Adrian Magson - Retribution

He heard the blast of a car horn. Dobrev, waiting to take him to the office. Cheeky young bugger was getting above himself. Drivers were supposed to come up and knock, not sound the horn like a damned cab driver. He gathered his things together and thought he’d go out to Sheremetyevo instead and take a look at the immigration records and the camera hard drives. He might tread on some toes in the process, but since it had become an international manhunt, and the request from the UN and the FBI had been about as high-powered as it could get, he would have the backing of his superiors.

As he shrugged on his coat, there was another loud blast of the horn, this time longer.

‘Dobrev, you insubordinate little shit!’ he shouted. ‘I’m coming!’ He took a last look around, flicked a used shirt into a drawer, then picked up his pistol and went downstairs.

He walked across to the car, and saw Dobrev standing with one foot inside the vehicle. The young man looked terrified and was pointing at a cleaner’s cart and broom lying on the ground.

‘The Afghan,’ Dobrev stuttered. ‘He was here!’ Then he turned and threw up.

By the time Koslov was being grilled by military security investigators, Kassim was on his way to Moscow’s Domodedovo airport. He flung the knife he’d almost used on the Russian driver through the car window at the first opportunity, and straightened his clothing. He was breathing fast, as if he’d run a race, and he felt light-headed. Tiredness, undoubtedly, catching up on him. Yet he’d been awake for much longer in the past, and under far more stressful circumstances. Perhaps it was a sign that he wasn’t eating properly. He drank water from a plastic bottle and spat some out of the window. Water was purity; purity was strength. It would have to do for now.

His instructors had warned him that operating at peak effort, whether in a war zone or not, could very quickly drain his mental and physical resources. The only way to sustain himself, they had told him, was by eating at every opportunity, and by observing his daily devotions. He wondered if these men with their wise words had ever done what he was doing, or carried the burden he was carrying. In any case, serving his devotions had never been high on his list of priorities, although he had not dared let them know that. Some things were best left unsaid, when surrounded by zealots; even those who had helped him and brought him to this point.

He couldn’t tell what had stopped him killing the driver. The stupid man’s challenge had unnerved him. A couple more minutes and he could have been inside the building and looking for Koslov. But the driver had spotted him and was surely about to raise the alarm.

His response had been automatic, the ingrained need to protect himself. But he’d stopped and turned away. Why? He shook his head, seeing the young Russian’s face, an unshaven fuzz on his lip and the look of abject fear in his eyes.

Perhaps it had just been his lucky day.

He stayed alert for signs of police activity, and eventually joined a stream of traffic heading into the airport perimeter road. He left the car unlocked in a long-term car park next to the Airhotel. From what he had been told about this place, it would be gone before the day was out. Then he made straight for the check-in desk for flights to London, and to meet the man who would provide him with what he needed for the next stage of his journey. He wouldn’t mention that he hadn’t killed the Russian, though.

By midday UK time, he would be landing in Heathrow.

The Dolphin coffee shop and restaurant on Pacific Avenue was a single-storey building with its own car park, set between an apartment block on one side and a golfing store on the other. There were few cars in evidence, and only a handful of heads visible inside when Harry arrived just before five. He parked across the other side of the road with a clear view of the entrance, and wondered if Bikovsky would turn up. The ex-Marine’s attitude at the house in the hills hadn’t been exactly helpful, and Harry was half expecting to have been sent on a wild-goose chase just to get him out of the way.

Beside him on the seat was an envelope he’d collected earlier from the local FBI office on Wilshire. It contained copies of the Russian Intelligence file on Kassim and mug shots of the mujahedin fighter from Chechnya, taken when he was scooped up in a random raid on a warehouse in Grozny.

The photo was a face-on shot taken against a rough brick backdrop, the overhead lighting casting shadows beneath Kassim’s eyes and across his gaunt cheeks. He looked too young to be any kind of fighter, his beard wispy and thin, the early attempts of a teenager trying to look tough and grown-up. But the colour of the hair matched the darkness in his eyes, which were staring into the camera in sullen defiance. Harry could only speculate about how much he had changed since then.

‘We’ve put this out to all our field agents,’ Bob Dosario, one of the Bureau’s special agents, had told Harry when he was admitted to the LA office. ‘And I’m arranging for copies to go out on the streets and to our office at the airport. I can’t promise anything, but if he comes here we stand a chance of eyeballing him. Pity is, we don’t know what he looks like now, but we might be able to get our guys to build up a facial projection from this photo.’

With Kassim’s record so far, Harry had serious doubts about the FBI’s chances of catching him unless he made a mistake. And apart from killing Lloyd, which he would have seen as unavoidable, he hadn’t shown any signs yet of doing that. He left Dosario and drove down to Pacific Avenue to meet Bikovsky.

A faded, open-topped Suzuki four-by-four turned off Pacific Avenue and bumped the gulley into the Dolphin’s car park, narrowly missing a tourist fighting with a folding map. A large figure in jeans and T-shirt climbed out. It was Bikovsky. He stomped across the car park and disappeared through the doors of the Dolphin.

Harry drove into the car park and followed him inside.

Bikovsky was seated at a back table, sipping at a glass of iced water and looking sour. He said nothing when Harry greeted him, but signalled for the waitress to bring a coffee and Danish.

Harry ordered the same and sat down.

‘I just got word from a friend about Eddie and Marty,’ Bikovsky said briefly. ‘Those two guys you met at my place?’

Harry nodded. It was time for the other to lead the way. He might learn far more by letting the man talk.

‘You really riled them,’ Bikovsky continued, rubbing his knuckles together. ‘Eddie, especially — the one you threw down the stairs. Now they’re really pissed and looking for payback. The people I’m with, they don’t need this kind of shit. They’re trying to run a smooth operation, and this kinda noise pulls in too much static from the cops. The people Eddie and Marty work for don’t play nice, neither.’ He sneered. ‘I could have made some decent side money selling this meeting to them, let me tell you.’

‘Why didn’t you?’ Harry resisted taking a look out the window. It wouldn’t do any good now, anyway, and he was relying on Rik playing the tourist outside to watch his back for such eventualities.

‘I don’t trust them even more than I don’t trust you.’

Harry ignored the insult. ‘Rival operators?’

‘Yeah, kinda.’ A nervous tone had crept into Bikovsky’s voice, and Harry guessed he’d been sent down by his bosses with orders to sort things out.

‘In that case,’ he said, ‘you help me and I’ll be out of your hair.’

Bikovsky nodded and took another sip of water. ‘Sounds good.’

In a few terse sentences Harry told him everything he knew so far, other than the rumours about the rape and murder at the compound. He doubted Bikovsky would have seen anything on the news reports, and if he was the man responsible, he didn’t want to tip the ex-Marine’s hand and risk him clamming up or disappearing altogether.