Howard Linskey: The Dead

‘He is clean,’ the man said.

‘Of course he is,’ answered Vasnetsov’s head of security, ‘he is not so stupid as to bring a weapon, a wire or a tracker to a meeting with us. Blake knows that, if he did, we would bury him out here,’ and he glanced towards the forests.

Evgeny took me inside. We went into a large room at the front of the building that had a huge open fireplace with logs burning ferociously in the grate. Vasnetsov was sitting there with Mikhail Datsik, his banker, along with another three bodyguards.

‘I am glad you did not miss your flight,’ said Vasnetsov dryly by way of greeting, ‘so much easier this way.’

‘I’m here,’ I admitted, ‘but I still don’t see how I can help you.’

Vasnetsov frowned at me. ‘You will help me by carrying out my instructions. Soon you will meet my Joe . He has been in training for two years and you will provide his route in to my homeland. That much I have already explained,’ and he shook his head. ‘You should be happy, Blake. When you leave here in the morning you will take my Joe and your fee. I promised you two million US dollars and it’s yours.’

‘So I get to stay the night here?’ I asked.

‘Your flight to Amsterdam leaves in the morning. Tonight you eat and sleep. In the morning you leave here a wealthier man,’ and he shrugged as if it couldn’t be easier. ‘Once you arrive in Amsterdam you send my agent down the line. It really is very simple.’

‘And if I refuse?’

His face hardened, ‘I already told you that I do not forgive.’

‘You did,’ I conceded, ‘so tonight I will eat and sleep and tomorrow…’ I shrugged, as if I would likely go along with his plan but I was stalling, buying myself some precious time before I made him my enemy with a refusal.

‘Good,’ he said but abruptly the lights in the house went out and we were plunged into darkness. I could only dimly make out shapes in the room. There was some shouting in Russian, a panicked question and an authoritative reply, then people began moving in and out of the building.

Vasnetsov barked something in Russian and waved an arm. I was willing to bet it was something like, ‘Get out there, find out what’s happening!’

Someone activated a hand-held flare. One of the bodyguards held it and three of them started towards the main door. They didn’t get very far. The weapons must have had suppressors because I never even heard the shots. All three bodyguards were dropped in the hallway with ruthless efficiency. I instinctively threw myself to the floor.

‘Evgeny!’ Vasnetsov had panic in his voice as he called for his personal bodyguard who drew a pistol, dropped to one knee and aimed his weapon at the window, then at the door, then back at the window again, as if unsure where the attack would come from. I could hear shouting and the sound of boots running along wooden floors. The sound of gunfire that followed was deafening. Vasnetsov’s bodyguards were determined not just to combat the threat outside but to obliterate it.

After the initial bursts of machinegun fire there was a brief pause and I heard orders being shouted in Russian. I could also hear the screams of dying men then further gunfire but the bursts were more focussed now, as if they were trying to pick out individual targets. Evgeny was chattering away into a tiny hand-held radio, trying to work out what was going on. I didn’t speak a word of Russian but I knew panic when I heard it. The men he was communicating with were trying to brief him, while at the same time fighting for their lives. I lay on the wooden floor praying they had bigger problems to worry about right now than me.

This pattern was repeated for a while; short bursts of gunfire from Vasnetsov’s bodyguards, then return fire that held an eerie quality because it was silent, but we knew about it because bullets were hitting the front of the house, shattering windows and thudding into the brickwork. It sounded like there was a whole bloody army out there. The shouting continued, but it was getting less and less regular. Evgeny was still calling out his list of names, ‘Lev!.. Ivan!.. Oleg!.. Pyotr!’ and I could see by the light from the flickering flames of the fire that he was sweating. I realised they were losing.

I didn’t know how long the firing lasted but it seemed like hours. Eventually, as abruptly as it started, the shooting ceased and there was an incredibly tense silence. There were only Vasnetsov, Evgeny, Mikhail and me left in the room and we all held our breath as we waited for something to happen. I was looking at them and they were staring at the door.

Just as I turned my head it happened, the window exploded, the glass bursting inwards and showering us, then there was an enormous bang and a cloud of smoke and my ears began to ring from the stun grenade. I was dimly aware of figures somehow swinging themselves through the shattered window and bursting into the room.

The four men who came through the window all wore black uniforms, black helmets and night-vision goggles and carried submachine guns. I knew they could make us out through the smoke and darkness and I was thankful for that, because they were less likely to gun me down if they could see I was lying harmlessly on the ground, my hands outstretched, palms down against the carpet, looking as much like a non-combatant as possible. One of them zeroed his weapon in on me and levelled it like he was about to fire. I thought ‘This is it, he’s going to kill me, just to remove any witnesses,’ then he hefted the weight slightly so that it sat more easily in his hands and kept it trained on me. ‘I’m not moving,’ I told him, ‘I’m not moving.’ I was hoping that hearing me speak in English might make him hesitate to kill me. Perhaps he would be fearful of some sort of international incident and in any case they were clearly not after me.

I managed to turn my eyes slightly towards Vasnetsov and I could see that his bodyguard had given up. He had placed his weapon on the ground and very slowly put his hands up. He looked entirely helpless. ‘Evgeny!’ hissed his boss, as if he expected the unarmed man to do something, even though the presence in the room of four armed men indicated he was the only one of Vasnetsov’s private army still breathing. Evgeny was pleading with his eyes. He was trying to tell the commandos he was prepared to go quietly. One of the attackers took a step towards him, carefully aimed his semi-automatic and shot him anyway, putting three, perhaps four rounds through his chest. Evgeny fell backwards and his lifeless body hit the ground.

That was when Vasnetsov made a break for it, a desperate, stumbling run. He didn’t get far. They moved quicker than he ever could and soon caught up with him. He was cursing, kicking and screaming but they sat him down in an armchair and one of them gave him a hefty slap around the face to silence him. A second later, the lights came back on.

I put my face down because the bright light was hurting my eyes and the smoke made them sting. I was blinking furiously, trying to focus, when a man marched purposefully into the room. He was dressed in black combat trousers, a black army-issue sweatshirt and combat boots and his face had been blacked out by camouflage paint, but his only weapon was the pistol he wore on his belt. He glanced over at me, then at the half-American banker and finally Vasnetsov and when he spoke it was in English, so we could all understand him.

‘Yaroslav Vasnetsov, I am Major Uri Nikulin of the GRU. You are under arrest; charged with treason and acts of terrorism, along with many other crimes against the state.’

‘No,’ Vasnetsov’s voice cracked.

I could hear the sound of a helicopter’s rotors, perhaps more than one, and they were getting closer.