Betrayal (26 page)

‘You are an interesting man, Ryan Drake. You seem to have done a lot of things in your life. But not for long.’ She leaned a little closer, noticing his change in body language when she’d mentioned his change of careers. ‘This makes you uncomfortable?’

‘You have me at a disadvantage,’ he said, trying to change the subject. ‘You seem to know a lot about me. I don’t know anything about you.’

‘One of the benefits of having the backing of my agency,’ she reminded him with a sardonic smile. ‘Anyway, I think there is another reason. If I had to guess, I would say you didn’t leave the military of your own free will.’

‘I’m sure that’s none of your business,’ Drake replied tersely.

‘It is if it has a bearing on our investigation—’

‘It doesn’t,’ he cut in, his sharp look warning her not to pursue this further. ‘And I didn’t come here to play
This is Your Life
.’

He was finished talking with her, especially about this. He needed time to cool down, to regain his composure. He glanced towards the door, which he knew to be guarded on the other side by a pair of armed FSB agents in case he decided to go sightseeing. ‘I’m going to the bathroom.’

The woman nodded, her expression making it obvious she’d scored a point. She had exposed a point of weakness that could be exploited later, if she chose.

‘One of our agents will escort you.’

‘Is he going to hold my dick for me as well?’

Miranova remained annoyingly unperturbed. ‘Only if you can’t find it by yourself.’

In the restroom nearby, Mason popped the lid on his bottle of painkillers and tipped a couple into his hand, eyeing the innocuous little pills with a mixture of distaste and resentment. He shouldn’t need these, he kept thinking to himself.

A few years ago he’d been in the prime of his life; strong and physically fit, and possessing a robust vitality that kept him in excellent health. He could scarcely even remember the last time he’d had to visit a doctor.

Now he had to take these fucking pills just to get through the day. His shoulder was aching, and no amount of concentration could hide the slight tremor in his hand as the previous dose of painkillers wore off, leaving behind their inevitable legacy.

It started with trembling hands, but it didn’t stop there. Headaches, sickness, fatigue, disorientation; he’d experienced it all the last time he’d tried to stop using them. That had been six months ago, after the final corrective operation on his shoulder.

He hated it, but right now he knew he needed them. He couldn’t afford to let Drake or himself down on this job. He had to get through it.

Swallowing the pills, he chased them down with a gulp of water from the faucet and let out a sigh that was somewhere between relief and resignation. The pills packed quite a punch, and it didn’t take long for them to kick in.

He was just straightening up when the door opened behind him. Startled, he spun around to find himself face to face with Drake.

‘Ryan!’ He tried for a relieved grin while at the same time moving a little to the left, putting himself between Drake and the bottle of pills that was still resting on the edge of the sink. ‘Jesus, you scared the shit out of me.’

But Drake wasn’t smiling. ‘Caught you at a bad time, Cole?’

‘A man’s allowed to take a shit break, isn’t he?’ Turning away, he bent over the sink and turned on the tap again. At the same time he reached for the bottle, closing his hand around it before Drake could get a look. ‘Any news from McKnight?’

‘Nothing yet.’

Mason splashed some water on his face, trying to ignore Drake’s dubious glance in the mirror. ‘They’ll find something. McKnight seems pretty squared away. And Keira … well, she’s Keira, right?’ He looked up and managed to summon a playful grin. ‘She doesn’t quit until the job’s done.’

Drake folded his arms. ‘You’re right about that. I always could rely on Keira,’ he said, putting a certain emphasis on that last word. The meaning wasn’t lost on Mason.

He felt himself growing more on edge as the seconds crawled by, expecting his friend to challenge him at any moment. Had he seen the pills? Did he understand what they were?

Wiping his face and slipping the bottle unobtrusively into his coat sleeve, he straightened up and turned to face Drake again. ‘Give them a chance, Ryan. They might just surprise you.’

He hoped his meaning wasn’t lost on Drake either. Leaving his friend to think on that, he brushed past him and headed for the door. He was just reaching for the handle when Drake called out to him.

‘Oh, and Cole?’

Turning, Mason was just in time to see Drake toss something towards him. Instinctively he raised his left hand – his good hand – to catch it. Then, remembering the bottle of pills he’d hidden up his sleeve, he turned slightly and snatched at it with his right. It was a clumsy catch, but he held on all the same.

He managed to hide the flash of pain from his shoulder at the sudden movement, and glanced down at the folded hand towel Drake had thrown his way. He knew right away why the younger man had done it. The son of a bitch was testing him.

‘Remember to wash your hands,’ Drake advised.

Norilsk, Siberia

‘Yes!’ Frost cried, punching the air. ‘Got you, you son of a bitch!’

McKnight looked up from the stack of documents she’d been sorting through with Stav, turning her attention to the technical specialist. Frost had plugged her own laptop into a USB port on Umarov’s computer, using its sophisticated hacking and decryption software to break through whatever security protocols he’d had in place so she could trawl his hard drive for useful data.

Like a cyber hunter stalking her digital prey, she had slashed through its defences to get at its vulnerable underbelly. Now it seemed she was poised to make the kill.

‘What have you found?’

‘Our roadkill friend has been busy lately, mostly deleting stuff,’ Frost explained. ‘Unfortunately for him, deleting something doesn’t get rid of it. All it does is flag that disk partition as available to overwrite, and even then a trace of the original data can stay for—’

‘Just give me the short version,’ McKnight interrupted. As fascinating as the technical aspects of her profession were, she was more concerned with the information Frost had uncovered than how she’d found it.

‘Jeez, what a way to kill my buzz,’ Frost griped. ‘Anyway, I managed to reconstitute several emails between Umarov and a guy called Anatoly Glazov. They started a few weeks ago. I had to run them through a translator program, so they read like a pair of fucking Martians talking to each other, but the gist of it seems to be that Glazov asked Umarov to supply him with several cases of D, which I guess refers to Danubit – the explosive.’ She paused a moment to read on a little further in the emails she’d only just finished reconstituting. ‘Umarov says … it’ll be risky but he thinks he can do it.’

‘Fuck the translator program,’ Stav said, sensing she was having difficulty. Tossing aside the papers he’d been examining, he strode over to her computer. ‘Bring up the original emails, please.’

Hesitating, Frost glanced at McKnight, who nodded her assent.

Hitting a couple of keys to revert to the original Cyrillic versions, Frost leaned back from the computer. ‘Knock yourself out, big guy. Not literally, of course,’ she added with a fake smile. ‘You did that already.’

Giving her a look of annoyance, Stav went to work, his eyes quickly darting across the screen. Even Frost was surprised at the rate he was able to take in information.

‘She is right,’ he said at last. ‘It seems the two men were old work colleagues. Glazov approached Umarov asking him to supply the explosives, and offering fifty thousand roubles in return.’

‘So where did they go?’ McKnight asked.

‘According to this, Umarov was to take the explosives to an abandoned warehouse on the south side of the city, where some men would be waiting with his payment. There is nothing more beyond that.’

McKnight nodded. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a whole lot more than they’d had a few minutes earlier.

‘Then we need to find out who Anatoly Glazov is, and where he lives,’ she decided. ‘If the two of them were old work colleagues, he should be on the mining company’s personnel database.’

‘This is not problem,’ Stav said, reaching for his phone. ‘FSB will find what we need.’

It took less than a minute for Stav to be connected to the right department within the FSB’s immense organisation, and even less time for him to put forth his request for information. With the enquiry submitted, he hung up and folded his arms, whistling under his breath.

Sensing their eyes on him, he smiled. ‘Chill and be patient, my friends. We wait.’

‘I’m chilled enough,’ Frost assured him.

Thirty seconds later, his phone pinged with an incoming message. Manipulating the comically small touch-screen phone with his massive hands, he called up the message and scrolled down to read.

‘Well?’ McKnight prompted, eager to know more.

Stav let out a snort of amusement as a grin slowly split his face.

‘You will love this.’

Grozny, Chechnya

‘We have him,’ Miranova announced, reading off the information forwarded by FSB headquarters in Moscow.

McKnight had called them with the news of their breakthrough only moments earlier, quickly explaining the email chain they had found between Umarov and Glazov, and that all available information on Glazov would be sent on to them.

Miranova turned her laptop around, allowing Drake and Mason to see what she was looking at. Staring back at them was a passport photo of a ruggedly handsome, practical-looking man of middle age, the sort who seemed as though he belonged in a sawmill or a factory. The date stamp announced that the photo had been taken seven years previously.

‘Anatoly Glazov, born here in Chechnya in 1948. He served in the Red Army engineer corps for nearly a decade,’ she explained, rapidly summarising the information in his dossier. ‘When the Cold War ended, he moved into the private sector and started working for Norilsk Nickel as an engineering contractor.’

Mason could see where she was going with this. ‘The sort of guy who’d be responsible for rock blasting, that sort of thing?’

‘Precisely. He retired from mining operations about three years ago due to ill health. He has been living off a company pension ever since.’

Drake was elated. As far as the evidence went, it didn’t get much better than this. They were dealing with a man with possible sympathies to Chechen separatism, and who had the knowledge and experience to build improvised explosive devices.

‘So he could be the guy behind this,’ Mason reasoned.

‘Possible, but unlikely,’ Miranova countered. ‘He was not flagged by our internal security directorates, and his file shows no history of political activity. Even his military record mentions no anti-government sentiment. He does not fit the profile of a terrorist leader.’

‘But he
is
hard up for a few quid,’ Drake chipped in.

The FSB agent frowned at the unfamiliar expression. ‘Excuse me?’

‘He’s a Brit,’ Mason apologised on Drake’s behalf.

Drake gave him a disapproving look before continuing. ‘He wouldn’t be living here if he had the money to get out. A guy like that might be willing to build bombs for the right price, especially for a fellow Chechen.’

‘That is my theory also.’ He saw a faint smile; a tacit acknowledgement that they were both on the same page. ‘His last known address is less than twenty miles from here.’

For Drake, the next course of action was obvious. ‘Then let’s pay Mr Glazov a visit.’

Anatoly Glazov grasped the edge of his chipped, stained kitchen sink, his thin body convulsing in another coughing fit that felt as though it was tearing him apart from the inside. With a final racking gasp, he spat a glob of foamy mucus into the sink, trying to ignore the fact that it was pink with blood.

He turned on the tap to wash it away, then straightened up and ran a shaking hand across his mouth. The attack had left him feeling sick and weak, but it had passed now. It always passed.

Reaching for the bottle of vodka on the shelf beside him, he poured a generous glass and took a gulp, forcing the stinging liquid down his throat. It made him want to gag, but gradually the pain subsided as a languid warmth began to spread outwards from his stomach.

He was just laying the glass down when he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the grimy kitchen window. He saw his face, gaunt and haggard, his clothes hanging slack on his spare frame, his hair thinning and grey. He was barely sixty, yet he felt decades older.

Twenty years ago he’d been a strong, vibrant man in the prime of life. A little thick around the midsection perhaps, and an inch or two shorter than he might have liked, but still ruggedly handsome and with a successful army career under his belt. Now it was all gone. Chechnya had eaten away his life just as Norilsk had eaten away his health.

Still, none of that mattered now. Now he had the means to escape this war-torn hellhole. A quarter of a million roubles had just been deposited in his bank account; generous payment for a few days of easy work. The buyer, whose name he’d never learned, had promised him justice and retribution for the Chechen people, claiming his work would change the course of history and other such bullshit. In truth, Glazov had no interest in it. He had never considered himself terribly nationalistic, and was too old to start now.

He had agreed to the man’s offer for the money, and in that regard he was very passionate. A quarter of a million roubles was enough to get him booked on a flight out of Chechnya, enough to get him the medical treatment he could never afford before. Enough perhaps to give a man a second chance at life.

He was just pondering the future that lay ahead when the phone in his living room started ringing. Turning his eyes away from the unpleasant reflection, he shuffled through the untidy hallway and into the cramped, cold room that smelled of damp and mould and decay. The room that served as both his main living space and, in light of his declining health, his prison.