‘Ah, the photographs. .’ He sighed. ‘If this doesn’t work out I doubt you will see me again.’
‘I thought as much. You’re so desperate for this not to go wrong you’re throwing everything you’ve got at it. And there’s more to collect than just Kaffarov, isn’t there?’
Paliov folded his hands in his lap. ‘I’ve no idea what you mean.’
Dima slammed his hands down on the desk. ‘Dont fuck with me.’
‘There are. . operational obstacles. Even Timofayev has to tread carefully. One foot wrong, even at his level, and we all go down the crapper.’
The sheen of sweat on the old man’s brow told Dima his instincts were correct. ‘Okay then I’m going to tell you. There’s another team who go in when my lot come out. Because Kaffarov’s left something precious there.’
Paliov looked ashen.
‘The Chernobyl cleaner team landed their chopper here an hour ago. They’re repatriating warheads.’
Paliov raised his hands and let them fall on his knees. He smiled wanly. How pathetic, Dima thought. To be so high up, at such an age, and to be so scared. Perestroika, the transformation of the evil old USSR into the shiny new Russian Federation. Nothing had really changed. They might as well be back in Stalin’s time.
‘And Timofayev insisted I wasn’t told.’
Paliov had managed to stop the flow of sweat down his forehead.
‘Their existence is classified at the highest level. Only three people in the Kremlin know of it. It is therefore most embarrassing for those who do know that this has come to pass.’
‘Al Bashir gets his hands on this, he gets the nuclear capability his country’s been craving, to put them in the game with Israel and Pakistan. The Americans get wind of this, if they haven’t already — they’re going to be seriously pissed off with Russia for supplying a rogue state. I mean, seriously.’
Paliov reached into his jacket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. He helped himself, lit up and drew on it deeply like a man enjoying his last one before the firing squad.
‘As I recall, the smallest we ever made weighs in at over 90 kilos and is about the same size as a medium- sized domestic refrigerator.’
Paliov shifted in his seat and gazed at his knees.
‘There have been developments. The use of carbon fibre and the miniaturisation of key components has brought the size down to that of a normal suitcase. The blast potential is the equivalent of 18 kilotons of TNT — about the same as the Hiroshima bomb.’
‘How do you know it’s still there, in the compound?’
‘It gives off a signal, which Kaffarov seems not to be aware of. He’s lucky. That’s how we knew where he was.’
Paliov drew again on his cigarette. Already past his sell-by date, he seemed to have aged another ten years just in this meeting.
Dima felt a small flicker of contempt. ‘Your job’s on the line, isn’t it, pension even threatened. I do so feel for you.’
Paliov let out a smoky, sardonic laugh. ‘My life, more like.’
Dima pursed his lips and blew out a long sigh. ‘And fuck the rest of us. Right, now listen to me. The photographs: I want a name and an address, and when they were taken. You tell me now, or do the job yourself. I’ve had enough of being fucked around by you people.’
‘Timofayev has that information.’
‘And he doesn’t even trust you?’
Paliov shrugged. ‘No one trusts anyone.’
‘Then why should I trust you? What do you take me for?’
He wanted to kill him there and then, squeeze the life out of his contemptible, wobbly, time-serving little body. But then he would never get the photographs.
Paliov leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, his hands pressed together as if in supplication, the cigarette jutting between them. ‘Give me back twenty years and I’d be going in with you. If you succeed, I will give you every assistance to help you find. . that which caused you to accept this mission. I know what those photographs mean to you. If it was in my gift you’d have it all now. Oh, and by the way, Timofayev has promised you thanks in person from the President.’
‘I hope you told him I don’t give a shit about that.’
Paliov stood up and offered Dima his hand. ‘But, if this goes wrong, my honest advice is — don’t come back.’
11
Iraqi Kurdistan/Iran Border
By the time Blackburn got to the dead Marine there was nothing on him. Helmet, M4, body armour, ammunition: gone. Fatigues, gone: tags, gone. Even his boots, watch and wedding ring. Even his underpants. The crowd had picked him clean. Headless, naked in the shattered landscape, surrounded by rubble, he looked like a fallen statue. Only the dust-specked delta of blood oozing out of him was proof that he had ever been a living man.
A few feet away, like discarded candy wrappers, he saw a couple of crumpled photos. He reached down and picked them up. One was of a girl sitting on the hood of a blue Firebird, the other a labrador leaping in the air to catch a stick.
There was nothing Blackburn could do for him. He smoothed out the photos and put them in a pocket. Then he whispered a prayer, and inwardly promised himself he would put a name to the dead man and somehow avenge his horrible, inglorious death. He knew this image would remain with him forever and that in the future he would never speak about it, because nothing good or positive could ever come from communicating it. Now, for the first time in his life, his father’s silence finally made sense.
It was dark now. The temperature was falling. He was weak and desperately thirsty. The deafness had turned into a steady buzzing in his ears like a malfunctioning radio. He turned and started heading east back towards the border from where they had come he didn’t know how many hours before. He had been walking for an hour or so, stumbling along what was left of the road, when above the buzz he heard the welcome throb of an Osprey. He doubled his pace and immediately tripped and fell on some rubble. He got back up and continued more slowly. The Osprey disappeared over the horizon, but it had given him some hope, something to focus on. As the sound died away he became aware of other sounds in the darkness: shouts, a vehicle being furiously manoeuvred, gears screaming, then shots and a flash. If there was fighting, he reasoned, there had to be good guys as well as bad.
In the area he was now walking into, the quake damage was less intense. The street was still strewn with rubble but most of the buildings were intact. He heard a voice and aimed for it. It was coming from a vehicle, a crashed Humvee. He could see a figure leaning out of it as if waving him on, but the angle was wrong. The soldier, hanging half out of the cab, was dead, his arms splayed. Blackburn focused on the source of the voice. It was several seconds before he registered that it was American, coming from somewhere on the ground — a radio.
‘
‘
He grabbed the radio. The outer casing fell away. He tried to open a channel, no go, so he tossed it aside as right on cue the Osprey reappeared, clattering overhead, its twin rotors tilting into position for a landing. Blackburn found energy he didn’t know he still had as he half stumbled, half jogged in the direction the chopper had gone. He kept it in sight, a dark cutout against the night sky, until its lights came on, flooding the area beneath. He tried to manage the outpouring of relief he felt. He wasn’t there yet, and the lights had provoked a volley of small arms fire followed by a blast and a fireball to the west of where the Osprey was landing. Now it was out of sight behind the buildings.
Suddenly it occurred to him that no one on board knew he was out there heading for it. With fire around it would be on the ground for the minimum time to take on its cargo of wounded. He had to get there before it lifted off again. Not far now: he could feel the wind stirred up by the rotors, the furious crashing sound of the propellers slapping the air. He was running now, with better vision and a powerful turbo charge of adrenalin, leaping over boulders and bodies in his path, not pausing to look at the carnage he was passing — from the quake or the
