Aggressor (32 page)

I left him where he was and went over to the tree.

Charlie was resting the sole of his boot against the trunk, in order to ease his damaged ankle.

I collapsed alongside him. I wasn’t going to ask him if he was OK. If the time approached when he couldn’t take any more, he’d give me plenty of warning.

Charlie grunted. ‘We’d better step up the pace or we’ll be stuck out here all night. If he could tab as energetically as he gobs off, we’d be there by now.’ His face was lit briefly by one of his stupid grins. ‘He’s a bit like you, lad; he can talk the talk, but he certainly can’t walk the walk.’ He liked it so much he shouted a repeat for Bastard’s benefit.

Bastard looked up, but either couldn’t or didn’t want to hear.

I wasn’t looking forward to trying to keep Bastard on the move all night. If he couldn’t shift his arse in daylight, he’d be ten times worse after dark. People like him become uncoordinated; they stumble, they injure themselves.

Bastard looked the part inside a Pod with a coffee machine at his elbow and a wad of tobacco in his hip pocket, but that was about it. He’d boast a good night out, but I didn’t want to have to nurse him through one.

I doubted he’d ever gone more than a couple of hours between doughnuts.

I checked Baby-G, which was still chugging along after its dip in the river. It was 3.27, which meant only about another four hours before dark. At this rate, it wouldn’t be enough.

Charlie moved his foot off the trunk of the tree and onto my shoulder. Bastard watched, and maybe it made him feel even more like Nobby Nomates. He sounded pretty sorry for himself. ‘How much fucking longer in this goddam shit country, man? How far we gotta go?’

‘What’s the matter, Big Boy?’ Charlie watched him fiddle with his soaking wet loafers. ‘Never been cold, wet and hungry before?’

I broke into a smile. ‘Cold and wet, maybe. Hungry? I don’t think so!’

Charlie almost choked with laughter.

‘You fucks think we’ll get there before dark?’ Bastard scowled at us as he wiped the rain from his face. ‘I don’t want to be out in this shit all night long, that’s for sure. And don’t even think about leaving me out here. Nothing’s changed. You fucks can’t get out of here without me. Don’t forget it.’

Charlie grimaced as his foot made contact with the ground again. ‘Don’t fret, Big Boy. We’ll push your fat arse all the way to Turkey if we have to.’

He hobbled off up the road. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew it would be contorting with pain with every step.

I’d have offered myself as a crutch, but he would only have fucked me off. He knew as well as I did that he wasn’t the priority right now, whatever Hazel might think.

3

I pushed and shoved Bastard for another hour. He was slowing down, without a doubt. It couldn’t have been easy shifting that bulk of his; I could almost hear those big wobbly thighs chafing together with every step he took.

We were still following the pipeline scar to the left of the road. The rain was a solid grey curtain.

As we rounded a sweeping bend into high ground, I saw a splash of white about 150 metres ahead of us. I wiped the rain from my eyes and looked again. It was the arse end of a van, static beside the road.

Bastard and I drew level with Charlie.

Charlie rested his arm on my shoulder to take the weight off his injury. ‘Looks like our luck’s in, lad.’

Bastard began sounding off as if he’d spotted an empty cab at theatre time and we were about to let it go. ‘Hey, what’re you fucks waiting for?’ He shambled off up the road, trying desperately to make his legs move as fast as his instinct for self-preservation.

As we got closer, the white blur became a Mercedes van, up to its axles in the mud. Both sets of rear wheels were spinning, but the driver was only burying them deeper.

I dodged the spray coming off the tyres and made my way round the passenger side. I saw two shapes in the front seats, but they were too intent on working the steering wheel and gear-stick to notice me.

I tapped on the glass.

The figure in the passenger seat spun around, clearly startled. I could see her dark eyes, as wide as saucers, through the rain-blurred window. She stared at me for several seconds then switched her gaze to Charlie and Bastard as they closed up behind me. I could understand her concern. We were in the middle of nowhere, in a torrential storm; we must have looked as though we’d just crawled out of a primeval swamp.

I unzipped my jacket, lifted it up, and turned from side to side. ‘No weapons,’ I mouthed. ‘We . . . are . . . unarmed.’

I let my jacket fall as the others followed suit, but kept my hands up.

She wound the window down about six inches, but her expression made it clear that she still wasn’t exactly delighted to see us.

‘It’s OK, it’s OK . . .’ I smiled. ‘Speak English?’

She turned to the driver and said something in rapid-fire Paperclip. He took his foot off the gas and bent forward to see round her. He had a very short, just grown-out crew cut, and hadn’t shaved for a day or two.

I kept my smile so wide my face was starting to hurt. ‘English? Speak . . . English?’

The girl faced me again, her brow still furrowed. ‘Who are you?’ The accent was Eastern European, but with an American TV twang.

I spoke very slowly. ‘Our car . . . It got hit . . .’ I mimed a collision. ‘The mud . . .’

The driver leaned forward again. ‘We understand.’

Bastard appeared at my shoulder and pushed me aside. He pulled his accreditation from his soaked leather wallet and thrust it through the gap. ‘Borjomi,’ he barked. ‘Take us to Borjomi.’

If that was his idea of a charm offensive, our tab was far from over.

The woman took the ID.

Bastard didn’t waste any time. ‘We wanna get to Borjomi. See that ID? That says you take us.’

The two inside the Mercedes had another exchange in Paperclip, glancing at each of us in turn. I never liked not knowing what was being said in situations like this, particularly when I appeared to be the subject of the conversation, and the outlook didn’t sound good.

Eventually she shrugged. ‘Sure . . . It’s not so far. No more than thirty minutes. We’re going there ourselves, if we can get out of this mess.’

She passed the ID back and Bastard tucked it into his wallet. In the state he was in, I doubted she’d been able to match him with the photograph. I hoped she wouldn’t recognize me.

Bastard reached for the handle to the sliding door halfway down the wagon, as if he already owned it, but she waved him away. ‘You will have to dig us out first.’

She slid across into the driver’s seat, and he climbed out. He was tall and lanky, maybe mid-twenties, and wore a black Gore-Tex jacket. He came round the front of the vehicle and thrust out a hand. ‘I’m Paata.’ He nodded towards his companion. ‘And she’s Nana.’

Charlie and I both introduced ourselves. I hoped that our expressions would help distance us from the tub of lard still wrestling with the sliding door.

Bastard glanced in our direction. ‘Hey, this goddam thing’s stuck.’

Paata shook his head. ‘It’s locked on the inside. Security. We’ll undo it in a minute.’

Bastard pulled up his collar and went to lean against one of the few trees to have been left unscathed by the side of the road. He leaned forward, hands on his knees, resting his huge buttocks against the trunk. I tried not to laugh; he looked like a bear trying to scratch its arse.

Charlie and I grabbed the rear bumper and started to push and lift, trying to free the wheels from the ruts they’d created. Paata shouted out to Nana to keep them turning, then came to join us. He unzipped his jacket, to stop himself overheating. Me, I was looking forward to it. Mud flew like muck from a spreader as Nana floored the accelerator.

Paata yelled more instructions and Nana hit the pedal again. This time the wheels spun more gently.

Charlie and I leaned against the back door and tried to lift, then let go so it rocked back into the rut. I wasn’t sure how much good we were doing. His hands were starting to shake like a demented percussionist.

‘Paata,’ Charlie called out. ‘Have you had to get out of this stuff before?’

‘Sure. I am an expert!’ Paata gave us a beaming smile. ‘Every time, I call a tow truck.’

‘Good thinking.’ I laughed. ‘But not this time?’

‘Cells don’t work this far out. Not until Borjomi.’

Charlie tapped him on the arm. ‘Thing is, lad, I’ve dug a few vehicles out of snowdrifts in my time. It’s not as bad as mud, but the principle’s the same.’

Charlie bent to inspect the axle. ‘The mud clings to the undercarriage until there’s no way to get any traction, and spinning the wheels only drives them deeper. Us three strong lads need to stay here, at the back, but Nana must help us rock the wagon back and forth. She needs to keep the wheels as straight as she can, shift quickly from first gear to reverse, and we’ll get a nice rhythm going. When we manage to jump this thing free, she should keep it moving until it’s on firm ground. And she should try not to spin the wheels if she can help it.’

Paata headed up front to pass on Charlie’s instructions.

‘Hey, driver,’ Bastard shouted from under his tree. ‘What about getting me a hot drink?’ He was well and truly back to his old gobshite self.

Paata sensibly ignored him.

The engine revved and the three of us started to push and shove. I wondered how much more of this Charlie could take.

Nana threw the Merc into reverse and Paata wiped a fistful of mud off his face.

‘Open up the back,’ Bastard yelled. ‘I’ll make the coffee myself.’

Paata muttered something under his breath. I thought I’d probably just learned the Paperclip for ‘fuck off’.

Charlie took a step back. His ankle looked as though it was about to give way beneath him. ‘Listen, Paata, this isn’t going to work. You got a shovel?’

‘I wish,’ Paata said. His expression told me that if he had, he’d use it across the back of Bastard’s head.

Charlie opened the front passenger door and burrowed inside. He emerged with the rubber mat from the foot well and handed it to me. ‘You might be able to scrape enough mud away from the wheels with this to get some traction, lad.’ He turned back to Paata. ‘What about snow chains?’

Paata rattled off another sentence or two of Paperclip to Nana, and I heard the side door slide open and close. He reappeared with two sets. Charlie dropped one into each of the furrows I’d scooped behind the tyres and threw in the rubber mat for good measure.

At Charlie’s signal, Nana revved the engine once more and dropped the clutch. The wheels spun for a second and the Merc rolled straight out of the ruts and back onto firmer ground.

Bastard didn’t waste any time getting his arse off the tree.

Nana climbed out. She was dressed in walking boots, waterproof trousers and an expensive black Gore-Tex jacket like Paata’s. She couldn’t have been more than about five foot six, and her features were almost elfin, but there was nothing fluffy about her demeanour. As she headed round the side of the vehicle, she looked as purposeful as a heat-seeking missile.

She gave the side door a quick double tap. There was a click and it slid open to reveal a bank of TV monitors set in an alloy frame which acted as a bulkhead to the cab, a stack of aluminium boxes, and an even more purposeful man with a huge beard and biceps the size of Bastard’s thighs.

‘This is Koba,’ Nana said. ‘I regret we live in dangerous times. Koba makes sure we come to no harm.’

She wasn’t kidding. Koba wouldn’t have looked out of place wielding a gollock in a Tbilisi graveyard. He studied us silently with dark, hooded eyes, as if trying to decide which of us to headbutt first.

‘There’s only room for another three of us here in the back.’ Nana pointed at Charlie. ‘Why don’t you get in the front with Paata and stretch out your leg? It looks painful.’

Bastard didn’t need a second invitation. He heaved himself inside and I followed. It was obviously an outside broadcast set-up. I put two and two together, and suddenly wished I’d hung on to my stupid hat.

I’d thought Nana seemed familiar. She’d fronted the camera in the broadcast from the Kazbegi siege.

4

I shifted a couple of cables out of the way to make room for my feet. I could see Paata and Charlie through the hatch, framed by the TV monitors, as we set off. Beside them, someone had taped a montage of images from Nana’s recent past.

One of them showed her in Fiona Bruce mode, posing at a news desk, wearing make-up and an earnest smile. Captions in Paperclip, Russian and English promoted her for some kind of award. She had certainly kept herself busy. She had exposed corruption in all sections of government, ‘unearthing entanglements of network and patronage at all levels’.

Another shot showed her alongside the Georgian army, covering the siege by Islamic militants in Kazbegi, on the Russian border, not even two weeks ago. According to the cutting, she’d been the first journalist at the scene, and reported live for CNN.

Nobody talked. Nana was very tense and edgy, and it set the tone. The soundproofing in the cab did a perfect job of muting the rain, and it accentuated the awkward silence.

Bastard, true to form, remained oblivious. ‘Now where the fuck’s that coffee?’

Nana reached into one of the large nylon zip bags on the floor and handed him a stainless steel thermos.

As Bastard unscrewed the top, Koba watched his every move.

‘Do you guys work on the pipeline?’ Nana asked. ‘What are you, surveyors? Engineers?’

Bastard poured himself a generous mug, and the smell of coffee filled the van. ‘Security.’

She turned to me. ‘You security too? Do you have any ID? Koba likes to be sure about people.’

‘It was in my bag, in our Pajero.’ I did my best to look apologetic. ‘We lost everything.’

She switched her attention back to Bastard. ‘We’re planning a documentary about the pipeline. Maybe we could do business one day.’

Bastard was getting the brew down him. It hadn’t occurred to him to offer some to anyone else. ‘Anti, I guess?’