The Oktober Projekt (3 page)

‘Keep it steady,’ Nick insisted, ‘he’s coming home with us,’ he
added, cocking a thumb towards Lubov in the rear.

‘He can’t,’ roared Foula, glaring through his rear-view mirror
at the uninvited passenger, then quickly swerved as an on-coming taxi driver
protested at his erratic driving with rapid blasts from his Skoda’s horn. ‘We
won’t make it,’ he said, seeming to regain some composure.

Ignoring the chaos unfolding around him,
Nick had his mobile to his ear. ‘Hi dear it’s me,’ he began,
holding his hand up for silence. ‘I’m going to be a little late, you know,
things have changed. Tell Bethany I’m glad she’s been chosen for the nativity
play, she’ll enjoy meeting the Three Kings. Sure… Oh, I also had an unexpected
call from my mother. That’s right. There’s been another domestic so she’s
coming to stay. She’ll probably travel on her usual route, the one she just
took on her last visit. Will do, you too, take care.’

‘Dear God, you’re utterly mad,’ Foula snapped, his words forced
through compressed lips.

‘Watch our back,’ Nick insisted, slumping back.

‘We must make stop first, we collect key to material,’ said
Lubov, rooting in his canvas bag, looking for something that he couldn’t find
or maybe had forgotten to pack.

‘You don’t have it on you?’ Nick demanded incredulously. ‘Does
your mistress know? Back there, is she aware that the product is a separate
item?’

‘I disclose nothing to her.’

Where did you meet her? Your girlfriend, your mistress, where?’
Nick wanted to know and he wanted to know fast.

‘At work, at Defence Ministry, she was transferred two months
ago. Vrangelya I do not totally trust,’ Lubov confessed.

‘Great, wonderful.’ Through the wing mirror Nick had been
tracking a set of headlights from an Audi that had sat on their tail since
they’d set off, diligently following each turn they’d made. ‘Pull in,’ Nick
said abruptly, ‘I’m driving.’

Flinging the Gaz towards the pavement, Foula did an emergency
stop. As Foula got out Nick slid into the driver’s seat, already revving as
Foula landed heavily beside him. Hitting the accelerator with meaning, Nick cut
straight through three lines of traffic. In the Lefortovo tunnel Nick drove
recklessly fast, switching lanes to blasts from the horns on cars, trucks and
buses. Taking a junction by the Kristall Distillery on Samokatnaya ulitsa at
red, a second Audi joined in the pursuit.

‘An address,’ Nick demanded over his shoulder, ‘Now.’

Lubov hunched into a ball on the back seat insisted, ‘I will
deal only with a senior ex-officer in London.’

‘You already told me, but you need to take us to the material,’
Nick yelled, watching the leading Audi’s headlights stick wilfully to their
tail as he cut across a busy intersection streaming with traffic by the Casino
Mirage.

‘Golyanovo,’ Lubov offered, as Nick hit the brakes on
Kutuzovksy Prospekt, swerving around a three-car pile-up where an angry crowd
had hauled out a driver too drunk to stand.

‘Hold tight,’ Nick yelled, speeding over the Moskva River on
the Crimean Bridge. With Foula gripping the dashboard, Lubov braced in the
back, Nick used the handbrake and accelerator to spin the Gaz in the middle of
the bridge.

‘Out,’ Nick ordered them, the Gaz at an angle blocking the
lanes of traffic.

Marching towards a red Lada that had pulled up short, Nick
levelled his Yarygin at the driver’s head. Pulling open the door Nick hauled
the driver out as Lubov and Foula scrambled in. Smacking the gears into reverse
Nick stamped on the accelerator and wove back across the bridge, clipping
nearly every car in his way. Using another handbrake turn, Nick faced the Lada
down a wide avenue running from Krymsky Val.

‘How far?’ demanded Nick as shallow bars of fine light from the
street lamps played on the windscreens of passing cars, wishing he were in one
of them, on his way home instead of having to extract a blown agent who was
probably leading them into a trap.
 

‘Five kilometres, maybe less,’ Lubov stated, positioning his
body exactly in the centre of the back seat. ‘Then you will see what a profitable
exchange we will all benefit from,’ Lubov added, a glossy sheen spreading out
over his skin, as though his mistress had given him a fine coating of baby oil.

Snow hit the windscreen steady and hard, making it difficult to
count how many avenues and boulevards they criss-crossed in Nick’s race across
Moscow.

‘Tell me when we’re close,’ Nick snapped, not in the mood to
make it an issue, not here, not in this city. Nick knew enough heroes and most
of them were dead.

‘Here, just here,’ said Lubov by a budget Mapka store in the
Golyanovo district.

Leaving Foula in the driver’s seat, Nick took the lead and
initiative all the way. Striding past a pre-cast fountain no longer connected
to the mains, they entered a narrow alley of shuttered daytime stalls and shops
that led to a square with wind twisted saplings bent double under frost and
snow. At the very core, grey concrete towers with Lubov’s block sitting solidly
on the corner.
 
An empty Audi was
drawn up outside the wide main entrance, which Nick took to be neither a
coincidence nor an omen, just a sign they were out of luck.

Tucked against an apartment wall Nick signalled to Lubov that
they were going in.
 

‘You stay right behind me,’ Nick warned him and set off in
front, working out a strategy as he went, not knowing whether to laugh or cry,
calling on all his considerable experience from other operations fighting
unconventional dirty wars.

The address Lubov so badly wanted to reach was ten floors up
and Nick insisted they do it on foot; the heavy loud throbbing of drum and base
from the second floor following them all the way. Holding Lubov back when
they’d reached his landing, Nick didn’t have to ask which apartment belonged to
the accountant because striding out of it a crop-haired figure in a Puffa jacket
brought up his MR-445 Varjag. Nick launched himself at speed, rolling to his
left firing once. Falling back in a heap the figure crashed into Lubov’s door.
As Nick started to drag the body inside by his jacket collar, the little
accountant rushed down the hall slipping past Nick.

The apartment consisted of four rooms and everything radiated
off a linoleum-floored hallway, as did the wide trail of blood. Lubov tried
twice to run on ahead, but each time Nick pushed him behind, and if he’d had
time would have walked him all the way back to his car to prevent him becoming
a nuisance.
 

‘Know him?’ Nick asked Lubov as they stood over the body of a
second male in a Puffa jacket, a kitchen knife plunged at a weird angle in his
neck.

Lubov paused, his face very red, his way lost. He stood open
mouthed, his eyes fumbling for somewhere to look.

‘No,’ mumbled Lubov.

‘Who else should be here?’

‘Wife and nephew.’

Already Nick knew they were too late.

In a long narrow living room there were twin sofas in a fawn
plain fabric, rugs on polished floorboards and charcoal sketches strung in a
well proportioned line. Nothing was ostentatious just too neat; flat pack
utility creating Lubov’s hard won paradise where someone had fought and lost,
decided Nick. He picked out the splashes of blood, smashed porcelain lamps and
ripped cushions. Playing loudly a CD worked its way through a Mariah Carey
album, and Nick gratefully silenced her mid note. An oversized tropical fish
tank filled a wall, its filter humming away; shoals of bright fish large and
small darted out of coral and waving plants unaware of the destruction around
them.

Taking a room at a time Nick took the lead with Lubov
following, muttering curses under his breath. Every room bore hallmarks of a
quick ruthless search; in too many places to count, on the fabric, walls and
carpet there were ominous dashes of blood. The nephew and Lubov’s wife must
have fought a running retreat after putting up resistance with the knife,
thought Nick as each room revealed more destruction. The final bedroom door was
closed and Nick knew this was where the wife and nephew had finally run out of
places to hide.

‘Wait here,’ Nick told Lubov, facing a plain cream door.

‘I am not afraid,’ Lubov said proudly.

Nick tricked the door from its jamb and stepped in. By his
foot, blood formed in a thick circle on a Persian rug at the bottom of a bed
too big for the room.
   

Lubov gasped and Nick guessed he hadn’t seen a close relative
in such a state. Well this was his lucky day, there were two for him to consider,
Lubov’s wife and nephew toppled elegantly forward in a last clinch.

‘Your family?’

Lubov nodded once for each body, and unable to look again, had
folded in a heap on a corner of the bed.

They’d tortured them slowly Nick reckoned, one made to watch as
someone had gone quite berserk on the other with cigarettes and razors, which
one first really didn’t matter. Pieces of cushion were still taped across the
wife’s mouth and Nick knew why Mariah Carey’s high notes had been selected to
accompany their pain. Nick guessed the wife must have been a lot younger than
Lubov, but from what they had done to her body, age difference counted for
nothing.

Planting his feet either side of the congealing pool,
Nick swallowed his bile and turned the
nephew’s plump short body over, a teenager who hadn’t been given a fighting
chance.

‘What have we come for?’ Nick asked Lubov.

For a full minute Lubov didn’t move, drained of colour and
energy.

‘Have they taken it? Did your wife know what it was? Who knew
where it was?’ Nick rattled off the questions aware that time was running out.

‘No one but me, okay,’ admitted Lubov, slowly searching the
shattered bedroom with his eyes, but never allowing them to stray too close to
the bodies.

‘Then get it, we have to go… now,’ Nick insisted.

And after they’d been tortured for information they couldn’t
divulge, Lubov’s nephew and wife were executed. The nephew’s head split by a
single shot, his black glasses screwed up in a knot beside him, the wife shot
twice, in both eyes. This was getting better by the second thought Nick, right
back in messy deaths and secrets never to be told.
One for sorrow, two for
joy…

‘Anyone else know you might have stashed something here?’ Nick
asked, but Lubov had sloped off into the living room, and Nick could hear him
quietly weeping.
               
                   

‘Sure, I tell everyone, the whole damn world,’ shouted Lubov.
‘How should I know?’

‘Is it still here?’ Nick asked when he joined Lubov.

‘Yes,’ said Lubov, going to his fish tank, tears and snot
running together on his ashen face. With shaking hands he turned off the power,
plunging the tank into stagnant darkness. ‘They…’ but he ran out of breath
before completing his pledge and moving pieces of coral, pushing gravel aside,
his fingers locked onto a small plastic watertight container that he extracted,
his sleeve soaking wet.

Holding out his hand for the container, Nick waited as Lubov
clung to his precious cargo, eventually shaking his head in noble defiance.
‘They died for this,’ he announced
gravely, nodding towards the bedroom. ‘And I keep it until I’m safe in London.’

‘You’re going nowhere until I take a look at what you’ve got,’
promised Nick, ready to seize the container by force. ‘My rules and that’s my
last word.’ He stepped forward and Lubov sensing what was to come, hurriedly
uncapped the container slipping out a SIM card.

‘To assist me retrieve my material,’ he said. ‘It is already in
London, I took a precaution.’

Fantastic thought Nick, if you’d booked a flight you’d have
saved me making the trip of a lifetime. ‘Then we need to take care of it,’ he
said, holding out a hand and when Lubov dropped the SIM into his palm he
hurried into the kitchen.

‘Sharp knife,’ demanded Nick, unlacing a boot, easing it
off.
 
‘And cling film, you got some
of that, know what it is?’ Nick hopped on one foot pulling drawers open. ‘Sharp
knife,’ he yelled again.

‘They make big mistake,’ Lubov raged, coming into the kitchen
and handing Nick a knife that was anything but sharp, the anger rising through
him; a charge too powerful for his demure frame.

Nick heated the knife on a gas ring, a handkerchief wrapped
round his fingers. ‘Wrap the SIM in the plastic,’ Nick told Lubov as he opened
a slit along the outer edge on the thick rubber sole of his boot. Obediently,
Lubov folded the SIM in cling film and passed it across. Easing the card into
the slot, Nick heated the knife again and sealed it in. Bending and stretching
the sole to check if it held, Nick pulled on his boot and laced it.

‘We’re leaving,’ he said, nudging Lubov towards the door. Lubov
needed coaxing and he didn’t have time. ‘Right now, go,’ added Nick.

Outside a police siren tore into the night, an eerie wail
moving closer. Glancing out into the corridor Nick pushed Lubov ahead, and
closed the apartment door. Out into the snow they faded into the shadows,
hugging walls and the freezing air as a second police car sailed towards the
block. As they crossed an open square Lubov let out a piercing scream, cursing
the GRU, SVR and FSB to hell and back, all
siloviki
adding the President and Prime Minister for good
measure. Nick had heard enough, and clasping Lubov’s arm dragged him at a rapid
trot. Weaving into courtyards and alleys he refused to drop the pace or lessen
his grip on the little accountant as big wet chips of snow billowed after them,
chasing them all the way to a frantic Foula huddled in the car.

The Lada bumped heavily as Nick pitched Lubov in the back.
‘Drive,’ Nick ordered, flopping heavily next to Foula.