December (9 page)

Sergey was ushered quietly into Krymov’s office in the Kremlin.

Even though it was Saturday evening, the President was still hard at work. Being unable to let go was all part of his instability.

He followed the classic dictator-kitsch style of having a huge office with his desk set at the far end of it to intimidate anyone who had to take the long walk towards him.

Although, to be fair, this desk did have history. His particular office lay on the top floor of the Senate House, a triangular building around a central courtyard, along the eastern wall of the Kremlin, with Lenin’s Mausoleum in Red Square just over the great outer wall to the east of it.

It had been the office of the Russian head of state since 1918 so the other occupants had included Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernyenko, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin and Medvedev.

Now Krymov sat at his huge desk with a green-shaded lamp illuminating the wall of paperwork that he liked to hide behind. It was ten o’clock at night and he was hunched over the desk, pen in one hand, signing documents. He looked up and glowered at Sergey like an angry pig.

Sergey walked nonchalantly across the deep pile carpet
towards him, wearing his crumpled suit and tie, his hair askew and his diamond earring glinting in the low lights.

Krymov wagged his finger at him threateningly.

‘Shaposhnikov, what’s this I hear about you meeting up with a man called Devereux in London?’

Sergey froze halfway across the carpet.

‘You said he was a geologist you were flying out to Krasnokamensk but Gorsky has checked him out and tells me he is a well-known British mercenary. What’s going on?’ he barked. ‘If you don’t want to smell, then don’t touch shit!’

Behind him stood Major Batyuk, the head of Echelon 25, Krymov’s élite bodyguard unit. A tall, balding man with a hardened face, wearing a tight-fitting uniform, he had had his right ear sliced off years ago in a fight and the angry little stump of red cartilage stuck out of the side of his head, giving him a weird, lopsided look.

The major clenched his fists at his side, knowing that this was going to be another of those sessions when some poor subordinate was dragged into the office and shredded. Krymov would probe them to start off with; they would then be terrified, which encouraged him to bully them more so the whole thing would end with the President in a screaming fit and Batyuk having to beat someone senseless and then drag their battered body out of the office. He looked at Sergey now, waiting for him to sweat and start pleading for his life.

Sergey swaggered forward right up to the desk, looking straight at Krymov.

‘I’ve hired him to go hunting elephants, comrade.’

Krymov sat up and frowned. ‘Hunting elephants? What shit are you coming out with now, Shaposhnikov?’ he shouted, unsure whether to be angry or confused.

‘Yes, Devereux’s worked in Africa a lot. He’s an expert tracker to help me track down the Russian elephant.’

‘What? The Russian elephant! Shaposhnikov, you’re a head-fucker!’

‘Ah! Comrade President, you know me.’ Sergey waved a hand.

The overly familiar tone made Major Batyuk grind his teeth.

‘Yes, you know, the Russian elephant. It has a trunk and two ears. Yes, like this, you see, it has one ear on one side of its head,’ Sergey paused and pulled out the lining of his left-hand trouser pocket, ‘and one ear on the other side of its head.’ He pulled out the lining of his right-hand trouser pocket. ‘And then it has a trunk. Yes, a trunk, like this.’ Sergey paused again.

Krymov stared at him, not comprehending what was happening.

Sergey then unzipped his trousers.

Major Batyuk could not believe it. He knew that Shaposhnikov was a joker, but to come out with this in the face of an accusation of treason by the President was too much. He was going to have to shoot this guy here and now.

Sergey pulled his shirt tail out through his fly and started waving it around and laughing manically.

Krymov gave a weird sound, halfway between a scream and a wheeze. His face went bright red and he creased up, bent over his desk and banged it with his fist.

‘Shaposhnikov!’ he wheezed. ‘I embrace you!’ Tears of laughter streamed down his face. ‘Russian elephant!’ He staggered round the desk and embraced Sergey, both of them laughing hysterically now. ‘Russian elephant!’

Krymov got hold of Sergey’s shirt tail and pulled him around the office. ‘Off to the circus!’ he shouted, making trumpeting noises.

They pranced around Stalin’s office until they collapsed on a pair of chairs to one side.

‘Shaposhnikov, you make me laugh!’ Krymov eventually wheezed. He looked with loathing at the pile of work on his desk. ‘This job does my head in, I tell you. But you make me laugh. Come on! Batyuk, get the car! Fuck work! Let’s go and drink vodka!’

The heavily armoured black Zil limousine swept west along Kutuzovskiy Prospekt. Using the central lane in the road reserved for government vehicles they were able to maintain a steady eighty miles an hour despite the snowy conditions.

The two Russian tricolours fluttered on its bonnet, another Zil followed behind with the nuclear launch codes and two large Ural military vehicles travelled in front and behind, loaded with Major Batyuk and two squads of heavily armed Echelon 25 troops.

In the back of the Zil, Sergey and Krymov sat facing each other, reclining in the black leather seats with their feet stretched out in front of them. They bantered and picked at a plate of pickled fish, mushrooms, salamis and other delicacies, occasionally breaking off to toast each other with shots of vodka when a good idea came to mind.

Krymov held up a pickled mushroom. ‘That’s the problem with the West, you know. Whenever I go there I can never get a good pickled mushroom.’

Sergey looked at him blankly. It wasn’t one of the main issues he faced in London. He nodded sagely, though. ‘Yes, that is the legacy of capitalism. You see,’ he pointed a finger knowingly at the President, ‘under capitalism, man exploits man.’ He paused and they both nodded wisely. ‘But under communism,’ Sergey continued, ‘it was the other way round.’

Krymov continued nodding and looked out of the tinted window. He then glanced back at Sergey, who was grinning
at him. Krymov wheezed with laughter and slapped his leg. ‘The other way round! Ah! Shaposhnikov!’

They continued eating, drinking and bantering and the MKAD, Moscow’s main ring road, shot past unnoticed behind the black tinted glass.

After a while Sergey shouted, ‘Here’s to those British fuckers, to keep ’em warm tonight!’

‘Yes! Fuck ’em! Do ’em good to get the cold up ’em!’

Soon they were heading down the long drive of Novo-Ogaryovo, the country estate that Krymov had taken over from Putin.

The President’s official residence was an imposing nineteenth-century classical house set amidst snow-covered pine woods. Ice and gravel crunched as the convoy drew up outside the colonnaded porch. Golden light shone from carefully polished lanterns, and soldiers and uniformed servants stood at attention lining the steps up to the grand front door.

The convoy swept up and Krymov’s limousine parked neatly in front of the steps. The Echelon 25 troops debussed and took up positions around the convoy to cover the President’s movement up the steps.

There was a long pause as they all waited in the cold. After two minutes nothing had happened and eyes darted to and fro across the lines of attendants. Had something happened to His Excellency? Major Batyuk walked up to the Zil, anxiously trying to see in through the tinted glass.

The door burst open and Krymov fell out of the limo, laughing. Guards darted forward anxiously and then backed off. He rolled over in the snow and lay on his back shouting: ‘The British are a bunch of pussies! Bunch of pussies!’

Sergey staggered out of the car, tripped over Krymov’s outstretched foot and fell face down next to him. He shouted in anger and thrashed around trying to get the snow off his face.

Krymov hooted with laughter. He crawled over to him on his hands and knees and then staggered to his feet and helped Sergey up.

‘Come on, comrade! You see, this is what living in Britain does to you! You can’t take your vodka!’

Servants came forward to help but Krymov waved them away angrily and continued supporting Sergey on his shoulder up the steps.

Once inside they lurched down a series of long corridors to the banya complex overlooking the gardens at the back of the house. Saunas are to Russian male culture what the pub is in Britain: a place for men to be together and talk in private. Krymov’s major-domo hurried along nervously behind them, fearing his boss’s unpredictability in these sessions.

The President entered the changing room first, clapped his hands and ordered more vodka and food before stripping off his overcoat and suit and dumping them on the floor. The major-domo scurried about picking them up.

Sergey followed his example until both were stark naked facing each other. Krymov’s body sagged with age: the bags under his eyes, and his flabby male breasts. His stomach hung down over his crotch and his skinny legs stuck out under the mass. Sergey was also rotund but slightly better built; his hair looked particularly dishevelled and ridiculous after his fall in the snow. The only thing he was wearing now was his diamond earring.

Krymov ignored the servant, thrust his chest out and looked Sergey straight in the eye. A moment of understanding passed between them before Krymov flung open the sauna door and they both strode into its swirling steam.

Krymov’s sweating face leered up close to Sergey’s.

Sergey could see that the pores in the President’s vodka-raddled skin had opened up like moon craters. He was out of breath and his eyes were crinkled up with pleasure.

Sergey was retelling a scene from
Peculiarities of the National Hunt
—a cult Russian comedy film—in which the pilot of a nuclear bomber is trying to explain to his squadron leader why he has a smuggled cow strapped into the bomb bay of his aircraft.

‘We’ve been infiltrated!’ shouted Sergey with just the right note of defensive indignation in his voice.

Krymov screamed with laughter and fell off the bench that he was sitting on. Sergey lay back on his bench, snorting weakly with laughter. Both were exhausted by their humour-making and silence settled on the banya for a minute.

Eventually Krymov clambered off the floor, poured himself another shot of vodka and stretched his sweaty, white, flabby body out, face down on his front on his bench, with a joyful sigh.

The two lay still for a while before Krymov muttered, his chin tucked down by his shoulder, ‘Come and whip me.’

Sergey heaved himself to his feet, pulled a bunch of birch twigs from a holder on the wall and began expertly to flutter them rapidly over Krymov’s back, starting at his shoulders, drawing the blood to the surface and cooling it at the same time with the airflow. Krymov groaned at the sensation.

‘Shaposhnikov, you are good to me,’ the President muttered, incapacitated with pleasure.

There was a pause as Sergey continued his work; brow furrowed with concentration.

Krymov continued, ‘Everyone needs someone close to them.’

Krymov’s industrially proportioned wife was known as
‘Mrs Stale Bread’. They slept in separate beds and hardly said a word to each other. He didn’t seem to need intimacy and no one expected it from him, so Sergey’s eyes flicked up in surprise from his work when the President returned to the subject in a slurred voice.

‘It does get to me, you know, reviving Russia…there’s so much to do…she needs such a great big kick up the arse…get her going, up there again as a superpower.’

Sergey moved this gentle flagellation down past Krymov’s shoulders, wondering where his train of thought was going. He was so absorbed in the challenge of misleading Krymov that it came as a distasteful shock when he really did open up, as if he was breaking the rules of the game.

‘Hmm, they do say that everyone needs someone to trust…but you see, you have to be careful who you trust.’ Krymov pulled his chin away from his shoulder and rested his head on his hands so he could speak freely. Sergey continued his work.

‘You see, I always think about Ivan the Terrible…’ Sergey knew Krymov admired him, ‘…how he was betrayed by Prince Kurbsky.’

Sergey tensed at the mention of his name. Kurbsky was the most famous traitor in Russian history, who had abandoned the Tsar and run away abroad to join the hated Polish enemies of the Motherland.

‘His most trusted adviser!’ continued Krymov, twisting round and resting on an elbow so he could look Sergey in the eye.

Sergey stopped flapping his twigs and stood looking down on Krymov, who became more animated as the idea gripped him.

‘His closest adviser! A man as close as this!’ He gestured to Sergey standing next to him. ‘A traitor!’ He sat up and
swung his legs round onto the floor, staring accusingly at Sergey.

The sudden mood swing caught Sergey off guard. Was Krymov being serious? Was this an elaborate setup?

What he was saying was just too close to reality to be coincidence. Was this why Krymov had hauled him all the way back to Moscow: to spring this trap on him?

Sergey’s normal bubble of bravado was punctured by the lance-like look of suspicion that Krymov now shot at him. He looked helplessly back like a boy caught with his hand in the sweet jar.

‘Imagine! What a motherfucker!’ Krymov stood up, outraged by Kurbsky’s betrayal of trust.

Sergey felt suddenly washed out by the irony of what was happening and longed to get away.

Krymov looked at his defenceless stare and took it as helpless agreement with his sentiment. He was overcome with emotion.

‘I could not wish for a better friend than you, Shaposhnikov! You are the embodiment of
Russkaya dusha
! Of real trustworthiness!’ He opened his arms and, despite their nakedness, embraced Sergey with a bear hug.

Sergey returned it, not quite believing what was happening.

‘Look, after this job you’ll never have to work again!’

Alex opened both hands in a gesture inviting Colin Thwaites to think about the two million pounds that he stood to gain from the operation.

‘Yeah, you’re dead right, you’ll never work again—because you’ll be
fooking
dead, that’s why!’ said Colin emphatically in his harsh Lancashire accent.

Alex was struggling to make headway against a torrent of Northern scorn being poured on his bold new idea.

He was beginning to get exasperated; it was later the same day that he had met Sergey in the pub. He needed Col for the op; there wasn’t anyone else he trusted as much to make the raid work as this tough former Para. He began to regret his confidence in front of Sergey about how quickly he could get his team together. It was true that they were assembling in London but he had not yet explained to them the details of the job—his emails had been very brief for security reasons—so as yet they had not fully signed up to it.

The two men were in Alex’s living room in Fulham. Colin had made it down from Blackburn on one of the few trains that were still running and was now sitting on a sofa facing Alex.

He looked the epitome of a Northern hard man: short but with a strong, wiry build, tattoos of Blackburn Rovers on his right forearm and the Parachute Regiment on his left. He was in his mid-forties, balding on top, with grey hair shaved down to bristles, a coarse-boned face with gimlet eyes, small moustache stained brown from nicotine, and lean lines stretched down his cheeks from a fanatical exercise habit. He was an experienced marathon runner: ‘Keeps yer fit, like—it’s the only time I’m not fagging, yer know.’

He had worked with Alex through all his operations in Africa. Sharp, tough and a stickler for military professionalism, he was the mainstay of the team that Alex headed. He had been born on a council estate in Blackburn with a restless natural intellect that failed to achieve anything at school. Aged sixteen he was drifting into a life of glue sniffing and petty crime, but had signed up for 2 Para with a mate one day. They had been watching
The Professionals
the night before and knew that the lead hard man, whom they worshipped, was a TA Para.

As with many wastrels before him, the strictures of army discipline had provided the channel to focus his energies. He had seen action in Northern Ireland and Bosnia, had risen to sergeant major in the Pathfinders, the Para’s élite reconnaissance unit, and had done stints all over the world training and advising Special Forces.

What he lacked in size he made up for with aggressive energy. Pithy comments and an endless stream of poor-taste jokes were delivered in his unattractive nasal accent.

His blunt nature meant he couldn’t help but express his doubts now about the outline of the task facing them.

‘OK, right, so let me get this straight. We rock up at this prison camp in Siberia or whatever and they say: “Yer, that’s your bloke over there.”’ He mimicked casually pointing
someone out. ‘I mean, they don’t shoot ’im or nowt. So we just get ’im and then booger off.
Then
we get on a plane to Moscow—and they don’t shoot us down on the way, like—we land up in the middle of a fooking great revolution, and then just walk off, you know, come home, put our feet up and watch the telly, like?’ He held his hands up and cocked his head on one side, looking at Alex in disbelief. ‘I mean, it’s bollocks, int’e?’

It was a testament to the trusting relationship between the two men that Colin could be so scathing to a superior officer.

The two were certainly an unlikely pairing. Public school officers from posh cavalry regiments were not usually respected by hardened former Paras; ‘Ruperts’ was the standard dismissive name they used for them.

Alex looked at him. Despite the huge social gulf between them, they shared a great deal of common ground that had allowed them to get through many differences of opinion.

They were both exiles from their social groups, who felt trapped by the conventions that they were supposed to observe and loved the adventure of escaping from them and discovering new things.

Colin hated the parochialism of people on his home council estate and had gone to great lengths to get away from it and broaden his worldview. He had learned to speak good French (with a heavy Lancashire accent) in order to explore West Africa and had become a huge fan of its music, travelling around to see bands play when he was on leave.

Similarly, Alex was supposed to be a county gentleman, but found the mental straitjacket that came with the class stereotype unbearable; he actually preferred the outspoken honesty of the Northern ex-Para.

He knew that Col’s reaction to what he had proposed was
a fair one and that such plain speaking had saved him from some bad decisions in the past. He couldn’t deny that the mission was risky and realised that it was pointless trying to reassure Colin that it would all be all right and everyone would come home safely, because it probably wouldn’t be and some of them would almost certainly die.

Alex knew that a change of tack was needed.

‘OK, you’re right.’ He held his hands up in acknowledgement. ‘It’s not your average job. Your average job would be the sort of thing we’ve being doing for years now in Africa. So, no, it’s not another training mission; it’s not another mine-clearance job, another close-protection job.’

He knew how much Col hated the latter task, nursemaiding arrogant African businessmen as they went around fleecing people. He sensed that goading Colin into the mission was the way forward because they both felt their lives were entering the long, slow glide path to mediocrity. Neither had really made it, and Alex knew that Col still shared his desire to get out there and face the challenges that made him feel alive, that stopped him feeling like he was living in the body of someone who had fallen asleep.

He was, therefore, able to turn the tables on Colin and continue with mounting fury: ‘So, no, it’s not just
another
job, it will be
fucking
risky and, yes, we probably will all get killed, but actually I don’t give a
fuck
!
This
is the big one.’ He jabbed an index finger at Col. ‘
This
is where we do get to save the
fucking
country! And if that’s too much of a problem for you then I’ll just have to fucking well do it on my own!’ He stared at Col, challenging him to meet his gaze.

Col now had the uphill task of justifying his scepticism. With the boot on the other foot, he sat looking at the floor, rubbing his chin as Alex continued to glower at him.

Alex sensed he had won and changed tack again to give Col a face-saving way to climb down from his position.

He continued, the beginnings of laughter now softening his tone, ‘I mean, if you don’t want to then that’s fine. I’ll come and visit you in the care home and change your colostomy bag for you if you want.’ He broke out into a sardonic guffaw, knowing that this was Colin’s secret horror: of not being self-reliant, of dying a slow and pitiful death, and that he would prefer any sort of active, violent end to that.

Col accepted he had lost. ‘Ah, fook off!’ He tossed his head in disgust and then grinned at Alex knowingly. ‘I tell you what, mate. I’m not a fooking granddad yet. How old’s my new bird then, eh?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Twenty-seven, mate! Fooking tits like this.’ He held both hands out in front of him. Alex roared with laughter.

Col grinned and then shrugged. ‘Don’t know what the fook she sees in me, though. I’m old enough to be her dad.’ He looked baffled. Despite two divorces and numerous girlfriends, he never did understand why women liked his ferocious energy, and had always run away from them when they began to wrap their soft tentacles around him.

‘She took me to Ikea the other day, and I were sitting on this sofa thinking to meself, what the bollocks am I doing here?’

Alex shrugged; he had never understood women either and was the last to feel he could offer another man advice on the subject. There had been enough of them over the years and they generally fell into two categories. When he was a young man there had been the good-looking county girls where the sheer physical urgency had shut out the fact that he couldn’t stand their company. They had been raised scrupulously to
avoid discussing any controversial subject—politics, religion, even artistic preference in films, books—everything that his frustrated mind wanted to spend time exploring.

After he had realised that he could live without the sex, he had put a lot of effort into tracking down girls that he found interesting. With those few that he had then got close to, he was disturbed to find that something held him back. Although he could not articulate it, his greatest fear was that he might turn into his father. They both had the same good looks that seemed fatal to women but his philandering father had used them to crush and humiliate anyone who showed affection for him. The first time he beat his wife up was on their wedding night.

Alex had grown up with this intermittent domestic violence and somehow the image of his mother’s bruised and tearful face had always overlaid that of his girlfriends in his thoughts. The fear that he might do the same had driven him to break off relationships before they even got started.

However, that was the past. Right now, all he cared about was that Col was onboard so he just laughed and said ruefully, ‘Well, at least you’re getting
some
fucking action.’