They were determined to linger in Volgograd no longer than was necessary but, as Wilson checked the departure boards, he realized they were not going anywhere soon, because almost all the trains were heading the wrong way. The first three were destined for Saratov, Perm and Brest respectively, which meant they were heading north, back into the heart of Russia.
‘OK,’ Wilson muttered, craning his neck to check the boards again, ‘there’s no point in waiting for the Astrakhan train because it doesn’t leave for nearly twelve hours, and I don’t want to hang around here that long. We could take the Groznyy train at four, but I think we’ll head the other way. We’ll take the five o’clock to Adler.’
‘Where the hell’s that?’ Dawson asked.
‘On the eastern shore of the Black Sea, just south of Sochi,’ Wilson replied. ‘It’s closer to the Turkish border than either Astrakhan or Groznyy.’
‘That still leaves us with eight or nine hours to kill.’
Wilson looked around him before replying. ‘What we don’t do is hang about this damned station all day. We’ll go find a coffee shop, or whatever this place has to keep passengers from starving to death. We’ll grab a quick breakfast and use their bathroom to wash up. Then we’ll check into a hotel real close to the station and try to get some sleep. And this afternoon we’ll come back here and catch that train.’
Yuri Borisov seemed to have fallen apart. The money the Americans had paid him was gone, with no hope of its ever being recovered. He had colluded in the theft of a highly classified weapon and was, by implication if not in fact, an accessory to two murders. He’d been caught by the police carrying an unlicensed firearm. He had a broken arm and two hands that were almost useless. Finally, and of no importance whatsoever, his car was a total write-off. To say he was vulnerable was a grotesque understatement, and Litvinoff planned to get as much as he could out of the plant administrator before he recovered his senses.
‘We might be able to do a deal,’ the investigator suggested, though he had no intention of keeping his word. That one million dollars had seemed so close he had almost been able to smell it. All his career he’d been hoping for a score that big, one he could use to get himself and his wife out of Russia for good, with enough money to live comfortably for the rest of their lives. When he’d opened the passbook he’d realized that he finally held the key to their new life in his hands. His disappointment had been even greater than Borisov’s — but Litvinoff was angry as well.
‘Tell me exactly what happened,’ he urged, his voice soft and persuasive, ‘and we’ll try to work something out.’
Borisov was slumped in the chair, his head in his hands, trying desperately to think of some way — any way — that he could talk his way out of this mess. He had, he now realized, only two options: he could tell the unvarnished truth, which at best would virtually guarantee he’d never leave prison for the rest of his life, or he could give Litvinoff a version of it that incriminated him as little as possible. He knew there would be a full-scale inquiry at Zarechnyy, so whatever he said now had to cover the facts. It wasn’t a difficult choice.
‘As you know,’ he began, ‘I’m an administrator at PO Start. A few weeks ago I became suspicious about the conduct of two of our technicians.’
‘Their names, and how did they arouse your suspicions?’
‘Boris Devenko and Alexei Nabov. They were asking questions about the secure-storage facilities, obviously trying to find which building held certain pieces of equipment.’
‘What equipment?’ For a moment Borisov didn’t answer, and Litvinoff looked up from his notebook. ‘What equipment?’ he repeated.
‘I have a problem here,’ Borisov said, something of an understatement in the circumstances. ‘I can’t be specific without knowing your security clearance, and seeing your identification.’
‘You’re in no position to start making demands, Bori-sov,’ Litvinoff snarled.
‘I don’t have a choice. This information is highly classified, and I could get into very serious trouble if I reveal it to anyone without the proper clearance.’
‘You’re already in very serious trouble,’ Litvinoff pointed out.
‘I know, but still I can say nothing.’
‘Very well.’ The investigator pulled out a small leather wallet and flipped it open on the table between them. Borisov recognized the distinctive shield immediately — FSB officers were not infrequent visitors to Zarechnyy — and for the first time he learned that he was talking to Vaslav Litvinoff, a senior field investigator. He nodded, closed the wallet and pushed it back across the table.
‘I’ll ask you again. What equipment were they looking for?’
‘Portable nuclear weapons,’ Borisov replied, and Litvinoff dropped his pen.
Saadi’s men had cleared the house. They’d found another seven servants — two Filipinos and the rest Pakistanis — plus four members of the wealthy Arab family that owned the stables. None had resisted, because when each was kicked awake they found themselves facing at least one Kalashnikov assault rifle.
And any faint stirrings of resistance evaporated the moment they were all assembled in the hall, hands bound behind their backs and adhesive tape stuck over their mouths, and saw the body of the young manservant dumped face-down on the floor, a small pool of urine discolouring the marble tiles by his groin.
Saadi stepped off the bottom tread of the staircase — he’d been making a final check upstairs — and walked across to join Massood in front of their terrified prisoners.
‘Get the digger,’ he ordered, ‘and take that with you.’ He pointed at the corpse.
Saadi nodded to Bashar, and the tall Arab led the way towards the rear door of the farmhouse, the other men herding the captives behind him. Outside, he could hear the diesel engine of the Bobcat starting, the sound fading as Massood drove it past the house towards the open desert lying to the north of the stables.
The Bobcat was a single-seat digger, smaller than an average car, its steel bucket supported by two hydraulic arms on either side of the driver’s compartment. Though he had never handled one before, Massood had no difficulty in controlling the small vehicle. He drove on past the stable block, found the track that had been marked on their maps, and turned the digger to follow it. Some hundred yards further on, the grassed fields gave way to open desert, but he continued for yet another hundred yards before turning off the track, the Bobcat bouncing roughly as it hit the uneven dunes.
He stopped the machine and checked the terrain in front of him by the light of the Bobcat’s headlamps, now supplemented by the rising sun. The sand was fairly level and relatively firm, so the digger’s fat tyres hardly sank in at all. It was good enough, Massood thought. He raised the bucket, the Filipino’s body tumbling out. Then he turned the machine, dropped the bucket and dug the lower edge into the sand, powering the Bobcat forward to move as much as possible. He lifted the hydraulic arms, drove the digger a few feet to one side and emptied the contents of the bucket. Then he backed up and repeated the operation, the hole already beginning to take shape.
Saadi stood by the edge of the track and watched. Behind him, Bashar and the other men had formed a loose ring around their fifteen prisoners — they had found four staff asleep in the stable block — and were watching the thirteen bound men and two women carefully.
After twenty minutes Massood had excavated a pit about fifteen feet long, ten feet wide and eight feet deep. He decided it was adequate, then manoeuvred the digger around the hole until the vehicle was positioned on the uphill side, behind the heap of sand he’d dug out.