native Russian. ‘Moscow?’
‘Tula.’
‘Ah. Tula once had a hearing aid factory. Take care, my friend from Tula, and I mean that.’
*
Beck and Needham flanked Gorodetski as they entered the underground car park. Gorodetski felt unsteady on his feet but refused to let it show. Needham pointed his remote at a black Cadillac Escalade; the lights blinked to confirm the alarm had been disabled and that they could now open the doors.
Gorodetski glanced up at Beck as the taller man opened the sliding door. ‘No hard feelings, I hope?’
‘Not for a week, according to one of the nurses.’ His face was unsmiling, but the eyes betrayed it wasn’t an issue.
‘Live by the pork sword, die by the pork sword,’ Needham added as he climbed into the driver’s seat.
On pulling out of the parking lot both operatives automatically scanned for possible threats. The NY traffic was heavy, but eventually gave way to the emptier roads of New Jersey.
‘It’s gonna be a while yet, James, I’d get some shut-eye if I were you.’ Needham didn’t know Gorodetski’s real name, and nor did the rest of Casey’s team. ‘Sleep when you can, eat when you can, remember?’
‘Yeah, I remember.’ It was a Special Forces motto the world over. Gorodetski needed no encouragement; the cocktail Litvin had administered already had him nodding.
*
Camp Bastion, Helmand Province, Afghanistan
As one of the last units to leave Camp Bastion, Captain Mike Webster of the British Army Intelligence Corps had started to become bored with his posting. The frantic activity that had followed the target acquisition and execution of the Bin Laden kill/capture mission had long gone. There had been some infighting between rival groups, with splinter cells forming new alliances as their leaders vied to replace the late Saudi ‘Sheik’, but now, in Afghanistan at least, there was an eerie silence from Al-Qaeda. The West had turned its attention to the new threat: Islamic State, or IS, as British Intelligence officially called the new organisation. For their part, neither Al-Qaeda nor the Taliban had conducted any major attacks since the announcement that Camp Bastion was to close and ISAF were to pull out of Afghanistan. It was as though they were collectively holding their breath until Bastion’s decommissioning had become a reality. Regardless of the lull in hostilities, Webster was sure that some very fanatical men somewhere were planning the next 9/11. It wasn’t a matter of if – it was when. He supped his regulation milky tea and studied the US drone surveillance photographs. The most exciting things he had seen in months were the images in front of him. Known players in the Pakistani Taliban had been followed crossing into Afghanistan where they were recorded meeting local Afghani ‘Talibs’ and suspected members of Al-Qaeda. In Webster’s opinion, the group posed a perfect target for a hellfire missile, but someone high up, undoubtedly American, had decided to let it play out, to see what the ‘men in black turbans’ were up to. Webster shifted the photographs to one side and sighed. His room was stuffy and he was tired. He closed his eyes and felt himself drift… He was suddenly on a beach with his wife, sipping rum as the sun set. He could taste the alcohol and feel the warmth of his wife’s lips…
‘Captain Webster.’
Eyes snapping open, embarrassed, he looked up. ‘Just thinking with my eyes closed. What is it?’
Corporal Ian McAdam seemed a bit uneasy. ‘We’re holding a… er… local who wants to meet with a member of British Intelligence.’ It wasn’t an unusual request. Every Tom, Dick, or Halib thought they had vital intelligence, especially when rumours circulated about large cash rewards. What was unusual, however, was that Webster was being bothered. McAdam met his superior’s eyes. ‘This one is a bit different.’
‘How so?’
‘He says he’s Russian.’
‘Russian?’
‘Soviet Red Army, sir.’
Webster raised his eyebrows. An unknown number of former Red Army soldiers had remained in Afghanistan after the Soviets had withdrawn. A few had been prisoners of war, others deserters who had gone native, and some bandits who attempted to make money in the ‘Wild East’ as the Soviet Union had crumbled. He, however, had yet to meet one.
McAdam held out his hand. ‘He was carrying this.’
Webster narrowed his eyes. Puzzled, he studied the sheet of paper. It seemed to be some type of technical diagram. It was handwritten and contained words in Cyrillic. ‘OK, lead on, Macduff.’
‘McAdam, sir.’
Webster sighed. ‘I know.’
McAdam led the way out of the dark seclusion of Webster’s office into the dusty, blinding Afghan daylight and to an area designated for ‘interviews’. Both buildings reminded Webster of a Star Wars set. Two armed squaddies had been placed, as a precaution, on sentry at the entrance. They saluted; Webster returned it and entered the room.
His guest was sitting with his arms folded and a hardness in his eyes. He was not to be intimidated. When the man spoke there was a recognisable Russian accent. ‘You are Military Intelligence?’
‘You can talk to me, Mr…’
‘Then that is a “yes”? My name is Mikhail. I have valuable intelligence that you must pass on to your superiors in London.’
Webster kept his game face on. ‘What would that be?’
Mikhail had no time for small talk. ‘Al-Qaeda has an atomic weapon.’
‘What?’ Had Webster heard him correctly?
‘Al-Qaeda has an atomic weapon. I brought it into this country in 1989. It is an RA-115A and is the size of a suitcase. The paper I have given you details the technical schematics of the device.’
Webster tried not to smile. It was best to humour the loonies, not make fun of them. He’d let ‘Mikhail’ talk and pretend to take notes. ‘So you’re saying that the Red Army brought nuclear material into Afghanistan in the Eighties?’
‘That is correct. I was a lieutenant in the Spetsnaz. I was assigned a classified order to bring certain weapons into theatre. I was to maintain them until they were needed.’
‘How many?’
‘How many nuclear devices?’
‘Yes.’
‘I personally had one such device. There may have been more in other bases that I was unaware of.’
Webster stared at the paper. He neither spoke nor read Russian, if that was indeed what he was looking at, but the more he studied the diagram, the more something started to niggle him; the more he started to feel that perhaps, just perhaps, Mikhail wasn’t mental. What if this was real? ‘How did you come across this document?’
‘I created it myself.’
‘From what?’
‘From memory. I have
