Authors: Dan Latus
M
y eyes bounced between Sasha and Borovsky. There was no time to process what Borovsky had just said. Sasha was raising the Glock to shoot him.
‘No!’ I yelled. ‘Sasha, don’t!’
I moved to stand in the way.
‘Frank!’
‘We need him,’ I said. ‘I need him.’
‘What do you mean?’
Her face changed, took on a puzzled look.
‘Don’t shoot him!’
‘What he means,’ Borovsky said, ‘is that he doesn’t know where Miss Picknett is. He doesn’t want you to shoot me until I have told him.’
Sasha looked even more puzzled. ‘Who?’
‘A client of mine,’ I told her, ‘and a friend. He’s got her somewhere.’
‘What does that mean?’ she said with contempt. ‘Your friend? He is my country’s enemy!’
I was shocked by these revelations but I stood my ground. ‘You owe me, Sasha!’ I told her, reaching for the gun.
She stepped back and moved sideways, so she could get a clear sight of Borovsky again. ‘Get out of the way, Frank. I owe nobody – especially not your friend. My friend is dead.’
‘Misha isn’t dead,’ I extemporized wildly. ‘We need to find out where he is as well.’
Sasha’s eyes swung back to Borovsky. ‘Not dead?’ she demanded. ‘Is this true?’
‘It could be,’ Borovsky admitted with a smirk.
The smirk seemed to prove too much for Sasha. She pulled the trigger. Borovsky yelped and fell backwards, clutching his arm.
‘Damn you!’ I yelled, lunging for the gun.
‘A flesh wound,’ she told me contemptuously, hanging on to the Glock and fighting me with surprising strength.
I managed to force the gun out of her hand. It dropped to the floor. Before I could swoop to pick it up, the room was suddenly full of feet and fists. The gunshot had brought Borovsky’s cavalry to the rescue.
The Glock was kicked away from me. Something hard crashed down on my head. I sprawled across the floor and took a bit of a kicking before things calmed down.
I spat out blood from a mouth injury and raised my battered head. I saw the new arrivals were no respecters of womanhood; Sasha had been knocked about, as well. She was struggling to get herself together. One of Borovsky’s men reached down, picked her up bodily and hurled her into a corner of the room. Then he towered over her.
I didn’t feel up to objecting on Sasha’s behalf. I was in no condition to protect anybody. Besides, I was also pissed off with her. The stupid bitch! She had brought all this down on us. Now what? What the fuck was going to happen now?
Borovsky spent several minutes having his arm attended to. Then he turned back to me. By then, I was back in the land of the fully conscious.
‘For your information, Mr Doy, Sasha and her colleague are agents of the FSB – not, perhaps, as infamous as the KGB, I think you will agree, but famous enough.’
I listened. I didn’t nod or shake my head in case the thing dropped off. I just listened. And I knew he was speaking the truth. Things fell into place. My questions about Sasha were answered. No wonder she was tough as old boots. She was a woman with a mission – and one full of lies.
‘Their role,’ Borovsky said, ‘was to infiltrate my organization and put a stop to my activities in the art world. The Kremlin was not truly concerned about art, not really. It was more concerned with stopping the erosion of the financial value of the collections of places such as the Hermitage, whence Sasha had come.’
‘And destroying my country’s culture,’ Sasha contributed.
‘Indeed,’ Borovsky said, bowing his head in acknowledgement.
This was of limited interest to me. What was bothering me at this point was less the thought of the financial value of Russia’s cultural collections and more how the hell was I going to get out of here. The future – my future, never mind anyone else’s – didn’t look promising.
Then something struck me. Negotiations? They had both spoken of them. That meant this game was still in progress. Borovsky hadn’t finished with us yet. Otherwise, we would have been shot and fed to the fishes.
‘So,’ he concluded, confirming my thinking, ‘now I must negotiate. These days Moscow likes to get its agents back. They are not thought so expendable as in former times. Cheer up, young lady! There is hope for you yet.’
I couldn’t see any for Jac and myself, though. The Kremlin didn’t have any interest in us.
‘Negotiate?’ Sasha snarled. ‘You are dead! There will be no negotiations.’
‘If only for your sake,’ Borovsky said equably, ‘I hope you are wrong. In any case, the world’s oceans are vast. There are many places for me to go.’
After having heard that indisputable truth, Sasha and I were herded along corridors and down stairs, always going down. Our destination was in the cellars. A heavy timber door, studded with bolts, was opened and we were pushed inside. There, we joined Jac Picknett and a young man I took to be Misha. We had all of us arrived, together at last in one place, and so far in one piece.
J
ac was sitting on a stone bench that might once have supported wine racks. Otherwise, the room was empty, painted white and empty, with a single light bulb hanging from the centre of the ceiling. I went straight to her.
‘How are you?’ I asked, taking both her hands in mine.
Startled by our arrival, she looked up and gave me a weary smile. ‘Not good, Frank. I’ve felt better.’
She looked unharmed physically but shock had obviously taken its toll. I gave her a hug.
‘They didn’t knock you around?’
She shook her head. Then she rallied. ‘And this is…?’
‘Sasha.’
‘Of course! Your mystery girl.’
I turned to introduce them to each other. Sasha was still glowering at the door, as if sheer willpower could force it open. She gave Jac a perfunctory greeting.
‘And this is Misha,’ Jac said. ‘He’s Russian, too.’
‘So I’ve been told.’
Jac was in better heart than I could ever have expected. In her own English-rose way, she was beginning to seem a tough guy, too.
I called to the man sitting on the floor in a corner. He
nodded dolefully and struggled to his feet, to engage Sasha in a conversation in Russian. She responded without going overboard about it. It wasn’t the reunion of childhood sweethearts, I belatedly realized. More fool me.
‘So?’ Jac said, looking at me expectantly.
‘It’s a long story,’ I told her.
‘So I gather.’
‘Unfortunately, we got mixed up with Borovsky. Where did they pick you up?’
‘At Risky Point.’
I nodded. She had arrived too late to come with us, and too early to be saved by Bill Peart.
‘Explanations are going to have to wait,’ I told her.
She nodded.
I turned to the young man across the cell. ‘Misha?’
He came over to me. We shook hands. ‘He paints Picassos,’ I told Jac.
She looked impressed for a moment. Then she gave a wry smile.
‘And Sasha,’ I added, ‘paints Rembrandts – original Rembrandts.’
‘Ah!’ Jac said, as if now she understood everything. Perhaps she did.
They were colleagues, not the betrothed lovers Sasha had given me to understand. She had stood by Misha, and done what she could. But actually rescuing him had been a step too far for her. So she had focused on assassinating Borovsky. Completing their joint mission. Whatever. She still seemed amazing to me.
By now, Sasha had calmed down. She turned and came over to us. ‘Miss Picknett?’
‘Jac, please.’
Jac attempted a smile and got up from the stone bench where we were sitting.
‘No, no! Save your strength.’ Sasha looked at me and added, ‘You stopped me, Frank. You should have let me shoot him.’
‘You did,’ I pointed out.
She shook her head impatiently. But she was quietly angry now, not angrily struggling to contain her emotions.
‘What good would it have done us?’ I said quietly. ‘If you had killed Borovsky, his men would have killed all of us instantly. It would have been an automatic response.’
‘But many lives would have been saved in my country.’
She turned away, leaving me wondering what she meant.
Misha explained. ‘You know about us?’ he asked, ‘Why we are here, as art students?’
I nodded. Jac wandered off, seemingly unable to sit still and listen any more.
‘That is not all,’ Misha said. ‘It is not everything.’
I felt like wandering off myself. This was no time for convoluted conversation about old paintings in pidgin English with someone I didn’t know. I wanted to concentrate on how we could get out of here.
‘He means we discovered something else,’ Sasha said. ‘It is not only art that Borovsky copies and smuggles.’
‘No,’ I agreed. ‘It’s guns, as well.’
Sasha was surprised for a moment. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Guns, bombs, bullets. How do you know?’
‘I’ve seen the crates they were loading onto the boat. Do you know where they are going?’
‘The North Caucasus,’ she said bitterly. ‘Chechnya, Ingushetia and those other republics – to kill ethnic Russians.’
‘We discovered this,’ Misha added, as if it had been his life’s work. Perhaps that’s what it was now. It didn’t look as if he was going to get the chance to discover much else.
‘We were told to stay with Borovsky,’ Sasha said. ‘Our mission was to find out how the weapons were sent – by what route, and who was involved.’
That made sense. Discover the channels and then block them off. Sinking one cargo wouldn’t stop the supply.
‘But somehow Borovsky discovered our true identity,’ Sasha added. ‘So he knew what we were doing. And now he negotiates with Moscow, but it will do him no good. There will be no compromise, and no exchange.’
Again, that didn’t seem to be a hopeful conclusion.
‘How did he discover who you were?’ I asked. ‘Any idea?’
I was thinking betrayal. Money talks, and Borovsky was well able to come up with the money for bribery.
Sasha just shook her head.
‘Maybe it was my fault,’ Misha said slowly.
‘No!’ Sasha said sharply.
It didn’t matter anyway. It had happened. Now we were where we were. I began to search the room, looking for a way out. One didn’t immediately appear to me.
It hadn’t appeared to Misha either. ‘There is no way out,’ he said, seeing what I was doing. ‘I have looked.’
Sasha kicked the door. ‘Be careful,’ I told her. ‘They are my good boots.’
She glowered at me. Then she changed her mind and grinned. That was better.
‘Your boots?’ Jac said, looking puzzled.
So to fill in some time I gave her a slightly expanded version of my previously expurgated account of recent history.
‘I’m surprised you had time to consider my gallery’s security requirements,’ she said when I had finished.
‘If that’s a rebuke,’ I said bitterly, ‘forget it!’
‘No, no! I’m just recalling what Lydia said about you having such an interesting life.’
I don’t know why but that started me smiling, and that led to us both chuckling and then laughing without restraint. Hysteria, probably. Sasha and Misha looked on in total bewilderment.
We were in a stone box underground. It was a big cellar without windows or any opening other than the one filled by the heavy-duty timber door that looked as if it had been there since before the house was built. The floor was solid stone. So were the walls. The ceiling, too. All built with good, unweathered sandstone blocks. The only opening anywhere, apart from the door, was where the metal tube containing the cable for the electric light came through the ceiling. That was approximately half an inch in diameter.
My mind was racing, but going round in ever-decreasing circles. And our situation was desperate. I said nothing of this to the others but I knew we had to get out of here soon, or we wouldn’t get out at all. Somehow we had to do it.
Borovsky was wrapping things up. He was almost ready to
go. The last of his stuff must be down at the quayside by now. There couldn’t be much more to be done up here at the house.
And now he had us as hostages. Perhaps he really was engaged in negotiations with Moscow, despite what Sasha thought. It was even possible that they might yield a result, but it couldn’t be one that included Jac and me.
The two of us were very definitely surplus baggage. I didn’t believe for one moment that when
Meridion
left harbour, Jac and I would be on it. Sasha and Misha might be, God willing, but Moscow would have no interest at all in two Brits who had got themselves entangled in an unfortunate situation. Moreover, to protect their own interests, there was no way they were going to alert the UK authorities to our plight. To them, in that charming American phrase, Jac and I would simply be collateral damage.
Misha said, ‘There is no way out. I have searched. It is impossible.’
Sasha gave him a look of contempt that surprised me. She had risked a lot to keep her colleague alive. Did she really hold him in such low esteem?
‘Nothing is impossible, Misha,’ I said gently. ‘Did they not tell you that in agent training school?’
‘I didn’t spend long there,’ he said, ‘not like Sasha. Mostly I am an artist.’
Sasha shut him up then with a torrent of what sounded like rebukes in Russian. I smiled, winked at Jac and continued with my detailed examination of the cellar.
I studied the channel for the electric cable, and then I started wondering about the roof of the cellar. The ceiling
was not arched. So it couldn’t be stone, I realized. It must be concrete. How thick was it? Not that that mattered. We had nothing we could use as tools to find out. Also, I didn’t want to interfere with the light in case something snapped or broke, and left us in complete darkness. That really would be the end.
‘You’re wondering if the ceiling is weak at that point?’ Jac said, breaking into my thoughts.
I nodded. ‘Wondering is all I’m doing. I’m pretty sure the ceiling is concrete. Probably quite thick concrete. Not that it matters much. We have no tools anyway.’
‘Are we in danger, Frank? Serious danger?’
That put me on the spot. I didn’t want to frighten her any more. And it was my fault that she was here. Not directly, perhaps, but through association. On the other hand, was there any point in lying?
‘I think we are,’ I said.
She nodded and looked thoughtful. ‘So we really do have to find a way out.’
There was nothing worth adding to that. So I didn’t even bother trying.
‘I think you are right about the ceiling,’ Jac said thoughtfully. ‘It is concrete.’
I nodded weary agreement.
‘Everywhere except here in the corner.’
I looked where she was pointing, and my heart started beating again. I wondered how I had missed what she’d seen.