Adrian Magson - Retribution

Bikovsky swore again, but finally nodded. ‘OK. . you got it. But this better be worth it. There’s a coffee shop on Pacific called the Dolphin. I’ll be there about five this evening.’ He turned and walked through the gate without looking back.

The camera swivelled to follow him all the way.

‘Damn,’ Rik said. ‘I was hoping for a look inside.’

‘Down, boy,’ Harry said. ‘You’re too young for that stuff and your mother would never forgive me.’

The US Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID), assisted by the FBI and prodded by regular calls from Ken Deane, had moved extra quickly on lifting the prints from the knife used to kill Lloyd at Fort Benning. Second only to being sent nationwide to all FBI regions, copies were sent to Koslov at FSB headquarters in Moscow, as Harry Tate had requested.

As soon as he was notified of their arrival, Koslov took the prints along to the forensic laboratory and flagged the job as ultra urgent, to include all databases. Nothing less would get anything moving, and since he had a vested interest in the information, he had no hesitation in pulling rank over several other jobs currently being dealt with. Even so, the civilian supervisor argued as a matter of course, claiming there were already far too many urgent jobs awaiting their turn.

‘Do you have proper justification for this taking precedence, Captain?’ the man enquired primly. Plainly, to him it meant nothing if the job was done now or next week, but he evidently felt the need to defend his corner, especially with newcomers like Koslov.

‘Yes, I do,’ Koslov responded firmly, staring the man down. ‘If we do not find out who these prints belong to, I will probably die. After that, so will you, for allowing the murder of an officer through dereliction of your duty. Is that justification enough for you?’ He nodded at the man’s suddenly pale face and walked away.

Fifty minutes later, to Koslov’s amazement, the supervisor rang to say they had a match.

‘You what?’ Holy God, it had been an outside chance, but it had worked. ‘Send Dobrev up to me with the details. Immediately.’

Two minutes later Koslov was staring in bafflement at a sheet of printed paper. The details had been copied from Russian Army Intelligence files. After trying all current records, the computer had automatically switched to scanning deeper into the archives and had fastened on a name and prints. From the heading at the top of the sheet, Koslov saw the details had come originally from a specialist Intelligence unit operating in Chechnya. Their unit details had been blanked out, and he knew instantly what that meant: Spetsnaz — Special Forces. The date of 2001 told him more; it was during the period known as the Second Chechen War, which had begun two years before. Islamist separatists fighting for independence from Russia had been spreading their conflict into Dagestan and Ingushetia, drawing in Muslim volunteers from outside the area, some deliberately using the experience gained for training purposes before going to fight in Afghanistan and elsewhere. It had made identifying many of the fighters impossible, but Koslov knew the authorities had made a point of collating and recording thousands of faces, fingerprints and background details of known and suspected terrorists involved in the war. These had been fed into a database which had been kept up to date by security services archivists working for the FSB and SVR.

This man had called himself Kassim. No other name. A notation said the address he’d given was false. His age was given as seventeen years, but that was just as doubtful. Picked up in a sweep of an underground camp outside Grozny, Kassim had been taken to a local militia barracks lock-up for processing along with twenty other suspected fighters. Two days later an explosion had breached the walls and Kassim had vanished, killing one of the guards on the way out. Because of that his file had been kept active for a while, until it was moved into the archives. He was thought to have gone to Afghanistan.

The thumbprint photo told Koslov nothing. Devoid of character or detail like most police mugshots, this one must have been taken and processed by an idiot. It was just a face, nothing more, one he would find replicated outside this building a thousand times, if he cared to go out and look. He stared at the ceiling, seeing once more the face of the man in the trees. Now he knew what had been familiar. . what had been tugging at his memory. It wasn’t the man’s face, for he didn’t know him from a hole in the ground. It was his manner. . something in the way he moved and the stance of his body as he ran; the purposefulness of his gait. If this information was correct, the American soldier had been killed by an Afghan.

And now Koslov was being stalked by the same man.

He heard a cough and looked up. Dobrev was still standing there.

‘Haven’t you got things to do?’ Koslov asked.

‘Sir.’ Dobrev nodded. ‘Waiting for instructions, sir.’

Koslov smiled. Dobrev was no fool; time spent waiting here was time away from running endless errands for other officers.

‘Have you ever seen an Afghan, Dobrev?’

‘Umm. . no, sir. Not up close, anyway.’

Koslov spun the sheet of paper round so that Dobrev could see the photo, although he guessed he’d already read the text. ‘That man is in Moscow. Right now. He’s older now, of course. If you see him, let me know right away. Oh, and start running. Otherwise he’ll kill you.’

When Harry returned to his hotel, he found an urgent message waiting from Deane. He dialled the number and waited.

The head of security sounded breathless, as if he’d run up a flight of stairs.

‘We have an ID on our killer,’ he announced. ‘Koslov fed in the prints and came up with a name. He’s a Muslim fighter named Kassim. . a mujahedin .’

Harry digested the information and felt a tingle of interest in his gut. So, a terrorist connection after all? Time would tell. And while they didn’t yet know why this Kassim was intent on wiping out members of the UN, at least they could now begin working on possible motives.

‘Did he explain how he got it?’

‘He was happy to,’ said Deane. ‘Russian Military Intelligence kept close tabs on the various mujahedin factions during the Second Chechen War, especially when they noticed how many foreigners were turning up in the region. They recorded thousands of fingerprints, names, some photos — and ethnic groupings. They fingerprinted every male they came across, active or not. Even if there was no evidence of them being in one of the rebel factions they sent the details back to Moscow. Kassim was kept in a lock-up for a couple of days, then the local rebels staged a breakout. He killed a militiaman and his prints later came up on a captured RPG-7 which brought down a Russian helicopter. According to Koslov this would have put him on a search-and-kill list, but they never found him. He was probably a volunteer and left the country for Afghanistan or Pakistan when things got hot. Kassim’s probably an Uzbek. . they’re mostly nomadic types, according to my researchers, so moving around the hills wouldn’t have been a problem. And they get used to staying out of the way from the moment they’re born. That might explain how he was able to sneak up on the Marine sniper so easily.’

‘Is there a photo?’

‘Yeah. It’s lousy quality, according to Koslov, taken under what he calls battlefield conditions. He’s getting it scanned and sent over. I’ll email it you and send copies to the FBI office in LA. They might be able to match it with the cameras at the airport.’

‘But why an Afghan if the rumours are about Kosovo? And how can a hill tribesman be moving around like he is?’