Rise of the Enemy (2 page)

‘Gentlemen, welcome to RTK!’ the man said in Russian, his words articulate and clear. He held out his hand and his smile widened to reveal dazzling white teeth. ‘I’m Mikael Semshov, CEO of Advanced Technologies.’

Dmitri got to his feet and shook Semshov’s hand. ‘I’m Andrei Veronin,’ he said. ‘And this is my colleague, Yuri Zhirkov.’

Semshov turned to me and I shook his hand. He had thick, strong fingers and the firmness of the handshake took me by surprise.

‘Pleased to meet you both,’ Semshov said, releasing my hand. ‘Please, come through.’

Semshov turned and began to retrace his steps past the receptionist’s desk. Dmitri and I followed. We exchanged a quick questioning look. Grechko had assured us that we would be meeting with him. His absence wasn’t a good sign. Not at all.

As we approached the open doorway I noticed yet another fatigues-clad guard standing on the opposite side.

‘Is everything all right with Viktor?’ Dmitri asked. ‘Only we thought we were meeting with him.’

‘Ah, Viktor? He’s fine,’ Semshov replied without turning
to face us. ‘He just got called out to a meeting. You know how these things are. He should be back within half an hour, but I thought I’d extend my courtesies to you. It’s always nice to meet our customers. I can give you a tour of the facilities too if you like, but let’s wait for Viktor in my office.’

It sounded plausible enough, but I didn’t buy it. Maybe we had been too trusting of Grechko. But we still had our job to do. We’d just have to wait for things to play out.

We followed Semshov through the open door. The guard on the other side waited for us to pass before setting off in tow behind us. The guard from the Jeep was also following. We rounded a corner and came to what looked like an airlock – a glass pod with a thick door bisecting it down its centre. We were led through it, one at a time. This wasn’t colour-coded necklaces any more. This was serious security. It would make our exit all the more difficult; we had no way around that. But all these precautions also meant we were getting closer to where we needed to be.

We were taken down a short corridor, passing closed doors on our left and right that gave no indication of what lay behind them. As we reached the end of the corridor, Semshov stopped to open a large oak-panelled door on which a chrome plaque displayed his name and title.

Semshov stood in the doorway and ushered me and Dmitri through. Inside it could have been the office of any corporate chief in any industry in any country in the world: plush carpets, oversized bookshelves filled with various ornaments, knickknacks and photo frames, a large desk and executive leather chair. Not bad for a scientist.

‘Please take a seat,’ Semshov said, walking around us and pointing to the two less-impressive chairs at the near side of the desk.

We again did as we were told, at least partly content that
we were finally deep in the bowels of RTK – exactly where we wanted to be. Though the absence of Grechko was certainly a worry. I noticed that the room had only one window, directly behind the large desk. The view was unspectacular, the office looking over the neighbouring building, a nondescript brick structure that was only about ten yards away. On the other side of the office, behind where I was sitting and off to my right, I had noticed a closed door. A toilet or shower room perhaps?

Or an alternative method of escape if our visit here turned south?

My eyes followed Semshov as he came around and sat at his desk. Both guards were out of my peripheral vision but I heard shuffling feet as they stationed themselves somewhere behind me. Semshov had a smirk plastered across his face. I fought hard to keep my calm exterior. I wasn’t getting good vibes.

‘So, gentlemen, where were we?’ Semshov asked rhetorically. ‘Perhaps you could tell me a little more about what you were hoping to get from your visit?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Dmitri said. ‘As you know, the Ministry has just recently agreed its budget for research expenditure for the next five years. As a longstanding and trusted…’

Semshov held up one hand in the air, palm pointed outwards, stopping Dmitri in his well-rehearsed tracks.

‘No, no, no,’ Semshov said, shaking his head. ‘The truth, please.’

I stared straight ahead at Semshov. My heart was pounding in my chest. I could feel blood and adrenaline racing through my body. The collar of my shirt felt tight and stifling, practically choking. Because I knew what was coming.

Semshov dragged the silence out, the malice in his smile growing. I sensed movement behind, the guards moving
closer, and heard them drawing their weapons, the tell-tale sound of metal on leather as they pulled the pieces from their holsters. I knew that the barrel of a gun would now be pointed at the back of my skull.

‘Why don’t you start with who you two really are,’ Semshov said. ‘Because I know you’re not from the Ministry.’

Clearly the game had changed. But it wasn’t yet over. Dmitri and I weren’t just there to steal information, we were there to leave a mark. We certainly hadn’t planned for our visit to pan out like this, but we could still achieve our aim. Fake passports and stolen identities had got us into RTK, but the plan had never been to leave covertly.

Why?

Because for the last nineteen years I had worked for the Joint Intelligence Agency, the JIA. A secretive intelligence agency, controlled jointly by the USA and the UK, the JIA’s agents ran specialist operations away from the scrutiny of the mainstream law enforcement and other intelligence agencies. It was policing, espionage and elite armed forces all rolled into one.

And the JIA, together with the British and American governments who oversaw us, wanted RTK, wanted Russia and the other governments that were sponsoring RTK’s research, to know they had been hit. That was the real purpose of my visit. We wanted them to know that we knew what was going on there. Think of it kind of like government-to-government blackmail. Simply a matter of strengthening our own hand.

All of that explained why at that moment, when Semshov
revealed that our cover was blown, when I heard the guards behind me drawing their weapons, I didn’t react. I waited.

All five people in the room remained silent for a few seconds longer. Without looking behind I didn’t know exactly where the two guards were stationed. And I told myself I wasn’t going to look. You don’t want to go making too many sudden movements in a situation like that. For all I knew they were only inches away, guns trained on my head and Dmitri’s, and any movement from me might have been my last. And I couldn’t have just sprung out of my chair and tried to tackle them to the ground. If they were too far away, I would have been an open target and it would have been nothing more than suicide.

So I waited.

‘How did you figure it out?’ Dmitri asked.

His voice was still calm and casual. I knew he wasn’t interested in the answer to the question. He was just buying time, doing the same thing I was. Not trying to figure out how we were going to escape from the predicament, but figuring out how we were going to get what we came for and
then
escape.

‘What, you thought we wouldn’t know about you turning Grechko to your side?’ Semshov said, smiling. He was enjoying every second.

‘So where is he?’ Dmitri asked.

‘Come on,’ Semshov said, laughing. ‘You are Russian, aren’t you? What do you think we’d do with a traitor like that?’

‘You killed him?’

Semshov didn’t answer. But we all knew that Grechko was dead. The trap had been laid for us and we had walked right in.

I heard more shuffling of feet from behind, could now hear the breaths of a guard standing only inches away. I
should have been feeling sick with trepidation. But the reality was that the situation hadn’t changed. If they had wanted to kill us, they would have done it already. In fact, I was feeling more confident than before. Because having heard the guard’s movements, I had a better feeling for how close he was.

Not close enough.

‘You need to understand something,’ Semshov said, his smile now gone. ‘I know a lot more than you might think about how these things work. There’s no need for me to kill you both. What I want is to know who you are and why you’ve targeted us. We want to know who our enemies are. All this secretive running around in the dark – it’s degrading. So I’ll make this quite simple for you. You can tell me now, straight up, or we can force it out of you.’

Neither of us said a word. I heard more movement from behind and felt light pressure on the back of my head. A gun barrel being pressed against my skull. I knew that Dmitri would be feeling the same.

Was it the end for us?

No, it was going to be the opportunity. Because I now knew exactly where the guards were. Striking distance.

‘You don’t want to talk? That’s a shame. You know, I actually feel sorry for you two, your masters having sent you here like this. What does that make you? You must be the cheapest labour they have, no? Dispensable. You’re just like pet dogs. Loyal, obedient. But I like that. I actually like dogs. It’s your masters that are the real problem. They’re the ones who risk your lives. They’re the ones that want to destroy us for no better reason than they don’t fully understand what we do. And that we work for Russia and not them. But unfortunately, your masters aren’t here. And you are.’

Semshov nodded to the guard behind Dmitri. A gunshot
rang out. I flinched at the sound, but I knew immediately that the shot hadn’t been from the guard standing behind me. The scream that came through Dmitri’s gritted teeth told me that. I didn’t know where he had been shot, but the fact he was screaming at all meant that it hadn’t been intended to kill him.

I rotated my head slightly to get a look. Blood was pouring out of a hole in Dmitri’s right shoulder. The bullet had gone straight through bone and tissue, in and out. Dmitri was panting heavy breaths, his nostrils flaring, trying his hardest to control the pain, to retain his focus.

We had bluffed our way so far, but it would take us no further. Now was the time to react. Dmitri looked over at me. We both knew what to do.

I stared at Semshov, who had a look of such arrogant confidence on his face. He opened his mouth to speak. But before he could say a word, I leant forward. Just an inch or two. I strained my legs and pushed down hard on my feet, readying them to take my weight. I moved my hands down to my sides, resting them on the seat, next to my thighs. Then, in one swift motion, I used my legs, my arms, my whole body weight to propel the chair backwards, crashing it into the legs of the guard directly behind me.

I heard commotion to my left and was aware that Dmitri would be doing the same; I hoped he had the strength and concentration to pull it off. In the blink of an eye I rushed in a narrow arc around the chair, moving up behind my bemused guard. If he was an amateur, he would probably start pulling on his trigger in desperation, aiming at where I had been. If he was in any way decent, he would be moving away and into a defensive position while he determined what was happening. I didn’t hear any more shots, so maybe he wasn’t an amateur. But he still wasn’t good enough.

Before the guard had the chance to manoeuvre away, I twisted my left arm around his neck and grabbed hold of his right ear. My right arm snaked around my left and I clasped my right hand over his jaw. I used the grip to pull his head backwards and upwards, twisting in a sudden anti-clockwise motion.

I heard his neck snap and released the grip. His limp body slumped onto the plush carpet below.

Only a few seconds elapsed between hurling the chair and hearing his body hitting the floor. A split-second later a similar thud told me Dmitri had accomplished the same feat. Not bad with a gunshot wound to contend with.

Semshov was halfway to a desk drawer, his hand reaching out to it. Was he going for an alarm? A weapon?

‘Put your hands where I can see them!’ Dmitri shouted.

I turned to see Dmitri, his left arm held out, fingers gripping a Glock 17 pistol that he was pointing at Semshov. The gun belonged to the dead man at Dmitri’s feet.

Semshov looked up, his hand still outstretched towards the desk. He had taken on a ghostly look. Shocked at how the balance of power had so quickly changed.

‘You’ll never get out of here alive,’ Semshov said. ‘Whatever you do to me, it’s nothing compared to what we’ll do to you.’

I noticed the slightest of twitches in his right arm. A piercing alarm began to sound. And that same wicked smile that he had first greeted us with began to creep across Semshov’s face once more.

‘Fuck!’ Dmitri shouted.

I tried to stop the inevitable. ‘Dmitri, no!’

But I was too late. Dmitri pulled on the trigger of the Glock twice. A quick double-tap. The two slugs hit Semshov in his chest, less than an inch apart, right at the
centre of where his heart would be. He writhed in his seat for a second, a look of disbelief wiping away just a sliver of that confidence.

And then he was gone.

‘Why the hell did you do that!’ I shouted.

I wasn’t upset that Semshov was dead. Just that he was dead before we’d got any of the information we needed. He could have been useful. A hostage may even have helped us to get out.

‘Eliminate all threats,’ Dmitri said.

‘But not until we get the files! You’d better not hit any roadblocks getting the information, otherwise we’re screwed.’

‘Don’t worry about me. I know how to do my job.’

Dmitri took his briefcase and placed it on Semshov’s desk. He opened it up and went to the concealed compartment that held all of his equipment. I wouldn’t know where to start with all the high-tech gizmos that he used, but I knew the basics. The tools of the trade that Dmitri had mastered would allow him to copy the entire hard drive from Semshov’s computer in just minutes, simultaneously transmitting it wirelessly to our remote field office. We had planned to take Grechko’s hard drive, but that wasn’t going to happen now – perhaps Semshov’s would be more fruitful anyway.

On top of that, we had already obtained Grechko’s security details. While the hard drive was being copied, Dmitri would be able to roam free through RTK’s server data for anything else of interest.

At least that was the theory.

But all of that took time. And with the alarm blaring, I wasn’t sure we had much.

‘How long do you need?’ I asked as I watched Dmitri attach leads from Semshov’s desktop to a handheld device that looked to me nothing more than an extravagant mini-tablet.

‘Longer than we have,’ he said.

‘Shit.’

‘Give me five minutes. I’ll see what I can do.’

I wasn’t sure we really had five minutes. Guards would surely be swarming us on all sides already. But we had to try.

‘Are you able to do it with your shoulder like that?’ I said.

‘Just let me get on with it!’

I walked over to the guard I had killed and took the gun out of his hand – a Glock 17, just like the one that Dmitri had. I checked the clip. Still full. Seventeen rounds. The chamber was loaded with another. I searched through his pockets, looking for anything else of use. I found another full clip, a mobile phone, a radio. I took them all. I also took his black-corded security card from around his neck. Just in case. Though I had to expect they had us on lockdown already.

‘Rather than looting the dead, why don’t you figure out how we’re going to get out of here?’ Dmitri said.

I didn’t like how he said it.

‘Just let me get on,’ I said. ‘I know how to do my job as well, remember?’

‘I’ll be done in two minutes. At least check the doors and windows, figure out which way we’re going to go.’

‘I’m not opening that door until you’re ready. No point in inviting an onslaught.’

Dmitri huffed. I got on with what I was doing. The alarm was piercing. The pitch made my insides curdle. It had been going for a few minutes already. Back-up had surely arrived nearby. The only questions were how many men, how well-equipped, where the hell they were and, more importantly, what their orders were.

I headed over to the other internal door, hoping that there may be some good fortune through there. There wasn’t. The door led into nothing more than a small cupboard. We
weren’t going to get out that way.

I began to creep over to the window, cautiously, not wanting to create a target for anyone stationed nearby. I stopped before I got too close. I could see vehicles and bobbing heads lining up outside. But as long as the glass was breakable, the window had to be our best bet for escape. The door we had come through would only take us through narrow corridors. And back to the airlock. Even if those doors hadn’t already been locked down, they would take far too long to clear and we’d be nothing more than sitting ducks.

‘Please tell me you’re nearly done?’ I said.

‘Just…hang.’ Dmitri held up a finger at me. ‘Done! Now, get us out of here.’

‘Bullets or chair?’ I said, staring over at the window.

Dmitri shrugged. I took aim with the Glock.

There was an almighty crash as one of the window panes exploded. Thousands of neat pieces of safety glass flew through the air and crashed to the floor.

Dmitri looked at my gun as though what had just happened was impossible for such a low-calibre firearm. And it was. Because I hadn’t even pulled the trigger. This fact dawned on both of us just a second later.

‘Get down!’ I screamed.

I threw myself to the floor on the near side of the large desk, away from the now open and exposed window. Dmitri began to move, but before he could get to me an explosion erupted, so loud it felt like my eardrums had shattered to pieces, just like the window had moments earlier. With it came a bright white flash of light that seemed to burn and burrow its way into my head – I was completely blinded.

I knew what it was. A stun grenade. Non-lethal, but incapacitating.

But knowing that didn’t make the effects any less severe.
For a number of seconds my brain was fuzzy and my body felt like a dead weight. A result of the shock caused to the stabilising ability of my inner ear. I tried to stand but fell into a heap on the floor, my face scraping painfully on the thick weave of the carpet. I knew the effects would pass, but by then there could be ten guards in the room, guns at the ready.

I pulled myself along the floor, towards the cupboard door. I didn’t really know why, other than it took me further away from the window where the grenade had come from.

My vision started to return. The spinning in my head began to subside.

‘Dmitri. Are you okay?’ I said, turning around.

No answer.

I heard shouting from outside. I wasn’t sure whether they were shouting at us or giving each other orders. I stayed where I was, on the floor.

‘Dmitri?’

Still nothing.

I finally got my sight back, though everything seemed to be spinning around me. Dmitri was lying on the floor, next to the guard he had killed. I went to get up, again failed. My legs were like jelly.