The Increment (9 page)

NINE

Sergei Malenkov was a broad man, with thick shoulders and a short, closely cropped beard that covered his chin and his neck. He was wearing dark canvas trousers and a long grey sweater, and was carrying a small black bag slung over his shoulder.

In the last twenty-four hours, Matt had noticed the streets were full of them. Hard, strong-looking men, drifting around the town, desperately poor, looking for any kind of work they could sign up for. You needed some weapons, you just had to ask.

Kiev was the crime world's car-boot sale.

More like a sailor than a soldier, reflected Matt as he shook the man by the hand. His skin had the tanned, deep grooves of someone who has spent years facing the winds and rains of the ocean, and his eyes had the brightness of a man who has spent a lot of his life peering out into the murky, foggy expanses of the sea.

'SAS,' he said, looking sharply at Matt.

Matt nodded. 'Ten years.'

'And your friend,' he said, glancing towards Ivan.

'A different kind of regiment,' answered Ivan. 'Republican Army, Ireland. I specialised in explosives.'

'And you?' said Matt.

He looked hard at the man, waiting for the answer. I'm going to put my life in this man's hands.
He better know how to handle himself.

Malenkov looked towards Orlena, then back at Matt. 'Soviet Navy, then the Ukrainian Navy after the break-up. Marine amphibious assault units. I served for twenty years. My main posting was on board the
Hetman Petro Sahaydachny.
That's the flagship of the Ukrainian Navy. You probably haven't heard of the Cossack Hetman. He was the man who liberated the Ukraine in the seventeenth century. Our national hero.'

Orlena sat down, gesturing to the rest of them to take their seats. They were meeting in the apartment, at just after eight in the morning. Ivan put a jug of coffee between them. 'Sergei has been out of the navy for two years,' she said. 'Now he helps to provide security for Western companies investing in the region. Tell him what you need, he'll supply it.'

'Men and kit. Just give me the list,' said Malenkov, a broad grin on his face. 'The men will be cheap, and the weapons expensive, that's the way it is out here.'

'We've only seen some pictures from the sky,' said Matt.

'The surveillance plane tells you everything you need to know,' said Orlena sharply. 'We can plan the mission from that.'

Matt looked upwards, meeting her eyes. 'And how many jobs have you been on, exactly?'

A frosty expression descended on Orlena's face. 'Can we just get on with this?'

'I'll tell you what we're going to do,' answered Matt, controlling the irritation in his voice. 'I want Sergei here to come with me and Ivan, and I want to get up there and take a look at the factory. We don't attack anything until we've had a good hard look at it.'

He glanced sideways, first to Ivan, then to Malenkov. 'Right?'

Both men nodded.

'We can get the plane back,' said Orlena. 'It can be arranged for later today if necessary. Just speak to the pilot. He'll get any photographs you want, any angle.'

'Nice idea,' said Ivan. 'A spotter plane swooping across the factory all afternoon. That's not going to alert anyone, is it?'

Matt tapped the side of his left eyeball. 'There's only one type of surveillance you need for this job. It's called going to have a bloody look. And we're going to do it tomorrow.'

At one a.m., alone in the small bedroom, Matt pressed the end-call button, killing the line. He paused, taking a sip of water before making the next call. Then he punched in the number. Right now, this was just like any military job. A lot of hanging around waiting for the action to start.

Four calls so far, yielding precisely nothing.
Nobody knows anything.

'Keith there?' he said into the phone as soon as it was answered.

'Maybe,' replied a man with a West Country accent. 'Who's calling?'

'Matt. Matt Browning.'

In the distance, he could hear the man shouting,
phone, phone.
Keith Picton was an ex-regiment sergeant, now in his fifties, who ran an Outward Bound centre near Barnstaple in north Devon. Lots of ex-forces guys drifted through the place: there was always work there for fit young men who knew how to teach rock climbing or kayaking to a bunch of marketing executives from Staines. Picton took them all in, gave them somewhere to kip down, some food to eat, and paid them only a bit less than the minimum wage for the work. It was hard to tell sometimes if he was running a business, or a charity for old soldiers temporarily at a loose end. Doesn't matter, everyone agreed: he was a diamond, no matter how rough his manner, and everyone knew and respected him.

He's better plugged into the network than any man I know.

'Browning, you old bastard,' said Picton. 'What the hell are you up to now?'

'Same old stuff.'

'Really?' said Picton. 'I heard you were Mr Easy out in Marbella. Big pay day from some dodgy-sounding job for the Firm, nice place by the sea, gorgeous totty hanging off your arm, and about to ruin the whole marvellous thing by getting married to your childhood sweetheart.'

Even though I haven't spoken to him in more than a year he knows everything about me.

'Well, you know how it is, Keith. Roll the dice, and you go up a ladder. Roll it again, you go down a snake.'

'Right. How can I help?'

Matt was hoping this, his fifth call, would reveal something. He'd started out with a couple of the private security firms that operated out of London: they were always hiring guys out of the army, and had a good feel for what was going on. Nothing. Next he'd tried a friend who worked in recruitment, helping forces men find new jobs. He tried Bob Crowden, his first sergeant when he signed up more than a decade ago, and a man who kept in touch with all the men who'd passed through his barracks. Nothing there either.

So far as anyone knew, nothing suspicious was happening to ex-army men anywhere.

'I was just wondering if you'd heard anything, Keith,' started Matt. 'Stories about soldiers going crazy, injuring themselves or other people. Do you think there could be any connection? Anything out of the ordinary?'

'Like what?' Picton replied, eventually. 'A bloke running out on his family, or quitting his job, or getting into a fight after a skinful? Can you be more specific?'

'No, just acting weird. And violent.'

Another pause. 'Nothing that I've heard of,' said Picton, sounding more definite. 'Tell you what, I'll ask around some of the lads in the centre. We hear anything, we'll let you know.'

'Thanks.'

'What's it about, Matt? Why do you want to know?'

'Just chasing down a theory for a friend,' said Matt. 'If you hear something, call me.'

'You ready?' shouted Orlena from down the hallway. 'The car's here.'

Matt slipped the phone into his pocket.

Nobody knows anything, he reflected as he slung his kitbag over his shoulder.
But maybe that's because there's nothing to know.

The Land Rover must have been two decades old. One of the old models, Matt noted, back from when it was a military vehicle adapted for farmers, not a yuppie-mobile, running the kids to school and back. The paint looked as if it had been retouched a hundred times, with no thought for its appearance: it had turned the car into a patchwork of dark blues, greens, blacks, with the occasional dash of silver streaked along the underside to cover up spots of rust.

'British car,' said Malenkov approvingly. He slapped the bonnet as if he were patting a favourite horse. 'If you think the Ukrainian roads are bad, wait until you see Belorussia.' A laugh peeled out of his throat. 'You'll get a smoother ride in a washing machine.'

'You take the passenger seat,' said Matt, looking towards Orlena. 'Ivan and I can kip down in the back. We're used to it.'

He tossed his kitbag into the back of the car, and climbed aboard. There were no seats in the back, just an old mattress slung down on the metal surface. It was a long drive, and he knew he would have to make himself as comfortable as possible. Matt put his bag at the top of the mattress, lying down flat on his back, with his head resting on his kit. At his side, he could see Ivan doing the same.

'Funny smell,' said Matt, sitting up.

'Poppies,' said Ivan. 'I think they grow them in southern Ukraine, down near the Black Sea coast, around Odessa. Then process them into heroin. I reckon our friend Mr Malenkov is into lots of different businesses.'

The engine roared into life, shaking the Land Rover as it turned away from the kerb, and started speeding through the light mid-morning traffic in downtown Kiev. Matt had glanced at the map earlier, and had a rough idea of the route they would be taking. From Kiev, they would take the M20, cutting north, and crossing the border just before the steel-and-cement town of Gomel. Then they would turn west, on to the A250, keeping straight on to the road through Bobrujsk until they hit Minsk.

Motorway, thought Matt, some time later as he looked at the cracked surface of the single-tracked road. Even the Cromwell Road on a Friday afternoon was quicker than this.
And I thought that was about as bad as any road could get.

'How long do you reckon?' he shouted through the glass that separated the back of the Land-Rover from the cabin.

'Ten hours, maybe fifteen,' shouted Malenkov over the roar of the engine.

'Let's stop for lunch,' shouted Ivan.

Orlena turned back to them and smiled. 'I'll see if I can find you some cabbage soup.'

Matt lay back on the mattress, and tried to shut his eyes. As the Land-Rover bounced along the pitted surface of the road, he could feel every vibration and bump knocking right through his spine. Horrible food, funny smells, brutal transport and constant danger.
Welcome back to soldiering, mate.

The forest was dark and edgy, thick with the smell of pine needles. Matt lay down on the ground, feeling the damp moss close to his skin. Behind him he could hear the low whistling of the breeze rustling through the trees. Up ahead, he could hear the low, sneezy rumble of plant and machinery humming through the night.

'What can you see?' he whispered to Ivan.

'Bugger all.'

It had been a long and tiring drive. Matt had slept fitfully, woken up first for lunch, then for supper: both meals were taken at simple roadside cafés serving cabbage soup and sausages to the truckers who worked the highways between the two cities. Neither Matt nor Ivan spoke while they were eating. They were dressed in some cheap jeans and sweatshirts Orlena had picked up for them at a market in Kiev: Levi's or even Gap jeans would mark you out as a foreigner here. There was no point in alerting anyone that they were neither Ukrainian nor Belorussian. Along these back roads a foreigner was a rare sight, and would immediately provoke suspicion.

They had stopped briefly at the border. Neither of them had visas for Belarus, but that didn't seem to be an issue. Malenkov had dropped twenty dollars into the palm of the guard, and that whisked them through. By nightfall, they had bypassed Minsk, and made their way north towards Khatyn. The forest was just to the north of the city. A dense thicket of woodland, mostly pine, it covered about fifty square miles, dotted with just a few factories and some logging stations and tiny villages. By the time they arrived, it was already after ten at night.

We'll go and check out the target, Malenkov had suggested. Then get some rest.

'Let's get closer,' whispered Matt.

They had parked the Land-Rover half a mile back, snaking through the forest on foot. Right now, they were five hundred yards from the factory.

Matt started wriggling along the dirt track that ran between the trees. They hadn't seen anyone along the track for the past three hours. The factory was about three hundred yards ahead of them, and the main tarmac road leading up to it eighty yards to their left. The compound covered some four hundred square yards in total, protected with a high fence of barbed wire, reinforced with a strong steel mesh. There was just one set of gates, firmly locked, and protected with what looked like just one sentry. Matt moved slowly around the perimeter to get a better look. At two of the corners of the compound, there was a searchlight built on to a twelve-foot high wooden platform. The light swivelled around, in a slow semicircular arc, flashing its beam along the perimeter of the fence: Ivan timed the motion, calculating it took forty-five seconds to complete an arc, leaving at least fifteen seconds when it was safe to move underneath it. So far as Matt could see, there was one guard operating each light.

He pulled out the pair of binoculars Malenkov had given him and, through the magnified circle of vision, he could see that the two guards were carrying what looked like semi-automatic machine guns. At these distances, he couldn't tell the make or calibre. Kalashnikovs probably. No reason why they wouldn't use the local kit. It's not as if they don't make good guns in this part of the world.