Chapter 5
Zhilev stood in the darkness of a forest surrounded by a dense, brittle army of black slender pines, their heads shuffling in the breeze. He was completely still, listening to the sounds of the night. It was some thirteen years since he had last stood in this wood, on the same spot, also in darkness, but that time he was not alone. He had been with three other members of Spetsnaz, all Combat Swimmers, all from the unit on Mayskiy Island. They had been dropped off the night before by a Russian ‘fishing boat’ in the Norwegian Channel, ten miles off the coast of East Anglia, where they then motored the rest of the way to the coast in a small rubber inflatable. The relatively quiet beaches west of Cromer had been chosen as the point to come ashore where it was also easier to carry the boat up the gently sloping sand and into the hinterland at high tide, deflate it and bury it with the engine and fuel bags in a sand dune. They then made their way across country and just before dawn arrived at a small wood a mile in from the coast where they laid up for the rest of the day. One of them remained on watch at all times in case of farmers or children while the others slept, ate, or serviced their gear, then the following evening they crossed several fields to an agent contact point in a quiet country lane. The agent was a Sandringham game warden who had done this many times in the past ten years. He drove them across country in his Land Rover to the other side of Thetford Forest and from there they walked through the wood to the point where Zhilev now stood.
He remembered how the pines were younger and thinner then but still dense enough to give cover from view from the light, night-time traffic that cruised the A1065, 75 metres away, where it cut through this part of the forest. During his military service he had imagined returning to this place, but never as a civilian.
Zhilev had been standing still for almost an hour, the recommended minimum amount of time to watch and listen before proceeding to the next phase. Throughout his career, Zhilev had been a perfectionist and stickler for protocol. His reconnaissance and target survey reports were always detailed and supported by sketches, photographs, charts or maps, with samples of local soil and flora where possible, and Zhilev kept a copy of everything except the samples. It was an offence to do so but wise and worth the risk if your chosen career in the military happened to be with an arm of the KGB, which Special Forces ultimately were even though Zhilev’s unit came under the direct command of the Navy. One never knew where one’s career might lead and a detailed record of one’s past exploits was essential, even though it could be a double-edged weapon. The tide of power in Russia was a turbulent one and long before the wall came down those in privileged places knew a storm was brewing from within. Zhilev decided early on in his career that keeping such information and never needing it was better than the reverse.
There was a chill in the moist air, still not as cold as Riga at this time of year, but his well-built Russian boots protected his feet from the damp ground and his shaggy old sheepskin coat, a present from his brother to use on camping trips, kept his body warm. The only activity he had detected while standing in the wood was a handful of foraging muntjaks, the short-legged, plump little Asiatic deer that roamed these woods. Zhilev had not taken his original route across the forest from the old agent drop-off point but had walked through the wood, keeping parallel with the road, from the garage on the roundabout three-quarters of a mile away where he had left his car parked among many others so it would not be noticed.
It had been a tiring journey from Riga to Ostende but he had managed to snatch a solid hour’s sleep during the short ferry crossing to England. Apart from his usual aching neck, he felt quite good. Perhaps it was the rush of being on an operation once again, even though it was not an official mission sanctioned by his government. But it would be the biggest operation he had ever undertaken, by far; much bigger than ferrying agents into Europe through Swedish locks using mini-subs, or a bodyguard to Gorbachev in Reykjavik and Malta, or ferrying weapons and explosives into Palestine and Lebanon and operators into Afghanistan.This mission had not been planned and prepared by him but by Spetsnaz, and was a long-standing operation which had been in position for the past thirty years, and maintained and trained for in the event it was needed. Zhilev had some variations to the plan, of course. The target for one.
It had taken him no more than a day to adjust and update the operation to his needs after thoroughly going over the report he had kept, along with several others, in a large metal box under the stairs. The only factors that could pose a problem were changes caused by time, erosion and, of course, by the FSB, the Federal Security Service which had replaced the KGB after the end of the Cold War. It was possible that operations of this nature had been dismantled but Zhilev considered it unlikely. There were clues that operational commitments against the West had not changed, comments he had heard on television or read in newspapers and on the Internet from politicians and high-ranking military personnel, which suggested many attitudes and suspicions about the West remained for the most part unchanged. The West appeared to have fallen under the illusion that with the end of the Cold War, Russian espionage and war and counter-war plans had been shelved or dismantled. To the contrary, if anything, there had been a general increase in spying and military planning and contingencies immediately after Yeltsin took command. If people in the West thought that because the wall had come down and a fledgling democracy was growing in Russia, it had changed its mind about Western greed and expansionism and no longer suspected its duplicitous and underhanded ways, they were sadly mistaken. In the old days, expansionism was about land and the fulcrum of political control. Now it was all about economic empires and controlling them, but many of the ways and means of achieving goals remained the same. The country with the biggest stick made the rules and broke them when it suited, and Russia was not about to fall behind if it could help it. Zhilev felt confident everything in the forest was how he had left it all those years ago and that he would find what he was looking for. He had nothing to lose by carrying out a reconnaissance, and everything to gain if he was right.
Zhilev was not here for any political, economic or military gain. His motivation was an ancient one and second only to greed: revenge. Those who supported the people who murdered his brother were going to pay a terrible price for what they did. The whole world would know by the time he was finished, and, more than that, the entire world would be involved.
Zhilev had already found one of the markers as per the map: a centuries-old milestone, its engraved information long since eroded, located precisely 73 metres on a bearing of 271 degrees from the apex of the bend in the road, which itself was exactly 527 metres north of the northernmost entrance to a public picnic area. The milestone was one of three short-range markers which would lead him to what he was looking for. The markers were chosen for their location; surrounding the precise place he was looking for in a triangular fashion. If an imaginary line were drawn through each marker on the specific bearing written in the report, where the three lines crossed was the pinpoint he was looking for.There were also three long-range markers or landmarks, more prominent features several miles away, aimed at vectoring a searcher to the area of the short-range markers. One was a radio mast, the other a factory chimney, the third the centre of a roundabout, the bearings through all three crossed at the secret location; the smaller markers were the final and more accurate indicators.
Since Zhilev had already been to the location he did not need the long-range markers and could make do with just two of the short-range landmarks: one of them being the milestone, the other the southerly post of a five-bar metal gate, 150 metres on a bearing of 270 degrees from his position.
Lights suddenly appeared in the distance and seconds later the sound of a car approaching. He stood still as it drew closer and waited until it passed and continued out of sight.
Zhilev searched the immediate area and selected two long and robust sticks, breaking off the smaller branches to clean them up.
He took a compass from a pocket, held it in front of him and turned his body until the needle settled down and the thin luminous line highlighted his preset reading of 105 degrees. Then, holding it like a weapon, he looked for something in the distance he could aim for so he would not have to keep following the compass, but there was nothing but black wood. Not that it mattered. It would just have made it easier.
He set off in the direction the compass indicated, taking solid paces through the short firs that grew out of the acidic, pine-needle soil. Every time he had to move around a tree, he rechecked his bearing. It had to be precise. After 127 paces, he stopped and planted one of the sticks in the ground by his foot. As an afterthought, he removed his scarf and wound it around the top of the stick so it would be easier to find at the end of the next phase.
Satisfied he had been as accurate as possible, he retraced his footsteps on a back-bearing to the milestone. Here he turned the bezel of the compass to a heading of 270 degrees and marched off in the new direction. In Zhilev’s experience one of his normal paces with a slightly added stretch was a metre long, and 150 steps later he was standing in front of the five-bar metal gate which immediately filled him with confidence as well as satisfaction, despite the fact there was a lot more to achieve before he could call it a success.
He adjusted the compass bezel once more and set off in the new direction, counting his paces and constantly reconfirming his direction. At 135 paces he stopped, placed the second stick in the ground beside his toe and looked up to see the stick with his scarf attached two metres away to his left. One more pace and he would have crossed the path from the milestone. He considered taking the distance and bearing from the third marker, but decided it would not be necessary since the first two sticks were quite close together. He could always use the third marker if he had trouble finding the exact spot.
He put the compass away, reached into an inside pocket and pulled out a slender, telescopic length of steel thirty centimetres long. Gripping the ends, he extended it to its maximum length of a metre, then a quick twist and the device was locked into position. One end tapered to a sharp point and Zhilev proceeded to insert it into the ground between the two sticks, pushing it firmly down two-thirds of its length without meeting resistance. He withdrew it, moved the point a few centimetres and repeated the procedure.
The third insertion a little further away met resistance after a third of the rod was in the ground, but it was shallower than he was expecting and he removed it, moved a few more centimetres away and pushed it into the soil again. This time it continued down unimpeded, suggesting the previous obstacle was a stone or a root.
Zhilev continued to work methodically in a line until he had passed the stick with the scarf, then changed direction to head back to the other stick at an angle. After a dozen more insertions the rod met solid resistance about halfway down its length. Zhilev moved it up and down a few times to confirm it was there then inserted it further along again and met the same resistance. A ripple of anticipation shimmied through him and he dropped to his knees, cleared the area of small firs, selected two small sticks and stuck them in the ground at the first two points of resistance. Now he changed direction, probing around to locate the edges of whatever was under the ground. Each time he identified an edge he placed a small stick in the hole. Ten minutes later he got to his feet and looked down at the fruit of his efforts. A dozen twigs formed a near-perfect circle a metre in diameter.
Distant lights indicated another car was approaching. Zhilev watched the beams flicker through the trees until they passed out of sight then removed his coat in preparation for some manual labour and hung it on a nearby tree. He got back down on his hands and knees and began to scrape away the topsoil of pine needles, placing them in a pile outside of the circle of twigs. He went back to his coat and took a military-style folding spade from an inside pocket. Zhilev unfolded it, screwed down the locking device that gave it rigidity, inserted the tip into the soil and, with a heavy boot, plunged it into the earth.
Fifteen minutes later Zhilev struck something hard with a solid clunk that suggested the object was large and metallic. The noise was loud enough to make him pause, his ears searching in every direction. He had not decided what he would do if someone appeared out of the darkness and discovered him. His mission procedure of old was to terminate any intruder and dispose of the body or bodies. He did not expect to meet anyone but he knew he had to have a definite plan in case he did. Up until when the spade struck the metal object beneath the soil, the mission was all so much speculation. But now things were beginning to look as if they might become reality, it was all suddenly deadly serious. If he wanted to proceed, he would have to kill. He did not honestly know what he would do were he to be discovered right at that moment, and he would only know if the situation arose. He decided to leave it at that and let things happen organically, but he felt in his heart that if this phase of the mission was successful, he would proceed as if he was here on behalf of his country.
Satisfied he was alone, Zhilev got on to his knees and reached down into the hole. He scraped around, pulling out handfuls of soil until he exposed what appeared to be a thick iron wheel a little smaller than a steering wheel. He lay on his stomach and, gripping the wheel with both hands, tried to turn it. It would not budge. He tried again, applying every ounce of effort, but the wheel was stuck solid.
He took a moment to rest and wondered when it had last been serviced, or if indeed it had been at all in the last few years. He remembered clearly from his original briefing that the caches were checked at least once a year by an agent whose sole job it was to maintain them and the equipment inside. Any sign of such a maintenance schedule would be an encouraging indication of the cache’s operational status. If not it meant the option had been abandoned by the FSB some time after the end of the Cold War and, depending on how long ago that last service was, it would be a decisive factor as to whether or not his plan could continue to the next phase or end there and then.