Aggressor (30 page)

Charlie sparked up from the back. ‘How are Hari and Kunzru?’

Bastard shrugged. ‘How the fuck should I know? I got the call; at least one of them was still breathing. I was heading back there when I saw you guys on the road. Anyway, fuck ’em. Welfare ain’t my responsibility.’

The mist cleared as we wound down the side of the mountain. A wide, fast-flowing river sparkled in the sunlight below us. Apart from the vivid brown scar that cut across the lush green of the valley floor, we were back in
Sound of Music
country.

Bastard jerked his thumb towards the point at which the line of freshly turned earth cut back towards us and started to run level with the road. ‘There’s your pipeline.’

‘Where’s the metalwork?’ I’d been expecting to see something above ground, as I had in the Middle East.

‘They’ve buried it. Makes it a whole lot tougher to blow up.’

Charlie leaned between us. ‘Our old mates the militants?’

‘Militants, Kurdish separatists, Muslim extremists, Russian assholes, you name it. They all either want a piece of the action, or to use the thing as a bargaining counter.

‘The Kurds wanna split from the Turks: you give us our country, we don’t fuck with your pipeline.

‘The Russians, well, they just want to fuck the pipeline up, period. Perestroika, my ass; the cold war never ended for those guys.

‘And closer to home, there’s the Georgian politicos, doing side deals with whoever comes within reach – and charging the oil companies a fucking fortune to give the pipeline house room in the first place.’

Charlie nodded. ‘And we have a few bits of paper tucked away explaining where our late lamented friend Mr Bazgadze fitted into all this.’

Bastard glowered at him. ‘Don’t count on it, asshole.’

The rain started again. I flicked the wipers back into overdrive, but still had to press my face against the windscreen to see where we were going.

Bastard squinted through the curtain of water ahead of us. ‘But who gives a shit? My job was just making sure things ran real smooth.’

‘Fucked up there then, didn’t you?’ Charlie tapped the package in his jacket pocket. He’d wrapped the camcorder tape and the documents from Baz’s safe in a plastic bag he’d found in Bastard’s carry-on. ‘And I’m no expert here, but the local media seem to be painting a rather different picture than the one you gave us . . .’

Bastard couldn’t help himself. ‘Hey, I only told you what I’d been told myself.’ He gave a deep, frustrated sigh. ‘I’m not the decision-maker here. I’m like you guys; I’m a worker bee – a worker bee who just wants to get the fuck out of here.’

I’d promised myself to stay out of this, but my blood was starting to boil. ‘Worker bee, my arse. You’re a fucking maggot. You feed off situations like this, and leave the real worker bees to pay the price.’ I changed down to take a bend. ‘Remember Anthony, the Brit you slapped around at Waco?’

He went quiet for a moment. The rain was now hammering so hard on the Pajero’s roof it sounded like we were trapped inside a snare drum, but I could almost hear his mind whirring. ‘Anthony? Anthony who? I don’t remember slapping any Brit at Waco.’

‘Yes, you do.’ My eyes were fixed on the mud-covered gravel ahead. The Pajero was starting to slip and slide, and I had to fight the wheel to correct it. ‘He designed the gas you used, but shouldn’t have, remember? He committed suicide about a year afterwards. He couldn’t live with the guilt.’

‘Oh,
that
Anthony . . .’ Bastard ran an index finger over his moustache. ‘Sure I remember him . . . fucking Limey fag. He shouldn’t have been there. Never send a boy to do a man’s job . . .’

I swung the Pajero up a track that suddenly opened up to the left. We bucked over the pipeline towards a stretch of trees.

I shouted back at Charlie. ‘Let’s see if this arsehole’s bollocks are as big as his mouth.’

I braked hard at the treeline, killed the ignition and shoved Bastard towards the passenger door. ‘Get the fuck out! Now!’

I swivelled in my seat, leaned back against my door and kicked at him with both feet as he scrabbled for the handle. ‘I was there, I was with Anthony. I saw the whole fucking thing . . .’ I kicked him again as his door swung open and he slithered out into the mud.

He picked himself off the ground, his face a mask of fear and indignation. ‘It wasn’t me who gave the order. That was way above my pay scale.’

I followed him out while Charlie rummaged in the back of the wagon.

‘I thought you’d got the message about that worker bee shit,’ I yelled through the rain. ‘None of those kids stood a chance, and you enjoyed every fucking minute!’

‘Bingo!’ Charlie gave me the thumbs-up, slammed the rear door and headed for the Pajero’s bonnet.

‘Wait until I’ve climbed aboard him.’ I brought my pistol up. ‘I’m going to have this fucker.’

Bastard backed away until he was pressing against the front wing. ‘Hey, I knew it wasn’t right. I knew it was wrong to kill those people.’ He raised his hands, half pleading, half trying to make me keep my distance. ‘Those were American citizens . . . my own people . . .’ He pointed at me. ‘Our people.’

‘Down! In the mud! Now!’

He slid down the side of the vehicle and slumped against the wheel. The rain kicked up the puddles all around him. We were both soaked to the skin. My sleeve weighed heavily on my arm as I raised my pistol to his head.

‘Who are you working for?’ My first kick caught him square in the ribs. ‘Who gave the order to drop Charlie?’ My second disappeared into the mountain of flesh that spilled over his waistband. ‘What’s in those documents? What the fuck happened at the house?’

Charlie had released the bonnet and was now standing on the other side of him.

Bastard heaved air into his lungs and his face tilted up towards me, eyes screwed up against the rain. ‘What you gonna do, son? Pull that trigger? Fuck you, then. Just get on with it. ‘

Charlie shook his head, then leaned down and clipped one of the Pajero’s jump leads onto the roll of fat above Bastard’s collar and held the second against his ear.

Bastard screamed and his whole body shuddered. He collapsed like a rag doll, legs splayed out in the mud.

The jump lead was still clamped to his neck. Charlie handed me the other and slid into the driver’s seat.

I gave Bastard another kick, just because I wanted to.

Charlie fired up the ignition, and gave the pedal a squeeze.

Bastard said nothing, just lay there whimpering, listening to the steady throb of the Pajero’s engine, staring down at the mud. He was starting to get the message.

8

‘Look at me.’

He kept his eyes down.

I jammed my clip against the top of his ear.

He squealed, arched his back and collapsed again.

I leaned over him. ‘
Look at me
 . . .’

He stayed where he was, but this time his eyes came up to meet mine. Rain streamed off my chin and onto his face.

‘This is very simple.’ I waved the jump lead in his face. ‘You talk, and I keep this away from you.’

He jerked his head to dislodge the crocodile clip from his neck, but it stayed right where it was.

I kicked his hand away as he tried to reach up and grab it.

When he started to talk, I could hardly hear him above the sound of the rain. ‘It was a simple operation that got fucked up. We just needed those papers, no hassle, everything clean.’ He scrabbled in the mud and hauled himself back up against the wheel. ‘It’s out of my hands now. That’s why I was getting out of this shithole.’ He stared into the trees.

I moved the clip back into his line of sight, and held it no more than a centimetre away from his nose. ‘You’re not answering the questions. Who the fuck are you working for? Who are these powerful friends of yours you said can make things happen?’

‘The politicos, man. Same old story. The guys Bazgadze was gunning for. That’s why they wanted what was in his safe. That’s all I know.’ He glanced up at me. ‘And all I wanna know.’

‘You still with the Bureau? Is this some covert FBI fuckabout we’ve been sucked into here?’

He shook his head slowly and his gaze dropped back towards the mud. ‘Those fuckers spat me out four years ago. Chewed me up and spat me out, with just enough of an annuity to buy myself a cigar every Fourth of July. Why do you think I ended up in this goddam shithole?’

I wasn’t buying the sympathy card, and brought the clip a fraction closer to let him know.

‘I was in the job thirty years, and for what? Jack shit, man. So when these guys step in and offer me a retirement plan—’

‘What happened at the house?’

‘The guys I work for, there are six of them, OK? Partnership for Peace isn’t high on their list of priorities; well, partnership gets their vote, but peace can go take a dump. They want to keep things exactly the way they are. US dollars are flying in by the planeload, and a lot of them get diverted their way. They pay the militants to threaten the pipeline, just to keep things on the boil. Nothing bad, nothing physical – just the occasional firework display. Nobody gets hurt. It’s just good, old-fashioned commerce. I’m just there to—’

‘Yeah, we know,’ Charlie said. ‘You’re just there to smooth the way . . .’

Bastard looked up at him and risked a smile.

I kicked him. ‘Get on with it.’

He slid his legs up as close to his chest as his gut would allow. ‘This Bazgadze guy, he’d been getting more and more of a problem. The whole sainthood thing wasn’t good for business. And neither was getting found out just before Bush arrives to rally the troops for the war on terror. So the plan was, steal the papers, find out what he knows. Lean on the guy. Warn him off . . .’

He raised a hand to the jump lead still clamped onto his neck. ‘Can I take this thing off? I’m fucking helping you here.’

I shook my head. ‘You’re helping yourself. That still doesn’t explain what happened at the house, or at the cemetery. Who the fuck were those guys?’

‘Bazgadze wasn’t any more popular with the militants than he was with my politicos. There’s this fuck, Akaki, he runs them. He just couldn’t wait. If Bazgadze had proof he was on the take, he wanted him dead. He’s a fucking psycho, he’s out of control. It’s not the way to deal with guys like Bazgadze – he’s a fucking god around here.

It’s gotta be subtle.’

‘What, like you?’

The rain was so hard it felt like a madman with a staple gun was attacking the back of my neck.

Charlie wasn’t happy – and not just with Bastard’s explanation. ‘We better start getting a move on.’ He pointed beyond the trees, where mud and loose debris were breaking away from the side of the hill and gravity was doing the rest. ‘The road’s taking a pounding.’

I kicked Bastard to his feet.

‘So what happens now?’ he said.

‘What happens now is you shut the fuck up, or we connect those jump leads to your bollocks. You’re coming with us, and later on, when we’re in Turkey and out of this shit, you’re going to call a few of your high-powered mates. We’re going to make a little deal, and this time you’re going to be the broker.’

9

The curtain of water in front of us was now so solid I had to slow the Pajero to a crawl.

The noise was horrendous. We’d had to open all the windows, to try to deal with the condensation from our soaking clothes. The heater was going full blast, but it didn’t stand a chance.

Bastard was trying without success to shift some of the mud off his clothes and skin. He looked like he’d just crawled out of the black lagoon. He paused mid-scrape and had a crack at getting back into the good lads’ club. ‘Hey, Nick, believe me, I’m sorry about that Anthony guy. I’m sorry about the whole goddam thing. It was a really heavy time.’

‘But it didn’t have to be, did it?’

Bastard fidgeted some more. ‘It wasn’t like that. Just think what would have happened if Koresh and his buddies had gotten away with giving the finger to the ATF. Law and order would’ve lost all credibility. A thing like that couldn’t go unpunished. Anarchy, lawlessness – gotta be nipped in the bud, or you end up like this shithole.’

Rain crashed onto the car like breaking waves. The wipers were on full power, and still I couldn’t see a thing.

Charlie had arranged himself across the back seat, weapon tucked under his arse, legs draped over the carry-on. It was one of those airtight, fireproof, everything-proof aluminium things that come with a lifetime guarantee and a thousand-dollar price tag.

I got to thinking about what Bastard had said when he was plugged into the mains, and it didn’t stack up. When it came to being fucked over, I was the world’s leading expert, and the smart money didn’t say anything like Bastard wanted us to think it did. There was something a whole lot more serious going on here than a little light spring-cleaning before the US President arrived.

I kept an eye on the pipeline scar to our left; more often than not, now, it was the only way of telling we were still on the road. The river had burst its banks an hour or two ago, and raged along the bottom of the gradient to our right.

Bastard glanced over his shoulder and leaned towards me, as if he had a secret to share with his best mate. ‘Nick, listen. What about you and me making a deal? Let me go with the papers and tapes when we get to Borjomi; I’ll call my guys, see to it you’re off the wanted list, and make everything cool once you two get into Turkey. We’ve had enough of this shit, don’t you think?’

He nodded at Charlie, whose head was wobbling from side to side as I bounced the wagon along the track.

‘Just tell him I got out for a dump and made a run for it. Hey, how’s he to know . . .’

Things weren’t looking good out there. Brown slurry cascaded off the high ground to our left, carrying rocks and broken branches across our path.

Bastard wasn’t giving up. ‘You and me, Nick, we’re both really in deep shit. We’re singing off the same hymn sheet here.’

‘Why don’t we start with
Swan Lake
, lad?’ Charlie sparked up from the back. ‘We’ll hum it, you go jump in it.’

I glanced in the rear-view. He’d turned onto his side, knees bunched up, and was chuckling quietly to himself. ‘You’ve got two problems with your plan, Fat Boy. One’ – he tapped the top pocket of his jacket – ‘it’s all in here. Two, running isn’t exactly your strong suit. You couldn’t even bend over to run a bath, for fuck’s sake.’