I got back to hear Number 24d banging around in the depths of his tiny room for a few seconds, then he appeared dressed in plain pants and a jacket and carrying a small bag. He had developed a high colour and was breathing heavily from his exertions, and I hoped he was ready for what lay ahead. From now on in, his entire life was about to change dramatically.
‘Is that all you have?’ I asked.
‘It is all I need,’ he replied with great dignity. ‘My life is very simple.’
And about to get a hell of a lot more complicated, I wanted to add. Instead I asked if he had somewhere to go and hustled him towards the stairs.
He nodded. ‘I have friends who will help me. I have nothing to keep me here so maybe it’s for the best.’ He tried to smile but it didn’t quite gel. Not surprising when a complete stranger arrives on your doorstep unannounced and turns your life upside down. ‘I lost my job at the university,’ he explained, ‘and the money paid by your CIA was not enough to live on. So, I live here in this small box.’ He shrugged philosophically. ‘But we do what we have to in life, do we not?’
‘Yes, we do. Will Yaroslav talk?’
He nodded sadly. ‘Of course he will. He’s a fat, miserable turd who feeds off the misfortune and sadness of others. I have no doubt he will have another person in there to replace me before the day is done. But don’t worry — the authorities will not find me. The way things are going in this country, somehow I don’t think I will be at the top of their list of people to deal with.’ He smiled sadly. ‘Ironic, is it not? Most of us spend our lives working to leave some small footprint, some memory of our passing in the vain hope that we as individuals were not entirely irrelevant. Yet here am I hoping that my footprint will be non-existent.’ He waggled a set of car keys. ‘Thank you for coming to warn me. I have my car nearby. I will complete what I was paid to do, but that will be all.’
‘But I don’t have Travis yet. You should go. Get away from here.’
He considered it for a moment in silence, his breathing harsh. We arrived at the front door, where he turned to me. ‘But you are here to rescue him, are you not?’
‘That’s my job, yes.’
‘Then we both have something to finish. Come to Vokzal’na Square directly west from here. It is not far. I will wait for one hour. If you do not come, I will have to assume you have not been successful.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m sorry.’
He walked away without waiting for a reply, towards whatever future awaited him yet still prepared to do what he’d been paid for. I could only admire his quiet courage.
I went back to the car and drove along the street, hooking a left at the end of the block then left again. I was now in a deserted back run behind the apartment block. On the other side was a large patch of communal vegetable gardens surrounded by sagging wire fencing and dotted with tiny sheds like matchboxes stood on their ends. Most of it looked neglected and weed-strewn, adding to what was already a desolate and moody backdrop, as if inviting the bulldozers and graders to come and do their worst.
I walked to the end of the street and ducked behind a section of wooden fence around a deserted plot of weeds, and found a vantage point where I could keep an eye on the approach road. With luck I’d hear the sound of any vehicles coming before they got to me, which would give me time to come up with a plan to spring Travis.
The truck was the first to arrive, no doubt having used its weight and the complement of troops on board to bully its way through the crush of vehicles at the airport. It stopped a hundred yards away out of my line of sight near a single property surrounded by a chain-link fence, with a barn-type building backing on to the road. Through the sagging open double doors of the barn I got a glimpse of a bunch of chickens in a wire-framed pen. I focussed on the truck and over the clatter of the engine I heard a brief burst of a voice coming over a radio link. ‘Stay put and wait. ETA five minutes.’
The jeep with Travis. The clock was now ticking.
My priority was to get Travis away from the men in the jeep, but the troops in the truck was a problem I couldn’t ignore. Somehow I had to immobilise them.
I moved out from behind the fence and found a gap in the chain-link surrounding the property. I was out of sight of the truck or anybody inside the house and had an easy route to the barn. I ducked inside and breathed the overheated, musty atmosphere of about a dozen chickens. They ignored me, focussing on their feed or their grooming. So far so good. I moved over to the front wall for a look-see. And heard a cough very close by.
I stopped dead and froze. A trickle of water sounded. Somebody was relieving himself just a couple of feet away on the other side of the barn wall. Through a slim gap in the planks I caught a glimpse of a uniform.
I held my breath and prayed the house owner wasn’t about to come out and protest at this invasion of their property, or to collect some eggs.
The soldier finished and moved away, and I peered through a knot-hole in the rough planking. The truck was a dozen feet away, but inching slowly forward as the driver held the engine on the clutch, the heavy ribbed tyres squeaking as they rolled over a line of stones half-buried in the earth close to the barn wall.
I slid back and tried not to cough. The barn began to fill with noise and the acrid smell of diesel and heavy exhaust smoke, and the structure was vibrating with the proximity of the engine. The chickens were getting nervous, too, and abandoned their feeding, electing to go into a protective huddle in one corner of the pen.
I reckon I had a couple of minutes, if that, to do something before Grey Suit arrived and gave the order to move in.
If that happened, all bets for Travis were off.
EIGHTEEN
I checked the interior of the barn, which was full of the rubbish and discards found on any smallholding or farm anywhere in the western world. Long-forgotten and rusted machinery, coils of wire, battered feed trays, folded cardboard vegetable boxes going mouldy with damp, dented buckets, plastic sacks and a tall stack of cut logs ready for winter. I picked up a length of metal tubing as thick as my arm, an idea forming in my head. I’d seen this done once before, but never tried it myself.
I had to work fast. I grabbed some of the cardboard and wrapped it in layers around the tubing, tying it in place with some string hanging from the wall. Next I slid the end of the submachine gun barrel into the tube. It was a loose fit so I used a fold of plastic sacking to wedge it securely in place and pack around the gun barrel.
I now had a very rough and ready suppressor, or silencer. It was cumbersome, and I’d only find out how silent it was when I pulled the trigger. But if it served to deflect some of the sound, it would be good enough.
I found a gap close to the ground where a piece of planking was missing, and slid the tube through, carefully pushing it along the ground as far as I could towards one of the heavy tyres, which were now almost touching the barn wall. Give it another few seconds and the truck would be past my position and beyond reach. The noise from the nearest tyre scraping on the stones was high-pitched, rising above the clatter of the exhaust and the metronomic blipping of the engine as the driver became impatient to go.
I moved the selector to single shot and waited, timing the revs. One. Two-three. One. Two-three. One. Two-three. One—
I squeezed the trigger.
Some of the report came back up the tube, but most of it was lost in the roar of the truck’s engine. The crude suppressor worked, but the sound of the tyre going was much louder, the released air pressure battering the planks close to my head. I yanked the tube back and cast it aside, then moved to the back of the barn and waited.