Die Trying (2 page)

‘He’s quite a nut in his own way. Legend has it he killed more than two hundred mafiosi.’ Land frowned. ‘Now, a quick word. My chiefs are very upset at the damage Bald has caused so far.’

‘Scared of any mud sticking?’

‘Not at all. But they feel it would be better if perhaps he wasn’t given any public exposure.’ Land spoke slowly, emphasizing each word like a primary school teacher. ‘If he were arrested, that might bring some unwanted coverage in the news. Not the kind of thing HMG needs at this point in time.’

‘You want him dead?’

‘Only if he actually makes the exchange. If he pulls out, even if it’s the last minute, then we’ll have to think of something else. But if Bald hands them the coke, and gets his prize in exchange, he’ll have gone too far, and you have permission to engage.’

‘To kill, you mean?’

‘Do you have a problem with that?’

Gardner thought about it. Revenge had been on his mind ever since Bald had double-crossed him in Rio. Sure as shit he wouldn’t hesitate to fill Gardner with lead if the chance presented.

‘None at all.’

‘Good man. I want you – the Firm wants you – to do whatever it takes.’

Land removed a cream envelope from the breast pocket of his shirt. Gardner wondered how an agent who spent his life living out of suitcases managed to keep his shirts and jackets so neatly ironed. Like the guy was a fucking walking steam press.

The envelope was unsealed. A flick of the thumb and forefinger and it popped open. Inside: ticket to Belgrade, one way; new passport, name of Gary Dutch; American Express, black, same name; pay-as-you-go mobile. He could be getting ready for his stag weekend.

‘You do right by us on this one, Joseph, and I can personally assure you that it will be worth your while.’

‘Let’s just get it over with.’

Land flicked his lights. The police car moved on and two minutes later the Mercedes exited the stadium lot. As it dropped Gardner at the airport, the same bobby in a fancy uniform was mincing about outside.

Gardner climbed out of the car.

‘When you get to Belgrade, call me. There’s a local contact who’ll sort you out,’ said Land, then fucked off.

Gardner was left standing there, wondering if he hadn’t just made the worst decision of his life.

Yakutsk, Russia. 1917 hours.

You can always spot a first-timer, thought Aleksandr Nikolai Sotov as he surveyed the private military airfield at Sobransk, some twenty kilometres south of Yakutsk, in north-east Siberia. However tough a man’s constitution, however thick his skin or thin his blood, nothing could prepare him for the cold.

Sotov recognized straight away the man climbing down the steps from the plane. The bug eyes, the bent nose. The swollen cheeks. As if his head had been compressed in a vice.

The man looked lost. The old saying of the English came to mind: like a rabbit caught in the headlights. Only you didn’t get rabbits in Siberia. Not in conditions up to minus fifty.

Sotov exited the black Lexus and approached the runway. The cold pierced his skin like salt in an open wound.

‘Maxim, Maxim, my good friend! So glad you could make it.’

‘What a miserable journey,’ replied Maxim Ledinsky, the chief of the Military Counterintelligence Directorate of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB). ‘The plane was held up for two hours at Moscow. Then we had the worst turbulence I’ve ever experienced. In the old days we would report back and have the pilot killed,’ he said, slitting his throat and winking in a manner which suggested to Sotov that he was only half-joking.

‘You are here now.’

‘And prepared!’ waving to his clothes. Padded jeans, Gore-Tex boots, woolly scarf, hat, gloves and winter coat. Concealing underneath, Sotov was certain, several layers of thermal garments.

‘That’s very good, Maxim. But please, take off your glasses.’

Ledinsky blinked his confusion.

‘In this weather the metal will stick to your skin and when you remove them you’ll tear off chunks of flesh.’

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Ledinsky said, fumbling at the frames with his heavily gloved hands.

‘And the package?’

‘In the back of her,’ said Ledinsky, thumbing the Hercules.

‘Show me,’ Sotov said.

Ledinsky grumbled as he escorted Sotov around to the rear of the aircraft. The turbines whirled out streams of air so fast and so cold that to look directly ahead was like being jabbed in the eyes with cocktail sticks.

The ramp lowered. Sotov moved forward. The Herc’s cargo area was a tangle of cables and ropes. Crates were stacked to the rear. Emergency lights flashed.

‘Where is it?’

‘There,’ Ledinsky signalled to a wooden crate marked with the Red Cross symbol. The crate was a metre wide and about the same high.

‘Open it,’ Sotov said.

‘I can’t feel my fingers,’ Ledinsky protested.

‘Maxim, I need to see it.’

Ledinsky hollered at the crew. Two men in overalls scaled the ramp and used the stocks of their AK-47s to prise open the lid. It took them three tries before the crate began to split open.

‘Quickly, my nose hurts,’ Ledinsky urged them.

‘Be patient,’ he was told.

Sotov peered into the crate. It doesn’t look like much, he thought. No. It really seems like hardly anything at all. A lot of fuss for something so – he reached for the right word –ordinary. Yes, that was it.

‘You sure this is everything, Maxim?’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘OK, I’m satisfied. Now we can leave.’

Sotov marched towards the Lexus, full of renewed vigour. Only Ledinsky’s constant bitching threatened to bring him down from his high. ‘Shit, this weather. They warned me in Moscow, but I didn’t think it would be this bad. I mean… I don’t know how you people survive.’

You people, Sotov thought. His parents had been part of the migration from the west, which is why he stood out from the native Siberians. Where they had dark features and ruddy cheeks, Sotov sported blue eyes, sandblasted hair and pale skin.

‘It’s warmer in the car,’ he said.

‘Yes?’

‘Well, perhaps only minus ten.’ Sotov was smiling to himself.

His chauffeur, Denis Popov, six-two with a long, thin neck and silver hair the colour of a knife edge, manoeuvred around the Lexus and opened a door for Ledinsky. The Lexus was just one of a fleet of luxury cars. Sotov’s official title was the CEO of Russia’s leading diamond-mining outfit, Strelka Corporation. But Sotov was also
mafya
.

The engine was already running when Sotov and Ledinsky took their seats in the back of the Lexus.

‘I take it you’ve covered your tracks?’ said Sotov.

‘Of course,’ Ledinsky replied. ‘I’m taking a big risk too, you know. If this thing goes missing—’

‘It won’t.’

Sotov pointed to a black truck reversing towards the Herc’s ramp. Strelka guards stood either side of the truck. Overhead one of the Sikorsky helicopters belonging to Sotov’s private fleet patrolled the surrounding area.

‘I didn’t realize you had so many men,’ said Ledinsky.

‘Here, in Yakutsk, I’m the only law there is. The people around here joke that when Aleksandr Sotov shrugs, the whole of Siberia shakes.’

‘How many—?’

‘Men in my force? I forget the exact number. Eight thousand? Enough to get things done.’

‘What kind of—?’

‘Vodka?’ Sotov produced a bottle of Russian Standard and two shot glasses from a fold-away cabinet.

Ledinsky eyed the bottle suspiciously. ‘I don’t drink.’

‘Nonsense! A man cannot do business in Yakutsk without vodka warming his belly.’

Sotov poured Ledinsky a generous shot. Knocked back his own and
aaahed
.

Popov steered the Lexus out on to the highway. The icy road was flecked with black spots: frozen corpses of the millions of midges and mosquitoes that had swarmed over Yakutsk in the brief summer respite. Only three weeks ago temperatures had been a mild fifteen degrees. Seemed like history now.

‘What about my payment?’ said Ledinsky, looking down at his still-full glass.

‘I’ve decided to kill you instead.’

Ledinsky froze.

‘I’m joking, Maxim. We’re on our way to collect it now.’

They drove through what an outsider would have mistaken for a ghost town. No cars were on the roads, just a few trucks shipping in vital supplies of petrol and food. Streets devoid of people. Only the fish market showed any signs of activity. It was where, decades earlier, Sotov had set up his first business, crushing his competitors by poisoning their catches with diesel fuel.

The Lexus slowed to fifty kilometres and hour an hour as they headed north-west, Yakutsk in the rear-view mirror, the banks of the River Lena to their right. Now and then the car jumped and sank from the holes in the road.

Heading west, they passed a radar installation and a pyramid-roofed church. The chauffeur turned on to a gravel path and, half a kilometre down, stopped at a checkpoint. An imposing yellow sign warned that intruders would be shot. Guards, armed with A-91M bullpup assault rifles and with the company’s Siberian husky logo sewn to their lapels, peered inside and nodded sombrely at Sotov. The gates opened; the guards waved them through.

The road continued for another couple of kilometres until it reached the mouth of a low cave. Foot patrols with sniffer dogs cleared the Lexus to proceed. At the cave’s mouth four guards stood to attention, two on each side of a solid-lead vault door.

Golden statues of snow leopards were perched on the pillars either side of the door. Sotov exited the Lexus and took a keycard from his pocket. One of the guards also removed a keycard. They inserted their cards simultaneously into their slots. A series of clicks followed, then the door cranked open.

‘Come I have something to show you,’ said Sotov.

Ledinsky hesitated. ‘What’s inside?’

‘Why, your reward.’

‘Good. And please, let’s make it quick,’ Ledinsky said, the blood draining from his face. ‘I’m a busy man.’

‘Of course.’

The cave was cool and dark. Ledinsky took off his hat to reveal a comb-over. Steam wafted from his bald patch like cigar smoke. Another guard directed them towards a lift. They entered. The guard slammed the cage door shut, and the lift rattled as it descended three hundred feet below the surface. Ledinsky wiped sweat from his pate.

‘I was not aware you had another facility.’

‘We needed somewhere to store a few things.’

‘What things?’

‘Secrets, Maxim. Secrets.’

The lift screeched to a halt. Brilliant light flooded the black of the shaft. A guard cranked the door open. Sotov gestured for Ledinsky to exit first. The FSB chief scrunched up his eyes, as if staring directly at the sun. Sotov handed him a pair of sunglasses.

‘We’re in the only place in Siberia where a man needs these,’ he grinned.

Ledinsky’s jaw slackened.

‘In Yakutsk we like to say, there’s a lake or river for every person who lives here,’ Sotov said. ‘But the truth is that we have more diamonds than people. Here, comrade, diamonds are as common as snowflakes.’

‘It’s incredible… I’ve never seen—’

‘Quite a sight, isn’t it?’

They were standing in a dome-shaped underground mine. Searchlights fired powerful blue rays at the ceiling, fifty feet above. Sotov lowered his eyes to the ground, to an area the size of six football pitches. Filled with mountains of polished diamonds.

Ledinsky picked up a handful. Each gleaming stone hypnotized him. He managed to peel his eyes away. Looked quizzically at Sotov.

‘These must be worth billions.’

Sotov shrugged.

‘But… why are you hiding them underground?’

The
mafya
man kneeled beside a small mound of diamonds. A stone the size of his fist rested on top. Four times as large as the Cullinan diamond in the English Crown Jewels, the rock in front of him, he reckoned, was the largest rough diamond in the world. And it was kept underground, gathering dust.

‘Some things are more valuable when they are not seen,’ he said.

‘You’re not making any sense.’

‘Do you know that one diamond merchant controls fifty per cent of the global market? That’s an impressive figure, no? It means they have the power to raise the price of rough diamonds or lower it, however they see fit.’

Ledinsky frowned.

‘They say diamonds are rare,’ Sotov continued. ‘It’s a myth. We keep the stones down here, in the mine, because it benefits this particular merchant to have fewer organic diamonds on the market. They pay us
not
to supply them. It works for both of us. They keep the price of diamonds artificially high, and we get paid for doing nothing.’

‘That’s preposterous.’

Sotov rose to his feet. He scooped up the fist-sized diamond and offered it to Ledinsky.