Fire Hawk (34 page)

The Colonel closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath.

‘Orlov is behind you?' he mocked. ‘Then watch out. Yes. General Orlov will take action all right.' He shook his head again. ‘You are so,
so
innocent, Misha. How can this be? Where have you been the last five years? Don't you read newspapers? Don't you know what happens to people who cross the Mafiya?'

Pushkin swallowed, unable to answer at first. ‘But the army is stronger than them. General Orlov . . .' He gulped.

‘
Orlov?
Misha, Misha. Remember what people call the Mafiya?
Sprut
– the octopus. Its tentacles are everywhere.
In the Militsia, in government. Even in your beloved army.'

Pushkin gaped at him stupidly, not believing what he was hearing.

‘But you're not saying that General Orlov . . .' he croaked.

‘You think generals can live on what they're paid any more than we can?' Komarov growled.

‘But General
Orlov
!' he mouthed, sensing a great tidal wave closing over his head. He'd told the man everything.
Everything
. ‘I can't believe . . .'

‘You
must
believe it Misha. Because if you don't you're dead. You're a danger to them. They've seen now that warning you off isn't enough. Now they will kill you.' Komarov glanced round nervously. ‘And don't think you'll be safe in this place.'

Pushkin's head span. The military edifice, the bulwark against the collapsing society that he saw all around him, was itself now crumbling.

‘But where can I go?'

‘Don't tell
me.
I can't be trusted either. Anywhere. Abroad if you can. In Ukraine you will
never
be safe.'

Pushkin quaked. How could he have been so naive? He cringed at the thought of how that very afternoon, against all common sense, he'd propelled himself into the jaws of death. Like a mindless toy soldier – that's how he'd behaved.

They stood in silence, listening to the wind moving the branches above their heads. Then in the distance they heard a car. Komarov backed away like a ghost fearing the approach of day.

‘Goodbye, Misha. Forget honour. Forget your loyal oath. This is not the time for such thoughts. Do what you have to do for
them.'
He pointed up towards the apartments. ‘That's where your duty lies now.'

Then he was gone, melting into the darkness, picking
his way back through the shadows towards the block where he had his own home.

As the headlights of the approaching car got nearer, fear tore at Pushkin's guts. He sprinted to the door of the apartments and flattened himself against the wall inside. The car passed by without stopping. Harmless? A jeep on security patrol? Probably. But he knew he could never be sure of such things again. He pressed the button for the elevator. Then, as he heard the winding machinery gather speed, he backed away. Better to walk. Nothing was as it seemed any more. Nothing could be trusted.

He reached the fifth floor, out of breath. There were four apartments on each landing. He heard a door close. Someone watching, waiting? He slipped his key into the lock and entered his flat, a broken man.

Three hours later at a quarter to ten the three of them squeezed into the defiled Zaporizhzhia together with two small suitcases and a polythene carrier bag filled with essentials and the clothes and possessions they treasured the most.

Nadya's face was badly grazed and her arm was in a sling. Lena had explained that a car had mounted the kerb as the child had walked to the bus stop. Only the fortuitous presence of a tree at that point in the pavement had prevented her from being crushed to death.

At the gate the guard had changed since his return to the base earlier. The new man peered into the vehicle, surprised at the Major driving out at this time of night in a car looking like a work from a modern art exhibition. Pushkin, dressed now in casual trousers and a pullover, pointed at the rear seat.

‘The child. Taking her to a doctor.'

The guard noted Nadya's bandaged arm and grazed face.

‘Good luck, comrade Major. Hope you find one who doesn't make you pay through the nose.'

Pushkin turned the car towards the centre of Magerov village. He kept a wary eye on the mirror, but no lights followed them. He put his foot down until they were within a hundred metres of the train station. Then he pulled into the kerb, switched off the engine and extinguished the lights.

‘Five past ten, the last train,' he reminded Lena, helping her and Nadya from the car. The girl was wide awake but subdued. ‘You have the money?'

They'd managed to save a few
hryvna
in the past year, keeping it inside a tin musical box hidden behind their winter stock of bottled fruit in a cupboard in the flat. Just enough money for the rail tickets to Kiev.

Lena patted the pocket of the long winter coat she was wearing, her face strained and tear-stained. It had been she who'd come up with the solution of seeking temporary refuge with his widowed sister in the capital.

‘The Kiev train leaves Odessa at eleven-thirty. Get some seats. I'll find you on it.'

She kissed him with a fervour that betrayed her fear of never seeing him again.

‘Be careful,' she whispered. Then, after a pause, ‘I love you, Misha.'

Then they were gone, walking slowly towards the train station, Lena carrying a bag in each hand and Nadya with a small rucksack on her back.

Pushkin watched them for a moment, then took a deep breath to steady his nerves and restarted the engine.

Forty-five minutes later he had reached his destination, an area of marshland on the northern perimeter of Odessa, overlooked by the billowing flares of an oil refinery.

Although brought up in Kiev, he knew Odessa well. As
a child they'd come to visit their cousins here every summer. He turned off the ring-road, still moderately busy with traffic despite the lateness of the hour, and headed down a severely pitted lane that crossed the swamp on a man-made dyke. The headlights picked out tall, yellow-green reeds and then at last a clump of willows. He stopped the car beside the trees, got out and, using a hand torch, searched the ground for saplings. Finding some, he broke off a couple of lengths of bendy wood and threw them in the back of the car. Then he continued on his way.

At the end of this track he knew that the ground rose a few metres and there were houses – dachas set in vegetable gardens. But a few hundred metres before the houses, if he'd remembered correctly, the track would branch.

In the distance the lights of a house twinkled suddenly. He slowed. The car window was open and he screwed up his face at the smell from the sewage treatment plant whose effluent ended in the swamp.

Then he stopped. A mud path ran off to the left, just wide enough for a car, its surface rutted by the wheels of vehicles used by reed cutters. He turned down it. After a short distance the track ended in a ramp that dipped into the swamp. He halted the car with its lights pointing into the mire. Water glinted blackly. Recent rain had raised its level. The smell here was stronger than ever. By the edge of the sludge lay the skeletal remains of an old rowing boat.

He doused the headlights but left the sidelights on and the engine running. He got out, putting a leather briefcase on the ground beside him. Then he wound down all the windows and retrieved the two sticks of willow from the back seat. He wedged one of them between the accelerator pedal and the front seat base so that the engine note rose. The second stick was stouter.
Leaning in through the open driver's door, he jammed one end against the clutch pedal and pushed down. Then he made sure the handbrake was free, pushed the gear into first, and eased the stick's pressure on the clutch until the car began to move. He let go of the stick, jumped back and watched his cruelly abused jalopy jerk forward down the slope.

The stubby front of the car hit the sludge and slowed, but the rear engine powered the machine further into the mire. He watched the tail lights move steadily away from him. Then, suddenly, the engine spluttered and died as the vile-smelling slime penetrated the intakes. The lights shorted.

Pushkin waited a while, listening to the gurgle of the sinking car. Then, when the noises subsided, he shone a torch to confirm the gaily painted roof had dipped below the surface. Still visible beneath the water now, by the time daylight came he knew it would be gone.

Turning away from this destruction of the only thing of value he'd ever owned, he picked up his briefcase and began to walk, shielding the torch beam with his fingers.

Time was short. Very short. He began to run. He rejoined the main track and turned towards the light of the houses.

The first that he came to was ramshackle and decrepit, but the second was newly built of cinder blocks and timber. In front of it stood an elderly Toyota, almost certainly stolen a year or two back from somewhere in western Europe. The lights of the house blazed through open curtains.

Pushkin rapped at the door. He heard grunts of surprise from inside. He rapped again.

‘Come on, come on,' he shouted. ‘It's urgent.'

‘Who is it? What do you want?' A slurred male voice from beyond the door.

‘I need help. My car's broken down,' Pushkin shouted, praying they would make it easy for him.

‘Go away!'

‘I can pay you,' he lied. ‘Dollars.'

At the magic word, the door opened a few centimetres, held by a chain. A bleary-eyed, middle-aged man dressed in old cords and a moth-eaten cardigan scrutinised him.

‘All right, then,' he wheezed, convinced by Pushkin's clean, square looks.

The chain was slipped and the door swung open, the householder staggering back with it.

‘Come on in, comrade.'

The house consisted of one main room combining living, sleeping and cooking areas. A fat woman dressed in thick woollens lay dozing on a couch. A television was on.

‘If it's a telephone you want, comrade, you're out of luck,' the man muttered, eyeing him cautiously.

‘That's not what I want, comrade. I have to get to the railway station in Odessa. The Kiev train in half an hour.'

The ruddy-faced dacha owner looked blank.

‘You have a car. Will you drive me there?' Pushkin asked gruffly.

The other man's face creased with astonishment. ‘No chance, brother. The Militsia, they'd put me in jail.' He held up a vodka bottle in explanation. ‘Unless . . .
Dollars,
you said?'

‘That was a lie. I'm sorry. I have no money,' Pushkin admitted.

‘What are you saying? Why are you troubling me? Get out of my house!'

Pushkin knew he had no choice now. He bent down and clicked the locks on his briefcase, the dacha owner's eyes following his movements as if still expecting bank-notes.

‘No money,' Pushkin repeated, ‘but I do have this.' He pushed the muzzle of a Makarov 9mm pistol at the dacha owner's face. ‘Give me the car keys, comrade,' he demanded apologetically. ‘Immediately.'

The man's face crumpled with shock and incomprehension.

‘The keys,' snapped Pushkin, clicking back the hammer of the pistol.

At the sound of ratcheting metal, the old man dipped a trembling hand into his trouser pocket and pulled them out.

‘I'm sorry,' Pushkin mumbled, snatching them from him. ‘I will leave it outside the station. Keys under the seat. Door unlocked.'

The householder gaped. Pushkin had no idea whether he'd understood or not.

He would need to drive like a madman. There were just fifteen minutes until the departure of the Kiev train, and to reach the station from these northern outskirts would normally take twenty.

On the hair-raising drive through the dawdling late-evening traffic his mind kept darting back to what Komarov had said – that the Mafiya monster who'd initiated this trail of horror was known to both of them. Until this moment it was a riddle he'd been unable to crack, but suddenly he could. Suddenly he knew who Komarov meant.

A year ago there'd been a Captain First Rank, seconded like the rest of them to a job below his station at Magerov, who'd unexpectedly resigned his commission. A former Spetznaz commander, he'd left to sell his skills to Ukraine's new criminal aristocracy. The man was an animal, a man he despised. But a creature who, when his silver-capped teeth were into you, would never
let go. And Pushkin was convinced this was the man who was now out to kill him.

The car screeched to a halt outside the station one minute before 11.30. He sprinted across the forecourt where, despite the late hour, old babushkas still sat holding yellowing squares of paper advertising rooms to let. Up the steps into the ticket hall, he ran straight through, barging onto the platforms past the stalls selling pasties. In the background he heard the romantic Black Sea Song that blared from the station loudspeakers whenever a long-distance train departed.

Head craning for the platform number on the destination board, he crashed through relatives waving off loved ones just as the Kiev train began to move. Lungs burning, he squeezed more speed into his stride and grabbed the door rail of the final carriage. Leaping onto the step, he unlatched the door and swung it open.

He'd made it. His life, his future was a void. A black hole, a bottomless pit. Only one thing mattered now. Survival for him and his family.

THE FLIGHT BACK
from Cyprus in the RAF C-130 yesterday afternoon had taken seven hours, most of it spent strapped into an uncomfortable canvas seat at the side of the wide, grey-painted fuselage which was stacked with military hardware being returned to the UK for maintenance. They'd found space for Chrissie's plain coffin close by the ramp and secured it to the floor with thick straps more used to restraining heavy metal than frail flesh.