal personally with the Potrovsky widow. Make sure she’s entitled to a state pension.’

‘I sent the details off last night.’

‘Good. Oh, and send her some flowers on my behalf, usual wording.’

‘Yes sir. What about a press release?’

‘Make it brief. Give them some story about how an unexpected delay saved my life. Mention the missile but not the make. You can also add that the two youths involved were shot while resisting arrest. Get it to Tass some time this morning.’

‘Aren’t you going to make a show trial out of it, sir?’

‘It did cross my mind, but how can I when there are no defendants?’ He patted Anatoli’s arm then returned to the Mercedes.

The driver closed the door behind him and moments later the car drew away from the roadblock, heading south. It only slowed down on nearing the outskirts of Teplyystan where it turned off on to a narrow road leading into the Bittsevsky forest park, a panoramic landscape of ravines and gorges layered with fir, oak and pine plantations. The wording at the entrance was ominous enough: HALT! NO TRESPASSING. WATER CONSERVATION DISTRICT. The driver eased the Mercedes to a halt in front of a boomgate a couple of hundred yards further down the road and extended his ID card to the KGB duty officer, who immediately waved them through. The road ended in a cul-de-sac after another quarter of a mile and the driver turned the car into the adjoining parking bay, almost deserted at that time of the morning.

Benin climbed out and crossed to the guardhouse where he showed his ID card to the nearest of three armed sentries. The sentry checked its authenticity then activated the electronic turnstile. All three saluted as Benin passed but, as always, he ignored them. He made his way along a footpath flanked by spacious lawns and spectacularly colourful flowerbeds (rumoured to contain plastic flowers to ensure a year-round display), up a flight of steps and through the double doors of the tri-star-shaped glass and aluminium building. The newsstand was not due to open for an hour but after showing his ID card to a guard Benin asked that a copy of Pravda be delivered to his office the moment it arrived.

He rode the lift to the seventh floor and walked the length of the deserted corridor to the last of the suites of offices. Being on the top floor with its breathtaking view of the surrounding forest was one of the job’s many perks. He activated the lock with his magnetic strip ID card, then repeated the action on the inner door leading into his private office, closing it securely behind him. After switching on the light he sat down behind his solid oak desk (made, on his orders, from Bittsevsky oak), opened his leather-bound diary and scanned the day’s agenda.

One name was missing. The name of his most trusted and valued European operative, whose identity appeared nowhere in his office documentation. The operative he had come in especially early that morning to contact. He closed the diary and swivelled round in his chair to unlock the wallsafe. From it he removed a set of keys and selected one, using it to unlock the bottom left-hand drawer of his desk. It was divided into two sections, the back section secured behind yet another lock. He opened that one too and withdrew a telephone. In a world of bugs and surveillance he considered an occasional trump card imperative to keep a winning hand.

He dialled out, and as he waited for it to be answered he knew he was using a line more private than anything set up between the Kremlin and the White House. Monitoring the telephone conversations of the Kremlin hierarchy had become one of his pet projects over the last few years. What he knew about their private lives–

The receiver was lifted at the other end.

‘Brazil,’ Benin said.

‘1967,’ came the reply.

The codewords matched. Benin continued. ‘Were there any problems loading the cargo on to the train?’

‘None at all, the cover worked perfectly.’

‘And the train?’

‘It left on schedule. The men are all in position, it’s running according to plan.’

Benin replaced the receiver and locked the telephone away, then, after securing the drawer, put the keys back in the wallsafe, closed it and spun the dial. He sat back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head. The assassination attempt on his life had been thwarted and his master plan on the Continent was going exactly to plan. It was going to be a good week.