An inner voice told him that outrunning his pursuer wasn’t going to happen.
Koslov crashed through a small thicket of thorns, his breathing harsher as his body demanded more oxygen. His trainers were beginning to sink in the softer ground and his calf muscles starting to ache with the extra effort required. The other man, however, was showing no signs of distress.
Koslov crossed a section of pathway connecting with the main circuit. With nobody else in sight he was beginning to feel the first signs of desperation. The feeling was worsened by being isolated among these trees, barely two hundred metres from safety. Damn it, this was crazy! Why didn’t he just stop and ask the man what he wanted? Or even stand and fight, if that’s what the maniac was after?
Yet everything about the runner’s demeanour told him discussion was not part of his agenda, and neither was defeat. Besides, if the man was carrying a knife, Koslov knew his own limitations. A pair of hands softened by desk work were no match for a blade.
He staggered through a hollow, tripping on hidden branches, and felt a pain building in his side and burning up through his chest. His legs, good for two or three circuits on a good day, were now hurting badly with the effort of dragging him over the rough terrain. When he glanced to his left, the other man was jogging, now barely ten metres away and moving closer.
Suddenly Koslov glimpsed space and light ahead, and called on his last reserves of energy. He pushed through some low-hanging branches and out into the open, where he startled the two army officers he’d passed earlier. They were enjoying a breather and a quiet cigarette.
Koslov skidded to a stop, his mouth working frantically, and pointed behind him, his body braced for the inevitable surge of movement and the blow which would surely follow.
But the other runner was nowhere to be seen.
‘You on a camouflage and concealment course, Koslov?’ asked one of the officers, glancing at the swaying branches where the FSB officer had burst from the trees. ‘I think you just failed.’ He grinned slyly at his colleague and they both laughed before turning and walking towards the apartments. The army rarely had an opportunity to make fun of the FSB, and took it gleefully whenever it was offered.
Koslov, rarely happier to see anyone else, even if they were enjoying his discomfort, trotted closely in their wake, his back prickling with tension. If he tried to tell these buffoons what he had seen, they’d think he was mad. What he should be doing was getting on to the security office and having the place searched. That would be the sensible thing.
At heart, though, he could already picture the reaction of his colleagues — and worse — his superiors, who had expressed great faith in a man who was going places. A man with a knife? Chasing you through the woods? Are you sure? What have you been up to, you young dog — playing with another man’s property? He could imagine their coarse laughter and raised eyebrows. Greater careers than his had been ruined on such trivial evidence.
‘Captain?’ It was one of the support staff from the office, a thin-faced young gofer/driver named Dobrev who spent his days chasing around with messages or ferrying officers about the capital. ‘A telephone call came in for you, sir. Urgent priority.’
Koslov threw a final look towards the woods and ducked into the apartment building. ‘At the office? Why didn’t they put it through to my apartment?’ He ran lightly up the stairs to his quarters on the second floor, stripping off his tracksuit top as he went. Calls were routinely fed through to officers’ living quarters if they were not in the office, in case of priority requests. Such a call usually meant he was about to travel somewhere on an investigation. He would change quickly and should be in the office within twenty minutes.
‘I couldn’t, sir.’ Dobrev panted up the stairs behind him and followed him into the small apartment. ‘Your line is not working. Also, it’s against regulations to give staff numbers to foreigners, sir.’
Koslov stopped in the middle of pulling on a clean shirt. A shower would have to wait. ‘Foreigners?’
‘Yes, sir. The call came from — ’ Dobrev sneaked a look at a slip of paper in the palm of his hand — ‘from a man named Harry Tate, sir.’ He pronounced it phonetically, then looked up with a frown. ‘At least, that’s how it sounded. He was an American, I think — calling from somewhere I cannot spell. It sounded like Veniss Bitch, sir.’ He shrugged. ‘The line was not good.’
‘Venice Beach,’ Koslov corrected him. His memory ticked over, matching the name to a face. Several years ago now, the British officer in charge of the protection squad in Kosovo.
‘You know him?’ Dobrev sounded impressed.
‘Yes. His name’s Harry Tate, he’s British and he was calling from Venice Beach near Los Angeles in the United States. It’s like a Black Sea resort only a lot more fun — or so I’ve heard.’ He finished pulling on his shirt and wondered what Tate could possibly want. Odd that the man’s name should pop up the same day he had been thinking of him. ‘What was the message?’
‘None left, sir. He said that he would call again in two hours. He was travelling, I think. I heard a Tannoy in the background. . like an airport or a train station.’
‘Good work, Dobrev. Very perceptive of you.’ He picked up an orange from a bowl on the table and tossed it across the room. Dobrev caught it adeptly. ‘You should eat more fruit. Is the car outside?’
Dobrev backed towards the door, stuffing the orange in his pocket. He was smiling. He was accustomed to officers in the FSB leaving on the run, but not to any kind of praise.
Koslov followed, pausing only to pick up the landline phone. It was dead. He replaced it, making a mental note to get it checked. After what he’d just experienced, he couldn’t help but feel uneasy.
Phone lines to this building were never faulty.
Out of sight among the trees, and beginning to feel the cold, Kassim quickly retraced his steps towards the ring road where he had left his car parked in a service entrance to the woods. He felt oddly elated rather than annoyed at not hitting his prey. The contact would have worried the Russian, so accustomed to being safe here in Moscow, and seriously upset his equilibrium. If it had not been for the two other men, he would have had him.
But that did not matter now. He had seen Koslov up close, had looked into his eyes and sensed his feeling of vulnerability. Yet that had also brought its own revelation: seeing the Russian in the flesh had surprised him. He was smaller than the description in the binder had suggested, with a slim body and the fine, pale features of a girl, almost. Strange how history and rumour somehow made Russians seem so much bigger and more threatening than they really were.
He climbed into the battered Saab he had hired from a black-market rental near the airport and threw the knife he’d bought from a street dealer into the glovebox. He would wait until the afternoon, when Koslov’s guard would be down, his attention on other matters.
He sat for a few moments, aware that he should move away from here, but remembering what had been drummed into him. For reasons completely unconnected with his main task, killing a Russian was always something to look forward to.
THIRTY-ONE
By the time Koslov had seen to some urgent paperwork and attended a briefing, the two hours since Tate’s message had flown by. In that time he had asked the maintenance manager in the apartment block to check his landline. The man had come back to say that overhead wires into the building had been severed by a falling branch. It was one of those things that happened occasionally, a freak of the weather and nature combined. The manager had assured him that communications would be returned to normal within the hour.