They looked at each other and for a second, the years that separated them vanished. Vatsanyev reached forward, clasped him by the shoulder.
‘Dima, Dima! You need to move with the times. The world is changing. Forget the past, forget the present even. What’s coming will change everything. Trust me.’
He let out a barking cough, exposing gums where teeth had once been. ‘We’re in what the Americans call the End Times — but not in the way they think. God won’t be there, that’s for sure. Three letters: P — L — R. Time to polish up your Farsi, my friend.’
They had served together in Iran during the war with Iraq, comrades and rivals. Dima had to arrange Vatsanyev’s release from the Iraqis, but not before they had stamped on his back and pulled out all of his fingernails. They had even stayed in touch after the break-up of the Soviet Empire, but Vatsanyev had gone underground after Grozny fell to the Russians. Now they faced each other in a dead hooker’s flat, mercenary and terrorist — two professions that were on the up.
Dima swung round suddenly. The two ski masks jumped. He bent down and unzipped the case, and with the flourish of a black marketeer presenting his booty flipped back the lid to reveal the neatly packed dollars. Bulganov wanted it all back but that might have to be Kroll’s task. The ski masks stared in wonder. Good, more signs of innocence. Vatsanyev didn’t even bother to look.
‘Aren’t you going to count it?’
He looked perturbed. ‘You think I don’t trust my old comrade?’
‘It’s Bulganov’s money, not mine. If I were you I’d check every one — front and back.’
Vatsanyev smiled at the joke then nodded at his boys, who knelt down and eagerly started to pull at the tightly packed bundles. The atmosphere in the room relaxed a little. Dima noticed that a dark stain had spread from under the rug that had been thrown over the dead hookers.
The shorter Chechen holstered his pistol but the other left his on the floor by his left knee. Less than two metres away. Dima wished he knew who or what was in the next room, but it was now or never.
‘I need a piss. Where’s the toilet?’
Dima leapt forward, appearing to trip over the table which tipped it on its side. He slammed down hard on top of the younger thug who folded in on himself like a book. As he landed, Dima lunged for the pistol on the floor with both hands, found the trigger with one, racked the top slide with the other and without raising it fired first at the taller one, hitting him in the thigh. The man sprang backwards, offering Dima a better target. The bridge of his nose exploded with petals of bloody flesh. Still with the gun under him, Dima aimed another shot into the groin of the man beneath him and felt the explosion as he went slack. Without pausing, Dima rolled himself over the open case of money and across to the corner diagonally opposite the open door. Looking back, he saw the sofa was empty. Vatsanyev was bent over the upturned table trying to reach one of the guns with his stick. Dima lost a whole second as a remnant of embedded kinship stopped him taking a shot. He recovered enough to put a bullet into Vatsanyev’s shoulder.
Katya was nowhere to be seen. She had to have gone into the other room. Had she taken shelter there or been pulled in by whoever was in there? He didn’t have to wait long. She appeared in the doorway, head pulled back, her face contorted in a fresh convulsion of fear. Just behind her, another face half-hidden, even younger. No question who this was: the same black eyes as her father’s, only wrapped in an exquisite porcelain doll’s face. Dima did a quick calculation: Vatsanyev’s daughter Nisha, his only child by his last wife would be — sixteen. Nisha had had the choice, could have gone to America with her mother and could soon have been heading for Harvard. Instead she was here, sucked into her father’s desperate struggle. He glanced at Vatsanyev on his side, eyes open, watching his daughter on the other side of the money he would never get to spend.
Dima’s eyes locked on to Nisha’s. She kept her body behind Katya, gripping her captive’s hair tightly with one hand while the other held a breadknife against her throat. Half a second passed. Dima had been here before. There had been younger targets than Nisha. An eight-year-old boy in northern Afghanistan wielding an AK like it was joined to him, and a girl, a trained sniper sent to assassinate her own informant father. On a rooftop where he had cornered her, the building beneath them burning, he made a last attempt to persuade her to switch sides. But she made it clear that the idea disgusted her and insisted on going down fighting.
Another half second. There were no choices here, no second thoughts, no opportunities for negotiation. Her father had been like a brother once; Dima had even held Nisha as a baby. The best she could hope for was that his aim wasn’t what it was, that his bullet would hit Katya and then they’d all be fugitives.
Dima raised his arm. It seemed to take a huge effort, as if some subterranean force field was exerting itself. Nisha was slightly to Katya’s left, face half-shadowed by her captive. Dima fired wide, predicting that Nisha would dart behind her human shield, then he fired again to Katya’s right, catching Nisha on the rebound. Katya crumpled forward as Nisha dropped her and fell back into the darkness. He sent a further burst into the other room, then stepping across the debris and bodies he lifted Katya into his arms.
In the sudden silence he could hear the rapid breathing of one of the Chechens. Dima turned, about to put a bullet in him, when he heard something shuffling outside. He looked up just as the apartment front door exploded. Three AK muzzles and, not far behind, three figures: faces pointlessly blackened, their helmets and body armour fresh and untarnished by action. An internal security SWAT team — famous for their ineptitude. Trying to take in the scene that confronted them, they froze. For a moment, nobody spoke.
‘He’s down there,’ Dima said, gesturing at Vatsanyev but keeping his eyes on the men. He could hear Vatsanyev struggling to lift himself, and his wheezing whisper, ‘Dima, Dima, don’t let them take me.’
One of the SWATs stepped forward, lowering his weapon. ‘Dima Mayakovsky, you’re to come with us.’
‘On whose authority?’
‘Director Paliov.’
‘Am I under arrest?’
‘No, you have an appointment.’
‘Can we make it later? I’m a bit busy.’
Kroll appeared in the doorway, behind them.
‘Sorry I wasn’t able to warn you. Shall I take the goods?’
At the word ‘goods’, one of the SWATs fixed his gaze on the money. As the SWAT nudged his pal, who’d clocked Katya as part of the package, Dima swung his own weapon up into his face. The second one, weighing up whether to ditch his nice steady job for a case full of dollars, left Dima plenty of time to ram the gun into his balls.
Dima looked round at Vatsanyev and gave him a single nod. Looking back at the men, he said, ‘Just a moment’. Then he looked once more at his old comrade, and put a bullet in his head.
2
GRU Headquarters, Moscow
Paliov folded and unfolded a corner of the report as he read. With two fingers of his other hand he smoothed a patch on his forehead, as if trying to eliminate part of the network of creases that was ranged across it. The pendulous folds of skin under his eyes reminded Dima of the nosebags the carthorses wore in winter on the farm where his mother once worked. The big empty desk should have been an indication of Paliov’s status, but Dima thought it had the opposite effect. It made the Chief of Operational Security look small and shrivelled.
The incident at the apartment was less than two hours old, but the hastily concocted document looked like it ran to over twenty pages. Paliov appeared to be studying every word, frowning as he read. Dima offered him a summary.
‘To save your valuable time, Director, it’s simple: Went in, got the girl, kept the money, shot them all. The End.’
‘Vatsanyev could have been a useful source.’
‘How?’
Paliov looked up from the report and glared.
Dima hadn’t expected this. Typical: you sort out a mess for these people and they suddenly decide they need someone who’s already been stored in the big, chilled filing cabinet with a tag on his toe. Anyhow, they’d never have got anything out of this one. Did these people never learn?
He laughed. ‘If we’d lopped off his other ear? Snipped off his damaged fingers one by one? You could have pruned every limb, and his bollocks, and served him up his own cock on a blini; he wouldn’t have given you a thing.
