Litvinoff stared at the scatter of tools and boxes on the dockside in front of him. He’d been convinced that they’d find the suitcase nuclear device inside that crate, but it was now perfectly clear that the weapon simply wasn’t there.
That was the bad news — and in fact there was no good news as far as the FSB officer could see. Despite his earlier threats, he now couldn’t even charge the barge master with anything more than a misdemeanour, because every single piece of equipment found inside the crate was correctly listed on the paperwork the captain possessed.
The conclusion was inevitable, and highly uncomfortable to contemplate: the Americans had just been using the barge as a decoy. Litvinoff had wasted vital hours on this fruitless pursuit, and he was still no nearer finding them or, more important, the weapon. They must have planned a completely different escape route out of Russia. But as he stood silently on the quayside, eyeing the jumble of broken and rusted equipment around him, Litvinoff hadn’t the slightest idea what that other route might be, or how he was ever going to find it.
Chapter Eight
The local police dutifully arrived at Al-Shahrood less than two hours after Sheikh Qabandi’s peremptory summons.
In the meantime, the sheikh and his men had been busy. Qabandi had summoned his two pilots to help him and Alexander fill the water troughs and sort out feed for the horses, so that by the time the police cars arrived the animals were again quiet and settled.
‘How many people should there be here?’ the inspector asked, as his men began searching the stable-block accommodation.
‘Usually a minimum of twelve,’ Qabandi replied. ‘That includes at least two members of the bin Mahmoud family, their household staff of about six and roughly the same number of people living at the stables.’
‘What do you think has happened to them?’
‘I’ve no idea, but something is definitely wrong. I’ve dealt with Osman bin Mahmoud for six years now, and I’ve never known him go off and leave the horses unattended. There’s always somebody here at the stables, day and night.’
‘Perhaps there was an emergency, something that meant everyone had to leave. You told us that your horse’ — the inspector referred to his notes — ‘yes, your horse Shaf is missing. Suppose the horse bolted,’ he waved his arm in a vague gesture, ‘and they’ve all gone off to fetch it back.’
Sheikh Qabandi frowned impatiently. ‘That’s a most unlikely scenario. The horses here may be thoroughbreds, all highly strung animals, but they seldom bolt, as you put it. Whenever they are outside their stalls, they always wear a bridle, and are attended by one of the staff.’
‘But supposing an insect bit one, or something like that—’
‘Inspector’ — Qabandi was starting to get annoyed — ‘let’s assume your scenario might be correct, and that the staff here failed to obey the simplest and most basic procedures they follow every single day, and that my horse did manage to run off. At most, it might need half a dozen people to recapture it. Where’s everyone else? Or are you suggesting that literally everybody, even Osman bin Mahmoud’s wife, went rushing off into the desert to search for it? And that they’re still out there now, at least twenty-four hours later?’
‘How do you know there’s been no one here for twenty-four hours?’
‘By deduction, Inspector. When we arrived, none of the stalls had water and most had no fodder. I know the routine here. The water troughs are filled every morning and evening as a matter of course, and checked during the day. If they had been filled this morning, they would all be over half-full. And if they’d been filled last night, most of them would still have some water left. So the last time they could possibly have been filled was yesterday morning.’
‘Right,’ the inspector said, closing his notebook. He didn’t like the arrogant tone of the sheikh standing in front of him, but he had to concede that the man seemed to know what he was talking about. ‘We’ll search the farmhouse next.’
‘And then what will you do?’
‘I don’t know. Let’s see what we find in the house first.’
‘Are you feeling unwell, sir?’ the waiter asked.
The question was ridiculous. It was perfectly obvious to even the most untrained observer that Edward Dawson was sick. He was lying on a couch in the hotel lounge, his tie loosened and his shirt unbuttoned at the neck. His skin had an unhealthy pallor, almost grey, and he was breathing in short, painful gasps. His companion had opened a small black bag and was now extracting a stethoscope and blood-pressure cuff.
‘Stand back, please,’ Wilson ordered in Russian. He listened to Dawson’s heartbeat for half a minute or so, checked his blood pressure, tested the reaction of his pupils with a small pocket torch, and gently felt his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘This man needs immediate specialist hospital treatment,’ he said. ‘That means he’ll have to be flown to Moscow or Kiev. Do you have an air ambulance here?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘We need to find out, and quickly. Fetch the manager, please.’
As the waiter hurried away, Dawson sat upright and vomited copiously onto the patterned carpet. The waiter looked back in alarm at the sound, then left the lounge at a run.
Less than a minute later a middle-aged man wearing a dark suit walked over to the couch. He looked with distaste at the splatter of vomit, then at Wilson.
‘I’m the hotel manager, so how—’ he began, but Wilson cut him off almost immediately.
‘My colleague requires urgent medical attention,’ Wilson repeated. ‘I’m a doctor, and I suspect he may be suffering from encephalitis or meningitis. We need an air ambulance immediately.’
‘We have doctors and a hospital here in Adler. I’m not sure we need to—’
‘Listen,’ Wilson interrupted, ‘if my diagnosis is correct, we have to get this man into a specialist hospital as soon as possible. We’ll need complex laboratory tests to determine whether he’s suffering from a viral or a bacterial infection, and then use specific antiviral or antibacterial drugs to cope with it. We’ll also need sedatives and anticonvulsants, and probably corticosteroids to reduce the inflammation of his brain. I know that this scale of treatment is completely beyond the facilities likely to be available in any local hospital. The nearest major centres are Kiev and Moscow, so that’s where he’s got to be taken. If he doesn’t get emergency treatment very soon he could die, possibly within hours. Now, I’ll ask you again. Is there an air ambulance available here in Adler?’
The manager stared down at the sick man, then looked up. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said abruptly, then turned to leave. ‘You’ — he gestured to a waiter — ‘find one of the cleaners and get that mess cleared up.’
Litvinoff had at least received one piece of good news. He’d ordered a check of all hotels and vehicle-hire firms in Volgograd, but had assumed that the search would be fruitless because his quarry would have gone somewhere else. But it turned out that luck was on his side, and Litvinoff and two of his men had immediately driven south to follow up the new lead.
A hotel located near the main railway station had reported that two men carrying American passports had checked in that morning. That was unremarkable in itself, but what had caused the staff to remember them was the short duration of their stay. They’d arrived early in the morning, taken a twin-bedded room, but left the hotel that same afternoon. That meant they’d had to pay for two nights’ accommodation, despite having spent only six hours in the hotel — none of them during the night — because the hotel’s ‘day’ started at twelve noon.