She walked parallel to the road, never straying into the open but never losing sight of it. A lumber truck roared past but she was too slow to break cover and flag it down. Eventually, she decided it was pointless walking in either direction, because there was no hope of reaching a town: far better to sit it out at a spot where she could dash from the trees on to the road when she heard a vehicle coming. She built a screen from thick boughs of pine, which she cut using the serrated meat knife she had stolen from under Igor’s nose. If the old lady was keeping her gun, she was going to have their knife. She lay quite comfortably for a while, listening for a vehicle, but soon began to drift off. No! She couldn’t sleep. She must do everything she could to stay awake. This included fifteen minutes of yoga exercises she remembered from a course designed to relieve stress among aid workers in the camp on Lesbos, watching some ants carrying food to a mound of pine needles and thinking of her life with Denis and with Samson. ‘I am with you, I am with you, dear Anastasia.’ Samson had said it with such intensity that she knew he still loved her. Looking up at the goddamn trees – she was sick of trees – she supposed these words meant something to her but, really, what the hell good were they out here? Samson wasn’t with her. Nobody was. Even from herself she seemed absent.
She hadn’t been moving for an hour or so and she became cold. She worried how she would survive the night and decided to build a fire. This she approached methodically, digging out a hole and surrounding it with stones so the flames could not be seen from the road. She excavated two channels so the fire would have enough air. Then she piled pine needles and twigs in a wigwam and surrounded these with pointed pine cones that oozed resin. These made a lot of smoke and she realised that more flames meant less smoke. She flicked the cones away, broke some dead branches and laid them against the fire. Once the fire was properly alight and there were glowing embers at its base, she set more stones around the flames and these began to heat up satisfactorily, just as Naji had described to her. Now there was virtually no smoke.
She ate some of the congealed soup from the pot; she would heat the rest when it was dark. She followed the soup with some bread and washed them down with the well water from an old plastic bottle they’d given her. She felt herself nodding off and forced herself to sit in a less comfortable position, but this didn’t work and she finally succumbed to a deep, days-long exhaustion and slept.
What woke her a little later was the smoke. Raindrops falling through the branches above her had extinguished the flames and sent up a cloud of smoke around her so she could barely see. She coughed and fanned the air furiously.
‘The woman who likes fire,’ said a voice to her right. ‘The woman who was released by fire is now trapped by fire. An irony, no?’
She shot up and reached for the knife, but a boot stamped on her hand. There were four men around her. Kirill was crouching by the fire, warming his hands. He smiled at her surprise. ‘I should kill you now because you left me to die. You wanted Kirill to burn.’
She didn’t speak.
‘You locked door. You wanted me to burn. But Yuri and Timur here, they saved me. I owe my life to them, Anastasia.’
‘Tell them what you were doing in that room.’
He smirked and poked the fire with his stick. ‘They knew. It does not matter to them. They don’t give a shit for you. They will be the ones that bury you.’
He rose and gestured to the four men, and they picked her up and bore her down the short slope to the road, leaving the knife and the remnants of her meal beside the smouldering fire, and pushed her into one of two vehicles that had slewed to a halt when the smoke had been spotted.
When Samson arrived at Harland’s cottage by the sea, Vuk was lounging by a black BMW coupé with low-profile tyres, flared exhaust pipes and bonnet vents. He remembered Simeon and Lupcho appearing in a similar car on the Greece–Macedonia border when he had first encountered Vuk, but this was much larger and could doubtless outrun any police vehicle in the six or seven states they had flashed through to reach Estonia in just under eighteen hours.
Vuk wore the same large khaki jacket with bulging pockets as he had three years before, a black cap, a fleece of great age and a red jersey with a zigzag motif. He held a cigarette in one hand and a bottle in the other and was staring into the distance. When he saw Samson, he flung his arms around him and gave him a bristly, smoke-laden kiss on both cheeks. ‘Magnificent cunt! How you are doing?’
Samson smiled weakly. ‘Where are the others?’
‘Looking at ocean. Disco pussies never see sea in Macedonia.’ He roared with laughter and proffered the bottle. Samson shook his head and took him by the elbow to the beach, where Simeon and Lupcho were skimming stones. He spent five minutes explaining the situation; anger and outrage flickered in Vuk’s face. They settled on a price for the operation – €5,000 in cash each for Lupcho and Simeon and €8,000 for Vuk.
‘Anastasia best woman in the world. We get her for Samson to make babies.’
‘I told you, she’s married to Denis.’
Vuk shrugged and spat out a piece of tobacco. ‘Samson love this woman and that not fucking detail.’
‘Follow me and we’ll go through the plan at the house. By the way, Naji is there.’
‘Little Syrian bastard?’
‘He’s a grown man now and you can’t go round calling people “little Syrian bastard”, Vuk.’
‘Smart little bastard,’ said Vuk, seeking compromise. He gave a piercing wolf whistle. Lupcho appeared from the beach in a long leather coat with headphones horseshoed around his neck and lifted a hand. Simeon, sporting a new tattoo beneath his Adam’s apple, shaven hair, ripped jeans and a red hoodie, followed and aimed a finger with a cocked thumb in Samson’s direction. Just as he registered that both of them were probably high, his phone vibrated in his hand and he answered a call from Zillah.
‘It isn’t good news,’ she said. ‘They found the place where she’d been – the fire was still warm. There was some food and a knife, which sounds like the one the old lady said Anastasia stole from her kitchen.’
‘Maybe she abandoned camp?’
‘There are two sets of tyre tracks on the side of the road. Those vehicles braked in a hurry. They’re ninety per cent sure she’s been recaptured.’
‘You’ve told Denis?’
‘He’s in court right now – not a good moment.’
‘What about his plan B?’
‘I have no idea what it is.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘Has there been activity on the bank accounts?’
‘I sent an email,’ she said. ‘This comes from within an agency so it’s accurate.’
‘It’s all in the email.’ She was losing patience with him.
‘Okay, thanks. Keep me in touch with what’s happening on the other side of the border.’
‘We’ll look for the rest of today, but after that I have to pull them out.’
He hung up, went into the house and called for Naji, who was nowhere to be seen. Nor was Harland, whose Volvo estate was parked beside the rented white Porsche. He shouted again and returned to Vuk, who was giving his two assistants a dressing-down. Samson took in the scene. ‘They’re out of their heads,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t use them.’
‘They take too much drugs to drive in night.’
‘I’m not having them anywhere near this operation. They’re out. I’ll pay their expenses and a thousand each for driving you here.’
‘Make it fifteen hundred,’ said Vuk.
‘Okay, but they should leave now,’ he said, counting out the money and adding €500 as a generous fuel allowance. ‘Now you wait here,’ he told Vuk. ‘I’m going to see our host.’
He found Naji inside and sent him the email from Zillah. ‘Have a look at the email I just sent you – there’s a lot of information which may be useful. Something might strike you.’ Naji slipped the laptop under his arm and tugged a ring pull on a tin of Coke.
Harland was out at the back, standing over a chopping block with a hand axe, looking out to a mass of birds that had appeared over the bay. ‘Starlings,’ he said. ‘They’re migrating to Western Europe.’
‘They think she’s been recaptured,’ said Samson.
Harland turned to look at him. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, but it’s not surprising.’ He flipped the axe into the chopping block and took off his gloves. ‘So that means you’re going ahead.’ He moved towards Samson and gripped his shoulders. ‘How on earth do you expect this to work? Think about it. You’ve spent precisely five minutes in that bar. You’ve got no one on the inside. You know nothing about Crane’s schedule. No idea if he has bodyguards, what kind of back-up they can summon. And if, by some undeserved miracle, you do manage to grab Crane, you don’t know how to contact the people holding Anastasia and you haven’t even thought of where you’re going to put the bastard until you do. Unless you’ve got something seriously good up your sleeve, I would suggest that you abandon the whole thing.’
‘I have to go ahead. This is her only chance.’ He glanced at his phone, which had just vibrated with a message from Zillah Dee. ‘Looks like he’s going down,’ he said. ‘And a story is breaking about Anastasia.’ He read the text out to Harland.
‘Publicity is not what we need,’ said Harland. ‘Look. I’ll help, but when I say I won’t do something, please don’t argue. We’ll use Johannes’s fishing cabin. There’s a key, but we’ll have to break in because he can’t be implicated. I’ll make good the repairs afterwards and add something for the inconvenience.’ He held out his hand. ‘A thousand will do the trick.’
Samson handed him the money.
‘You can never breathe a word of this to Ulrike. She’s gone back to the city and thinks I’m just keeping an eye on you here. Okay?’
‘Yes, of course. Thanks, I’m grateful.’
‘You can thank me when we’ve got her out,’ said Harland. He glanced at the wind chime, which had suddenly become agitated on a low bough. ‘Bad weather’s coming in. That could be to our advantage.’
Samson explained about the loss of Simeon and Lupcho.
‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Harland. ‘I’ve had an idea, and I’m going talk to some people now.’
‘Look at sunset, Anastasia,’ Kirill said, and wrenched her chin towards the orange slash in the clouds to the west. ‘Look, because this is your last.’
Kirill had changed. He no longer pretended to be anything but a sadistic killer and he was as rough with her as the men who threw her into the car had been. She had changed, too. She accepted that she was going to die and just prayed that he wouldn’t rape her before ending her life.
She looked dully at the sunset. She had never liked clichéd sunsets and, besides, this one wasn’t especially beautiful – just a sign that the day was ending. She wouldn’t see another. So what? She didn’t matter. She had had her time.
‘You like sunset?’
‘It’s hard to appreciate when you are in pain,’ she said. They were in the open and all around were concrete buildings without windows. It looked like an abandoned military facility, a place that could withstand bombs. Her hands were bound behind her back and plastic ties cut into her ankles. She had lost the circulation in her left foot and her shoulder was in spasm, and when the pain overwhelmed her, as it did in the car, she gave up all pretence of bravery and just cried.
Kirill may have let the mask slip, but he was no less ridiculous strutting around, barking orders and trying to provoke her with needless insults.
‘Why have you done this to me? What did I do to you?’ she asked.
‘You tried to kill me.’
‘I had to get away. You were drunk. You wanted sex.’
That earned a vicious kick on her thigh, which made her topple over and bang her head. One of the men picked her up and placed her against a wall.
‘If I’m going to die, I want to know why,’ she pleaded through fresh tears. ‘Why don’t you kill me now?’
He hooked his thumbs into the armholes of a gilet under his jacket and stomped around some more. ‘We wait. I will receive word, then you will be no more.’
‘But why?’
‘Because your husband causes trouble to my organisation and we must rectify certain matters.’
‘What organisation? What matters?’
‘Political matters. Matters of great importance that you would not understand.’
‘Try me,’ she said.
‘Husband infiltrated network in United States and used a spy to gather information and disrupt operation.’
‘He’s a businessman, for Christ sake! He’s not interested in politics.’
‘You do not know your husband well.’
‘Just have the good manners to explain why you’re going to kill me.’
He smiled and sat down beside her with his back to the wall. She smelled some kind of hair product. Clearly, not everything had burned in the fire, as he claimed. Though it was cold, she noticed a fine sheen of sweat across his forehead and a trickle ran from his temple. His face shone when he lit a cheroot. He turned to her, smoke dribbling from the corners of his mouth. ‘You hear noise, Anastasia? That’s my men digging new hole for you! First hole we could not use because people are looking for you. They found dacha and hole. They were very smart to find dacha. Truck driver told them, I think.’ His face creased with a smile and he laughed – not a real laugh, of course, because she doubted Kirill was capable of genuine emotion. But he wheezed and slapped his thighs and made as though the joke had suddenly just struck him. ‘If you didn’t make fire at dacha, they would have found you. Maybe they rescue you.’
‘Well, I avoided having sex with you. That makes it worth it.’
‘We can still have sex.’
She knew he was playing with her. ‘You couldn’t get it up last time.’ A muscle moved in his cheek but he didn’t strike her. ‘You can’t even rise to that,’ she added.
‘You are not serious person, Anastasia.’
‘Maybe, but I know the difference between serious and pompous.’
He shook his head, as if to say that she did not even have the power to provoke him now, and puffed furiously on his cheroot. ‘I now explain everything to you. When Soviet Union fell, people in West believed Russia would become a liberal democracy. But Russia was still Russia and West was still West. We hated you just the same, but we were weak because economy was shit and we lost Soviet Empire. Yet we kept our hatred of West and we knew one day we would triumph over complacent liberal democracies. You know how we do that?’
She looked away and muttered, ‘I may die of boredom before you have the chance to kill me.’
‘You are brave to make such joke, Anastasia. But it is good joke.’ He raised a finger. ‘I finish now without interruption. We destabilise West with two things. First, we use social media, invented by Americans, and we kill their truth and Americans don’t know what is true and what is false, what is up and what is down. Second, we use fault in human nature, and you know what this is? Racism. Hatred for migrants, for blacks, Arabs, Jews, Roma, for Pakistanis, for any fucking person who is not same as you. And we do just little to inflame hatred with Internet. Political elite sees hatred and fear everywhere in their own societies and illusion of Western superiority dies, morale is fatally undermined. When enemy does not believe in himself, he loses his power.’
‘And you’re saying Russia did all this as a planned strategy?’
‘No. West helped us by taking bad decisions. Bringing million migrants into Europe was like dream for us. But there was one other thing. Instead of protecting liberal democratic system, Westerners became obsessed with themselves. Identity politics. Gender politics. Personal fulfilment – all that shit. Me fucking Too. No one is serious about anything if it’s not their own pain or their personal journey. This is the decadence communists predicted.’
‘That’s all such a cliché. Anyway, if the West is already doomed, what’s the point of what you’re doing?’
He pulled out a flask. ‘The sun is down. I drink now.’
‘Are you going to give me some? I’m cold.’ The forlorn point of the remark was to remind Kirill that he was dealing with a human being who felt the same things as he did. ‘I’m really cold.’
He ignored her. ‘You know what pressure point is, where nerve lies close to surface in human body? We use far-right action all over Europe’s pressure points. We give them money and they execute certain tasks for us.’
‘Violent fascists.’
He smiled. ‘Insurgents.’
‘You’re financing terrorism. They’re no different from ISIS.’
‘Both serve our purpose to weaken West. In my lifetime, we will see the Russian Empire strong again.’ He swept his hand across the massive concrete towers and bunkers which glowed faintly in the last of the daylight. ‘In my lifetime, but not in yours, Anastasia.’
He put the flask to her lips and tipped brandy into her mouth. She choked but managed to keep some in her mouth so she could swallow it slowly and take what pleasure she could from it.
‘I regret that you must die. You have good spirit, Anastasia.’
‘And I regret that my last conversation on this earth is going to be with an impotent, fascist hypocrite. Don’t pretend you’re not enjoying this, because you’re loving it.’
He chuckled to himself and looked at his phone. ‘We have not got long now,’ he said, as though they were waiting for a supermarket to open.
Naji saw a pattern of transactions in the four bank accounts, although he had no figures. The email address of the man who generated the data had survived being forwarded through three parties, including Samson. Naji replied to the email, suggesting they moved to an encrypted messaging service. For Naji, it was standard to imply he was much older than his actual age and, in this case, that he was an experienced investigator. He soon won this individual’s confidence. His name was Jamie, and he explained he was no longer at the office, having finished an early shift at some kind of financial monitoring agency, which Naji took to be a branch of the US government. Since he was twelve, Naji had been used to corresponding with young men and women in science and tech forums – it helped his English. Sometimes he realised their expertise could only have been gained in government service. Also, they liked to show off. Jamie was no exception. He had an expert understanding of SWIFT, the highly protected network that allowed financial institutions to exchange information about transactions. Most laypersons wouldn’t know that the architecture of the SWIFT network was divided between European and transatlantic transactions. Jamie volunteered that the transactions of all data centres in the Netherlands and the underground facility in Switzerland weren’t mirrored in the US data centre. The transactions they watched all took place late at night, between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m., Estonia time, every working day, and in the last ten days, millions of dollars had flowed between the four principal accounts and hundreds of accounts across the world. Jamie couldn’t swear to it, but most seemed to be new because they were associated with freshly minted shell companies. He confirmed that these entities were mainly registered in London and Cyprus.
Naji kept an ear on what Samson, Harland and Vuk were planning. He noticed that Harland did not seem to like Vuk at all, but the exchange with Jamie went quickly. Soon he realised that Jamie was telling him a lot and he began to experience the thrill he’d had when hacking into IS systems as a boy. All the transactions came from the same location and were apparently made on the same device. And the pattern was the same every night. First, the bank account of the new shell company would transfer funds – usually between $250,000 and $350,000 – to one of Crane’s four principal bank accounts. Then another would transfer a much larger sum, in the millions of dollars, to the shell company’s bank account. Jamie wrote: ‘Maybe the kickback is being paid up front. That’s why your Joe is using multiple accounts. He is skimming!!!!’
Naji realised that the faster Jamie responded, the more he gave away.
‘What device is he using?’ he typed.
‘Looks like a new iPad Mini – the compact version of iPad.’
‘Would that remember passwords?’
‘If he allowed it, but most people don’t when using it for banking. Palm prints, iris or face recognition are most often used.’
‘Have you got a list of new shell companies and accounts?’
‘It’ll take a while. Hey, are you kosher? Which agency did you say you’re with?’
‘I didn’t. British SIS.’
‘Respect! Okay, so this is going to take a little while. We were doing this for a former colleague and have not bundled up the data. But it would be my pleasure.’
‘Thanks,’ Naji replied, punching the air.
‘Do you mind telling me what you’re working on?’
Naji considered the risk. The guy seemed cool, so he gambled. ‘Money is being supplied to far-right violent groups in Europe,’ he typed.
‘You got it, brother. Give me an hour.’
They signed off.
Naji focused on what was happening with Samson and Harland. Harland had just hung up on a call, which had lasted almost as long as Naji’s interaction with Jamie. He was smiling and his eyes were watering.
‘So?’ said Samson.
‘Nyman’s people are going to work for us tonight,’ said Harland. He paused and laughed. ‘But they don’t know that.’
‘How do you mean?’ said Samson.
‘My friend at KaPo wants to get them off his back, so he’s offered Nyman the old dossier in exchange for surveillance help. Nyman accepted with alacrity. His people will cover Crane’s home, the restaurant where he dines and the bar. When they see Crane’s white Porsche move, they’ll phone him and he’ll let me know immediately.’
Samson smiled. ‘And they have no idea?’
‘No. But there’s a price. KaPo want everything we have.’
‘There’s some good stuff in the email,’ said Samson, looking over to Naji.
Naji nodded but said nothing. He was aware of Samson’s gaze lingering on him with suspicion.
‘Send it to me and I’ll put it their way,’ said Harland.
‘But you didn’t tell them what we’re planning?’ said Samson, turning back to Harland with one final penetrating glance at Naji.
‘Of course not! They suspect he’s preparing to leave, anyway. There’s been activity at the house to indicate that. If he goes missing, I believe they won’t be overly concerned. They’re angry that he’s been running his operation here because of the problems they’ve had in the past with Russian money-laundering.’ He sat down and dabbed his eyes with a tissue. ‘There’s something else. They inserted surveillance devices into Crane’s house. A rushed job: two or three needle microphones, which they got in overnight. Seems KaPo independently located the house yesterday. They need help on something and they’ve sent an email with a transcript which’ – he looked down at his phone – ‘should be here any moment. Yes, here it is. I’ll send it to you.’
The transcript was of two individuals talking in English, one of whom was Crane, identified as Chumak. There were occasional interruptions from a third individual who spoke in Russian, and these were redacted. KaPo wanted explanations and an ID for Chumak’s main interlocutor.
CHUMAK: I asked you not to come but you came anyway. That was unwise.
AMERICAN MALE: I had to – what else could I do?
CHUMAK: You came on your own plane, landed at the airport in Tallinn. You think the authorities won’t register this? They pay attention to private jets.
AMERICAN MALE: I couldn’t email or send a message. I needed to see you personally. You have to understand that he’s in possession of more information that Daniel gave him. Much more.
CHUMAK: What makes you think that?
AMERICAN MALE: Things he said to me after the meeting a couple of days ago.
CHUMAK: It doesn’t matter – the operation will be completed by the end of the day. There are just a few things to tie up. (Pause.) Now you are here you should celebrate with us. You’ll meet some of the people we are working with and then …
CHUMAK: We go our separate ways, of course.
AMERICAN MALE: What about the hostage? You’re going to let her go, right? That was the deal. We agreed that you would do this. Just a few days while he was in jail and you got things straight, you said.
CHUMAK: Her husband is still a danger to us.
AMERICAN MALE: He’s in jail. His business is fucked. He can’t hurt you. You got everything you wanted, Adam. And now you’re going to disappear … (inaudible)
CHUMAK: Why are you so concerned?
AMERICAN MALE: She’s a good woman. She has nothing to do with this.
CHUMAK: You like her?
AMERICAN MALE: Sure, I like her.
CHUMAK: This is the reason you’re here – to plead for her life.
AMERICAN MALE: What’s the point of another death? Let her go, Adam. That’s what you agreed to.
CHUMAK: I’ll see what I can do, but you have to understand this is a very complex matter now. (Pause.) I’m surprised by your sudden interest in her welfare. Has he got to you? Has he told you to come here?
AMERICAN MALE: No, of course not. I’m here of my own volition. I came because I wanted to make sure you knew what was going on in the States.
CHUMAK: Thank you. But you shouldn’t have come here.
AMERICAN MALE: I understand, but you owe me, Adam. I’ve helped you to do what you wanted. Now I’m asking you for something in return. Let her go and …
CHUMAK: We’ll talk about it later.
Samson skimmed it again, then looked up. ‘The American male is a man named Gil Leppo. Anastasia’s husband identified him as Crane’s man and sent him to plead for her life. This is his back-up plan – definitely not working. Crane is going to have her killed, that’s plain.’
‘What do I tell KaPo?’ asked Harland.
‘Say it means nothing to us.’
‘They’re not stupid.’
‘Find a way of stalling them.’
A few minutes later, they gathered round a laptop, opened Google Earth and went through the plan. The snatch was ludicrously simple and would involve just Samson and Vuk. It could only work if the timing was perfect and they had more luck than they deserved. Harland said he would run the communications from near the Soviet-era Olympic yachting centre at the port, where they would dump the Porsche and transfer Crane to the pick-up.
‘Where I will be?’ asked Naji.
‘You’re staying here,’ said Harland.
Naji picked up his laptop and walked to their end of the room then faced them. ‘I have new information on all bank accounts. I must be with you to look at his iPad.’
‘How do you know he has an iPad?’ asked Samson.
‘My source. In one hour he will tell me everything about Crane’s operation. I must be with you.’
‘I promised your sister,’ said Samson. ‘What source?’
Naji remembered the moment in the Macedonian border town when he had implored a group of migrants to take him with them on the road north. He placed his laptop on the table. ‘You can tell me nothing about fear, nothing about danger,’ he said quietly. ‘I have seen more in my life than any of you – men killed for smoking cigarette, women beaten for wrong ringtone. I saw barrel bombs fall from sky and destroy a school. I see what security forces did to my father. I was nearly drowned. I survived. Perverts and terrorists tried to murder me. I lived. And when Almunjil was going to kill you, Samson, I saved your life.’ He stopped. ‘Even then I was not a boy.’
Harland cleared his throat and said, ‘He can wait with me in my car at the port. He’ll be fine. Then we will lead you to Johannes’s place.’
‘I’m against it,’ said Samson, ‘but I agree, on the understanding that you do not place yourself in danger.’ Naji nodded. ‘So I have a few things to say,’ he continued. ‘I and Vuk will be armed, but these weapons will not be used.’ He looked at Vuk. ‘I repeat, they will not be fired. I don’t want a bloody shoot-out. This has to be quick and clean. Talking of which, Vuk, you need to shave and get yourself a jacket and put on a bloody tie and clean shirt for the first time in your life so you can pass as Crane’s driver.’ Vuk looked aggrieved; Harland said he could help. ‘As soon as they know we’ve got Crane they’ll contact us. They won’t call Hisami because they know he’s back in jail, so the call must come on this phone.’ He held up one of the several phones lying on charge. ‘Then we’ll make arrangements to swap Crane for Anastasia. This will take place somewhere along the Russian border.’
Harland’s face betrayed his many doubts, but in response to a less than friendly look from Samson, he said, ‘It is what it is. We’d better get on with it.’
The storm rolled in at 9.15 p.m. with strong winds that forced two ferries trying to dock in the port of Tallinn to retreat to the open sea. The downpour halted traffic and sent the few people still on the streets running for shelter. Torrents coursed in the roads; the tram system was paralysed because of fallen trees that had taken overhead lines with them; and a section of the city was plunged into darkness when the Ranna substation, undergoing an upgrade, was inundated.
By the time the storm hit, several messages had passed from Harland to Samson relaying the movements of Crane’s white Porsche, which had departed the Russian-style residence at 8.35 p.m. and at 8.57 p.m. arrived at the restaurant Gogol, where it dropped off Crane and male and female companions. One of Nyman’s people had booked a table, so was able to relay to KaPo the descriptions of Crane’s party for dinner. Harland’s friend at KaPo passed much of this information to him, but only essential details were relayed by an encrypted message service to Samson and Vuk, who waited in the white Porsche identical to Crane’s in a back street three minutes’ drive from Bar MS. The sending of these messages had been taken over by Naji, who had put all the phones in a group on an app and was quicker at typing than Harland, who, with eyebrows raised and glasses at the end of his nose, tended to stab at the phone’s screen with his index finger.
Naji and Harland watched the storm in silence while waiting for news from the restaurant. When the wind died Harland got out and dashed to the pick-up to make sure it would still start.
To Naji, Harland seemed something like the model Englishman conjured up by his father, who had almost certainly had inaccurate ideas about such things from his reading of the English classics. He was polite, listened intently and asked many interesting questions about Syria and Naji’s escape through the mountains.
Their conversation came to an end when messages began to pour into Harland’s phone. Naji relayed them to Samson via the app.
‘Party about to leave restaurant.’
‘Two cars outside restaurant.’
‘Crane and companions get into white Porsche.’
‘Four men get into Black Mercedes SUV, German plates.’
‘Crane’s car now on way to Bar MS.’
‘Second car waiting at Gogol. Passenger has forgotten something.’
Harland looked at his watch. ‘Now we’ll see what happens. If that bloody Porsche stays outside the bar for the duration of Crane’s time there, we’re …’
‘Screwed,’ said Naji.
‘Just so.’
Fifteen minutes passed before the white Porsche appeared at the bar. It took much longer than Harland had expected and he assumed there had been some kind of hold-up because of the storm.
A message from Samson asked, ‘Has Porsche left the bar with Crane’s woman?’
‘No word,’ replied Harland.
Another few minutes elapsed. Harland tapped the steering wheel. Naji consulted the message app he was using to talk to Jamie. As yet, there was nothing from him.
Another message came in from KaPo. ‘Both cars outside bar.’
Harland waited, his eyes locked on to the screen.
A new message read, ‘Three people are out of white Porsche. Four men out of black Mercedes. They are saying goodbye to the woman.’
Harland held his breath.
‘Woman returned to white Porsche with driver. Both vehicles leaving now.’
Harland nodded and patted the steering wheel a couple of times.
Naji sent the message on to Samson and got the reply, ‘Thanx.’
‘We have a bit of a wait now, maybe two hours. I want to hear about your music. Samson tells me you have talent,’ said Harland.
Naji looked mystified.
‘I’m interested,’ said Harland.
But before Naji could respond Harland received a call from Rasmus, his source in KaPo, who spoke for thirty seconds, during which Harland said nothing apart from a grunted goodbye. He dictated a message for Samson. ‘One unidentified male – not ours – watching bar.’
The white Porsche rented by and containing Samson and Vuk had moved closer to the street with the bar in it and was now parked just two minutes away, in the shadow of a church. On reading the latest message from Harland and having replied, Samson got out and moved along the side of the church so he could drop down into the street about a hundred metres from the Metsa Sõbrad bar. It was still raining and there was much debris in the street, but evidently the main body of the storm had passed on its journey eastwards. Samson waited in the lee of the church, quite well sheltered from the rain, watching for any movement. There were more cars parked opposite the bar than on the previous evening, but nothing stirred until ten thirty, when three vehicles arrived in quick succession, followed by two Mercedes people-carriers, and dropped off men at the entrance of the bar. Several more cars drew up. Samson estimated that about twenty-five men had gone into the bar. He lifted his binoculars and watched them as they hurried to the door. They were a less rowdy bunch than before, and most wore suits. There was certainly a sense of occasion and formality.
Three quarters of an hour passed during which he became aware of an uneven bump in an otherwise regular shadow on the other side of the street, cast by one of two streetlights between him and the bar. There was no movement, of course, yet the shadow could conceivably have been the back of a man’s head. A glance through the binoculars wasn’t conclusive, but Samson remembered this was more or less the spot from which an armed man had emerged to beat up the two drunken thugs.
A dog appeared, trotting from the direction of the bar, stopped, lifted its leg against a tyre and seemed to do a double-take by the driver’s door, as though it had picked up a scent or a movement in the car. It soon lost interest and continued on its way. Samson trained the binoculars on the car and saw mist on the inside of the windscreen – the breath of perhaps two occupants rather than one condensed on the rain-chilled glass. The car was facing away from the bar, which meant that the driver could observe the entrance in his wing mirror. It had to be Nyman’s team.
Muffled by the rain, the clocks of Tallinn began to chime eleven. Samson folded the binoculars and put them inside his jacket then made his way back to the Porsche. When he opened the door, Vuk thrust a mobile in his face. ‘You fucking idiot who does not look at fucking phone.’
Samson read that Crane’s white Porsche had left the residence four minutes before.
‘Go! You know what to do,’ he said, scrambling into the back and reaching for the gun on the floor. ‘When we get into the street, slow down until you see people at the door. Don’t arrive there too early. Then pull up beyond the door so they don’t see you.’
‘Numbers fucked with water. I take away.’
Samson processed this. The registration plates Naji had mocked up were unusable because of the storm. ‘They won’t notice – they’ll still think it’s Crane’s car.’
They entered the street. ‘Slow down!’ hissed Samson.
‘I know this. Don’t tell me fucking story again.’ The car coasted across the cobbles and stopped. ‘They come now,’ said Vuk, moving off.
‘Okay … Just ease it beyond the doorway.’
As the car moved towards the bar’s entrance, Samson looked between the seats and saw the doorman recognise the car as Crane’s and move into the street with an umbrella.
They glided past the entrance. Crane was standing in the doorway. He looked up crossly from a leather folder he held in both hands then back into the doorway. Vuk stopped.
‘Damn! He’s waiting for someone,’ said Samson under his breath. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ And he knew who that might be. The doorman moved to the car. Crane glanced behind him then followed and arrived at the passenger door just as it was opened. At that moment, Samson saw Gil Leppo, in a long black raincoat, dive towards the car. Crane was halfway in. Leppo opened the back door, saw Samson with the gun and let out a kind of yelp, which made Crane hesitate. At this point, there was a soft explosion behind Samson as the back windshield shattered. More bullets clipped the roof of the Porsche and thudded into the back door. The doorman, who was midway between the car and the entrance to the bar, was hit and fell sideways. Samson saw Crane rooted to the spot, looking astonished. The only thought in his mind was that, if Crane were killed, Anastasia would certainly die. He flung open the back door on the driver’s side and rolled on to the street, loosing off three shots blindly into the shadows, where he had seen the immobile shape of a man. But the man was no longer hidden. He was in the centre of the road holding a silenced automatic weapon that produced a series of muzzle flashes not much brighter than a Christmas-tree light.
Samson rolled again and fired and at the same time became dimly aware of Nyman, who had appeared out of nowhere and was dithering between two parked cars to Samson’s right. The gunfire continued and he heard a yell from the direction of the car. Now Nyman was looking at him aghast, trying to compute what his former colleague was doing in Crane’s car and why he was now carrying out the duties of a seasoned bodyguard. Samson also took in Sonia Fell, crouching by the wall of the building on the other side of the line of parked cars. Next thing he knew, Crane’s white Porsche had materialised in the street and Crane’s driver, comprehending at least part of what was happening, had opened fire on the gunman.
Samson rolled once more, scrambled up and went round to the front of the Porsche to seize Crane, who had taken shelter behind the back door, which had been wedged open by Gil Leppo, who had been wounded in the stomach but was still moving. Crane searched Samson’s face, not knowing whether he was friend or foe, and rightly decided that the man he vaguely recognised from twenty-four hours before was trying to save his life. He let himself be hauled over the wounded Leppo and bundled into the back of the car. As Samson gave him a final shove, he noticed the leather iPad case lying on the cobblestones by the doorman. He picked it up and leapt in with Crane, dropping the case on to the front passenger seat without another glance at Leppo, who looked as though he was about to die.
‘Go!’ he shouted. Vuk hit the accelerator, but the wheels of the Porsche spun wildly on the damp cobbles and the car began to drift sideways into the body of the doorman. Then Vuk took his foot off the gas, tried again and the Porsche lurched forward and over the man’s lifeless body. They passed rapidly through the old gateway and down the slip road, crossed the ring road, crashing three sets of lights, and entered the avenue of modern commercial buildings that led to the ferry terminal. It was only when Vuk swung left towards the dark, concrete mass of the Linnahall – the V. I. Lenin Place of Culture and Sport – that it dawned on Crane that these men were far from his saviours. He scrabbled with the locked door. Samson placed the gun to his chest and said, ‘Shush! We just saved your life, pal.’
They made for wasteland near the Linnahall, much of it under water, and skidded to a halt between Harland’s Volvo and the pick-up. Harland was already out of his car. Samson pulled Crane out of the Porsche and held the gun at his chest while Harland bound his hands behind his back with tape. Holding the Glock Compact with one hand, Samson opened the bullet-pocked door, reached in, picked up the iPad folder and held it aloft, which prompted Naji to dash from the Volvo. They both knew that, if Crane hadn’t switched off the device before the gunman opened fire, it could still be accessed without a passcode. Naji opened it and gave Samson a thumbs-up. He’d now be able to change the auto-lock setting to ‘Never’.
They left the Porsche on the wasteland, and with Samson now at the wheel of the pick-up, they followed Harland’s car at a sedate pace on to the road that circled the old town to the south. Vuk was in the back with a gun pressed to Crane’s temple, a length of pipe in his right hand.
Several police cars passed them going in the opposite direction with flashing lights and sirens, but very soon they left the lights of the city for the motorway. Apart from one or two trucks toiling eastwards, there was very little traffic. Samson glanced in the rear-view mirror. ‘Who’s trying to kill you, Crane?’
‘I’m not Crane,’ he said.
‘Right, you’re Aleksis Chumak. You kept the same initials for the all-American Adam Crane. And by the way, if you’re not the man known as Adam Crane, what the hell were you doing with Gil Leppo – the guy who was pleading with you for Anastasia’s life earlier today?’
There was no answer.
‘A lot of people must want you dead,’ continued Samson. ‘Who was that in the street?’
‘I assumed you had arranged the attack to get me into the car?’
‘I don’t go round killing innocent people like that doorman. That gunman wanted you dead. He was after you. Who was it? Maybe it was your Russian masters, who knew you were skimming their money and decided to do away with you now that your operation is over – huh?’
Crane looked sourly out of the window and said nothing. Samson examined him in the glow of the light from the footwell. Gone was the swagger of the previous evening, and now Samson noticed he looked heavier than in recent photographs and his hair was much shorter. He had the pallor and edginess of the all-night gamblers his father used to mix with. It looked like he’d been drinking a lot.
He prodded Crane again. ‘If we don’t get what we want tonight, we’re going to kill you.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. The accent was corporate America with no hint of the Ukraine.
‘You kidnapped Hisami’s wife in Italy to stop him publishing what he knew about your operation, giving you time to clean up your books and cover your tracks. But he wants her back. If that doesn’t happen in the next twelve hours, Vuk here is going to put a bullet in the back of your head. Before that he’ll make sure you suffer, just like you made Daniel Misak suffer in London.’
Crane shrugged and glared at Samson’s reflection in the mirror. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
Samson engaged his eyes. ‘Well, whatever happens with you tonight, you should know that tomorrow we will publish everything we have – the bank-account numbers, the phoney shell companies in London who you’re giving money to and what they are going to do with it.’
Samson had his attention. ‘I told you. We want Anastasia back, and you’re going to make the call to save your life. Otherwise, I’m going to let Vuk here get to work on you. Vuk comes from Serbia and is currently being hunted for war crimes. He likes to keep his hand in.’ Vuk snarled, perhaps a little too theatrically to have effect.
The Volvo was slowing and had its indicator on. Samson cursed, followed Harland into the motorway service area and saw Naji leap from the Volvo and disappear into the shop. ‘What the fuck are they doing?’ murmured Samson, and went to park on the far side of the forecourt. A few seconds later, the phone reserved for Macy Harp started vibrating.
Macy’s first words were, ‘You know what to do with the phone after this call?’
‘Yep,’ said Samson, getting out of the vehicle and into the rain.
‘Our former employers are hopping mad. They’re saying you wrecked their operation.’
‘Bollocks! They didn’t have an operation, and we saved Crane’s life from an attack by an unidentified gunman. The only thing they had was the intelligence they’d got from us, and that’s out of date.’
‘Take Crane back right now, or there’s a risk they’ll charge you with weapons offences, endangering life, armed kidnap, and so forth.’
‘Sorry – no.’
‘They’ll find a way of prosecuting you in the UK as well.’
‘On what grounds? Making SIS look stupid?’
‘Nyman was hit.’
‘Badly?’
‘No, he’ll pull through, but Fell’s saying you shot him.’
‘Wrong. There was a hitman with a silenced automatic spraying the street with bullets, at least forty rounds. By the way, was the gunman hit?’
‘No, there’s no sign of him now, which means they can pin all this on you, Samson. Take Crane back to Tallinn and they might just let you off.’
‘Not going to happen. You know Anastasia’s life depends on it.’
‘Well, I’ve delivered their message to you,’ Macy said regretfully. ‘Now it’s on you. They mean business.’
‘Fuck them.’ Samson hung up and saw Harland moving rapidly towards him, holding his hand up against the rain. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Naji has to keep that iPad powered up. It’s nearly out of battery. He’s making a lead out of something he’s bought in the shop and the cigarette lighter from my car. God knows! Says it won’t take long.’ The rain was dripping down his face.
They moved towards the pick-up. Samson checked on Crane and Vuk in the back. ‘Just got word from Macy that all hell’s breaking loose,’ he said to Harland. ‘They want Crane. If you need to bail out, now’s the time.’
Harland shook his head. ‘I suppose I’m bloody well in now. Did you find a phone on Crane?’
‘No, Vuk checked.’
‘So I guess we may need that iPad.’
‘That reminds me,’ said Samson. He handed Harland the phone he’d just used and pointed to a flatbed van that had driven into the service area for fuel. ‘Can you toss this into the back as you pass?’ Harland nodded. If the phone Macy had called on was being monitored by GCHQ, they’d end up tracking an old van carrying two pneumatic drills and dozens of traffic cones.
They turned to see Naji burst from the shop triumphantly holding up a piece of wire.
‘Right, we’d better get going,’ said Harland. ‘It’s a long drive.’
Samson climbed into the pick-up and noted Crane’s deadly, indifferent expression. The gangster in Crane smelled the weakness of his position. There wasn’t a plan and Crane damn well knew it. They were about to head into the vast darkness of eastern Estonia and they didn’t have a clue how to reach the people holding Anastasia, or what they would do if they failed to make contact. They didn’t even know if Anastasia was alive. But Crane knew. Samson switched on the interior light and turned round. ‘Have you given the order to kill her? Is that what’s going on here? Is she dead?’ To ask this straightforward question seemed wholly unreal to him, but the words were out and he needed an answer.
Crane met his eyes and it appeared for one moment as though he were about to smile. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’
‘Is she dead?’ said Samson.
Without warning, Vuk brought the pipe across Crane’s right knee then hammered the kneecap two or three times more, causing Crane to scream. Samson ordered Vuk to stop.
‘If you’ve got a way of contacting your friends, you’d better tell me about it now, because this guy really wants to kill you.’
Crane said, ‘I don’t know what you’re …’
‘How would you give the order?’
Vuk made as though he was about to start beating Crane about the face.
‘There’s a number on my phone. I don’t have it. I lost it in the street.’
Samson waited a beat. ‘Did you contact them before you left the bar?’ he asked. ‘A text, an email, a call – how was it done?’
Crane rocked with pain and shook his head. Harland’s car shot past them. Samson started the pick-up and followed. ‘You’d better fucking well pray she’s not dead, pal.’
He phoned Harland as he drove. Naji picked up. ‘Look on the iPad for any messages or texts sent in the last few hours.’