Spy Out the Land (11 page)

He cleaned a shot glass in the sink, poured himself a large portion, and knocked it back. It went down smoothly enough, the herbs filling his mouth, but it was like dousing a sauna with water:
you had to wait a second or two for the full impact. And there it was, starting with a pleasing heat and then rising rapidly until he grimaced and wondered if he hadn’t overdone it –
the back of his throat would now burn for the next ten minutes.

Well, good. Pain was good. Pain was welcome.

He poured another dose, then walked back to the living room. He took the rifle out from beneath the sofa, then seated himself in the armchair and set the glass on the side table next to it. Pain
was good, but he didn’t want to get drunk. He had to stay alert. But the glass would keep him company: the glass and the rifle.

He sat there, ruminating on this, his throat torn. Best not to think at all. Focus on the sounds, and on the changes in sound.
Focus.

She looked across at the map on the passenger seat and took the turning Erik had indicated. Once she was on the main road, she glanced in her mirror towards the back of the
car. Ben was asleep, his head tilted back, his mouth agape and his left eye ever so slightly open. Keeping one hand on the wheel, she fumbled in her bag with the other. She found the pack of Prince
and, in a practised move, slid a cigarette out, lit it from the lighter on the fascia and took a deep draught.

The trembling in her lips slowly abated, and her head began to clear. She had been so caught up with Erik’s insistence that they leave that she had barely had time to consider what was
happening. For a dreadful moment when she had come into the flat she had thought he had discovered her past and was leaving her, but it hadn’t appeared so after all and she had agreed to
follow his instructions almost blindly. But now she was away from the flat her initial questions returned, with a few new ones. What the hell had he been so afraid of? He had been desperate to
place her and Ben out of harm’s way, it seemed. But why?

Who was
he
running from?

‘This is Leopard One. Please report on the situation, over.’

‘Leopard One, this is Leopard Two. All quiet here. Hippy’s lights are now out. Over.’

‘Stand by for new orders. Leopard Three, do you read me, over?’

There was a crackle of static and Corporal Abel Makuba’s voice came on the line.

‘Leopard Three. She’s just taken a turning for somewhere called Värtahamnen. We may soon be out of range. Over.’

Weale had already spread out the large map of the city on the kitchen table, and after a few seconds he had located Värtahamnen. ‘It’s a harbour. She could be on to us and
planning to catch a boat. How busy are the roads? Over.’

Makuba looked out of the window at the traffic, and the tankers and cranes of the port coming into view ahead. ‘Fairly busy. Over.’

‘All right, use your discretion. But if she gets on a ferry, get on it after her. If it’s some other form of boat, find someone in the harbour who you can pay to follow her. But only
do that if it looks to be absolutely necessary, otherwise you might have the coastguard on your tail. She can’t be planning on going very far, and eventually she’ll be somewhere there
aren’t many people around. Call me when you can. Do you read, over?’

‘Loud and clear. Over and out.’

Weale placed the intercom on the table and took a breath. After a moment, he picked it up again, switched channels and told Sammy Oka to follow the other car to Värtahamnen.

Dark walked to the window. He had avoided checking the curtain in case the repeated movements were registered, but it had now been some time since Claire had left with Ben. He
pushed it aside with one finger.

The Opel had gone.

Why had they left? A horrid thought crept into his mind, and lodged there.

What if it wasn’t him they were after – but Claire?

He walked back to the armchair and sank into it, the taste of vomit rising in the back of his throat.

I also have secrets.

Christ, what had he done? He looked at his watch. It had been two hours and fifty minutes since they had left. He might already be too late. He picked up the empty shot glass and hurled it
across the room, letting out a cry of anger and despair as it smashed against the wall.

Stay calm, he told himself. Think of a plan, then enact it. He had to get to Utö, and there were only two ways there. By boat, as he had told Claire to go – or by air.

And air was quicker.

It was his only chance to make up the time, but even then he would have to be fast. He took the M57 and the passports from the holdall and placed them in his jacket, then raced down the
staircase and out into the square. Most of the shops had closed, but the fruit and vegetable stalls and fast-food kiosks were still open, and there were plenty of people around: teenagers laughing,
children licking ice-cream cones, pensioners seated on benches. Pigeons strutted around the fountains like sergeant-majors at a passing-out parade. By the cinema, a young man was parking his
motorcycle and Dark ran towards him, waving his arms. When he was very close, he drew the gun from his jacket. The man’s eyes widened in fear and he dropped the bike and ran.

As she came into Värtahamnen, the screech of seagulls and the smell of fuel woke Ben up, and he started crying. She switched the radio on and turned the dial, looking for
some music to soothe him. She went past a drama of some sort, an exchange of urgent male voices, then with a start realised they were speaking in English and quickly dialled back to it. The voices
were sharp and had the tinny quality one heard on frequencies used by taxi drivers and the police.

‘Target One is approaching the harbour now. Over.’

‘Has she seen you, over?’

Her entire body froze, gooseflesh forming on her skin, and almost without thinking she jerked her neck back to check the road behind her. The voices on the radio were unmistakably those of
Rhodesians.

And they were talking about her.

‘What are those men saying, Mamma?’

She glanced in the mirror at Ben.

‘Nothing, darling. It’s just a story in English. We’ll be there soon.’

She drove down a ramp and onto the asphalt of the pier, her eyes flitting between looking for motorboats and the cars in her rear-view mirror.

Dark skidded to a halt in the skirting area outside the main terminal of Bromma airport. Once he had found the signposts, he started the motorbike up again and rode it down a
narrow concrete passageway towards the flying school. The reception area was in a large Nissen hut and he braked the bike, climbed off, and ran into the building. A young woman in a smartly pressed
white blouse was seated behind a marble desk, strands of bright blond hair emerging from beneath a beret with the flying school logo fixed to it.

‘Do you have any helicopters on the premises?’

She stared at him, taking in his frantic look. ‘Just the one, sir.’

‘Where?’

She pointed out the window towards a hangar, and Dark made out the front of a Bell Jet Ranger. ‘You have to book, Herr . . . ?’

But he was already running back out of the hut and heading towards the hangar.

Corporal Abel Makuba tapped Peter Tandi on the shoulder and pointed. A few hundred yards ahead, a red Volkswagen Beetle was parked beside the pier, its rear wheels skewed at an
awkward angle.

Makuba drew his weapon, and Tandi took the car down a gear.

‘Wait!’ shouted Makuba as they came up by the Beetle.

It was empty, the key still in the ignition and the back door not fully closed.

The men jumped out. Makuba was the first to see the motorboat speeding from the shoreline.

He reached into his jacket pocket and felt for the wad of Swedish notes.

Ben was finally asleep on a bunk below deck. He’d had a tantrum about getting in the boat, but had finally become so tired he had dropped off again. A bottle of
välling
from
her bag had done the trick – she’d been trying to wean him off the wheat-based milk for months, but now wasn’t the time to worry about that.

When she walked out on deck, she found the fisherman she had hired looking through a pair of binoculars at the waves behind them. He seemed to be focused on a grey speck in the middle distance.
He handed her the binoculars and she peered through. The speck came into focus, and she saw it was a motorboat of a similar size to their own. She handed the binoculars back and asked him what was
going on.

‘I think they might be following us.’

She took a deep breath. ‘Can we go any faster?’

He grimaced. ‘Not really.’

‘Try anyway, please. Have they gained on us at all?’

‘Not as far as I can tell, so it could be nothing. Or it could be that they’re waiting for us to land.’

Paul Dark looked down at Utö, glittering in the twilight. He was still several miles away, but he could make out the jetty and the lighthouse. As he approached he saw that
a large motorboat was moored to the jetty, and a man he didn’t recognise was on the deck. A few agonising seconds passed, and then Claire emerged, clutching Ben in her arms, and he felt the
relief flood through him.

The motorboat turned and headed back the way it had come, trailing a thin wake of surf behind it. Then Dark registered another disturbance in the waves, and his eyes followed it out until he saw
the other boat, which was fast approaching the jetty. His heart heaved again, and he pushed the stick forward and started to descend.

Claire and the other man were now running towards the lighthouse, Claire slowed down by having to carry Ben in her arms. The second boat reached the jetty and a group of men disembarked. They
wore black clothing and face masks, and one of them started firing up at him with a machine-pistol. Dark swerved out of the way and came in again, lower this time, and he noticed that the men were
also wearing gloves. Then he realised that they weren’t gloves, but that it was their skin – they were black men.

One of them threw a grenade into the air and a few seconds later it exploded below him, buffering the helicopter off course and sending spasms through Dark’s neck as he crashed into the
side of the cockpit. He righted himself and pulled back on the stick. Once he had managed to steady the helicopter, he stuck his head out of the window and looked down again.

Now the men had reached the entrance of the lighthouse, and Dark fought a feeling of helplessness as he watched them enter it. He had been so intent on getting here that he hadn’t really
considered what he might do once he had. He had thought he would be able to land on the jetty, but now he saw that the idea was madness: five winters had taken their toll on it and the strip of
wooden planks looked much thinner than he remembered. The roof of the lighthouse was far too narrow, and the only other alternatives were to try to land on the water or to run aground on the rocks,
both of which could easily kill him. The jetty was his only hope, but could it take the weight? He slowly started to bring the helicopter down vertically, craning his neck muscles so he could see
below to position the skids directly over the planks.

In the corner of his eye he caught a blur of movement by the lighthouse – the men were coming out. One of them held Ben, who had started screaming, and the others had Claire, who was doing
the same, her face twisted with fear as she looked up at the sky, searching for him.

Dark watched with horror as Gunnar and Helena came running out behind them, waving their arms. One of the men holding Claire turned and fired at Gunnar, hitting him in the chest. As he fell, a
volley of further shots peppered him. Then there were more shots, and Helena fell too, her body and Gunnar’s now suddenly horrifyingly still as they lay next to each other.

The men reached the boat and stepped aboard with Claire and Ben, then set off in a wide arc, leaving a wake of surf churning behind them as they headed back the way they had come.

Dark looked down and realised with a jolt he wasn’t going to be able to land the helicopter: he was coming down too fast to judge the angles correctly and it was going to hit the jetty. He
unstrapped his belt, grabbed the pistol from his jacket and dived out of the cockpit, stretching his legs as far as he could to clear the rocks surrounding the jetty.

He came to the surface with his head pulsing from the shock of the impact and the cold. The M57 had fallen out of his hands, and he couldn’t see it anywhere. He wiped his eyes and blinked
up to see the landing skids crump into the rear of the jetty, and then the tail rotor tipped back and unbalanced the rest. He went back down and swam towards the rocks, pushing against the weight
of his clothes. He scrambled ashore and limped over to where Gunnar and Helena lay. Both were dead, their blood staining the ground. Seagulls wheeled overhead, shrieking.

Dark looked back at the jetty and felt the heat as the rear of the helicopter caught fire. A few moments later, an explosion rocked him onto his back.

When he sat up again, he thought for a moment he was hallucinating, as he heard the sound of rotors and saw the silhouette of the helicopter emerge, totally intact, from the smoke of its own
explosion. Then he saw that it was a different colour, orange and green: the Finnish coastguard had arrived. A voice shouted down at him through a loud-hailer and men in dark fatigues rappelled
from the cockpit to where he was crouched. They removed the rifles strapped to their backs and pointed them at him. He saw himself reflected in their face visors.

Dazed, he placed his hands above his head. His mind was still on the motorboat speeding away from the shoreline back towards Sweden, and he was wondering whether he could somehow reach the
coastguards’ helicopter and catch up with it. But even as he thought it, in the pit of his stomach he knew that it was useless. He’d come too late, and they were gone.

Ben and Claire were gone.

Claire woke into darkness.

She was lying on a low cushioned bench, her hands and feet tied tightly with rope and her mouth bound with tape. The rocking motion beneath her and a throb of pain in her left bicep reminded her
of what had happened: she had been dragged on board a boat, and one of the men had sedated her with a needle.