The Outsiders (21 page)

He went from the platform to the staircase.

The deacon and the nun followed him down.

He should have felt in control and content. The arrangements had been made for the next journey, and the aircraft would soon be at Pskov airfield.

The priest came to him and the mayor sidled behind him. His men came from the back wall, and stood close to him. He did not attend religious services, although his wife and children did. Suspicion ate at him because his men had not climbed the ladder with him.

He said, ‘I would like to finance the project to save the church. I am away for a week or two, leaving this evening. You should ask a reliable contractor to supply an estimate for the work. I’ll look at it on my return?’

The nun clapped, and others joined in. Grigoriy was at the door, Ruslan behind him. He didn’t know how he would read the signs that his men might betray him. A politician in Pakistan had been killed by his bodyguard, another in India. An Iraqi minister had been targeted by a man ‘protecting’ him. Every man had a price.

Now Ruslan was at the wheel and Grigoriy held the door for him.

Natan heard the car horn in the street. He looked at the mess in his room, then switched off the lights, hoisted his rucksack and his laptop bag, went out, locked the door and ran down two flights. He came out into the street. The Mercedes was parked at the kerb.

There was another blast, impatient – they hadn’t seen him. He opened the front passenger door. He saw three index fingers, each amputated at the lower joint. The Major used his as a wedge to steady a pencil while he scribbled a note on his pad. The warrant officer used his to hit the horn. The master sergeant rubbed his chin with his stump. Natan believed they prided themselves on their wounds.

He sat, fastened the seatbelt, and they drove away. The glove box was open, as always, and the handle of a pistol peeped out. The storage bay between him and the driver contained the gas and smoke canisters. The light was fading. His shoulder was tapped, and the Major passed him the torn-off sheet from the pad: ‘Rhodium, ruthenium, palladium, iridium and osmium, platinum group metals. Where are they bought and at what prices? Is it a good time to buy?’

They sped down a street, swung away at the rear of the Pskov Kremlin and were out on the open road. He was lifting the laptop from its bag.

The Major spoke again: ‘You look better, Gecko. Has the flu gone?’

He said it had. The hand gripped his shoulder and squeezed. ‘Good.’

The hand slipped back. The laptop was switched on. He asked, ‘Now we go to Nouakchott? First stop, yes?’

Beside him, the driver – the warrant officer – nodded.

Then he asked, ‘And from there to Spain, direct?’

He could have bitten his tongue out. He didn’t query travel – it was never of any interest to him. The woman, the voicemail on his phone, would want that answer when they met. He flushed and the driver stared at him. He sensed the eyes of the master sergeant on his neck.

‘It is important to you?’ he was asked.

Natan stammered that it wasn’t.

‘Why did you ask?’

He didn’t know, he said.

‘It doesn’t matter to you?’

He said it didn’t.

‘So why?’

He muttered something incomprehensible.

‘What is Spain to you, Gecko?’

Natan began to trawl on his laptop for details of the precious metals, their prices and where they could be bought. Sweat, cold, ran down his back. He had asked a direct question because the woman would demand the detail of the onward leg. He didn’t know where or how they would meet, but she would be watching for him, as a stalker did. Twice more, the driver looked away from the oncoming traffic and stared hard into his face. Natan flinched from the gaze.

They would fly through the night and be in west Africa after one refuelling. The next day he would have his meeting, wherever, whenever, and detail would be sucked from him.

The Latvian policeman escorted a Swedish newspaper editor, from Malmö, past the Blue Bottle bar where a small celebration had begun. They paused at the entrance, and the visitor gazed at the bottles on the shelves behind the steward. As they watched, glasses were raised: beer, whisky or schnapps. The Latvian policeman said, ‘Sometimes we have a proper session, and then it’s firewater from the Balkans, champagne from France or vodka from Poland. We do that when we have concluded a matter we’re proud of. Now we’re in late November and there have been just two occasions over the last few months this bar has been crowded. One event was to celebrate the capture of the banker behind a major drug ring – he was worth a hundred million euro. Then we drank the bar nearly dry after we helped stop two furniture pantechnicons coming into Germany from the Czech Republic. A group of Romanians were transporting fifty-three teenage girls to European brothels. Those were real successes – but success is too rare. At Europol we have a budget of eighty million euro a year for a clearing house of intelligence. Individual governments raid their taxpayers in the interests of crime prevention, and the public demands a return for their money. Too often, to make sure of that return, the police charge in prematurely and there’s not much more than an evening’s headline or an interview with a minister. In an ideal world we would have rejected the politician, the paymaster who must show short-term results, the need of broadcasters to fill their news programmes and we would have allowed that cargo ship to sail on. We would not have boarded it at sea. It would have docked, the cargo would have been unloaded and split, and we would have put intensive surveillance on the trafficking of the narcotics across Europe. Then we would have been led to major figures whose apprehension might disrupt the trade. On such an occasion we would fill the bar. Today the men we have in custody – some of the crew and others at Cádiz harbour – won’t be able to give us the names of the major players. So you won’t see any of the senior men in the bar this evening, none of the organised-crime team heads will be celebrating. The likelihood is that the confiscation of the drugs will change little.’

They went on down the corridors, then up a flight of stairs, and the drinkers in the bar were forgotten.

The minor problem was that neither had spoken up; the major problem was that bitching was now too late
if
the chance had been there.

Snapper would have said he was an élite photographer, and that Loy was good at back-up. They did their work from front bedrooms, factory roofs and, occasionally, from a van parked on a busy street.

He had on the wrong footwear, which was why he’d slipped and fallen. They were decent lace-ups with a reasonable tread, but he’d realised his mistake when Sparky had lifted a rucksack with his all-terrain boots dangling from it. It was pitch dark and they’d brought too much kit, which hadn’t been a disaster until Xavier had shed his load and left them. Something about three being enough to do the last leg and get in through the back.

They had been up half the night, had caught a delayed flight out of Stansted to Seville. Dawn had been up when they’d arrived, and there had been a meeting down the road with a Six man who had driven from Madrid. There’d been banter between them about red berets and guys from the RAF. He’d brought a load of gear that Sparky couldn’t have carried through Security.

Top of Snapper’s talents was the ability to get crisply focused pictures that told a story, usually of conspiracy. He was also skilled at reading the meetings he watched. Important to gauge who was a chief and which man mattered – might not be the one who had most to say, but the runt at the back who never opened his mouth. It was a three-hour drive from Seville to Marbella, so they had done two rest stops and dozed in the car. The mobiles, of course, were off, and they had new communications kit that was encrypted for transmissions. There had been an accident at the Antequera end of the motorway from Seville – a bad one – and they’d been stuck for more than two hours. The should have reached the drop-off point with Xavier at dusk but instead it had been in inky, darkness. If it hadn’t been for Sparky, they’d have been nowhere near it.

Snapper could talk his way in anywhere. He had the knack of picking the one man or woman on a street who would invite him in and let him stay as long as he needed. But he wasn’t much good at going cross-country over rough ground or slithering down slopes on his buttocks.

Loy had half of their gear and Sparky had taken the rest.

Sparky led, with Snapper behind him and Loy last. They hadn’t been told that the approach to the ‘plot’ would involve going down a mountain where there were steps of a sort and a track that could only be identified by fingertip touch. Snapper was forty-seven and weighed at least sixteen stones. The doctor who did his annual medical had once urged him to cut back on calories, but had given up. No one, certainly not the Boss, had been quite frank on how the approach to this Paradise place was to be made. He should have asked, but he hadn’t.

Sparky had said he’d been an ‘airborne’. When he was asked how he managed the weight he was carrying, he’d said in the dark – almost apologetically – that he’d been a corporal in the 2nd Battalion, but had been out five years. He didn’t explain why Winnie had recruited him from the gardening staff at the old graveyard. Snapper couldn’t fathom the man. Why was a former paratrooper, good enough to be back-up on a Five job, employed as a gardener . . .? It made no sense, but . . . The moon was rising, and far below he saw the lights of the town, and the ships at sea. More important, there was an end in sight. He could see the lights to the sides and back of the ‘plot’, the location of the target. Paradise was separated from it by a wall of trees, in darkness.

They were on the floor, had spent hardly any time at their table. No one spoke to them.

He said into her ear, ‘Maybe we’re the only real people in the world. They’re hoods with their slappers. We don’t know where they come from, can’t speak a word of any language they use. We don’t carry guns. It’s not that they’re hostile – they aren’t, because we’re no danger to them – it’s simply that they’re indifferent. They don’t care a toss about us. They haven’t even noticed us – but there’s no hassle and the place is great. And we’re in good shape.’

‘Brilliant shape.’ She kissed him.

There was more Rihanna and more Lady Gaga, and they’d dance until they dropped or the money ran out.

The late news came on. The flat was small enough for the TV to play in the living area, for Myrtle to hear it in bed and for Mikey to get the drift from the balcony. He was having a last smoke of the day on the little platform that had no view except the block across the road.

He reacted because he heard the name. Then the girl reading the news repeated it.
Santa Maria
. He felt weak, and cold sweat trickled down his neck – it always had when disaster whacked him. Mikey Fanning turned to stand in the doorway between the balcony and the living room. The newsreader had named the boat and now he understood barely another word she spoke. He didn’t need to.

The screen showed a map with the Venezuelan port of Maracaibo marked on it, the Spanish port of Cádiz and the Rock of Gibraltar. In the middle there was a wad of Atlantic Ocean, and a red cross marked a point that was nearer Europe than Latin America. Then they showed a picture of commandos swarming close to the containers on the deck. A lifebelt close to one bore the name
Santa Maria
. Mikey Fanning had had no education, but no one had ever called him dumb. He understood.

‘Did you catch that, love?’ he called.

‘I did, more’s the pity.’

‘All down the pan.’

‘Looks as if our bodies’ll get to go to Alicante. Want to talk about it?’

‘Like I want a hole in the head.’

He was not among the old people who sat in the day-care centre in San Pedro. He had a good memory, sharp when he needed it and bloody sharp when he didn’t. He pictured the lawyer, Rafael, who had the plush office near the Paseo Maritimo, the smart suits, the flash car and an introduction. He could remember the man he had met at the club where the lunch would have cost what he and Myrtle lived on for a month. He could also recall the two minders, whom Rafael had said were Serbian. They might have been on a war-crimes list, Rafael had said, and they had tattoos on their arms of women and knives. They had been arrogant enough to bring their handguns into the club, and no one on the staff had called the Policia Nacional. It was like they’d bought the place. That was where the money had come from to finance the big deal that was going to make Tommy King a big man with a big future. And there was to have been ‘a drink in it’ for Mikey Fanning.

‘It’ll keep for the morning.’

He could have cried.

His rock, Myrtle, said, ‘Come to bed, Mikey. Things’ll look better in the morning.’

They wouldn’t and he knew he’d never sleep. It was a poleaxing blow because Tommy had talked his way into a deal that was way out of their league. He didn’t want her to see in him how deep the fear went.

‘Give us a minute.’ He locked the balcony door – though there was nothing in the apartment for a burglar to steal – went to the cabinet and poured himself a drink.

‘That’s him – Ivanov,’ murmured Snapper. ‘Get it in the log, Loy.’