But Dolohov was past lying. He repeated himself slowly and in an exhausted tone of voice. ‘His name is Jacob Redman,’ he croaked. ‘Now I have nothing more to tell you. And if you are going to kill me, I ask that you do it now and you do it quickly.’
A bright orange sun rose slowly above the horizon of southern Kazakhstan. The countryside through which Jacob Redman drove his truck was bland. Flat and featureless. Every few miles he would drive past a settlement, but he saw only the occasional shepherd. Now, though, up ahead and in the distance, he saw the bleak sight of Communist-era tower blocks emerging above the horizon – concrete monuments to a time long gone, but they were still inhabited, no doubt. There were cars here on the outskirts, as well as the ever-present goats. Jacob just kept his eyes on the road ahead.
He was getting close now. His journey was nearly at an end.
The road took him past the town and further into the flat landscape. In his rear-view mirror he watched as a military vehicle approached from behind, clad in green and brown camouflage webbing and carrying God only knows what. Jacob allowed the truck to overtake him, but then kept the vehicle in his sights. After all, the chances were that they were heading for the same place.
Gradually, he began to see landmarks, sights that he knew indicated he was indeed on the right path. A control tower in the distance with a satellite receiver spinning slowly on the top. More vehicles – articulated lorries as well as military ones. Brown-grey concrete buildings, austere, unwelcoming constructions that again spoke of this country’s Soviet past.
Jacob was tired. He had been driving non-stop, allowing himself ten minutes shut-eye every few hours just so that he could keep going. Now that he was nearing the end, however, he felt a surge of adrenaline. It was no longer a struggle to keep awake. His mind was alert.
A fork in the road. The military vehicle up ahead bore left. Jacob followed. They continued through the drab countryside for several miles before he saw a high, wire boundary fence emerging from the distance. The military truck began slowing down. There were signposts now along the side of the road. Jacob couldn’t decode them because they were in Russian, but he could tell that they were warnings to stay away. He continued driving nevertheless.
They were only metres from the boundary now. A large panel announced their location in austere black letters.
Космодром Байконур
Jacob’s Russian was good enough for that. Baikonur Cosmodrome. Built by the Soviets in the mid-Fifties, it was the largest operational space launch facility in the world. The truck ground to a halt. The military vehicle ahead was allowed in, giving Jacob a plain view of the entrance as the truck disappeared into the vast expanse of the cosmodrome. There was a barrier marked with red and white stripes. The boundary fence had rolls of barbed wire on the top that made it look like some kind of concentration camp. There was a lookout post, but it was old and didn’t give Jacob the impression of being much used. By the barrier were a number of guards. They wore military uniform and carried the ubiquitous AK-47s. Jacob, in his non-military truck, had clearly raised their suspicions. Two guards approached, their weapons raised.
Jacob put his hands on his head.
The driver’s side door was opened. Chatter from the soldiers. Russian. It made no sense to Jacob. A few of them swarmed round the back. It wouldn’t take them long to find Jacob’s own AK stashed away with the fuel canisters. He needed to be careful not to make any sudden moves. With his hands still on his head he stepped out of the car. There were two AK-47s pointing right at him, and they were just the ones he could see.
And then he spoke. Not in his own language, but using the small amount of Russian at his disposal, the words that he had been practising in preparation for this moment over the past twenty-four hours.
‘Menya zovut Jacob Redman. Ya rabotayu v Federalnoi Sluzhbe Bezopasnosti. Ya hocu vstretit s nachalnikom etogo faculteta.’
‘My name is Jacob Redman,’ he said. ‘I am working with the FSB. Take me to the head of this facility.’
PART THREE
EIGHTEEN
Vaziani Airbase. Georgia. Sixty miles from the Russian border. If anybody had been looking into the dawn sky, they would have seen the lights of the RAF C-17 Globemaster glowing in the distance as it made its approach. But nobody was watching. Aircraft were hardly a curiosity here, either for the Georgian nationals that manned the base or for the small platoon of British troops who kept themselves to themselves, but were not welcomed with much enthusiasm by their hosts.
So it was that the Globemaster, which had made its way from the UK over commercial airline routes – only to stray off piste towards Vaziani at the very end of its journey – was little more than a blip on the air-traffic control screens until it thundered towards the runway, its emissions causing the air all around to wobble and become hazy. As it turned off the runway and started taxiing towards the hangars, it passed an area of bombed-out land, scars of the attack on the base by Russian fighter jets in the late summer of 2008. The attack had not been so bad as to damage the infrastructure of the base itself, and the Globemaster came to a halt without any problems.
The engines had almost wound down to silence by the time three forklift trucks had trundled up to the aircraft. Unusually, though, they were shadowed by two military vehicles. The Georgian airbase staff were unimpressed with the British troops’ insistence on accompanying them every step of the way; but the troops themselves had their orders, and that was to make sure they were present at all times during the unloading of the Globemaster’s cargo.
It didn’t take long. It was a small cargo for such a large plane. Eight cases, each of them about the same size as a small van; wooden, and with the words HUMANITARIAN AID emblazoned on the side in big black letters. Under the watchful eye of both the troops and the loadies from the Globemaster, the forklift operators carefully transported each box into one of the nearby aircraft hangars. When they had completed their task, they left with their vehicles, without even a gruff nod at any of their guests.
The hangar doors were swung shut. It was a huge, cavernous space lit by industrial strip lighting, and in which the voices of the troops echoed and rebounded. They had made the place their own in the weeks that they had been here. In one corner of the hangar were low tables with full ashtrays; a few mattresses were unfurled on the ground; someone had even cadged an old black and white TV set, but it was largely unused. Russian-language TV didn’t hold much interest for them.
In the centre of the hangar, just metres from where the crates had been unloaded, stood a man. He was the only person in the place who wasn’t in army camouflage gear; instead he wore perfectly ordinary civvies, and not very fashionable ones at that. He was approaching middle age, wore rimless glasses and had a balding head, which he disguised by careful brushing of what remained of his thin hair. The guys called him ‘Doc’. Their standard joke was to ask him for remedies for imaginary ailments that they’d made up on the spot – usually some grotesque affliction of the genitals. The Doc took it all in good humour. He had long since given up telling them that the letters after his name were not a medical qualification but a scientific one. After all, there weren’t so many jokes to be made about the scientific engineering that was his particular area of expertise.
The Doc held a clipboard with an inventory list. Eight cases. He ticked them off. Then he turned to the nearest three soldiers and waved his pencil vaguely at them. ‘Would you mind?’ he asked politely.