Who Dares Wins (28 page)

A window opened. It contained more icons, perhaps twenty. Each one was labelled with a name. Sam stared blankly at it. ‘What’s this?’ he asked, more to himself than to Clare.

Her hand brushed against his as her fingers searched out the mouse. She directed the cursor to one of the icons at random, then clicked it. A short pause and a grinding from the laptop’s innards. Then a document appeared.

There was a photo at the top, a young man with shoulder-length blonde hair. Beneath the photograph, laid out neatly and stretching far beyond the bottom of the screen so that Clare had to scroll down to see it all, was a startling array of personal information. His name, of course – Paul Harrison – and his address. But also his sexual orientation and a list of known previous girlfriends. His parents’ address and telephone number. His national insurance number. A list of three official police cautions. Parking fines. His Tesco Clubcard number. His likes and dislikes. Every car he had ever owned. Every job he had ever had, and the wage he had been paid. A graphic of his signature. His closest acquaintances – their names and addresses. A link to his Facebook profile and a list of all his ‘friends’. His credit card numbers and certain purchases that he had made. His bank account numbers and security details. Three e-mail addresses and their passwords. The IP address of his computer and the most popular websites visited from that address. Films he had seen, TV programmes he had watched. Music he listened to.

The list went on. Sam and Clare read it in silence. Neither of them commented out loud on the one word that had screamed out to them more than any other. It was written in brackets just beside the subject’s name. It read ‘
DECEASED
’.

Clare got to the end of the document long before Sam and impatiently closed down the window, immediately opening another. A different picture, different details. Still the same ominous label after the name: ‘
DECEASED
’. She browsed through more of them, spending less and less time on each one, until finally she brought up a document that made her catch her breath.

‘
Bill
,’ she whispered in shock. ‘
It’s Bill
.’

The photograph of Clare’s contact stared out at her. He had black skin with patchy, tightly curled stubble and a gappy smile. Like all the others, he was deceased. But they already knew that.

Sam stood up. He didn’t know what to say or what to think. Jacob was something to do with these red-light runners, he accepted that. But what? And if they were dead, what did that have to do with his brother?

But he didn’t know what he
should
believe. He stared out of the window. It was beginning to rain and the drops slid down the pane, lit up by the streetlamps beyond.

‘Sam.’ Clare’s voice was unsure of itself. ‘I’ve found something else.’

He turned and approached her.

‘Look at this,’ she continued, spinning the computer around on her lap so he could see it. ‘His e-mails. He’s only sent them to one address, each time with one of these documents. There’s only one contact here – the person he’s sent them to.’

‘What’s his name?’ Sam demanded.

‘Alexander Dolohov.’

Sam’s brow furrowed. He had never heard the name before. ‘Any more details on him?’

She turned the computer back towards her and started fiddling, but as she did she shook her head. ‘Nothing,’ she murmured. ‘His name and his e-mail address. That’s all.’ She looked up, bright eyed. ‘You could e-mail him!’

Sam shook his head. ‘No way. If I want to talk to this guy, I’ll do it the old-fashioned way.’

‘What if he doesn’t want to talk to you?’

Sam sniffed. ‘I guess I’ll just have to turn on the charm.’ Clare clearly heard the tone in his voice and didn’t reply. Sam looked at her with his eyes narrowed. ‘Can you get someone to track him down?’ he asked. ‘Someone from your paper?’

‘I could do it myself,’ she said.

Sam shook his head. ‘The Firm are on to both of us,’ he said. ‘If we start sniffing around we’ll alert them. Nobody but us knows about this laptop. Let’s keep it that way.’

‘I could ask someone, I suppose . . .’ She sounded uncertain as she pulled out her mobile.

‘Not with that. There’s a phone downstairs, in reception. If you’ve got someone you can phone, do it from there.’

Clare appeared to think for a minute. ‘All right,’ she decided finally and with a heavy sigh. ‘All right, I’ll do it. Wait there.’

‘No,’ Sam replied. ‘I’ll come with you.’

‘I’m not going to do a runner you know.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

She shrugged. ‘Whatever.’

They were eyed by the suspicious receptionist as Clare made her call. Sam hovered nearby, just out of earshot as she mumbled privately into the phone to some faceless colleague, then left the number of the hotel. The receptionist was clearly trying hard to listen to the conversation, but Clare was talking too discretely for that. ‘It’ll take an hour or so,’ she told him as she hung up.

Sam nodded. He turned to the receptionist. ‘Let us know if we have a call,’ he instructed and was repaid with a nondescript gesture. Sam considered being more forceful, but decided against it. ‘We’ll be in our room,’ he said brusquely.

He and Clare left the reception and climbed the stairs back to their room.

Neither of them noticed the man on the other side of the street, an umbrella protecting him from the rain, his eyes firmly fixed on the door of their hotel.

*

They say that the darkest hour comes just before dawn. For the young Kazakh man in a small village in the southern part of that huge country, it came a lot earlier than that. He lay in his bed, fast asleep, blithely unaware that his snoring could have woken the dead. Or even that he was only a squeeze of a trigger away from joining them. The trigger in question belonged to a fully loaded AK-47 and, at that precise moment, the cold steel of the weapon was about to be pressed into the fleshy part of his cheek.

His eyes shot open. He gasped. In the darkness, silhouetted against the silver moon that beamed through his open window, stood a man. He couldn’t fully see his face, but he could tell he was big; and he could tell that the man was holding the weapon in one hand. The other was up towards his face, one finger pressed to his lips.

‘Shhh . . .’ he said quietly.

The young Kazakh man started to tremble. He tugged his thin sheets a bit further up his body, but his assailant pulled them away again revealing him to be naked apart from a pair of rather unfashionable underpants. The stranger bent over, grabbed him by the arm, and pulled him out of bed.

He did not dare shout out. The weapon was pressed into his back now; it hurt his knobbly spine. ‘
What do you want?
’ he whispered in Kazakh, but the man did not appear to understand him. They moved swiftly out of the bedroom, into the only other room of the small house. Through the window he saw – on the forecourt of his small petrol filling station – an old four-by-four truck. The lights were off, but it sounded like the engine was turning over. It was parked right by his single, solitary pump and just beyond the small booth where he took his customers’ money near the controls for the pump.

He turned to the gunman. In here he could see his face better. He had dark hair and a scraggly beard. His eyes were narrow and hard. The gunman pointed towards the booth. ‘We’re going there,’ he said. ‘You’re going to turn the pump on.’

The Kazakh didn’t understand his foreign-sounding words. ‘
I have no money
,’ he replied in his own language. ‘
No money here!
’

His assailant pointed to the booth again. Then, letting go of him for a moment, he mimed the turning of a key. The man nodded quickly, then ran back into his room. He pulled on his trousers and shirt while the gunman surveyed him from the doorway, then removed a bunch of keys from his trouser pocket and held them up. The gunman nodded in satisfaction. ‘Open up,’ he said, then stepped aside to let him pass.

He was marched, at gunpoint, outside. The gritty ground was painful against the soles of his feet, but he was hurried quickly to the booth anyway. His hands shook and it took a couple of goes to insert the key into the door; but once he managed it, the booth opened easily. Inside he headed straight for the till and flicked it open. ‘
Look,
’ he said, indicating the empty tray, ‘
nothing!
’

The gunman shook his head darkly, then pointed out towards the pump. Only then did he understand. The guy wanted fuel. For a brief instant he wondered why someone would go to such trouble – such danger – simply for diesel, but he didn’t let it worry him for long. Under the counter there was another keyhole. He inserted the relevant key and switched it on. On the forecourt, the faint humming of the pump started up.

The gunman, still pointing the weapon in his direction, urged him outside. They approached the vehicle and, without having to be asked, he started filling the tank. Meanwhile, the gunman opened up the back and dragged out four empty fuel canisters. When the vehicle was full, he moved on to these. The dial on the pump whizzed around and somewhere at the back of his mind the young Kazakh had a vision of simply stuffing hard currency into the canisters. But he said nothing. The presence of the wicked-looking weapon was enough to keep his mind on the job.

His whole body was trembling by the time the fourth canister was filled and returned to the back of the truck.

The gunman raised his weapon. He aimed it at the young man’s forehead.

A terrible cold numbness spread through his body. He closed his eyes. ‘
Please,
’ he whispered. ‘
I have done as you asked.
’

He waited for the sound of the shot.

A bang. It seemed to go straight through him. But it wasn’t the gun. He opened his eyes. The gunman was not there. The noise had been only the sound of an exhaust backfiring. He collapsed to his knees in relief, watching, shivering, as the vehicle disappeared into the darkness.

Sam and Clare sat in their room, surrounded by a bubble of tense silence. The night they had spent together was all but forgotten. They were not two lovers in a hotel room; just two people with a common interest, and common fears.

‘There could be more than one Alexander Dolohov, you know,’ Clare said.

‘Then I’ll visit them all.’

‘How will you find out which is the right one?’

Sam didn’t answer. There were some things she didn’t need to know.

Clare stared at him. ‘You’ve found out things that I don’t know, haven’t you?’

He shrugged. ‘Your friendly granddad from MI6 paid me a visit.’ He saw Clare shudder slightly. ‘They’ve got a theory.’

‘Care to share?’

Sam hesitated. His instinct was to keep everything to himself, but it seemed a bit ridiculous keeping Clare in the dark. ‘The red-light runners,’ he said. ‘The Firm claims they’re nothing to do with MI5. That they’re being trained up by some foreign agency and led to believe they’re working for Five.’

Clare’s eyes widened. ‘Who?’ she asked breathlessly.

‘Your man wouldn’t say. My guess is the Russians.’ His voice went quieter. ‘Remind me to ask Dolohov when I catch up with him.’

Clare looked at him intently. ‘But Sam, maybe you should just
tell
MI6 what you found on this laptop. I mean, it could be serious.’

Sam shook his head. ‘No way.’

‘Why not?’

He considered telling her – about the Spetsnaz soldiers surrounding the camp and his suspicions that someone in the Firm had tipped them off about the Regiment’s arrival – but he kept quiet. ‘It’s just not safe,’ he muttered inadequately. ‘Trust me.’

At that precise moment, there was a knock on the door. Sam and Clare exchanged a look just as a voice called from the other side. ‘Phone!’

They hurried downstairs.

Clare took the call almost in silence, the telephone nestled in the crook of her neck as she made notes in a speedy shorthand. She nodded occasionally – pointlessly – and when the conversation was over she uttered a brief word of thanks before replacing the handset. A short nod at Sam and they returned to the privacy of their room.

‘Well?’

‘Two Alexander Dolohovs,’ she said. ‘One in Manchester, one in London.’

‘Shit,’ Sam cursed.

‘Not really,’ Clare replied. Despite the stress, there was a twinkle in her eye. ‘The one in Manchester is three years old.’ She scribbled an address on a piece of paper from her notebook, tore it out and handed it to Sam. ‘I’d say that was your man.’

Sam read the address. A road in Maida Vale. Flat 3.

‘My friend couldn’t get much on him. He teaches Russian at a university college in Bloomsbury. I, er, I also asked her to look into a couple of other things.’

Sam raised an eyebrow. She indicated the laptop. ‘The red-light runners. I gave her the names of the two latest, er . . . the two who died most recently.’

‘And?’

‘Accidents. Both of them. A car crash and a, er . . .’ She blushed. ‘A sort of sex game gone wrong. No suggestion of foul play.’ She said this last part brightly, as if it were good news.

‘Of course not,’ Sam murmured.

They sat in the dim light of the bedside lamp. Rain pattered hard on the window. Sam tried to connect this new information in his mind, but he still felt like he was doing a crossword without the clues.

‘How is your brother involved in all this, Sam?’ Clare asked quietly. She was looking wide-eyed at him, as though scared of the answer.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Maybe he was on to them. Jacob always thought he could do everything by himself.’ He set his jaw. ‘I’m going to go and see Dolohov.’

‘Now?’

‘Yeah. Now.’

‘I’ll come.’ She sounded plucky, but nervous.