Deadly Impact--A Richard Mariner nautical adventure (10 page)

‘You both have a point,' allowed Richard. ‘Loose wiring, wet floor, a little carelessness … That's all it takes, I know. But let's not jump to conclusions. We just have to take care. The only thing we stand to lose is time. And we still have plenty of it.' He looked at his watch. ‘A little more than sixty-two hours, in fact, until we are due to dock at the NIPEX facility at Choshi.'

‘Right,' said Aleks. ‘Let's split up as before and proceed with the search as we agreed.'

During the next hundred minutes, they searched the midship sections between the huge spheres of the Moss tanks, from the covered weather deck down to the keel and back up again. Soon it was clear that Richard and Dom DiVito were not the only ones convinced they were being watched. On more than one occasion Aleks – or, according to Steve Penn, Konstantin – had to stop his men from destroying the security equipment they were certain was spying on their every move. They became increasingly monosyllabic, concerned – as Richard had been from the outset – that their communication and movements were being hacked into the bargain. The lighting remained on but, since Yoichi Hatta's electrocution, it seemed duller. The shadows were more numerous, more threatening; darker and closer to hand. The relentless rumbling of the motors and the alternators, the muttering of the water as it bubbled along the hull just beside them and the roaring of the wind across the whaleback just above them all seemed to cloak mocking whispers.

Both Aleks and Konstantin became the subject of increasing pressure as their men became convinced that the opposition were following their every move more and more closely. It was an unexpected consequence of the point Aleks' young associate, Boris Brodski had made. Even the more experienced began to feel that there was someone dogging their footsteps, watching and waiting to attack them. Not only on the decks they had not yet searched and those they had just searched, playing a kind of grim variation of Grandma's Footsteps, but even like spiders on the outside of the whaleback itself. And there seemed reason for this suspicion, at least, because on more than one occasion as he squeezed past the girth of a Moss tank, with his shoulder close to the whaleback's inner surface, Richard thought he heard a stealthy footstep or the tapping sound of something metallic striking the white paint of the outside. As he had, he now registered, in the silence after Aleks' observation just before they left the corpse at the top of the ladder near the hatch out on to the weather deck.

The only real relief came when they explored the midship pulpits that stood either side of the ship, open to the elements, thrusting out in little balconies that hung like bridge wings over the ocean. The atmosphere below deck had become so charged with suspicion and mistrust that it came as a simple, almost blessed, relief to stand out in the late afternoon sun, watching the great golden blaze of it westering towards the horizon as
Sayonara
sailed apparently serenely a little west of south towards distant Japan. ‘You see,' called Aleks, clearly overcome by the lessening of the tense atmosphere, ‘there is no one out here after all!' He gestured up at the great metal marquee of the whaleback that covered the five Moss tanks. ‘No murderous mountaineers swinging on ropes along the sides to spy on us! The idea is ridiculous!' He laughed. ‘Take a look for yourselves!'

At his unthinking invitation, most of the starboard team crowded across to the outer rail and leaned back dangerously, stretching their necks to see as much of the white-painted metal curve as possible. And it did, indeed, seem empty and innocent. Appearing to billow like a great metal sail stretched to the full, it curved away on either side until it vanished round the corner at the forecastle or beneath the reach of the bridge wings. Directly above, it reached up, hard edged against the evening sky, the full curve broken only by the tips of the upright pipes and tank caps that ran in series along its top.

But then Richard's keen eyes began to pick out the little inconsistencies that spoke of hand and footholds in the apparently unbroken incline and his memory clicked in, undermining the optical illusion as effectively as if a magic trick were being explained to him. The fact was that the apparently plain top was actually made up of layers as sheaf upon sheaf of pipes ran the length of the thing, coiling into and out of the tank tops as they went. Starting on the side of the pulpit they were occupying and wrapping itself round the metal sail was a metal-runged ladder that reached up to the very top of the thing, joining with a walkway that ran beside the pipes from stem to stern. And Richard was by no means the only one to remember just how many access points, walkways and ladders were in fact riveted to the outer skin of the whaleback.

‘Konstantin wants to send someone up on the port side to check whether there has in fact been anyone moving around up there,' came Steve's voice in Richard's headset. ‘That a good idea?'

Richard looked across at the gaggle of men grouped round Aleks. He didn't need to open Channel A on the comms to tell him what they were discussing. The gestures would have been clear enough even had they not been shouting at the tops of their voices. ‘Tell him to hang fire,' he said. ‘Looks like Aleks is about to send someone up anyway.' Richard immediately recognized the soldier Aleks sent up. It was Boris Brodski, the young man who had dared to disagree with him about whether or not the first death had been an accident. The lithe ex-soldier swarmed up the first few rungs with the loose-limbed confidence of an orangutan. Richard himself was just striding across the balcony with Aleks' name on his lips to advise the use of a safety line when the lieutenant stopped the young soldier, handing him a lifeline himself. Grudgingly, the young man took the line and cinched it to the thick webbing of his gun belt before snapping the carabineer at the far end of it to the hand rail that ran up the fat curve beside the iron rungs. Then he was off. Pausing only to un-cinch the clip once or twice where the hand rail was secured to the whaleback by uprights like banisters, he raced up at incredible speed. ‘Take your time, Boris! This isn't a race!' warned Aleks.

‘Don't worry, Lieutenant, I'll be up there before you can spit and swear,' called Boris by way of answer. And his boast seemed well-based, for he was swarming over the outer curve in record time, outlined against the hard blue sky like a mountaineer on an ice-cliff.

‘Take care!' called Aleks as his soldier disappeared at last.

‘
To fear death is never to be properly alive!
' called Boris's voice, beginning to sound breathless at last.

As epitaphs went, it was a fitting one – particularly for a soldier. For it seemed that no sooner had he called the mocking words than Boris was tumbling back down the side of the whaleback, face up to the hard blue heaven, etched against it in a capital X shape, arms and legs waving wildly as he fell. The safety line snaked out beside him, a solid, serpentine S against the sky. Becoming a bar-straight stripe against the white curve with terrifying speed as he reached its lower end and the carabiner clip at its upper end caught against the topmost upright of the hand rail.

Boris was still spread-eagled, facing upwards, when the line snapped taut. He had cinched it to his belt buckle. And his unbreakable webbing belt was tight across the small of his back, just above his hips, as though protecting his kidneys.

Because he fell absolutely silently, the rush of his motion and the twang of the tautening line were clearly audible to the stunned men in the pulpit beneath him. As was the
crack!
his spine made as it snapped, broken by the belt as efficiently as a neck being severed by a headsman's axe, just at the moment he came level with them all.

Boris's broken body bounced back up as his headset and goggles came tumbling down. The black line scribbled across the white metal above him, then began to straighten once again as the body fell once more – this time with sufficient force to twist the carabineer open. The line sprang clear of the handrail. Trailing the useless rope like a disconsolate tail, the broken corpse tumbled down on to the outer rail of the pulpit. The outer edge caught it across the chest. Its arms and head flung wildly inboard, as though trying to grab safe hold or call for help. But that was an illusion. Even before anyone could move, let alone try to catch the limp and broken limbs, it slammed back and outwards from the rail, throwing up its hands in surrender, and giving everybody one last glimpse of Boris's white, stricken face. And the black mark in the middle of his forehead, immediately above the bridge of his nose. Then he was gone.

Aleks and Richard led the rush to the rail and craned to see over the side in a last faint hope that he had somehow survived after all, but there was nothing to see but the eternal royal blue of the deep water stretching like an ocean of ink back towards Rat Island Pass and forward towards Japan.

It is 10 a.m. Moscow time as Ivan Yagula runs out of the Lubyanka exit of the Moscow metro and begins to stride across the square where the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky used to stand, towards the building which housed the grandson of the secret service he had fathered. The square is bustling. Tourists wander all agog, surrounded by the jewels of Russian history.
Militsia
in police uniform and the much maligned GIA traffic cops patrol. The old KGB headquarters building towers dead ahead, but Ivan tends to the left, past the blaze of Detsky Mir, the children's emporium which is yet another example of the manner in which Russia is opening its doors to international business. The CEO of Russia's most famous toy store might be Vladimir Chirahov, but the chairman of the board of directors is still the British business tycoon Christopher Alan Baxter.
Like the old Gazprom/BP combo,
thinks Ivan;
like Bashnev/Sevmash and Heritage Mariner, though Richard's not on the Russian boards any more than Felix or Anastasia are on his.

Ivan is not heading for Detsky Mir. He plans to pass it instead and cross the car-choked road by Kuznetsky Most metro station, to go into the new building that houses the section of the much-expanded FSB to which he has just been summoned. Without pausing or deviating, the massive man in his long black coat strides through the teeming crowd of lesser mortals all the way across to the doorway with the brass plaque which states: FEDERAL SECURITY SERVICE BUILDING.
Reception
.

Many Muscovites would be too nervous to go where Ivan is going, to talk to the men he is due to meet. But the most powerful of them, the federal prosecutor, is Ivan's father, so he feels that he has little to fear. Probably. Even if the other two are almost as powerful as his fearsome father –
otets
. Viktor Ivanov, the current head of the FSKN, the Federal Drug Control Service, and Yuri Oleshko, the FSB's Director of Investigation. So Ivan approaches the reception door on Kuznetsky Most and rings the bell, waiting impatiently to be identified and admitted.

His father lingers, massively and impatiently immediately inside and they tower, shoulder by shoulder for a moment, seeming to fill the huge room between them. ‘Federal Prosecutor,' says Ivan, equably, by way of greeting.

‘Hunh,' growls the federal prosecutor by way of answer. ‘You're late.' He turns away and begins to walk briskly into the interior of the building.

Ivan easily overcomes the urge to consult his Poljot President chronograph. They both know he is punctual to the second. So he follows, a metre or two behind, like a crown prince in the Tsar's footsteps. Ivan the Terrible, perhaps. ‘What's this all about, sir?' he asks as the federal prosecutor – whom he has never actually thought of as
otets
– reaches the stairs. ‘Drugs,' Lavrenty Michaelovitch Yagula, Federal Prosecutor of the Russian Federation, says over his shoulder. ‘Krokodil, heroin, cocaine, gang warfare, Afghans and Italians. Bashnev/Sevmash. Heritage Mariner.'

‘Anything in particular, sir?' asks Ivan, showing none of the surprise or concern that he feels at his father's cryptic words.

‘Yes!' snaps his father, going from cryptic to obscure with typical abruptness. ‘Eleven bullets.'

The Yagulas come into a large meeting room side by side. Ivan's narrow eyes sweep at once over the two men at its far side and the news page enlarged on the screen between them.
FSB operatives kill 11 Afghan terrorists
, says the headline. Ivan recognizes it from yesterday's
Moscow News
. But he is damned if he could see what this has to do with Bashnev/Sevmash or with Heritage Mariner. ‘That looks like a step forward,' he probes, pointing at the news report with his chin. ‘Your men have done good work there, General.'

Ivanov grunts – the sound is very much like those the federal prosecutor made. ‘
Someone
did good work,' he growls. ‘But not the FSKN. My men were led by the nose. The whole thing was a set-up.' He zooms in on the photograph that accompanies the article. Judging from the amount of blood around the shrouded figures, they had been all-but shot to pieces.

‘But who …' asks Ivan, finding himself in the unaccustomed position of not being able to join up the dots.

Yuri Oleshko leans forward suddenly. ‘The facts are these,' snaps the director of investigations, his deep voice forthright and forceful. ‘We – our agencies – have been fighting the drugs war on two fronts. The Eastern Front against the Afghans and the Chechen
Mafiya
gangs who import their heroin through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan then across the Caspian Sea into Georgia, the Black Sea and all the way up the Volga. And the Home Front against the local gangs who hit pharmacies and pharmacy supply companies for painkillers, iodine, lighter fluid, industrial cleaning oil, with which they make—'

‘Krokidil,' spits the federal prosecutor.

‘The drug that eats its addicts,' nods Ivan. ‘I've seen the pictures. And of the victims … what's left of them, once the drug rots their flesh away. From the inside.'