nearly sending him crashing to the ground with it. He could hear someone screaming under the rubble. A fire had broken out inside the building, belching acrid smoke. No mask, shit. All the kit was still in the SUV. All he had was his AK and a knife. He climbed through a window, grabbed a shredded curtain which he tore a strip from and wrapped it over his face.
A big drawing room, with nice paintings on the walls. A Matisse. And a Gauguin: two voluptuous island girls, topless, gazing out at him. Could they be real? Maybe that was what the non-Muslim heaven looked like: quite possibly not virgins, but he wasn’t fussy. He saw a giant marble chess board on a glass coffee table the size of a lake: a game midway through. No players in sight: white two moves from checkmate. From a doorway, a huge man with cheeks that squeezed his eyes into slits was aiming an Uzi at him. Yin or Yang? Dima would never know. His knife thudded into the man’s carotid artery, making a mess of Gauguin’s Tahitians. He hoped it was a fake.
Dima jumped on him, retrieved the knife, grabbed the Uzi and tore off his radio. Another blast echoed deep inside the building — the boiler or a fuel tank? The floor lurched and half a wall collapsed, sending a huge mirror down like a guillotine on to the expiring Korean. He saw the chess set glide away: game over. Four rooms on this floor. Two completely blown away. Kaffarov could be under the rubble as well. Two more — a library. He didn’t dare think about what precious first editions might be in there. A desk and a laptop, but a small one, white. Kristen’s? Check it later. He found the internal stairs. Intact. Took them three at a stride. Outside he heard the AA guns. A short sharp burst. Someone conserving their ammunition: Vladimir. He marvelled at how you could identify someone by the way they shot.
Bedrooms: one untouched, fresh flowers in a vase. Roses. A swimsuit on the carpet — wet. Tch, tch. A towel as well. Young people today, never clear up after themselves. His mother’s voice. You would have liked this room, mother. Silk cushions, triple-mirror dresser with matching curtain along the front: all the things you never had. A masked man in each of the mirrors. Himself. The en suite bathroom all marble: massive.
A rumble from outside, high up. Helicopter? There was a pad on the roof. Wrong noise. Plane? Both: Osprey. Keep the Marines away, Vladimir: I’m not done here yet.
Seven more bedrooms: all empty. They’d seen the G-Wagen: Kaffarov had to be somewhere. No sign of an office, nor even another laptop. Where was it all? Kaffarov never stopped, always trading, always in demand. Food, water and weapons, the three basic needs of humanity, in his case definitely not in that order.
The engines were close, slowing now. The Osprey doing its magic trick, switching from flight to hover, a fourteen-second process: fourteen seconds to take aim.
And suddenly Dima was down, smothered by a huge bulk. How did something that big move so fast, so quietly? His face grated against brickdust. Heat pressed in on him, and garlic sweat. The lone remaining twin was perched on top of him. From behind a hand curved round his forehead, gripping his brow, fingertips pressing against his eyeballs. He tried to open one eyelid, saw a window. Outside was the Osprey, its bulk falling to earth, the remaining engine losing the battle. And in extreme close-up, a flash of blade in the other hand curving toward his neck.
45
Dima didn’t hear the order. It disappeared under the sound of the Osprey falling among the trees, slamming into the ground and pulling with it more of the half-destroyed chalet. The blade hovered in the air as its owner struggled to reconcile the desire for revenge with the need to obey orders. His boss won that one. The blade disappeared, for now.
‘Hold up his head.’
Yin or Yang wrenched Dima’s head up and to one side. Kaffarov bent down slightly and Dima got his first close-up look: a Tajik, dark-haired and pale-skinned with a thin neck and a pronounced chin. Without all the hired muscle he might be a pushover, but right now Dima lacked the opportunity to find out.
‘He doesn’t look American. Take him to the pool.’
‘Thanks, but I haven’t got my swimming kit,’ said Dima.
The twin yanked him up by the scruff of his coat and dragged him across the room like a recalcitrant dog. A door, with nothing to distinguish it as such, opened silently in the wall. And there was the rest of it: a whole parallel universe carved into the mountain behind the facade of the chalet. Dima tried to walk but the twin held him down, so he was forced to let his feet drag behind him, and be pulled along the corridor like a toy.
Another door opened — the gym — and leading off it, a room full of screens. They stopped in the gym. Dima tried to turn his head to see more of the other room, but was yanked forward again. There was a brief glimpse of an aquarium: did people like Kaffarov keep piranhas, or was that only in films? Then he smelled the chlorine. They didn’t start with a question. The huge Korean just stuffed his head into the water and held it there. Twenty seconds. A taster. Yanked him up. Kaffarov’s face was close, calm, expressionless, his pupils tiny dots.
‘Who sent you?’ He spoke in Farsi, then repeated the question in English.
Dima replied in Russian.
‘Your girlfriend’s under the rubble. If you hurry you might just be able to save her.’
His head went under again: a cold, suffocating horror, no space, no air. Don’t try to breathe. How long would it be this time? He counted twenty seconds — and then another. Kaffarov’s face was closer this time.
‘You are going to tell me exactly who you are, and why you’re here, or Yin will drown you.’
‘Ah, so it was Yang I killed then. You boys really do look alike.’
‘Do it.’
Down he went again. Okay, start counting. The water was tepid, sort of stale. Dima knew what to do. He’d trained for this, come first in his Spetsnaz group for lasting the longest. It was all a matter of relaxing. The more relaxed you were, the less energy you used. Keep counting. Entire extra seconds could be gone without that next lungful. Learning how to suffer through all the misery and punishment of his training, being thrown naked on to the hard frozen snow and made to fight, the beatings, the humiliation, all about controlling pain, managing anger, channelling it into patience, kneading it into raw aggression, conserved for just the right moment.
The trick was not to care, to keep counting but just give in to it. So I’ll die: so what? I’ve had my moments. The record for staying under water was eleven minutes thirty-five seconds. His best was just under eight. But that was after a really good sleep. I should have fucked that receptionist, he thought: she had red hair and smelled of apples. That would have been a good memory to go out on.
Three minutes. He had glimpsed the pool, seen that this was the deep end. What else could he use? Focus on the surroundings, the hand pressing down, where Yin’s weight on top of him was distributed, the knees on his shoulders, not his lower arms which were free. Dima inched them round until his hands could grasp the edge of the pool. Four minutes. Not as good as he was. He needed that lungful of air right now.
He let his muscles go, stopped resisting, and used the weight of his head, which he had been pushing against the twin’s hand, to pull him further down, boosted by the leverage from his hands on the edge. With an extra pull he pushed himself deeper. Yin lost his balance, keeled over Dima and hit the water: not what he was expecting. Dima plunged a hand down, grabbed the knife from his pudgy hand, brought it straight up under Yin’s flailing ribcage and plunged, then twisted, then plunged again. He felt a wall of muscle, withdrew and plunged once more.
46
There was a collective shout of pain in the Osprey as they felt the jolt. The AA fire took the tip of the starboard rotor off, stalling the engine before the flames started. The ramp doors were already opening for a fast exit, but the door gunners had been blown away. Not by a hail of fire but by short sharp bursts expertly aimed. The F-16s had reported the AA guns neutralised. Mistake. So many mistakes in warfare, Blackburn now understood. It was a miracle anybody survived, let alone triumphed.
The port engine revs rose as it sucked at the air, trying to compensate, but the Osprey was halfway through its transition from flight to hover. Blackburn felt the craft climb and then hang for a tantalising few seconds before it gave up the fight and started its progression downwards. The pilot did what he could but the ground rushed towards them. Men frozen into position clung to the grab handles on the fuselage interior. Futile. Blackburn lurched towards the open ramp, tripped and slid headfirst. He smashed through several trees he never had time to identify, but boy did he love those trees. The arms of angels breaking his fall. His arrival back on earth was still painful though and he blacked out for several seconds. Further down the hill, he saw the Osprey roll on to its side: the
