‘That should make it easy for them,’ said Belotserkovsky grimly.
‘Enough of that,’ said Buslenko. ‘I’m not going to let that bastard Vitrenko fillet me the way he did Vorobyeva.’
‘So you think he’s out there?’ asked Olga.
‘Oh, yes. If the prey is special to him, he likes to be there for the kill.’ Buslenko paused, frowning. ‘Funny … I said exactly the same thing to someone just yesterday.’ He felt a sudden panic in his chest as he thought about Sasha. Sasha was no soldier. He was an analyst. A soft and easy target. The thought must have registered in his face.
‘What’s wrong?’ said Olga.
‘The guy I got to put the team together … He was the only person who knew we would be here. They must have got to him.’
‘Bribery?’
‘No …’ Buslenko shook his head. ‘Never. Not Sasha. They must have …’ He let the thought die.
Belotserkovsy rested a hand on Buslenko’s shoulder. ‘If it was him, Taras, he’s not in any pain now. They wouldn’t have kept him once they knew we were here.’
The BMW braked as it came around the corner and found Maria’s Saxo head-on in its path, but the tyres aquaglided on the wet surface. The driver corrected by accelerating and swinging the BMW to avoid the Saxo. By the time he passed Maria where she stood at the side of the road, she had the illegal automatic aimed at the flank of the speeding car. She fired six rounds in rapid succession as it passed and the side
windows shattered. The BMW swung from side to side, straightened, then accelerated away. Maria fired three more rounds at the rear of the car as it disappeared into the distance.
Maria watched the BMW for a moment, then took a second clip from her pocket, rammed it into the grip, snapped the carriage back to put a round in the chamber and stood, arms locked before her, waiting for the BMW to come back. It didn’t. Her heart pounded. The rain plastered her newly darkened hair to her scalp and she was chilled to the core of her being.
And she felt better than she had in months.
The bastard had seen her as an easy victim. She had seen herself as an easy victim. But now the hunted was the hunter. Nine rounds into the body of the car: she must have hit him somewhere. Maria ran back, spun the Saxo around in the road once more, and headed off after the BMW.
They had been in the lodge for three hours. They had not allowed themselves a light, nor the comfort of food or drink.
‘I don’t get it,’ said Buslenko. ‘Why don’t they just get it over with? There’s only four of us in here. We’re kilometres away from civilisation. They could finish us off with silenced fire and no one would be any the wiser. Where are they?’
Stoyan nodded. ‘It doesn’t make sense. And they’ve covered their tracks pretty well.’ He peered out of the window into the moonlight. ‘Maybe they’re waiting for us to try to get out.’
Belotserkovsky suddenly looked agitated. ‘Maybe
there’s no one out there,’ he said at last. ‘Maybe it’s the enemy within we should be worrying about.’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Buslenko.
‘Maybe there’s no Vitrenko force out there. Maybe we’re dealing with an infiltrator.’
‘That’s crap,’ said Stoyan, but he looked uneasy.
‘Taras is right that only his friend knew about this location,’ said Belotserkovsky. ‘That is
outside
all of us.’ He looked at Olga Sarapenko. ‘She’s not one of us. How do we know she isn’t in Vitrenko’s pay?’
‘That’s bullshit,’ said Buslenko.
‘No … no, wait a minute,’ said Stoyan. ‘
She
was outside immediately before Vorobyeva was killed.’
Buslenko’s face darkened. ‘Enough! Are you trying to tell me that
she
,’ he indicated Olga with a nod of his head, ‘was able to sneak up on the best personal security specialist I’ve ever worked with? No offence, Captain Sarapenko.’
‘None taken,’ she said. ‘Even I know my limits. But maybe this is why they haven’t finished us off. Maybe they’re waiting for us to come apart at the seams.’
‘Good point.’ Buslenko’s expression suggested that he had made a decision. He looked at his watch. ‘It’ll be light in two hours. I want us out of the woods by then. Get kitted up. We’re going for a walk.’
‘Stoyan, you take point.’ Buslenko looked up at the sky. The moon was low, caressing the bristling tip of the forest. He found himself blessing the few clouds that had drifted in from the west. ‘Captain Sarapenko, I take it you know how to use one of these …’ He tossed a
Vepr
assault rifle to her.
‘I can handle it.’
Buslenko pointed to the river to the left of the hunting lodge. ‘Same as before – we use the bank as cover. Keep low and keep together. If we’re going to encounter opposition, it’ll come from the forest, where there’s more cover. They’ll have to expose themselves to attack. The one thing we have to watch out for is grenades. Or they’ve maybe predicted our route and set booby traps. Watch out for tripwires.’
Buslenko gave Stoyan a gestured countdown. On one, Stoyan rushed out of the lodge, across the drive and down the river bank. He ran crouched low but fast. Buslenko waited. No gunfire. Stoyan indicated the all-clear and Buslenko gave Olga Sarapenko the order to cross, then Belotserkovsky. Still no attack.
It didn’t make sense. Now would have been the time to pick them off. It seemed as if they were running from ghosts. Maybe Belotserkovsky had a point. Maybe it was one of them. But there was no one in the remaining group that he could have imagined taking out Vorobyeva with such ease. Certainly not the woman.
Buslenko scoured the fringe of the woods with the night-vision scope he had attached to his
Vepr
. Finally, he bolted across the snow-encrusted track and down the river bank.
Maria spent three hours searching for the BMW. She had been sure she would find it slewed off the road, the Ukrainian slumped over the wheel. She was vaguely shocked at her lack of concern for the driver. She could be pretty certain that she had just either killed another human being or seriously injured him.
But, there again, he had tried to kill her and death was something these people traded in. Maria backtracked to check for turn-offs she might have missed: there were none. He had got away. She checked the fuel gauge: she was running low and she was not entirely sure which way would lead her back to the autobahn and Cologne. And it was as if she herself was running out of fuel; the leaden, aching tiredness of her system was draining the adrenalin that had flooded it during the chase. Eventually she came to a junction which indicated Düsseldorf, Cologne and Autobahn 57. She turned onto it and headed back towards the city.
They had covered five kilometres in the last hour, by Buslenko’s reckoning. Not bad considering the terrain and the darkness. There had been no booby traps, no ambush. And, Buslenko was beginning to believe, no enemy waiting in the woods. The woman, Olga Sarapenko, had done particularly well, considering she hadn’t had to go through the same rigours in training as the rest of them.
‘Take a rest,’ he ordered them.
‘I’m telling you …’ Belotserkovsky dropped down next to Buslenko, resting his back against the frozen river bank. ‘There’s no attacking force. It must have been one of us.’
‘Where are you going?’ Buslenko called across to Stoyan, who had started, crouching low, to climb up the river bank.
‘I’m going to take a look around, boss. I’ll be careful. Then I’m going to take a leak.’
Buslenko nodded and turned back to Belotserkovsky.
‘It can’t have been one of us. I’ve been working it out. The four of us here had no opportunity. Captain Sarapenko was outside for less than ten minutes. It would have taken her that long to reach Vorobyeva. You, Stoyan and me … we were all inside.’
‘We don’t know for sure when Vorobyeva was done,’ said Belotserkovsky. An owl hooted in the woods and suddenly flew over their heads, its wings clapping the air. They both swung their weapons to bear on the owl. After a moment they relaxed.
‘We’re getting jumpy,’ said Buslenko. ‘And yes, I do have a rough idea when Vorobyeva was killed. His body was still warm. In these temperatures that means he died just about the time he was supposed to head back to be relieved. And he wasn’t killed by ghosts, so it’s best to keep our wits about us.’
At the top of the river bank, Stoyan kept low and scanned the length of the river. He could see the lights of Korostyshev in the distance. It would take them less than an hour to get there, but the sky was lightening and it would be the trickiest part of the journey. His eyes traced back up the front edge of the forest. The first three ranks of trunks were visible, then blackness. It would stay night in the forest for hours yet. He decided to recommend to Buslenko that they should quit the river bank and use the trees as cover. It would be slower going but safer. He gestured down the bank to Buslenko, pointed two fingers of one hand to his own eyes, then indicated his near surroundings with a sweep of his hand. Buslenko nodded, signalling that it was okay for Stoyan to recce the immediate area.
Stoyan crossed the narrow expanse of open
ground between the river bank and the forest. He pressed his back to the bark of a tree, took out a small monocular night-vision scope and surveyed as far into the forest as he could. He could see nothing. Literally. Even the night-vision scope couldn’t penetrate the blackness of the forest’s interior.
‘Stoyan!’ He spun around and aimed the scope in the direction from which he had heard his name called in a loud whisper. ‘Stoyan! Over here!’
Stoyan didn’t reply. He tried to locate the voice near enough that a burst from his assault rifle might hit whoever was there.
‘Stoyan! It’s Tenishchev!’
Stoyan moved closer, keeping low to present as small a target as possible, and keeping his
Vepr
aimed at the source of the voice.
‘Here,’ said the voice. Tenishchev appeared above some bushes at the edge of the forest. He looked ragged and dirty and had no weapon. The dark stain on the side on his face looked like blood. ‘Come here … but keep low. Serduchka is somewhere around here. He’s been shadowing you. Serduchka is a traitor. He killed Vorobyeva and he tried to kill me.’
Stoyan ran across to the bushes and they both dropped behind them. Tenishchev looked afraid. His parka was torn and when Stoyan touched it, it felt wet. Stoyan looked at his fingertips – they were slick with blood.
‘Are you okay?’ Stoyan asked. Tenishchev nodded, but Stoyan put his rifle down and eased back the parka where it was soaked in blood.
‘You say Serduchka killed Vorobyeva?’
Tenishchev nodded again. Stoyan was worried:
there was a lot of blood but he couldn’t find the wound that was causing it.
‘Serduchka is one of Vitrenko’s men?’
‘Yes …’ said Tenishchev. ‘It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? Do you know what’s even harder to believe …?’
Stoyan stared wildly into Tenishchev’s eyes. He found that he couldn’t breathe. He looked down and saw where Tenishchev had rammed his hunting knife up and under Stoyan’s sternum.
‘… So am I,’ said Tenishchev into Stoyan’s already dead eyes.
Buslenko and Belotserkovsky had been lying flat, scanning the forest fringe for fifteen minutes. The sky was now dangerously light.
‘We’re going to have to move on …’ said Buslenko.
‘We can’t just leave Stoyan behind,’ protested Belotserkovsky.
‘Stoyan’s dead,’ said Olga Sarapenko with sudden authority. She was below them, down by the river, watching the opposite bank. ‘And so will we be if we don’t get out of the wilds. There’s a reason why Vitrenko’s targeted us here … either he is simply making sport of us as if we were a herd of wild boar, or he’s decided that we represent too much of a threat to him if we get to Germany.’
‘We’ll never make it to Germany,’ said Belotserkovsky dully.
‘He’s not going to get us here,’ said Olga defiantly. ‘I’m going to watch that son of a bitch die.’
Buslenko smiled. He turned to Belotserkovsky. ‘You ready to roll?’
Belotserkovsky nodded. Something drew his attention upwards to the brightening sky.
‘Take cover!’ he screamed.
Maria had planned to sleep until mid-morning. She had put the ‘do not disturb’ notice on the doorknob of her room and had thrown herself onto the bed and fallen asleep almost immediately. When she awoke she was annoyed to find herself still fully dressed – her unbrushed teeth and mouth felt coated. She lay for a moment not knowing, not remembering what it was that was causing the nauseating ache in her chest. Then it came back to her: the crushing remembrance of firing into the car. She had probably killed someone. Maria had committed the crime that she was supposed to prevent, to solve. She could probably quite legitimately claim in a court that she’d been acting in self-defence. But the gun was illegal. And so was the intent: Maria had fired into the cabin of the car and had wanted to kill the Ukrainian. She no longer had the right to call herself a police officer. She was a vigilante, nothing more.
She went to the window and pulled back its curtains. There was no light from the apartment opposite and the curtains there were drawn across the glazed doors that opened out onto the roof terrace. The sky was a dull glimmer above Cologne’s rooftops. It was barely dawn but Maria knew she wouldn’t sleep again. She looked blankly at the growing light in the sky and it looked blankly back at her. Time to move on.
She stripped and showered and packed her bags.
She went down to reception and checked out. The hotel was good enough for her purposes, but she had used her own name and credit card, added to which the hotel staff had looked somewhat surprised at her sudden change of appearance. Maria’s plan was to check into another hotel in the same area. She would pay cash and stay a couple of nights. After that, she could move into the flat of her friend who was working in Japan.
She carried her bags out of the hotel and into a bright winter morning, without the slightest idea of how she was going to get back onto Vitrenko’s tail.