Andy McNab - Exit wound

For a second she seemed lost. ‘When he joined the army Grisha went away for almost a year. In that time I saw him only once. He didn’t talk about his training, but I could see that it had affected him deeply. It was only years later, through my work, that I found out what they do to recruits. Systematic abuse. Punishments have nothing to do with your performance. If the officers and the NCOs in charge are having a bad day, they beat you. If they are bored, they beat you. When Grisha came home that summer, he was a changed person. He didn’t want to talk about the army, just kept telling me that it wouldn’t be long – another four years – and then he’d be free of it. I had just turned eighteen so we decided to hand in our application.’

‘For what?’

‘To get married. Russians do not have engagements and rings. We just apply to ZAGS, the department of registration. They furnish a date when you can marry.’

The rain was falling harder now. She unwrapped the scarf from her neck and tied it round her head. ‘It was stupid – I was so young – but I wanted to let him know that I would wait for him. I couldn’t tell my father. But Semyon was very supportive. He became like a father to me, too. It was he who bought the Ural, a beat-up old thing from the Great Patriotic War, and restored it for Grisha. The only times I saw Grisha happy that summer – his old self – was when he and his father worked on that bike and when we were out riding on it.’

I didn’t say it, but Grisha was lucky to have had her – and Semyon. I’d never had a dad who cared enough about me to buy me a skateboard, let alone restore a motorbike.

‘We bought the rings…’ She gently played with hers, twisting it around her finger. ‘But the wedding never happened. He was sent to Afghanistan before ZAGS would give us a date…’

Her tears returned, and I thought about the three I’d lost. I’d never dwelt on how much those fuckers meant to me. It wasn’t as if we’d lived in each other’s pockets but just being with them again, even fleetingly, had made me feel good. They were my family, or as close as I was ever likely to get.

‘Anna, you still have family. There is still someone who…’

Ahead of us, lit by a flickering street-lamp, was a bus shelter. Anna stepped into it and I followed. The shelter stank of the things bus stops normally stink of. The rain drummed on the roof.

She smiled sadly and removed her scarf as I reached out and touched the ragged bruise on her neck.

An image filled my mind – of a twenty-one-year-old kid lying on a mortuary slab with the back of his head removed by a tumbling missile fragment. ‘So Semyon works for M3C. He was working in one of the companies sucked up by Brin? Weapons that Semyon had helped to build killed his son?’

She gave a shallow nod. ‘That’s why Semyon and I do what we do.’ She checked her watch. ‘Come, time to go and see him.’

Her wheelie-case bounced behind her as we carried on towards the station in silence. I could see the lights of the metro up ahead. I’d been keeping one eye on it. In the couple of minutes since I’d last looked, the crowd outside had almost doubled in size. Anna had noticed it too. In the harsh light of the entrance, over the heads of the people waiting to get in, I could see two grey peaked caps. Police were checking everyone returning from the flea-market as they passed through the turnstiles.

‘What’s going on?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe they are searching for drugs. It happens sometimes…’

‘Let’s walk to another station, yeah?’

We edged around the back of the crowd and onto a main drag.

At the time Grisha was killed, everything was still for sale. Now it was more organized, and that made it more dangerous. It was easy to see why she was a woman with a mission.

But I had one too.

And if Semyon had found out where they were staying in the city, I could be done and out of here by the morning.

2348 hrs

Grey apartment blocks loomed either side of us. We kept in their shadows while holding the trigger on Semyon’s equally drab concrete building. Lights pushed through net curtains on two of the five windows that made up his second-floor flat.

An old diesel truck, a product of some ancient Soviet factory, belched fumes as it trundled past. We were about eight K away from the Gucci and Prada stores off Red Square. The tarmac was cracked and potholed. Areas of hard-packed mud that had once been turf were covered with a layer of dogshit and rubbish.

‘It’s a company apartment, Jim. He has done very well. The higher he has gone, the more information he has been able to discover.’ Anna told me this was a middle-class area, but it was like the old USSR had never gone away. Communism had produced generations that couldn’t have cared less about public areas. Why should they? The Party told them they’d take care of everything. Anything the other side of their own front door meant nothing to them. They weren’t even allowed to feel any responsibility for it.

‘Do you two have any tell-tales? You know – a sign to show it’s OK to go up?’

‘Yes – it’s always at night, so he has the kitchen light on, the one to the far right.’

I checked again to see if anyone else was watching his windows. ‘You sure that’s the only way in and out?’

‘Yes, Jim, it’s an apartment block. Just the one entrance and exit. And before you ask, those are the only windows. He has none facing the back of the building.’

She was getting a little bit crisp, but so what? Questions like these kept you alive.

‘He got a car? You see his car out here?’

‘No. He uses Grisha’s motorbike. It will be in the garage.’

She dug about in her pocket and replaced the battery. ‘Let me call him.’ She started pressing away.

‘How come you use a mobile if you two need to be so disconnected?’

‘It’s a pay-as-you-go. We both bought them for cash and only use them between us.’ She closed down the mobile. ‘His isn’t on.’

I took a breath and started to move.

‘No, Jim, it’s OK. He often forgets. He is getting old, that’s all. Come, we’ll check if his bike is there. Will that make you happy?’

I took her arm and we walked down an alleyway. The long, one-level strip of concertina garage doors ahead was covered with graffiti.

She led me to one about two-thirds of the way down, stood on tiptoe and pulled out a piece of broken concrete to retrieve a key. We lifted the door together. The smell of petrol and oily rags hit my nostrils.

Once inside and the door was down again she hit the power. A dull orange bulb hanging from a dodgy wire sparked up in the middle of the ceiling. Anna walked over to the bike. As she ran her hand over the metal it was as if her memories returned.

I knew about Urals. I’d blown a few up in Afghanistan with our IEDs. They were big, clunky pieces of Soviet engineering, a little underpowered but solid, and ideal over rough terrain, which was why the Red Army had bought them in their tens of thousands. This one still had its bullet-shaped sidecar fixed on the right-hand side, and was a mass of immaculate, gleaming chrome and black gloss – Semyon’s mobile shrine to his dead son.

Anna walked around the machine, reliving old times. ‘I come here by myself sometimes… birthdays, anniversaries…’

I felt the working parts while she sat in an old cane chair pouring her heart out. They were warm. Semyon had been using the Ural less than an hour ago.

‘I know this is stupid, but we called this old thing “Cuckoo”, after a song we loved. It was a hit when we met. Everyone used to sing it and…’ She stared into the sidecar for a few more seconds, before reluctantly getting up. We closed down the garage and headed for the apartment.