The four men who came through the window all wore black uniforms, black helmets and night-vision goggles and carried submachine guns. I knew they could make us out through the smoke and darkness and I was thankful for that, because they were less likely to gun me down if they could see I was lying harmlessly on the ground, my hands outstretched, palms down against the carpet, looking as much like a non-combatant as possible. One of them zeroed his weapon in on me and levelled it like he was about to fire. I thought ‘This is it, he’s going to kill me, just to remove any witnesses,’ then he hefted the weight slightly so that it sat more easily in his hands and kept it trained on me. ‘I’m not moving,’ I told him, ‘I’m not moving.’ I was hoping that hearing me speak in English might make him hesitate to kill me. Perhaps he would be fearful of some sort of international incident and in any case they were clearly not after me.
I managed to turn my eyes slightly towards Vasnetsov and I could see that his bodyguard had given up. He had placed his weapon on the ground and very slowly put his hands up. He looked entirely helpless. ‘Evgeny!’ hissed his boss, as if he expected the unarmed man to do something, even though the presence in the room of four armed men indicated he was the only one of Vasnetsov’s private army still breathing. Evgeny was pleading with his eyes. He was trying to tell the commandos he was prepared to go quietly. One of the attackers took a step towards him, carefully aimed his semi-automatic and shot him anyway, putting three, perhaps four rounds through his chest. Evgeny fell backwards and his lifeless body hit the ground.
That was when Vasnetsov made a break for it, a desperate, stumbling run. He didn’t get far. They moved quicker than he ever could and soon caught up with him. He was cursing, kicking and screaming but they sat him down in an armchair and one of them gave him a hefty slap around the face to silence him. A second later, the lights came back on.
I put my face down because the bright light was hurting my eyes and the smoke made them sting. I was blinking furiously, trying to focus, when a man marched purposefully into the room. He was dressed in black combat trousers, a black army-issue sweatshirt and combat boots and his face had been blacked out by camouflage paint, but his only weapon was the pistol he wore on his belt. He glanced over at me, then at the half-American banker and finally Vasnetsov and when he spoke it was in English, so we could all understand him.
‘Yaroslav Vasnetsov, I am Major Uri Nikulin of the GRU. You are under arrest; charged with treason and acts of terrorism, along with many other crimes against the state.’
‘No,’ Vasnetsov’s voice cracked.
I could hear the sound of a helicopter’s rotors, perhaps more than one, and they were getting closer.
‘You will return to Russia where you will stand trial.’ Vasnetsov was pressing himself back against the chair, as if he could somehow disappear into it. ‘You will go to prison for the rest of your life. This has already been decided,’ then he said, ‘one last thing, my president says hello.’
‘I will give you twenty… thirty million dollars…’ Vasnetsov’s panicked eyes were darting round the room, looking for signs of weakness, seeking out corrupt men who, like everybody else he had ever done business with, would be willing to take his money, ‘Each… every one of you… thirty million dollars!’ He was pleading now. Nobody moved, nobody even flinched.
‘You!’ he shouted at the man who had his gun trained on me, ‘Kill your Major and let me go and I will give you fifty million dollars… the same for your two friends… just one bullet… I’ll pay every man outside… how many of them are there … tell me…?’ He was nodding like a lunatic, ‘tell them there has been a mistake… tell them I am already dead… I will pay each of them five million dollars and you three will get fifty million each. Think about it!’ he implored them.
If the Major was alarmed by this offer, he didn’t show it. He just let Yaroslav Vasnetsov carry on making a fool of himself.
‘You are going on a helicopter now Vasnetsov,’ the Major told him, ‘the journey won’t be comfortable but it will seem like luxury compared to the cell we have waiting for you. Your billions of American dollars will buy you nothing there. It is very small and very cold and you will rot and die in it.’
The colour had gone from Vasnetsov’s face. He already looked like death.
The Major then turned towards Mikhail, who had been cowering silently in a corner while a commando held a gun on him. He walked up to him and, astonishingly, shook Mikhail’s hand. ‘Mikhail Datsik, you are a hero of the motherland. My president salutes you. You will be rewarded for your services to the state.’
Mikhail just blinked at him but Vasnetsov immediately understood, ‘ Mikhail! You bastard! You fucking traitor! I’ll rip out your guts!’ and he launched himself forwards but one of the commandos grabbed him by the shoulder and punched him back down. Despite the blow, Vasnetsov carried on ranting, ‘You fucking Judas, Mikhail. It doesn’t matter where they put me, I’ll kill you. I’ll put one hundred million dollars on your worthless head. They’ll kill you, they’ll kill your wife, they’ll kill your fucking children!’
‘What do we do with him?’ asked one of the men and he jerked his head towards me.
‘This piece of shit?’ answered the Major. ‘He is a drug dealer. Take him into the woods and shoot him.’ Then he eyed Mikhail keenly, ‘Take the banker outside with you,’ Mikhail went pale, ‘to wait for the second helicopter.’
Two men held Vasnetsov while the Major opened a small case and advanced with a new weapon in his hand; a hypodermic needle. When Vasnetsov saw it, his eyes widened in terror and he tried one last desperate time to free himself from the grasp of the two soldiers, but they held him firm. I witnessed the needle go into his arm and watched Vasnetsov’s terrified face until his eyes rolled back into his head and he slipped into unconsciousness. When he awoke again, he would be back in Russia.
I was forced from the room along with the banker. One of the soldiers pushed us out through the front door and made us walk across the courtyard. Mikhail was talking to himself manically, praying perhaps, or just muttering in a panic, despite what the Major had told him about being a hero of the motherland. There were many more soldiers standing guard, hefting machineguns or quickly and efficiently preparing to leave on the first helicopter which had landed a hundred or so yards away. Vasnetsov’s bodyguards still lay on the ground where they had fallen. The location was so far from civilisation that Vasnetsov’s attackers could have brought heavy artillery and the authorities would still never have heard a thing.
We left the building behind us and trudged across the snow just as a second helicopter landed in the courtyard. I turned to look behind me and there were three soldiers following us, all armed.
‘Keep moving,’ one told me. There was no sign of the Major.
Christ they were really going to do this. They were going to shoot us both and leave our bodies in the woods.
‘Keep walking and shut up,’ the soldier was addressing Mikhail but he was beyond reason now. His voice just went higher as his panicked rambling continued in earnest. He began to sob between the words. Me? I stayed silent, waiting for a miracle.
We walked on until we reached the edge of the wood and both turned to face our killers. The first soldier took a pistol from his holster and gestured with it for us to go on. Mikhail shook his head and the commando smacked him round it with the gun, drawing blood. The banker howled in protest and the other two soldiers hauled him into the trees. They gestured for me to walk and I followed dumbly. What choice did I have?
The cold air was biting and my breath was coming out in white plumes, my feet made the snow beneath my boots crunch with every step. I’d done this before, marched on ahead while a killer held a gun to me and forced me to walk to my grave. That time I’d been saved by Palmer but he wouldn’t be coming to my rescue now. Nobody would. I was twelve hundred miles from home, in a foreign land. There was no way back now and the men behind me couldn’t be bought. Vasnetsov had already tried that.