The Jacobin was fairly certain Kuznetsov wouldn’t try to kill him. The man knew the Jacobin had insurance, in the form of a document to be opened by lawyers in the event of his death or disappearance, spilling the beans on the whole operation, which would negate any use of Purkiss and Fallon as scapegoats.
The Black Hawk was tilting slightly to the right, eastwards, drifting inwards at the beginning of the circling movement that would wheel it to face the shore at the beginning of the final phase. Its crew would be looking out for the backup boat — and, yes, there it was, a bigger and noisier craft than the Jacobin’s, steaming from the southeast some distance behind the Jacobin.
The backup crew. They would be able to provide access to Kuznetsov. The Jacobin began his own turn, to bring his boat across the path of the larger vessel.
Dobrynin tapped Venedikt’s arm and nodded at the window. Venedikt turned and craned, saw the boat approaching far below, its occupants unidentifiable at this distance. Venedikt knew them to be Raskov and two of the other men. There would be additional room on board for the four of them: himself, Dobrynin, Lyuba and Leok, assuming they all made it out alive.
It was going to be impossible to land the helicopter on the water. They had agreed that Leok and Lyuba would bring them as close to the surface as they dared, and then Venedikt and Dobrynin would leave the craft, with pilot and copilot following. The Black Hawk would rapidly spin out of control and would hit the surface. It was then that they would be in the most danger from the rotor blades and the wild bulk of the machine. Once aboard the boat, they would leave the Black Hawk and its remaining passenger — Fallon — to the mercies of the sea and of the fighter jets that would descend on it like wasps.
Venedikt strained his eyes. A smaller vessel, a speed boat, was veering towards Raskov’s, not heading directly at it but moving to head it off. There was a solitary figure aboard. Through the dim light and the spray from the boat’s passage Venedikt couldn’t make out who it was. It was his turn to touch Dobrynin’s arm and point. Dobrynin got a pair of binoculars from a knapsack and peered thorugh them. He passed them to Venedikt, eyebrows raised.
Venedikt sharpened the image. The Englishman. What did he think he was doing?
An enormous cheer, loud enough to be heard above the chop of the rotors, drew his attention. He looked round. Dobrynin had turned up the portable radio he’d brought on board. The sounds from the War Memorial indicated that the convoy bearing the two presidents had arrived.
He turned back, picked up his phone and thumbed in Raskov’s number, saw movement on board the approaching boat as the man answered.
‘That speed boat approaching you,’ said Venedikt. ‘He’s friendly, I think. See what he wants. Don’t attack him unless he attacks you first.’
‘Understood.’
Seven fifty. In ten minutes’ time it would be done.
Still he heard only Kuznetsov’s voice, the words unclear. The tinny patter of radio sound he identified as constant background cheering, like that at a sports match. Purkiss assumed they had the radio on and were using it to monitor events at the site of the meeting.
Close by his ear, through the wood, came two distinct sounds. Taps, rather than creaks.
He held his breath again, waiting.
Just as he decided he’d misheard, they came again.
Two. Fallon was signalling him. Two men, obviously excluding the flight crew.
He didn’t dare tap back to indicate he’d understood.
It was useful information. Even if he didn’t know the precise locations of the two men, having a clear idea of the number of one’s opponents always improved confidence and speed. He’d have surprise on his side, too. The problem was, paradoxically, Fallon. He was seated directly above Purkiss, no doubt still bound. With his weight bearing down, Purkiss had no way of lifting the lid of the bench.
Another bluff was needed, another faked seizure or faint of some kind similar to the one Purkiss himself had pulled off in the basement. If Fallon managed to slide off the bench onto the floor of the cabin, Purkiss would be able to emerge quickly enough that he might get the drop on Kuznetsov and the other man. But he had no way of communicating this to Fallon, no way of knowing if Fallon might think of it himself.
The screen of the phone, nearly forgotten on the periphery of his vision, lit up, jolting him.
We see you.
Elle and Kendrick. And suddenly he knew what they had to do.
Thirty-Nine
The Jacobin stood at the wheel of the boat, his free hand raised in a gesture of non-aggression. The men in the approaching boat were watching him with curiosity rather than hostility. He glanced across and up at the distant helicopter, now side-on as it swung in its long arc to face the shore, and raised his hand in that direction. Kuznetsov would have spotted him, notified the men in the boat.
A hundred metres or so separated him from the boat. He let go of the wheel and cupped his hands around his mouth, called, ‘You have to warn Kuznetsov. Tell him Purkiss is on board the helicopter.’
His voice came out more weakly than he’d expected. The rumble of the water and the larger boat’s engine drowned him out. One of the men on the boat cupped a hand to his ear and shook his head. Frustrated, the Jacobin sat and applied acceleration.
His engine was racing more noisily than it should have, until he realised the noise wasn’t coming from his boat but from another, a similar size to his, approaching from the south. The men in the larger boat were beginning to shout and point.
The Jacobin felt the tilt of disorientation: no fleet of military vehicles, just a speed boat like his own, with what looked like a two-man crew. Through eyes filmed with fatigue and pain and salt air he focused on the faces behind the arc of windscreen. One was a woman’s, Elle’s.
Through the front cockpit windows between Lyuba and Leok, Venedikt saw the lights of the city, awake for several hours by now, ten kilometres away. From the east, sunlight was leaking through the cloud cover and spilling glittering tendrils across the surface of the water. The sea below the helicopter was roiling, bewildered and furious at the sudden conjunction of three interlopers.
Venedikt had been distracted by the Englishman’s approach and hadn’t noticed the advance of the second speed boat until Lyuba had called out. He’d taken his eyes away from the binoculars, then immediately reapplied them. The woman was steering while the man, Purkiss’s crony, had lifted his assault rifle over the top of the windscreen. In the larger boat the men were already hefting their own weapons into position across the back rail of the craft.
It took Venedikt a moment to realise that Purkiss’s man was levelling his rifle not at Raskov and his men in the boat, but upwards at the Black Hawk.
The helicopter was perhaps sixty metres above the surface of the sea, the approaching speed boat almost half a kilometre distant. It meant that the Black Hawk was at the limit of the AK-74’s effective range, but Venedikt flinched as the characteristic clatter of the rifle cut through the whap of the rotors even at this distance and tiny streaks of noise whispered past the fuselage. Leok banked the chopper to the left and upwards. Venedikt struggled to keep his feet, gripping the back of the pilot’s seat while with his other hand he swung the binoculars. He saw that Raskov and his men had opened fire themselves, no longer caring about the range now that the Black Hawk had come under fire. Crazily, Purkiss’s man wasn’t returning their fire, but was still aiming at the Black Hawk, now impossibly beyond reach, a modern Don Quixote tilting at his own particular windmill.