They moved in, clubs swinging, and both of the men howled and went down. The sergeants pulled them on their feet. Ivanov had seldom seen two drunks sober up so fast. Oleg was actually sobbing.
"Let's get one thing clear. The sergeants will be quite happy to move to your right leg and then each arm in turn, but I detest violence, so listen carefully. Captain Ivanov, if you please!"
Ivanov read the letter. When he was finished, Lermov said, "My warrant from Prime Minister Putin gives me total authority over your destiny. I shall now question you on certain matters relating to your service in the London Embassy that involved you. If you do not tell me the exact truth about what happened, you will be reduced to the ranks and posted to a penal regiment."
They stared at him dumbly, total dismay on their faces. Lermov held up the Putin letter. "This warrant from your Prime Minister gives me the power to do this. I have no more time to waste. Give me your answer."
"Anything, Colonel," Petrovich mumbled.
"That's right, sir," Oleg joined in. "Just tell us what you want to know."
"Then sit down and let's get started."
From then on, it was easy, and they fell over themselves to pour out the truth. Colonel Luzhkov had offered them this very special job to kidnap an American, Blake Johnson, who had just arrived in town and was staying in a top-floor suite at a hotel in Mayfair. A truck that did laundry pickups in the area was available to them, and uniforms to go with it. They explained how they'd gone up in a service elevator, abducted Blake Johnson, returned to the truck, hid him in the rear, and driven away, their destination a private airfield at Berkley Down, where a Russian Falcon was waiting to fly him to Moscow and onwards to Station Gorky.
Then came the business of the truck being forced to stop, an unexpected passenger in the rear, the man in the black hood, who spoke the kind of Russian you'd expect from a Mafia lowlife, who shot Petrovich in the hand and blew away half of Oleg's right ear, then drove off with Blake Johnson in the truck and left them to phone the Embassy for help. Luzhkov had been furiously angry, had referred to the man in the black hood as someone named Dillon, because this Dillon had a reputation for shooting half an ear off people who offended him.
So that was it, all there, a perfect piece of the jigsaw. They sat there, broken and humble, and Lermov didn't even feel grateful. Animali, the Italian word for "scum," was the only way to describe them. Blake Johnson was the enemy, and Lermov knew him only by reputation, but that didn't mean one couldn't feel distaste for what had been planned for him.
He considered it all, then stood and said to the sergeants, "Take these men to a holding cell." He turned to Ivanov. "Put the necessary documentation in hand for their demotion to the ranks and transfer them to an appropriate penal battalion."
Both men gasped in disbelief. "But you promised, Colonel, that if we told you the truth, we'd be all right."
"Yes, I lied, but you thoroughly deserve it." He went to the door, which one of the sergeants opened for him, and walked out.
Both men gasped in disbelief. "But you promised, Colonel, that if we told you the truth, we'd be all right."
"Yes, I lied, but you thoroughly deserve it." He went to the door, which one of the sergeants opened for him, and walked out.
Back in the corner of the officers' bar, he sipped tea and reviewed the situation. It was certainly all coming together, thanks to patient questioning and sound detective work. They were almost there, and then Ivanov came in and sat down opposite him, an edge of excitement to him. He put a transcript on the table.
"Just in from London. Excellent stuff, so I spoke to Major Chelek to confirm."
Lermov poured another glass of tea. "Just tell me."
"GRU computer experts said the London Embassy can access Scotland Yard files, and no one named Ali Selim has a criminal record. The computer checked on other people of that name resident in London and found several, but one seemed particularly interesting-because he was dead."
Lermov said, "Explain."
"Remember the Garden of Eden sailed downriver on Monday afternoon? Well, this Ali Selim was fished out of the river at Wapping two days later."
"Drowned, of course."
"No, his throat was cut."
"I see. What is the source of this information?"
"Grafton Street Morgue in Wapping, where the body was delivered by the paramedics who recovered it. It's all there in the morgue records. A brief report of the recovery of the body, identity and address in a wallet found on the body. He lived at a place called India Wharf on the Thames. The autopsy report indicated that due to possible contamination of the body, cremation was urgent, and this took place at the morgue facility the same day."
"I must say, Ferguson is definitely turning out to be the ruthless bastard of legend. Is that everything?"
"Major Chelek has gone down himself to this India Wharf where Selim lived to see what he can find out. He'll be in touch as soon as possible."
"Then let's have something to eat until he does."
An hour in the canteen, a heavy vegetable broth that was a meal in itself with black bread, and, once again, a glass of the rough red wine.
"Peasant food," Lermov said. "In spite of the delights of the modern world, we still love the kind of food our grandparents enjoyed."
They went back to the office, and, ten minutes later, Ivanov's secure mobile sounded. "Put it on speaker," Lermov ordered.
Ivan Chelek's voice was clear and firm. "Well, here I am on India Wharf, looking out over the Thames, Ivanov. It's raining."
"I'm here also," Lermov told him. "We'll make this a conference call. So where are we at?"
"It seems to be an anchorage surrounded by old Victorian warehouses, most of them boarded up just waiting for a developer to knock them all down. Four motorboats tied up for the winter with canvas covers. No sign of any kind of habitation."
"So Ali Selim didn't live there."
"Oh yes he did. There's a lane at the top with a few old terrace houses and a corner shop. I walked up, tried the shop, and struck gold."
"Go on," Lermov told him.
"The people living in the houses are all Islamics of one kind or another, and the shop was their general store, run by an aging Arab named Hussein. We had the place to ourselves. I'm an old Iraq hand, as no one knows better than you, so I went and locked the front door, took a pistol from my pocket and five hundred pounds in fifties, and put them on the counter. I told him in Arabic that he had a clear choice. He could answer my questions or I would blow his brains out."
"And?" Lermov said.
"Proved a mine of information. Ali Selim was born in London. His father was a seaman off a freighter, in the old days when the Pool of London was thriving. He met and married a cockney white woman. It seems Ali was a very frightening and violent man from his youth. He went to prison on many occasions for robbery, assault, that kind of thing."
"And yet there is no police record on him at Scotland Yard," Ivanov observed.
"Obviously, his record had been wiped clean," Lermov said. "As if he never existed."
"He existed all right," Chelek said. "Apparently, he had relatives in Afghanistan who helped with the poppy trade, and he was into the drug business and made big money."
"Was he interested in the Islamic movement?"
"Not at all. He drank very heavily and made strange remarks when he was drunk, deriding Islam, and mocking such things as the bombing attacks in London by British-born Muslims, saying that he'd done far more that they ever could imagine. He once said to Hussein that they should have come to Belfast with him in the old days and seen some real action."
"Did he indeed?" Lermov said. "So we've established that he was a thoroughly frightening individual who would appear to have some sort of terrorist links in his past, and that's if he is to be believed. Is that it, then?"
"Not quite. Ali Selim lived in a barge anchored in the basin here. He also had an orange motorboat with a huge outboard motor. It was called Running Dog, and he boasted it could do forty knots. Both vessels have disappeared."
"Has Hussein got any explanations for that?" Lermov asked.
"Yes, he sometimes looks after an old greyhound for his son. On the Monday that the meeting was taking place on the Garden of Eden, he locked up his shop at one o'clock and walked the dog down the street, leading to the wharf. As he got to the end of the wharf, he drew back because he saw two men in fluorescent-yellow-and-black jackets being urged off the barge by Ali and pushed towards the Running Dog. The thing is, their hands were tied. Ali was wearing a similar jacket and carrying a large canvas bag."
"Were they talking?"
"It looked like it, but Hussein couldn't hear a thing. He said the weather was terrible, pouring rain, and mist so thick that the Running Dog disappeared as it roared away."
Ivanov said, "And Hussein turned right round and went straight back to the shop and minded his own business."
"I'd say a sensible thing to do, considering his experience of the kind of man Ali Selim was," Lermov told him.
"So what does all this say to us?" Chelek asked.
Lermov said to Ivanov, "I recall you telling me about a small riverboat exploding, an overheated gas tank or something."
Chelek said, "You think that was the Running Dog?"
"I've never been so certain of anything in my life," Lermov said. "This is how I write the story. Ali Selim sets out in the Running Dog to attack the Garden of Eden, probably with a bomb of some kind. I feel that his two prisoners were Kurbsky and Bounine."
"But what happened to Luzhkov?" Ivanov demanded.
"I cannot answer that."
"But what do you feel most probable?"
"Ali Selim is the person most likely to have had the answer. His barge has obviously been spirited away by Charles Ferguson, who has also had his criminal file at Scotland Yard wiped clean. It's as if he never existed. The crematorium at Grafton Street Morgue has taken care of that, reducing him to six pounds of gray ash. It was possibly an oversight on Ferguson's part not to have the morgue records wiped out, too."