Andy McNab - Zero hour

Grisha used to write a lot when he was in Afghanistan. In February 1989, the month the war ended, so had the letters. The army told her he was missing, presumed dead. She wrote requesting further information, but the authorities had never replied. It was like he'd never existed.

Almost a year after they'd lost the war, Grisha's father had got a call from a man who claimed to be from the military forensic medical laboratory that had performed an autopsy on his son's body. He wanted to meet; there was something he needed to ask. But Grisha's father was too scared. This was Soviet Russia.

Anna had said she would go. 'I had nothing to lose. I'd left school and was waiting to go to university. I met this man – this colonel – at a cafe. He told me about himself – told me that he had served in Afghanistan and what an utter, godforsaken waste of life it had been. People like Grisha, he said, deserved better. Then he showed me some pictures.

'The autopsy had been carried out at a medical laboratory in Kazan. They'd flown the bodies there, the bodies of everybody who'd been in Grisha's armoured personnel carrier. The first picture showed him almost as I remembered him: face up, eyes closed, like he was sleeping.

'The colonel told me the carrier had been hit by an anti-tank rocket. A fragment had pierced his eye, hit bone and tumbled. In the next picture, I saw the exit wound. There was nothing left of the back of his head – just a big black congealed mass of blood, brains, bone fragments and matted hair.'

It was a Soviet missile. The army had found a whole cache of them soon afterwards. The boxes had identified the manufacturer. Someone had sold them to the mujahideen.

Grisha's father worked for the Soviet Union's biggest arms manufacturers. Weapons that he had helped to build had killed his son. Grisha's death drove them both – him, until his death, to unearth arms trafficking; her, to champion the underdog at every turn.

I turned my head. Anna was weeping, and this time the tears weren't on demand.

'Walking through that graveyard made it easy. Those places always make me cry.'

'Pull over, Anna, I'll drive. You navigate.'

She bumped to a halt. Three trucks thundered past us, just metres apart. She hardly noticed. She had both hands on the wheel, head down.

'I try to move on, Nick, I really do. But it's… hard…' She turned to face me. 'Do you understand?'

I put a hand gently on her shoulder.

About half an hour out of Odessa, Anna glanced towards me again. 'When you asked about the tears, Nicholas, what were you trying to tell me?'

Jesus, this girl didn't miss a thing. 'Nothing really. I was just-'

She pulled into the side of the road again and swivelled in her seat. 'OK, we can play this one of two ways.' She took a deep breath. 'Either you carry on treating me like one of your army friends – and we pretend there's nothing wrong – or you tell me why you look like shit and what those little red pills are for.'

I didn't say anything for a moment. 'Anna, I thought… I thought… if you still can't hold back the tears every time you think about Grisha, then what right have I to-'

'You don't really understand this at all, do you? Grisha's story is about the importance of telling the truth, however painful it might be.'

Her beautiful, sad eyes bored into me, and stripped me back layer by layer. And for the first time since I could remember, I didn't cut away. I told her about the headaches and the visit to Kleinmann. I told her about his prognosis and the Smarties and the fact I had binned all the other treatment on offer. Finally, I told her about sitting in the flat, desperate to make a call to her, but being unable to do it. I told her I was too scared of her reaction, that I didn't want her to bin me.

Then I sat, arms folded, not daring to look at her, and stared out into the darkness.

I felt her fingers gently brush my cheek.

'You idiot…' She was shaking her head. 'I would never walk away. Surely you know me well enough to know that?'

I nodded, letting my hands drop, and tried to smile.

A tear had formed in her eye, and I watched it roll down her cheek. I'd done that. Her first chance of moving on and I'd fucked it up for her.

'You can understand, can't you? I wanted this one last kick at it before I go. Wouldn't you do the same?'

'The treatment – we can fight this…'

'It'll just delay the inevitable.' I pulled the Smarties out of my jeans. 'At least I can take these in front of you now.' I flicked it open and stared at the shiny red pebbles inside. I let the silence lengthen. 'I don't want to be a lump of dribbling jelly, depending on you, making your life as miserable as mine would be. You don't deserve it. Fuck it, better to burn out than fade away, eh?'

She moved her mouth closer to my ear. 'You stupid, stupid idiot.' She kissed me on the temple, then took two Smarties from the case and gently popped them into my mouth. 'We'll do this whichever way you want. But promise me one thing: be open to the idea of getting involved. It feels just as scary to me.'

We held each other close. A wave of happiness washed over me. She murmured in my ear, 'I'm glad you told me. I want to be with you.' She kissed me on the cheek again. 'And it doesn't matter for how long.'

Bulgari was still there, on her neck, though much weaker than this morning. Or maybe it wasn't there at all, and I just wanted it to be. Fuck it: it still felt comforting, reassuring and safe.

She was the one who pulled away. 'We have to get back on the road, Nicholas. Let's move, or we'll never get to see those White Nights.'

She spun the wheel and we carried on heading south.

Copenhagen Tuesday, 16 March 11.15 hrs The Turkish Airlines Boeing 737 was on its final approach. The three-hour flight from Istanbul wasn't full. Anna found herself a spare row of seats and slept all the way, cuddling her pack of 200 duty-free Camel. We were dressed in the same clothes we'd been wearing when we'd left the Cosmos yesterday morning and the Bulgari was a distant memory.

Less than two hours after I'd called him, Julian had come back to confirm that Lilian had obtained a visa under the name of Nemova and flown to Copenhagen ten days ago. She had booked the ticket in person at a travel agency on Nicolae Lorga Street in Chisinau. The Malev Hungarian flight was the cheapest available, departing Moldova at 05.45. It arrived in Copenhagen at 09.15 after a one-hour stopover at Ferihegy in Budapest.

Lilian had asked for a window seat. She hadn't booked in conjunction with anyone else. Nor had she checked in with, or asked to sit next to, anyone else. She'd paid cash for the US$693 return fare.

The return was booked for one week later, but she'd never checked in. Her mobile hadn't been used since the night before her departure and couldn't be traced. It had disappeared off the face of the earth, just like her.

Shortly after Julian's call, Anna heard back from her contact. The company in Moscow that Tarasov's shipment was bound for specialized in radar technology. He didn't yet know who the end-user was. For that last piece of the jigsaw puzzle, he would have to dig some more.

We'd arrived at the port in Odessa to discover that the ferry to Istanbul only sailed on Saturdays and Mondays, and took a couple of days. We'd rerouted ourselves in the direction of the airport and spent the rest of the night in the car. I dropped Lena's pistol into a river and ditched the Beamer, then walked the last two K to the terminal.

We took the Aerosvit Airlines 07.00 flight to Istanbul, arriving at 08.35. We caught the connection to Copenhagen, leaving at 09.00, by the skin of our teeth. There wasn't a problem with visas. Brits and Russians don't need them, and Anna smoothed over the minor hiccup caused by the absence of both a Moldovan exit stamp and a Ukrainian entry stamp with a story about us taking the wrong road out of Transnistria and missing the border post. The immigration guy accepted the explanation, together with all the lei that Irina had exchanged for us. This was another former Soviet republic, after all.