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DAVID BRONSTEIN ARRIVED at Heathrow carrying the wallet of papers he’d been instructed to read en route and a disordered copy of The Independent. He was thirty-two, stocky, clean-shaven, with heavy glasses and a skull-cap. A pair of unkempt eyebrows and scuffed shoes seemed to unite his upper and lower extremities, giving him the aura of a distressed scholar. He wore a black blazer.
Beneath an electronic billboard, just to the right of the benches, he caught sight of a young man in a bespoke suit with his hands folded behind his back. Definitely the guy in the photo he’d been given. Their eyes locked and they gripped hands.
“David Bronstein, Lieutenant Commander, NYPD.”
“Jonathan Hartley-Brown, Metropolitan Police Inspector.”
Hartley-Brown was a good two inches taller than most men, and according to Bronstein’s notes, twenty-four. He had brown hair with a side parting, well-proportioned facial features and shiny brogues with grey socks.
They exchanged half-hearted quips about transatlantic flights, sent Bronstein’s luggage ahead and installed themselves on the back seat of a pre-paid London cab. As per protocol, they spoke about the weather and the traffic till it reached Scotland Yard, where they disembarked in a drizzly mist. Hartley-Brown gave the driver a tip. Then they took the lift to an open-plan office to examine two forlorn-looking faux-pine desks with matching PCs and an inch-high midway fence to curb proliferating untidiness. Secretaries, photocopiers, and softly ringing telephones surrounded them as far as the eye could see.
“My apologies for the world’s greatest anti-climax,” Hartley-Brown said. “You can take either one. I’m not fussy.”
“Any progress on the case?”
“Not yet. I was only informed I was being deployed last night and my brief today is to help you settle in. I believe we’re simply supposed to spend time getting to know each other.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was told.”
“I’ll show you your flat next and we can eat a meal, then go to a bar or a West End musical or whatever you prefer. All expenses paid. Work begins in earnest tomorrow at eight am sharp, so I suppose we’d better not burn too much midnight oil.”
Bronstein smiled. He could tell Hartley-Brown didn’t buy the ‘bonding’ crap, either, and just wanted to get started. Which meant they were going to hit it off. “It’s ‘Johnny’, yeah?”
“Jonathan. But you can call me that.”
“‘Hartley-Brown’. Your parents are divorced?”
“Not last time I checked. It’s an old family name.”
“Some kind of peers of the realm, then.”
“Well, not in this generation but - ”
“My dad’s a Hasidic rabbi, incidentally. See this?” He twiddled a tassel sticking out from his belt. “This is in deference to him, although I’m not that heavily into it myself. You ever heard of a tallith?”
“A Jewish prayer shawl, yes. While we’re on the subject of fathers, mine’s the Shadow Foreign Secretary. Thought I’d better say early since you’d have found that out soon enough anyway. I’ve overheard people say I wouldn’t be more than a sergeant now otherwise.”
“Sheesh, you don’t believe them, do you?”
“I don’t beat myself up over it. Everyone’s born with advantages. You’ve just got to do the best in the position you’ve been given. I do try hard. I am dedicated.”
“Good enough for me. What side’s your dad on, just out of interest?”
You probably haven’t heard of the Conservative Party much in America - ”
“The Republicans writ small, yeah?”
“I don’t know about that. He’s called Sir Anthony Hartley-Brown.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell. Still, a ‘sir’, eh? How long till the next election?”
“Nine weeks max.”
“Impressed. You’re son of the future king, then.”
“My mother asked me to invite you to dinner, by the way.”
Bronstein smiled. “So you told her about me, huh?” He ran his finger across the desk to check for dust.
“Not in any detail. I simply told her you were coming from America. She thought a traditional family meal might make you feel more welcome.”
“That sure is good of her. I’m touched. I mean it.”
“Is a week next Monday all right?”
He laughed. Jonathan certainly didn’t believe in beating about the bush. “Apart from the little matter of the investigation, I’m free for the foreseeable. But what does one wear for a sir?”
“My parents are a little old fashioned. Maybe an evening suit?”
Bronstein raised his eyebrows. “A tux? I haven’t brought one.”
“I could lend you my spare.”
“How tall are you?”
“Six foot two.”
“Shame. I’m five-eleven.”
“Actually, that’s ... good. That’s just fine. Stay here.”
Hartley-Brown walked to the other end of the floor, weaving between yucca plants and desks with miniature teddy bears on, and disappeared behind a panel. He returned with a black-haired man of about his own age, in a brown suit. “This is the fellow you’re replacing,” he announced. “Nicholas Fleming of CID. Nicholas, this is David Bronstein from the NYPD. David, Nicholas has been looking forward to meeting you for obvious reasons.”
Fleming looked considerably more rugged than Jonathan. He took Bronstein’s hand in what felt like the first move of an arm-wrestle and shook it hard. “It’s you I’ve to thank for my secondment to New York, then? I’m leaving tomorrow. I’ve always been a bit of an Americanophile so I’m really looking forward to it.”
“Glad to be of service,” Bronstein said. “You’d better not be much of a cop, mind, because I’d like them to miss me.”
Fleming grinned. “I’m honoured they even consider it a fair swap. My best friend tells me you’re in need of an evening suit, by the way, and we look about the same size. I’ll drop mine off at his place before I go to the airport. Least I can do.”
“Thanks.”
“The chef’s excellent, incidentally, and Jonathan’s parents are charming. Watch his sister doesn’t sweep you off your feet, though.”
“Bit of a knockout, huh?”
He glanced at his watch. “You’ll have to excuse me now, I’m afraid. I’ve a fair amount of work to catch up on before I leave. Good meeting you.”
“Nicholas and I did two years on the beat together,” Hartley-Brown said when Fleming had gone. “He was in the Coldstream Guards for three years before that. You mustn’t mind what he says about Marcie. He was in love with her at one point.”
“What happened? If that’s not too personal a question?”
“I don’t think he was her type. She calls him ‘Mr Brown’ because he’s always wearing brown suits.” He sighed. “I know. It’s not much of a joke.”
“Sorry to change the subject,” Bronstein said, “but aren’t we supposed to be a three-man unit? I was told to expect a Russian.”
“They may be sending one. Nothing’s been finalised. It’s why the dinner invite’s a week next Monday, sorry to harp on about that. Just in case we need to set another place at the table.”
“Who’s in charge? You, me or him?”
“It could be a ‘her’, for all we know. I don’t think any of us is strictly ‘in charge’. I’m supposed to coordinate the investigation.”
“So if we both want to, say, take a certain detail, you get to decide who goes, yeah?”
“I suppose so.”
Bronstein frowned. “That’s all I need to know.”
“I’d probably send you. It makes things easier to coordinate if you don’t rub people up the wrong way.”
He smiled. He’d forgotten, this was a nice guy. “From what I read on the plane over, the Met’s identified a number of paparazzi who were at the scene of each crime. I’ve a list of twenty-three. You know about that, right?”
“It sounds as if we’ve both been given the same prep.”
“Prep?”
“Homework. Background reading.”
“Anyway, the cops will already have spoken to a lot of them, but it looks as good a place to start as any.”
“We’ll split the names tonight, if you like, then we can get straight onto it tomorrow morning.”
“And meet back at the office seventeen hundred hours tomorrow, yeah? Swap tales?”
“Done. Shall I show you your flat now?”
Orlov left the prison two hours before schedule by a side entrance, bypassing the usual homily from the governor and the paperwork at reception. He went straight to an unmarked Mercedes. The driver took him across the river Kama and transferred him to a ZiL at Teterina. His new driver gave him a trench coat to change into and sped him to Efremy, where he changed cars and drivers again. Half an hour later, his car pulled to a stop on a straight road edged with pines and piles of chopped timber.
The driver opened and closed his door for him and walked in front. They passed through six or seven rows of trees and emerged onto a makeshift airstrip, surrounded on all sides by forest. A Technoavia crouched at the far end with its propeller roaring.
Khrantsov stood to one side with a group of soldiers who smoked and blew on their hands. From the look of the clouds above, a heavy snowfall was in the offing.
“Best of luck,” Khrantsov said. “We’ve supplied you with a gun and several rounds of ammunition in case you meet with ... obstacles en route. If you give them to the pilot when you land we’ll see you’re reunited with them in England.”
Orlov looked to the sky. There were two other light aircraft already airborne, several hundred feet overhead. SP-91s, apparently circling.
“Anything to worry about?” he asked.
“We don’t think so. In any case, you should be able to outrun them.”
“I understand I’m to be investigating the deaths of newspaper photographers,” Orlov replied contemptuously.
“Beggars can’t be choosers. The important thing is to get you out of Russia.”
“And then?”
“We’ve devoted a lot of time and money to keeping you safe in prison. If the liberal cause is ever going to succeed in this country, organisations like ours need to utilise their resources more efficiently.”
“I didn’t need to be looked after. I’m quite capable of taking care of myself.”
“We understand that. We didn’t like to take any chances.”
“I take it you expect me to defect once I’m in Britain?”
“That’s an anachronistic term, but there are equivalents. It would solve an awful lot of problems.”
“Forget it.”
“You once wanted to do some good, as I recall. You can remain loyal to that, or you can be the quintessential pig-headed patriot with a death wish.”
“If I defect, I’ll look like a traitor. It’ll play straight into their hands.”
“Applying for asylum was what we were thinking.”
Orlov laughed. “Britain’s got more immigrants than it knows what to do with. Do you think for a moment they’ll give me a second look?”
“You could be very useful to them.”
“As a defector. That will be top of their terms and conditions.”
“We’re wasting time, Colonel. Go.”
Orlov put his hat on and walked to the plane. He climbed into his seat and they took off, clearing the tops of the trees with inches to spare. They banked and headed West.
“I’m Cherepnev,” the pilot said, turning to face him with his hand extended. A young man of about twenty-three, dark hair, thin, with a goatee. “If you feel like smoking, there are some cigarettes and a lighter under the dash.”
Orlov shook hands. “I take it that means you want to.”
“Not necessarily. It’s against regulations.”
“I was told there was a gun and some ammunition on board.”
Cherepnev handed him a new Ots-33. “The bullets are on the rear seat.”
Orlov removed his seat-belt and leaned over the back. The plane listed slightly.
“Don’t do that!” Cherepnev said.
There was a curtain covering the ammunition. Orlov pulled it back to find a crate of vodka and a bundle of pornographic magazines. The ammunition was on the floor.
Cherepnev was blushing. “I’m not smuggling any of that, really. It’s for my own personal use.”
Suddenly, they saw something they weren’t expecting. Eight or nine ad hoc airstrips in forest clearings almost identical to the one they had left, each giving birth to a plane in flight.
“I take it you weren’t anticipating this,” Orlov said.
“We’re going to have to change direction.”
There were six aircraft in the sky now, and no sooner had they turned about than they encountered a new contingent emerging from the miles of foliage below.
“You’re going to have to try and land,” Orlov said.
“How?”
“I doubt they’ll try to kill me here. If they’re who I think they are, they’ll want to ensure I suffer.”
“Who do you think they are?”
Orlov grinned. “FSB, KGB, Spetsnaz, what’s the difference?”
“I thought the KGB didn’t exist any more.”
“Oh, we all thought that ... ten years ago.”
Suddenly, gunfire. They felt the fuselage fill with punctures and Cherepnev took the plane into a dive. When it righted, they were fully surrounded. Orlov wondered if he could take the controls if Cherepnev was killed. He tried to remember what to do. He couldn’t.
The air was full of the sound of shot now, like crackling in an oven. Four or five planes appeared heading straight at them. They went into a loop and started to descend.
“Call to ground,” Orlov said. “See if you can get Khrantsov.”
“He must know. He must be watching. What can he possibly do?”
Orlov grabbed the radio. “Khrantsov, can you hear me?”
“We’ve called for assistance,” came Khrantsov’s voice. “Try to stay airborne, Colonel. Don’t land unless you absolutely have to. Repeat - ”
Orlov wondered what Khrantsov thought ‘assistance’ was. A few conscripts firing in the air with training rifles, probably. The SP-91s had grouped now. Three broke off from the main body to spearhead the attack.
“Take us down as close to the trees as you can,” Orlov said.
They dived and levelled out just above the pines. The three pursuers followed them. Orlov saw their planes weren’t equipped with guns; instead, men leant out of the windows discharging pistols. It was the sort of thing someone might have dreamed up during a heavy drinking session. The way they were shooting, it was probably still going on. He reached for his ammunition feeling a lot less anxious. Then he turned the vodka crate upside-down, dispatching the bottles onto the floor.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Cherepnev yelled.
“Bring us up a bit.”
“How much?”
“Enough to be able to fly with your nearside wing down thirty degrees for a bit. I need to see past the tail.”
Orlov slid the passenger door open. He looked behind and tossed the crate high enough to clear their own tail. It hit the wing of the plane behind to their right, but hardly made it swerve. Meanwhile, they were rising. The three planes on their tail began to follow them.
“Bank it,” Orlov said.
He loaded his pistol and leaned out. He could see between the vertical fin and the elevator now.
“Right a bit!” he shouted.
Suddenly, the middle of the three planes came into view. First the wing tips, then the landing gear and finally the cabin. He took aim and fired. He saw the pilot snap into inactivity. The plane veered and hit its neighbour and the two fell into the forest and fired a plume of flame into the air, way behind.
“See if you can get the third underneath us!” Orlov shouted.
Given what the other plane had just seen, he calculated the pilot would panic and try to take evasive action. With Orlov above him he’d descend without thinking. As soon Cherepnev had executed the manoeuvre, the third plane hit the trees. It somersaulted and burst into flames, narrowly missing the Technoavia. Cherepnev pulled into a sharp ascent.
“I may need a cigarette,” he said.
Five other planes were arriving to resume the attack.
“Where’s the fuel tank?” Orlov shouted.
“In the back.”
“Have we got access to it?”
“Not unless you pull out the rear seats.”
“How secure are they?”
“This is a new plane. Bloody hell.”
“What’s the matter?”
“You may have to access it now, if we’re to stay afloat. It’s been punctured. We’re losing fuel.”
“Problem solved. Your vodka, is it good?”
“What are you talking about?”
Orlov leaned out of the door again. He could see where the leak was. Perfect. Behind them, six planes fired erratically.
He thrust his gun in his pocket and scooped up a handful of bullets. Stones would have been preferable but if he remembered his Galileo aright, it wouldn’t matter, providing he adjusted his pitch sufficiently. He threw the first and it didn’t even clear the tail. The second went straight over the cabin of the pursuer. He could see the pilot laughing. The third hit his propeller.
He went back inside. When he emerged again, it was with a three-quarters full vodka bottle with a burning scroll in. He gauged its weight with a few gentle shakes then cast it.
“Accelerate,” he told Cherepnev.
The bottle exploded on the propeller of the plane behind and the flames were sucked deep into its engine. The fuel Orlov’s plane was losing and the fuel in the SP-91’s own tank combined to create a fireball that engulfed all six pursuers almost simultaneously.
Orlov looked at the remains of the glossy magazine he’d just dismembered. ‘Red Hot Women’. “How long before we have to land?”
“A couple of miles. How many more planes are there?”
Orlov scanned the skies. “Three, eleven o’clock.”
But ahead of them, they could already see the forest producing new SP-91s. One ... two, three, four ...
They gave up counting at twelve.
Suddenly, a dark speck appeared close to the horizon, getting bigger as they watched, emitting an increasing growl. A squadron of fighter jets, Su-37s.
Cherepnev laughed hysterically. “They’d better be on our side.”
Orlov picked up the receiver. “Khrantsov?”
“I told you you had friends in high places,” Khrantsov said.
Suddenly, the SP-91s were in full retreat without a shot being fired. The jets shepherded them away, criss-crossing each other’s paths until the sky was clear again. Then they regrouped and diminished until they were a dot on the horizon. Below the Technoavia, the forest thinned and gave way to farmland.
“We’re losing altitude,” Cherepnev said.
“Proceed due northeast to Shchekino,” Khranstsov said. “We’ll patch you up there.”
Sir Colin put his hat on the Home Secretary’s coffee table again and sat down. The PA brought in two cups of Darjeeling on a tray.
“You sounded rather upset on the phone,” the Home Secretary said. “I’d have ordered something stronger, but it’s not the time of day. What’s the problem?”
“We’ve had word from the Russians. They’ve chosen their man.”
“Oh?”
“Colonel Sergei Orlov.”
The Home Secretary stroked his chin and looked up. “Rings a bell. I’ve heard that name.”
“The wrong man for the job on so many levels.”
“Who is he?”
“A dissident ... of sorts. In prison for treason until a week ago. But he’s obviously been given a second chance.”
“You think he’s here on an information gathering exercise?”
“I’ve been in contact with MI6. There’s some sort of power struggle going on in the Kremlin. One of those periodic spats where the left hand doesn’t know what the right’s doing. Someone over there’s telling us to put him in charge of the investigation, someone else is telling us to deliver him up to the embassy as soon as his feet touch the ground.”
The Home Secretary smiled and sipped his tea. “These things have a habit of working themselves out. Can’t we just wait to see which faction wins and deal with the matter accordingly? We don’t want to put the Russians’ backs up.”
“He’s been in intelligence. If he’s here to spy on us, I’d rather not have the responsibility.”
“You invited this, Colin. You proposed the idea of a Russian-American-British team. You should probably have anticipated it.”
“That they’d try to exploit it? No, I didn’t.”
“Tell me who he is again.”
“He was involved with the investigative journalist, Anna Politkovskaya. Remember Anna Politkovskaya? Assassinated in Moscow in 2006. She uncovered a host of systematic abuses in the army, and five and a half million square miles of regional and central government corruption.”
“Involved romantically?”
“No, politically. Orlov worked in the Special Intelligence Regiment of the Ministry of Defence. He helped bring several of the worst offenders to trial, and he’s supposed to have established a secret network of politicians, humanitarians and high-ranking military personnel pledged to bring the army under the control of the civilian executive.”
“Sounds like a noble fellow.”
“Apparently he prepared a dossier of hitherto unknown abuses that would have been dynamite had it found its way to the right authorities. He was arrested shortly before Politkovskaya’s murder and it never came to light. And only he knows who’s in the secret organisation.”
“Don’t they inject people with truth-drugs and that sort of thing once they’ve been arrested over there?”
“If they do, they didn’t work.”
“Well, I like the sound of him. I didn’t get involved in politics to send men like him to their deaths. If he makes it here, he’s staying, understand?”
“I wouldn’t be too hasty.”
“Sometimes I like to do things hastily. I do still have gut reactions. Believe it or not, Colin, I used to be an idealist.”
“MI6 seems to think he might be a plant.”
“Meaning?”
“That he might have realised the ‘error’ of his ways; that maybe he’s reached an accord with his former enemies and they’re offering him some sort of rehabilitation in return for favours.”
“Spying on us, you mean.”
“Treason’s a fairly serious charge when you’re as devoted to your country as he apparently is. You might do anything to clear your name. Especially after a year in Solikamsk prison with another twenty-four to go.”
“Come on, Colin. It’s Scotland Yard you’re running. What’s he going to spy on? UK crime statistics?”
“You know as well as I do that we’ve been working much more closely with the Secret Intelligence Service since 7/7.”
The Home Secretary drained his cup. “Yes, yes, fair enough.”
“What do you recommend?”
“Keep in touch with SIS. We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for now. And keep me informed.”
