Tim Stevens - Ratcatcher

The window was a wide one. The handshake was scheduled to take place at eight a.m. precisely. Even if there were a delay — Venedikt doubted it would take place ahead of time, these things never did — he had a radio link to the memorial site to guide him. The handshake would last a good few minutes for the benefit of the world’s cameras. Then the two leaders would step up to their podiums and deliver their respective speeches of hope. Perhaps twenty, thirty minutes in total. The missile travelled at a velocity of one hundred and fifty metres per second. Over ten kilometres, that amounted to a little more than one minute from firing to impact.

A wide window, indeed.

The Black Hawk was capable of a speed just under three hundred kilometres per hour. There was no reason to hurry, and Leok and Lyuba kept it at well below a third of the maximum velocity. Beyond the smudged rim of the horizon, past the fields and the treetops, Venedikt began to catch the glitter and shift of the sea.

Encased in his crowded coffin, aware of the pressing down of at least one human body on the lid, Purkiss felt the claustrophobia ram its suffocating fist down his throat. All that stopped him from crying out, pounding on the wood inches from his face, was the knowledge of what would follow.

Instead he concentrated on his phone, staring at the backlit blue face as though by force of will he could summon a signal into being. By his watch they had been airborne for ten minutes. Assuming they were heading out to sea, as he suspected, they would by his estimate still be over land, and certainly potentially in range of a phone mast.

It was ingenious, he had to admit it, now that he understood what they were going to do. Purkiss was no expert on missile systems but he remembered reading something about the new Israeli development, a missile that could reach its target at a range of fifteen miles without the target’s having to be in sight of the person operating the launcher. The exclusion zone for air traffic around the War Memorial had a radius of ten kilometres, Elle had said. Fifteen miles was twenty-five kilometres. There’d be plenty to spare.

He blinked, moved the phone an inch back from his face to make sure of what he thought he’d seen. A single bar had crept into the upper left hand corner of the screen. Weak, but a signal.

He had already composed the text message a few minutes earlier. He pressed “send”. As he waited, the words that he assumed to be Estonian for “sending message” flashing at the top of the screen, their pulse almost mocking in its languor — don’t get your hopes up, friend — he reread the message.

It’s Purkiss. I’m hidden on board a Black Hawk heading out over the sea. They plan to use a long-range missile to make the hit. They have Fallon prisoner. I believe they have him on board amp; intend to leave his body in the wreckage of the chopper so it looks like SIS was responsible. You have to alert the authorities amp; they need to find us amp; shoot us down.

A smiley face filled the screen. Message sent.

The handset made a tiny chirrup. The Jacobin grabbed it off the seat and stared at it, negotiating the bends in the country lane with one hand on the wheel. The signal had been reestablished. Purkiss was on the radar again.

Instead of the stationary pulse centred in the airfield that the Jacobin had been expecting, the beacon was on the move, crossing fields, moving steadily across boundaries such as walls and streams. Purkiss was in the helicopter.

Three possibilities. One, Kuznetsov had him prisoner on board the chopper as planned, and had for some bizarre reason allowed him to keep his phone. Two, Purkiss had command of the machine and was either flying it himself — virtually impossible — or forcing Kuznetsov’s pilots to take it to some unknown destination. Or, three, Purkiss had stowed away on it.

Whichever was correct, there was only one course of action to take. He dropped the phone back on the seat, seized the wheel, and gunned the engine.

As a schoolboy Purkiss had developed the involuntary habit of waking seconds before his alarm went off in the mornings. He would lie paralysed by the lingering grip of sleep, anticipation of the blare from the clock radio rising in his chest to a peak of terror. He felt that way now, eyes on the tiny screen, fist slick around the handset, waiting for the reply.

Fallon, I got you in the end , he thought bleakly. It was too late to hear what the man had promised to tell him. He should have pressed him harder while they were imprisoned together in the basement. But he suspected it was all bluff. Fallon had no stunning revelations to offer. It was more likely to be a last-ditch torrent of blather to try to achieve absolution for his crimes.

It would be quick, Purkiss supposed. The Estonian security forces would scramble fighter jets with air-to-air missiles. There would be no messing about with close-combat artillery, no opportunity for Kuznetsov and his crew to go down in a blaze of defiance. Boxed in his coffin, Purkiss wouldn’t hear the end coming. All of which assumed that Elle had got his text message and could persuade the authorities quickly enough of the seriousness of the threat. It assumed that the air force could locate the Black Hawk in time, before Kuznetsov and his crew discovered that Purkiss had raised the alarm and took evasive action.

The reply came then. Purkiss didn’t register the words on the screen, was unaware of anything but the tone that heralded the arrival of the text, loud as a blast in the confined space, a double ting sound like the tapping of a spoon against the rim of an empty glass to gain an audience’s attention before an after-dinner speech.

Didn’t think of that, did you, forgot to mute it .

Purkiss knew it had been heard outside his hiding place too, because from beyond the lid he heard a muffled cry and a creak as the weight shifted on the lid.

The man was a surly old walrus, moustache and fingers the same nicotine sienna. He stared through the haze from his rollup with eyes stewed in last night’s booze.

‘You’re out early.’

‘I wanted to get away from the crowds back in town.’

‘You’re not interested in the handshake?’

The Jacobin shrugged. ‘Big deal. People make friends, they fall out again. Round it goes.’

The man was old enough to have been a child during the war. He gave half a laugh. ‘Isn’t that the truth.’ He sat up straight on his stool, dropping ash on the newspaper spread on the counter before him. ‘What can I do for you?’

The Jacobin told him: something fast. He took out his wallet and fanned the notes. Money no object.

The old man squinted through the smoke, nodded. ‘Got just the thing. Come on.’

It bobbed among the small collection at the jetty, dull white in the morning gloom, a Finnish make, not brand new but well cared for.

‘Handles exceptionally well, and I can’t say that for some of these other buckets,’ the old man said. ‘Inboard motor, as you can see. Maximum speed a hundred and ten knots.’

Back in the office the Jacobin exchanged keys for cash. The old man eyed him. ‘You all right? You look like you’ve had a rough night.’

‘Touch of asthma. The morning cold always makes it play up. I’ll be fine.’

‘Good, because I want my boat back.’

The Jacobin accepted the man’s offer of a waxed jacket to go over his suit. He climbed aboard. He wasn’t an experienced speedboater, but the controls were easy enough to grasp. The engine started smoothly, its low rumble comforting beneath his thighs.

‘Keep clear of town,’ called the old man. ‘They’ll torpedo you if you get too close.’