Jamie raised his camera, zoomed in and started to snap. He managed to take a substantial burst of photographs before the younger of the two men stopped, turned and looked behind him. Through the zoom of the camera, Jamie saw that the man was staring straight at him.
He felt his blood freeze. He lowered the camera and instinctively pulled his hood down. If they see you, don’t panic. Just walk away. They’ll assume you’re the Press. He turned heel and walked to the end of the road. Adrenaline surged through him. Any moment now, he thought to himself, I’m going to feel a hand on my shoulder. They’re following me.
He upped his pace.
Jamie turned the corner, into the busy main street. He ran across the road, ignoring the beeps from the cars, which had to brake and swerve to avoid him. On the opposite pavement he stopped and looked back.
No one.
He grinned as he felt a sudden exhilaration. It had gone well. He put his hand over the screen at the back of the camera and flicked through the images he had taken. They were good. He’d got what he wanted. That evening, having changed his clothes and therefore his appearance, he would repeat his performance, this time outside the Georgian Orthodox Church further west of here, where he had been told these two men worshipped regularly. From a randomly chosen Internet café he would e-mail the best of his photographs to the address he had been given.
And then he would lie low and wait. Wait for another package, and for the opportunity to carry out the second part of his instructions.
Dolohov’s wounds were bad. He kept asking for vodka, but Sam refused to give him any. He needed to use the alcohol to keep the stumps disinfected, a rough and ready way of stopping his captive from developing fever, but the best he could come up with. Dolohov managed not to scream when he plunged the wounds into a bowl of vodka, but that was more out of exhaustion, Sam sensed, than bravery. He found codeine in the bathroom cabinet and kept the Russian dosed up on that. It was hardly going to remove the pain, but it would take the edge off for as long as the supply lasted.
They sat in silence, Dolohov still restrained by the electrical flex. It was clear that the Russian knew how close he had come to death. When he had uttered Jacob’s name, a madness had come over Sam. He knew what people looked like when they thought they were about to die. Dolohov had that look.
But Sam had calmed himself at the last moment. And he had done his best to keep calm during the slow hours before morning. Apart from during Sam’s painful makeshift medical attentions, the two of them had sat in silence, Dolohov obviously trying to manage the pain and Sam trying to manage the implications of what he had just learned.
After Bland had collared him and spun him the MI6 line, Sam had simply not believed him. There were too many things that just didn’t add up and Jacob’s parting words had never been far from the front of his mind. But Dolohov had no reason to lie to him. On the contrary, he had every reason to tell the truth. What was more, Dolohov did not know Sam’s name. He did not know his relationship to Jacob. Bland might have been playing mind games; Dolohov almost certainly wasn’t.
And then there was the evidence of the laptop. It was Jacob’s – at least, it had been taken from Jacob’s things – and he had e-mailed details of the dead red-light runners to someone. Whichever way he looked at it, Dolohov’s story stacked up.
Except for one thing. If the Russian was telling him the truth, his brother was no longer the man he once knew. He had become someone else.
Sam turned to the big windows at the end of the room and parted the curtains. The low, crisp sun of dawn shot in. Sam winced, but did not move the curtains. The morning sky was red and scudded with lean pink clouds. There was a chorus of birdsong. In Kazakhstan it would be later in the day, but the same sun would be shining down. Shining down on Jacob. What would his brother be doing now?
What the hell would his brother be doing?
Treason. It’s not a terribly fashionable word is it? Bland’s voice was as clear in Sam’s head as if he were actually there. I would say, in circumstances such as this, that a man might become bitter.
Sam found himself having to control his anger again.
They’ll tell you things, Sam. Things about me. Don’t forget that you’re my brother. Don’t believe them.
How could he forget that? How could he believe them? Jacob was his brother. He deserved the benefit of the doubt. But he also had some explaining to do. For a moment, Sam considered contacting Bland again, telling him what he knew. But he put that thought from his mind. The memory of the Spetsnaz troops in Kazakhstan, of Craven’s death, was still fresh. Nobody had yet explained to him with any degree of satisfaction how the Russians knew they were coming. The Regiment had been expected and in Sam’s book that meant one thing: a tip-off. Go singing to MI6 and the chances were that every word of his conversation would end up on a transcript roll somewhere in Moscow. He shook his head as he continued to look out at the night sky.
Sam needed to see Jacob. Face to face. To ask him the questions that needed asking. His brother deserved that at the very least. And mole or no mole, he needed to do it without the interference of MI6. They would be heavy handed in their questioning. They would more than likely torture him to get the truth. They would do to Jacob what Sam had done to Dolohov, or something like. And he wasn’t prepared to let that happen.
He turned to Dolohov.
‘Can you contact him?’ he asked abruptly.
Dolohov, bleary eyed, raised his head. Jesus, he looked like shit. ‘Who?’ he demanded.
‘Jacob Redman.’
Momentarily, a wily look crossed Dolohov’s face. It disappeared as soon as it had arrived, to be replaced by that sombre expression; it did not, however, go unnoticed by Sam.
‘Yes,’ Dolohov replied. ‘I can contact him.’
‘How?’
‘By e-mail.’
Sam nodded. He thought for a while longer before speaking again. ‘Do you often contact him?’ he asked.
Dolohov gave him a contemptuous look, as though it were a stupid question. ‘It has never happened yet.’
‘But if you asked for a meeting, would he come?’
Dolohov shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He could be anywhere in the world.’ A pause. ‘But yes, I think he would come. I am a man of a certain importance.’
Sam approached the chair. ‘I’m going to untie you,’ he said. ‘I’ve got your gun and mine. One of them will be pointing in your direction all the time.’
The Russian sneered.
‘I mean it, Dolohov. You won’t even be able to take a shit without me being there. Just in case you had any plans to play silly buggers.’
‘To play what?’
‘Just do what you’re told, Dolohov. If you want to make it through the day, that is.’ Sam walked round to the back of the chair and untied the flex. It fell from around Dolohov’s body. The Russian raised his arms and for the first time looked at his hands. They were a mess. The skin was stained and smeared with blood and the stumps where his fingers used to be glistened painfully. Dolohov looked bilious.
‘Count yourself lucky you didn’t go the way of the red-light runners, Dolohov,’ Sam told him, pointing his gun nonchalantly in the Russian’s direction. ‘But there’s still time, so let’s not fuck around. Where’s your computer?’
Dolohov looked towards the main doors of the room, out on to the hallway. ‘In my bedroom,’ he said.
‘Get moving.’
The Russian pushed himself weakly to his feet. He was unable to walk in a straight line as he staggered out of the room with Sam following behind – close, but not too close. The guy was a trained assassin, after all.