Execution

SIXTY

‘What a shit hole.’ Serkhov shivered and pulled his jacket collar up around his chin. He and Votrukhin were standing outside an abandoned cottage with a corrugated iron roof, set against a grey, sludgy expanse of the Thames where it spilled out into the sea.

After being forced to flee the apartment in Knightsbridge, they had taken a prearranged route through south London, using small hotels for one night each while awaiting further instructions, aware that this mission was now almost certainly over.

Votrukhin in particular had been shocked at coming so close to being caught by the two security men, and had angrily asked Gorelkin how they could have been traced to that address. Gorelkin had expressed no specific opinion, suggesting in a roundabout fashion that he and Serkhov must have been careless. It had been enough to leave the atmosphere between them soured and distrustful.

The next time Gorelkin called, it was with orders to make their way north to a point on the coast of Essex, just across the Thames.

‘What about the hire car?’ asked Serkhov.

‘The car doesn’t matter,’ Gorelkin insisted. ‘You won’t be returning it, anyway.’

Their destination was near Canvey Island, on the Thames Estuary. The car’s satnav guided them along a winding lane lined with houses and fields. Then the houses stopped, leaving nothing but scrubby fields and what looked like mud flats. It looked bleak and unwelcoming, driving both men into an even more sombre mood than before.

‘Wait right at the end, on the point,’ Gorelkin had told them earlier. ‘A deep water channel runs close to the shore. A trawler will pick you up and take you to Ostende, where you’ll be picked up.’

‘Why can’t we fly out?’ Serkhov had queried. He was past caring what Gorelkin thought of his questions and just wanted to get the hell out of this godforsaken country any way he could.

‘All airfields are being monitored, that’s why,’ Gorelkin had replied tersely. ‘You go anywhere near one and you’ll be picked up. Nobody is watching trawlers leaving the coast.’

It made sense and Serkhov had shrugged it off. As long as the trawler didn’t sink, he could put up with a few hours at sea. Anything was better than sitting around waiting for the British security services to pick them up.

‘We’d better wait inside,’ Votrukhin murmured, and walked over to the cottage and kicked open the door. The interior was a ruin, the brick walls bare of plaster, the floor a concrete slab riddled with cracks and littered with old bricks and planks, the roof a mass of holes. But it would do until they could leave.

‘What about the car?’

‘Leave it. People come down here to walk dogs and watch birds. By the time the boat comes it will be almost dark.’ Votrukhin piled two stacks of bricks and placed a plank across, forming a rough bench. He sat down gingerly, then pulled out a packet of mints. He took two and offered the packet to Serkhov, but the sergeant shook his head and sat beside him.

‘I still don’t get how Gorelkin arranged for us to dodge those security people,’ Serkhov murmured. ‘They nearly had us, then suddenly, gone.’

‘Don’t question it,’ Votrukhin replied. ‘We followed instructions, it got us out of a jam. End of subject.’ Even he, however, had been left wondering how their boss had managed it. From having no support whatsoever, they now had someone watching their backs and intercepting a close pursuit. All it had taken was a phone call instructing them to slow right down at a particular set of traffic lights along their route, then take off the moment they saw the other car coming.

All he knew was that it was the best piece of stage-management Gorelkin had ever managed.

They sat in silence after that, neither having much to say. After working together so long, more often than not in dangerous situations, the two men had developed the art of silent companionship, speaking only when necessary.

Through the thin walls came the sound of boats passing in the channel; small work vessels, engines clattering, the occasional fast launch crashing over the water, and heavier vessels seemingly taking an age to go by and making the ancient building shudder with their noise.

After thirty minutes, with the light fading outside, Votrukhin’s phone rang. He answered it and listened, then shut it off.

‘The boat’s on its way in. We wait inside for a signal.’

Serkhov sucked on his teeth and spat across the room. He’d been getting more and more restless, and didn’t think much of the arrangements. Nothing to eat or drink, in danger of some local idiot dog walker seeing them here and reporting them to the police, and neither of them knowing what was going to happen afterwards.

‘Seems a dull way to leave the country,’ he commented. ‘There was a moment when I thought we might go out like that film. . Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, shooting our way out through a bunch of English cops.’

Votrukhin said, ‘You think too much.’

‘No. I’m being realistic. Your trouble is, you believe all the crap they sold you about duty for the country and service, and how being an officer lifts you up the ladder. Me, I stopped listening to that years ago. We’re still at the same shit level we were at ten years back, and it doesn’t look like getting better, after what Gorelkin put us through.’

‘So why are you here, then? You want to die a hero’s death, is that it?’

‘Well, it might be better than wasting away in a foreign prison. Or finding that we’re going to carry the can for Gorelkin’s cock-up and end up in a recycled gulag for a few years.’

‘You’ve really got a thing for him, haven’t you?’

‘You mean you haven’t? This whole trip’s been a mess from start to finish. We did Tobinskiy, which is what we came for. But it’s all been downhill from there. No real planning, no backup, no fall-back plan for when the shit hit the fan, like it seems to have done. And now we’re sneaking out like kids raiding a chicken coop — and after what?’

‘We don’t know if it failed. Gorelkin might have got the Jardine woman some other way. Anyway, when did you ever know an operation go perfectly as planned? It’s why they use us, because we can adapt.’

‘Adapt my arse. .’ Serkhov’s head snapped up at the sound of an engine. It sounded closer and lighter than any before. ‘What’s that?’

‘Probably a tender from the boat to pick us up.’

They both stood up, and it took a moment for both men to realise that the engine noise had come from the rear of the cottage, where they had left their car, not from the sea.

‘Fuck!’ Serkhov swore and pulled out his gun. ‘This doesn’t sound good.’ He stepped across to the window and glanced out. When he turned to Votrukhin, he looked grim. ‘Four men getting out of a car. They’re armed with machine guns.’