Fire Hawk (32 page)

‘In Odessa?'

‘I think maybe.' Reznik had bitten his lip, realising the little he'd said was already too much.

Pushkin had offered a cigarette and lit it for him with a match.

‘A yard, you said? There were soldiers in it?'

‘I didn't see, comrade Major. Just kept my eyes on the four-six-nine like I was told. The officer gave me something to read while I waited for them to unload.'

‘Pictures of girls in it?'

‘Yes, comrade Major.' The boy had blushed slightly. ‘
Amerikanski
.'

‘So instead of watching what was happening to the load on your truck you had your eyes full of spread legs!'

The boy had coloured beetroot.

Pushkin had known he would get no more from the youth and had ordered him to return him to the administration block. At the moment the jeep had driven up to the entrance, Colonel Komarov had emerged from it. He'd looked startled to see them together.

Pushkin switched on the ignition of his eight-year-old Zaporizhzhia. After an agony of churning, the rear-mounted engine spluttered into life. A cold drizzle smeared the windscreen, which the well-worn wiper blade did little to clear. He engaged the gear and the machine jerked down the road towards the main gates of the Magerov base. Set on a stone pedestal at the far end of the drive a corroding MiG-15 acted as a gate guardian and a reminder that the Magerov base had once had a more prominent role.

The railway station would take him just five minutes to reach.

Pushkin had blamed himself partly for what had happened to Reznik after that gentle interrogation. It had been downright careless to allow Komarov to see him with the youth.

The following morning he'd arrived at his usual time at the headquarters building, the Ukrainian flag flying from the staff on the roof. Top half azure, bottom half golden yellow, symbolising fields of corn under a blue sky. A salute from the guard, then upstairs to his office.

‘The report on the accident, comrade Major.' One of his lieutenant clerks had met him at the top of the stairs. ‘It's on top of the pile, Major. On your desk.'

Accident?

In his gloomy room with its smell of stale tobacco, he'd picked up the topmost sheet from his desk. A report from the Militsia traffic department. There'd been an explosion in a jeep last night, while the vehicle was being driven outside the base.

One occupant only. The driver – Private Ivan T. Reznik. Killed.

Deeply shocked, he'd sat staring at the poorly typed, misspelled report, simply not believing it. That it could
not
have been an accident was the one thing he was certain of. Jeeps did not explode of their own accord. No accident either that the victim was Reznik.

The boy had been murdered. A miserable young life cut short before any chance of happiness. A young man silenced because of what he could tell about the destination of the drone spares.
Could
tell, but
hadn't
in any significant way. And remembering Colonel Komarov's shock at seeing Reznik with him the previous afternoon, Pushkin had thought the unthinkable. That his commanding officer and close friend had had a hand in Reznik's death.

And yet he knew in his heart that Oleg Komarov was not a criminal. And most certainly not a murderer. If his
daughter's godfather was involved in these criminal acts it was because forces beyond his control had compelled him to be.

Only at that point had Pushkin understood. The forces concerned would be Mafiya. Suddenly he'd become deeply afraid.

The Lieutenant from his outer office had knocked and entered, a fair-haired twenty-five-year-old with cool blue eyes.

‘Bad about Reznik, comrade Major.'

‘Yes. Very bad.'

‘A fault with the jeep? Fuel leak perhaps?'

‘Probably.'

‘Should I question Vehicle Maintenance?'

‘Yes. You'd better.'

‘Odd though. You'd have thought he would have smelled something.'

‘Yes. Yes you would.'

The Lieutenant had hovered over him. There was one more matter to be dealt with.

‘It's the telegram, comrade Major. For the family. You usually put your name to them.'

For the Lieutenant the death or serious injury of conscripts was a routine matter that he dealt with repeatedly.

‘Yes. Yes, of course.'

‘Wondered if you wanted to say something special, since Reznik drove you only hours before the accident?'

‘Ah. Perhaps I should.'

‘It's the mothers, Major. Makes them feel their sons were treated like human beings here instead of dogs.' He'd spoken without irony.

Pushkin had sat for another hour at his desk, smoking cigarette after cigarette and pondering, stubbing out the butts in the shell-case ashtray his father had given him when he graduated. He was dealing with something of an
unfathomable size and shape. It had puzzled him at first why Mafiya gangsters should want a drone. Their wars were fought at street level with Skorpions and Kalashnikovs, not on a battlefield where aerial reconnaissance had its use.

Then it had dawned on him.

All along his thinking had been confined within the tight parameters of his own military environment. He'd imagined that the spares misappropriation must be some
internal
army scandal – that the drone would be used for the purpose it had been designed for. But a machine built for one purpose could be easily adapted for another. Replace its camera sensor with a bomb of equivalent weight and the device became a guided missile. A fearsome weapon for some Mafiya gang – or a group of crazy foreigners bent on terrorism.

The more he'd thought about it, the more he'd realised that the consequences of what had happened here at Magerov might soon reverberate around the world. Hundreds, maybe thousands of lives might be lost as a result of the misuse of property belonging to the army of Ukraine. And apart from lives,
honour
was at stake here too. The honour of the Ukrainian armed forces.

The army was in his blood, as it had been in that of his ancestors. The son of one of the few Ukrainian heroes of the Great Patriotic War to survive the conflict, Mikhail Pushkin was a man to whom honour and duty mattered more than anything else. His duty, he'd realised, was to pursue the matter further. And first he would need to raise his concerns again with his commanding officer. Only if
that
action produced no satisfaction could he take it to a higher level.

Plucking up his courage, and after one more cigarette, he'd marched from his room to the rather more spacious one occupied by Colonel Komarov.

His daughter's godfather had been sitting behind his
desk, his round face in profile, staring through the window at the red-brown leaves of a large horse-chestnut tree on the grass outside.

‘Comrade Colonel!' Pushkin had stood to attention with the Militsia report in his fist.

Komarov had swung round to face him, his normally warm, soft features looking drawn and tired, his eyes drained of life.

‘I wish to report my concerns about the case of—'

‘A tragic accident, Misha.' Komarov had cut him off sharply.

‘But I wish to lodge a formal—'

‘No, Misha. You do
not.
' The eyes had chilled, but behind their ice was fear. ‘Accidents are events that none of us can do anything about.
None
of us, Misha. Remember that. For your sake. For my sake. And for the sake of my god-daughter, whose life I treasure very dearly.'

At the mention of Nadya, Pushkin's determination had faltered, but only for a moment.

‘It is my duty to tell you, comrade Colonel, that I now have firm evidence that the spares for the VR-6—'

‘Your duty, Major Pushkin, is to obey my orders!' Komarov had been white-faced with anger and fear. ‘For God's sake, leave that matter alone, Misha. Return to your desk now and involve yourself in routine things. Do not give one more thought to the VR-6 business. Forget it. Because there is nothing to be done. I am telling you, Misha.
Nothing can be done
.'

There
was
something, however. And Pushkin was now doing it.

He parked the Zaporizhzhia on a patch of waste ground opposite the bleak, open platform that served as a railway station for the small town of Magerov. His
appointment with General Major Orlov at the headquarters of the Odessa Military District was for midday but he wanted to be in the city in good time to leave nothing to chance.

The armed forces of Ukraine had become sick beasts since independence from Russia. Undernourished and with their post Cold War roles still undefined, corruption and opportunism had eaten away at the moral fibre of their officers. Giving in to that corruption could only make matters worse. Pushkin knew he had to make a stand. It was his
duty
to do so.

Going over the head of his commanding officer and friend had a secondary purpose too. Oleg Andrey'evich Komarov had become the Mafiya's tool, their prisoner.

General Orlov, he hoped, might have the power to free him from that grip.

PUSHKIN STARED BLANKLY
at the high, bare walls of the waiting room on the ground floor of the Odessa headquarters, his broad-brimmed cap on his knees. The pale-green room was in need of fresh paint, but it was light, with a large window overlooking an internal courtyard where rain fell in a steady drizzle. He'd been kept sitting on a metal-framed chair for more than two hours, while a stream of other visitors came and went. He'd begun to feel like a disobedient schoolchild left to sweat before his punishment, rather than an officer upholding the highest standards of the service.

At last a dark-haired woman in her late thirties appeared in the waiting room doorway and smiled at him. She wore a silky apricot blouse and a pleated skirt. He stood up and she apologised for the long wait, saying the General had been called away but was now back. Pushkin followed her into the lobby. They passed through a security turnstile and up two flights of stairs to the long, wide corridor where the generals had their offices.

The Odessa Military District was under the overall command of a General Colonel, an old tank commander reputed to be in despair at the decline of the army he'd
served for thirty years. Beneath him were half a dozen generals major acting as department heads.

The secretary knocked at a pair of heavy doors decorated with elaborate mouldings. The name on a small engraved panel read General Major N. M. Orlov. Pushkin was more nervous than he'd ever been in his life. General Orlov was Colonel Komarov's direct superior, responsible for military supply. He'd met him only twice before, once on his appointment to the district and again during an inspection at the Magerov base three months ago.

A short, dark man with a brooding, Napoleonic air about him, Orlov waved him to a chair. He wore his uniform jacket, the lapels decorated with the insignia of special forces, his left breast marked by three lines of campaign ribbons. Orlov had distinguished himself in Afghanistan. His hands rested on a broad blotter where he'd scribbled notes about previous meetings. At the front edge of the desk was a gilded pen stand.

‘Comrade Major. I must say right away that the terms under which you requested this meeting are extremely serious,' Orlov began, looking at Pushkin over the rim of a pair of half-moon reading glasses. ‘I understand you've come here to make allegations against your commanding officer, is that correct?'

Orlov's bluntness threw him momentarily.

‘Comrade General. I . . . well it's not exactly
against
. More in support, I would say. I mean, what I have to say to you, General, is that I have evidence that a substantial quantity of military equipment stored at Magerov—'

‘Mikhail Ivanovich,' Orlov cut in, his voice a little softer. ‘Before you make your allegations, which could have very serious consequences for many people, not least yourself, let me ask you this: have you really thought about what you're doing? It is a
very
serious step you're taking. Suppose your allegations were to prove
unfounded. Your career – it would be over. You would have to resign. And without a pension worth anything. Your family . . . Lena, Nadya. Have you thought about them?'

A chill descended like dew. The General had done his homework.

But he couldn't stop now.

‘Believe me comrade General, I have thought about it. The decision has been a painful one for me. Very painful.'

‘Of course. Oleg Andrey'evich is your daughter's godfather.' Orlov pursed his mouth to emphasise the significance of this. ‘You and he, you have
kym.
The bond, it's like family. And yet you are prepared to break it?'

The homework again. A voice at the back of Pushkin's mind told him to give up now. To back off. To shut up. To slink away to his desk at Magerov and carry on as if nothing had happened. But he couldn't. There was too much at stake.

‘Comrade General, I believe a very serious crime has been committed and that—'

‘Crime! Yes. It's all around us. We are
led
by criminals, Mikhail Ivanovich.' Orlov leaned forward on the desk as if imparting a confidence. ‘In the government – in the army even, according to some. We all know it. Ukraine has become a criminal state.'

‘But you're surely not saying we should accept it, General?'

‘Accept? The choice is hardly ours, I think.'

‘But comrade General, the crime that I'm talking about,' Pushkin continued, his confidence returning, ‘I believe it could have very serious consequences outside Ukraine as well as within the army. This is why I have to report it, why I've had to ignore all matters of personal loyalty.'

The General sat back, his eyes as hard as coal.

‘Well then, if your mind is made up. What is it you have to tell me, Mikhail Ivanovich?'