Total Fallout Page 3

  A broad smile appeared on Al Nayef’s face. ‘Did you see how I stood up, and waved my fist at you?’

  ‘I did,’ Tate said.

  ‘It was something I saw in a film. It felt like the right thing to do.’

  Tate humoured him. ‘It was. You looked brave.’

  Al Nayef shrugged and dipped his head, abashed like a teenager. ‘Was I convincing?’

  ‘Totally.’

  ‘I practised.’

  Tate frowned, concerned. ‘Where was this? Did anyone see you?’

  ‘No. No one saw me. I was on my own, in my cabin. I watched several Hollywood action films to study their technique.’

  ‘Armchair warriors are the most dangerous,’ Fox said.

  Tate coughed back a laugh.

  Al Nayef went on, ‘And like a Hollywood film you used blanks in your gun, but it was highly realistic.’

  ‘Extremely,’ Tate agreed. In fact, his first and third magazines had been loaded with standard rounds; it was only the second that he had “shot” Al Nayef with that had contained blanks.

  Al Nayef extended his hand to shake Tate’s. ‘All because of you I am here. You are a good man.’

  ‘But his fashion sense is a bit shite,’ Fox said.

  Tate shook Al Nayef’s hand. ‘I’ll leave you both to it.’

  ‘Cheers, sonny,’ Fox said, and winked.

  Unlike everyone else, Tate still looked like an extra from Miami Vice. He shut the door and took the stairs to the first floor. Stage one of the mission was over, but it was far too soon to relax. The authorities in Monaco, France and neighbouring Italy would all by now be aware that an attack had taken place. Rescue boats would be searching for Al Nayef, or his body, and Tate’s description of course had been circulated. Tate thought about Al Nayef. He’d seemed more excited than scared, as though it was an adventure and he wasn’t running for his life, as though he’d not quite comprehended the seriousness of his situation.

  Perhaps if he saw what Tate was about to do now, the true precariousness of the situation would hit him? But Tate knew Al Nayef must not see what was in the room he was about to enter.

  Tate walked into the master bedroom and shut the door behind him. Plastic sheeting covered the room and reminded Tate of an episode of Dexter. A pile of crumpled, damp clothes lay on the floor. A naked male body was positioned squarely on a plastic sheet next to this. The corpse was intact with the exception of a missing lower jaw, but the face had been mutilated. Deep lacerations cut right across it; the nose was missing and the cheekbones broken. The dead man’s unrecognisable face looked as though it had got in the way of a heavy ship’s propeller.

  A supply of surgical masks, gloves and white protective coveralls lay on the bed. Tate donned a set then moved to the corpse and dressed it with difficulty in Al Nayef’s clothes.

  Ten minutes later Tate stood back to admire his grotesque creation. This had once been someone’s son, perhaps someone’s brother, husband or father. An abrupt sense of remorse tightened his chest. He had once also been someone’s son, and so had his brother but unlike the corpse before him they both lived whilst their parents did not. And the man who had murdered their parents – Ruslan Akulov – was still free. Tate felt his remorse turn to anger.

  ‘Do we know who he was?’ Fox said, as he appeared behind Tate, a cup of coffee in his hand.

  Tate answered without looking up. ‘No idea. All I know is that he was delivered here and is fresh enough to pass for our friend downstairs.’

  ‘Dental records?’

  ‘That’s probably why the lower jaw is missing, too tricky to copy.’

  ‘Poor bastard.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I didn’t mean laughing boy here, I meant Al Nayef. Today he’s royalty, tomorrow he’s just Joe Public.’

  Tate stretched his back. ‘That’s the name SIS should have put on his new passport.’

  A smile split Fox’s craggy face. ‘I haven’t given you yours yet, have I?’

  ‘No.’ Tate frowned.

  Fox let his smile turn into a grin. ‘I wouldn’t shave until you’ve checked it out.’

  Tate removed the coveralls, gloves and mask. ‘So can I have it?’

  Fox reached inside the pocket of his denim jacket. ‘Here.’

  It was a genuine United Kingdom passport, and had been aged in order to not rouse suspicion. Tate looked at the photograph page. He closed his eyes and sighed. It was a real photo of himself, with a sensible haircut but it had a Hulk Hogan, horseshoe-style moustache that drooped around either side of his mouth.

  Chapter 2

  Topeka, Kansas, USA

  It was June the 12th – Russia Day – and Ruslan Akulov sat at a booth in the back of a diner in Kansas, almost the geographical centre of the continental United States. Physically he was very far from Russia but gastronomically, much nearer. The diner in Topeka’s Little Russia neighbourhood had been open for over seventy years serving Russo-German food. Akulov bit into a pickle, which reminded him of those his grandmother made in her village on the outskirts of Moscow. It was a little after eleven in the morning and although the place had just opened, more than half of its thirty-five covers were full. A half-dozen booths lined one side of the diner and six bar stools faced the full-length bar on the other; a couple of tables had also been squeezed in near the back wall to accommodate latecomers.

  A police officer wandered in and took one of the remaining bar stools. He greeted the old guy serving and within a minute a large plate of ham salad appeared in front of him. Akulov took a piece of his own ham; it was the best he’d had in a while. There was a comfort here that Akulov missed. He was a citizen of nowhere and belonged to no community. He was Russian, yet the passport he carried was American and the language he used now was Boston-accented English. He ate another pickle. Akulov didn’t think of himself as a sentimental person and had no strong attachment to anything or anyone; in fact, the only family he still had were those men he’d served with in the Russian Army. Yet even his old classified Spetsnaz unit, known only as the Werewolves, was disbanded and its surviving members scattered. Some he knew were dead, a few worked for private military companies, and others had simply vanished.

  To the world Akulov had vanished too, disappearing into the American heartland. But to do what he still did not know. To start again, to be reborn or to sit and grow old in obscurity? Regardless, he was no longer Ruslan Akulov; he had become Russel Cross, a thirty-six-year-old independent insurance broker, a job so dull-sounding that when asked what he did for a living, he was never probed further.

  Akulov knew a little about the brokerage business, but not insurance brokerage. It had been his broker who, for a thick fee, had facilitated his past contracts. When he’d dropped out of the circuit, his broker had lost a sizeable meal ticket and, he imagined, was less than happy. As a habit Akulov occasionally checked the “draft folder” of an internet-based email account. There his broker left messages for him, unsent therefore untraceable as emails, and deleted by the reader once read. Only he and the broker knew the password to the account and the name in itself was a random mixture of numbers and letters that meant nothing to either of them. This was also where his broker would leave a link to a dedicated page on the dark web where details of each new contract were posted for a specified time before being deleted. Randomly the broker would leave details of the next account to be used.

  It was a simple, secure and trusted system. Each time Akulov accessed the email account he used a one-time burner phone, and given both the illegality of their actions and the sums of money involved, he was as certain as he could be that his broker had done the same.

  Broker. Akulov let the smallest of smirks appear on his lips. The broker was actually his agent.

  Akulov pulled a new burner phone from his pocket and powered it up. As he waited for it to log on to the cellular network – he didn’t trust Wi-Fi – he continued to eat his early lunch. Any moment now he expected to have company at his table, and
when that happened he would either need to leave or close down the phone.

  He logged in to the email account. He had read but not deleted the messages his broker had sent him since his disappearance. The first had appeared a month afterwards. It had been simple, one line, direct to the point: ‘Where are you?’ It was followed two weeks later by ‘Are you alive?’ There had been several more in between and the last he’d received had been two months previously. It simply stated, ‘If you have read this you are in danger.’ He’d ignored it. The words were nonspecific, meaningless and could have been a ploy.

  Akulov blinked as he saw the new message appear in the folder. He couldn’t understand it. ‘British Intelligence have conformation you survived your last contract. They are actively searching for you. Kill/capture.’

  Akulov frowned. The last contract, the assassinations, the hit list given to him. It had included three British diplomats, two he had liquidated. But it had also listed high-ranking American targets, and he had killed all three of those. Why was it the British who sought him, and not the Americans? Why was it not a joint mission? It was a riddle, and he hated those. If he replied it was confirmation he was alive, but if he didn’t …

  The door opened. A middle-aged couple stepped inside and looked about. They saw his table and started to approach. Decision made, he deleted the message and tapped a two-word reply: ‘Why? Explain.’

  Akulov stood, approached the counter and with a nod handed two notes, a $20 and a $10 to the old guy serving.

  Outside dark storm clouds now dominated the sky and a light wind blew spots of rain into his face as he walked to his hire car. The Challenger was parked between an old pick-up and a Ford Explorer in police livery. He got in and turned the ignition. Instantly the 5.7-litre Hemi V8 engine rumbled to life. American muscle, it put the faintest of smiles on Akulov’s face. He slowly reversed, looked back at the single-storey, red-fronted diner and then sped off down Porubsky Drive.

  More rain now started to hit his windshield and the clouds had become darker still. And then rain started to hammer on the windows of the car like stormy fists as he carried on along the road. He was leaving yet another place his nomadic existence prevented him from knowing. Guessing and second-guessing the opposition, those who had hunted him, who had sought to kill him, had made for a life of continual movement, one that he had tried to escape but one that now was reaching for him once again. Wipers frantically pushed the rain away from his screen. The lives he had taken, the dreams he had destroyed were now preventing him from living his own.

  He passed a couple on foot, hand in hand, without an umbrella between them. Hair was plastered to their faces, clothes were clinging to their bodies, their eyes were locked on each other. Loneliness gnawed at Akulov. He had been in a crowded diner but was a man forever alone. This was not the life he had been forced to choose; this was the life he had been created for. Forged out of Mother Russia’s strongest materials and tempered by experience, Akulov was no longer a man. He was a weapon.

  Wichita, Kansas, USA

  Akulov had chosen the town because he’d liked the name and the hotel because it was anonymous, part of a mid-level chain and incorporating a conference centre. A dozen near-identical domestic sedans sat in the parking lot. He found a space for his Challenger around the side of the building where it was less likely to draw attention. He entered the hotel reception and took a room for two nights – it gave him options – and showed his driving licence and credit card issued in the name of “Russel Cross”. A middle-aged man with a fixed smile and dull eyes handed him his key card and explained there was a free hotel shuttle service to and from Dwight D. Eisenhower Airport, just 0.9 miles away, should he need it, and then wished him a “pleasant evening”.

  Akulov found his room, which was as requested on the end of the block. Once inside he locked the door and placed a rubber wedge underneath it for added security. The room had a red feature wall. He was glad it was behind the bed so he wouldn’t have to look at it. A card boasting “free Wi-Fi” was on the credenza in front of a large flat-screen TV. Akulov sat on the bed and powered up a new burner smartphone using the cellular network. He logged in to the email account he shared with his broker.

  And there in the draft folder was a new message.

  ‘British intelligence have confirmed your identity as the Camden bomber. One week before the EMP attack on the US last year, a smartphone was discovered during the renovation of a commercial property overlooking the site of the Camden bombing. It contained video footage taken of the attack. In this video you are seen abandoning a van at the entrance to Camden Market, then walking away to detonate both the IED and the vest worn by your accomplice. The UK believe you masterminded the attack and recruited the Chechen. The final death toll was thirty-one. This included the parents of the brothers Simon Hunter and Jack Tate – both employees of SIS.’

  Akulov sat back and closed his eyes. This was why it was the British and not the Americans who were after him. Assassinating key individuals was one thing but committing an unprovoked act of terror in London was something completely different. He remembered vaguely the news stories at the time. Two devices had been detonated together: a huge car bomb in a panel van and a suicide vest worn by an illegal immigrant from Chechnya. Camden Market had been instantly transformed from a vibrant sea of shoppers into a scene of carnage. Akulov reread the message, willing it to have changed.

  Akulov dropped the phone on the bed and sat in silence for several long minutes before raising his hands to rub his face. His hands were shaking. He clenched and unclenched his fists. The shaking subsided, reduced to a quiver, but did not disappear completely.

  Images of the dead, those he had killed, and there were many, played in his head, passing in front of his eyes like an internal cinema screen, a grotesque trailer. He saw their faces, the moment of their deaths, and the waxy pallor as they became lifeless shells. But what he did not see were any innocents. What he did not see were any targets liquidated in London.

  Akulov followed the link his broker had left and accessed a page on the dark web. Here he saw the footage the British authorities had been using to investigate the attack. It wasn’t just one video, it was a collection of videos. Two from interconnecting Camden Council CCTV cameras and one from a Transport for London camera affixed to a bridge. These three did not show his face. The most damning of all footage was from a tourist’s smartphone. The smartphone that had been lost. It clearly showed Akulov in the background exiting a panel van, walking away, turning before the next corner to look back and then pressing a button on a mobile device to trigger the explosions.

  There was a problem.

  It wasn’t him.

  He was never there.

  He was being framed.

  Akulov’s face was now an emotionless mask as he watched and rewatched the footage, each time trying to see where it had been manipulated, how his image had been inserted into the scene. But there were no tell-tales, no distortion or image pixilation. Although he had had some training, he was by no stretch of the imagination a computer specialist. What they had done couldn’t be possible.

  As far as he saw it there were three ways to prove he was not the man in the footage. Firstly to establish that the footage had been doctored, secondly to establish the identity of the real perpetrator and thirdly to confirm that he had been somewhere else at the exact same time.

  He memorised the address, closed the page and then tapped in a Google search for the Camden bombing and confirmed the date. He knew where he had been, but he also knew that getting confirmation of that was an all but impossible task. In fact, the only person who knew for sure that he had not been in London on that date was the broker who had sent him on another contract on the other side of the world.

  He had no idea how the footage had been manipulated. He did, however, have an idea of who the real bomb-maker may have been. The bombing had taken out the Hunters, and the fact that his broker had mentioned them was a sign. He knew fro
m the attack on the US the previous year that Maksim Oleniuk – his last employer – had ordered the hit on them. And Oleniuk’s private military company “Blackline” had sourced its specialists exclusively from his broker.

  He needed to think. Akulov slipped off the bed and onto the floor. He snapped off thirty hard, fast press-ups, then changed the position of his hands, bringing them together to work on the inside of his chest. He sat up, his chest warm, and thought about his broker. A fellow Russian, who before the implosion of the mighty Soviet Union had been a KGB intelligence officer. The broker’s identity was a secret but Akulov had refused to work for someone whose name he did not know. Knowing each other’s identity was a failsafe and like the Cold War status quo, mutually assured destruction was guaranteed if either talked. And neither had. His broker had grown richer from Akulov’s completed contracts and the halo effect of controlling Russia’s most feared assassin continuously brought in both new contracts and clients.

  Akulov turned, and started to do sit-ups. He knew his broker had handled this contract and chosen the contractor from a small pool of talent. And that talent pool contained many operators personally known to Akulov. He continued to train his stomach until it burned before he got up, moved to the bathroom and showered.

  Towel-dry he sat on the bed and was back in the email draft folder. Now a myriad of questions swirled in his head, but he deleted the broker’s message and tapped in only the most important: ‘Give me his name.’

  Rising from the bed, he was about to power off the handset, remove its SIM card and flush it down the toilet but he had a better idea. He checked his watch: it was still early. He decided he would take the free shuttle to the airport.