Tim Stevens - Ratcatcher

‘Thanks,’ said Purkiss, because there wasn’t any more he could say.

‘Jesus,’ said Kendrick. He was sitting on the bed, booted feet propped on the stool at the dresser.

‘What?’

‘The man killed your girl.’

‘Yes.’

‘It was my girl, I’d be out there, mad as a snake, finding the bastard. Not sitting on my arse in some crappy hotel room.’

‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

‘Should’ve called me sooner.’

‘I didn’t know what this involved until this morning. This Kuznetsov… whatever his connection with Fallon, we’re going to have to go through him first. And he’s got his own private army.’

‘Any idea of numbers?’

‘Those British agents are delving into that,’ Purkiss said. ‘We can’t know if everyone in Rodina Security is involved. My guess is that it’s a select few, not the whole firm, though how many exactly is anybody’s guess. Twenty? More, perhaps. Certainly I’ve had a whole load of them on my back.’

‘The more the merrier.’ Kendrick had his middle-distance stare on, was cracking his knuckles, grinding his teeth. Purkiss didn’t want him to peak too soon.

He said, ‘Here’s the plan for this evening.’

The Jacobin sat at the computer, headphones on, listening to the dispatch from the SIS contact at the embassy in Moscow.

‘Takeoff time’s confirmed at twenty thirty-five hours. President and entourage en route to private airfield now. The usual one near Sheremetyevo.’

The Jacobin listened a while longer, then thanked the contact, ended the connection, turned to the other two at their desks and said, ‘On schedule. President’s expected to land just before ten p.m.’

‘Anyone think the attack might come tonight?’

None of them did. The security was too tight, the landing zone outside Tallinn too closely guarded a secret. A late supper with the Estonian president was expected, again at an undisclosed location. No, the danger was going to present itself in public.

The Jacobin peeled off the headphones, ran a hand through tired hair, said, ‘And where the hell is Purkiss?’

Neither of the others offered an opinion.

They rolled their chairs over to one of the computers to share information. The Jacobin listened as the facts and figures were rattled off, pretending that the information was new. Rodina Security was a private concern with ambitions to go public. It was solvent, had survived an audit two years earlier by the tax authorities, and had no record of trouble with the law, if one discounted the fact that just under twenty per cent of its staff, including its managing director, had criminal records. It employed thirty-four people, twelve in administrative and clerical capacities and the rest as security personnel. All thirty-four were of ethnic Russian background.

On the screen Kuznetsov’s face appeared alongside a potted biography. The Jacobin studied it. It was a face which the word craggy seemed to have been coined to describe. Dark eyes glowered from beneath a domed brow on which the hair had been cropped back; the mouth and jaw were set like a boxer’s. A brutal face but not a stupid one. Kuznetsov wasn’t stupid. He was boorish, crass even, but he was cunning as a whip.

The Jacobin was under no illusions as to Kuznetsov’s intentions after the event. The man despised the English. He’d never pretended otherwise. The Jacobin would be caught up and swept away, drowned in the tide of history, as Kuznetsov would put it in one of the mangled, half-remembered Marxist platitudes he’d picked up from what passed for his reading. But the Jacobin too was making history, of a very different kind. And in it there would be no place for Kuznetsov and his ilk.

Kuznetsov hates the English. There was something relevant there, something that nagged at the Jacobin’s attention but scurried away when focused upon. It would come in time. Of more immediate import was the question from earlier. Where the hell was Purkiss?

It was nearly eight o’clock by the Jacobin’s watch. Two hours, and if Purkiss hadn’t surfaced by then, it would be time for the trump card.

‘Looks like a farm to me.’

They were huddled in front of Abby’s monitor. With the mouse she altered the view so that they were sweeping in almost horizontally, trees and buildings rendered in squat, distorted three-dimensional images.

‘That was our impression,’ said Purkiss.

The property covered ten acres, a curving driveway leading down from a gate set in a stone wall to a low but two-storied building which appeared to be the farmhouse. There were smaller buildings scattered about: stables, a couple of sheds, what looked like a garage for a tractor. The stone wall surrounded the entire property in an approximate rectangle. The gate was in the south wall, set back from the road, and the north of the property was carpeted in fields and woodland. A couple of cars were parked outside the farmhouse, but their details were obscured.

‘How up to date are these pictures?’ asked Purkiss.

‘They were taken some time in the last three years,’ said Abby.

Kendrick: ‘This isn’t real time?’

She shook her head. ‘You’d need direct access to a satellite for that. The military, the CIA have that capability. I don’t.’

‘My three Service friends might,’ said Purkiss.

‘Want to ask them?’

‘No.’

Purkiss stood and stretched. ‘You brought what I asked for?’

‘Yep.’ Kendrick had brought a rucksack and he rummaged in it and pulled out two pairs of night-vision goggles.

‘Okay, good.’ He paced to get the blood flowing. ‘We circle the wall, see if there are any other ways in. If not, we go over. Ideally we want to have a look in that farmhouse, but if we manage to take captive anyone there, quietly, that’ll be good too. Abby, we’ll stay in phone contact with you all the time. If you lose both of us, contact these people individually and tell them where we were.’ He gave her the numbers of each of the three agents. ‘It’ll mean we’ve failed, but at least they’ll be able to alert the police and have the farm raided.’

He paused, looked at them in turn, said: ‘Ready?’

Kendrick shrugged on his jacket. ‘Farms. I come all the way here on a city break and you want me to get my feet covered in cow shit.’

‘The fresh air will do your complexion good.’

‘It’s all right for a swede basher like you. Some of us, the ones whose brothers aren’t also their dads, prefer city life. You know, cities? Where people respect species boundaries.’

‘He’s been learning some big words lately,’ remarked Abby as she opened the door for them. ‘Now leave me alone so I can work on that memory stick.’

On every street it seemed there was the wash of police lights, the corralling of traffic into fewer lanes than usual. Purkiss spotted several shop fronts with blown-up pictures of the two presidents. Instead of using the satellite navigation system in the rental Fiat and running the risk of being directed up roads that had been newly cordoned off, he headed for the familiarity of the coast road. Here too he was struck by the security presence. Police not only swarmed over the road and pavements but cruised the dark, glittering bay in small tugs. Packs of sniffer dogs rooted around by the side of the road.

Purkiss pointed to the Soviet War Memorial. ‘That’s where it’s happening. The handshake.’ As he’d expected a wide area around the base of the needle was cordoned off and men with bomb-sweeping equipment roved about.

Kendrick said, ‘You think it’s going to be a bomb?’

Purkiss shook his head. ‘No. Security’s too tight.’

‘A rifle?’