‘Well, then I don’t understand,’ Lou said.
His mobile rang. Lou grabbed it and pushed the ‘accept’ button.
‘Yes . . . yes,’ Lou said. ‘I understand . . . but look, what are . . .?’ He exhaled loudly. The other two could hear a man’s voice spilling from the iPhone
receiver. The blood had drained from Lou’s cheeks. ‘Yes . . . OK, OK. Right . . . I get it! I want to speak to my wife. No . . . I want to speak . . .’
Lou’s head slumped forward, the phone in his lap. Jerry extended a hand and gripped his friend’s shoulder.
Lou looked up. ‘They want the location of
Phoenix.
A physical, paper map with the precise details – latitude, longitude and depth. They’ve given me a set of
coordinates . . . somewhere called the Khimki Forest, 6 a.m. One chance, they said . . . One chance. Fuck it up and Kate dies.’
Lou hadn’t slept a wink, just sat in the chair close to the massive window in the room he had shared with Kate. He had watched the night sky, the moon moving across the
punctured black, the field of stars seeming to shift as the world turned on its axis.
Now, well before dawn, he sat in the foyer downstairs still feeling small and insignificant. How was it, he thought to himself, that he and Kate had chosen to be scientists, but kept finding
themselves caught up in intrigues and inter-governmental conspiracies? How had they become strange bedfellows with the military, the FBI and MI6?
The risks he and Kate took diving hundreds of feet or poking around old and unstable wrecks were one thing, but what the two of them were involved in now . . . this was a different sort of
danger; one over which they had no control, one that forced them to be entirely dependent upon others. He hated that, it went against his character.
Jerry appeared as the lift doors opened and strode towards him across the vast Persian rug that covered the centre of the foyer. ‘You obviously haven’t slept.’
‘Impossible,’ Lou replied. ‘Heard anything about the phone tap? Do we know who we’re dealing with?’
‘’Fraid not. Fleming briefed me ten minutes ago. The call to your mobile was scrambled and triple re-routed . . . No trace.’
They turned and saw Fleming come in through the revolving door bringing a gust of freezing air with him. ‘I have the hire car,’ he said. His face was pale. Flakes of snow began to
slowly melt on his shoulders.
He sat down the other side of Lou, removed a glove and plunged a hand into a pocket of his fur-trimmed parka. ‘And here is the camera I was talking about last night.’
He lifted a device between his thumb and index fingertip. It was about a quarter the size of an aspirin and as thin as foil. Leaning forward, he fixed it to the collar of Lou’s greatcoat.
It was almost the same colour as the fabric and virtually vanished.
‘It’s on permanently, recording now, and lasts for eight hours. It’ll help us ID the kidnappers.’
He removed a laminated sheet of A4 card and handed it to Lou. He glanced at it. It was a map mostly showing the blue of the North Sea. To the right lay a strip of green – the west coast of
Norway. A red dot indicated the precise location of the wreck.
‘Let’s go,’ Fleming said.
The roads were quiet. Lou sat in the back, alone; Jerry in the passenger seat; Fleming drove. Before they set off he punched in the coordinates: 55° 56' 6"N 37° 26' 48"E. None of them
spoke as Fleming took the Volkswagen Polo east on the E22. The lights of the city began to slip away behind them. At five-thirty the sun was still some four hours from rising and the traffic was
thin, building a little on the main roads with early risers heading to work. Lou let the soporific beat of the wipers roll over him as they swept away large flakes of snow from the windscreen.
Twenty minutes after leaving the hotel they reached the inner ring road, Moskovskaya Koltsevaya Avtomobilnaya Doroga, the MKAD. Turning north, they joined heavier traffic and it started to snow
harder. Passing Khimkinskiy Lesopark, an expanse of green on their left, they reached the junction of the MKAD and the northbound M10. Taking the freeway, in a few minutes they could see the
outlying birch trees of Khimki Forest, a thousand hectare national park that had recently been a battleground between conservationists and property developers, a conflict the green groups had
won.
Fleming checked the GPS. ‘The meeting point is in view on the screen now,’ he announced and tapped the panel on the dashboard. Lou leaned over Jerry’s seat as they both peered
at the display.
‘Looks like a junction of two tracks about four miles to the north-east of here.’
Pulling off the main road, they took a narrow east-bound unmade road, the Polo bouncing on the ice-hardened track, its suspension complaining loudly. They stopped a hundred yards along the path.
Fleming jumped out and Lou took the wheel. Derham lowered himself into the passenger footwell, pulling a Beretta 9mm from his pocket. Fleming squeezed into the narrow space between the back and
front seats.
Lou took it slowly, one eye on the GPS, watching the red cursor marking the car’s position as it moved along the representation of the track on the screen, drawing closer to the agreed
meeting point.
He turned the car left off the track onto a narrower, rougher path, the hard ground making the vehicle bounce and grind. A minute later they reached a clearing and stopped. On the GPS screen the
red cursor hovered over the meeting point. He peered through the snow-edged windscreen, keeping the engine running, the wipers swishing.
‘See anything?’ Derham asked.
‘Nothing.’
Lou’s mobile trilled.
‘Yes.’
He flicked on the Bluetooth and a deep, accented voice spilled from the speakers.
‘You should be able to see us now.’
Headlights appeared along the track. They bounced as the approaching car navigated the rutted frozen track.
‘I see you. You have my wife?’
‘We ask the questions, Dr Bates. You are alone, I hope?’
‘Yes.’
The lights came closer and stopped moving. The car was a black Lexus four-wheel drive. In the stillness Lou could hear the purr of its large engine.
‘You have the coordinates?’
‘I do. And a map.’
‘Open the door slowly and take two paces directly in front of your car.’
Lou eased the door open, stepped out, walked slowly, leaving the door open and carrying the map encased in a plastic folder.
Two paces in front of the Polo, he stopped, and with his left hand he shielded his eyes from the bright car beams. He strained to catch a glimpse of Kate, but he could see nothing inside the
car.
Two men stepped from the front seats. Another, armed, hands outstretched, the barrel of a pistol pointed directly ahead, emerged from the back. The two men from the front walked towards Lou. One
of them removed a gun from under his leather jacket, held it with both hands, pointing it down at his side. He wore Aviators, and lank, greasy hair hung to his shoulders. The other man was older,
short and thickset. He was wearing a Crombie over a suit and tie; his business shoes were polished to a mirror finish. They stopped four paces in front of Lou.
‘You said you had my wife. Where is she?’
The man in the Crombie lifted a gloved hand. ‘All things at the appropriate time, Dr Bates.’ He was the man who had spoken on the mobile.
Lou waved the folder in front of him. ‘I want to see my wife first.’
The man considered him for a few seconds, his face completely expressionless. Then he turned to the driver. ‘What do you think, Uri?’
Uri lifted his arms and pointed the gun at Lou.
‘I think that’s a “no”.’
Lou turned and started to walk back to the car.
‘Dr Bates.’
Lou ignored him, kept walking. Uri fired, a bullet hit the ground an inch from Lou’s left boot, snow spraying up his coat. Lou dived to the frozen ground, hands over his head.
The passenger door and the offside rear door of the Polo flew open simultaneously. Derham fired his Beretta between the door frame and the car body. Fleming opened fire from the left side of the
car.
Uri flew backwards, a stream of blood gushing from a wound in the centre of his chest. The man in the Crombie dived for the driver’s side of the four-wheel drive.
Lou scrambled across the snow. More shots rang out. A bullet hit the windscreen of the Polo, another slammed into the near-side front door. Lou turned and saw the man who had been close to the
back door of the Lexus slumped on the ground, a plume of blood flying up from his destroyed face.
Uri writhed in the snow, a swathe of pinky-red around him. The Lexus revved and spun on the icy track, the tyres screaming in protest, a wheel caught the side of Uri’s head, the left back
wheel came round and crushed his body.
Derham and Fleming stopped firing, pulled themselves up just as Lou got to his feet. The Lexus slithered around on the frozen ground in a cloud of exhaust fumes. Lou ran after it, yelling
incoherently. And for no more than a second, through the miasma, he saw Kate’s face appear at the rear window. She was calling to him, her face contorted with horror.
‘Kate,’ Lou bellowed, the sound consumed by the damp air and the snow. ‘Kate . . .’ The sound bounced back to him. He dropped to his knees, sinking into the whiteness.
Crumbling forward, he collapsed into the snow, hot tears streaming down his face and onto the frozen ground.
The phone rang three times before Lou came to, grabbed for it blindly in the darkened room and heard its dull thump on the carpet. He scrambled across the bed, reached down and
found the receiver.
‘Yes?’
‘I’d like to help.’
Lou was instantly awake, pulling himself up against the headboard. He’d recognized the voice immediately.
‘Max. What do you mean?’
‘What I said, Lou.’
‘How?’
‘We told you . . . Sergei has an Intel network at least as good as the SVR. We know where Kate is being held.’
Lou was silent for so long Max said: ‘You still there?’
‘Yes. Why would you help?’
‘It is right that you should be cautious, my friend, but it is simply that Sergei likes you and he likes your wife. He feels a sense of responsibility. Kidnapping in his city . . . not
good.’
Lou glanced at the clock. It was 3.24. He turned to stare at the faintly lit wall opposite. Shadows and strange patterns of reflected neon played on the wallpaper. From far off in the freezing
night he could hear the rumble of traffic cut through by the shallow screech of a siren.
‘What do you have in mind?’ Lou said, his voice little more than a mumble. He felt nauseous, his mouth dry.
‘Come alone. Don’t involve Fleming.’
‘Why?’
‘We don’t trust British Intelligence, Lou. You understand, no?’
‘Where?’
‘Entrance of the hotel. Ten minutes.’
He heard the phone click, closed his eyes for a second and felt the room spin. He reached over and switched on the light, then pulled himself out of bed. As he dressed he punched in
Jerry’s number and put the phone on speaker. It took a few moments before Derham’s drowsy voice spilled into the room.
*
‘You did the right thing calling me, Lou,’ Jerry remarked as they descended in the lift.
‘They said I should come alone.’
‘Let me do the talking.’
They crossed the reception. The night staff were busy at computer screens and paid them no attention. Emerging into the night, the cold hit them hard.
Max was standing beside a car, the doors open. He extended a gloved hand and gave Jerry a hard look. ‘I said come alone, Lou.’
‘That will not be possible,’ Derham replied.
Max stared into the captain’s eyes.
‘I’m . . .’
‘I know who you are, Captain Derham.’ Max turned to the car. ‘Both of you get in, please.’
The streets were almost empty. Fresh snow had settled; only a few tracks sliced the powdery ice. The pavements were deserted. They saw half-a-dozen police cars doing their rounds close to Red
Square. At a junction a few hundred yards from the hotel two army trucks, each carrying soldiers in greatcoats and fur hats, pulled in front of them. Two streets on, they turned off east.
‘Where is Kate being held?’ Lou asked, leaning forward. He felt overwhelmingly despondent.
‘A district in the south-east, Kapotnya.’
‘Who has her?’
‘Unknowns. By that I mean we can’t find any links with them and any of the major gangs . . . yet.’
‘We came to the conclusion that Kate was taken by someone connected with Russian Intelligence, the SVR,’ Jerry said.
‘Possible,’ Max replied.
‘We considered Sergei, briefly,’ Lou said flatly.
Max shrugged without taking his eyes from the road. ‘No sense in it. Sergei wants his second payment. He’s hardly likely to alienate Fleming and his people by doing such a thing, is
he?’
‘That’s what we decided. Why didn’t you want us to alert Adam?’ Derham asked.
‘I told Lou, we don’t trust MI6. Why should we?’
‘But you trust us?’
Max exhaled through his nostrils. ‘Lou wants his wife to be rescued alive, doesn’t he? We will meet my people in an apartment close to where she’s being held. Sergei has put
two of his best men onto it. They are excellent. You can trust them.’ He gave Lou a reassuring look. ‘This is not a good . . . what do you say? Scene? Not a good scene.’
Lou stared out at the ice and snow-strewn streets lined with grey rectangles, faceless monolithic slabs like tombstones against the leaden sky.
They drew into a square car park in front of a residential block. There were three other vehicles there, two derelicts and a tatty, orange Moskvitch van. From the car they made their way over a
stretch of waste ground hard and rutted with frozen mud and ice. Across a stretch of pitted tarmac stood a ragged tower block. It had been thrown up in the sixties and was already falling apart;
cladding missing, windows smashed. Behind it in the dark morning, they could see, stretching across the horizon, the spindly columns of the Kapotnya oil refinery, red and yellow tongues of flame
dancing atop three of the refining towers.