units that came under the general banner of Spetsnaz, which simply translated means ‘of special purpose’. He knew his life was going to change in every conceivable way and he marched eagerly, albeit blindly, into it.
Had he known where the great adventure would eventually lead he would have remained in Riga and become a metal worker like his father, marry, and have a family and take holidays in Yalta once a year like everyone else in the factory. But he did not.
Zhilev took the two hundred mile train journey south from Kiev to the city of Ochakov on the Black Sea, a hundred miles north of Sevastopol, the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, which was to be his parent command. From Ochakov, he was taken in an army truck into the wilderness to eventually arrive at Pervomayskiy, an artificial island at the mouth of the rivers Dnepr and Bug. Called Mayskiy for short, the island was a stone fortress constructed in 1881 and used as such until World War Two. It was taken over by the Spetsnaz in the 1960s and the interior reconstructed to provide classrooms, a small hospital, helicopter pad, sports facilities and accommodation for two hundred and fifty men, and included a water-processing plant and enough food and supplies to comfortably sustain the men inside its walls for up to a year without contact with the outside world in the event of a nuclear attack. This was the home of the 17th Brigade of the OMPR and where Zhilev was to be based for much of his career.
The following two years were spent training extensively in all forms of intelligence gathering, both technical and physical, as well as advanced small arms and sabotage. He learned Special Forces diving skills, which included the use of bubble-less re-breather diving apparatus as well as mixed gas options for deep-water operations, and how to drive and navigate a number of different miniature submarines. He studied intensively a variety of Western commercial and military targets, from oil platforms to missile silos, so that he could report on them as well as mount sabotage operations against them. This was where he also learned to use several different kinds of chemical, biological and man-portable nuclear weapons or suitcase bombs.
The only negative aspect of that period was he could not see as much of his brother as he would have liked. When either of them were on leave, and that was rarely at the same time, they would make their way to the other’s nearest base town, in Vladimir’s case, Moscow, and in Zhilev’s, Ochakov, and spend as much time as they could together. By the time Zhilev’s two-year training programme was complete, Vladimir was a civilian once again, and with Zhilev’s probationary period over, it was easier for them to meet. In fact Zhilev spent every leave period back in Riga with his brother, attended his wedding as best man, and was at every one of their three children’s christenings.
During Zhilev’s operational years he took part in missions and so-called rehearsals all over the world from Cuba to China, England and America, and was involved in the training of several renowned terrorist groups and the passing of weapons to, among others, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. The day he realised his career in Spetsnaz was over was the worst in his life, until the arrival of this letter. Nothing in the world meant more to him than his brother, not even his own life. He would have given it gladly if it meant Vladimir could come back home.
Zhilev’s thoughts went to Vladimir’s wife and daughter. He wondered if they knew. Vladimir had elected Zhilev as his next of kin in the event of an emergency because there was no one in the world he trusted more. As an engineer on an oil tanker travelling all over the world, there was always the chance he might have an accident and he wanted his brother to be the first to know before his wife and children.
Zhilev decided to drive over to the house and tell Marla, Vladimir’s wife, the grave news. But first he had to recover a little more himself. She would be devastated and he wanted to have full control of his own emotions so that he could concentrate on comforting her.
He checked the letterhead for the phone number of the office in Dubai. Before going over to see Marla he would make arrangements for his brother’s body to be brought home for burial, and also find out how he died. Then he noticed the date at the top of the letter.
‘My God,’ he murmured. Vladimir had been dead for more than a week.
Stratton was hunched over a desk reading a book in the office of C Squadron’s operations’ hangar, situated on the edge of the Special Boat Service’s sprawling headquarters camp a quarter of a mile from Poole harbour. The book was about the Templars, the military order established after the beginning of the first crusades, the invasion of what is now known as the Middle East at the end of the tenth century. He’d had the book for more than a year, having come across it in the television room of the south detachment undercover operations HQ in Northern Ireland and, not having had the time to read it due to a sudden increase in operational developments, it had ended up in a box of odds and ends that he brought back with him to England after prematurely finishing his tour.The book had surfaced only the other day during a much-needed sort through of the spare room of his cottage in the quaint village of Lythchet Matravers just outside Poole, and he began reading it there and then.The book actually started centuries before the famous knights and opened with the story of Abraham and Isaac, about as far back as Christian, Jewish and Muslim history went. Since the chronicles of the Templars intertwined with the beginnings of the present-day conflict between the Middle East and the West, it seemed an apposite read.
The only clue inside the hangar that it was raining outside was the faintly audible staccato of droplets hitting the metal, insulated roof. The office, tightly packed with filing cabinets, computers and monitors, various phone and communications links, the boss, 2IC and sergeant majors’ desks, plus a table devoted to tea and coffee making, had scant room for little else. It had no exterior windows just those looking down into the cavernous hangar’s interior, which also had little in the way of spare room and was a soldier of fortune’s Aladdin’s cave. The hangar was divided up into the various SBS tasks and terrains they operated in: arctic, jungle, desert and maritime, including all-terrain vehicles, snowmobiles, an assortment of inflatable craft, canoes, parachutes and diving equipment. Add to that the operatives’ personal lockers and the place was veritably jammed.
Morgan, the only other person in the office, was seated at the 2IC’s desk behind Stratton gurning as he plucked hairs enthusiastically out of his nose with his large fingers, a task that required some vigorous excavating. The two weeks following the buzz with the supertanker had been quiet ones with much of the squadron away catching up on leave owed since playing games in Iraq. As acting sergeant major of the squadron, Stratton was manning the fort while the boss and 2IC attended a briefing in London, which meant he couldn’t stray far from the camp until they got back in case something of an operational nature came up. He did have some work to do, namely preparing a training programme and the stores and transport requirements for a mini-submarine-borne assault exercise against an oil platform in the North Sea, but he was putting it off for a day because he was not in the mood. He could practically write it in his sleep anyway, but the truth was he found the book so interesting and enlightening he wanted to keep on reading it.
‘I was always led to understand,’ Morgan said nasally, a finger deep in his nostril,‘that if you plucked hairs instead of cutting them, after a while they didn’t grow back, but I think that’s a load of bollocks. Been plucking these bastards for years and there’s more than ever . . . Christ, that’s a long one,’ he said, lifting it up to the light to inspect it. ‘Look at that,’ he said, holding it out for Stratton to see. Stratton looked over his shoulder at the hair that, at some two inches, was indeed unusually long. ‘It must’ve been growing out of me bleedin’ sinus,’ Morgan said as he placed it on the desk to study it further. ‘Perhaps it was an ingrown eyebrow,’ he pondered.
Stratton went back to his book. The choice between a conversation with Morgan about his nasal hairs and the Templars was not a difficult one.
‘One thing is true,’ Morgan continued. ‘It doesn’t hurt like it used to. The more you pluck ’em, the more it seems to numb the nerve endings. Know what I mean?’ Morgan knew he was being a nuisance and was enjoying it.
Stratton turned the page while Morgan, having mined his nose to exhaustion, directed his attention to the hairs inside his ears.
The phone rang. Morgan wiped his fingers on his sleeve and picked it up. ‘C Squadron,’ he said. ‘Yeah,’ he said looking at Stratton.‘Who is it, please?’ Morgan listened a moment then held out the phone to Stratton. ‘Some bloke named Sumners. Sounds like a rupert,’ he said using the affectionate nickname for an upper-class-officer type.
Stratton looked at the phone without allowing the surprise to show on his face. He never expected to hear
