State Of Emergency: (Tom Buckingham Thriller 3) (39 page)

His gaze fell on the cops guarding the bridge, in full kit with their MP5s. Quite who or what they were expecting was anyone’s guess. He wondered when things would ever return to normal – or, indeed, if there would ever be a ‘normal’ any more. Maybe with Rolt gone there might be.

‘I’m sorry you were left out there on your own.’ Woolf’s embarrassment was leaking out from behind the poker face.

‘It’s not the first time.’

‘You sure you want to wait? Could be a while.’

Tom nodded.

The night before, Tom told Phoebe to meet him at Invicta. It was strange going back in. Rolt had been a stickler for tidiness and the place had been trashed. The police and Security Service had been all over it. All the computer hard drives were gone; filing cabinets yawned open. No cupboard had been left unrummaged. And every surface had been dusted for prints as if it were a crime scene. Strangely, the only item that had been overlooked was the Ordynka, still resting in its wooden box.

Phoebe had made an effort to look her best, in heels and a low-cut burgundy suit, with a gold brooch in the shape of a feather pinned to her lapel. Tom noted that she had more makeup on than he had seen her wear before. But it did not mask the strain and fatigue on her face.

He was standing in Rolt’s office, gazing at Umarov’s garish gift, weighing it in his hand, when she came towards him. ‘Tom, I’m so glad you’re all right. You have no idea.’ She kissed him on each cheek. She felt hot and was trembling a little.

He didn’t speak at first, just smiled and nodded, curious to see what she would say next. ‘Nice brooch,’ he said.

‘It was my mother’s. My father gave it to me after she died.’ Her gaze floated around the room. ‘Well, I’m glad we can finally put all this behind us.’

Tom didn’t say anything.

She walked up to Rolt’s desk and trailed her fingertips in the dust left by the search team. He watched her intently, taking his time. She looked up at him. ‘Was there something – is there something you wanted to say?’

Tom examined the blade of the Ordynka. ‘Just a question.’

She looked at him, a wariness in her gaze. ‘What question?’

He didn’t respond, just looked at her. His face must have said it all because after a few seconds’ silence her eyes filled with tears. She blinked nervously and looked away. Eventually she spoke. ‘How did you know?’

‘Someone had to have warned Umarov about me. Not a straight “He’s under cover,” or they would never have let me near Chequers. More a hint, maybe, that I couldn’t be completely trusted. Enough for them to threaten me that my father …’

He paused to swallow the anger. ‘Enough for them to effectively take him hostage.’

Despite the foundation, blotches of red appeared on her cheeks. Tears tumbled out of her eyes and fell with faint plops onto the desk. ‘Rolt and I, we were always together, so much of the time … It just sort of happened.’ She wiped away some of the tears. ‘Then he got it into his head that MI5 had a source inside his organization. There was I, always fiddling with my phone, so he accused me. It never entered his head it could be you.’

‘So you saved yourself by informing on me.’

She flinched as he said the words, even put up a hand as if she thought he might strike her. ‘I was terrified of Umarov. I knew his reputation.’ Her face was a mess of tears and despair. ‘What are you going to do?’

He considered his answer. ‘Oh, take a break. Keep an eye on Dad for a bit.’

She was steadying herself against Rolt’s desk. ‘I meant now.’

Tom put the Ordynka back in its box, closed the lid and went to the door. Before he left he turned and looked at her one last time. ‘Live my life. I’ve got a lot to live for.’

Then he left and closed the door behind him.

On the bridge, Woolf waved Tom forward to the balustrade. ‘Okay, they’re ready. You sure you want to watch?’

‘Yes, I am.’

A couple of the cops made room for him; one breathed out a long mournful sigh as the cables tightened and the crane powered up.

The hair was a matted mess, grey with sediment; the skin looked as if it had been bleached white. She had attached a weighted diving belt round her waist, insurance against a change of heart.

Woolf was at his shoulder. ‘Okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘Officially we still have to confirm ID.’

But Tom didn’t need to wait. Her burgundy jacket still had the brooch on its lapel. He turned to Woolf. ‘Make sure the brooch doesn’t disappear. It mattered a lot to her.’

Have you read the first Tom Buckingham thriller?

Read on for a preview of
Red Notice
. . .

Prologue

Borjomi, Georgia

25 September 1996

05.17 hrs

Dawn had begun to streak the eastern sky as the two mud-spattered trucks inched their way up the road in the faint glow from their sidelights. They jolted over rain-filled potholes and scree and came to a halt just short of the crest of the hill.

Their movements measured and cautious, a dozen armed men climbed down from the rear of each vehicle. Their breath billowed around them in the freezing air. Checking their safety catches, they stamped their feet to restore circulation and eased the stiffness from their legs. Some placed a last cigarette in the middle of their week-old beards and lit up.

They checked their equipment, ensuring pouches were still secure. If it had a button or a Velcro strip, it was there to be fastened. Two of the team struggled to hoist heavy weapons systems onto their shoulders.

Their commander stood a short distance apart from his men. Laszlo had an aversion to the smell of nicotine. He wore the same stained camouflage fatigues as his troops and had a
similarly Slavic cast to his features, complete with coarse, almost black beard, but carried himself with an arrogance they didn’t share. He was just short of six feet in height, but his sinuous limbs and slim frame made him look taller. His mouth was downturned and his eyes were the washed-out grey-blue of a winter sky; his skin was so pale he looked as if he’d lived his life in permanent shadow.

Another man exited the cab of the nearest truck. Laszlo’s cool gaze missed nothing as he approached. The newcomer’s civilian clothes were of a cut and quality that were neither cheap nor local. He wasn’t a Slav, he was from the West. Europe? The USA? It was hard to tell. They all looked the same. His brown hair was starting to grow out from its short back and sides, and he, too, had a good week’s growth on his chiselled jaw.

The man might not have been one of Laszlo’s team, but the comfortable way he held his AK, the folding butt closed down in his hand as if it were a natural extension of his body, showed that he was no stranger to shot and shell. The weapon – all of his equipment – was also of Soviet origin. In Yeltsin’s Russia, there was no shortage of underworld gangs willing to steal and trade such things, or of corrupt officers happy to empty their armouries in return for cold, hard cash.

The man had no fear of repercussion from what he was about to do. There would be nothing to suggest this had been anything but a purely local affair. He was sterile of ID and personal documentation. Like the rest of the team, it was as if he didn’t exist. He had a name – Marcus – but Laszlo knew it wasn’t his own. The team commander had taken steps to discover his companion’s real identity. Information was a commodity to be traded, like drugs, weapons and women, and Laszlo always liked to bargain from a position of strength.

He stood for a couple more minutes, watching the new day creep across the landscape. To his right, a steep, boulder-strewn slope tumbled to a fast-flowing river. Water the colour of chocolate surged downstream. The force of the current had carved out the soil for a ten-metre stretch along the far bank,
exposing a latticework of tree-roots that gleamed white against the mud, like the ribs of a putrefying corpse.

On the other side of the road, a dense pine forest cloaked the lower slopes of the mountains that filled the northern horizon. It seemed to float in a sea of mist. The treetops swayed each time there was a gust of wind. As he watched, the sun’s first rays painted the snow-capped peaks with gold. In the west, just visible now in the strengthening light, a black gash as straight as a Roman road showed the course of the pipeline being driven through this remote valley. Directly in its path, just over the hill from where they now stood, a huddle of buildings lay surrounded by a patchwork of fields.

As soon as the man reached him, Laszlo turned. The wind whipped up a shower of pine needles as the two of them moved through the edge of the forest. As they neared the crest of the hill, they flattened themselves to the earth and wormed their way to a point from which they could study the approach to Borjomi.

On the slope below, the trees gave way to fields of yellowing grass, dusted with frost and punctuated by mounds of autumn hay secured beneath tarpaulins. Beyond them, houses were clustered around a dusty square. A rusting iron water pump and a long stone horse-trough stood at its centre, half shaded by a large, stag-headed oak tree.

The buildings at the heart of the village were of wood and stone, with sun-faded shutters and roofs of patched tiles or corrugated iron, steeply pitched to shed the winter snows. The gables of some had once been richly carved but were now so weathered, cracked and split with age that the embellishments were barely visible.

While those houses looked almost as ancient as the oak tree they faced, the buildings around them were drab, Soviet-era constructions, their crumbling concrete façades pockmarked by bullet holes. A huge barn, built of unmilled wood with gaps between the planks, boasted a roof of heavily patched corrugated-iron sheets.

The whole place was mired in mud and poverty. Tangles of
scrap metal and rotting timbers decorated the yards. A solitary motor vehicle, a battered Lada with rust-streaked bodywork, was parked next to a pair of horse-drawn farm carts. Apart from a handful of chickens scuttling about and a few cows mooching in the fields, the place seemed to be deserted.

At the side of the road just outside the village, an old door had been nailed to two fence posts driven into the ground. Daubed on it, in crude hand-lettering, was an inscription in Russian, Georgian and Ossetic: ‘Protect our village.’

The two men worked their way back from the brow and conferred in low tones. Although his companion was now issuing orders to him, Laszlo’s stance and attitude showed that he did not regard him as his superior in any way.

‘Ready?’ The man’s Russian was halting but understandable. And now his accent gave him away.

Laszlo nodded. ‘Ready, Englishman.’ He signalled to his men and led them down the hill, moving tactically, one foot always on the ground. Half the team stayed where they were to cover the advance of the rest. Using the haystacks to mask their approach, they too went static and returned the favour.

A cock crowed inside a barn and wisps of grey smoke began to rise from a chimney as some unseen inhabitant coaxed his fire into life. Laszlo was wary. It wasn’t always like this. An attack could be initiated at any moment. He’d taken incoming from sleepy backwaters like this and lost men. That was why he favoured a rolling start-line. If his team took fire as they approached they’d just roll into the attack and fight their way forward.

They reached the shadows of a tumbledown wall on the edge of the settlement and waited there, all eyes focused on the Englishman as he took one last look at the target to confirm that nothing had changed since he issued his last set of orders the day before.

He’d led them into a field for a run-through in slow time, letting the whole team see what each of the component groups would be doing during the attack. They’d rehearsed the what-ifs: what if the team had a man down? What if a group
got separated from the main force? What if the team took heavy fire from an RPG?

Now that the Englishman had seen in real time what he’d told them to call the battle space, he knew there was nothing to add. His voice was calm as he spoke to Laszlo.

The South Ossetian checked that his men were in place and ready, raised his hand, paused a moment, and let it fall.

The team burst from cover. With the Englishman leading one group and Laszlo the other, they advanced along both sides of the main street. Dogs set up a chorus of barks and howls and a few villagers began stumbling from their houses, some clutching hunting rifles and shotguns, one or two with AKs, but the attacking force, better armed and better trained, cut them down before they fired a single round.

Laszlo led his men from house to house. The crump of HE grenades and the crash of splintering wood were interspersed with cries and screams. Half dressed and rubbing sleep from their eyes, the remaining occupants were dragged from their homes, herded into the open, kicked and punched face down into the mud, then immobilized with plastic zip-ties.

While the Englishman stayed with his group and controlled their captives, Laszlo led his team further along the line of buildings. He paused for a couple of seconds, dropped into cover and looked back towards the others. A young villager, perhaps no more than a teenager, was sprinting towards the forest.