FireWall

23

We moved on for a few mare minutes and stopped. There was a clunk as the driver disengaged low gear and shifted into high, then set off again with a sharp left turn. We had to be on the gravel road, and the left turn meant that at least we wouldn't be driving past the Saab: that was further up on the right, toward the dead end. Did they already know where it was? Had they been here the night before, watching me carry out the recce, then followed me back to it? It made me worry about Tom again. Maybe they hadn't bothered to chase him too hard because they knew where he was heading. It wasn't whether he was dead or alive that worried me, it was just not knowing.

We began to accelerate gently. The front passenger seat back moved and creaked under what must have been a very large body pushing against my face. He was probably trying to get into a comfortable position with belt kit on.

The snow was now melting off the clothing of the three in the back and dripping down my neck. It wasn't the worst thing that had happened to me tonight, but it pretty much fitted in with the way my luck was going. There wasn't a lot I could do about it at the moment, apart from prepare for the ride by not tensing my body up and trying to relax as much as the three pairs of Banner boots would allow.

The front passenger suddenly bounced around in his seat with a shout of "What the fuck?"

The accent was unmistakably American. "Jesus! Russians!"

A split second later the driver hit the brakes. There was a crash of metal and glass behind us and the heavy-caliber sound of automatic fire.

The clear-cut, no-messing New England accent and the sound of rapid fire got me stressing big time. It got worse as our wagon came to a quick, sliding stop, turning sideways on the snow. The doors burst open.

"Cover them, cover them!"

The suspension bounced as everyone leaped down from the wagon, using me as a springboard. I suddenly felt very vulnerable, hooded and plasticuffed here in the foot well-a vehicle is the natural focus of fire. But I didn't care what was going on and who wanted what from whom. It was time to disappear.

Wind whistled through the open doors and the engine was still running.

The heavy automatic fire was only about fifty yards away. A series of long, uncontrolled bursts echoed off the trees. This was my opportunity.

Pulling up my plasticuffed hands, I tried to tug the mask off my face, but the drawstring got stuck on my chin. My fingers were grappling with it when I heard hysterical shouting further down the road. The one advantage of working with Sergei and his gang was that I had learned to recognize some Russian. I might not know what it meant, but I knew where it came from. This had to be the Maliskia.

If I could get the hood off, my plan was to crawl into the driver's seat, then just go for it. As I was struggling with the string I got a little reminder to keep my head down. Safety glass cracked as a round came through the rear windshield and hit the headrest above me. At almost the same instant two rounds from the same burst ricocheted off a slab of granite at the roadside and shrieked up into the air. There were more shouts, this time from American voices.

"Move!"

"Come on, let's do it! Let's do it!"

My 4x4 wasn't going anywhere, but other engines revved, doors slammed, and tires spun uselessly in the snow.

At last I got the mask off. Pulling myself up, I couldn't feel any of my pain, and had just begun to move toward the gap between the seats when I realized it wasn't an option. About fifteen feet away, at the side of the driveway behind a mound of granite, a white-clad figure was pointing an SD at my center mass. I knew, because I could see the red splash of his laser sight on my jacket. The black-covered head screamed at me above the nightmare that was happening down the road: "Freeze! Freeze! Down, down, down!"

Change of plan. With the laser on me, the only problem he had was not missing. There were more screams and shouts mixed with the heavy Russian fire. I got down as flat as possible in the rear foot well if I could have crawled under the carpet I would have.

I was feeling even more exposed now I'd seen what was happening behind me. Headlights shone in all directions, illuminating the snowfall as the Americans tried to make their escape around the van that was directly behind our 4x4. It was off to the side of the driveway, its left wing wrapped around a tree; the driver must still have been in his seat as I could hear and see the wheels spinning in a frenzied attempt to get back on the gravel.

The shadows thrown by the headlights caused even more confusion as bodies moved within the treeline. I saw the muzzle flash of the Russian fire, but coming from way behind the convoy now. They were moving back.

My cover must have seen movement in the treeline nearer us. He brought his weapon up and started to fire, putting down a series of rapid, well-aimed three-round bursts. It sounded pathetic compared with the heavier caliber opposing fire; these weapons were not designed to be used at long range. Even sixty feet was a long way for an SD.

"Stoppage!"

The boy needed to change mags. I watched as he gripped his outer glove in his teeth, keeping his eyes on me. The moment the glove was off I saw a white silk touch glove in the headlights. The empty magazine went down the front of his white smock and, producing a new mag from his belt kit he slapped it into place. He then hit the release catch, which told me these guys were the newer version of the SD-even more indication that these were official. It was all very slick; I wasn't going to escape just yet. He had a bolstered P7 and his weapons drills were so good that even with him under fire there was no way I'd have time to do anything. I kept my head down and lay still.

Vehicles screamed past me with skidding wheels, the tree-loving one in the lead, glass smashed and holes in the body work revving far too fast, trying to gain speed. Our vehicle group must have been giving covering fire while they moved out of the danger area.

The New England voice was back in earshot. "Move on, move on. Come on, let's go, let's go, let's go!"

The guy covering me got up, still pointing his weapon at me as he moved forward. He jumped into the wagon, ramming his heels down into my back and the weapon into my neck. The barrel was very hot and I could smell cordite and the oily odor of WD40. He'd probably smothered it in the stuff to protect it from the weather and it was now burning off the weapon.

The last thing I had a chance to see was him getting hold of the hood then pulling it back down over my head.

All the others were now jumping back in, making the vehicle rock with their weight. I felt the gearshift being engaged and we started to move off faster than we should, the tires slithering and sliding as we turned back on line to move up the driveway.

The doors were slammed shut and I was hit by a rush of air from above.

The electric sunroof was opening; a moment later I heard dick-thud, dick-thud, dick-thud and a yell of, "Get some, get some, get some!" as New England fired through the open aperture. I couldn't hear any reply from the Russians.

One of the others turned and opened fire through the rear window, adding more holes to the safety glass.

Click-thud, dick-thud, dick-thud.

Empty cases hit the side window with a metallic ping-ping-ping, then fell and bounced off my head.

Freezing cold air blasted through the roof, then the motor whined and the rush of air stopped.

"Anybody down?"

"I didn't see anyone." That came from the rear. "If there is, they'll be in the wagons. No one was left."

I got a heavy slap around the head. "Fuckin' Russians! Who do you think you are, man?"

The front passenger was, without doubt, the commander. His WASPy accent sounded as if he should have been standing on a soapbox fighting an election for the Democrats in Massachusetts, not trying to sort out a gang fuck in Finland, but thankfully he seemed to be sorting it out rather well. I was still alive.

There was a short pause, maybe while he marshaled his thoughts, then, "Bravo Alpha." He had to be on the net, listening to his earpiece. "Situation?"

There was silence from the others. Well-trained operators know better than to talk when somebody's on the net.

The Wasp let out a cry. "Shit! They have Bravo's vehicle." He got back on the net, "Roger that, did you total the kit?"

There was five seconds of silence before he replied in a low, depressed voice. "Roger that, Bravo." He addressed the vehicle crew. "The sons-of-bitches have some of the hardware. Shit!"

There was no reply from the crew as the Wasp composed himself before getting back on the net.

"Charlie, Alpha-situation?"

He checked through all his call signs. There seemed to be four of them: Bravo, Charlie, Delta, and Echo. How many people at each call sign I didn't know, but there had seemed to be loads of them at the house. It seemed the whole thing had been a gang fuck for everyone.

Me getting caught; Tom, well, I didn't know; the Americans and Maliskia each only getting part of the hardware they wanted; as for the three Tom lookalikes from the house, they must be more pissed than all of us put together.

The radio traffic had been in clear speech, which indicated they were using secure and probably satellite com ms not like my Motorolas at the Intercontinental. As they transmit, these radios skip up and down through dozens of different frequencies in a sequence that only radios with the same encryption fill, fluctuating at the same rate and frequency, can hear. Everybody else just gets an earful of mush.

He must have got a message from Echo. "Okay, roger that, Echo. Roger that." He turned toward the bodies in the back. "Bobby has gotten hit in the leg. But everything's fine; it's cool." There was a sigh of relief from the back.

I felt the fabric press against my face as he turned. "Is that asshole still breathing?"

My cover answered, "Oh yeah." He gave me another dig with his heel and a muttered insult in Texan drawl.

I moaned in deep Russian acknowledgment. The commander's ass swiveled again and my head moved with it. He got back on the net. "All stations, this is Alpha. We're still going as planned. My group will take the extra paxes. Acknowledge."

I imagined him listening in to the other call signs on his earpiece.

"Bravo."

"Charlie, roger that."

"Delta, roger."

"Echo, roger dee."

It seemed that I was the extra "paxes." Whatever happened to me now, it would be down to the Wasp.

We drove in silence for another twenty minutes, still on the paved road. By my estimation we hadn't gone far; we couldn't have been traveling that fast because of the heavy snow.

The Wasp got back on the net. "Papa One, Alpha."

There was a pause while he listened.

"Any news yet on Super Six?" More silence, then, "Roger that, I'll wait."

"Papa One and Super Six" didn't sound like ground call signs. Where possible these are always short and sharp. It stops confusion when the shit hits the fan or com ms are bad, factors which normally go hand in hand.

Ten minutes later the Wasp was back on the net. "Alpha." He was obviously acknowledging somebody.

There was silence, then, "Roger that, Super Six call signs are no go. A no go."

After a pause of two seconds, he announced, "All stations, all stations. Okay, here's the deal. Go to the road plan; the extra paxes still goes with me. Acknowledge."

Nothing more came from him as he got the acknowledgment from the other call signs. At least these guys were having a shit day too. The Super Six call signs must have been helicopters or fixed wing aircraft that couldn't fly in these conditions. In better weather we would have been flown out of here by people who worked for their Firm. Nine out of ten times these are civilian pilots with background jobs as commercial fliers, so they have solid cover stories. They'd fly in on NVGs, maybe pick us all up, or at least the kit, injured, and prisoners, and scream back out of the country to a U.S. base. Or maybe, if they were helis, they'd land on an American warship in the Baltic, where the computer equipment and its operators would be sorted out and moved on to whoever was so anxious to have them. If I didn't sort my shit out soon and escape I'd land up with them in one of the Americans' "reception centers." I'd been shown them in the past; the rooms ranged from cold and wet 3x9 foot cells to virtually self-contained suites, depending on what was judged the best way to get information out of "paxes" like me. No matter how you looked at it, they were interrogation centers, and it was up to the interrogators CIA, NSA, whoever they were whether you got processed the easy way or the hard way.

Fuck the pizza boys; I didn't care what happened to them. But now being one of the Maliskia, I'd be checking straight into my personal 3x9 with corner en suite. There was nothing I could do about that for the time being. I could only hope I'd have a chance to escape before they found out who I really was.

24

We drove quite slowly for about another twenty minutes. It was physically painful lying crammed in the foot well but that was nothing compared with how depressed I felt about what the future held.

"Papa One, Alpha-at blue one."

The Wasp was back on the net. Papa One must be the operating base. The Wasp was counting down to it, sending a report line so that Papa One knew the group's location.

A minute or so later we turned a sharp right.

"Papa One, Alpha-blue two."

I could hear the material on the driver's arms rustling as he worked at the wheel, and the tire noise told me we were still on pavement and snow.

There was a sharp right turn and my head was squeezed against the door.

Then we were bumping over what felt like a speed bump, and drove another ninety feet or so before the vehicle came to a halt.

The Wasp got out, leaving his door open. As the rear doors opened, other vehicles passed and stopped all around me. The screech of tires on a dry surface told me we were under cover, and judging by the echoes made by the vehicles we were somewhere large and cavernous.

The three on top of me started to exit. Elsewhere, engines were still running as other doors were pushed or slid open. People clambered out and walked around, but there was no voice noise, only movement. Then came the echoing clatter of steel roller garage doors being pulled down manually with chains.

Whatever kind of building we were inside, they didn't waste money on heating. Maybe it was an aircraft hangar, which would make sense if we were going to have a pickup with a fixed wing or chopper. Then again, maybe it was just an old warehouse. I couldn't see a single glint of light through my mask.

The air was becoming heavy with vehicle fumes. As soon as the three pairs of feet had used me as a platform to get out of the wagon, a pair of hands gripped my ankles and started to pull me out, feet first. I was dragged over the door sill and had to put my arms out to protect myself as I dropped the two feet or so onto the ground. The dry surface was concrete.

There was lots of movement around me, and the same sort of sound as there had been in the house, the shuffling and dragging of electric plugs. The equipment was being moved out of the vans.

I heard the telltale clunk of metal on metal as working parts were brought back and weapons unloaded, along with the clicking of the ejected rounds being pressed back into magazines.

I was turned over onto my back and my feet were released and left to drop to the floor. I gave a very Russian moan. Two pairs of boots walked round to my head. They pulled me up by the armpits and started marching me. My feet dragged along the concrete, toes catching on bumps and potholes and now and again colliding with a lump of brick or other hard debris.

It might have seemed to the two either side of me that I was doing nothing, but at brain ell level I was really quite busy, trying to take in all the sensory information around me. They dragged me past a wagon and even through the hood I caught the aroma of coffee, probably them opening the flasks they'd had waiting for them at the end of the job.

We passed some subdued sounds of pain and short, sharp breathing. It sounded like a woman. There were men around her.

"Okay, let's get another line up."

It seemed that Bobby in call sign Echo was a woman. They were getting fluids into her and treating her GSW (gunshot wound).

We kept moving, my feet dragging through bits of wood, cans, and newspapers, theirs occasionally crunching down on plastic drinks cups.

I heard the rip of Velcro, then was dragged sideways through a heavy door. They steered me round to the right as the door swung back.

The pizza boys were already here: The sound of crying, moans, and groans filled what felt like a smaller area than before. The echoes made it sound like we were in a medieval torture chamber, and even in the sanitizing cold this place stank of decay and neglect.

A couple more paces and we stopped, and I realized the others were being kicked; that was why they were screaming. I heard boots making contact with bodies and the grunts of the kickers.

I was pushed down to the ground and given a good kicking as well. The moans and sobs seemed to come from my right, and were now somehow muffled one by one. We weren't all in one big room; I guessed we were being put into closets or storage spaces.

The moment my head banged against the toilet bowl, I knew where I was.

A bathroom.

Another scream and a grunt echoed as the boys were subdued and persuaded into their new accommodation. I didn't know what was worse, their noise or the fact that the kickers were doing all this without a word, making best use of the echoes to scare the shit out of everyone.

Guided by their kicks I crawled into the far-right corner of the stall, coming to rest on what felt like years of debris. The paper I felt was crispy and brittle, like very thin nacho chips. Still getting kicked, I felt a hard brick wall against my back and the base of the toilet bowl against my stomach. I kept my head down and knees up in protection, gritting my teeth and waiting for the worst. Instead my hands were gripped and pulled up into the air, the plastic now tighter against my wrists because they were swelling up. I felt a knife go into the handcuffs and they were cut. Shackling my left arm over the waste pipe at the rear of the toilet bowl, they grabbed hold of the other arm and shoved it underneath so I had a hand on either side. It was pointless resisting; they had total control over me. There was nothing I could do yet, apart from save my energy.

They gripped my wrists together. I tensed up my forearm muscles, trying to bulk them out as much as possible. The plasticuffs came on and I heard the ratcheting and felt the pressure as they were tightened. I moaned as soon as it seemed the right thing to do. I wanted to appear as petrified and broken as the pizza boys. They left, slamming the door behind them.

I tried resting my head against the pipe, but it was unbearably cold.

If there was any water inside it must be frozen solid.

I lay there amongst the rubble and trash, trying to get comfortable, but feeling very aware of the cold floor through my clothing.

There was a loud, prolonged creak as the heavy main door into the hangar area swung closed. Then there was silence, even from the pizza boys. Certainly no sounds of dripping plumbing; it was too cold for that. I couldn't hear any of the vehicles, either. Nothing but pitch-black silence.

A couple of seconds later, as if the pizza boys had all been holding their breath waiting for the bogeymen to go away, the moaning and hooded sobs began once more; after a few moments of that, the boys muttered a few words to each other in Finnish, trying to give each other a boost. They sounded severely scared.

I shifted my position in an attempt to get some pressure off my wrists, trying to find out if that extra millimeter or two of muscle flexing had given me any chance of moving my wrists in the handcuffs.

As I stretched my legs, I connected with what sounded like an empty can. The noise as it rattled and scraped over the concrete gave spark to an idea.

I waggled my head past the waste pipe, so that it was resting on top of my hands. Then, feeling with my teeth through the hood, I got hold of my right outer glove. That came off easily enough and I let it drop to the ground, leaving the touch glove still on my hand.

I reached forward with my head, positioning the bottom of the hood over my fingers, and got to work. I now knew the hoods were done up with a drawstring and ties round the bottom, and it wasn't long before it lay on the ground.

It seemed a total waste of effort. The stall was in complete darkness, and now that I had the hood off, my head was getting cold. My nose started to run almost immediately.

Leaning as far forward as I could to free up my hands, I started to feel around on the ground. My fingers sifted through old paper cups and all sorts of garbage until I found what I wanted.

I readjusted my body around the pan to make myself comfortable while I pulled off my other outer glove with my teeth. Then, with both touch gloves still on, I squeezed the thin metal of the soda can between my thumbs and forefingers until the sides touched in the middle. I then started to bend the two parts backward and forward. After only six or seven goes the thin metal cracked, and soon the two halves were apart. I felt for the ring-pull end and dropped the other one next to my gloves and hood.

Feeling gently around the broken edge, I looked for a place where I could start to peel the side down like an orange. The sensation had virtually gone in my swollen hands, but the touch glove caught on the aluminum and I found what I wanted and started to pick and tear. My fingers slipped a couple of times, cutting me on the razor-sharp metal, but there wasn't time to worry about that; besides, I couldn't feel the pain and it was nothing to what would be inflicted on me if I didn't get away from here.

Once I'd pared the metal down to under an inch from the tab end, I tried moving my wrists apart as much as possible. It didn't work that well because plasticuffs are designed not to stretch, but there was just enough play to do what I wanted. Cupping the can in my right hand with the sharp edge upward, I bent it toward my wrist, trying to reach the plastic. If I'd left more tin sticking out it would have gone further, but the edge would have buckled under the pressure. That was also why I used the tab end: The thicker rim gave the cutting edge more strength.

I knew that establishing a cut into the cuffs was going to take the most time, but once I'd got into that nice smooth plastic I could go for it. It must have taken just a minute or two for the jagged tin to finally bite; then, when I was about three-quarters of the way through, I heard the loud, echoing creak of the swing door opening. Light and engine noise spilled through a gap of about two inches under the stall door.

There was the sound of boots on trash heading in my direction. The light got stronger and I started to stress big time, dropping the can and scrabbling for the hood, and, once it was on, trying to find my gloves. I didn't manage it, but just as I was gritting my teeth for the inevitable confrontation the footsteps went past.

There was a flurry of muffled pleas in English from the boys as their doors were kicked open and they got dragged out and subdued. They must have heard the Americans during the contact, too, as there was no multilingual begging now.

Doors banged and soon I could hear their feet dragging past me. Within moments, the door swung shut and silence was restored.

I felt around for the can end, not bothering to take the hood off. I couldn't have seen anything anyway. I started to work with more of a frenzy; I had to assume that they'd be coming for me next, and soon.

After two or three minutes of frantic sawing, the plastic finally gave.

Pulling the hood off, I felt around for the gloves and put them in my pocket, keeping just the touch gloves on.

Next I located the other can end. Getting slowly to my feet and enjoying being vertical, I felt around the stall. I found the door handle, opened it and walked very slowly and carefully out into what I could feel was a narrow corridor with painted brick walls. A faint glimmer of light under the swing door trickled into the corridor about ten feet up on my left. Picking my feet up and putting them down with infinite care, my left hand supporting me on the wall, I made my way toward the light.

As I got closer I began to hear a vehicle engine revving, then starting to move off.

Once at the door I couldn't find a keyhole to look through, so, clearing the debris on the ground, I got down on my knees. Chains rattled as the roller shutter was pulled open. I wondered if the pizza boys were leaving town.

Lying flat on the floor on my right side, I managed to get my eyeball close to the bottom of the door. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out the bottom half of the can, the one I hadn't worked on. Using the light to find a place in the metal where I could start peeling this time, I got to work and put my eye back against the gap.

I'd been right, it was some sort of hangar or factory space. It was mostly in darkness, but lit in places by twelve-inch-long florescent lighting units, the sort that campers use. These had either been perched on the hoods of wagons or were being carried around. The pools of almost blue light and shadow made the place look like the set of the Twilight Zone.

Several vehicles were parked in a row on the far left, about forty yards away, sedans, wagons, MPVs, and SUVs, some of which had roof racks piled with skis.

My thumb slipped and ran along the ripped can. I still couldn't feel it, but at least some sensation was returning to my hands. Pins and needles had started to work their way around my fingers while I carried on peeling the metal back.

I looked straight ahead to the exit, my only way out, then at the people who would try and stop me. They were mostly by the two remaining vans, parked haphazardly in the middle of the hangar.

A group of maybe five or six bodies were hurriedly unloading their weapons and taking off their white uniforms and bundling them into what looked like Lacon boxes aluminim airfreight containers. They were in a hurry, but not rushing. No one was talking; everyone seemed to know what was required.

When one of the bodies did a half turn so that it was in profile, I realized that Bobby wasn't the only woman on this job.

As they continued to throw off their kit, I could now see where the sound of Velcro had come from: She was ripping apart the side straps from sets of body armor before stacking them in the boxes.

Another group of maybe eight were out of their whites and unpacking civilian clothes from duffel bags. Others were combing their hair in the side mirrors, trying to make themselves look like normal citizens.

I caught a glimpse of the 4x4 I'd been transported in; its back window safety glass was pockmarked with holes where the rounds had passed through. Beyond it were the shapes of the other vehicles used on the job, which were now probably going to be abandoned. Strike marks from automatic weapons were not the best kind of modification to be sporting at stoplights.

I couldn't see any evidence of the computer kit. I assumed they'd moved it straight on, along with the pizza boys and probably Bobby and the guy with the hook hanging from his thigh. They'd be in need of proper trauma care. Since the weather had put a stop to a quick exfiltration, the next destination would be a secure area like the U.S. embassy. From there, the equipment would probably be moved by diplomatic bag back to the U.S. Dip bags are basically mail sacks or containers that by mutual agreement other governments cannot have access to, which means they can contain anything from sensitive documents to weapons, ammunition, and dead bodies. I'd even heard a story of the intelligence service bringing back the turret of a new Russian armored personnel carrier in what must have been a party-sized one.

The pizza boys would be stuck in the embassy or a safe house until a heli could get in sometime tomorrow and airlift them out of the country, unless there was a U.S. warship in dock. If I didn't get a grip of this situation, I knew I'd soon be following them.

Everyone was now out of their whites and in jeans, down jackets, and hats. The woman was still organizing the loading of the Lacons.

Loud metallic echoes filled the hangar as the boxes were moved into the vans.

One man seemed to be running the whole show. I couldn't see his face from this distance, but he was the tallest of the group, maybe six foot two or three, and a head above everyone else. He gathered everyone around him and seemed to be giving them a brief. They were certainly doing a lot of nodding, but his voice wasn't loud enough for me to understand what he was saying.

While he finished the briefing, the doors of the two vans slammed, both engines revved and they started to leave. Their headlights swept across the group as they turned toward the shutter.

I felt around the rim of the half can in my hands as the chains went into action. I wasn't doing particularly well with it because I hadn't really been concentrating.

I watched the Wasp team disperse as they moved off toward the line of vehicles like aircrew to their fighters, lights swinging in their hands. They were probably going to split up and do their own thing, probably in exactly the same way as they'd come into the country in the first place.

They would now be sterile of anything implicating them in the job. They would have cover documents and a perfect cover story and would certainly no longer be armed. All they had to do was wander back to their chalets and hotels as if they'd had a good night out, which I supposed they had. None of them was dead.

More engines revved, doors slammed, and headlights came on. I could see the fumes rising from exhausts. It looked a bit like the starting grid before a Grand Prix.

The people from the embassy would probably take care of the abandoned vehicles. Their priority was to get away from here now that the equipment and pizza boys were safely on their way. Their only problem was that they had a little bonus me.

It looked like the Wasp and another woman were taking on that responsibility. The vehicles were now leaving, but they were still on their feet, the woman with a set of jumper cables dragging along the floor as she moved out of the way of the holiday makers. They were leaving nothing to chance.

Red brake lights lined up as they took it in turn to exit and hang left. Snow was still falling. I could see it clearly now as full beams shone out into the darkness.

Soon there was just one car left stationary, its engine running and its lights blazing. The Wasp was sitting sideways in the driver's seat with his feet on the concrete, the glow of a cigarette intensifying as he sucked on it. The interior light was on and I could make out thick curly hair on a very large head.

The jumper cables were thrown into the rear seat and the woman disappeared into the darkness.

At last I'd finished the other half of the can. The blood from my fingers felt cold as it was soaked up by my touch gloves. It was a good sign. Feeling had returned to my hands.

It was quiet for a few moments, with just the engine ticking over, and then chains started rattling, and the shutter closed. The woman emerged from the shadows once again and bent toward the glowing cigarette. I couldn't make out any of her features because her hair covered her face.

They talked for a moment, then he turned back into the car to stub his cigarette in the ashtray. He was clearly too professional even to leave DNA evidence on the floor. By then she was round the back, pulling open the trunk.

The Wasp started walking in my direction, his long legs silhouetted by the vehicle's headlamps. There was a flicker of bright white light, then the florescent unit in his left hand burst into life. I could see that he'd just finished pulling his ski mask back on. I watched his right hand go under his coat and come out again holding a multi barreled P7, which went into his coat pocket.

My body banged into shock. He was coming to kill me. I made myself calm down. Of course he wasn't coming to kill me. Why would they have gone to the trouble of bringing me here? And why the hood to hide his identity? He was taking precautions in case I'd pulled my hood off.

The car edged forward with the trunk open as he got within about thirty feet of the door, the light still swaying in his left hand. It was time to get in gear, otherwise I'd soon be given a dose of the medicine I'd forced Val to take last week.

I got to my feet and moved to the right of the door, away from the toilets, stressing at the prospect of taking on a guy of his size. All that stuff about the bigger they are, the harder they fall, it's a myth. The bigger they are, the harder they hit you back.

I wasn't sure how long the hallway was, but I soon found out. I'd only taken four steps when I banged into the end wall. Turning back, I faced the door, fumbling in my pocket for the other half-can, breathing deeply to oxygenate myself in preparation.

The door swung open with a metallic screech of its hinges, momentarily flooding the area with bright white light. I could hear the car whining in reverse. He had turned right, his massive back to me now as he took the first few steps toward my toilet stall.

I moved quickly as the door closed; not exactly running, because I didn't want to trip, but taking long, fast steps to get some speed and momentum, with my right arm raised. With the main door closed and car engine running, there was no way she was going to hear this.

He did, though, and when I was still a couple of feet away he started to turn.

I focused on the shape of his head as I leaped up and at him. Landing with my left foot forward, I swung my whole body to the left, my right arm crooked and the palm held open. Sometimes a really firm, heavy slap to the face can be more effective than a punch, and that's absolutely guaranteed if you're wielding a sawed off soda can with razor-sharp edges.

It hit his head hard. I didn't care where the can connected, just so long as it did. There was a loud groan. I didn't feel the can digging in, just the pressure of my arm being stopped mid swing as the rest of my body carried on swiveling.

The light danced as the florescent unit in his hand clattered to the concrete, and he started to follow it. I swung to the right with my left arm slightly bent, still focusing on his head. I hit the mark; I could feel the softness of his cheek under the left half of the can, then felt it scrape around the contour of his jaw as he fell. He moaned again, this time louder and with more anguish. By now he was on his knees.

As I brought my right hand down hard onto the top of his head, the metal edges dug deep, then hit bone, stripping back the skin as he fell. I gouged a thick furrow from his scalp; the can held for a couple more inches and then broke free.

He slumped to the ground, hands scrabbling to protect his head. For a few more frenzied seconds I continued to slash at his hands and head, then his hands fell away and he lay very still. He wasn't feigning unconsciousness: he wouldn't have risked dropping his hands and exposing himself to further attack. He had gone into shock, but he was still breathing; He wasn't dead. He was never going to get a job modeling for Gillette, but he'd live. There had been no other way out. If you're going to stop somebody, you have to do it as quickly and violently as you can.

The florescent unit threw a pool of light across the floor and onto his ski mask. The wool still looked remarkably intact, as it does when a sweater rips and the tear seems to knit itself together, unless you look at it close up. Blood was seeping through the material.

Dropping the cans, I rolled him over onto his back and, putting my knee into his face just to make things worse, I pulled out the P7 and a cell phone that was also in there. That went into my pocket.

My breathing was now very fast and shallow and just slightly louder than the engine ticking over immediately beyond the swing door. I could see the red glow from the tail lights under the door gap, and my nose was filling with exhaust fumes.

Getting to my feet, I got hold of the top of his ski mask and pulled it off. At last I saw the extent of the damage. He had some severe gouges where the can had gone right through his cheeks and flaps of skin hung across his mouth. In places I could see bone through the blood-soaked, hairy mess of his skull.

I pulled the mask over my head, trying to cut down on the chances of being recognized later. It was wet and warm. I checked his body for a radio as he whined weakly to himself. There was nothing; he'd have been planning to be sterile like the rest of them. He'd had to hang onto the P7 to sort me out.

I turned toward the door. It was the woman's turn next.

Pushing through, I moved into a cloud of red fumes and brake lights.

The vehicle was no more than three feet away, engine idling, trunk still open and waiting for me. I moved straight to the left hand side as the passenger door banged shut behind me. Bringing the pistol up into the aim, I pointed it at the woman's face, the muzzle a foot from the glass. If she opened the door, she couldn't knock the pistol out of line quickly enough to do anything about it; if she tried to drive forward, she would die first round.

She stared wide-eyed at the barrel from under her multicolored ski hat.

In the glow from the instrument panel I could see her trying to make sense of what her eyes were telling her. It wouldn't take her long; my blood-soaked touch gloves and the Wasp's mask would soon give her a clue.

With my left hand I motioned for her to get out. I was supposed to be Russian; I wasn't going to open my mouth unless I had to.

She kept staring, transfixed. She was bluffing; she'd drop me at the first opportunity.

Moving further back as the door inched open, I decided to put on a heavy Slavic accent. Well, what I thought sounded like one. "Gun, gun!"

She stared up at me with frightened eyes and said in a little-girl voice, "Please don't hurt me. Please don't hurt me."

Then she opened her legs to show me a P7 nestled between her jeaned thighs. They were definitely traveling sterile, otherwise they would have had conventional weapons for this phase.

I motioned for her to drop it in the foot well She moved her hand very slowly downward to comply.

The moment she'd dropped it I moved in, grabbing her by her shoulder-length, dark-brown hair and heaving her out of the car and onto all fours. With the P7 jammed into her neck I felt for a cell phone. It seemed I had the only one. Moving back three paces, I pointed at the far wall, where the car had originally been parked, and she got up and started walking. I didn't care what she did now that she was disarmed. All their radios would have been stashed, I had the cell phone and there was no one left that she could turn to for help.

I got into the warm car, a Ford, threw it into first gear and screamed toward the closed shutter. She was probably in the hallway by now to find out what had happened to her friend the Wasp.

Stopping alongside the four vans and the shot-out 4x4,1 got out with a P7 in hand and splashed through the small puddles made by melting snow from the vehicles, ready to shoot out some tires. You don't just go up and fire straight at rubber: There's too high a chance of the round ricocheting back. You use the engine block to protect you, lean round the door and then do it.

The P7's signature thud was nothing to the high-pitched dmgggg that echoed round the hangar as the round hit metal. Then there was a hiss as air escaped under pressure.

I took a look behind me; there was nothing happening from the hallway yet.

Once all vehicles were taken care of, I jumped back into the driver's seat and aimed for the garage doors, though this time in reverse, so the headlights were pointed at the swing door. If she came for me, I wanted to see.

I braked, threw the gearbox into neutral and leaped out. The ice-cold metal chains burned my hands even through the touch gloves as I pulled down in a frenzy to open the shutters. Raising them just enough to get the car out, I clambered back in and reversed out into the snowfall, pointing the vehicle in the direction everyone else had gone.

I left the hangar behind, not knowing whether to feel sorry for the Wasp, relieved at still being alive, or angry with Val and Liv. I checked the fuel tank; it was nearly full, as I would have expected.

The cell phone went out the window and buried itself in the snow. No way was such a fantastic tracking device going to stay with me.

The snow was falling heavily. I didn't have a clue where I was, but that didn't really matter as long as I got away. Pulling at the mask, I felt the Wasp's blood smear across my face. It finally came off, and I threw it into the foot well along with the other P7.

Hitting the in tenor light, I took a look in the mirror. There was so much red stuff on me I looked like a beet. There was no way I could drive after first light or in a builtup area looking like this.

The steering wheel, too, was smeared with blood from the touch gloves.

I'd have to sort myself out. After maybe an hour I pulled off the road, and had a quick wash in the freezing snow. Then, with a cleaned-up body and car, and the blood-soaked gear buried in a snow drift, I drove through the night, looking for signs that would steer me to Helsinki.

The more I thought about it, the more severely pissed I became.

Whether Liv and Val knew about the Americans wanting to join in the fun, I wasn't sure, but I intended to find out.

25

Wednesday, December 15.1999 I set an the flam next to a red star in the corner of the station, facing the row of telephone booths that displayed the DLB loaded sign.

The black marker strike down the side of the right-hand booth was clearly visible from the bus station doors immediately to my right. I had a copy of the International Herald Tribune, an empty coffee cup and, in my right pocket, a P7 with a full seven-round unit. Detached from its pistol grip in my left-hand pocket was the other unit, containing three remaining rounds.

As soon as the shops opened that morning I'd bought a complete set of clothes to replace the cold, wet ones I was wearing. I was now in a dark-beige ski jacket, gloves, and a blue fleece pointed hat. I didn't care if I looked dorky; it covered up my head and most of my face. My pulled-up jacket collar did the rest.

Pain lanced across my left shoulder as I adjusted my position. The bruising probably looked horrendous. There was nothing I could do about it but moan to myself and be thankful I hadn't fallen on anything sharp.

I'd dumped the car off at a suburban railway station just after eight o'clock that morning and took the train into the city. The snow was still falling, so the vehicle would be covered by now and the plates would be un checkable On arrival at Helsinki I'd pulled off the left-luggage ticket from under locker number eleven and collected my bag, cash, passports, and credit cards. I also checked for Tom's, ticket under number ten. It was still wrapped in its plastic and taped under the locker.

I'd been thinking about him a lot. If the Americans or the Maliskia hadn't killed him last night, the weather would have. Tom had skills, but playing at Grizzly Adams wasn't one of them.

I felt pissed, but not too sure if that was for him or me. It was then that I wrote him off. There has to be a stage when that happens, so your mind can be free to concentrate on more important things, and I wasn't short of those.

I left his bag ticket where it was. It would be an emergency supply of money and a new passport, once I'd tampered with it, in case what I was about to do went to rat shit.

Despite my best efforts, I found I couldn't help feeling sorry for Tom as I sat and watched a constant flow of travelers moving through the doors. It was my lies and promises that had got him where he was now, face down in the snow or bundled up somewhere in an American body bag.

The thing that made me feel even guiltier was that I knew I was just as pissed about not making any money as I was about his death.

Cutting away from that, I buried my hands deeper into my pockets, wrapping them round the P7 barrels. I was getting even more annoyed because I'd dumped the bag and blanket that could now be keeping my ass warm and comfortable, and because I knew that Tom's death would become yet another of those niggling little glitches that would surface in the hours before daybreak while I tried to sleep.

The station was packed. Santa Claus had already done two circuits, collecting money for neglected reindeer or whatever. People had been dragging in the snowfall on their footwear and, thanks to the large Victorian-style radiators, puddles had formed around the door area and gradually spread further into the station.

I looked at Baby G. It was 2:17 and I'd been here over four hours already. I was dying for another coffee, but needed to keep an eye on the doors; besides, once I drank I would inevitably need the bathroom at some stage, and I couldn't afford to miss Liv when and if she arrived.

It was going to be a long food- and coffee-free day, and maybe night.

From the point of view of third-party awareness, it's not too bad hanging around a railway station; you can get away with it for quite a long time.

I adjusted my numb, cold ass again, deciding not to waste time speculating about what the fuck had happened at the Microsoft house.

The facts were, I had made no money, Tom was dead and I could be in a world of shit with the Americans and a universe of shit with the Firm.

If my involvement was discovered, I'd end up helping to prop up an arch in a concrete pillar somewhere along the new Eurotunnel high-speed link. I'd never been too worried about dying, but to be killed by my own people would be a bit depressing.

The longer I'd thought about what had happened on the drive last night, the more I'd boiled over with hostility toward Liv and Val. I had to come up with a plan that still got me what I needed and not waste time and energy trying to work out how to get even. Apart from anything else, that wouldn't pay any clinic bills. Plan B was taking shape in my head. The Maliskia's money would pay for Kelly when I lifted Val and offered him to them for cash. My life had been up for grabs for years, and for a lot less money.

I had no idea how I was going to do it yet; I'd have to hit the ground running. But the first phase would be to let Liv think I had the Think Pad with the downloaded information on it, and, because of last night's fuckup, I'd only deal with Val now, and only in Finland. Who knows?

If Val turned up with the money, I could just take that and save myself the hassle.

But that wasn't the message I'd left in the plastic box I'd placed in the DLB. It was empty, just there so that when she came to get it there was something to unload, so as not to arouse suspicion.

Everything needed to be as it should be. As she left the station I would grab her and tell her in person, so she made no mistake about what I wanted.

I'd been sitting there for another twenty minutes when a large group of schoolkids on an excursion tried to get through the bus station doors all at once, juggling bags, skis, and Big Macs as they tried to walk, talk, and listen to Walkmans at the same time.

Less than thirty seconds later I saw Liv come through and walk straight past the loaded sign without even turning her head. But I knew she would have seen it. Her long black coat, Tibetan hat, and light-brown boots were easy to spot among the crowd as she moved through the hall, brushing snow from a shoulder with one hand and carrying two large paper Stockmann bags in the other.

She carried on past the kiosks and rest rooms, maneuvering through the schoolkids, who were now waiting for one of their teachers to sort his shit out with the tickets. I kept my eye on the peak of Liv's hat.

I had a good check to make sure she hadn't been followed in, just in case she'd brought any protection with her, or worse, in case the Wasp had a few of the party faithful on her tail.

The hat disappeared as she turned left into the ticketing and metro hallway. There was no rush, I knew where she was heading.

Once on my feet and past the school trip I spotted her again, just about to sit on top of the DLB, next to some more kids. The street pre former was in his normal spot, knocking out some old Finn favorite on his accordion. The noise mixed nicely with the ruckus from a group of drunks on the other side of the benches. They were having an argument with Santa Claus, much to the amusement of those passing.

Liv sat down as Santa poked the chest of one of the drunks. Staff began to step in to separate them. I watched Liv bend down and pretend to mess around with her bags. Her hand moved to pick up the DLB. The empty container was pulled from the Velcro and dropped into one of the bags; it wouldn't get read here.

I waited for her to leave, positioning myself in a corner so that whatever door she decided to head for I wouldn't be in her line of sight. A few minutes passed before she stood up, looking toward the ticketing area and smiling broadly. Her arms went out as the man from St. Petersburg emerged, smiling, from the crowd. They embraced and kissed, then sat down together, talking in that smiley, hand-in-hand, nice-to-see-you way, their noses only inches apart. He was dressed in the same long camel-hair coat, this time with a dark maroon turtleneck sticking out of the top. Today he also carried a light-brown leather briefcase.

Making sure I wasn't in line of sight of the platform doors, I checked the departures and arrivals board high on the wall. The St.

Petersburg train, going on to Moscow, was leaving from Platform 8 at 3:34 just over half an hour's time.

They talked for another ten minutes and then both stood up. Liv's contact picked up her bags in one hand, his briefcase in another, and they walked toward the platform doors.

Alarm bells started to ring in my head. Why had he picked up her bags?

My heart started to pound even harder when they both went through the doors and out onto the snow-covered platform. Shit, was she going with him? Maybe the courier had just given her the news about what had happened at Microsoft HQ and Liv was bailing out while she could.

I counted to ten and pushed my way out into the cold. Platform 8 was to the right of me as I headed toward the luggage lockers. The snow was falling gently and there wasn't a breath of wind. I walked with my head down, hands in pockets. Glancing sideways across the tracks, I saw they were heading for the cars about midway along the train. I walked slowly toward the left-luggage room, watching until they got on board. Then, checking my watch as if I'd just remembered something, I turned on my heels. There were about seventeen minutes to go before they left for St. Petersburg, and it looked like I'd have to go with them.

I went past two of the Russian train staff, standing in the guard's van at the rear of the train, their high-peaked, Nazi-officer-style caps pushed onto the backs of their heads as they glumly took a swig of whatever was in their bottle.

I climbed aboard and entered a clean, though very old car, with a corridor facing the platform and compartments all the way along to my right. I moved along the warm walkway and sat down on one of the hard, fabric-covered seats in the first empty compartment. The strong, almost-scented cigarette smell probably never left these trains.

What now? I had money but no visa. How was I going to cross into Russia? Hiding in the rest rooms only works in Agatha Christie movies.

Maybe a bribe could get me in. I'd play the dickhead tourist who hadn't got a clue about needing a passport, let alone a visa, and offer to be very generous with my dollars if they would just be so kind as to stamp me in or whatever they could do for me. After all, only a lunatic would want to get into Russia illegally.

I sat and watched snow-covered Nazi hats strolling along the platforms below the windows. My carotid pulse was throbbing on both sides of my neck and there was a pain running up the center of my chest as I heard whistles being blown and the heavy car doors slamming closed.

I checked Baby G-three minutes to go. It wasn't dealing with the guards and immigration people that was getting me stressed; it was the possibility of losing Liv, my only quick and certain link to Val.

My compartment door was pulled open and an old woman in a long fur came in, carrying a small overnight bag. She muttered something and I gave a grunt in reply. Looking up, I caught a glimpse of black leather moving on the platform. Now what was happening? Liv carried on past with her bags, head down against the snow.

I felt huge relief as I jumped up and moved along the corridor, but I couldn't get out yet in case the courier was watching her and wondered why someone else had decided to jump train.

She disappeared into the station and I leaped onto the platform, not checking to see if he was looking, and headed for the doors she had just passed through. I spotted her hat above the crowd, heading for the bus station exit. She must know by now that there was no message in the box. I fell in behind, waiting for my chance to grip her. I was about twenty paces behind as she pushed her way through the bus station doors. Once through them myself, I looked out into the snowfall. All I could see were buses and lines of people trying to get on them; Liv must have turned off as soon as she hit the sidewalk.

I was moving down the steps when there was a shout behind me. "Nick!

Nick!"

I stopped, spun round, and looked back up toward the doors.

"Liv! How lovely to see you."

She was standing by one of the pillars, left of the doors, smiling, arms outstretched, getting ready to greet another of her long-lost friends. I switched on and played the game, walking into her arms, letting her kiss me on both cheeks. She smelled great, but what I could see of her hair under her hat wasn't as well groomed as usual and was knotted at the ends.

"I thought I would wait for you. I knew you would be around somewhere, otherwise why leave an empty container?"

Still embracing, I looked at her with my wonderful-to see-you smile.

"Tom is dead," I said.

The look on her face told me she knew how I felt. She pulled back and smiled. "Come, walk with me. You have a right to be angry, but all is not lost, Nick." She invited me with her gloved hand to carry her bags. As I bent down I saw the boyfriend's light-brown briefcase.

Still smiling at her, I gripped her arm and more or less pulled her down the stairs. Once on the sidewalk I turned right, toward the front of the station and the town center. "What the fuck's going on?

We got hit by an American team last night. I was lifted. Then the fucking Russians hit them!"

She nodded as I ranted away at her, doing her normal trick of knowing everything but giving very little away.

I said, "You already know that, don't you?"

"Of course. Valentin always finds out everything."

"You and Val have been fucking me over big time. Enough. I want him here tomorrow, with the money. Then I'll give him what he wants. I have the Think Pad and it's downloaded with what you want." I wished I'd taken Tom up on his offer back at the lead house to let him tell me exactly what he was doing.

She hadn't even been listening. "Are you sure Tom is dead?"

"If he's out in this shit…" I held my hand out.

She looked exactly the same as she had done in the hotel, calm and in control, almost as if she was in another place and I wasn't talking to her.

I increased my grip on her arm and guided her down the road, not caring what passers-by might think.

"Listen, I have the download. But I'll only deal with Val now, not you. There will be no more fuckups."

"Yes, Nick, I heard you the first time. Now tell me, this is very important. Valentin will not do a thing unless he has all the details.

Did the Americans take all of the hardware with them from the house?"

"Yes."

"Did the Americans capture any of the occupants from the house?"

"Yes. I saw three."

"Did the Maliskia then manage to take any of the hardware or occupants from the Americans?"

She was like a doctor working through a list of symptoms with a patient.

"Not the occupants. They got one of the wagons that contained some hardware, for sure."

She nodded slowly. We joined a small crowd at a crossing, waiting for the green man to illuminate, even though there was no traffic to stop us all crossing.

I whispered into her ear. "This is bullshit, Liv. I want Val here, with the money, then I'll hand everything over and fuck off and leave all of you to it."

My rhetoric was having no effect on her whatsoever. We crossed the main drag to the sound of the warbling signal, heading for the cobblestoned pedestrian shopping area.

"That, Nick, will not happen. He will not come, for the simple reason that you haven't anything to trade, have you?" She spoke very evenly.

"Now, please answer my questions. This is very important. For everyone, including you."

Fuck her, I wasn't waiting for any more questions. Besides, she was right again. "Why did the Americans hit the house? Whatever we were going in for belongs to them, doesn't it? It's not commercial, it's state."

She treated me to her best Mr. Spock look as I dragged her along.

"Turn right here."

I turned the corner. We were on one of the shopping streets.

Streetcars, cars, and trucks splashed through the slush.

"The Americans were NSA, Nick."

Oh fuck. My heart sank to hear my suspicion confirmed and the pain returned to my chest. I wanted money, but not that badly. This was a big boy fuckup. Those people were the real government of America. "Are you sure?"

She nodded. "They also hit my house last night about two hours after you left."

"How did you get away?"

She flicked at the ends of her hair. "By having a very cold and long night out on the lake."

"How did they know to hit you?"

"They must have been guided to the house, but I don't know how. Now please, you are just wasting time and we don't have a lot of it."

I didn't even notice a van passing and giving my jeans and her coat the good news with some slush. I was busy feeling more depressed than pissed now. The NSA. I really was in the shit.

She gave me more directions. "Cross here."

We waited like sheep again until a little green man told us to cross.

Jaywalking must carry the death penalty in this country. Moving on green, it was safe to talk again.

"Tell me, did you or Tom use e-mail, telephone, fax, or anything like that while you were at the house?"

"Of course not, no."

And then I remembered what had happened at the airport. "Wait. Tom did. Tom "

She turned her head sharply. "What? What did Tom do?"

"He used e-mail. He sent an e-mail to someone in the U.K."

The calm, controlled look drained from her face. She stood still, pushing me away as people skipped around what looked like a domestic spat just about to erupt.

"I told you both not to do that!"

I pulled her back toward me, as if I was in command, leading her down the street. She composed herself, and finally, very calmly, she said, "So, it was Tom who brought the Americans here." She pointed to the right, down another cobblestoned street. "Valentin wants me to show you something, then I am to make you an offer that your pocket and conscience will not let you refuse. Come. This way."

As we turned I decided to keep quiet about the fact that it wasn't necessarily Tom's fault. E4 might have followed me from the moment I left her apartment in London, or kept tabs on us via Tom's credit card.

But fuck it; I couldn't do anything about that now.

We'd ended up by the harbor. A fish and vegetable market had been set up on the dock, steam billowing from under plastic awnings that protected the traders and their merchandise from the snow.

"Over there, Nick."

My eyes followed hers, hitting on what looked like the world's largest Victorian conservatory a couple of hundred yards away from the market.

"Let's go and get out of the cold, Nick. I think it's time you knew what's really going on."

26

The teahouse was hot and filled with the aroma of coffee and cigarettes. We bought food and drinks from the counter and headed for a vacant table in a corner.

With our coats over a spare seat and her hat now removed, it was even more obvious that Liv had had a bad night. We must both have looked pretty rough compared with the American tourists who were beginning to fill the place, fresh off the cruise liner I could see down in the harbor. The sharp hiss of the cappuccino machine punctuated their conversations, which for some reason were louder than everybody else's.

The Finns seemed to speak very quietly.

Our table was by a grand piano and partly screened by potted palms. The less conspicuous the better. Liv leaned forward and took a sip of tea from her glass while I shoved a salmon sandwich down my throat. She watched me for a while, then asked, "Nick, what do you know of the U.K./U.S.A. agreement?"

A camera flash bounced around as the tourists posed with their tea glasses and big wedges of chocolate cake. I took a swig of tea. I knew the bones of it. Set up by Britain and America in the late 1940s, since when Canada, Australia, and New Zealand had also become part of the club, the agreement basically covered the pooling of intelligence on mutual enemies. Beyond that, however, the member countries also used their resources to spy on each other: In particular, the U.K. spied on American citizens in the U.S.A." and the Americans spied on British citizens in the U.K." and then they traded. Technically it wasn't illegal, just a very neat way of getting round strict civil liberties legislation.

Liv's eyes followed three elderly Americans in multicolored down jackets as they squeezed past our table, loaded down with tea trays and elegant paper shopping bags full of Finnish crafts. They didn't seem able to make a decision about where to sit.

Liv looked back at me. "Nick, the three men in the house last night were Finns. They were engaged in accessing a technology called Echelon, which is at the very heart of the agreement."

"You mean you were trying to get Tom and me to access state secrets for the Russian mafia?"

She looked calmly around the other tables and took another sip of tea.

She shook her head. "It's not like that at all, Nick. I didn't explain everything to you before, for reasons that I'm sure you will understand, but Valentin wants commercial information, that's all.

Believe me, Nick, you were not stealing secrets, state or military.

Quite the contrary: You were helping to stop others from doing precisely that."

"So how come the NSA were involved?"

"They simply wanted their toy back. I promise you, Valentin has no interest in the West's military secrets. He can get those whenever he wants; it's not exactly difficult, as I'll demonstrate to you shortly."

She glanced at the Americans to make sure they weren't listening, then back at me. "What do you know of Echelon?"

I knew it was some kind of electronic eavesdropping system run by GCHQ, intercepting transmissions and then sifting them for information, a bit like an Internet search engine. However, I shrugged as if I knew nothing at all, I was more interested in hearing what she knew.

Liv sounded as if she was reading from the Echelon sales brochure.

"It's a global network of computers, run by all five nations of the U.K./U.S.A. agreement. Every second of every day, Echelon automatically sifts through millions of intercepted faxes, e-mails, and cell phone calls, searching for preprogrammed key words or numbers.

"As a security precaution in our organization, we used to spell out certain words over the phone, but now even that has been overtaken by voice recognition. The fact is, Nick, any message sent electronically, anywhere in the world, is routinely intercepted and analyzed by Echelon.

"The processors in the network are known as the Echelon dictionaries.

An Echelon station, and there are at least a dozen of them around the world, contains not only its parent nation's specific dictionary, but also lists for each of the other four countries in the U.K./U.S.A. system. What Echelon does is to connect all these dictionaries together and allow all the individual listening stations to function as one integrated system.

"For years Echelon has helped the West shape international treaties and negotiations in their favor, to know anything from the health status of Boris Yeltsin to the bottom-line position of trading partners. That's serious information to get hold of, Nick. Why do you think we are careful not to use any form of electronic communication? We know that we are tagged by Echelon. Who isn't? Princess Diana's calls were monitored because of her work against land mines Charities like Amnesty International and Christian Aid are listened to because they have access to details about controversial regimes. From the moment Tom started working at Menwith Hill, every fax and e-mail he sent, as well as phone calls, would have been intercepted and checked.

"Those Finns had designed a system to hack into Echelon and piggyback off it. The firewall that Tom breached was their protection around that system, to stop them being detected and traced. They were online last night for the very first time."

"Trying to do what? Hack into NSA headquarters or something?"

She shook her head slowly, as if in disbelief at their naivete. "We knew from our sources that their sole objective was to pick up sensitive market information that they could then profit from. All they wanted was to make a few million dollars here and there; they didn't understand the true potential of what they had created."

"But what has all this got to do with me?" I asked. "What is Val's offer?"

She leaned even closer, as if we were exchanging words of love. We might as well have been, the way she spoke with such passion.

"Nick, it's very important to me that you understand Valentin's motives. Of course he wants to make money out of this, but more than that, he wants the East eventually to be an equal trading partner with the West, and that is never going to happen as long as ambitious men like him do not have access to commercial information that only Echelon can provide."

"Ambitious?" I laughed. "I can think of plenty of other words I'd use before that one to describe ROC."

She shook her head. "Think of America a hundred and fifty years ago and you have Russia now. Men like Vanderbilt didn't always stay within the law to achieve their aims. But they created wealth, a powerful middle class, and that, in time, creates political stability. That is how you must see Valentin; he's not a Dillinger, he's a Rockefeller."

"Okay, Val is businessman of the year. Why didn't he just strike a deal with the Finns?"

"It doesn't work like that. It would have alerted them to what they had, and then they'd have sold it to the highest bidder. Valentin didn't want to take that chance. He was happy for them to make access and try to play the markets while he found out where they were, and got to them before the Maliskia."

"And the Americans?"

"If you had been successful last night in downloading the program, Valentin would have told the Americans where the house was. They would then have gone in and closed it down without knowing that he also had access to Echelon. Remember what I said in London, that nobody must know…"

Very clever, I thought. Val would have carried on logging on to Echelon, and the West would have slept soundly in its bed.

"But the Americans did know."

"Yes, but our security was watertight. The only way they could have found out was through Tom."

Before we got sidetracked into conjecture about who was to blame, there were plenty of other questions I wanted the answers to. "Liv, why Finland?"

She answered with evident pride. "We are one of the most technologically minded nations on earth. This country probably won't even have currency by the next generation, everything will be electronic. The government is even thinking of doing away with passports and having our IDs embedded on the SIM cards in our cell phones. We are at the cutting edge of what is possible, as these young men demonstrated. They had the skills to hack into Echelon, even if they lacked the street sense to know what they could really do with it." She waited as I took a sip of tea. The sandwiches had long gone. "Any more questions?"

I shook my head. There were many, but they could wait. If she was ready to explain the new proposal to me, I was ready to listen.

"Nick, I have been authorized by Valentin to tell you that the offer of money still stands, but your task has changed."

"Of course it has. Tom is dead and the NSA have Echelon back."

Her eyes locked on to mine as she shook her head. "Wrong, Nick. I didn't want to tell you this until the information was confirmed, but our sources believe the Maliskia have Tom. Unfortunately, we believe they also have the Think Pad This is very disturbing as it still has the firewall access sequence that-"

I fought to keep my composure. "Tom's alive? Fucking hell, Liv. I've been sitting here drinking the man was dead."

Her daughter-of-Spock face never changed. "The Maliskia think he's with the Finns. They naturally assumed…" She waved her hands across the table. "Remember, they also want access to Echelon."

"So you want me to get Tom back."

"Before I tell you the objective, Nick, I must explain a complication."

A complication? This wasn't complicated enough?

She bent down and lifted her boyfriend's briefcase onto the table. It was dark outside now and Christmas lights twinkled in the marketplace.

Liv opened the case. Inside was a laptop, which she fired up.

I watched as she reached into her coat and brought out a dark blue floppy disk in a clear plastic case. As she inserted the disk I heard the Microsoft sound.

"Here, read this. You need to appreciate the situation completely so you can understand the gravity of the task. I could just tell you all this, but I think you might want confirmation."

She handed the briefcase over to me, the floppy still loading as the laptop did its stuff before displaying it on the screen.

The disk icon came up on the desktop and I double clicked it.

Adjusting the screen and ensuring that only I could see its contents, I started to read as the group from outside came in and greeted their friends, and lost no time in showing them their purchases of Russian-style fur hats and reindeer-meat salamis.

There were two files on the disk. One was untitled, the other said, "Read Me First." I opened it.

I was presented with a Web page from the London Sunday Times, dated July 25 and displaying an article entitled, russian hackers STEAL U.S. WEAPONS SECRETS.

Liv stood up. "More tea? Food?"

I nodded and got back to the screen as she went to the counter. By now the tourists were a group of six and making enough talk for twelve.

"American officials believe Russia may have stolen some of the nation's most sensitive military secrets," the article began, "including weapons guidance systems and naval intelligence codes, in a concerted espionage offensive that investigators have called operation Moonlight Maze."

The theft was so sophisticated and well coordinated that security experts believed America might be losing the world's first cyberwar."

The hits against American military computer systems were even defeating the fire walls that were supposed to defend the Pentagon from cyber attack. During one illegal infiltration, a technician tracking a computer intruder watched a secret document be hijacked and sent to an Internet server in Moscow.

Experts were talking of a "digital Pearl Harbor," where an enemy exploited the West's reliance on computer technology to steal secrets or spread chaos as effectively as any attack using missiles and bombs.

With just a few taps on a computer laptop it seemed anyone could totally fuck up any advanced nation. Gas, water, and electricity utilities could be shut down by infiltrating their control computers.

Civil and military telecommunications systems could be jammed. The police could be paralyzed and civil chaos would take over. Fuck it, these days, who needed armies?

Even top-secret military installations whose expertise was intelligence security had been breached. At the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (Spawar), a unit in San Diego, California, which specialized in safeguarding naval intelligence codes, an engineer was alerted to the problem when a computer print job took an unusually long time.

Monitoring tools showed that the file had been removed from the printing queue and transmitted to an Internet server in Moscow before being sent back to San Diego. It was not clear precisely what information was contained in the stolen document, but beyond its role in naval intelligence, Spawar was also responsible for providing electronic security systems for the Marine Corps and federal agencies.

It was suspected that several other intrusions had gone undetected.

The piece went on to say that President Clinton had called for an extra $600 million dollars to combat the problem of Moonlight Maze, but that still might not be enough, as China, Libya, and Iraq were developing information warfare capabilities, and, according to one White House official, so were certain well-funded terrorist groups. It didn't take much imagination to think of the damage Osama Bin Laden and his friends could do if they got their hands on it. As for the massive Russian probing, that could very well be the Maliskia.

I double clicked the next file. What came up on screen confirmed the story of the hit against Spawar in San Diego could very well be true.

The Sunday Times might not know what was in the file, but I did now.

The Naval Intelligence crest in front of me headed a list of maybe fifty code words that corresponded to radio frequencies.

Liv sat down with more tea and sandwiches.

"Have you read both?"

I nodded, and as I closed the files and ejected the disk, Liv leaned over and held out her hand. "Nick, you can help stop this from happening if you want to."

I passed the disk over and started to shut down the laptop as she continued. "The Russian government aren't the only people who buy this information from the Maliskia. So can anyone with a big enough checkbook."

Obviously Val's was big enough, otherwise I wouldn't have been reading the code lists.

"As I said before, Nick, if they get Echelon capability and start to exploit it, even without selling the information to others, just think of the consequences. They are already on the way to achieving the capability to close down the U.K. or U.S. with their Moonlight Maze operations; with Echelon they will have complete and unrestricted access to any information worldwide-state, military, commercial..

You can stop it, Nick, if you want." She paused and looked me straight in the eye.

I handed the briefcase back to her across the table. She was right. If this was the truth, it was an offer my conscience couldn't let me refuse. The idea of these machines listening to everything we did and said was very Big Brother, but shit, I'd rather have just the agreement countries accessing it than everybody and their brother with enough cash. As for the leak of military information, that had to be stopped. I didn't give a shit about people finding out about the latest surface-to-air-missile technical details or whatever. It was people's lives, including my own, that mattered. I had been part of enough fuckups where friends had died because of insecure information.

If I could stop it and come away with a suitcase full of money, it seemed to touch every base.

"So what exactly do you want me to do?"

She heard the acceptance in my voice. "You must destroy the Maliskia's Moonlight Maze capabilities and any advance they've made with Echelon.

That means, destroy the complete installation -computers, software, everything.

"This time, however, you'll be completely on your own. Valentin cannot be seen to be attacking the Maliskia. Any conflict would cause disharmony and distract him from his aim. So if you encounter a problem, I'm afraid he or I will not be able to help you."

I might be the most cynical man in the U.K. about the U.K." but I was not a traitor. And if all she was saying was true, I was sure that Val would be happy to open his checkbook a little wider, especially if I was having to go in singlehanded. I sat back and held up three fingers.

There wasn't a flicker in her face. "Dollars?"

Since she'd even asked the question, the answer was obvious.

"Sterling. The same arrangements as for the exchange."

She nodded. "Three million. You will be paid."

It worried me slightly that she'd agreed so easily.

"What guarantees do I have?"

"You don't. And there's no money up front But Valentin is well aware of the lengths you went to to track him down before, and that no doubt you'd do the same again."

"Correct." I didn't need to explain about never making a threat you cannot keep. She knew.

"As I've said a number of times, Nick, he likes you. You will get your money."

"So tell me, where is the installation?"

She pointed behind me, out toward the harbor and the sea. "It's that way. Estonia."

I frowned. The only thing I knew about Estonia was that it had been part of the old USSR." and now wanted to be part of NATO, the E.U." JC Penny's loyalty scheme, you name it anything to detach it from Russia for good.

"The population is still thirty percent Russian. The Maliskia find it easier to operate from there."

She lifted the cup to her lips and screwed up her face. The tea was cold.

There was one rather important point she seemed to have overlooked.

"If the Maliskia have Tom," I said, "I take it he'll be at this installation. Do you want me to bring him back here after I've lifted him or just take him back to London?"

She stared at me as if I was an idiot. "Nick, I thought you understood, Tom must be considered part of their capability."

She kept her gaze fixed on me for several moments while waiting for the penny to drop. It finally did. She saw it in my face. "I don't wish to state the obvious, Nick, but why else do you think Valentin would pay you three million? Tom must die."

I was almost lost for words. "But why? I mean, why don't I just get him out at the same time?"

"That's not an option, Nick. Tom will very quickly be coerced into helping them with Echelon. As we both know, he can breach the firewall. We know they have at least some of the software. We know they have Tom, and probably also the Think Pad As soon as it all links up, what's in his head, what's in his pocket, what's in the van…"

She shuddered. "If the Maliskia get access to Echelon and add it to their Moonlight Maze capabilities, they will have all the ingredients for catastrophe. It will affect not only Valentin's vision for the East, but bring the West to its knees.

"Look, Tom has the Think Pad He has the ability to use it. The risk is too great. What if you are killed or taken before finishing the task? Even if you did rescue him he would still be in the country, and the possibility of capture by them is a risk Valentin is not willing to take. It is simply better that Valentin sacrifices Tom and the opportunity to access Echelon himself than risk the Maliskia having it.

No one, Nick, can afford for the Maliskia to have Echelon."

I was still finding this hard to accept. "But why not just tell the Americans? Val was going to tell them about the Finns' house."

"Unthinkable. What if they take Tom and he explains exactly what has been going on? Nick, I don't think even you would want that, would you? Tom would go back to prison for life and you'd be in the adjoining cell."

Bending down and placing the briefcase in her bag once again, she seemed to be rounding up. "I'm sorry, Nick, but I have many things to do now, as you can appreciate. We'll meet tomorrow at Stockmann, eleven a.m. in the cafe. That is the soonest that I'll be able to get more information. One thing is certain, after that you must leave as soon as you can. If the Maliskia have got Tom to cooperate, every hour counts."

I looked at her and nodded. "This new information, is it coming in on the 6:30 a.m. train from St. Petersburg?"

She didn't bat an eyelid. "Yes, of course. Nick, I want to apologize once more for what has happened. It was just that if you'd known exactly what was going on "

"I wouldn't have done the job in the first place?"

"Precisely. I must go now." She busied herself in standing up and fastening her coat. "I think I need about fifteen minutes."

I nodded. I'd get another tea while she got clear of the area, then I'd go and find out exactly where Estonia was and how the fuck to get there.

27

Thursday, December 12 1933 Ten minutes before she was due to arrive, I settled into a corner seat at the Cafe Avec in Stockmann. On my way over I'd stopped at an Internet cafe and checked out the Moonlight Maze story on the Sunday Times Web site. It was genuine.

The "Avec" seemed to refer to the fact that you could have your coffee with a shot of anything from the bar, from Jack Daniels to local cloudberry liqueurs. The locals were knocking them back like there was no tomorrow.

Placing two coffees and two Danishes on the table, I put a saucer over the top of Liv's cup to keep it hot.

The cafe was just as packed as when I'd been there with Tom. I'd spent a lot of time thinking about him last night, lying in my cheap and, more importantly, anonymous hotel room. The sad fact was that stopping the Maliskia from combining Echelon with their Moonlight Maze operations, and getting the money for doing it, was more important than Tom's life. Then I pictured him leaping to my defence after we'd come off the fence. Killing him was not going to be easy.

I had even considered going to the consulate and calling Lynn on a secure line, but then I realized I was losing sight of the aim, which was money. If Lynn knew, that would be the end of it. All I would get was a pat on the head if I was lucky. This way I got to pocket 3 million, plus I did democracy a good turn. It was bullshit, of course.

The trouble was, it even sounded like bullshit.

After my tea stop with Liv yesterday I'd gone straight down to the harbor to check out the ferries to Estonia. Its capital, Tallinn, seemed to be the destination for an array of roll-on, roll-off ferries, high-speed catamarans, and hydrofoils. The faster craft made the fifty-mile journey in only an hour and a half, but the girl at the ticket office told me there was too much ice floating in the Baltic and too much wind for them to make the crossing in the next few days. The only ones that could handle the conditions were the old-fashioned ferries, and they usually took over four hours, and because of the heavy seas they would now take even longer. Story of my life.

I took a sip of coffee as I sat looking at the long words in a Finnish newspaper and scanning the escalator. I was going to use the Davidson passport to go into Estonia, but had booked the ferry ticket in the name of Davies. Giving the name slightly corrupted always adds nicely to the confusion. If stopped for it, I'd just say it was the mistake of the people who did the ticketing. After all, English was their second language, and my cockney accent could be quite hard to understand when I tore the ass out of it. The method wasn't foolproof, but it might just muddy the waters a bit. I was sure the Firm would still be looking for Davidson now that he was connected with Liv and Tom. I didn't care how much they might have worked out, as long as there wasn't a picture of me to go with it, and thankfully the one in Davidson's passport wasn't much of a likeness. The mustache and rectangular glasses, plus makeup to change the size of my nose and chin slightly, worked quite well. If put on the spot, I'd say that I used contacts to read now and liked my new clean-shaven look.

I'd learned makeup from the BBC. Plastic noses and eyebrow sets are not what it's all about. As I dunked a corner of the Danish into my coffee, I couldn't help a smile as I remembered spending four hours making myself up as a woman for the final session of the two-week course; I'd thought the shade of lip gloss I'd chosen particularly suited me. It had been a laugh spending the day shopping with my teacher "girlfriend" Peter, who was dressed up in quite a fetching blue number, especially when it came to going into women's rest rooms. I didn't like having to shave and wax my legs and hands, though. They itched for weeks afterward.

An insistent electronic burst of the William Tell Overture came from somewhere behind my left shoulder, followed by a brief moment of silence, then a burst of Finnish from an elderly lady.

Everybody in this country had a cell phone-I'd even seen small kids wandering around holding their parents' hands and talking into a dangling mike-but no one settled for the standard ring. You couldn't go five minutes in Helsinki without hearing The Flight of the Bumble Bee, snatches of Sibelius, or the James Bond theme.

I sat, dunked, and waited. I had the passports tucked uncomfortably under my foot inside my right boot, and I had $1,500 in hundreds, twenties, and tens in my left.

As for Mr. Stone, he was well and truly stuffed away in the bag at the railway station. The P7 and extra barrel were still with me and would only go into the railway bag at the very last minute. There was no way I could take the weapon with me to Estonia. I had no idea how heavy the security was on the ferry journeys Liv's head appeared first as the escalator brought her up toward me.

She was looking around casually, not specifically looking for me. The rest of her body came into view, wearing the black, belted three-quarter-length leather coat over her normal jeans and Timberland-type boots. She had a large black leather bag over her shoulder and a magazine in her right hand.

She spotted me and headed for the table, kissing me on both cheeks. Her hair was back on top form and she smelled of citrus. An English-language copy of Vogue landed on the table between us, and we bluffed away with the how-are-you? smiles as she settled into her seat.

I put her cup in front of her and removed the saucer. She lifted it to her lips. Either it was cold or tasted past its best, because it went straight back down on the table.

"The Maliskia are located near Narva."

I returned her smile as if enjoying the story. "Narva?" It could have been on the moon for all I knew.

"You'll need a Regio one-in-two-hundred-thousand map."

"Of which country?"

She smiled. "Estonia, northeast." She put her hand on the Vogue.

"You'll also need what is inside here."

I nodded.

Her hand was still on the magazine. "It's from this location that they have been running Moonlight Maze; and now that they have Tom and the Think Pad it's where they will also be attempting to access Echelon. They move location every few weeks to avoid detection, and after what's happened here they will be moving again very soon. You'll need to act quickly."

I nodded again and her hands came together on the table as she leaned forward. "Also inside is an address. You'll meet people there who should help you get explosives and whatever else you need. The best way to Narva is by train. Hiring a car is more trouble than it's worth. And Nick" she fixed her eyes on mine "these people in Narva, do not trust them. They're totally unreliable, the way they conduct their drugs trade is disrupting business for all of us. But they're the closest Valentin can offer you to support on the ground."

I gave her a smile that let her know I wasn't born yesterday.

"Also remember, do not mention Valentin at all when dealing with them.

There must be no connection between him and any of this. None whatsoever. If they make a connection, the deal will be off, because they will simply kill you."

Her hands went back together. "Also in there is a" she hesitated, trying to find the right word, but didn't come up with one that satisfied her. In the end she shrugged "letter from a friend, the same one that has the contacts in Narva. It will ensure you get what you need from these people, but only use it if you need to, Nick. It was obtained at great personal expense to Valentin and shouldn't be abused."

I asked the obvious. "What's in it?"

"Well, it's a bit like an insurance policy." She smiled rather bleakly. "A Chechen insurance policy. I told you before, he likes you."

I didn't need to ask any more about it. I'd see it for myself soon.

For now there were more important matters. I needed the answer to the bayonet question again. "How many people are there on site?"

She shook her head. "We don't have that information, but it will be more than last time. This is their most important asset, which is why it's in Estonia the geography is the best defense system there is."

Something else needed answering. "How will you know I've been successful?"

"You're worried that Valentin will not pay without proof? Don't. He will know within hours how isnoconcernof yours. You will get your money, Nick."

I leaned closer. "How do you know Tom?"

"I don't, Valentin does. When Tom was caught at Menwith Hill it was Valentin he was working for. You British never discovered that, however, because your threats to him could never compare with the one Valentin was capable of delivering."

"Which was?"

Her expression invited me to use my imagination.

In my mind's eye I saw Tom, curled up in the back of the car after he'd had the facts of life explained to him by the interrogation team.

"Was Tom trying to access Echelon for Valentin at Menwith Hill?"

She nodded. "When he was caught, he told British Intelligence only what they thought they needed to know, then told the courts what they told him to say. It was all very simple, really. Well, for everyone except Tom."

"And how did you know of my connection with Tom?"

"Valentin has access to many secrets. After your encounter in Helsinki, he wanted to know a little more about you. It was easy enough to order that information from the Maliskia, thanks to Moonlight Maze. Even more incentive to get in there and destroy that capability, don't you think?"

Fucking right. I didn't like the sound of any of it.

Liv patted the magazine with her hand. "Read it. Then all we know, you will know. I must go now. There are so many other things to do."

I bet one of them was to report back to Val's go-between and tell him that I was on my way to Narva.

Liv and I smiled at each other like parting friends, kissed on the cheek, and did the farewell routine as she replaced her bag on her shoulder. "I'll check the station every day, Nick, starting Sunday."

I touched her sleeve. "One last question."

She turned to face me.

"You don't seem too concerned about Tom. I mean, I thought you two were, you know, close."

She sat down again slowly. For a second or two she toyed with her coffee cup, and then she looked up. "Meaning I had sex with him?" She smiled. "Tom is not someone I'd seek a relationship with. I had sex with him because he was weakening and very unsure about what was expected of him. Sleeping with him was… was" she searched for a good expression, then shrugged "insurance. I had to keep him committed to the task. He's the only one who could do this sort of thing. He is a genius with this technology. He had to go with you. That is also why you must carry out your new task as quickly as you can. His capabilities must not be available to the Maliskia."

She stood and turned with a small wave of the hand, and I slouched down in my chair, wishing I'd had that information a few days ago. My eyes followed her as she headed for the escalator and slowly disappeared.

I took a small white envelope from inside the magazine Liv had left behind. It looked as if it was made for a small greeting card; it certainly didn't look as if there was much inside.

I stayed put for a while, not bothering to touch it, and drank her lukewarm coffee. After about ten minutes I piled the cups, saucers, and plates onto the tray.

Walking away from the escalators, I made my way through the warm clothing department and into the rest rooms. Safely in a stall, I opened the envelope. Inside were three scraps of paper of various sizes and quality. The first was a Post-it, on which was an address in Narva by the look of it I was after a guy called Konstantin plus a long and lat fix. The Post-it was stuck to half a ripped sheet of cheap and very thin Xerox paper, with about ten lines of Cyrillic script written in pen. This had to be the Chechen insurance policy, because the third item was a sheet of wax paper on which was a penciled cross and, toward the bottom left-hand corner of the sheet, a little circle. All I had to do was line up the longs and the lats on the right map and bingo, the circle would be around the location where Tom and the Maliskia were supposed to be.

I listened to the shuffle of feet outside, water splashing into sinks, hand-driers humming, and the odd grunt or fart, and started to laugh to myself as I folded up the bits and pieces of paper and tucked them into my socks, out of the way. I felt like Harry Palmer in one of those Michael Caine films from the sixties. It was ridiculous. I had more stuff around my feet than in my pockets.

I flushed the toilet and opened the door. An overweight Japanese tourist was waiting patiently, his sides bulging with video and camera bags. Leaving him to fight his way into the stall, I headed to the condom machine by the urinals. It was decision time.

Dropping in some coins, I considered the banana- or strawberry flavored ones and those shaped like medieval maces, but in the end went for the old-standard clear ones. All very missionary. Then, with the packet of three in my pocket, I was out of Stockmann with any luck forever.

Checking for surveillance by doing a complete circuit of the store and taking a few turns that meant I'd doubled back on myself, I felt confident I wasn't being followed and headed for the same bookstore where I'd bought my guidebook to Estonia. I soon found the map that Liv had specified.

Back at the hotel, it was time to study it in detail. Tallinn, the capital, was in the west, on the Baltic coast. It faced Finland, which was fifty miles across the sea. Narva was miles away, in the northeastern corner, right next to Russia and just ten miles inland.

There was one main road that went from Tallinn to Narva, linking together other, smaller towns on the 130 miles between the two. I could also see the black line of the railway that Liv had told me to take, roughly paralleling the main road, sometimes near the road but mostly a few miles south of it.

Narva was bisected by a river, and the border with Russia was an imaginary line running down the middle of it. There were two crossing points, a rail bridge and a road bridge. On the Russian side, the main road and train line kept going east, with a sign on the edge of the map saying, "Peterburi 138km." In other words, Narva was closer to St.

Petersburg than it was to Tallinn.

I took out the sheet of wax paper and placed the cross over the corresponding longs and lats, then looked at the circle. It ringed a small cluster of buildings a couple of miles south of a small town called Tudu, which was about twenty-two miles southwestish of Narva.

Basically, the target was in the middle of nowhere, the perfect place for the Maliskia to run their operations. That was where those Finns should have gone to do the job; maybe they didn't because there weren't any to-go pizzas to be had.

There were still a few hours before the five-thirty ferry, so I got out the guidebook and read about this northeastern corner of Estonia. It sounded a nightmare. During Iron Curtain days Narva had been one of the most polluted towns in Europe. Two huge power stations produced enough kilowatts to keep the massive wheels of the USSR. industrial base turning, while pumping out uncountable tons of sulfur dioxide, magnesium this and aluminum that into the atmosphere. There was a huge lake nearby, and I made a mental note not to eat any fish when I got there.

According to the guidebook, 90 percent of the population in the area were Russian speaking, and, in the eyes of the Estonian government, Russian citizens. They took the line that if you couldn't speak Estonian, you couldn't get Estonian citizenship. The upshot was a big gang of Russians right on the border with Russia, holding old Russian passports, who had to stay in Estonia, a country that didn't acknowledge them.

Five trains a day left Tallinn heading east. Some went straight on to St. Petersburg and Moscow, and some just stopped at Narva, about a five-hour journey. No problem at all; I'd get the ferry tonight, check into a hotel, sort my shit out and get the train in the morning. That would be the easy bit.

I had the Narva contact name and address in my head; an hour of repeating it while reading had sorted that out. I ripped the cross off the wax paper, rolled it in the Post-it and ate it. Everything else on this job was like some spy film, so why not go whole hog? I kept the guidebook and map because I was going to be a tourist. If asked, I was exploring the region's immensely rich culture. Well, that was what it said in the guidebook. I couldn't wait.

As the final preparation for the journey, I went into the bathroom and ran a sink of warm water. Then, unwrapping the complimentary sliver of soap, I proceeded with a little task I never looked forward to.

28

I followed the herd out of the terminal waiting room and up the boarding ramp onto a massive drive-on, drive-off ferry. When I saw that we all had to pass through a metal detector I felt relieved I'd left the P7 with my other stuff in the station's luggage lockers. I was using Nick Davidson's passport. The woman who swiped it at passport control was one of the few immigration officers who'd ever looked at the picture.

Few of my fellow foot passengers appeared anything like as prosperous as the Finns I was used to seeing. I guessed they were Estonians. They all seemed to be wearing fake-fur Cossack-style hats and a lot of leather. Several were in old and shabby full-length quilted coats.

They were toting enormous plastic shopping bags, all stuffed to the brim with everything from blankets to huge cartons of rice. In each case, the whole extended family seemed to have come along for the ride, kids, wives, grannies, everybody going hubbahubba to each other in Estonian.

My plan had been to keep out of the way and curl up somewhere quiet and crash out, but once on board I realized there was no chance of that.

The air was filled with the hinging and whirring of video games and one-armed jacks overlaid with kids screaming up and down the hallways, their parents in hot pursuit.

Sometimes, walking sideways to get out of the way of kids and people with their big bundles of whatever coming from the other direction, I saw where the main crowd was headed-toward the bars and snack bar. If I couldn't sleep I might as well eat.

The crowd thinned as the hallway opened up into a large bar area. Like the hallways, all the walls were covered with mahogany effect veneer, giving it a dark, depressing feel. This area seemed to be full of well-dressed Finns, who had driven their cars aboard before us. They were laughing and joking noisily among themselves, throwing drinks down their throats like condemned men. I guessed they were booze cruisers, going over to Tallinn to stock up on duty free.

These guys didn't have shopping bags and reeked of disposable income.

Their ski jackets were top-of-the-range labels, and their thick overcoats were wool, probably cashmere. Underneath, they all sported big chunky sweaters with crew or turtle necks. The only thing they had in common with the Estonians was a love of tobacco. There was already a layer of smoke covering the ceiling, waiting its turn to be sucked out by the overworked heating system.

The currency desk was just the other end of the bar. I lined up and changed $100 U.S. into whatever the local money was called. I didn't even bother looking at exchange rates to see if I was being ripped off.

What was I going to do, take my business elsewhere?

Eventually, fighting my way to the snack bar, I picked up a tray and joined the line. I wasn't particularly bothered about the wait; it was going to be a long journey, and it wasn't as if I was itching to get back and join the lushes in the bar.

Twenty minutes later I was sitting with a family at a bolted-down plastic table. The father, who looked over fifty-five but was probably under forty, still had his wool hat on. His wife looked about ten years older than him. There were four kids, each attacking a large plate of pale, undercooked fries. Mine looked the same, plus I had a couple of scary-looking red sausages.

The sound of laughter echoed from the bar, along with piped muzak-badly performed cover versions of Michael Jackson and George Michael. Thankfully the ship's safety briefing, which started then carried on forever in about five languages, cut wannabe George off in his prime.

As I tucked into my fries and franks, the husband pulled out a pack of cigarettes and he and his wife lit up. They smoked contentedly in my face, flicking the ash onto their empty plates, finally stubbing out their butts so they sizzled in the ketchup. I decided it was time for a walk. Their kids could finish off my food.

We were now in open sea and the boat rocked from side to side and plunged up and down. Children were having great fun in the hallways being thrown from wall to wall, and their parents were telling them off much more quietly. In fact, many of them looked paler than the fries I'd left on my plate.

I passed the newsstand. The only thing they had in English was another guidebook to Estonia; I decided to go back to the bar and read my own.

The Finns, undeterred by the heavy seas, were swigging back Koff beer, or at least trying to. The swell meant there was as much liquid on the floor as there was going down their throats.

The only seat was at the end of a semicircular booth, where six Finns in their late thirties three men and three women all expensively dressed, were smoking Camels and downing vodka. I gave them a fuck-off smile as I settled down on the red, leather-look plastic and opened the guidebook.

Estonia, I was told, sandwiched between Latvia and Russia, was about the size of Switzerland and only two or three hours' drive from St.

Petersburg. It had a population of 1.5 million, the size of Geneva, and if that was the best they could find to say about it, it must be a pretty mind-numbing place.

Estonians seemed to have suffered all the rigors of life as a former Soviet republic. They'd had food coupons, breadlines, fuel shortages, and inflation higher than the World Trade Center. All in all it sounded a pretty grim place, a bit like a giant Baltic version of a South London housing project.

The pictures of the old city center of Tallinn showed medieval walls, turrets, and needle-pointed towers. I couldn't wait to see the "gabled roots" which the guide extolled. When I read on I discovered that most of the country's investment had been in this one tiny area, and that almost everywhere else they hadn't had gas or water since the Russians left in the early nineties. But then again, tourists wouldn't go that far out of town, would they?

I sat there with my eyes closed, deeply bored. There was no way I was going to socialize with the Finns. I had work to do on the other side, and besides, from what I saw I doubted I could keep up with their drinking, especially the women.

I sank as low as I could in the seat to avoid the rising cigarette smoke, which was now a solid fog above me. The ferry was slewing about big time, and now and again the propellers roared as if they'd come right out of the water, accompanied by a collective amusement park cry of "Whooooa!" from the crowd in the bar. There was nothing but darkness to be seen from the window, but I knew there was plenty of ice out there somewhere.

I crossed my arms over my chest, let my chin drop and tried to sleep.

Not that it was going to happen, but whenever there's a lull, it pays to recharge the batteries.

An announcement over the PA system sort of woke me up, though I wasn't too sure if I'd been sleeping. I guessed it was telling us what fantastic bargains were to be had in the ferry's duty-free shops, but then I heard the word Tallinn. The system carried on with its multilingual address, eventually coming to English. It seemed we had about thirty minutes before docking.

I packed the book in the backpack, along with my new woolen hat and washing kit, and wandered down the corridor. People were walking like drunks due to the swell, and now and again I had to put my hand up on the wall to stop myself falling. Following signs to the rest rooms, I slid aside a dark wood-veneered door and walked down a flight of stairs.

A couple of guys were chatting in the men's room, zipping up and lighting cigarettes as they left. There was as much alcohol on the floor as there was on the ground in the bar; the only difference was it had been through people's kidneys first. The room was boiling hot, making the smell even worse.

I trod carefully toward the urinals. Each one had a pool of dark yellow fluid slowly seeping past the piled-up cigarette butts blocking its path. I found one that wasn't so full it would splash back on me, got my left hand up against the bulkhead to steady myself and unzipped, listening to the relentless throb of the engines.

The toilet door was pushed open and another couple of guys came in. By the look of their GoreTex jackets they were Finns. I was sorting myself out, trying to zip up with one hand while using the other to stop me falling over. The boy in black headed for the vacant toilet stall behind me, and the other lurked by the row of sinks to my left.

His green jacket reflected on the stainless-steel pipes that ran from the water dispenser for the urinals above my head. I couldn't see what he was actually doing because the pipe's shape distorted him like a fairground mirror, but whatever it was, it just looked wrong. At the same time I heard the rustle of GoreTex and saw black in the reflection, too.

I turned just in time to see an arm raised, ready to do my back some serious damage with some kind of knife.

Never let them come to you.

I screamed, hoping to disorient him, while charging the two or three steps toward him, focusing on his arm. I didn't care about the other guy yet. This one was the main threat.

Grabbing his raised wrist with my right hand, I kept moving. That turned his body to his left, his natural momentum helping me. My left hand then helped to spin him so he had his back to me, at the same time pushing him toward the stall. We stumbled into one of them, the thin chip board walls rattling as we grappled in the confined space. He went down on his knees by the toilet. There was no seat; it had probably been ripped off years ago and taken home.

Still gripping his right wrist, I leaped over his back and forced both my knees straight down onto the back of his head. There was no time to fuck about: There were two of these guys to deal with. Bone crunched on ceramic. I heard teeth cracking and his jaw grind under my weight, mixed with an almost childlike, muffled screaming.

I saw him drop the knife. My right hand scrabbled around on the floor in search, and closed around it. Only it wasn't a knife, but an auto jet an American one. I recognized the make and I knew what it did.

Gripping the automatic syringe in my right hand, I had four fingers clasped around the cylinder, which was about the size of a thick marker pen, and my thumb on the injection button, ready to attack the splashing feet and green rustling GoreTex behind.

Too late; the boy was right on top of me. He also had an auto jet I could feel the needle penetrate and then its contents emptying into my buttock; it was like a golf ball was growing under my skin.

I threw myself backward, crashing as hard as I could into his body, pushing him toward the urinals. The swell made us both stagger as the ferry tilted.

Once we'd banged against the white ceramic, his fists started to hit the side of my face from behind me as I kept him pinned in position.

He was even biting into my skull, but I couldn't really feel the outcome. The Autojet was having its own effect on me: rapid heartbeat, dry mouth, vision beginning to go hazy. I was sure it was mainly scopolamine, mixed with morphine. When it's injected into a body, the effect produced is a tranquilized state known as twilight sleep; this combination of drugs was formerly used in obstetrics, but was now considered far too dangerous, except when, like the British and American intelligence services, you're not too concerned about the patient's bill of rights. I'd done a few targets with this stuff, making it easier to drag them off to a 3x9. I'd never thought I would get the good news myself, but at least now I could personally endorse the product.

Everything was going into slow motion. Even his shouting against my ear was blurred as he bucked and twisted, trying to free himself from between me and a urinal.

Ramming the Autojet against the leg that was kicking out on my right, I depressed the button with my thumb. Automatically the needle sprang forward, punctured his jeans and skin, dispensing its juice. Now we were equal; it was just a case of who dropped first.

"Mother fuck!" Unmistakably American.

I couldn't get up enough strength to do anything but pin him there, using my legs to push my back against him. He dropped the Autojet, but I kept pushing him back against the urinal, my feet slipping on the wet floor as the ship bounced around, hoping that he would be the first to lose total control so I could get away. His ass was in the urinal now, and its contents were getting slopped over both of us as I fought to hold him there.

He was still trying to punch sideways at my face, and might have been doing serious damage for all I knew. The drugs had kicked in good style, depressing my central nervous system.

I bent my head down to avoid his punches as he jerked about as if he was having a fit. In front of me, in the stall, a blurred, black figure was slumped on the floor.

The toilet door must have opened. Not that I heard it-just the incomprehensible shouting as my legs started to lose the ability to hold me up in the swell.

I took a deep breath and must have sounded like a drunk as I looked round at the newcomers. "Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off!"

Even the American joined in: "Fuck yooou!"

Their hazy, shadowy figures disappeared.

The American's legs were wobbling as much as mine now. My head was still trying to bury itself into my chest as he made wild grabs at my face, hoping to get at my eyes. He wasn't shouting any more but giving off loud moans, as if he'd lost the ability to form words correctly, and pulling on my ears and hair with whatever strength he had left.

I could hear his breathing above me. I threw my hands in the direction of the sound. He released his grip on my head and slapped them down.

My legs couldn't hold him in position any more, and I fell, first to my knees, then face down into the liquid swirling around the floor.

Feeling it slurp into my mouth, I knew I was on the way out. But as the American fell to his knees to my right, splashing more liquid over my face and snorting like a wart hog I knew I wasn't the only one. He sat back on his heels, resting against the urinal, fumbling to get his jacket zip undone. I couldn't let that happen-he could have had a weapon-so taking a deep breath that took in more swill off the floor, I started to crawl up him.

His hands tried pushing me off as he growled down at me. At least his hands weren't going for his pockets any more, just my face.

I managed to get my hands around his throat, shaking his head from side to side. He made a whining noise, like a two-year-old refusing food.

If only I could press one of my thumbs into the base of his throat, at the point just above where the two collarbones met and just below his Adam's apple, I could drop him-as long as his body was still capable of registering what was going on.

I got my hand down the top of his jacket, probing inside with my thumb until I found the bone and then the soft spot, then I pushed in with all my strength.

At once he began to come down with me as I sank slowly to the floor. He didn't like it at all. A quick, hard jab with two straight fingers or a key into this soft point can drop someone to the ground as quickly as if he's been given an electric shock.

He hit the floor, his legs still under him, bucking to free them like some frantic insect as I lay on top of him. He was choking now.

Wheezing, gurgling noises issued from his nose and mouth.

Trying to keep focus, and some sort of coordination, I ran a hand over his jacket pockets. Nothing. I tried to unzip the jacket, but my fingers couldn't grip the tab. As I pulled down they just fell away.

Still on top of him, watching his hair soak up the spilled contents of the urinal, I started feeling around his waist, wanting to find a weapon. My hands couldn't register if he was carrying or not; they refused to send any type of message to my brain.

I lay there knowing that I must get up, sure that he was thinking the same.

The other boy behind me in the stall started moaning and coughing, his boots scuffing the floor as he tried to move. With any luck he was more worried about his dental plan for the next few years than anything else.

Dragging myself to my feet, I staggered on the spot above the American, then my knees buckled and I collapsed on his head. Blood spurted from his nose as I pulled myself up on a urinal. He curled up on the soaking floor, still trying to reach out and grab my leg.

I had to get out of there and hide up for the next twenty minutes or so until I could get off the ferry. I wasn't going to black out: They wouldn't have wanted to carry a deadweight. The drugs would just make me like the Finns in the bar and make it easier to drag me to their car.

Stumbling up the stairs, I seemed to trip on almost every one. After about six attempts at pulling the door open I was back in a hallway.

The smell of smoke, the shouts of children, and the jingle of video games were all magnified in my spinning, dazed head. I was zigging while the rest of the world zagged.

I had to find myself a little spot where I could sit down and be no problem to anybody. That wasn't easy; I'd been fighting and rolling around in piss, and must have looked in a terrible state. Maybe I'd feign seasickness.

Staggering into a seating area, I made my way into the corner, slumping against the back of a seat before falling into it. The Estonian whose big bag had had to be whipped away before I fell on it shook his head knowingly, as if this sort of thing happened to him every day. Flicking his cigarette ash onto the floor, he carried on chatting to his neighbor before they both inched away. I must have stunk of piss.

Trying to hum a tune, anything to look like a seasick drunk, I decided to take my backpack off. I must have looked stupid sitting with it on my back. Slumped forward and with the coordination of jello, I made a complete mess of it. After fighting with the straps for a while I just quit and collapsed.

Announcements were being made on the PA. My head was swimming. Were they talking about me? Were they appealing for witnesses?

The man next to me stood up and so did his friend. They started gathering together their bits and pieces. We must have arrived.

There was a sudden migration of people, all going in one direction. I just had to try and keep aware of what was going on. I moved off behind them, stumbling among the crowd. Everybody seemed to be giving me a wide berth. I didn't know where I was going, and I didn't care, as long as I got off the ferry.

My mind was in control but my body wasn't obeying orders. I bumped into a Finn and apologized in slurred English. He looked down at my wet clothes and glared aggressively. All I was focused on was staying with the herd and keeping the backpack on my back. I just wanted to get off the ferry and find somewhere to hide while all the shit in my body did what it had to do and then left me alone.

Following people with strollers and plastic bags, I lurched down a covered gateway and joined the line for immigration. The woman said nothing as she checked my passport. I swayed and smiled as she eyed me, probably in disgust, and stamped one of the pages. Picking it up at the second attempt I staggered on through to the arrivals hall, focusing really hard on making sure it went back into my inside jacket pocket.

Outside, the cold wind buffeted my jacket as I staggered across a snow-covered parking lot. The whole area was brightly lit; most of the cars had a layer of snow, and a few were having ice scraped off them as bulging plastic bags were forced inside and exhaust fumes filled the air.

I could see the top half of the ferry behind me, beyond the terminal, and could hear the metallic rumbling of cars and trucks leaving the ship. In front of me was darkness, then, in what seemed the far distance, some very blurred lighting. That was where I needed to go. I needed to find a hotel.

Reeling against a line of vehicles, I got to the end of the parking lot and hit dark, snow-covered waste ground.

There were a number of well-worn tracks heading in the direction of the lights in the distance. Way over to my right, a convoy of headlamps trailing back to the ferry were heading the same way. I started following a track and immediately fell down, not really feeling anything.

Carrying on as best I could, I was soon in darkness and walking through trees. To my left was a large vacant warehouse. Stopping to rest against a tree, I fixed my eyes on the lights ahead and could hear the faint noises of cars and music in the distance. Things were looking up. I pushed myself off the tree trunk and staggered on.

I didn't even see where the boys came from.

All I felt was two lots of arms grabbing me and dragging me toward the decaying building. I couldn't see their faces in the darkness, just the glow from a cigarette stuck in one of their mouths. My feet were dragging along the ground as my attackers crunched their way through the lumpy snow. I tried to resist but put up the fight of a five-year-old.

Fuck, next stop a 3x9.

They threw me against a doorway which had been filled in with cinderblocks. I managed to turn so I hit it with my back, but it knocked the wind out of me as I slid down onto my ass.

The kicks started to rain in. All I could do was curl up and take it.

At least I was aware enough to know that I'd be too slow to escape or retaliate. I'd have to wait until they'd finished the softening-up process, then see what I could do. No way was I going to let these fuckers take me away if I could help it.

My hands were up around my head to protect it, knees up by my chest.

Each time a boot connected my whole body jerked. The drugging was an advantage as I couldn't feel the pain, at least for now. Tomorrow I'd be suffering.

Maybe I could get hold of one of their weapons? At this range, even in my condition, I couldn't miss, so long as I could manipulate the thing once I'd got it. You never know until you try, and I'd rather go down trying than not try at all.

The attack stopped as suddenly as it had started.

The next thing I felt was the backpack being pulled off my back, and even if I'd wanted them to, my arms couldn't have resisted being pulled back as the straps dragged down them.

I was pulled over, exposing my front, and one of them leaned over me and started to unzip my jacket. His own was open; now was the time to react.

Lunging forward, I pushed my hands deep inside his coat. But there was no weapon; he didn't even have one in his hand.

Hands, elbows, I didn't know what they were, hammered into me, pushing me back against the wall, and there was nothing I could do to help myself. I was back at square one.

They both started laughing. Then it was a few more kicks and some cursing in Russian or Estonian. That quickly stopped as they pulled my arms out of the way and finished undoing my jacket.

I was lying in slush and could feel the freezing wetness soaking through my jeans as if the piss wasn't enough. The jacket was pulled open and I felt their hands going in, pulling up my sweatshirt and sweater, feeling around my stomach, going into the pockets. These were strange places to be searching for a weapon, and it took a while for it to dawn on me. I wasn't being weapons cleared, I was being mugged.

From that moment on I relaxed. Fuck it, let them get on with it. I'd be as passive as I could. There was no need to mess with these people.

I had more important things to do than fight muggers. Besides, in my condition I would lose.

They were pretty slick for street thieves, checking around my stomach for a tourist's money belt, with fast whispers between them in whatever language as they did their work. The cigarette still burned in front of my face as they hovered over me. Finally, ripping Baby G from my wrist, they were off, their footsteps crunching in the snow.

I lay there for several minutes, feeling relieved they hadn't been American.

A truck stopped on the other side of the building, its engine idling.

There was a loud hiss of air brakes and the engine revved as it drove on. In the silence I heard more music. Then I just lay there, totally out of it, wishing I was in that bar or wherever it was coming from.

The most important thing now was to not let myself fall asleep. If I succumbed I might go down with hypothermia, just like drunks or junkies when they collapse in the streets.

I tried to get to my feet, but couldn't move. Then I felt myself drifting away. The urge to sleep was just too strong.

29

Friday. December 17, 199B I came round very slowly. I became aware of the wind blowing past the doorway and felt some of it push its way into my face. My vision was still blurred and I was feeling groggy. It was like being hungover, only several times worse. My head still didn't feel completely linked with my body.

Curled up among the beer cans and rubble I was numb with cold and shivering, but that was a good sign. At least I was aware of it; I was starting to switch on.

Coughing and spluttering, I attempted to sort myself out, trying to zip up my jacket with shaking hands to trap some warmth. I could hear a high-revving vehicle moving in the distance-I wasn't too sure how far away, but it didn't seem far. I listened for the music; that had gone now. Once the vehicle moved on there was no more noise apart from the wind and me coughing up shit from the back of my throat. The zip only got halfway as my numbed fingers kept losing their grip on the small tab. I gave up and just held the top half together.

Attempting to get my head into real-life mode, I checked inside my jacket. I knew it was pointless; they'd taken everything, both the Davidson passport and the money I'd changed. It wasn't worth worrying about the loss; it wouldn't bring them back. Knowing if the contents of my socks were still intact was more important; feeling around with numb fingers I pressed down inside my boots and made contact with the dollars. Even more surprisingly, I still had my Leatherman on my belt. Maybe they weren't as slick as I'd thought, or maybe it had no resale value unless it came with its case.

Once onto my hands and knees, I slowly hauled myself to my feet, using the cinder-blocked doorway for support. I wanted to get moving, find a hotel and get warm; I could still get that train in the morning. But then, it could already be morning, I didn't have a clue.

I had a shivering spasm. Slivers of ice had formed on my jeans as the piss on them had frozen. Feeling in my jacket pockets for my gloves was a stupid idea: they'd taken those too. I needed to get moving and generate some heat.

Freezing air blasted my face as I walked out. The wind was blowing big time, straight off the Baltic. Jumping up and down on the spot, my hands in my pockets, I tried to wake myself up in the darkness but lost my balance. As I breathed in sharply the subzero air clawed at the back of my throat and nose. I resumed my aerobics, but it was more of a shuffle than a jump.

The loss of my hat and gloves made me bury my head into the collar of my jacket and my hands firmly in the pockets. I started to pick my way through small piles of snow, which I soon found had gathered round lumps of concrete and twisted steel. I took my time; the last thing I wanted now was to twist an ankle, and the way my luck was going that was quite likely.

Eventually my hands got warm enough to manipulate the zip, and with my jacket done up completely I began to feel the benefit. A car slowly trundled along the road about sixty to seventy yards to my left. Ahead of me, maybe 300 yards away, was the cloudy blue-and white glow of a gas station. I bent down, taking my time so as not to lose my balance again, and undid my boot to extract a $20 bill.

After checking that the rest of the money was secure, I staggered and slid toward the blue glow beyond the trees. My condition was improving a little, but I knew I must still look loaded; it was certainly how I felt like the guy who believes he's in control when in fact he's slurring his words and failing to notice that matchstick he just tripped up on. Not that I really gave a shit what the people in the gas station would think of me; all I hoped was that they served hot drinks and food, and that somebody could give me directions to a hotel.

I stumbled on, slipping and sliding on the ice, all the time keeping an eye open for my new friends, or others who might be following the fucked-up foreigner for a few more dollars.

Putting my hand out to rest against a tree for a while, it dawned on me that it was going to be very difficult, maybe impossible, to check into a hotel. In a country like this they'd insist on passport details and possibly even visas. The Russians might have gone, but their bureaucracy would have stayed behind. I could hardly say I'd left my passport in the car. What car? There was also something else; I wouldn't know until it was too late whether the police made spot checks or the hotels had to report anything suspicious, such as a man covered in piss, with no passport, trying to pay in U.S. dollars. It depressed me, but I couldn't take that chance.

Lurching off again toward the gas station, I was getting nearer to the road. There was virtually no traffic or noise from anywhere, just the odd set of headlights and the rumble of tires over what sounded like cobblestones and slush in the distance. Intermittent street lights illuminated snow swirling from the ground, making it look as if it was just hanging there.

There were about thirty yards of snow and ice left to cover before I hit the road beside the gas station; I didn't know what to expect when I got inside, but it looked very much the same as a run of-the-mill Western European one. In fact, it looked almost too new and shiny to be in the middle of such a rundown area.

I stumbled across to the road; it was indeed made of cobblestones, but not like the ones in Finland. These were old, crumbling or missing, with potholes filled with ice every few yards.

Standing under the bright blue-lit canopy, I banged my boots to clear the snow and tried to make myself look respectable, miming as if I'd lost my glasses when I checked that it was in fact a $20 bill. I wasn't going to risk a $50 or $100; I could get fucked over again if seen with that amount of money round here.

The wind hit the pumps with a high-pitched wail as I went through the door. I entered a new world, warm and clean, with plenty of goods laid out in exactly the way they would be in a convenience store anywhere else in Europe. I wondered if I was hallucinating. They seemed to be selling everything from motor oil to cookies and bread, but especially rows and rows of beer and a pile of crates with more liter bottles of the stuff next to the spirits. The only thing missing and which I'd been hoping for, was the smell of coffee. There was no sign of hot drinks at all.

Two guys in their late teens looked up from behind the counter, then went back to studying their magazines, probably feeling ridiculous in their red-and-white striped vests and caps. They didn't look too bright this morning as they smoked and picked their noses, but then, I wasn't exactly looking like Tom Cruise.

I wobbled around the shelves, picking up a handful of chocolate bars, then some shrink-wrapped cold cuts from the chilled compartment. I might not have been at my most alert, but I still knew it was important to get some food in me.

They both stared at me as I dumped my goods on the counter, and it took me a while to realize that I was swaying on my feet. Resting two fingers on the counter to steady myself, I gave them a big smile.

"Speak English?"

The one with the zits saw my $20. "American?"

"No, no. Australian." I always said I was from Australia, New Zealand, or Ireland; they're neutral, easygoing and well known as travelers. Tell people you're a Brit or an American and somebody somewhere is bound to be pissed with you about whatever country you've bombed recently.

He looked at me, trying to work that one out.

" Crocodik Dundee f I mimed strangling a croc. "G'day mate!"

He smiled and nodded.

Handing him the bill, I pointed at my stuff. "Can I pay you with this?"

He studied a folder probably the exchange rates. Behind him, Camel cigarette cartons were neatly arranged around a special-offer Camel clock. I tried to focus my eyes on the hands and managed to make out that it was just after three thirty. No wonder I was freezing; I must have spent hours in that doorway. At least my nose was starting to warm up a bit in here; I could feel it starting to tingle, a good sign that the Autojet's effects were wearing off.

He exchanged the bill without a second thought. Everybody likes hard currency. My cold fingers fumbled with the large amount of paper and coins he gave me as change; in the end, I just cupped one hand and scooped the money into it with the other. As he handed me my shopping bag I asked, "Where is the train station?"

"Huh?"

It was time to play Thomas the Tank Engine. I pulled the steam whistle. "Oooo! I Chug chug chug!"

They liked that and started running at the mouth in what I guessed was Estonian. My friend with zits pointed to the right, where the road bent to the left before disappearing.

I put my hand up in a big Australian thank-you gesture, walked out and turned right as they had directed. Right away the cold wind hit me; my nose and lungs felt as if I was inhaling tiny fragments of broken glass.

The pavement taking me toward the bend was covered with ice the color of mud. This was so different from Finland, where sidewalks were kept scrupulously clear. Here the stuff had just been trodden down, turned to slush, then frozen. Empty cans and other lumps of litter sticking out at crazy angles made me lift my feet high to make sure I didn't trip.

As I followed the road, looking for signs to the station, I threw chunks of very hard chocolate down my throat. I must have looked like someone walking home with take-out after a good night.

After fifteen minutes of swaying down a dark deserted street, I came across railway tracks and followed them. Just a quarter of an hour later I was going through heavy glass doors into the dimly lit station.

It smelled of fried food and vomit, and like any other railway station in the world it offered a full range of drunks, addicts, and homeless people.

The interior was concrete with stone slab floors. It must have looked great on the drawing board in the seventies, which was when it was probably built, but now it was badly lit, neglected and falling apart, complete with fading posters and peeling paint.

At least the place was warm. I made my way along the main concourse, looking for a place to curl up and hide. I felt as if that was all I'd been trying to do since getting on the ferry. All the good sites were already booked, but I eventually found an alcove and dropped down onto my ass.

The smell of urine and decaying cabbage was overpowering. No wonder the space was vacant; somebody obviously ran a stall there specializing in rancid vegetables, then had a piss against the wall every evening before he went home.

I pulled the food from my pocket. I really didn't want any more, but made myself eat the remaining two chocolate bars and the meat, then rolled over onto my right-hand side, bringing my knees up into a foetal position, with my face resting on my hands among the un swept dirt and cigarette butts. I was past caring; I just wanted to sleep.

A couple of bums immediately started solving the world's problems with loud, slurred voices. I opened one eye to check on them, just as a bag lady wandered over to join their debate. They all had grimy old faces, cut and bruised where they'd been either beaten up or had got so drunk they'd fallen over and damaged themselves. All three were now lying on the floor, surrounded by a rampart of bulging plastic shopping bags tied together with string. Each had a can in their hand that no doubt contained the local equivalent of Colt 45.

Another drunk shuffled over to my alcove, maybe attracted by my earlier banquet. He started jumping up and down on the spot, grunting and waving his arms. The best way to deal with these situations is to appear just as mad and drunk as them-and more. I sat up and hollered, "Hubba-hubba hubba-hubba!" not bothering to try to make my eyes look scary; they probably already did. Picking up a can, I yelled at it for a few seconds, then threw it at him, growling like a wounded animal. He shuffled away, muttering and moaning. That was the only productive lesson I learned in reform school, apart from the fact that I never wanted to go back.

I lay down again and fell into a semi daze with what seemed like ten minutes' sleep here and five minutes there, waking every time there was a noise or movement. I didn't fancy being mugged a second time.

I was jolted awake by a hard kick in the ribs. My head was still aching badly, but at least my eyes were focusing a lot better. I saw a frenzy of men in black, looking just like an American police SWAT team, with black combat pants tucked into their boots, black baseball caps, and nylon bomber jackets festooned with badges and logos. In their belt kit they carried canisters, which were almost certainly full of mace. They were shouting and screaming, hitting vagrants indiscriminately with black foot-long nightsticks. For the homeless population of Tallinn, this was obviously their wake-up call. It was certainly similar to some morning calls I'd had in basic training.

Taking the hint, I started to pull myself up onto my feet. My whole body hurt. I must have looked like a ninety-year-old as I shambled out of the station with the rest of them, hoping it wouldn't take too long before my muscles warmed up and relieved some of the pain.

The cold early morning air gripped my face and lungs. It was still pitch-black, but I could hear a lot more movement than when I'd arrived. To my right I could see the main drag, with intermittent traffic. A solitary streetlight was glimmering, but so weakly it needn't have bothered. Parked in a row were five black, very clean and large 4x4s, possibly Land Cruisers. Each vehicle carried a white triangular logo, the same as the largest one on the back of the team's bomber jackets. There was still plenty of screaming and arguing going on, and I saw my three debating-society friends being thrown bodily into one of the wagons. Maybe that was where the cut faces came from.

I moved out of the way, round to the other side of the station. There was life of sorts going on here. I hadn't noticed it on the way in, but the building obviously doubled as a bus station. There was a large open area with shelters and fleets of dilapidated buses, covered in mud. Plumes of early morning exhaust fumes rose from the rear of some of them. People at the back of the lines were shouting at the ones in front, probably telling them to board before they froze to death. Bags were being placed into the luggage holds, along with wooden crates and cardboard boxes tied up with string. Most of the passengers seemed to be old women in heavy overcoats, with knitted hats and huge felt boots with zips up the front.

The only proper light came from the railway station and the bus headlights reflecting off the icy ground. A streetcar appeared from nowhere and moved across the foreground.

The station had windows missing in the offices above platform level, and it was covered by decades of grime. It wasn't just this building, the whole place looked in deep decay. The main street was badly potholed and entire areas of blacktop had broken up like ice floes to create different levels for vehicles to negotiate.

The men in black had finished their task. Some of the street people wandered across the road in a group, maybe heading for the next refuge point, others started to beg by the buses. When they stood next to the passengers it was hard to tell who looked worse off.

Everybody seemed to be holding shopping bags, not just the homeless, but the people boarding the buses as well. Not a single one was laughing or smiling. I felt sorry for them-freed from Communism, but not from poverty.

I waited while the black teams climbed into their wagons and moved off, then I wandered back into the station. The place didn't smell any better now it was cleared, but at least it was warm. I thought I'd better clean myself up. I eventually found a rest room, though I didn't know if it was for men or women. It was just a set of stalls and a couple of sinks. A solitary bulb flickered in the ceiling and the place absolutely stank of piss, shit, and vomit. Once at the sinks I found out where all these smells seemed to come from.

Deciding to skip the wash, I inspected myself in the mirror. My face wasn't cut or bruised, but my hair was sticking out at all angles. I wet my hands under the tap and ran my fingers through it, then got out of there quickly before I was sick myself.

Wandering around the station, I tried to find out train times. There was plenty of information, all in Estonian or Russian. The ticket office was closed, but a handwritten notice on a piece of cardboard taped to the inside of the glass screen explained that there was something happening at 0700, which I took to be the opening time. I couldn't see if there was a clock in the office as it was cut from view by a faded yellow curtain.

Sheets of paper stuck to the glass also carried various destination names, in lettering I recognized, as well as Cyrillic. I saw Narva and the numbers 707. It seemed there was just seven minutes between the office opening and my train leaving.

My next priority was to get a coffee and find out the time. Nothing was open in the station, but with any luck there was some kind of facility outside for the bus passengers. Where there are people, there will be traders.

I found a row of aluminum kiosks, with no unity or theme to what any of them sold; each of them just sold stuff, everything from coffee to hair bands, but mostly cigarettes and alcohol.

I couldn't remember what the currency was-things were still blurry-but I managed to get a paper cup of coffee for a small coin that was probably worth two cents. From the same kiosk I also treated myself to a new watch, a bright orange thing with the Lion King grinning out at me from a face that lit up at the press of a but ton.

His paws rested on a digital display, which the old woman running the kiosk corrected to 0615.

I stood in between two kiosks with my coffee and watched the trams deliver and pickup passengers. Apart from those yelling at each other in line, there was very little talk from anybody. These were depressed people, and the whole ambience of the place reflected their state of mind. Even the coffee was horrible.

I started to notice people huddled here and there in small groups, passing bottles among themselves. One group of young men in a bus shelter, wearing old coats over shiny shell-suit pants, were drinking from half-liter bottles of beer and smoking.

In a strange way the place reminded me of Africa; everything, even the plastic toys and combs in the kiosk window displays, was faded and warped. It looked as if the West had dumped its trash and it had washed up with these people. As in Africa, they had stuff buses, trains, TVs, even cans of Coke but nothing really worked together.

Basically it felt as if the whole country was Made in Chad. When I was operating there, the republic used to be the byword for things that looked okay but fell apart in ten minutes.

I thought some more about the ferry attack. The guys in the toilets must have been NSA, but the only way I could have been spotted was by them checking the ticketing, then taking and checking out this guy called Davies. Once my passport had been swiped they'd cracked it: Davidson was on board. The two who'd attacked me would be out of commission, but would others soon be on my trail?

I bought another coffee to get more heat inside me, as well as another bar of chocolate and a bottle of twenty-four aspirin to clear my head and help with the body pain, then I wandered around the kiosks looking for maps as I washed down the first four tabs with crap coffee. I found a Narva town map, but not one for the northeast of the country.

Glancing at Lion King as I paid for it, I realized I had to get a move on.

On the way to the ticket office I brushed the worst of the dirt from my jeans. My body heat was drying them out slowly, so I hoped I didn't smell too much. For all I knew they might have a rule about not selling tickets to hobos.

I was first in a line of three when the grubby bit of curtain got moved away from the little window to reveal an iron grill behind thick glass, with a small wooden scoop at the bottom where money and tickets were exchanged. A woman in her midfifties glowered at me from behind the fortifications. She was wearing a sweater and, of course, a woolen hat. She was also probably resting her feet on a bulging shopping bag.

I smiled. "Narva, Narva?"

"Narva."

"Yes. How much?" I rubbed my fingers together.

She got out a little receipt book and wrote "Narva" and "707." It appeared the cost was 707 hertigrats, or whatever the money was called, not that it left at 7:07.

I handed her a 1000 note. $20 U.S. was going a long way here. She moved away from the glass, rummaged around, came back and dropped my change through the scoop. With it was a slip of paper as thin as tissue. I picked it up, guessing it must be some kind of receipt.

"Narva-ticket?"

She babbled at me gloomily. It was pointless, I didn't have a clue what she was on about. I didn't ask about the platform. I'd find it.

Tallinn station seemed to be the origin for all lines. This wasn't Grand Central Station, though; the platforms outside the hall were lumpy, broken pavement, with ice where the water had puddled and frozen. In places, exposed concrete had crumbled and rusting reinforcement rods protruded. The trains were old Russian monsters with a big Cyclops light; they all seemed to be blue, but it was hard to be sure under all the dirt and grime. Hanging on the front of each locomotive was a wooden destination board, and that was all the help you got.

I walked up and down looking for the word Narva, brushing past other passengers. I found the train, but needed to confirm it with one of my shopping-bag friends.

"Narva, Narva?"

The old man looked at me as if I was an alien, muttering something without taking the cigarette out of his mouth, so the light from the tip bounced up and down. He then just walked away. At least I got a nod as he pointed at the train.

I carried on along the platform, looking for an empty car, to the sound everywhere of the early morning coughing up of phlegm people holding one nostril and snot ting out on the ground, then putting the cigarettes back between their lips.

There didn't seem to be any completely empty cars, so I boarded anyway, taking the first free row of seats I could find. The car floor was nothing more than welded steel plates, and the seats were also made of steel, with two small, thinly padded vinyl sections, one for your back and one for your ass. There were a couple of forty-watt lightbulbs in the ceiling and that was our lot. All very basic, all very functional, yet surprisingly clean compared to the mayhem in the station outside.

And at least it was warm.

30

The wheels rattled rhythmically over the rails as I gazed out at the darkness. I couldn't see any of the landscape, just lights from what I supposed were factories and from windows of row upon row of prisonlike apartment buildings.

I was sitting by the sliding door at the front end, next to a window, with, thankfully, a heater directly under my seat. According to the travel guide I'd be here for at least the next five hours, which was good news for my jeans. There were a dozen other passengers spread about the car, all of them male, most with shopping bags, and either deep in thought or doing the nodding dog.

The door slid back with a crash and a woman in her mid-forties came in, wearing a man's gray overcoat that was far too big for her. Draped over her arm were a dozen copies of a tabloid. She started jabbering and was clearly asking me something. I waved my hand politely to say no thanks but she became very animated. When I waved my hand again and shook my head with a nice Australian smile, she reached into her coat and out came the same sort of book of receipts that Mrs. Glum had used in the ticket office. I realized she was the ticket collector, who was obviously running a newspaper concession on the side. Like me, she was taking the money where she could find it.

I fished out my slip of paper. She inspected it, grunted, gave it back and swayed with the momentum of the train on to the next passenger, no doubt telling him that the village idiot was on board. Given what I was about to try, she wasn't far wrong.

We began to slow, and finally stopped. Through the darkness I could just see a factory, complete with a series of enormous chimneys. The station didn't have a platform; the factory workers had to disembark directly onto the tracks. Outside, people seemed to wander all over the place, even between cars.

The train set off again, stopping every ten minutes or so to disgorge another group of workers. After each halt the old diesel engine would strain to get up speed again, belching smoke which quickly merged with the junk the factory chimneys were pumping out. The railway system made Britain's look positively space age by comparison, but at least these ran on time, were warm, clean, and affordable. I thought of inviting a few Estonian train managers to the U.K. to show our guys how it should be done.

The train snaked, shuddered, and shook its way through the industrial wasteland. After half an hour the lights started to die out and I was looking into darkness again. I decided to follow the lead of the one other passenger left in the car and get some sleep.

It was shortly after nine thirty and first light had just passed. The sky, in keeping with everything else, was a gloomy gray. Through the grime on the window I saw snow-heavy trees lining the track on each side, a barrier against snowdrifts. Beyond them lay either vast stretches of absolutely flat open ground, covered in virgin white snow, or thick forest that stretched on forever. The electricity and telephone lines following the track were just like the trees, sagging with the weight of the snow and huge icicles that hung from them.

The train was still moving very slowly between stations, maybe because of the weather, maybe because the track was in need of repair.

An hour later, after another couple of stops, the chocolate and meat started to take effect. I hadn't seen any signs for toilets and I wasn't even sure there were any. If not, I'd just have to have a quick dump in the hall and explain it was an old Australian custom.

I walked the length of two cars, bouncing from side to side, until I eventually found one. It was just like the rest of the train, very basic but clean, warm, and it worked.

Ripping hard sheets from the roll I threw them into the bowl until it was more or less blocked. As I pulled down my now dry jeans and sat on the bare ceramic bowl, I had a quick sniff of the denim.

Not that bad, considering; I could always blame it on a tomcat.

Bruises had developed on both thighs now; they'd soon turn black, complementing the ones I already had.

As the chocolate and meat mix started to force its way out I fought to keep control, wanting to catch the insurance policy, wrapped in two condoms and inserted up my ass with the aid of some Helsinki hotel soap.

This was something else I'd learned in reform school. It was the best way to make sure my fifteen pence weekly allowance wasn't stolen. Saran wrap hadn't been as good as these condoms, though.

It was a bit of a smelly affair retrieving it, but once I'd untied the knot in the first condom, pulled out the one inside and washed my hands-there was even soap and water in these toilets-everything was clean and fragrant again. I was still enthusing about Estonian railways when it was suddenly like being back on the King's Lynn-to London line: the flush didn't work.

I stayed a while and treated myself to a wash. Back in the carriage, it was time to study my Narva town map, working out exactly where I'd find Konstantin. According to Lion King there was about an hour to go before we arrived. I sat there feeling rather pleased the chocolate had worked and that I wouldn't have to waste time in Narva waiting for nature to call.

I dry-swallowed another four aspirin and looked out of the window. No wonder people had been getting off before entering this part of the country. This must be the start of the great industrial northeast the Soviets had created during their reign. Gone were the trees and open spaces of the wilderness; instead the view consisted entirely of slag heaps, with massive conveyor belts, and factories that churned out smoke from every corner.

We trundled past forbidding blocks of apartments, with TV aerials hung from every window and sometimes enormous, outdated satellite dishes.

There were no yards or play areas, just two or three cars up on concrete blocks. Even the snow was gray.

The scenery didn't change much as the stops became more frequent, except that every spare inch of ground along the track was covered with little vegetable patches. Even the spaces under electricity towers were turned into makeshift greenhouses using a patchwork of plastic sheeting. Just when I thought it couldn't get any more depressing, the train shunted past three cars parked at the side of the road, nose to tail. They were riddled with bullet holes and burned out. There was no snow or ice on them and shattered glass lay all over the place. It looked as if they'd only just been hosed down and flash lighted For all I knew there might still be bodies inside. A couple of kids walked past and didn't give them a second look.

The train stopped with a rumble and a loud squeal of brakes. We seemed to be in a rail yard. Fuel tankers and freight cars appeared on either side, all covered with Russian script and caked in oil and ice. I was back in a scene from a Harry Palmer film again, only Michael Caine would have had a suit and trench coat on instead of piss-stained jeans.

The train just seemed to have driven into the yard and stopped, and that was it. Going by the number of doors opening, it was time to get off. Welcome to Narva.

I looked out of the window and saw people jumping down onto the tracks with their shopping bags. The only other remaining passenger in my car was leaving. I did the same, traipsing through the snow across a massive shunting yard, following the others toward an old stone house.

I guessed that it hadn't been built until after 1944, because I'd read that when the Russians "liberated" Estonia from the Germans they flattened the whole town, then rebuilt it from scratch.

I went through gray-painted, metal double doors into the ticket office.

The room was only about twenty by thirty feet, with a few old plastic, classroom-style chairs around the sides. The walls were covered with the same thick shiny gray paint as the doors, onto which graffiti had been scratched. I thought the floor was plain pitted concrete until I noticed the two remaining tiles refusing to leave home.

The ticket office was closed. A large wooden board was fixed to the wall near the sales window, with plastic sliders upon which, in Cyrillic, were the names of various destinations. I looked for anything that resembled the word Tallinn. It seemed that the first train back was at 8:22 each morning, but even if they'd spoken English, there was no one around to confirm it.

I stepped round the obligatory puddle of vomit and came out of the main entrance. Over to my left was what I took to be a bus station. The buses were of 1960s or 1970s vintage, all battered and some even hand painted. People were fighting to get aboard, exactly as they'd done in the capital; the driver was shouting at them and they shouted at each other. Even the snow was exactly the same as in Tallinn: dirty, downtrodden, and viciously icy.

Digging my hands deep into my pockets I cut directly across the potholed road, following the map in my head along Puskini, which seemed to be the main street. It wouldn't be far to Konstantin's address.

Puskini was lined on either side by high buildings. On the left, what looked like a power station loomed behind them and, bizarrely, electricity towers were set into the street and pavements, so pedestrians had to pick their way round them. Russians seemed to have sited all their industrial units as near as possible to the stations that powered them; then, if they had any space left, they'd squeezed in accommodation for the workers, and fuck the people who had to live there. I'd seen enough to tell me this was a miserable, run-down place. The newest buildings looked as if they dated from the 1970s, and even they were falling apart.

I headed up the street, keeping to the right. It was quiet apart from the occasional tractor and one or two Russian-plated articulated lorries surging past. The roads and sidewalks were jet black with grease and grime, with a good coating of slush from passing vehicles.

Christmas hadn't arrived in Narva yet. I wondered if it ever would.

There were no street decorations, lights, or anything remotely festive, even in the windows. I walked past drab storefronts which advertised everything from second-hand washing machines to Arnold Schwarzenegger videos.

Further along, I came to a small food store. It was an old building, but had the brightest lighting I'd yet seen spilling out onto the iced pavement. I couldn't resist it, especially as I hadn't had anything to eat since my chocolate and meat combo, from which I'd long since parted company.

An old man was lying on top of a cardboard box to one side of the main entrance, sheltered by the shop's canopy. His head was wrapped in rags, his hands covered with strips of canvas. The skin on his face was dark with ingrained dirt and he could have grown vegetables in his beard. Beside him was a wooden tomato crate turned upside down, displaying a rusty old screwdriver and a pair of pliers that were clearly up for sale. He didn't bother looking up at me as I passed. I must have looked as though I was all right for rusty tools.

The store was laid out to exactly the same template as a small town corner store in the U.K. It even had some of the same brands Colgate toothpaste, Kellogg's Cornflakes, and Gillette shaving cream but not much else apart from crates of beer and a large cooler that had nothing in it except rows of different sausages, including the risky red ones I hadn't eaten on the ferry, strung out in lines to make the display look more generous.

I picked up a family-sized bag of chips, two packs of sliced, processed cheese, and four cake-type rolls. I didn't bother with a drink as I hoped I'd soon be getting a hot one at Konstantin's. Besides, there wasn't much choice apart from beer and half-bottles of vodka. I couldn't be hassled to get toiler tries or a toothbrush to replace the stuff that had been stolen. All that sort of thing I'd grab if I needed it, but I didn't plan to be in the country that long; and in any case, no one I'd seen so far seemed to give much of a shit about personal hygiene.

As I paid for my goods I helped myself to two shopping bags, putting one pack of cheese and a couple of rolls into one, the rest into the other. Passing the old guy on the way out, I put the smaller bag down beside him. I hadn't bought him any chips because I didn't think his gums could tackle them. I knew what it felt like to spend hours outside in the cold.

With hands back in my jacket pockets, the bag dangling from my right wrist and banging rhythmically against my thigh, I moved on. I skirted an electric pole that was half in the street and half over the wall of a small factory, and more rows of miserable apartments came into view, identical to the ones I'd seen from the train. There were no names on the blocks, just stenciled numbers. At last I'd found one thing that my childhood project had over this place: at least every building there had been named after locations in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The rest of it, though, was much the same rotting wooden window frames and cracks in the panes taped over with packing tape. I remembered why I'd promised myself at the age of nine that I'd get out of shit holes like this as soon as I could.

It was only about one thirty in the afternoon, but already the town could have done with some streetlights on. Unfortunately, there just weren't that many around to help out.

Things started to liven up after another hundred yards or so. I came to a giant parking lot, full of buses and cars. People who seemed to be carrying everything from shopping bags to suitcases were shouting at each other, trying to be heard over the noise of air brakes and engines. It looked like news footage of refugees moving through a checkpoint. The closer I got, the more it started to look like somewhere Han Solo might go to get a spare part for his spacecraft.

There were some strange looking people around.

I realized I was at the border crossing point, the road bridge into, or out of, Russia. Harry Palmer would have been a regular here.

The parking lot was clogged with new Audis, old BMWs, and Ladas of all sorts, shapes, and ages. It was the Ford Sierras that looked strangely out of place. There were fleets of the things. I now knew where all the second-hand ones went when they weren't snapped up by cab drivers.

Money changers plied their trade along the edges of the parking lot, and kiosks sold all other types of kit as fast as Chad could manufacture it. I walked over to a green-painted garden shed with a small sliding window, dodging the arctic trucks that thundered past as they cleared border control. If you didn't get out of the way, tough.

Camel, Marlboro, and a million different Russian brands were taped to the glass, together with as many different styles of lighters. An old guy who looked like a gypsy, dark-skinned with thick gray curly hair, showed me his list of exchange rates. It seemed I could get about 12 EEK, whatever they were, to the U.S. dollar. I didn't know if that was good or not, just that Duracell batteries were taped up at just a couple of EEKs each, so either it was the bargain of the century or they were duds. I didn't want to show that I had money, so I went and sat on a garbage can behind the kiosk, got a warm $100 dollar bill out of my sock and replaced the boot pretty quickly.

Once he'd carried out about five different checks to make sure it wasn't counterfeit, including smelling it, the old guy was very happy indeed with his hard currency, and so was I with my new EEK wedge. I left the refugee camp behind and headed further up Puskini, toward a traffic circle which, according to the map in my head, led to the road I wanted.

The only buildings that looked at all inviting were near the traffic circle. Flashing neon signs told me these were "komfort baars."

Music blared from loudspeakers rigged up outside. Originally, I supposed, they'd been ordinary bars or shops, but their windows were painted out now. It didn't need much imagination to work out what was on offer the other side of the emulsion, but for the benefit of anyone in doubt, there were pictures of women and Cyrillic stenciling, no doubt defining exactly what was meant by "komfort." The best picture of all was on a blue window, showing the Statue of Liberty with Marilyn Monroe's face, pulling up her robe to reveal an ace of spades between her legs. Underneath, in English, it read, "America. Fuck it here." I wasn't too sure what it all meant, but the Russians who had parked all the trucks along the road obviously didn't have any trouble reading the menu.

I'd just stopped by the traffic circle to check which road I wanted next when two white Suzuki Vitaras with flashing red-and blue light bars screeched to a halt outside Marilyn's.

Three guys piled out of each, dressed exactly the same as the SWAT team at Tallinn station, but with a different logo. Theirs was also sewn on the back of their bomber jackets. I couldn't make out the wording from this distance, just that it was all in red and in the sort of typeface used on surf wear Pulling out smaller billy clubs than the lot at the station, they piled into the bar.

I stepped into a doorway to watch, taking one of the rolls from my shopping bag. Pulling the bread apart, I threw in a few slices of cheese and a handful of chips and watched as a very tired-looking green Lada police car turned up and parked near the Vitaras. Two fur-hatted figures inside didn't get out. I stamped my feet to keep them warm.

The Vitaras were showroom clean and had a phone number and logo emblazoned on the side and what looked like the letters "DTTS." The police car was falling to pieces and looked as if the insignia on the side had been hand-painted.

For the next few minutes nothing much happened. A stream of vehicles negotiated the traffic circle and I ate my roll, along with a few more chips. A few of the passing cars were quite new-Audis, VWs, and even a Mere-but not many. The popularity battle was really between rusted-out Sierras and Ladas.

I was still putting the finishing touches to my second cheese roll when the black teams emerged from the bar, dragging out three guys between the six of them. All three were in suits, with blood pouring down their faces onto their white shirts, while their smart shoes got scraped along the ice. They were thrown into the back of the Vitaras and then given the good news with billy clubs. The doors were closed and one of the team, noticing the police car, just waved them away. None of the passers-by even bothered to glance at what was going on; it was hard to tell whether they were too scared or just couldn't be bothered.

The police headlights came back on and off they drove, exhaust pipe rattling, toward the border-crossing parking lot.

The Vitaras and their crews also left, and I finished the roll as I crossed the traffic circle and turned right, toward the river. The address that Liv had given me was on this road, which was known simply as Viru. Still wondering what the three guys had done to cause Marilyn such offence, I started attacking the last roll and the remaining cheese and chips. Like I didn't have my own stuff to worry about.

31

Viru wasn't any more uplifting than the rest of town, just gray, miserable blocks of housing, more black snow and more un cared-for roads. Then, bizarrely, just up ahead was a burned-out bumper car, its metal frame and long conducting rod charred and twisted. God only knows how it had got there.

The only thing moving was a posse of five or six dogs, creating a haze of steam above their bodies as they skulked around, sniffing at stuff on the ground then pissing on it. I didn't even feel bad as I dropped my plastic bag, along with the chips and cheese wrappers. When in Rome Now and again a patched-up Sierra clattered past on the cobblestones, its occupants looking at me as if I was mad to be walking in this neighborhood. They were probably right, if the sulfur fumes I was inhaling were anything to go by. There was obviously another environmentally friendly factory near by.

Slipping my hands deeper into my pockets and my head deeper inside my collar, I tried to adopt the same miserable body language as everyone else. Thinking about what I'd seen at the "komfort baar," I decided not to tangle with private-enterprise security if I could help it. The State police looked a softer option.

Viru started to bend to the right, and straight ahead I could see the icy riverbank, five or six hundred yards away. That was Russia.

As I neared the bend I could see into the gorge, with the river Narva about 200 yards below. Following it around, the road bridge was about 400 yards away. Cars were lining up to leave Estonia, with foot traffic moving in both directions, carrying suitcases, shopping bags, and all sorts. The checkpoint on the Russian side had barriers across the road and guards checking papers.

If the numbering on the map was correct, Number 18 Viru would soon be on my right, a little past the bend and facing the river.

It wasn't an apartment building as I'd been expecting, but a large old house that was now a baar. At least, that was what the sign said, in white but unlit neon lettering above a rotten wooden door. Big patches of rendering were missing from the front of the building, exposing the red clay brick underneath. It was three stories high, and looked really out of place among the uniform concrete blocks surrounding it on three sides. Most of the upper windows were covered by internal wooden shutters; there were no curtains to be seen. There was another neon sign, also not illuminated, of a man leaning over a pool table with a cigarette in his mouth and a glass of beer on the side.

According to the sign next to it saying "8-22," it should have been open. Trying the door handle, I found that it wasn't.

Four cars were parked outside. There was a brand-new, shiny red Audi, and two Jeep Cherokees that had seen better days, both dark blue and with Russian plates. The fourth vehicle, however, was in the worst state of any I'd seen in Estonia, apart from the bumper car. It was a red Lada that had been hand-painted and had to belong to a teenager.

There were domestic music speakers clamped on the back shelf, from which wires hung like spaghetti. Very cool, especially the pile of old newspapers on the back seat.

I looked through the grime-covered ground-floor windows. There were no lights on and no sounds. Walking round to the other side, facing the river, I could see a light shining on the third floor, just a single bulb. It was like finding life on Mars.

Back at the wooden door I hit the intercom button near the baar sign.

The building might be in as shit state as Tom's, but the intercom was in better condition. There was no way of telling if it was working, though, so I tried again, this time for longer. There was static and crackling, and a gruff male voice, half aggressive, half bored, quizzed me. I didn't know what the fuck he was on about. I said, "Konstantin.

I want to see Konstantin."

I heard the Russian or Estonian equivalent of, "Eh, what?" then there was more gabbing from him and voices shouting in the background.

When he came back to me it was with something that obviously translated as, "Fuck off, big nose." The static ceased; I'd been given the brushoff.

I buzzed again, working on the theory that if he got pissed enough he might come down to the door to fill me in. At least then I had a chance of making some progress. There was more shouting, which I didn't understand; I got the gist but carried on regardless.

"Konstantin? Konstantin?"

The machine went dead once again. I wasn't sure whether there was going to be some action now or not, so I stayed where I was.

After about two minutes there was the sound of bolts being thrown on the other side of the door. I moved out of the way as it was pushed open. Behind it was an iron grill door, still closed, and behind that was a guy of maybe seventeen or eighteen, who looked like the style fairy had crept up on him and waved her LA-street gang wand. I bet he owned the Lada.

"Do you speak English?"

"Yo! You want Konstantin?"

"Yeah, Konstantin. Is he here?"

He gave a big smile. "Yes, he sure is, for that's me, man. You are the England guy, right?"

I nodded and smiled, holding back laughter as he tried to match his speech with his dress sense. It just didn't work, especially with a Russian accent.

He beamed as he looked me up and down. "Okay, smart guy, come on in."

He was right, I didn't look as if I'd come straight from the dry-cleaners. Or maybe he'd been expecting a man in a bowler hat.

The grill was secured from the inside with two lever locks. As soon as I'd walked in, both the door and the grill were locked behind me and the keys taken out.

He held up his hands. "Hey, call me Vorsim." He wiggled his fingers, or rather, the ones that hadn't gone missing, in the air. "Everyone does. It's Russian for eight."

He gave me another quick once-over as we both smiled at the joke he'd probably cracked a thousand times. "Hey, follow me, England guy."

I followed Eight up a narrow wooden staircase to the first floor.

The banisters and handrails were bare wood, and the exposed steps sagged with age. There was no light apart from the dull glow coming through the ground-floor windows. I could only just see where my feet were going.

It was an old, once-grand house. I couldn't see any evidence of a bar, but at least it was warm and dry-almost too dry. It had that dusty smell places get when the windows are never opened and the heating is on all the time.

Our footsteps echoed round the stairwell. Eight was about three steps above me, wearing a pair of the most blindingly yellow and purple Nike sneakers I'd ever seen, beneath a pair of baggy, blue hip-hop-style jeans that were stone washed-the kind with big horrible streaks of white-and a black leather bomber jacket with the L.A. Raiders pirate logo stitched on the back.

We hit a landing and turned for the next flight which would take us up to the second floor. Weak light filtered through the slatted shutters.

All the doors leading off it were paneled, with faded flowers painted on ceramic door knobs; it must have been a splendid place when it was first built.

We passed the second and carried on up to the third floor, then walked along a larger landing. He opened one of the doors toward the river.

"Your name is Nick, right?"

"Yeah, that's right." I didn't return the eye contact as I walked past him into the room. I was too busy checking what I was walking into.

There was just one bulb in the center of the room, producing the dingy, yellowy light I'd seen from outside. The very large room was in semidarkness and was boiling hot. The only job the lighting did was expose a layer of cigarette smoke that clung to the high ceiling.

There was a glow from the TV to my left, its volume set at low, with a body in front of it. Directly in front of me, about forty-five feet away, was a single sash window, its shutters open in the hope of letting in a little natural light. The shutters on each side were still firmly closed. There were no carpets or wall hangings, just empty space.

To my right, near a large marble fireplace, three men were seated on fancy chairs around what looked like an antique table with ornate legs.

They were playing cards and smoking. Beside them, and to the right of the fireplace, was another door.

The three heads at the table turned and stared as they sucked on their cigarettes. I nodded without any reaction from them at all, then one of the guys said something and the other two guffawed and went back to their game.

The door closed behind me. I looked at Eight, who was bobbing up and down with excitement. "Well, man" arms moving around like a rapper "you hang here, Vorsim won't be long. Things to do." And with that he placed the grill keys on the table and disappeared through the door near the fireplace.

I looked over at the guy by the TV. The color picture was a bit snowy, perhaps because it was perched on a chair with a coat hanger for an antenna. He sat on a chair opposite, his nose nearly touching the screen, too engrossed to bother looking round at me. His area was giving out more light than the bulb in the ceiling; it was a mystery how the other guys could see their cards.

No one offered me anywhere to sit, so I went over to the window to have a look outside. The floorboards creaked with every step I took. The card school, now behind me, just got back to mumbling to each other as they played.

It was easy to see what went on here. Two sets of electronic display pharmaceutical scales sat under the table at this end of the room. Next to them were stacked maybe ten to twelve large Tupperware boxes, some containing white stuff that definitely wasn't flour, others holding dark-colored pills that similarly weren't M&Ms.

Directly beneath the window was Viru, dirty snow and ice covering overflowing dustbins. At the corner of the building three scabby cats lay perfectly still in the snow, gathered around a drain, waiting for their black furry dinner to serve itself up.

Over the lip of the gorge the river on both banks was iced up, but the center third was carrying big chunks of ice and trash sluggishly from right to left, toward the Baltic about eight miles downstream. Further upstream the bridge was still jammed with cars and people.

I turned back to the room. It might be sweltering in here, but I was desperate for a hot brew. The only drink I could see was a bottle of Johnnie Walker on the table, which was being emptied by the card players. They all had black leather jackets draped over the backs of their chairs. They'd obviously watched too many gangster movies" because they were all dressed in black pants and black crewneck sweaters, with enough gold dripping off their wrists and fingers to clear Estonia's national debt. It looked like a scene from Good Fellas Packs of Camels and Marlboros lay on the table in front of them, gold lighters placed neatly on top. I made sure they couldn't see my Lion King watch. I didn't want them to start by shitting me, as there might be a time when they had to take me seriously. A smiling Disney character on my wrist wouldn't help.

I turned to the TV watcher as he clicked at his lighter and lit up, holding the cigarette between his thumb and index finger, then leaning forward, elbows on knees, to get his nose back into some low-budget American soap. What was really strange was that the dialogue was still in English; only after the actors had delivered their lines did the Russian dubbing take place. There was absolutely no emotion in the translation; a woman with more makeup than Boy George gushed, "But Fortman, I love you," then a Russian voice translated it as if she was buying a pound of cabbage. I suddenly knew where Eight got his English and dress code from.

The door opened and in he came. "Yo, Nikolai!" The bomber jacket was now off to reveal a red sweatshirt with Bart Simpson karate kicking another kid with fistfuls of dollars. Printed underneath was "Just take it." Dangling from Eight's neck was a thick gold chain that any rapper would be proud of.

He came and stood by the window with me. "Nick, I've been told to help you. Because, hey, guess what, crazy guy, I'm the only one here who speaks English." He shuffled from sneaker to sneaker as he clapped his hands. The Good Fellas looked at him as if he was a basket case, and got back to their game.

"Vorsim, I need a car."

"Car? Whoa, could be a problem, my man."

I half expected to hear his response followed by some bad Russian dubbing. He turned to the Good Fellas spoke some very fast stuff and did some mock begging. The oldest one, maybe in his early fifties, didn't look up from his hand but replied really aggressively. He must have been drinking liquid nasty instead of Johnnie Walker. I caught his drift, though: "Tell the Brit to fuck off ski I wondered if I should produce the insurance policy but decided not to. Better to save it until it really mattered.

Another one of the three sparked up with an idea, pointing first at Eight, then at me, and made out he was hitting something with a hammer. The other two really liked that one. Even the TV addict joined in as they all had a good laugh. It was Merlin's laugh: King Arthur used to get frustrated when he made a kingly decision and his wizard just laughed, because Merlin knew the future and the king didn't. I felt the same sort of thing was happening here. Liv was right: Don't trust them an inch.

Eight's shoulders slumped. He walked back over to me. "I'll have to give you my car."

"Is it one of the ones outside?" I'd already guessed, but was hoping I was wrong.

"Yes. But hey, man, I need it for bitches. Will I get it back soon?

How long do you need it for? A couple of hours?"

I shrugged. "Maybe a couple of days." Before he could react I added, "I also want to see you later tonight. Will you be here?"

"Cool, I'm always here. I live here, my man."

He pointed up at the loft. Rather him than me.

"OK, I'll be back later. Will your friends be here?"

"Oh sure, Nikolai, they'll hang for a while. Business to do, people to see."

I put my forefinger and thumb together and shook my hand. "Keys?"

"Keys? Oh sure, sure. I'll have to come with you, my man. Show you something cool." He ran through to the other room. The Good Fellas ignored me completely as I waited, concentrating instead on throwing more liquid nasty down their throats.

Eight reappeared, pulling on his bomber jacket and zipping it up as he took the keys off the table. We went downstairs and out into the cold.

After locking the door and grill behind us, it turned out that the cool thing he wanted to show me was that I'd have to hit the starter motor with a hammer before it would turn over. He said he liked it busted like this because no one could steal it.

While he was busying himself showing me what to do, it was pointless talking about licenses or whatever if I got stopped. I just wanted to get away from here and do my job. I didn't have time to fuck about.

The Maliskia knew the NSA were out and about and would be moving location any day now.

But Eight wanted to remove his speakers and music first. I looked at the cassettes as he piled them on the passenger seat. There was an array of American rap bands I'd never heard of, all following Eight's lead in the gold-chain department, plus some really hip Russian artistes who looked as though they were on the way to a reunion of the Liberace fan club. It was the white tuxedos that really gave them class.

I was waiting for him to disconnect the speakers when a 5 Series BMW, with a hint of silver beneath the dirt, cruised down the road from the direction I had walked. I noticed the plates first because they were British, and it was right-hand drive, then I looked at the driver.

The subconscious never forgets, especially when it comes to trouble.

Carpenter. I couldn't believe it. As if he hadn't fucked up my life enough these past couple of weeks.

He was slowing down as a van approached from the opposite direction, but it wasn't to let him pass; he was heading over to where we were, and if he saw me I bet I wouldn't be getting the Russian for, "Hello, nice to meet you."

I jumped into the back of the car with Eight and made as if to help him pull out the speakers, my knees badly creasing up his newspapers.

The BMW pulled into the parking lot, its tires crunching louder and louder on the ice the closer it got. I suddenly found the speakers very interesting indeed, and made sure my ass faced very definitely toward the BMW. I was feeling extremely vulnerable, but not as much as I would if he saw me.

The engine shut down and the driver's door opened.

Eight was the other side of me and glanced over my shoulder as Carpenter's door slammed, then turned back to his beloved speakers.

After hearing the wooden door close, I was still pulling out some very risky wiring as I asked, "Who's the English guy?"

"He's not England, you crazy guy!" He tutted into the air.

"So why has he got an England car?"

I'd obviously said something very funny. "Because he can, my man! Some England guy isn't going to St. Petersburgjust to get his car back; that would be crazy, man."

"Oh, I see."

In this part of the world it obviously didn't matter if you drove around with a hot car's plates on display. After all, if you had the money to have a BMW stolen to order, why not flaunt it? I could see the dealer's sticker in the rear window; it was a firm in Hanover, Germany, which probably meant that some British grunt had been saving up for ages to buy his tax-free bargain, only to get it lifted so it could rumble around Narva in the snow.

The first speaker came free. I had no idea how he was going to wire it up again; it looked like a telephone junction box in there. The chain around his neck made a curiously tinny noise as he moved around. The rap bands probably had the real thing, but I was sure his bitches never knew the difference.

"Who is he, then?"

"Oh, just one of the guys. Business, you know."

He must do a lot of business here to have his own set of house keys.

"Don't say anything about me to anyone, Vorsim," I said. "Especially guys like him. I don't want people to know I'm here, okay?"

"Oh sure, my man." The way he said it was too blase for my liking, but I didn't want to push the point.

Once the speakers were out I virtually threw the cassettes at him, wanting to get away before Carpenter reappeared. The hood was still open and I gave the starter motor a crack with thS hammer.

Eight stood by the door holding an armful of cassettes, with the speakers on the doorstep. "Be careful with the bitch machine, Nikolai."

Before he'd even turned to unlock the door I had the hood down, the engine in gear and was away, heading back the way I'd come.

My head was churning over about Carpenter. What if he was still there when I came back to see Eight after I'd done the recce? Or if he arrived while I was in the house? I had fucked up in my attempt to get out of the way so quickly. I should have told Eight I wanted to meet elsewhere.

I had to control a rage that was brewing inside me as I thought about Carpenter's drugged-up, fucked-up work that night. It had not only cost me money, but nearly got me killed.

Should I even go back and see Eight again? I had no choice: I was going to need help obtaining explosives or whatever else I needed.

I drove past the "komfort baars" thinking of my professional options and what I would unprofessionally really like to do about him. Fuck it; I pulled into the border-crossing parking lot. It took about a minute to work out how to secure the Lada, as the driver's door lock was busted.

With the starter motor persuader in my pocket I turned and began to walk back to the house. As the saying so rightly goes, there's not much you can't sort out with a two-pound ball hammer.

32

I would have to luck it nut and wait for him to leave the house, setting myself a cut-off of two o'clock the following morning. I still needed time to get on with the recce; lifting Carpenter and keeping him tied up somewhere until the job was finished wasn't an option. There was no time for that.

Now I'd got my bearings in this part of town I cut between apartment buildings and saw some of the worst conditions yet, sheds burned out to match the cars and buildings that should have fallen down years ago.

There was still an hour and a half to go before last light at about three thirty, but the overcast sky was making everything darker than it should have been.

Following the ice tracks in the snow, I turned corners and walked around car wrecks and rusty strollers until the house came into view.

Carpenter's BMW was no more than ninety feet away. The other three vehicles were also still there, all with a thin layer of ice forming on the windows and top surfaces. One or two people were walking around, but just from block to block, some accompanied by little dogs with knitted coats on.

It was dark and cold enough for me not to be noticed as I stood inside what was left of one of the sheds, leaning against the wall with my head down, my hands in my jacket pockets, the right one grasping the hammer. I felt no apprehension, no emotion at all about what was coming. Some kill because they have a good reason. Others, like Carpenter, because they just like it. For me it wasn't that deep. I did it only when I had to.

Flexing my toes in my boots to keep the circulation going, I tried to think of other options, but still couldn't come up with any. There were more important things at stake than this maniac's life; I thought back to the sobs from the man in the elevator in Helsinki as he held his dying wife. Carpenter could fuck everything up if he discovered I was here. I was still pissed with myself for not switching on with Eight and asking for a change of meeting place; because of that fuckup I'd got myself into a position where I could end up dead myself if I messed this up.

One or two more dull yellow lights came on in the apartments. The noise of a TV hung in the air as a car rattled along the road, then I heard a baby screaming. I continued with my trigger on the door, listening to the occasional bang of pots and pans from behind steamed-up kitchen windows and their sagging, dirty net curtains.

Somewhere in the neighborhood, dogs barked at each other, probably just out of boredom.

No sign of movement or light came from the house. Lion King said it was 3:12.

Still I watched and waited, feeling the cold attacking my ears and nose, wishing I'd made the effort and bought a replacement hat and gloves. I got another four aspirin down me as my body started reminding me that it had taken a good kicking the night before. I spent long minutes trying to get enough saliva in my mouth to swallow them.

Another check of Lion King 3:58.1 hadn't even been here an hour yet, but it felt like six. I always hated the waiting. Another thirty minutes crawled by, then there was movement at the door, a dull, yellowish glow at the grill.

Slowly I took my hands from my pockets. Taking a firm hold of the hammerhead in my right hand, I laid the handle along my forearm, on the outside of my jacket.

Two men were standing there smoking, waiting to come out once they'd opened the grill. In the glow from the cigarettes and the hall light, their breath vapor was indistinguishable from the smoke as it rose above them. I couldn't make out if either of them was Carpenter. I hoped not. Taking on two with a hammer would not make for a good night out, and Carpenter was bound to be armed.

They continued to talk as the grill squeaked open and one of them came out onto the ice. The grill was then closed, leaving one of them on each side. Maybe it was going to be okay. Whoever was leaving had a quick laugh with his friend, who now looked like a prisoner behind bars. Then, as he walked away, he pushed the wooden door closed, rubbing his hands together against the cold. From this distance I couldn't hear the bolts being thrown.

I could make out the shape of a baseball cap as he moved to the vehicles. I still couldn't tell if it was Carpenter.

The man moved toward the 5 Series that was parked side-on to me, facing the house, then there was a jangle of keys.

I still couldn't identify him. I would have to get closer. He'd be there a while, scraping the ice from the windshield.

My legs were feeling rubbery after standing still so long. Stretching, I moved out of the darkness, trying to pump a bit of blood around.

There were only about sixty feet separating us, but as he neared the BM I still couldn't be sure it was him.

The car door opened and the interior light shone across his back as he leaned in and started up the engine. Exhaust fumes filled the air as he shoved one leg inside and hit the gas. Then he turned the headlights on. They shone brightly away from both of us, but silhouetted his profile. I recognized Carpenter at once.

I took one last look around me to make sure the area was clear. From this moment on I'd be concentrating solely on the target, who was now ten meters away, hopefully with the engine noise hiding my movement.

He was focusing on the windshield, his back to me still as he leaned over to clear the ice.

My eyes never left his head as it moved back and forth in a cloud of breath.

He must have heard me, and started to turn. I was no more than fifteen feet away but too far to react quickly. I just had to keep walking, but now veering slightly left, as if I was heading for the road. I got my head down, not wanting to look at him as I approached the rear of the car, my hands under my armpits, concealing my weapon. I had to assume that he was checking out the dickhead who thought he could saunter around in this weather without a hat and gloves.

The focus of my whole world was on this man, waiting to hear the noise of the scraper again. I was nearly past him, just approaching the BM's trunk, when it finally began again.

Scrape scrape scrape.

It was time to look up and find his head once again as it bobbed up and down in time with the noise.

Scrape, scrape, scrape.

Supporting the hammerhead in my left hand I ran my hand down the handle and gripped it hard.

At that moment he looked up again, toward the road.

I, too, saw the four white DTTS Vitaras screech to a halt outside an apartment buildings on the other side of the road. I had no choice but to keep walking past him as black-clad bodies jumped out of the vehicles and ran into the building, leaving the drivers standing outside, nightsticks in hand.