The Oktober Projekt (6 page)

‘A possibility,’ Palmer-Fenton said, not committing himself.
 
‘If we get anything else…’

‘I’ll be across the river with Rossan,’ said Jane.

‘Right ho,’ he said, watching her hurry out.

Burning with an anger she couldn’t quite quell, she set off
over the river, the stiff October air clinging to her coat and hair after her
walk over Vauxhall Bridge; the peevish glare of headlights stinging her eyes as
she avoided the main entrance to Vauxhall Cross where marble clashed with
gleaming chrome and smoked blast-proof glass. Jane pounded on; round to a
discreet entrance reserved for senior staff and swiped herself in, entering one
of the gates watched over by internal security officers.
 
Supervising Jane’s entry, a square
dumpy dyed-blonde called Lorna who controlled the gate from a blast proof pod.
A thirty-year old with an incurable frown, Lorna was ticking off the days to
her wedding that she was assiduously planning between controlling her sets of
gates, remote cameras and a section of the basement car park’s sliding mesh
gates.

‘Fifty-two to go,’ sang Lorna, electronically admitting Jane
after her card had been scanned once more.

 
‘I hope he’s worth
it,’ Jane called over her shoulder making for Lift 1. Stepping out on the
eighth floor the drawn faces and distinct chill that greeted her were
intensified by the neutrally painted walls, done in a Farrow & Ball hue
called Pale Hound. Nodding at Alison Moss, Executive Director from Personnel
whose striking face was unusually tense, Jane cursed as she saw Tony Crost. A
diminutive Service lawyer, Director of Legal Affairs and an inveterate snob, he
was seated in a Nicca armchair in a meeting bay part way along the floor.
 

Striding on, Jane was hailed by Crost’s shrill call. ‘My dear
Jane, what a calamity, am I correct, one hand lost and one missing?’ cooeed
Crost, patting an armchair beside him.

Refusing the invite to sit, Jane filled a cup from the water
cooler as Crost wheedled over to her, taking her to one side with a
conspiratorial hand on her arm.

‘Word travels fast,’ said Jane without any warmth.

‘Bad news faster than the rest,’ he announced, letting go of
Jane as he dispensed a coffee from a Flavia drinks station. ‘More work for me
and my boys and gals, that’s the reason I’ve been summoned,’ he said, blowing
the heat from his coffee, his eyes pointing down the floor to C’s lair. ‘Do
tell me more,’ he urged. ‘I hear the missing hand is none other than Nicholas
Torr, our gallant swashbuckler. You know I am discretion personified.’

‘You’re a born gossip, Tony.’

Despite his olive skin, Crost still managed a blush.

‘Good Lord, that is a bit harsh my dear girl. I thought we had
ironed out our differences after your glorious return from Washington last
year, remember?’

How could she forget? Two months of sub-zero handshakes with
senators more interested in her body than her mind or her work as she headed a
joint cyber counter-terrorism working group, followed by a month of clearing
legal hurdles with a leering Crost.

‘I can’t confirm or deny,’ Jane said, sighting-up a clear exit
from the meeting bay. ‘I’ll tell Nick that you were asking after him.’ Crost
smiled but Jane could tell she’d hit a nerve.

 
‘Now, now, old
girl, there’s no point trying to hoodwink me. My sources are extremely
reliable.’

‘Goodness, Tony, have you taken up cooking?’

She made a dash for freedom and heard Crost’s ‘Impossible
woman,’ echo after her as Jane clenched her fists and rapped on Rossan’s door.

‘I’m in.’

Silenced by Rossan’s raised hand, Jane was directed to a soft
chair in front of his desk while he dealt with a call, handing out a severe
berating to an unfortunate soul for some oversight.

‘Of course I expect you to inform me immediately, you cretin,’
snarled Rossan, slamming down the phone.

Sitting back, he studied her with a long gaze, one that gave
him an unusual intense sobriety. Up out of his chair he was off, a man with
something essential to do. ‘How they holding up over there? What’s the latest?
Fancy a tea? No, of course not, you’re a coffee person.’ Rossan batted out the
questions in a quick covering arc of fire as he crossed the room.

‘No one’s any wiser, nothing has been confirmed or denied by
Moscow.’

‘No, I’ve been liaising with the Cousins, and as far as Langley
can gather, we’ve taken a major hit,’ Rossan grumbled, not bothering to look up
from his position; slouched by the long tablet window overlooking the Thames,
pouring mineral water into a disposable cup, studying the contents. He brought
a litre bottle with him each morning, rationing it frugally at hourly
intervals.

‘Downing Street and the FCO are already prattling about deals,
exchanges, discreet handovers if anyone has survived.’

Above a mahogany bookcase a line of framed photos depicting
Rossan’s career meandered around the room. From a group of laughing students
scrummed around Mercury fountain in Christ Church’s Tom Quad, to grey faced men
taking Rossan’s hand on retiring, somehow they all bore the foretaste of bitter
memories; this is what I’ve done, my moment. Remember me this way.
 

‘And are we going to comply?’ Jane asked.

‘Bloody better do.’ Screwing on the bottle top he glanced at
the raw morning light swelling over the city, pushing down from the north. ‘But
that’s not my decision.’

Behind Jane, Rossan’s secretary sneaked open the door.

‘Mr. Hawick and the Chief are running late, but should be ready
in fifteen minutes Miss Stratton.’
 

‘Am I not summoned to attend, Maureen?’ Rossan asked,
quizzically arching an eyebrow. Shaking her head, Maureen closed the door with
a neat click.

Leaving the cup on the windowsill Rossan strode over to his
desk, the metal tips on his heels a precise manoeuvre in sound. When he sat
down the scuffed leather chair squealed. Glancing down at a single sheet
squared in the middle of his blotter, Rossan looked up before even reaching the
last line; his sharp blue eyes snapped on Jane like a gun dog sighting its
first downed grouse.
 

‘My schedule is clogged solid as it is,’ he said loftily.
Heading off Jane’s apology with a raised hand, Rossan sat back. ‘Teddy and the
Chief don’t regard Roly and me as their natural supporters.’

‘I just want to get Nick or Alistair home,’ Jane sighed, the
hairs on the back of her neck tingling. Through the smoked grey window the
pallid morning grew stronger, forcing tines of light through a dark band of
cloud.

‘Who doesn’t?’ he said, his sophistry surfacing.

A ball of tension spun through her and whether it came from a
lack of sleep or empty stomach, Jane couldn’t decide. ‘It’s Moscow flexing its
muscles,’ she said.

‘Is it?’ He gave a vulpine smile, the eyebrow arched higher.
‘Have that on good authority, do you?’

‘Come on Paul, you know Moscow have been looking for a strong
hand since Litvinenko.’
         

‘Haven’t they just,’ said Rossan. Alexander Litvinenko, a
perennial thorn in the Service’s side, an ex-Russian FSB officer who, once
granted asylum against Rossan and Roly Blackmore’s wise counsel, turned on his
former Moscow masters in print, and for his endeavours he was painfully
terminated with a dose of radiation. ‘And we’ve given them one, that what
you’re implying?’ He leant forward, elbows planted on his desk.
                  

‘You mean by someone here?’ Jane flared.

‘Someone somewhere, has to be.’

Angry at Rossan’s flippancy a giddy twitch floated around her
tummy along with an itch deep in her palms she couldn’t ease.

‘Something I don’t know about, Paul?’

Again, he refused her. Keeping his distance which might only
have constituted a desk length, yet it seemed an endless expanse to Jane after
his supercilious shrug. ‘Hardly, you and Teddy seem to have the answers to
everything.’

‘On what?’ She demanded with feeling.

Surprised by Jane’s passion, Rossan cast around the desk and
hooked up a photograph of his wife Rebecca, wiping an imaginary smear off the
glass. Even at home Rossan continually ran into female intolerance,
indifference or anger. Rebecca, a debutante who’d sparkled quite considerably
in her youth, had never forgiven him when she lost her figure after the birth
of their son and daughter.

‘You’d have to ask C or Teddy,’ he said, seeming too pale under
the light.
 

Jane saw it clearly now, the reason for Rossan’s obfuscation;
it was her rise in C’s estimation, her new standing in the order of battle. ‘No
one’s been written off including Nick or Alistair,’ Jane said. She waited for
her anger to subside, to find its equilibrium.

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

‘You should be.’
        

‘Good, I’m relieved we’ve reached a mutual understanding.’

Except she didn’t think they’d reached anything mutual. ‘I’d
better go,’ she said.

‘Of course, won’t do to keep the Chief or Teddy waiting.’

Closing Rossan’s door she pondered on his scheming, all the way
along to her own office.

• • •

Nick had been checked over by a surly
Russian military medic en route to Moscow. Diagnosed with cracked ribs, severe
lacerations, a flesh wound and a couple of loose teeth, he’d been given an
injection to ease the pain, followed by a second the medic never fully
explained. Pronounced reasonably fit, Nick was officially handed over on the
city outskirts and rapidly transferred to a plain van.

Wasn’t it simply marvellous how the world revolved thought
Nick, moving slowly, his arms and legs reacting as though on time delay. Voices
reached him from his left, heading out in a widening arc, low then high. Nick
wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, unable to decide which was hot,
which cold. In the distance a helicopter swept by, the engine feint and hoarse.
Blinking hard he tried to focus, but something strange was going on with his
eyes that seemed to insist he wasn’t in the van, but lying in a forest.

Forcing himself up he started along an ancient logger’s track,
weaving through thickening snow, dipping and bumping along the curving high
banks protecting the track. This far into the forest the sun never came and the
air was frosty and sharp, tempered by pine. On through the underwood he avoided
prone trunks of rotting timber, here and there a full trunk held a crooked
branch up in distress. Listening, he heard the helicopter lose height, bank for
another pass. Keeping low, he swung slowly into a small logger’s camp of three
cabins. Breaking cover he kept close to stacked logs and made for the first
cabin.
 

Expecting to feel wood on his palm as he extended a hand to the
cabin door, Nick recoiled from the cold metal skin of the van. Crouched in a
corner he panted for breath, feeling really quite seasick as the van made three
quick turns and slowed to a stop. Outside, a dog let off a long train of barks
and a flat practised voice yelled for it to be quiet. His perception totally
muddled, Nick swam between reality and hallucination. Never accept an injection
from a stranger he thought, always say ‘no’.
 

Two pairs of capable hands half carried and dragged him out of
the van. Trying to stand in a presentable fashion he tumbled to the floor. Like
his life, he thought, things were never what he expected. Lifted and dragged,
Nick was taken down endless corridors, the fixed fluorescent lights hurting his
eyes. Someone gave a brusque order and he was set down in a room and a heavy
door swung closed. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom before
crabbing over to a corner facing the door. It seemed hours until he heard boots
approach in a quickstep as though following his scent. They hadn’t forgotten
about me after all he thought, deciding to do nothing but wait, his body pushed
low. Any time now Nick reasoned, he would be beaten. They dragged him forwards,
then back, yanked him right, then left, and Nick knew this to be his primary
conditioning. This also involved having his hands cuffed painfully behind his
back, while his eyes were roughly covered in a strip of course cloth. Curled
into a protective ball he listened as the boots retreated, concluding the end
of what seasoned interrogators class the ‘happy hour’. As the boots became a
feint echo, Nick forced his mind to follow a different route, to focus on a
direction.

Lost in his own collective world of introspection he missed
their return down the corridor, aware too late of their arrival as a key found
the lock. Swaying as they lifted him to his feet, Nick was guided and pulled up
twenty-four rickety steps into a sterile office prepared in advance for his
arrival. He heard voices low and heavy, one of them a woman, he felt the cold
pinch through his eyes as they uncovered them. Then Nick made one defiant
gesture, a futile headlong rush for the door. Tripped up, sprawled on a rough
bare floor, the woman laughed quietly as they restrained him by his ankles to a
metal chair bolted firmly down.

‘Would you prefer me to speak Russian or English, Nick?’ The
woman asked from behind a desk, her face protected by the halo of light coming
from a desk lamp she aimed directly at him.
 

‘My name’s Peter, not Nick. I’m a tourist and only speak
English,’ Nick said, unwinding his initial cover story. ‘Why am I being treated
like this, I need to contact the British Embassy.’
 

‘We’re here to help you, Nick,’ she offered, her English clear.
‘My name is Anastasiya and my colleague is Alexei and we’d like to get you home
as quickly as possible.’

Nick nodded, wondering if everyone he’d be meeting had picked
their worknames out of a hat. ‘I was hitching a ride and the car I was
travelling in was involved in an accident. That’s why I need to notify my
embassy.’