‘Two men in a lorry.’
‘How did they pay you?’
Again the captain looked uncomfortable. ‘We agreed payment in cash. It seemed easier because that saved having to generate all the usual paperwork. And it was only one crate.’
‘Where are you supposed to be taking it?’
‘Volgograd. They said they would arrange a vehicle to collect the crate there.’
‘Right. Wait here.’
Litvinoff walked back across the gangway to where one of his subordinates was standing ready. Above him, the noise of the Black Shark’s engines increased markedly, as the aircraft accelerated and began a climbing turn away from the barge.
‘Contact FSB headquarters at Volgograd. It seems the Americans will be waiting there to collect the weapon. Initiate a check of all vehicle-hire firms and hotels, and have local units pick them up.’
Litvinoff turned on his heel and remounted the gangway. ‘Captain, you and your men are guilty of numerous offences, but I’m frankly not very interested in pursuing the matter. My sole concern is that crate you loaded at Saratov. Instruct your crew to prepare it for immediate unloading.’
‘Yes. At once.’ The barge master hurried off and began barking orders.
Ten minutes later, the dockside crane lifted the crate from the hold and deposited it on the quay. Two stevedores stepped forward and unhitched the fabric straps.
For a few moments, Litvinoff just stared at the crate, then waved one of his men forward. The man approached cautiously, his right hand extended in front of him, holding what looked like a small microphone. His entire attention was fixed not on the crate but on the Geiger counter gripped in his left hand. The instrument had begun to make a ticking sound that was audible all over the quay. The FSB man stopped right next to the crate, then walked slowly around it.
He made two complete circuits, moving the sensor methodically up and down the wooden sides, then walked across to where Litvinoff was standing. ‘Nothing significant, sir. Normal background radiation only.’
‘Does that mean the weapon isn’t inside the crate?’
‘No, sir.’ The officer shook his head. ‘The fissile material should be properly shielded and no radiation should escape. If I’d detected a significantly higher reading than normal, it could mean that the casing had fractured.’ The man shrugged. ‘As to whether the device is actually in the crate, I’ve no idea.’
‘Right,’ Litvinoff nodded. ‘Open it.’
Two other FSB men walked forward carrying battery-powered screwdrivers, and within a couple of minutes the lid lay on the ground to one side. One of his men placed a short step-ladder beside the crate and Litvinoff climbed up to peer inside. He saw a jumble of tools and equipment, but he knew that the weapon itself would be hidden at the very bottom.
‘Empty it,’ he ordered.
Sheikh Tala Qabandi had two passions in life — Rolls-Royce motor cars and thoroughbred racehorses — and it was difficult to say which inspired him the most. He was well on his way to owning one example of every single model that Rolls-Royce had produced, though not even his enormous wealth would allow him to complete his collection. That was because many of the early models were incredibly rare, and most of them were now housed in museums or private collections and were never offered for sale anywhere or at any price.
Horses were in many ways a lot easier. In the world of bloodstock, money talked, and with the funds the sheikh had at his disposal, his was a voice that couldn’t be ignored. What he wanted, he usually got, simply because he could outbid almost anyone else. The result was a stable of first-class horses accommodated at the best training establishments throughout the world. He had five in England, three of them at Newmarket; four in the States, in Kentucky; another four stabled just outside Paris, and a couple in Spain. In the Middle East he kept three horses, all of them at Al-Shahrood, and of these his favourite was Shaf.
This year, he’d entered the horse for the Godolphin Mile thoroughbred event, part of the annual Dubai World Cup race meeting, with total prize money amounting to one million dollars. The money was almost an incidental as far as Qabandi was concerned. For him, the thrill was watching his horse run — preferably at the head of the field — and the annual meet-and-greet with other owners during the event.
As was his invariable custom, Qabandi was visiting the Al-Shahrood stables to check on his horse before its departure. Despite his love of Rolls-Royces, the sheikh had long ago decided that the stables were too remote for access by road, and he travelled there, as today, in his private Bell Jet Ranger. There was no designated helicopter landing spot at the stables, but the wide parking area at the end of the drive in front of the farmhouse was entirely adequate.
The helicopter arrived overhead Al-Shahrood just before noon. The pilot swung the Jet Ranger around in a tight circle, checking that the parking area was unobstructed before he landed. Then he turned the aircraft into wind — the small windsock attached to a pole near the farmhouse was barely moving — and set the aircraft down in a cloud of dust and light debris, almost in the centre of the tarmac.
Qabandi stepped out of the Jet Ranger, in his flowing white gellabbiya, followed by his personal secretary, William Alexander. The sheikh had decided to employ the young Englishman after a succession of Arab assistants had failed to measure up to his exacting standards. The trouble with his fellow nationals, Qabandi had found, was that they didn’t regard punctuality as a virtue, and he expressed this sentiment as an Arab himself. Like many scions of the wealthiest of the Gulf families, Qabandi had been educated in England, where the concept of always being on time had been instilled in him. He found he simply couldn’t cope with the ‘any time this week will do’ attitude of his previous assistants. Alexander had proved himself quiet, competent and highly efficient, and now Qabandi almost literally couldn’t manage without him.
As usual, Alexander was carrying a large briefcase which contained two phones — a GSM mobile and a satellite unit — plus a Sony Vaio laptop computer which basically contained Qabandi’s entire life. It held copies of almost every business document he had ever generated or received, all his letters, his agenda and his address book. All those documents were contained within a directory protected by a twelve-digit password known only to Alexander and Qabandi himself. The Vaio’s documents were duplicated on two desktop computers kept in separate locked rooms in the sheikh’s palace outside Riyadh, each protected by a different password. There was nothing, Alexander believed, quite so important as duplication and back-up.
‘This is unusual,’ Qabandi frowned, as the two men walked towards the farmhouse. ‘Normally Osman comes out to meet us.’
But Osman bin Mahmoud didn’t appear from the stable block, or from anywhere else. Alexander rang the bell and knocked on the farmhouse door without eliciting the slightest response.
‘Surely somebody must have heard the helicopter,’ Qabandi said, his irritation clear.
‘They must all be up at the stables,’ Alexander suggested. ‘Perhaps there’s a problem with a horse.’
But when they reached the stable block, they found that was deserted as well. What was more worrying was the noise of the animals housed there. Almost all were whinnying or snorting, some kicking at their doors, and a glance into the nearest stall immediately explained why. The water trough was completely empty, and there was barely a scrap of hay left.
‘Nobody’s been here for at least twenty-four hours. What’s going on?’
Alexander supposed this was a rhetorical question, and ignored it. Instead, he stared around the courtyard, looking at the individual stalls. All but a handful were clearly occupied but, when he looked at the far corner, he suddenly realized that he couldn’t see Shaf’s head sticking out. In fact, it looked almost as if the thoroughbred’s stall door was ajar. He started walking across the courtyard, then ran.