He remembered how the pines were younger and thinner then but still dense enough to give cover from view from the light, night-time traffic that cruised the A1065, 75 metres away, where it cut through this part of the forest. During his military service he had imagined returning to this place, but never as a civilian.
Zhilev had been standing still for almost an hour, the recommended minimum amount of time to watch and listen before proceeding to the next phase. Throughout his career, Zhilev had been a perfectionist and stickler for protocol. His reconnaissance and target survey reports were always detailed and supported by sketches, photographs, charts or maps, with samples of local soil and flora where possible, and Zhilev kept a copy of everything except the samples. It was an offence to do so but wise and worth the risk if your chosen career in the military happened to be with an arm of the KGB, which Special Forces ultimately were even though Zhilev’s unit came under the direct command of the Navy. One never knew where one’s career might lead and a detailed record of one’s past exploits was essential, even though it could be a double-edged weapon. The tide of power in Russia was a turbulent one and long before the wall came down those in privileged places knew a storm was brewing from within. Zhilev decided early on in his career that keeping such information and never needing it was better than the reverse.
There was a chill in the moist air, still not as cold as Riga at this time of year, but his well-built Russian boots protected his feet from the damp ground and his shaggy old sheepskin coat, a present from his brother to use on camping trips, kept his body warm. The only activity he had detected while standing in the wood was a handful of foraging muntjaks, the short-legged, plump little Asiatic deer that roamed these woods. Zhilev had not taken his original route across the forest from the old agent drop-off point but had walked through the wood, keeping parallel with the road, from the garage on the roundabout three-quarters of a mile away where he had left his car parked among many others so it would not be noticed.
It had been a tiring journey from Riga to Ostende but he had managed to snatch a solid hour’s sleep during the short ferry crossing to England. Apart from his usual aching neck, he felt quite good. Perhaps it was the rush of being on an operation once again, even though it was not an official mission sanctioned by his government. But it would be the biggest operation he had ever undertaken, by far; much bigger than ferrying agents into Europe through Swedish locks using mini-subs, or a bodyguard to Gorbachev in Reykjavik and Malta, or ferrying weapons and explosives into Palestine and Lebanon and operators into Afghanistan.This mission had not been planned and prepared by him but by Spetsnaz, and was a long-standing operation which had been in position for the past thirty years, and maintained and trained for in the event it was needed. Zhilev had some variations to the plan, of course. The target for one.
It had taken him no more than a day to adjust and update the operation to his needs after thoroughly going over the report he had kept, along with several others, in a large metal box under the stairs. The only factors that could pose a problem were changes caused by time, erosion and, of course, by the FSB, the Federal Security Service which had replaced the KGB after the end of the Cold War. It was possible that operations of this nature had been dismantled but Zhilev considered it unlikely. There were clues that operational commitments against the West had not changed, comments he had heard on television or read in newspapers and on the Internet from politicians and high-ranking military personnel, which suggested many attitudes and suspicions about the West remained for the most part unchanged. The West appeared to have fallen under the illusion that with the end of the Cold War, Russian espionage and war and counter-war plans had been shelved or dismantled. To the contrary, if anything, there had been a general increase in spying and military planning and contingencies immediately after Yeltsin took command. If people in the West thought that because the wall had come down and a fledgling democracy was growing in Russia, it had changed its mind about Western greed and expansionism and no longer suspected its duplicitous and underhanded ways, they were sadly mistaken. In the old days, expansionism was about land and the fulcrum of political control. Now it was all about economic empires and controlling them, but many of the ways and means of achieving goals remained the same. The country with the biggest stick made the rules and broke them when it suited, and Russia was not about to fall behind if it could help it. Zhilev felt confident everything in the forest was how he had left it all those years ago and that he would find what he was looking for. He had nothing to lose by carrying out a reconnaissance, and everything to gain if he was right.
Zhilev was not here for any political, economic or military gain. His motivation was an ancient one and second only to greed: revenge. Those who supported the people who murdered his brother were going to pay a terrible price for what they did. The whole world would know by the time he was finished, and, more than that, the entire world would be involved.
Zhilev had already found one of the markers as per the map: a centuries-old milestone, its engraved information long since eroded, located precisely 73 metres on a bearing of 271 degrees from the apex of the bend in the road, which itself was exactly 527 metres north of the northernmost entrance to a public picnic area. The milestone was one of three short-range markers which would lead him to what he was looking for. The markers were chosen for their location; surrounding the precise place he was looking for in a triangular fashion. If an imaginary line were drawn through each marker on the specific bearing written in the report, where the three lines crossed was the pinpoint he was looking for.There were also three long-range markers or landmarks, more prominent features several miles away, aimed at vectoring a searcher to the area of the short-range markers. One was a radio mast, the other a factory chimney, the third the centre of a roundabout, the bearings through all three crossed at the secret location; the smaller markers were the final and more accurate indicators.
Since Zhilev had already been to the location he did not need the long-range markers and could make do with just two of the short-range landmarks: one of them being the milestone, the other the southerly post of a five-bar metal gate, 150 metres on a bearing of 270 degrees from his position.
Lights suddenly appeared in the distance and seconds later the sound of a car approaching. He stood still as it drew closer and waited until it passed and continued out of sight.
Zhilev searched the immediate area and selected two long and robust sticks, breaking off the smaller branches to clean them up.
He took a compass from a pocket, held it in front of him and turned his body until the needle settled down and the thin luminous line highlighted his preset reading of 105 degrees. Then, holding it like a weapon, he looked for something in the distance he could aim for so he would not have to keep following the compass, but there was nothing but black wood. Not that it mattered. It would just have made it easier.
He set off in the direction the compass indicated, taking solid paces through the short firs that grew out of the acidic, pine-needle soil. Every time he had to move around a tree, he rechecked his bearing. It had to be precise. After 127 paces, he stopped and planted one of the sticks in the ground by his foot. As an afterthought, he removed his scarf and wound it around the top of the stick so it would be easier to find at the end of the next phase.
Satisfied he had been as accurate as possible, he retraced his footsteps on a back-bearing to the milestone. Here he turned the bezel of the compass to a heading of 270 degrees and marched off in the new direction. In Zhilev’s experience one of his normal paces with a slightly added stretch was a metre long, and 150 steps later he was standing in front of the five-bar metal gate which immediately filled him with confidence as well as satisfaction, despite the fact there was a lot more to achieve before he could call it a success.