Fire Hawk (53 page)

Rybkin switched off the machine.

‘So now you know.' He flinched as fresh pain stabbed through his shoulder. ‘Chrissie belonged to Voronin, since a year ago when you and she were in Kiev. The tattoo is Voronin's way with women. When they take his money they have to wear it. Like a receipt. She wouldn't have it at first, but she agreed back in June, when she got wind there was another fifty grand on offer.'

June. The month in which she'd ended their relationship. Ended it so she wouldn't have to explain to him where the tattoo came from.

Sam forced himself to his feet, clutching the Skorpion in his left hand. He couldn't breathe in this place. Still couldn't grasp what Chrissie had done to him.

‘It was
she
who told you I was being assigned to Baghdad?' he heard himself ask.

‘Yes.'

‘And then you told Naif Hamdan, so he could set me up.'

‘Yes.'

‘And she also told you where I live in London, so that Hamdan knew where to come when he tried to kill me?'

Rybkin sighed. ‘I didn't know he planned to kill you.'

Another lie, thought Sam. The habit of a lifetime. He pressed the eject button on the VCR and pulled out the tape.

‘Get me out of here, arsehole,' he grunted. He stuffed the tape into the waistband of his trousers.

Why had she done it? For the money? So she could have that goddamned gingerbread cottage by the river? Have the new BMW Clare had told him about? She'd risked his life for
that
?

He remembered that tiny bedroom in Amman, her concern for him after his release from Iraq. That loving concern that he now knew had one purpose and one purpose only, to learn if he'd tumbled to the fact that it was
she
who'd betrayed him. He remembered too her questions about the anthrax. Not idle questions as they'd seemed at the time, but to discover how much of the plan had been blown.

‘Move,' he snapped, pointing the Skorpion at Rybkin's stomach. ‘Get me out the way I came in.'

Rybkin caught his breath. ‘I need to go to hospital,' he gulped. ‘And Sasha.' Sam glanced at the man on the floor. No sign of breathing. Probably too late for him.

‘Move it!'

The passageway was empty and eerily quiet. Sam pushed the Ukrainian towards the heavy steel door.

‘Open it and then get me into the cellar with the lockers.'

Rybkin spun the heavy handle that withdrew the bolts
and the door swung back. They passed through and the door closed shut behind them. Sam clicked on the torch.

He was having to force himself to think ahead, to put behind him what he'd just seen and done. To turn Chrissie into history. A history that should never have happened.

If this had been a sane country he would have taken Rybkin at gunpoint to the police, but this was Ukraine and Rybkin would have friends in the Militsia. Friends who could block Sam's escape from the country. And escaping was what he had to do – and fast.

Suddenly he thought of a way.

His torch lit up the tunnel until their path was blocked by the plain metal back of the fake storage cabinet.

‘Open it.'

Rybkin was too weak to prevaricate. He reached with his left hand to a patch of wall above the opening and, pressing on some invisible switch, the metal panel swung back.

‘This is where we say goodbye, Viktor,' Sam growled, stepping through the gap. ‘I should kill you too, but I have a sneaking feeling Mr Voronin will soon do the job for me.'

Rybkin scowled. The cabinet swung shut with Rybkin still behind it in the pitch black of the tunnel.

‘Don't get lost, now,' Sam chided.

He shone the torch round the cellar to check he was alone, then he removed the magazine from the Skorpion and pocketed it. He hid the machine pistol on top of one of the cabinets. With the PSM weighing heavily in his other trouser pocket, he moved up the steps into the courtyard, then on towards the lights of the town.

When he reached the Prymorsky boulevard the crowd had dwindled to a handful of lovers and a scattering of sailors heading back to the port. As he began to make his way down the broad sweep of the Potemkin steps, he
heard not far off the wail of a police siren – and it was getting closer.

He panicked and began to run. Rybkin had had five minutes. Enough time to get onto his pals.

Two hundred steps, he remembered Oksana saying. Two hundred chances to miss his footing. As his feet hammered down them, his mind was spinning again. There was something not right. Something wrong with what he'd been told, something that didn't add up.

How
could
Chrissie have known? How could she
possibly
have known that he was being assigned to Baghdad – unless her husband had told her? Martin Kessler giving her information that was top secret. Had Kessler been bought too? A rotten apple in the hierarchy of SIS? Was this the smell he'd wanted Sam to conceal?

He reached the last flight of steps. Suddenly he stopped. There was a road to cross to reach the entrance of the port, and parked in the middle of it was a police car. Beside him a trio of sailors was zigzagging down the last of the steps, clinging to one another for support. They were singing.

‘. . . never walk alone . . .'

Sam slung an arm round the one on the end and began to sing with them.

‘Eh . . . 'oo are you, wack?'

‘What a night, eh?' Sam muttered. ‘Fucking wiped out, I am.'

They reached the road and began to cross, the police car just feet away.

‘Yeah. But 'oo are you? Youse not with us.'

‘Cracking talent, eh? Odessa girls, w'hay!' Sam turned his face away from the Militsia car.

‘The one I 'ad wasn't,' the sailor lamented. ‘Ugly as a fuckin' robber's dog.'

‘
Never walk alone
. . .' Sam howled.

On the far pavement they began lurching up the ramp
to the port, two armed policemen looking over them as they passed, their eyes weary from a night of watching drunks.

‘What ship you from?' the sailor asked.

‘Yours.'

‘No you're not. ‘Ere,' he shouted, turning to his mates. ‘This bloke's not from the
Devonshire,
is he?'

‘Give it a rest, mate,' Sam growled, trying to hurry them. ‘I'm a techie, sent out from UK to fix the radar.'

‘Oh, right.'

A footbridge led down to the inner harbour where the NATO warships were berthed. Sam let go of his new friends, now they were in sight of the ship. The sailors unlinked their arms and fell silent, trying to appear sober. Sam watched as they stomped up the gangway and saluted the officer checking names against a crew list. Then he followed.

‘Sorry, sir, you can't come on here,' the lieutenant declared, putting a hand on Sam's chest.

Sam took in a deep breath.

‘My name is Lieutenant Commander Packer. I work for British intelligence. I need to speak with your captain immediately.'

THE SEA KING
helicopter dipped its whirling tail rotor and descended like a predator onto the demarcated landing area at Istanbul's Atatürk airport. Sam twisted his helmeted head against the hard webbing seat back in the cramped interior, straining to see out of the small, spray-smeared window to his left. He was relieved at having escaped from Odessa, very relieved. But what he'd seen and done in the last few hours had left him stunned.

His arrival on the brow of the British warship last night had caused more ructions than he'd expected. He'd imagined there'd be
somebody
among the ship's seventeen officers who would know him from years back – the Navy was like an extended family – but he'd been out of luck. Most were of the next generation to him, well under thirty years of age, and four of the officers were women.

At first the captain hadn't believed his story of working for SIS, depriving him of his pistol and keeping him under guard in the wardroom while checks were made through the ship's secure satellite link with the Ministry of Defence. It was four in the morning before the dust had settled and a circuit was patched through to the duty officer at Vauxhall Cross.

This morning HMS
Devonshire
had sailed from
Odessa with the rest of the NATO flotilla at six a.m. The joint exercise with the Ukrainians was over. Once the frigate was well clear of the harbour, Sam had made his way to the quarterdeck at the stern and stood beside the sonar winch, holding Figgis's PSM pistol in his fist. He'd found it hard to grasp the fact that he'd actually used this gun. Killed one man, injured another, possibly fatally. Without the gun he himself would be dead by now, of that he was certain. But he didn't need it any longer, and it would be best for him and for Gerald Figgis if it were never found. He'd tossed the weapon into the scar of foam the
Devonshire
was carving into the smooth grey surface of the Black Sea.

Then, for several minutes, he'd remained there by the rail, clutching the cassette of Dima Grimov's horrific home video. It was evidence. The only proof that existed of Chrissie's treachery. Yet what it contained was vile, scenes more obscene than the worst pornography. Above all it had shown a Chrissie he'd never known, one that he wanted no one else to see. With a wide swing of his arm he'd sent the tape spinning into the foam.

Two hours later, well beyond Ukraine's territorial waters, HMS
Devonshire
's captain had obtained clearance for her helicopter to fly the two hundred miles to the Turkish metropolis, claiming that its passenger was in need of urgent medical attention back in England.

The helicopter settled firmly onto the landing pad of Istanbul airport and shut down. Sam undid his straps and the crewman directed him out. Once on the tarmac he removed his bone dome, dry-suit and life-jacket and looked across the field to the airport passenger terminal. His onward flight to London was in two hours' time, just before midday. Supposed to be a car to take him over there, but it wasn't here yet.

He'd found it hard talking to the anonymous duty officer in London a few hours ago. Particularly hard to
tell the British Secret Intelligence Service that one of its agents had betrayed friends and country for a bag of cash, when the agent in question had been his own lover. Hard, too, to explain with cold detachment how he'd found himself killing the man who'd murdered her.

He'd kept it as clinical as he could and to the point. Just the bare facts. The issue of whether MI6's own Deputy Controller of Global Risks had been the source of Chrissie's knowledge about his being dispatched to Baghdad could wait. Of more immediate concern to him had been the fate of Oksana Koslova. Rybkin had her name and address. If the Voroninskaya sought revenge for the death of Dima Grimov, it was conceivable
she
might become a victim. He'd asked that Figgis make plans to get her out – if that's what she wanted. From everything she'd said to him he guessed it would be.

It was adrenalin that had kept him going through the night, but by now it had burned off. He was dropping with exhaustion. During the helicopter flight across the Black Sea he'd kept nodding off, but the image of Chrissie's terrified face being impaled by the funnel kept jerking him awake again. The shock of seeing her death and of discovering her base nature had been fermenting in his gut. He burned with anger now, anger at Grimov and Rybkin for their grotesque cruelty, at
her
for being so contemptuous of all those who'd trusted her, and at
himself
for having been so totally taken in.

The crewman touched him on the arm and pointed off to their left. A fuelling bowser was drawing up to replenish the tanks of the helicopter and in its wake was the car that was to take him to the passenger terminal.

Duncan Waddell listened, his face devoid of expression.

‘Didn't bring the videotape back with you, I suppose?' he asked when Sam had finished.

‘No.' Despite Waddell's reproachful look he was glad he'd dumped it.

They were meeting in the Isleworth flat.

‘Totally and utterly fucking horrific,' Waddell growled, shaking his head. ‘To tell the truth it's hard to believe that such a good-looking woman could be so diabolically devious.' Then he smacked himself on the forehead. ‘What am I saying? She only deceived her own bloody husband for five long years!'

He looked quizzically at Sam, slightly embarrassed by what he'd just said. After all, she'd fooled
him
too.

‘Has it occurred to you to think about how she knew?' Sam asked acidly.

‘About you being in Baghdad, you mean?'

‘Yes.'

‘First question that came into my head when I heard about your report to the duty officer.'

‘And?'

‘I began to wonder when it was that you last saw her.'

‘What the hell does
that
mean?'

‘It's just that Martin Kessler thinks it was rather more recently than either you or she made out. Thinks it was well after your relationship with her was officially over. A few days before you went to Baghdad, in fact.'

‘
What?
Kessler thinks
I
told her? What a load of bollocks!'

‘Well he's quite adamant it wasn't him.'

‘He bloody would be.'

Waddell looked thoughtful.

‘For the record, when
did
you last see her before Baghdad?'

‘June.'

The terrier face had a closed look about it now. ‘Leave it with me, will you?'

Sam felt under suspicion again. ‘As long as you understand that she didn't hear about Baghdad from me.'

‘I hear what you say,' Waddell mouthed. ‘It
is
a pity you didn't bring that tape back . . . Anyway, let's move on to other things. We've arranged a visa for this Oksana Koslova woman – if she wants to take it up when she gets back to Kiev. Her brother will certainly be glad of her company here. He speaks no English. Nor does his wife.'