Andy McNab - Agressor

We'd made it to the hotel just before four. The kit had stayed with the body in the boot. We had to walk back into the city clean, just in case a curious blue-and-white wanted to know what we were lugging about this time of the morning. Charlie's jumper and the weapon went down an open manhole that no man or beast in their right mind would consider even going near, then we'd played a couple of drunken arseholes back from a night on the piss, jackets inside out and tied round our waists to cover the worst of the blood and mud. As it turned out, nobody raised an eyebrow. It was just another Saturday night in downtown Tbilisi.

I'd retrieved my card from behind the cistern, had a shit, shave and shower, then headed for Charlie's room with my old clothes under my arm to spend a little quality time covering our tracks. I pulled the CTR tape from its casing and burned it, with the help of the hotel's complimentary matches, and flushed the ashes down the toilet. Even our cell phones got the good news from my boot heel after a wipe-down to dispose of prints. We'd come into this country sterile, and we had to leave the same way.

The Marriott tape stayed with us; it was just too valuable to lose control of. There was a world of potential shit between us and Brisbane, and we needed to keep as much bargaining power to hand as we could.

After enough room-service breakfast to feed a couple of Charlie's horses, we binned our clothes in the kitchen skips behind the hotel, along with the remains of the camcorder. The tape was in my new, oil-worker chic, dark blue Rohan trousers, and I had slipped the first ten pages of the document in Baz's safe inside a magazine, in the pocket of my new khaki jacket. Charlie, waiting in the terminal, had the other half. He was going to come out and buy something from the shop when it was time to leave. That would be my signal to follow him back in.

I felt sorry for the old fucker. Once such a strong, solid, dependable performer, and now so screwed around by disease that he was finding it hard to grip anything firmly for more than five minutes. I could only begin to imagine his frustration. Just like Ali – king of the world one minute, a wreck the next. But unlike Ali, Charlie had a half-empty wallet into the bargain.

I had been thinking about that wallet a lot since this morning. Instead of keeping the papers as insurance, maybe we should cut a deal.

I felt a call to Crazy Dave from Vienna coming on. I'd persuade him to put us in touch with whoever the fuck had dreamed up this job, and give them the chance to buy the papers for the rest of Charlie's two hundred grand.

As a bonus, I'd try and resist the temptation to rip their heads off for forgetting to mention that we'd be sharing house-room with a couple of maniac jewel thieves, and a graveyard with a machete-wielding cousin of the Incredible Hulk. We'd keep the two tapes of Whitewall and a copy of the papers as a little memento of our Georgian adventure, in case they changed their minds later, or suddenly found themselves in the mood to give us 200K's worth of pain.

I didn't have too many illusions about Whitewall. He was probably just as expendable as we were, and they'd bin him as easily as they'd planned to bin Charlie. But at least we had something up our sleeves that he wouldn't want to become regular Sunday afternoon family viewing.

I suddenly realized that, for the first time in my life, I didn't give a fuck about the actual money. I wanted it for Charlie and Hazel's sake, of course, and because I never liked the idea of being turned over, but that was it. The thing I was really looking forward to was calling Silky. I needed to hear her voice again.

But I didn't fancy explaining to either of the girls that we'd be coming back via Hereford – that we had to see an old mate, and would therefore be a day or two later than we'd promised – so I decided to leave that bit of the conversation to Charlie.

Next time I looked at my watch it was 11.05. I was slouched over an espresso thick enough to tar a road, watching a Georgian celebrity chef do something interesting with an onion and a couple of oxen.

The delay was beginning to worry me. Once Baz's Audi was found with a present in the boot, the police would be swarming all over the house, trying to work out how Father Christmas had dropped by there as well. Or it could be the other way round. Whatever, it didn't matter which way this nightmare unfolded. If there was any CCTV footage in the can, it wouldn't be long before they were huddled round a monitor, watching the fuck-about in the yard.

Had I left any DNA at the cemetery? It was too late to worry about it now. But I did, just a bit.

Adrenalin and caffeine were taking their toll. I could almost feel the tension pumping round my body. At least the pain in my Adam's apple was starting to ease.

I took another sip of my now-tepid brew and concentrated on looking as bored as everyone else, but the bites in my swollen tongue made that easier said than done. Shit, it hurt. I wouldn't be putting away any packets of salt and vinegar for a while.

Five flights had been delayed so far. I heard the occasional Brit and American voice, and now and then a snatch of French and German, but most of the chat seemed to be in Russian or Paperclip.

A hardtop 110 Land Rover was still parked outside the terminal, either waiting for a pick-up, or until the driver was sure his passenger's flight had actually taken off. For his sake, I hoped he'd brought his thermos and a paper.

Two men came out of the terminal, dragging their carry-ons behind them, and headed towards the sheds. They wore the international uniform of the travelling fifty-something American executive: blue blazer, button-down shirt, chinos, very shiny loafers and a laptop bag for good measure. They were clearly in a good mood, and anxious to share it. Some guys who'd been chatting in French, and switched instantly to English as they approached, were today's lucky winners. 'Hey, good news, fellas. The Vienna flight's at 12.25. We gotta check in now.'

There were sighs of relief and jokes about Georgian inefficiency as the crowd gathered their bags and headed for the terminal.

I stood up just as Charlie emerged from the main entrance, laptop bag on his shoulder. He saw me, up and ready, and turned back.

I was about to follow when I caught a glimpse of the latest TV news bulletin. And what I saw made my body feel so heavy, all of a sudden, I had to sit down again.

Baz's Audi filled the screen.

Then the camera cut to a glistening pool of blood in the mud, directly under the boot. Some of the rubber stops must have been missing from the drainage holes.

The reporter gobbed off, then a policeman answered a series of questions. A string of Paperclip flashed along the bottom of the screen, with what I assumed was a summary of the morning's breaking story.

The camera homed in on the open boot, where the Hulk lay curled up like a baby, the satchel still shoved behind his back. He was big, and a lot darker-skinned than most locals.

It zoomed in even closer on the entry wounds. An ambulance crew stood by as forensics guys took swabs and checked for prints.

I took a casual sip of stone-cold coffee. Third-party awareness: I couldn't look as if I was flapping. There were still people around waiting for their flights, chatting, smoking, ignoring the TV.

I tried to calm myself. I mean, so what? We'd be checking in any minute. In just over an hour, we'd be airborne.

Then my heart switched to rapid fire again, and it wasn't because of the coffee.

With a still of the Audi filling half the screen behind him, a reporter was poking a microphone under the noses of three teenagers in multicoloured shell suits outside the graveyard. Two of them seemed to be explaining what they had seen. The third looked so out of it he wouldn't have known if anyone had fallen on top of him anyway. The first two's hands charted a course across their zit-filled, heroin-racked faces; I tried not to admit it to myself, but fuck it, what was the use – they were describing what I looked like.