Not that there were many people to steal from. In this vast country he could drive for an hour without seeing a soul; when he did it was frequently just a peasant tending animals in a field. No police, thank God. No army. Not yet.
He glanced at the fuel gauge. Close on empty. He pulled over and jumped down, walking round to the back and opening up. He had kept hold of the empty fuel canisters – four of them, lying on their sides with only the AK-47 for company – on the off chance that he came across a free supply of diesel. But he hadn’t. Only one of them had any of that precious, pungent liquid inside. He heaved it out of the back, undid the screwtop and started pouring it into the truck’s fuel tank. There was a glugging sound, as though the engine was thirstily drinking the fuel. Before long, the last drops had been squeezed out. The canister clattered as he threw it back into the van; Jacob took his place behind the wheel once more and allowed himself to close his eyes. Just for a minute.
He shook himself awake. ‘Damn it,’ he hissed, angry at his lack of self-control. There was no time for sleep; and he had wasted fuel while the engine ticked over. He shook his head and pulled out into the road once more.
It was growing dark now. The sky, which had been blue but dotted with cotton-wool clouds, grew orange. He had left the hemp fields of the Chu Valley far behind and now the surrounding countryside was far more flat. Fields of grassland extended into the distance. Soon they would be parched by the fierce summer months. Summer. But Jacob could not expect to see the greens and yellows of England. That thought came to him with a pang and not for the first time he found himself hankering after home. You could be an exile for any amount of time, he realised, but you never fully grew used to it. There were always moments when you wanted the comforts of home and for Jacob this was one of them.
He pushed that thought from his mind, as he had so many times before. He wasn’t going home now, or any time soon.
A town up ahead. He trundled through. It was indistinguishable from the one where he had picked up the vehicle. A little bigger if anything. On the far side of the outskirts, he pulled over. It was a risk, but he had to check he was on the right track. An elderly man sat outside his house on a low wooden bench. He had the Mongol-looking face indigenous to the region, deeply lined; he wore a winter jumper, despite the fact that it was a warm evening; and he looked at the new arrival with undisguised mistrust. Beside him, tethered to a splintered old post, was a goat. The animal looked a lot sprightlier than its owner.
Jacob had one note left. He pulled it from his back pocket and handed it to the man. The man looked for a moment as though he was going to take great offence, but at the last minute he stretched out a thin, trembling hand and accepted the offer. He secreted the money in the breast pocket of the shirt he was wearing under the jumper, then turned his attention back to Jacob.
‘Baikonur?’ Jacob asked.
At first the old man appeared not to have heard; at least, if he had heard, he pretended not to. So Jacob repeated himself. ‘Baikonur?’
Slowly, the man started to nod. He turned his head looking in the direction Jacob was travelling, then gradually raised his arm and pointed.
‘Baikonur,’ he said in a grizzled voice. His lips receded in on themselves, in the way only the lips of old men can. He pushed himself heavily to his feet and tottered the couple of metres over to where the goat was tethered. He held out a bony hand and the animal nuzzled his fingertips. Everything about his body language indicated that the conversation was over.
That was fine by Jacob. He’d found out what he wanted. He was on the right track. He rushed back to the truck, took his place once more behind the wheel and drove off. With luck, he would have enough fuel. If not, he’d just have to improvise. That didn’t matter. It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t be the last.
He shook his head again and tried to stop his drowsiness from overcoming him.
Sam’s mind was ablaze.
Everything Bland had said chased its way around his head. Did he believe him? He didn’t know. He certainly didn’t trust him. And he certainly didn’t like the way the bastard spoke about his brother. One thing was for sure: there was no way Sam was going to take Gabriel Bland’s word for anything.
There were unanswered questions, too. Things that just didn’t stack up. As he drove home, he kept reliving those moments in the woods outside the training camp: Craven catching one; the silent corpse of the Spetsnaz soldier. Were they Spetsnaz? Whoever they were, it seemed to Sam that they had been expecting the Regiment. Waiting for them. But how was that possible? The operation was top secret, a quick in-and-out job. The only way anyone would have known about the unit’s arrival was if they had been told. And if they had been told, that could mean only one thing. A leak. A mole.
What if I were to tell you, Sam, that the red-light runners were being trained not by MI5, but by a foreign intelligence agency? Bland’s words popped into Sam’s head. If Spetsnaz were being tipped off, everything pointed to the Russians, but that made no difference to Sam. He was being played by the Firm either way. He remembered Porteus, handcuffed and humiliated. He was being punished for tipping Sam off, that much was clear. But why then had Bland let Sam himself go so easily? He was up to something. Manoeuvring. He didn’t trust Sam any more than Sam trusted him.
He parked outside the flat. It always felt weird, coming home after an op. Like he was coming back from the office. Today it felt weirder than most other times. He took his rucksack from the back seat. It wasn’t regulation to take his gear home with him, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t like he was going to leave the contents of his bag at RAF Credenhill.
Sam locked himself into the flat and closed the curtains of the front room. Only then did he pull out the laptop computer.
He hadn’t had a chance to examine it, so he did so now. It was unremarkable. A little too unremarkable, perhaps: it bore no logo, no brand name. Its metal casing was scuffed and worn: the machine looked like it had received some pretty heavy use. Sam opened it up. Nothing unusual, just a bit of Kazakhstani grit that tumbled from the hinge and fell on to Sam’s lap. Some of the keys were worn away so that you could no longer see which letter they displayed; the delete key had come away completely, displaying its plastic skeleton underneath.
Sam found himself breathing heavily. He knew he should switch it on, but for some reason he felt reluctant. Perhaps, he told himself, he didn’t want to find out what this machine contained.
He scowled and pressed the power button.
For a second there was nothing. Then a whirr, and an electronic chord pinged around the room. The screen flickered and lit up. It was blue. A blank box in the middle, with a flickering cursor. Next to it: PASSWORD.
Sam blinked. He had no idea what to type. He should have expected this, but he hadn’t. Cursing under his breath, he closed the machine down. How was he going to break into it? How the hell was he going to break into it? Take it to a shop? No. He couldn’t just walk in somewhere and demand that someone he didn’t know hack into a computer; especially when he didn’t know what the computer contained. And when he went through his list of friends and acquaintances, people who might know someone who knew someone – well, they were all Regiment. Hereford was a closed shop. Word got around. No doubt tongues would already be wagging about his interview without coffee with the Firm in the Kremlin meeting room. He didn’t want to add fuel to the fire.