Thunder (31 page)

“Very wise, sir,” said Ellard, making Greere’s oily eyebrows spring up in surprise. “The two of them will no doubt become aware that something has happened soon enough, and will move up to a heightened state of alert.”

“Correct,” said Greere imperiously, he didn’t need or appreciate Ellard’s counsel on the matter. “Especially as last night’s escapades are all over the regional news channels. Safely dispose of your rubbish and get to the airport. I want you back here, in the office, today.”

“Something important for me to work on?” asked Deuce. “Do I need to prep?”

“No,” he said coldly. “But I’d try to get some sleep on the plane if I was you. You’re going to be monitoring things, here, through the night.”

“Yes, sir.”

The sound of undisguised dismay in Ellard’s voice made Greere feel good inside.

Sometime soon, he decided, he’d need to pay a personal visit to Ellard’s little hidey-hole in France. It was time to see if his subordinate was squeaky-clean. Personally, Greere doubted it. A few too many objects seemed to go missing after Deuce’s missions, and Greere could guess where they just might be.

It was always good to have a little leverage handy.

You never knew when you might need it.

~~~~~

Constanta

Sergei Ebrahimi wandered back to the shoreline, then out along the long harbour wall, and stood, halfway along it, staring sightlessly out over the Black Sea. With both hands he tugged gently at his coat’s heavy collar, to guard against the chill wind blowing past him. He felt numb inside. Sick in the pit of his stomach. His younger brother was gone. Dead. His body lost in some unknown place. His body taken, and disposed of, by foreigners.

His mind swam, full of images of Jeyhun Farhad Ebrahimi. He could see him, as a tiny boy, while they were growing up. Always smiling. Always following him around like some adoring puppy. Always wanting to do things for him. His middle name, Farhad, could be translated to mean joy and Jeyhun had always seemed to live up to it...

How did they end up here?

He’d tried to stop his brother from getting involved in this but his foolish, devoted, stupid, beloved brother would have none of it...

“I go where you go,” Jeyhun had announced so proudly.

And now he was gone forever.

Sergei couldn’t face being cooped up with Nagpal at the moment. London had been shocking enough, but his leader’s callous reaction to the possibility that both Jeyhun and Azat had been killed was, at best, terrifying. It was as if the man had no soul. Nagpal had, as far as Sergei was aware, known Sikand for years. The man had been Nagpal’s closest, perhaps only, friend.

When Sergei’s attempted call to Sikand’s mobile had gone straight to the standard operator voicemail announcement, Sergei had suspected the worst. When he got back to the grimy apartment, Nagpal had confirmed his suspicion.

“There are four reported fatalities in Budapest,” Nagpal had pronounced calmly. “Three local gangsters, as they call them.” Pictures of three faces were splashed over the television screen. “These men were our local contacts. They must have been compromised. There is no word of your brother. We must assume that he never got there.”

Sergei had stared, speechless.

“They are heroes. They have transcended into glorious afterlife having sacrificed themselves selflessly in pursuit of our holy cause.” Nagpal made it sound so positive, so confident, so certain. “There are no pictures of the fourth victim.”

“Perhaps it isn’t Sikand?” Sergei had ventured.

“Perhaps,” Nagpal had muttered.

Sergei Ebrahimi shivered to himself, not entirely because of the cold breeze, and continued to stare sightlessly over the scudding dark wave-tops.

~~~~~

Five hundred metres behind Ebrahimi’s disconsolate back, on the other side of Constanta’s massive dockside, Jack sauntered along: oblivious to his target’s proximity. He was following another man toward a pier crammed with small craft of all shapes, sizes, colours and ages.

“Is a good one,” the port official expounded enthusiastically. “You will like.”

The Sales Agent’s English wasn’t brilliant but Jack didn’t really care. He’d parked the car in the shade, at a discrete distance outside of the docks, quickly razored his long hair down to stubble, stuck on a hat and a big pair of sunglasses, and then walked in from there. Nick remained in deep, drug-induced sleep inside the vehicle.

The border crossing had been easier than he’d hoped. Short declarations of angry frustration at his purported workmate’s inability to stay sober, with appropriate gesticulations and perfectly forged passports – each with a hefty wad of first Forint, then Leu, tucked inside – had seen him trundling off again after barely a few minutes of negotiation. It had helped that he’d picked such a quiet crossing point, and such an early hour in the morning. Both sets of guards had looked frustrated at being disturbed by his inconvenient arrival, and more than happy to see the back of him.

He was pleased.

A search of the car would likely have turned messy.

Especially if they’d discovered the compartment under the back seats and across which his buddy remained comatose.

He glanced out over the docks to the distant sea wall. A few fishermen stood in the bright sunlight.

“Far too cold for fishing,” he mumbled to himself.

“What you say?” said his guide.

“Nothing,” said Jack. “Where’s the barge?”

The Romanian looked confused.

“Boat?” Jack simplified.

The Romanian brightened up again. “Yes, yes! Here....” He gesticulated into the distance. “Has cabin. Goodly bed inside.”

A tired looking hulk of algae-riddled white fibreglass, with a tiny wheelhouse and a slight list to the right, sat amongst the myriad of moored vessels. Jack wasn’t convinced that he did indeed ‘like’ but it would probably serve his purposes.

“Needs pump out,” explained the salesman.

“Needs a lot more than a bloody pump out,” replied Jack and started haggling.

Skala Kallonis

I wake up feeling groggy.
My head aches badly and I feel sore all over. If my senses weren’t numbed I guess I’d be in agony.

I have no idea where I am.

Through bleary eyes I can make out a small bedroom with plain, whitewashed, rough concrete walls. There’s a sizeable old wardrobe along one wall. It looks like it was handmade at some point in the last century, and its duck-egg blue gloss paint is fading and peeling away from its many, naturally distressed, ill-fitting joints and edges.

There’s a small bedside table which seems similarly antique. On it is a tall thick glass of clear water so I gently ease myself onto my side and take a long drink from it. As I finish the last drops I suddenly hope I was right to assume it was there for me to consume...

The floor is stone tiled, with a handful of nondescript rugs scattered around the bedsides, and I notice that it feels warm in here – and not just because of the clean sheets and coarse wool blankets that I find I am cocooned beneath...

Lifting the sheets I can see I am naked, but this is not as alarming as the dark black, blue and red-purple mottling that appears to cover every inch of my skin. Well, every inch that isn’t bound in clean cotton bandages. The largest of these is, of course, wrapped around my upper thigh.

I can vaguely remember fragments from the last few days. For a while I was lying in the back of a small car. My legs couldn’t stretch out. Then I think I was in some sort of caravan or train or something. It seemed to roll and pitch gently. Given this obscure movement, I think it must have been a train but I can’t be sure. I don’t remember much else. I don’t even remember dreaming.

Jack must’ve dropped me off somewhere. Clearly, wherever I am, they’re looking after me and, given that the bedroom door is standing wide open, I’m not incarcerated in some prison.

He must’ve left.

I wouldn’t blame him...

I misled him. Betrayed his trust with my deception. Trust is critical in any relationship, let alone a life or death one, and once it’s been broken...

I try to sit myself up in the bed but it hurts too much, and my head starts to spin again, so I collapse back onto soft pillows.

My rustling noises have attracted attention from outside and I can hear what sounds like a pair of boots being hurriedly pulled off and dropped onto tiled flooring.

Someone is approaching the open doorway. I can see a large dark shadow sprinting across the distant stoneware toward me.

“Nick?” asks a familiar voice.

“Jack?” I croak.

~~~~~

Constanta

Murat Nagpal’s eyes narrowed as a grainy image appeared on the TV screen in front of him.

Sikand...

Somehow the news stations had finally got their hands on a photo from the Hungarian Police Boat. It was dark and poor resolution but most definitely his compatriot.

He stared angrily into the unseeing eyes of his friend.

“How did they find you?” he muttered to himself. “How?”

Even here, on the BBC World Service, the consensus remained that four of the six people killed in Budapest had been caught up in a gangland shoot out. The British had, only recently, confirmed that this man – Azat Sikand – had also been involved in the Victoria bombing. Their press were gleefully celebrating his untimely demise.

‘Breaking News: Evil Terrorist Confirmed Dead After Gangland Shootings In Hungary,’
spouted the white-on-red capitalised strap-line at the bottom of the screen.

~~~~~

Skala Kallonis

I can feel cold tears trickling down my cheeks, but have no idea why they’re there. I haven’t cried for a very long time.

Jack stands by the bedside looking uncomfortable, like he’s not sure what to do. “It must be the drugs,” he mumbles. “I’ve had you sedated for the last few days. Seemed to be best. You must be in a lot of pain.”

“Can’t feel much,” I remind him.

“It must still hurt though?” he asks.

I nod. The infuriating tears continue. “You were supposed to leave me. You should have left me... I
deceived
you.”

Jack sits down on the edge of the bed and I notice he’s wearing a baggy, once black, now faded-grey, Guns ’N Roses tee-shirt and a pair of tatty looking khaki combat trousers which have been roughly cut down into three-quarter length shorts. The many pockets of the onetime combats are bulging with a random collection of household tools. His bare legs poke out from them and, beneath the leggy thatch of almost blonde hair, his skin is shaded pink as if from recent sunshine. He’s looking straight at me, jade eyes full of their familiar determination.

“I am not going to leave you,” he says forcefully.

~~~~~

Constanta

Sergei opened the outer door to the apartment, stepped in, and closed it again. “It’s me,” he called out quietly.

No answer.

He stepped forward carefully toward the door to the main living area and pushed it gently open.

Nagpal was standing in the middle of the room. All of Sergei’s scant possessions were scattered untidily around the man’s feet. He watched as the man finished flicking through one of the textbooks, and then threw it carelessly onto the piles.

“Tell me again about your journey here,” Nagpal growled. “From the start. Miss nothing out. Did you speak with anyone? Did anything strange happen? I need to know anything out of the usual. Anything at all.”

Sergei shrugged. His disenchantment with this man had continued unabated since the careless proclamations regarding his brother’s death, and now this – his few belongings ransacked with no regard or respect for his privacy. “I’ve already told you everything,” he said coldly. “A few casual conversations. All guarded. None that would have betrayed us. The minimum I could manage without blowing my cover by remaining mute.” Except, of course, he hadn’t told Nagpal
everything
– he hadn’t told his leader about his brief fainting attack. As far as Sergei was concerned, it hadn’t happened again since that one time in Poland and, given that he’d puked his guts up not long afterward, he’d written it off as being food poisoning that had triggered it. He certainly wasn’t going to make himself look, even in the slightest part, weak in the presence of this animal.

There was a small black box sitting on the corner of the nearby table which he only noticed because it suddenly bleeped. Amber LEDs started flashing on the box’s lid.

“What’s that?” he asked.

Nagpal was staring at him, face full of fury. “Keep still, Sergei. Don’t move.”

Sergei watched as the man collected the device and walked closer to him.

The bleeping intensified.

“What is it?” he asked again.

Nagpal reached out and roughly pulled the heavy coat he was wearing off his shoulders. Then he violently thrust the young man to one side.

Sergei stumbled amongst his possessions and fell untidily to the floor. Spinning himself over, he watched as the madman kicked and stamped at the coat until, finally, somewhere near the wide collar, his colleague’s Saint Vitus Dance was met with a crunching noise.

The bleeping box fell silent.

Hatred was painted all over Nagpal’s face when he slowly turned around. “They got to you somewhere, boy. They know where we are. They must have bugged the bag too. Sikand is dead because of
you
...”

Suddenly Sergei felt sick. He shook his head. “They can’t have...,” he muttered.

“THEY
HAVE
...!” raged Nagpal and Sergei cowered back at the stabbing force of the words. “Perhaps that’s why your
brother
died too...!”

‘Don’t say that,’ thought Sergei. ‘Please don’t say that...’

Nagpal turned away and took a couple of steps toward the doorway, then stopped and turned back to him. The furious expression was gone. A more familiar bland half-smile flickered across Murat’s thin lips. He had changed back to chillingly rational in the blink of an eye. Except this man could never be described as rational. Sergei knew this now. He wished he’d known it years ago.

Nagpal wandered casually toward him, stooped down, and carefully swept the box over Sergei’s prone form. It remained silent. “It finds bugs,” he explained, voice disturbingly composed. “Not very well. It’s the best I could find round here. It won’t find complex devices. See?” He held the device to a cellphone. “Can’t even find this. I should be grateful that whatever they put in your coat was a cheap old piece of rubbish. Perhaps they expected us to find it? Who knows?”

Sergei carefully pushed himself up into a sitting position.

“We have to go,” Nagpal said, moving toward the apartment door. “Pack your stuff. I have to make a call and find us some new phones. Be ready when I return.”

~~~~~

Skala Kallonis

It doesn’t take long for me to start moving around again. Albeit unsteadily.

I’m sitting in one of a pair of comfortably cushioned wicker chairs which sit on the shady veranda in front of Jack’s little villa. The building is a simple dwelling, with whitewashed cast-concrete walls and red half-moon tiles, and has a multitude of rambling lavender-flowered Wisteria clinging to its cornices. It stands, isolated, in its own grassy patch of field, surrounded by a low drystone wall which Jack continuously fusses over with varying degrees of constructive success. He is busy messing with one of the sections at the moment.

Further down the gentle slope, past his industrious activities, a tranquil blue sky with the merest scattering of fluffy white clouds overarches wild scrubland. Beyond that, I can see the flat calm waters of the Kolpos Kallonis – a huge, almost completely enclosed lagoon which cuts deeply into the island of Lesvos and turns the island into a large inverted ‘C’ shape sitting, as it does, a few short miles off the coast of Turkey.

The only noises come from screeching birds, or clanging goat bells, or the occasional fishing boat chugging lazily out toward the ocean. It’s so quiet that at times you think you’ve gone deaf. Except, of course, when Jack’s busy wall-building.

“Bollocks!” His loud curse cuts through the tranquil balmy air.

I smile to myself as he athletically heaves himself up, and over, the tremulous structure to retrieve whatever it is that he’s just dropped on the other side.

I hoist myself, less athletically, out of the chair and hobble gingerly toward the cool interior. I sense a short break and cup of tea will likely be welcomed by my ally and friend. The last time his industry went unchecked, there was less wall after he finished than before he’d begun.

“Tea break?” I inquire loudly over my shoulder and his fist emerges, thumbs up, above the stony fence-line.

Inside the villa the main room is a comfortable rectangle, furnished with a random collection of traditional furniture, pictures, and mysterious looking brass objects. It extends the width of the building with a small dining-kitchen, surprisingly modern toilet-come-shower room, and the main bedroom all accessible via three unpainted wooden doors which spread along its far wall.

I head for the open kitchen door, and past the room’s small and rarely used open fireplace. I can’t help but glance at its wide mantel as I pass. I know that Jack looks at it too, every time he goes in and out.

On it stand photos. Each one carefully dusted, with their frames meticulously clean. Photos of eight smiling young men. All with close-cropped hair. All looking proud to be wearing their uniforms.

The last photo is a group shot. Nine strapping examples of male physique at its prime. Each of them posing confidently, in muscle-rippled vest tops and thigh-packed shorts, as they stand there in front of a cluster of flapping, dust-blown, camouflaged tents. They’re all wearing wide-brimmed hats and expensive looking sunglasses to guard against what looks like a burningly bright sky.

Jack is the ninth man in this group. The picture is of his section, or squad if you prefer.

He was the one who made it home.

A slightly older version of this ninth grinning face appears in the veranda doorway. He must’ve jogged up the hill to have got here so quickly.

“So, is it ready yet?” the face asks with a familiar cheeky grin.

~~~~~

London

Greere walked back into the office from his latest update briefing with Sentinel. He looked as frustrated as he usually did after such encounters.

Ellard struggled to understand why Greere had such a problem reporting in to his boss. Sentinel seemed to be remaining supportive. If anything, he had appeared to be surprisingly pleased with the outcome in Hungary.

Ellard did however find it curious that a picture of Sikand had conveniently found its way, via some banal news channel, to every mainstream broadcaster worldwide. He suspected that someone, somewhere, possibly Sentinel or one of his mysterious superiors, was subtly making sure that the results of their endeavours were being made public. Even if the means by which they were reaching those ends were not.

“Any updates?” Greere spat at him odiously.

“Still nothing from the borders.” Ellard was spending most of his time monitoring chatter from the Hungarian borders. Some grainy CCTV images of Tin and Mercury, taken during the sprint across the city centre, had been circulating quietly within the various Hungarian Security Agencies. They weren’t particularly brilliant quality but he’d fully expected to hear about one, or both, of them being apprehended. So far they hadn’t – much to Ellard’s mild irritation – and he knew that the longer it went on, the more likely it was that they’d successfully got away. “They’re probably holed up in some village. Unable to move until Merc...”

“They’re long gone,” Greere interrupted him forcefully. “Tin will have jumped straight away, and I’ve said so many times.”