are ruthless killers. My men are thieves and thugs. They are not soldiers.’
Burliuk waved a hand dismissively. ‘I will help you on this matter, and in return you will forget the part I played in your deal with Yamout. Agreed?’ Petrenko nodded. ‘I’ll make a call and bring in some professionals. They will handle it. All you have to do is find him.’
CHAPTER 28
Dark clouds hung in the sky over Minsk. Victor walked on the left side of the street, along the kerb so that inconsiderate or clumsy pedestrians couldn’t brush or bang into his wounded arm. It throbbed continuously. In the morning, he’d visited several pharmacies to buy first-aid supplies, cleaned and dressed the wound before resting and sleeping through the rest of the day. He was waiting until rush hour before getting out of the city. It was the best time for making an exit. Maximum people. Maximum cover.
After the killings of the previous night Victor had plenty of enemies to concern himself with. He doubted Yamout would still be in the city, let alone hunting for him with all his bodyguards dead, but that left Petrenko’s people, whoever the surveillance team worked for, and the authorities.
The police wouldn’t be on to him without an eye witness, but they would be hunting for anyone suspicious. With cameras covering the Presidential Suite, the surveillance team would have captured his face when he surveyed the suite earlier in the day before his attack. He’d destroyed the computer, but if recordings had been backed up elsewhere he had a real problem. As for Petrenko, one of his men had survived, along with Petrenko himself, but in the frenzy of combat Victor couldn’t be sure which one. If that man happened to be Jerkov, whom Victor had briefly conversed with, they might have worked out the significance of that particular visit and would also know what he looked like.
Victor wore cheap shoes, cheap jeans and a cheap jacket, all purchased from a thrift store. A similarly cheap ball cap was pulled down tight over his head. He walked with a slight stoop to disguise his height. He was a block away from the Europe, keeping pace with a group of Russian tourists, walking a step behind as though he was one of them, occasionally nodding and smiling like he was part of their conversation while he looked for the car that matched the keys he’d taken from one of the surveillance team.
They had been smart operators. Aside from their Belarusian IDs carried in case they encountered the authorities, they’d been operating sterile. They wouldn’t have parked their car in the spaces opposite the hotel, or anywhere else too close. They would have parked a tactical distance away where they wouldn’t have been noticed by Petrenko or Yamout, but close enough to be practical.
From his previous reconnaissance Victor knew all the likely parking spaces in the vicinity, and mentally narrowed the list down to two: either at a small parking lot to the north-east behind a row of stores, or the long line of parking spaces that ran along the west side of Oktyabrskaya Square. The first lot was the more discreet of the two, but was harder to get to, and hence slower to leave with haste. Smart operators wouldn’t have boxed themselves in if another option was available. He’d checked it anyway, because he was thorough, but hadn’t found the car.
Victor was now at the second option, walking south. To his left, at the centre of the huge square, stood the Palace of the Republic. The rectangular building had sharp Stalinist columns set along every wall, a plate-glass facade, and was used for political ceremonies, concerts, summits, and exhibitions. The nearby parking was predictably busy and anonymous, and connected to two main thoroughfares. Had their roles been reversed, Victor would have parked here.
He saw fifty-one vehicles parked in a long row along the square’s west side. If the keys had included a radio fob, Victor could have just pressed it until the indicators flashed. There was no maker’s badge on the key ring either. Both had likely been removed by the team as a security precaution. Smart operators.
As they had numbered four, their car would have to be big enough to carry them all, so it would be a four- door sedan or SUV. Discounting the small sedans and coupes left thirty-six potentials. An SUV would stand out too much during mobile surveillance, so he dismissed those to bring the pool down another three. The team’s sedan would be a mid-range vehicle, again for anonymity’s sake, so Victor ignored those that were more than ten years old and those less than two, as well as the odd luxury BMW or Merc. Sixteen cars remained. The colour would be a muted tone, something that wouldn’t catch the eye. No red, white or black. Seven remaining. As the team were not native to Belarus and Minsk their car would most likely be a rental with a company sticker and Belarusian plates. Three left. As it had been parked since at least the previous evening, it would have picked up a parking ticket. Two left. Finally, smart operators always reverse-parked to facilitate a faster exit.
One left.
It was a dark grey Saab, four years old, with a Europcar sticker on the windshield. Victor folded the parking ticket into a pocket and inserted the key into the driver’s door. It unlocked, and he climbed inside. The door closed with a reassuring thunk. The interior was clean and unremarkable and Victor sat for a moment with his hands resting on the steering wheel, listening to the sound of traffic passing, and people walking by. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
The glove box contained nothing apart from the smell of greasy food, no doubt from the remains of a takeout stashed inside. He found a packet of soft mints in the driver’s door pocket and chewed one while he turned the ignition. The Saab’s inbuilt satnav powered on and Victor navigated to the most recent entries. He wasn’t surprised to find the log empty. The rental company would have wiped it after the previous client had dropped it off, and the surveillance team had been cautious enough not to use it and risk leaving an electronic map of their movements.
He thumbed the trunk release and climbed out. A young woman with long blonde hair tied into a ponytail stood on the other side of the flowerbeds that lay between the parking spaces and October Square. She used a small camera to take shots of the Palace of the Republic before she looked his way and smiled in the polite way polite people did to strangers they took to also be polite. Rude people tended to be remembered more acutely than those who were polite, so Victor smiled back.
He sensed she wanted to engage with him, perhaps to chat about the architecture of the Palace of the Republic, maybe to share some of the facts she’d learned from a tourist brochure. He looked away, as if he was too distracted to talk, and she went back to her photographs. He waited until she had walked away before opening the Saab’s trunk.
Two large black sports bags lay inside. One was empty except for a few electronic cables. The second contained tiny cameras and microphones, likely identical to the ones hidden throughout the Presidential Suite of the Hotel Europe. They were battery-powered with wireless transmitters, very small, very concealable, and very high tech. There were more cables, tools and other surveillance paraphernalia.
Victor took the bag and climbed back into the driver’s seat. The odometer read 91,000 kilometres travelled. Beneath the odometer, the trip meter read 49 kilometres. If the rental company had reset the satnav’s trip log, it would have reset the trip meter too. Europcar rented vehicles out from Minsk National Airport, which was approximately 41 kilometres from central Minsk. That left about 8 kilometres unaccounted for. Either they had got significantly lost on their way into the city, which Victor doubted, or they had been somewhere beyond the hotel.
It was unlikely they had all travelled together on the same flight to avoid attracting undue attention. As there were four, he expected two might have flown in, and the other two arrived in Minsk by some other form of transport, probably train as they would have had to bring the surveillance equipment, which wouldn’t get through airport security without difficult questions being asked. The two who had flown in had arrived second, otherwise the Saab’s trip meter would have read at least 82 kilometres. The suite next to the Presidential had two double beds, so only two would have checked in, again to keep a low profile. The other two team members had to sleep somewhere.
So, 8 spare kilometres, assuming they’d made no mistakes on the drive. If they’d only completed one journey between the hotel and the safe house, that was a radius of 4 kilometres in a straight line. In a city, where there were few straight routes, that reduced down to maybe a 2.5 kilometre radius, or a circular area of 18 square kilometres. The centre of Minsk. Somewhere in that area was another hotel or even safe house used by the two team members who hadn’t stayed at the Europe. Such a distance could have been covered on foot or on public
