Текст книги "Ghosts"

Автор книги: Mark Dawson

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Chapter Thirty-Six

Control owned a flat in Chelsea. He had purchased it ten years ago when he had started to spend more time in the city than at home. He was getting home later and later and it made sense to have a pied a terré where he could repair when long nights were necessary. The driver pulled up to the side of the road, got out and opened the door for him. Control bid him good night and crossed the pavement to the front door. He fumbled in his pocket for the key, pressed it into the lock and opened the door. The driver, who was armed, waited until he was inside and then drove away.

What a day! Control deactivated the alarm, took off his overcoat, hung his umbrella on the hatstand and removed his shoes. He massaged the soles of his aching feet and then stood before the mirror. He was dressed immaculately, as ever, in a well tailored suit that showed an inch of creamy white cuff. His regimental tie was fastened with a brass pin. He was of late middle age, of average height, a little overweight, his hair thinning at the crown. He was not the sort of man who would excite attention. He was as anonymous as a provincial accountant. Perfect for the job that he was asked to do. He rubbed his eyes. He had been up since five and he was tired.

He needed a drink. He took off his suit jacket, hung it on the bannister of the stairs leading up to the two bedrooms on the first floor and went through into the sitting room. There was a drink trolley pushed back against the wall and he took a bottle of scotch through into the kitchen and poured himself a generous measure. He looked out of the window into the garden beyond. Night had drawn in properly now, and, as he looked out onto the narrow stripe of lawn and the rear of the terrace opposite, with the slate roofs, the chimneys and the satellite dishes, the sky flashed with a pulse of lightning. He put the glass to his lips and sipped the scotch, the liquid warming his gullet as rain started to fall, lashing the glass, and, in the distance, a peal of thunder rolled across the city.

The cupboard was well stocked with ready-meals. He took out a chicken curry, removed the cardboard sleeve, slid it into the microwave and set the timer for five minutes. The machine hummed as the platter rotated and, soon, the smell of the food filled the kitchen. He would eat and then review the files he had brought home, perhaps with the benefit of another drink. He took his glass and the bottle back into the sitting room. It was almost ten o’ clock, and it was his habit to listen to The World Tonight on Radio Four.

The room was dark and he stooped at the standard lamp.

He was fumbling for the switch when the light on the other side of the room switched on.

The figure of a man was silhouetted in the armchair.

“Hello, Control.”

John Milton was sitting there, unmoving, watching him. His face was cast in shadow by the lamp just behind his shoulder.

His stomach suddenly felt turned inside out.

“You must have known I’d come back for you one day?”

Control couldn’t look directly at him without squinting into the light. Milton would have planned it that way. “I don’t…”

Milton held up a hand to stop him and then leant forwards so that Control could see him more clearly. He was dressed all in black: black jacket, black jeans and a pair of black boots. He was wearing latex gloves on his hands and he held a revolver in his right hand. “Before we get started, let me set a couple of things out. First, I’ve been waiting for you a little while. More than long enough to find both of your panic alarms. They’re disabled now, so don’t think you can call for help. You can’t. It’s just me and you. Second, there was a pistol in the drawer over there, too. This one.” He held up the Jericho 941F semi-automatic. “It wasn’t loaded but I found where you keep the ammunition and it is now.”

Control’s knees felt like water. “Can I sit down?”

Milton waved the gun at the settee.

“What do you want?”

“A discussion.”

“About what? About you?”

He turned his head a little and Control could see that his thin lips had formed a cold smile. “No. Not about me. A few other things.”

“Such as?”

“Let’s start with Michael Pope.”

Control measured that. “Alright,” he said.

The microwave pinged in the kitchen. Control jumped but Milton didn’t take his eyes off him. He caught himself thinking that this must be what it felt like for those men and women that he sent his agents to neutralise. His authority, his position, his years of experience; they were all useless in the face of the hard-faced killer sitting opposite him. And Milton was a killer. Cold-blooded and lethally efficient. No-one knew that better than Control. John Milton was the best assassin he had ever worked with. The absolute best; no-one else came anywhere close. He had been Number One, after all. He was the most relentless, the most ruthless, the most deadly operative he had ever sent into the field.

Milton sat back in the chair and the shadows fell back across his face again. “Do you know what’s happened to him?”

“He was on assignment. South of France. We haven’t heard from him for five days.”

“Who was the target?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Was it Pascha Shcherbatov?”

That took him by surprise. “I–I—” he stammered.

“He sends his regards.”

Control put the empty glass down on the side table; his hand was shaking and it rattled against the wood. He was already nervous and the direction the conversation was taking made him feel even worse. “You’ve met him?”

“A few days ago. Pope is alive. Shcherbatov has him. He used him to get to me.”

“How do they know about you?”

“That I don’t know,” he said, dryly. “But they knew quite a lot. If you asked me to guess, I’d say that you’re employing one of his agents.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“He knew Pope was coming after him. And he knew where to find me. Draw the dots, Control.”

“So what did he want?”

“We’ll get to that. I want you to tell me about Beatrix Rose first.”

That surprised him. The conversation wasn’t following a path he could predict and he needed time to think. He absently knocked back the last of his drink. He held the glass up and said, “I don’t know about you but I…”

“Stay there. You need to take this seriously.”

“I am taking it seriously.”

“No distractions, Control. I wasn’t born yesterday.” He tapped his index finger on the barrel of the gun. “So. Beatrix Rose.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I never found out what happened to her.”

“You know the procedure: minimum information. You didn’t need to know.”

He brought up the gun. “And now I do.”

Control waved his hand in the air before his face. “There was an assignment, just after you were transferred, I believe, and she was compromised. She didn’t report afterwards. We assumed what we would always assume in the circumstances: K.I.A.”

Milton leant forwards again to stare at him, the shadows reaching down his face like daggers. “This is going to be so much easier if you tell me the truth.”

He felt panic closing around him. He had no idea what he should say, what Milton did and did not know.

“Let me help you out. I know she’s not dead.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Because I went to see her after I saw Shcherbatov.”

“Where?”

He smiled and shook his head. “You don’t need to know where. But you might as well assume she told me everything. I know what you were doing then, when she disappeared. I know that you’d been prostituting yourself for years. I know all about the deal you thought you were doing with Anastasia Semenko. I know that you thought that she was an arms dealer looking for a way in with the Syrians. I know that she was introduced to you by the Iraqis that you’d already been working with, although you didn’t know that they were also working with the Russians. I know that you didn’t know that the Iraqis were in the habit of selling useful information to the Russians. I know that Semenko paid you because you said you could make an introduction with Assad’s regime. I know that they had you exactly where they wanted you. I know that the meeting Semenko and Shcherbatov were going to on the day that she died was with you. And I know that you sent us after them because you couldn’t afford to let them live. Shcherbatov told me everything and Beatrix Rose confirmed it. How long did it take you to find out he survived?”

He glared at him with sullen frustration. “We thought he’d drowned in the river but then he popped up again in Moscow a week later.”

Milton chuckled, humourlessly. “Did you know that he was married to Semenko?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You can’t blame him for hating you. He wants to disgrace you. And then he wants to kill you.”

Control felt a bead of sweat as it rolled out of his scalp and traced a slow line down his forehead. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m getting to that,” he said. “Do you want to reconsider what you told me about Beatrix?”

Control looked at the gun in Milton’s hand and swallowed hard. “It’s true about Semenko. They trapped me. They were ready to flip me. Can you imagine how dangerous that would have been for the state?”

“Best you don’t try and justify what you did,” he warned. “I’m not in the mood.”

“Rose found the evidence in the car that they were using to blackmail me. Photographs, financial records. She brought in the pictures and showed me. I tried to brush it off but I knew it wouldn’t wash. She’d guessed what had happened and that didn’t leave me with any choice.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I sent agents to dispose of her.”

It was a flippant choice of synonym and he regretted it at once. He saw Milton stiffen and the gun jerked around so that it was facing right at his chest.

“And?” he said.

“And that was a fuck up, too. Chisolm shot her husband and Rose stabbed her in the throat. Spenser took her daughter and she fled. I have no idea where she went. We never heard from her again.”

“Because she knows that if she comes after you, you have her girl. An insurance policy.”

“She was taken into protective custody.”

“Come on,” Milton snapped angrily. “Don’t waste my time.”

“There might have been something about using the girl to concentrate the mother’s mind.”

Milton passed the gun from his right hand to his left.

“What’s going on, Milton?”

Milton told him. He spoke for five minutes, explaining how Anna Kushchyenko had picked him up in Texas and flown him to Moscow, how he had been taken to see Shcherbatov and how he had shown him Pope. Milton said that Pope was sick and Control feigned concern. Milton said that he had agreed to work with them so that he could buy a little time to think of something better. The Russians had located Beatrix Rose in Hong Kong and he had gone to speak to her.

“Why does he want her?”

“Because he wanted to talk to her about what happened that afternoon,” Milton said. “He knows you didn’t get everything she took from the car. She copied the drives. She hid them before she came to see you. I’ve got them now. I collected them this afternoon before I came here.” He swapped the semi-automatic into his left hand, reached his right into a pocket and retrieved a clear bag with six flash drives in it.

“It would be better to give those to me,” he said.

“I’m sure you’d like that.”

“You’re going to give them to the Russians?”

“Of course not. I needed an insurance policy of my own. This is it. And just so it’s clear, I’ve downloaded these myself. They’ll be attached to emails that I’ll set to send in the future. Unless I delete them, they’ll go far and wide: government, the press, everywhere I can think of. It’s my dead man’s switch.”

“So what do you want?”

“First, I want Beatrix’s daughter. She has grandparents in Somerset. You’re going to deliver her to them. I want fresh passports for both her and her mother.”

“I can do that.”

“And two million dollars paid into a bank account of my designation.”

He bit his lip. “Two million?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s not so easy…”

“I need the Russian girl put under surveillance. She’s Shcherbatov’s proxy. She came into the country with me and she should be at the Holiday Inn in the Docklands. She’s expecting me to bring the drives back tonight and I’m guessing if I’m not back by midnight she’ll sound the alarm and that will be that for Pope. You need to get on that right away.”

“Fine. Anything else?”

“The third thing: you’re going to help me go and get Pope.”

“How am I going to do that?”

“A six man team, full load out, logistic support.”

“Are you mad? Pope is in Russia, man. We can’t send six of you to conduct an operation on Russian soil.”

“Yes you can.”

“No…”

“The Russians will help.”

“You’re going to have to explain that.”

“I know they asked you to go after Shcherbatov for them. Pope told me. You want to tell me why?”

Control felt helpless. Milton knew everything; he had no cards to play. “Fine. The colonel has gone rogue. He’s old school, from before the fall of the Wall. He hates the west, and he hates the thought that the motherland is pandering to it. They want him out of the way. They can’t be seen to conduct an operation against one of their own, especially on home turf, and he’s been around a long time. He has too much on the Kremlin for them to risk getting rid of him themselves and it all going wrong, especially as it appears that he is a hard man to kill. They knew we had assets who could do it, he put himself into a position where it was possible and so we assigned him a file.”

“Having the man we sent to kill him in his custody doesn’t do the Kremlin any good, does it? How long do you think it’ll take someone like Shcherbatov to break Pope and find out that his own people asked us to send him?”

“Pope’s strong. But…”

“But we both know he’ll break eventually. No. You can persuade them to do this, Control. You tell them we’ll go in, we’ll get Pope and we’ll take out Shcherbatov. Properly, this time. You’ve tried twice already. I’ll make sure it’s done right.”

Control furrowed his brow. It might work, he thought. “Maybe,” he said.

“A team of agents of my choosing, under my command.”

Control was about to rule out Milton’s involvement but then he caught himself. There was another way he could play this; perhaps he could come out on top in the whole deal after all. “Maybe,” he said. “I’ll need to think about it.”

“That’s what I want,” he said. “There’s no negotiation and the alternative is bad for you. It’s your call.”

Milton stood. He obscured the light from the lamp and Control could see his face properly for the first time: the implacable, powder blue eyes; the horizontal scar from his cheek to the start of his nose; the whiteness outlining his lips. There was no softness in that face. No pity.

“What happens to the information about me?”

“If you do as you’re told? Nothing.”

“You’ll return it?”

“No. I just won’t publicise it.”

“This will need discussing.”

“With who? You can’t take this to the government. It’s your call. Pick the girl up tonight. If she reports I’m not playing ball then this is all moot and our deal is off. The first priority is to manage her. And then you need to sort out Rose’s daughter. You can do that tonight, too. I want her to be on her way to her grandparents by noon.”

“You think it’s as easy as that? Just make a few calls?”

“I don’t care how easy or how difficult it is. You just need to get it done.” He crossed the room until he was standing next to him; he knelt down so that their faces were on the same level. “You know me well enough, Control. You know me better than almost anyone. And you know that if I say I’m going to do something, I do it.”

“I know.”

“So here it is, just in case you need reminding: if anything happens to Beatrix Rose, I’ll be back. If I get a whiff that you’re about to do something I don’t like, I’ll be back. That’s a promise. I’ll be back with your gun, in this room, waiting for you. You’ll never see me coming. You know who I am, Control, don’t you?”

He felt his throat thicken. “Yes,” he said. “I do.”

“I’m a bad man, Control. I’m a bad man who kills bad men. And you are one of the worst.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Anna Vasil’yevna Kushchyenko had spent a long and tedious night waiting for John Milton to return. She had drawn a bath and soaked in it for an hour, thinking about the Englishman and questioning, once again, whether she had erred in allowing him to make his way into London alone. Colonel Shcherbatov had allowed her the latitude to judge how to proceed; he had trained her, nurtured her career over many years, and he trusted her. She was as devoted to him as a daughter to her father and the thought of letting him down was abhorrent to her. It was difficult to argue with her performance so far. Persuading Milton to come to Russia had been difficult but she had managed to do that. Delivering him to the colonel had been a challenge, too, and she had managed that. She had helped him to find Beatrix Rose, managed him as he persuaded her to assist their cause and delivered him back to the United Kingdom. None of it had been easy, but, here she was, seemingly with his co-operation assured and waiting for him to return with the evidence that the colonel had said would be of priceless importance in his fight against the imperialists. Nurturing the operation to a successful conclusion would be a coup and she knew that he would be grateful. That was all the motivation that Anna needed.

She visited an internet café after her bath. It was a small operation at the back of a Polish grocery store and the proprietor hadn’t even looked at her twice as she bought a token for an hour’s use and settled before the screen in a wooden cubicle that would guarantee her privacy. She created a new gmail account and posted a message on the bulletin board of a Justin Bieber fan site. It was a bland message, seemingly in tune with the rest of the comments, but the board was monitored and her message would be delivered to the colonel. The coded message reported that the operation was proceeding as planned and that she anticipated leaving the country with the package they had come to collect tomorrow.

She posted the message, logged out of the PC and went back outside. It was a brisk night, with a cool breeze blowing in off the darkened river, and she decided to go for a walk for some exercise and fresh air. She ambled along the quay at one of the nearby yacht basins. The wind was cold and there were only a few people out. She saw a man leaning against the metal rails that protected the drop into the water below, gazing out at the yachts moored out on a floating jetty, their rigging rattling in the breeze. She walked beyond the man, realising, but much too late, that something about him was not right. She turned just as he had started after her, closing the distance in a couple of broad strides, taking her arm just above the elbow and impelling her towards a car at the kerb.

“Don’t make a scene, Miss,” he said in a quiet, firm voice.

“Who are you?”

“British intelligence. Afraid we need to hold onto you for a while.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Milton was driven to RAF Northolt. Group Fifteen used the facility when agents were not able to fly commercially and he was very familiar with it. The driver swept off the main road, paused to register their credentials at the gate house, and then sped through the wire mesh gate as it was drawn aside for them. He drove past the row of buildings that housed the base’s administrative and engineering staff and out to a single story building right out on the edge of the runway itself. A Hercules C-130J aircraft was being fuelled nearby.

It was just after dawn.

Milton got out of the car and went into the building.

Control was waiting for him. There were five others there, too. He recognised one of them very well and the other three were familiar.

“Captain Milton,” Control said stiffly. “Are you ready to go?”

“I am,” he said.

“You know everyone?”

“Well enough,” Milton said.

He looked them over and put names, and assignations, to faces.

Number Two was Corporal Spenser: short, bald and heavily muscled. Now that Pope was out of commission, he would be de facto Number One.

Number Six was Corporal Blake: darker skinned; foreign, perhaps, although Milton did not know enough about him to say from where.

Number Eight was Lance Corporal Hammond: female; early thirties; five eight; black hair, cut short; compact and powerfully built. Milton had surrendered to her in El Patrón’s mansion. She had a reputation for callousness.

Number Nine was Sergeant Underwood: the tallest of the four, well over six foot; broad shoulders; old acne scars scattered across his nose and cheeks.

Control turned to the final man. “And Lance Corporal Callan.”

“Yes,” Milton said. “Number Twelve.”

“Number Ten now,” Control said, “at least until Captain Pope is recovered.”

Callan was tall and slender and strikingly handsome. His hair was in tight curls and so blond that it was almost white. His skin was white, too, like alabaster. There was a cruelty to his thin lips and unfeeling eyes that Milton remembered very well indeed. He had executed Derek Rutherford in cold blood and then shot Milton in the shoulder; Milton had overcome him and put a bullet in his knee. According to Pope, he had been keen to end him there and then when they captured him in Mexico.

“They were all in Juàrez,” Milton said.

“That’s right.”

“They’ll need to do better this time.”

“We found you,” Spenser said. “We took you.”

“You did. And you took out a dozen cartel soldiers doing it and, yes, that was impressive. But then you let an overweight Mexican police officer on his last day undo all of that good work. So you can count me not especially impressed. Shcherbatov’s men won’t be as easy as the cartel. They’ll be well trained, well equipped and they might be expecting us. If you’re as lax as that when we go in tomorrow, I guarantee you one thing: we’ll all get shot.”

Spenser glared at him but said nothing. Milton felt Callan’s eyes burning into his back, too, and knew that he would have to proceed very carefully if he wanted to get out of Russia in one piece.

“Shall we discuss the plan?” Control suggested.

Milton held Spenser’s stare long enough to let him know that he was far from intimidated; Number Two broke first and looked away. “Go on,” Milton said.

“The Russians are going to give us some low visibility help.”

“Why would they do something like that?” Underwood asked.

“Shcherbatov is off the reservation. There could be an incident if we don’t get Pope back and they know that is not in their interests right now. They won’t support you if you get into trouble but they don’t mind making it easier for you to get to where you need to go.”

“Go on, then,” Milton said. “I’m all ears.”

There was a iPad on the table. Control selected a map of Russia and they all gathered around it. “You’re going out in the Hercules. It has just enough range to get you to Kubinka air base, south east of Moscow. You’ll be travelling under the pretext of a military exchange: senior members of the RAF flying in for a joint exercise with their Russian equivalents. Happens reasonably frequently. Won’t draw unnecessary attention.”

“And from Kubinka?”

“The Hercules will be refuelled. You’ll head north and do a HALO jump twenty clicks south of Plyos. And then the Hercules turns around and heads back to Kubinka”

“ATC?”

“We’re told that they will be looking the other way.”

Hammond looked sceptical. “We’re dropping twenty clicks from the target?”

“That’s right.”

“In the Russian winter?”

“You’ll be taking transport on the Hercules. The Russians are arranging it.”

“What do we know about the target?”

“It’s a dacha,” Milton explained. He didn’t have to work hard to remember it; he had a photographic memory for tactical information and he relayed it quickly and easily. “Three storeys, walled, two internal courtyards. Good security.”

“How many?”

“I’d guess a dozen.”

“Any good?”

“Spetsnaz. Very good.”

“Armed with what?”

“AN-94s and AS Vals. Like I said, they’re proper soldiers.”

Milton gave them all the additional information that he thought might be helpful: the internal layout of the dacha, the basement cell where it was likely Pope would be held.

“And you’re sure Pope is still there?” Control said.

“I’m sure enough.”

“How sure?”

“Eighty per cent.”

Hammond shook her head. “So twenty per cent says this is us putting our necks on the line for nothing?”

He stared her down. “And eighty per cent says that you’re not.”

She turned to Control and protested, “We need better odds for something like this.”

Control regarded him carefully. “Are you going to tell me why you think he’s still there?”

“No,” he said. “I have intelligence. But you’re going to have to trust me.”

“Alright,” Control said. “I’m happy to proceed on that basis.” Milton knew that he had no room for manoeuvre. He had evidence on him that would have him locked up in an MI6 Black Site for the rest of his natural life. He had no choice but to give the operation the green light.

Spenser pointed down at the map. “Say we manage to get in, find the dacha, take out the guards and get Pope. How do we get out again?”

Control dragged his finger down the screen, adjusting the map. “You make your way south to Privolzhsk … here. Sixteen kilometres. Provided you get there in one piece, the Russians will give you a ride back to Kubinka and you’ll fly out again on the Hercules from there.”

Milton looked at the five soldiers, gauging their reaction to the plan. They did not look impressed but there was little to be done about that. He would be able to fill them in on the smaller details en route, but there was nothing to be done about their obvious antipathy and suspicion towards him. That was something that he have to live with.

* * *

The four Allison AE turboprops were fired up and the six-bladed propellors started to spin. Milton strapped himself into his seat and prepared for the flight. He needed something to distract himself and so he took out his Sig Sauer P226 and started to disassemble it. He released the magazine, pulled the slide, checked it was unloaded, separated the slide from the frame and took out the recoil spring. He removed the barrel from the slide and then, using a cotton bud and a small pot of oil, he cleaned and lubricated it. It was a ritual that he had followed throughout his career, especially when he was facing a situation that concerned him. That word, concern, didn’t quite do justice to what he was now proposing to do. He was going to fly into Russia, skydive from ten thousand feet and then trek across the frozen tundra to a confrontation with Russian special forces where they would be outnumbered and outgunned, with no guarantee that the man they were going to rescue would even be there. He emptied the magazine, counted the bullets and slotted them all back again. The cabin of the Hercules was large and sparse, the cargo bay empty with temporary chairs screwed into their housing. The agents were going through their own routines: reading, listening to music, looking out of the tiny porthole windows as the buildings at the edge of the runway accelerated into an indistinct blur. He didn’t trust Control. There was nothing to say that he wouldn’t call Milton’s bluff and there would be nothing he could do if he did. The other agents had made their disdain for him obvious and there was no doubt in his mind that they would shoot him if given half the chance.

Callan turned to look at him and, noticing that he was watching him, held his gaze.

Milton looked away.

He was not among friends.

As the Hercules reached the end of the runway and lumbered into the air, Milton started to put the gun back together.