The Kremlin Device (22 page)

Then the bursts of fire died away. Single shots cracked out – one, two, three, four. I knew what they meant: the assaulters were using their pistols to pop rounds into the heads of their victims, making certain they were dead.

One more single shot, then silence – except for the wind.

‘Boris!' I shouted. ‘
Yestj?
'

‘
Da, da
.'

‘
Khorosho!
'

I held in my pressel and called, ‘Red to Blue – all secure at your end?'

‘Blue,' came Whinger's voice. ‘Affirmative. All inner rooms secure.'

‘Red. Roger. This side secure also. You can come on through.'

Standing up, I walked in through the shattered window-door. The air in the living room was hot as hell and thick with cigarette smoke, shot through with the sharp reek of cordite. Something had caught fire, ignited by the stun grenade. The blaze wasn't serious – just enough to give flickering illumination and light up the gory scene. The lights had gone down and for the time being I let it burn.

The Mafiosi must have been in conference round a rectangular table. Now, overturned chairs and five bodies lay all round it. Igor, crouched in the left-hand outer corner of the room, was still covering Nikolai as he scurried round checking each one. The door into the hallway was closed, so I went straight over and called through it, ‘Whinge?'

‘Yeah, yeah. We're here.'

‘OK. I'm opening up.' I turned the handle and pulled, to find the door was locked. Peering down, I saw the key was in the lock, spun it and pulled the door towards me. The two teams were safely reunited.

‘Red leader to Control,' I called. ‘Target secure.'

‘
Vas ponyal
,' went Anna. ‘Roger.'

‘Piece of cake!' said Whinger. ‘What's the Russian for that?'

‘I don't know. How many have your guys taken out?'

‘Four. The bodyguards. Two in the passage, two more watching TV in the end bedroom. We got them as they came out the door.' He flashed his torch into the bedroom doorway, and I saw two bodies lying across each other on the floor.

‘No casualties on your team?'

Whinger shook his head. ‘The stupid bastards never got a round off. The two outside were asleep on their chairs, and the others had left their main weapons in the hallway. There.' He shone the beam on a little stack of sub-machine guns in a corner. ‘Didn't even have time to draw their pistols.'

I found myself shaking with reaction. ‘Jesus!' I said. ‘What happens now?'

After a hit of that kind in the UK, the assault teams would be instantly spirited away from the scene in a hostage reception van, and any prisoners would travel with them, to get the whole lot clear before any journalists or TV crew turned up. Then a quick-reaction force would move in and take over. The most important guy in the aftermath would be the SOCO, the scene-of-crimes officer, from the police. Until he arrived, the key rule was that nothing must be touched or moved.

Not so in Moscow. Satisfied that all the villains were dead, Igor got up, walked over and kicked one of the bodies contemptuously, rolling it over.

‘Stop!' I called, waving my hands about to tell him to lay off. But that was the limit of my Russian, and he probably thought I was crazy.

Somebody found the electricity control panel. A trip switch had been thrown by the blasts, and once it was flipped back up enough of the lights went on for us to survey the wreckage.

It looked as though four of the sitting-room victims had been gunned down where they sat at the table. They were all flabby-looking, middle-aged men with bellies bulging out into their shirts and their sleeves rolled up. Their faces had probably never been pretty, and they certainly weren't now, because Nikolai had gone round and popped each one with a bullet through the head. One had an eye out on a stalk; another had spewed out half his teeth. Pools of blood were spreading over the pale carpet. Their jackets, still hanging over the backs of their chairs, had been riddled by bullets. The fifth guy, a younger man in a dark-blue polo shirt, had got half-way to the door before being dropped. On the right-hand wall, looking from the windows, water was dripping from the shattered remains of a glass fish-tank, and the wretched occupant was flapping its last in a puddle at the bottom. Another victim was an old tabby cat, which lay in a corner without a mark on it and seemed to have died of fright.

The table was covered with papers, evidently the subject of the meeting, and expensive-looking briefcases sat on the floor beside the chairs. The fire had started in a waste bin containing more paper, and I had no problem stamping it out. But I'd hardly finished when there was a commotion outside the door and in strode Ivan the Bear, with Sasha at his heels.

Ivan advanced towards me, grinning, and said something which Sasha translated as, ‘Breelliant! He congratulates you very much.'

‘Your guys did it.' I gestured round. ‘They were first class.
Ochen khorosho
.'

Ivan accepted the praise with a nod and turned his attention to the bodies. Almost at once he gave an exclamation and began to talk at speed into a mobile phone.

‘It is Keet – the Whale,' Sasha translated, pointing at the corpse of a huge man with close-cropped grey hair that lay on its back almost under the table. As he was speaking, Ivan bent down and unceremoniously ripped open the perforated, blood-stained shirt to reveal a foot-long tattoo of a whale's head and open jaws, tilted upwards towards the man's left shoulder. From the half-open mouth the feet of a human being were protruding. By a horrible fluke one round had gone in almost exactly through the whale's eye, leaving a bloody hole.

With a jerk on one arm Ivan rolled the body over and kicked the shirt up round its head. There, between the shoulder blades, was a tattooed portrait of Stalin.

‘Old Uncle Joe didn't save that bugger, did he?' Whinger was staring at the effigy, fascinated. Then, as he surveyed the scene, he added, ‘I like the delicate way they handle things round here, I must say.'

Ivan brought out a pocket knife, slipped the blade inside one leg of Whale's trousers, at the ankle, and slit the grey material open to half-way up the thigh. Then he pointed contemptuously and gave a short laugh.

‘He has stars on the knees,' Sasha translated. ‘Like I told you. The sign he would never kneel.'

It seemed that all the villains bar one were known to Ivan. By any standards it was a terrific coup for the security forces: five godfathers at one hit, plus four bodyguards and a haul of incriminating papers. Nor was that all. The two most fancy briefcases – crocodile leather by Gucci, no less – were closed with gold combination locks. Ivan picked one up, laid it on the table and started trying to open it. Frustrated, he called to Igor, who produced a small jemmy.

‘Hey, wait!' I said, thinking of Toad and Pavarotti. ‘That thing's worth a few grand. One of our guys will open it without wrecking it.'

But Ivan wasn't in a mood to wait, and in a few seconds he'd burst both locks. When he lifted the lid, everybody who could see gave a gasp, because the case was packed solid with fifty-dollar bills done up in little paper sleeves holding bunches of twenty notes: a thousand bucks a throw.

When you see cash in that kind of quantity, you realise how little space it takes up: I could have put ten grand in my hip pocket, no bother.

As if reading my thoughts Ivan plunged a hand into the case and brought out a fistful of bundles, holding them in my direction.

‘Take,' said Sasha. ‘He wants you to have it.'

‘No, no.' I waved it away.

‘Yes, please. He inseest. He thinks like Russian soldiers you not being paid well. You need more.'

Looking round under the table, Ivan spotted a far cheaper briefcase made of imitation black leather, with a flap closure and no locks. Having tipped the papers it contained on to the table, he proceeded to stuff it with handfuls of fifty-dollar bills and thrust it at me.

From this point things became more and more surreal. Somebody discovered bottles of special, high-octane vodka in the freezer compartment of the fridge, brought them out and began pouring slugs into short, squat glasses. Whinger and I declined, but as the icy spirit went down other people's throats in repeated doses, the volume of voices rose. While a minion collected up the papers from the table and stowed them away, Ivan himself carefully removed gold watches from three dead wrists and a couple of crocodile wallets from the jackets still on the chairs.

‘Present to English friends!' he beamed, holding a watch out in my direction.

‘No, for fuck's sake!' I exclaimed. ‘
Spasibo
– but keep them.'

Then some of his guys arrived with body bags, and at last bundled the corpses out of sight.

Outside, in the corridor, there was a great commotion as other inhabitants of the block argued with the guards on the door, trying to get in and find out what had happened.

‘Let's get the hell out of here,' Whinger muttered. ‘There's going to be a monster piss-up.'

‘We'd better sign off with Ivan.'

‘He's busy. Another day.'

‘OK.'

I looked round for Sasha and beckoned him over. ‘We need to get back to Balashika,' I told him. ‘Can someone give us a lift?'

‘
Konechno
. I drive you.'

‘How many vodkas have you had?'

‘Vodka? Nothing! Two only.'

So it was that we pushed our way past the new guards on the door, through the crowd outside and into the lift. Downstairs there was a heavy military presence on the entrance to the block, but Sasha spirited us through it, found the car he'd been driving, and set off.

I felt plagued by guilt – first by the thought that we should all have been in a formal debriefing session, recalling and recording every move of the raid; second by the knowledge that we had lost a man; and third by the fact that I was carrying a small fortune of ill-gotten gains in a Mafia briefcase.

‘Misha,' I said. ‘He was dead?'

Sasha nodded. ‘Absolutely. We found his body. How did he fall?'

‘Just lost his nerve.'

‘It is a pity. But –
nichevo
!' He smiled broadly. ‘We have beeg victory. Like in football – Arsenal nine, Tottenham Hotspot one!' He gave a merry laugh and drummed his hands on the steering wheel. Then he added, ‘Only one problem.'

‘What's that?'

‘Mafia bosses will be angry. For sure, they make counter-attack.'

‘On Omon?'

‘No, on government. The President, the Vice-President, the Minister of the Interior. Perhaps one of them will be their next target.'

NINE

I thought I was going to have nightmares, but in fact I slept like the dead, and woke up unable to remember where I was. Until I heard Whinger snoring, that is: then everything flooded back.

‘All in a day's work,' I'd said cheerily to Rick when we came in the night before – and a hell of a day we'd had. But it had been exhilarating too, and a sharpening change from the routine of training.

Naturally we'd had a wash-up with our own lads as soon as we had come in: they'd got a brew on, and we'd sat up till after midnight analysing the hit. We had also had a discussion – not quite an argument – about what had come to be known as the ‘diplomatic bag'. A count had shown it to contain 110,000 dollars.

When the lads saw that amount of money tipped out on the kitchen table they uttered, ‘Firekin ell!' in a kind of chorus.

If there's one thing that makes SAS lads take leave of their senses it's money. Normally they're pretty straight-up, but somehow the sight of cash sends them bananas.

‘There's my Jag!' Pavarotti cried with his eyes glazing over.

‘Bugger the Jag!' Pete told him. ‘What about my kitchen extension?'

‘Bet it's all forged,' said Dusty, ever the cynic.

‘Never,' Mal told him. ‘Big Mafia players wouldn't be carting fake stuff around. Whose is it, anyway? Geordie's and Whinger's, I suppose.'

‘No, no,' I said. ‘If it belongs to anyone, it belongs to the team.'

‘Buy a team Merc,' said Pavarotti. ‘Get a five-hundred or something. Smoked-glass windows. Then we can take on the hoods at their own game.
How
much did you say they had?'

‘Meellions,' I said, imitating Sasha. ‘Christ knows. It was a big briefcase and it was jam-packed. This lot was only a fraction of what we saw. There could have been stuff we didn't see as well. We never looked in the other croc briefcase or in drawers or cupboards. The flat could have been full of money. Drugs too, I daresay. God knows what they were at: it looked as though they were carving up their empire.'

It was Rick who produced the idea of sending the cash back to the UK. ‘Put it in the Diplomatic Bag,' he suggested. ‘Then at least it'll be safe, and a nice little bonus for when we get home.'

‘Bollocks to that,' said Pav. ‘Split it up now. Then we can go out and start spending.'

‘What on?' demanded Dusty derisively. ‘Rotten onions? Crappy cabbage? You'll get fuck-all else in Balashika.'

‘Funny,' said Mal. ‘At Sandhurst it's the other way round. It's the students who have the money. Arabs slip their instructors gold watches to get an early look at exam papers. Here, the students are penniless and the instructors are loaded.'

Whinger, who'd been keeping quiet, butted up and said, ‘They offered Geordie a gold Rolex as well.'

‘You bastard!' roared Pav. ‘Where is it?'

‘I told him to keep it.'