Resurrection Day (2 page)

Fawzi's windscreen was streaked with dust and dead flies. The road ahead wasn't up to much, a ribbon of cracked, potholed asphalt. It cut its way through a harsh, deserted landscape of parched, boulder-strewn fields and shale mountains. When the Russians had occupied Azerbaijan the road had been reasonable. Now the country had its autonomy there was no money for repairs.

Three hours into his journey, Fawzi was well pleased. Hardly any traffic — a few lorries heading east towards Baku, weighed down with farm produce, and the odd few country peasants on mule carts. With luck, the convoy would make Shusha in less than another two hours. Fawzi rolled down his window and looked back at the bus-load of Americans, sandwiched between the two police trucks. The convoy was approaching a dangerous gully on his left, the ground falling off to loose rock, boulders and rough brush. He saw the driver swerve to avoid a deep pothole before he righted the bus, narrowly missing the gully. Fawzi sighed with relief.

BOOM!

The sound of a massive explosion fifty yards behind him made Fawzi jump. Missile, something in his mind told him. He sensed the whispering sounds of fragments in the air, and a split second later there was a second explosion, the crack of a fuel tank erupting. Fawzi jerked round, saw the first police truck completely disintegrate in a blaze of red-and-orange flame. Suddenly debris rained down, twisted clumps of metal hammering on the roof and bonnet of his car. A wheel crashed into the road ten feet in front of him, the rubber tyre in flames as it bounced away.

'Stop the car!' Fawzi roared at his driver. 'Stop the fucking car!'

The man slammed on the brakes. With a surge of adrenalin Fawzi yanked open the door and jumped out, pulling out his pistol, his driver following. Fawzi saw that the bus was blocked by the blazing truck. The second truck at the rear had already halted and his men were jumping down, cocking their weapons. Fawzi tried to determine the source of the missile, turned to look up at the mountains. His blood ran cold. Another missile came streaking down from the hills, zooming through the air with white smoke pluming from its tail.

'Oh my God! No!' Fawzi pleaded, the missile hurtling towards him like a deadly comet. 'Get down!' he roared at his driver, and threw himself to the ground.

The missile screamed over their heads and exploded. The second truck disintegrated with an almighty detonation, sending a ball of flame and oily black smoke fifty feet into the air. Those of Fawzi's men who were still in the truck, and the others who had clambered off the back, were vaporised or blown out of the vehicle with incredible force, their bodies hurled into the air, then raining down in a shower of smouldering debris and flesh. The few survivors, some on fire or badly wounded by shrapnel, screamed and writhed in agony.

'Bastards!' Fawzi snarled at his unseen attackers, but he didn't move, waiting for yet another missile to strike the bus or his car. With the two trucks in flames, the bus was trapped and vulnerable. He saw the desperate Americans inside, terror etched on their faces as the driver tried to steer the bus off the road and manoeuvre it free.

Then it happened.

Fawzi heard the angry roar of engines. Looking to his right, he saw three vehicles race towards the blazing convoy from below some hills two hundred metres away, kicking up trails of dust in their wake.

As they came closer, Fawzi saw they were half-top Japanese four-wheel-drives, groups of men standing up in the back. When they were a hundred metres away the occupants opened fire. Weapons stuttered, sparks flew off torn metal, and the front windscreen of the bus was raked with gunshot. It shattered into a thousand fragments, and a slash of crimson was stitched across the driver's chest, his body convulsing behind the wheel.

Then Fawzi saw his car punctured by rapid volleys of machinegun fire.

The surge of adrenalin left him as quickly as it had come, replaced by fear. There was nothing he could do to save anyone. 'Get back to the car!' he roared at the driver. 'Run!'

Fawzi ran. The men in the vehicles continued firing. A round struck his driver in the back. The man yelped like an injured animal, spun to the ground and was struck again. A round punched Fawzi in the right arm, like a hammer blow, but he kept running.

'Please, God ... Please ... save me.'

Reaching the car, he clambered into the driver's seat, started the engine. As the car jerked forward, a burst of machinegun fire raked the bodywork. Fawzi was struck in the right shoulder. He lost his grip on the steering wheel and skidded off the road's edge. The car bounced down into the gully in an avalanche of dirt, rock, torn brush and shredded metal, crashed into a boulder with a sickening thud, and flipped over. Fawzi's head bounced hard off the roof, knocking him unconscious.

When he came to seconds later he was upside down in the driver's seat, in excruciating pain from his wounds, astonished still to be alive and that the petrol tank hadn't ignited. He cried out in agony, tried to crawl out of the wreckage but froze when he heard rocks tumbling down. He tried to see back up the gully. What he saw struck fear in his heart. Four tough-looking men with Kalashnikovs were clambering down, dressed in camouflaged army fatigues and menacing black woollen balaclavas, only their eyes visible through the slits. The men halted halfway down, studied the crashed, bullet-punctured wreck until Fawzi heard one of them say, 'Forget it. He's dead. Get back to the bus.'

The men climbed back up to the road. Fawzi's relief didn't last. Seconds later he heard the deafening crackle of sustained gunfire, the terrifying screams of men being executed. Fawzi's blood turned to ice and he wanted to throw up. Moments later he heard engines start up and a convoy of vehicles drive away. Fawzi was still in shock, the gunshot wounds in his arm and shoulder throbbing mercilessly. His shirt was drenched in blood and his mind tortured by questions. What had happened up on the road? Had the Americans been executed along with his injured men? And why? Why had his convoy been attacked and massacred? And who were the attackers?

A swarm of flies buzzed around him, scenting blood. Fawzi closed his eyes, cried with pain, cursed the day he had become a policeman. His mother had been gone fifteen years, buried in the chalk hills above Baku, but he called for her now, called her name as he lay there in the bullet-ridden car, praying to God that someone would find him soon before he bled to death.

Montreal, Canada 9 November 9 p.m.

A ghostly flurry of icy sleet drifted across the bridge of the Estonian freighter Tartu. Captain Viktor Kalugin, smoking a half-finished cigarette, snug behind the warmth of the ship's plate-glass window, lifted his binoculars and scanned Montreal harbour, looming less than a mile away in the freezing darkness of the St Lawrence river.

The metal plates of the rusting, sixteen-thousand-tonne vessel he mastered shuddered and creaked beneath his feet as he stared at the blaze of lights from the towering skyscrapers filling the city skyline, their mammoth shapes reflected in the river. The same river French settlers led by Maisonneuve had sailed down from Quebec to found Montreal in 1642, and as fine a natural harbour as you would find anywhere.

'Fifteen minutes to dock,' called the first officer.

Kalugin judged the estimate to be about right. There was a slight swell, an eight-knot wind, nothing for him to worry about. The first officer was a trusted and experienced man who knew the St Lawrence seaway as well as his captain did. Kalugin put down his binoculars, took a nervous drag on his cigarette, crushed it in the ashtray at his elbow. 'Take her in the rest of the way. I'll be below in my quarters if you need me.'

Kalugin went down the metal steps to his private quarters. For eight months of the year the cabin served as his home, the photographs on his desk of his wife and two sons reminders of his other life back in Estonia. After fifteen years serving in the Soviet navy, he had resigned and taken a master's job with a private shipping line operating out of Tallinn. These days, you had to go wherever the money was.

And it was money that made Kalugin risk his career that cold November evening as he unlocked his desk drawer with a key he took from his trouser pocket. Inside, underneath a thick sheaf of paperwork, was another key, this one secured by some thin metal wire to a three-inch chunk of brass, so Kalugin wouldn't mislay it. Slipping the key into his pocket, he relocked the drawer. Then he stepped out of his cabin, shut the door after him, and anxiously made his way along the corridor to the port cabin.

Kalugin rapped twice on the metal door, and twice again, before he slipped the key into the lock. When he stepped inside, the cramped, twin-bunked cabin was in darkness. The light nicked on as the Tartu's only passenger sat up listlessly and Kalugin closed the door behind him.

The Russian wasn't tall but he was reasonably well built, his body taut and fit. He was a handsome, lean-faced man. Where exactly in Russia he was from Kalugin couldn't tell, because the passenger had barely spoken a single word to him during the entire ten-day crossing. The cabin had been his home for the journey, an electronic chessboard his only companion to help take his mind off the angry waves of the harsh Atlantic. 'Better prepare yourself. We'll be docking in fifteen minutes.'

The Russian nodded. Already he was pulling on a dark blue windcheater, impatient to quit the stuffy confines of the cabin.

'You know the drill,' Kalugin advised. 'You don't move until the harbour officials and the crew have disembarked. You don't speak to anyone as you leave the ship, keep your head down and trail behind the crew. Your papers all look in order, so you shouldn't have any trouble. After that, you're on your own.'

'My thanks for your hospitality, Captain.' It was the first complete sentence the man had spoken to Kalugin since he'd boarded. The captain still couldn't place the Russian's accent, but couldn't have cared less. He grunted, put his hand on the doorknob. 'I'll be back when it's time for you to leave. Until then, it would be wise if you remained locked in the cabin.'

Twenty minutes after the Tartu had moored, an inspector from the Canadian Customs Office, accompanied by an officer from the Immigration Department, strode up the gangplank. Kalugin knew both men from previous visits and led them down for mugs of steaming coffee in the mess-room, where he signed the four copies of the ship's manifest, the declaration listing his vessel's cargo, the port of origin and the cargo's final destination. The crew had been assembled, and they waited to present their crewman's papers to the immigration officer for inspection, before each was issued with a seaman's shore permit, allowing him freely to enter and leave the port while the Tartu was docked. Finally, the immigration officer handed the list to Kalugin for signature. Because the captain or his shipping company had no known record of violation, the visit was no more than a necessary formality. No search of the ship was conducted, nor was the cargo examined.

Ten minutes after the two officials had left the Tartu, Kalugin, smoking anxiously, stood hunched over the starboard rail, watching as most of his crew left the ship, intent on a night of whoring and drinking in downtown Montreal. Kalugin would have his own fun ashore, but later, when his business was done. Timing it until the last crew member had gone down the gangplank, he tossed away his cigarette and retreated back down to the cabin.

His passenger was already waiting, wearing his windcheater, the hood covering his head and most of his face, a thick woollen hat and scarf concealing his features. He carried no luggage, but clutched in his hand were his forged passport, crew papers and shore permit. 'Ready?' Kalugin asked.

The man nodded.

On the starboard deck, Kalugin pulled up his collar and watched from the rail as the passenger went down the gangplank. The engineer's mate, busy checking a hoist on the far side of the freezing deck, barely gave him a glance. The Russian headed towards the harbour exit, trailing behind the crew. The customs and immigration officers on duty made no attempt to check the identities of any of the Tartu's crew leaving the docks, preferring to remain in the warmth of their offices, and the Russian passed out of the port unchallenged and disappeared into the bitterly cold Montreal night. Kalugin had no idea who he really was, nor did he care. An illegal immigrant, he had been told by the Chechen who had brought him on board, after midnight, in Tallinn, the day before his crew had joined ship, an explanation he didn't question. Kalugin's reward had already been deposited in a Helsinki bank account under a false name.

The captain spat over the rail and smiled to himself, happy in the knowledge that he was twenty thousand US dollars the richer. 'Good luck to you, whoever you are.'

By midnight, the passenger had reached the small town of Dunstan, a mile from the Canadian-US border. The Egyptian-born cab-driver who picked him up outside Montreal's Catherine Street underground station had simple instructions: take his passenger to the back road half a mile outside Dunstan and leave him there. Don't speak unless spoken to and don't look at the passenger's face. Less than ninety minutes later, the driver dropped his passenger exactly where he had been instructed, then turned his cab round and headed back to Montreal.

The back road outside Dunstan was heavily forested on either side with pine and birch trees. US Immigration had installed remote infrared cameras on many of the minor crossings in isolated and wooded countryside where no border posts existed, but across a vast, 3,500-mile frontier, there were still thousands left unguarded, and this was one of them, protected only by sporadic Canadian and US patrols.

The man left the road and trekked through the forest darkness for half a mile until he came to a narrow dirt track that cut through the woods into upstate New York. A blue Explorer four-wheel-drive was parked on the track, its lights extinguished.

A young woman sat in the driver's seat. When she saw him come out of the woods she stepped out of the vehicle. Even in the watery lunar light it was obvious that the woman was very pretty. Mediterranean-looking, with dark hair and high cheekbones, she wore a brown suede jacket over a pale grey sweatshirt, blue jeans tucked into ankle boots, a scarf and gloves to keep out the chill. When the Russian reached her, the woman hugged him, kissed him on both cheeks. 'It's good to see you, Nikolai. I'm so glad you're safe.'

The man smiled back. 'And I you. Did you miss me, Karla?' She smiled up at him. 'You know I did.' She touched his face, kissed him again, gently pulled away. 'Come, we'd better move, Nikolai. We've a long drive ahead of us.'