Buch lesen: «Cold Blood»

Chapter 1

July 2006. Pushkinskaya Street, Kyiv, Ukraine.

He was woken by the early morning sun warming his face and the excited barks of his neighbour’s dog scampering around on the communal landing, waiting for his master to lock the door and join him. Outside, three floors below, the swish of the street sweepers tidying up the pavements with their birch-twig brooms echoed gently. Aidan Snow opened his eyes and tried to focus on the ceiling. Gradually the image sharpened as his eyes became accustomed to the bright sunlight. He rolled onto his side and his nose found the empty glass bottle of Desna Cognac nestling between his pillow and the arm of the bed settee. Snow was wide awake now and knew that, whatever he tried, he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He was a morning person, which wasn’t exactly a blessing after nights out. Swinging his legs out, he sat up. Never again, he told himself, and not for the first time. The parquet floor was sticky from spilt beer. Snow walked to the balcony doors and opened them, breathing in the fresh morning air. The street-cleaner van approached from the far end of Pushkinskaya Street with hoses spraying water over the dusty road and pavement. Kyiv glowed with pride in the morning sun, the workers below intent on making her even prouder. A well-oiled Soviet machine that still worked fifteen years after the Union had ceased to.

Snow leaned against the balcony railings and gazed at the Ukrainian capital city he now called home; he had yet to tire of the view. To the left, his street, Pushkinskaya, crossed Prorizna Street and carried on downhill through a high, ornate, double arch into Independence Square. To the right it also sloped downhill, crossing both Bogdan Khmelnitsky Street and Boulevard Taras Shevchenko, before ending at Shevchenko Park and University. These were named after the great Ukrainian writer, their equivalent of Shakespeare, and not the Chelsea footballer, as his pal Michael had insisted. Carefree locals drinking beer and enjoying life were to be found at these meeting places at either end of Pushkinskaya, not to mention the bars that dotted its entire length. For the first time since Poland, Snow was at peace, or as near to it as possible. He took another deep breath – at peace, that was, except for the hangover he was battling.

It had been another night of cheap beer and ex-pat posturing at his favourite bar, Eric’s Bierstube. There had been the usual faces: the TEFL teachers sitting in one corner, trying it on with their most promising or largest-breasted students, and the so-called ‘serious businessmen’ in the other, downing shots as toasts to clinch deals. The rest of the clientele had been made up of either ‘new Ukrainians’, trying to look casual in their Boss suits, or local university students sipping slowly.

Snow had sat in his usual corner, his back against the exposed brickwork, and looked on with Mitch Turney and Michael Jones, who played their game of ‘guess the bra size’. As always, the Obolon beer had flowed freely. Michael had guessed at least one correct size before being called home by his wife, Ina. Mitch and Snow had then adjourned to the flat, where one last drink had taken three hours and resulted in five empty beer bottles and the end of the Desna. Mitch had fallen into a taxi and Snow had fallen on the floor.

He took one more deep breath and walked to the kitchen, collecting the empty bottles en route. His head swam. Never again. It was at times like this that being single was both a blessing and a curse. He had no one to tell him not to drink like a fool until all hours, but no one to come back to. So he drank and partied like, as Mitch put it, ‘a college student on midterm break in Tijuana’.

Snow padded around his functional kitchen and removed a carton of yogurt from the fridge, which contained the bachelor’s bare minimum: a block of cheese, milk, yogurt and a hunk of ham. The space usually taken up by beer had been liberated. He sipped the thick local strawberry yogurt straight from the milk-style carton and opened the kitchen window. July, and Kyiv showed no signs of cooling down.

He scratched the mosquito bite on his left buttock. The heat he liked, the heat he enjoyed, but the damn mozzies could be a pain in the arse! They seemed to hide during the day, only to break in and assault him at night if he forgot to plug in the repellent gizmo.

‘You’ve grown soft,’ he told himself. ‘How did you ever pass selection; a man who complains about a few bites?’ The former SAS soldier smiled to himself. ‘Perhaps I have, but it bloody itches.’ Snow pulled open a draw and took out a packet of pills. He popped two and chased them with yogurt. Never on an empty stomach, his mum said.

Saturday morning and in a couple of hours the streets of the capital would be teeming with people. The Kyivites shopping or promenading along the city’s main boulevard – Khreshatik Street – and the visitors from other regions come to sightsee. Kyiv – he loved her. She was graceful, cultured and beautiful, yet overlooked by the West. He hadn’t abandoned her for the holidays like his fellow teachers, but stayed to savour the hot Ukrainian summer.

This would be the start of his third year teaching at Podilsky School International and he felt at home. Kyiv had been the third-largest city of the mighty Soviet Union, but here in the centre, for all its grand buildings, it still retained a village-like atmosphere, with its inhabitants living just off the main shopping streets. Snow hated towns but Kyiv was different, with its vast number of trees – more than any other city in Europe (a local had told him) – several large parks and a river (again, according to the same source, the widest in Europe) running through the middle. It was both town and country in one. Snow was the only foreigner in his building and Kyiv wasn’t yet spoilt by tourism. It was rare to hear a foreign voice on the street, and those he did hear he usually recognised, by sight at least, as belonging to ex-pats or diplomats.

Just over one more month and school would start again. These drinking binges would have to stop, or at least be confined to the weekends. But not yet. He finished his yogurt and dressed in his running gear. Saturday or not, he wouldn’t allow himself to miss a run. It was a rule he had learnt in the SAS and one he wouldn’t forsake now he was a civilian.

Snow took the steps down to the ground floor to warm up his leg muscles before starting his ritual of stretches in the street outside. It was just after 8 a.m. – later than he normally ran, but, as it was a Saturday, there were fewer people up. Running was something that had become second nature to him; it helped clear his mind. He ran most mornings, although this was tough in the Ukrainian winter, with an average temperature of -10°C. It wasn’t the cold that made it difficult, but the ice. Walking up and down the city’s hills was treacherous and running became suicidal. Thus far, Snow had found the solution by running around one of the city’s central stadiums, either ‘Dynamo’, home to the famed football team, or ‘Respublikanski’, built and used for the 1980 Moscow Olympics. The fact that both of these were open to the general public was another Soviet legacy he embraced.

Satisfied he’d stretched enough, he moved off at a steady pace. He ran down Pushkinskaya until he hit Maidan. Dodging the stallholders setting up their kiosks, he pumped his legs up the steep Kostyolna Street. Cresting the hill he entered Volodymyrska Hirka Park. The morning air hadn’t yet become dusty and a breeze blew in from the Dnipro River below. He was taking his weekend route, as he had nowhere to be in a hurry. Reaching the railings overlooking the river, he turned left, following the footpath. The park followed the river until it abruptly ended at the mammoth Ministry of Internal Affairs headquarters. As Snow ran past the building and towards the British Embassy in the adjoining street, he was once again taken by the sheer size of the place. Looking much like the Arc de Triomphe, but larger, he estimated, the Ukrainian government building wasn’t on any international tourist ‘must see’ lists, but he made a point of staring none the less. It was one of the many things that made him want to stay in Kyiv.

Snow had grown up with a love for the unusual. His father had been cultural attaché for the British Embassy, Moscow, in the mid to late Eighties. As such, Snow had been at the embassy school there for much of his formative adolescent years. The upshot of this was that Snow’s Moscow-accented Russian was all but flawless. Ignoring his parents’ protestations that he go to university, he had joined the army immediately after his A-levels. Turning down a chance at officer training, he’d completed the minimum three-year service requirement before successfully passing ‘Selection’ for the SAS. He’d wanted to be a ‘badged member’ ever since seeing the very public ‘Princes Gate’ hostage rescue (Operation Nimrod) at the Iranian Embassy as a nine-year-old in 1980. His parents had laughed it off and bought him a black balaclava and toy gun, but, as the years passed, Snow’s desire to join only increased. Then he was in. His boyhood dream fulfilled and, although begrudgingly, he knew his parents had been a bit proud. Then it all went wrong.

Snow slowed to a walk as he entered Andrivskyi Uzviz. The steep cobbled street, lined with souvenir stalls, art galleries and bars, was quite capable of inflicting a broken ankle on the unwary. He descended the hill. His right thigh had started to throb. The sensation always brought back memories of the accident in Poland, the unbearable pain he had felt, pinned to the backseat of the car, unable to move, unable to reach for a weapon to defend himself. The sound of flames and the vicious scent of petrol filling his lungs. Then that face, the serpentine eyes that had looked into his and pronounced sentence upon him.

Snow shivered in spite of the warm morning air. After the accident the doctors had said he would always walk with a limp; that the bone would be weakened and that the muscles might not knit back together. They advised that he be taken off active duty, given a desk or other duties. He ignored them and attempted to defy all medical opinion by pushing himself harder than he’d ever thought possible. He spent hours in rehabilitation, first with PT instructors and then, later, on his own. He was twenty-four years old and a member of the 22^nd Special Air Service Regiment; no one was going to tell him what he could or couldn’t do.

His effort paid off and the regiment doctor had signed him off as fit for active duty. No limp, just a scar. However, the one thing Snow hadn’t admitted to anyone, least of all himself, was the toll taken by the mental scar. The nightmares, for want of a more macho term, that prevented him from sleeping and turned him from jovial troop member into withdrawn loner. Snow had sought professional help and then accepted the truth. He left the regiment within the year with an honourable discharge, his military career cut short.

He felt his leg ease as he reached the bottom of the hill and swore at himself for yet again allowing the past, something he couldn’t change, to ruin a perfectly good day. The sun was now higher in the sky as he jogged through central Podil and headed towards Hydropark, the largest island and park in the Kyiv stretch of the Dnipro River. Perhaps he’d risk a swim?

Tiraspol, capital city of Transdniester, disputed autonomous region of Moldova

The two men embraced like the old comrades they indeed were. Bull regarded the face of his friend and former Spetsnaz brother Ivan Lesukov. ‘You have grown fat, old man.’

‘And you ugly.’ Lesukov laughed heartily. ‘I see that Sergeant Zukauskas has not changed – you still look like a pig!’

‘That is why the Muslims hated me so much!’ Oleg, the barrel-chested Lithuanian winked.

Lesukov raised his glass and the others followed. ‘To fallen comrades.’ The vodka was cold, having been stored in the fridge Lesukov kept in his office.

‘You have an empire here, Ivan,’ Bull said, congratulating his friend.

‘I am the King of Chairs,’ Lesukov replied, spreading his palms at the window, which looked out over the factory floor below. ‘The main industries of our country are furniture and electronics, but we can’t sell abroad because of those bastards in Chisinau.’ He shrugged. ‘Our products do not carry the Moldovan government stamp and, as our country of Transdniester is not recognised outside of its own borders, we cannot sell.’ Lesukov refilled the glasses. ‘But I don’t care a shit about the electronics or even my chairs. What I have brought you here for today is to discuss how you can help an old comrade with his export business.’ He raised his glass. ‘To success.’ Again, the glasses were drained.

Bull spoke first. ‘I understand that, of late, you have been having some logistical problems?’

‘Our “friends”, the Russians, are understanding, if not supportive, of our “specific” situation. They let my goods pass freely through the security zone. In fact, some of my goods even originate from the weapons they are “peacekeeping over”.’ He tapped his nose with the end of his index finger. ‘So, with the Russians, here in Transdniester, I have no problem. They are good boys. It is the Moldavians to the west and the Ukrainians to the east that I am having problems with.’ He balled his fist.

Tensions between Transdniester and her neighbours, Moldova and Ukraine, had been high since Transdniester separatists, with Russian support, broke away from Moldova in 1992, declaring independence. The short civil war that ensued had left more than 1,500 dead. An uneasy truce, brought about by Russian ‘peacekeepers’, had stabilised the region since then. In a strange turn of events, Europe’s biggest Soviet Army weapons cache was now to be found not in ‘Mother Russia’, but near the Transdniestern town of Kolbasna, guarded by the two thousand Russian soldiers acting as ‘peacekeepers’.

A ‘confidential’ 1998 agreement between Russia’s then prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, and Igor Smirnov, the self-appointed president of Transdniester, to share profits from the sale of 40,000 tons of ‘unnecessary’ arms and ammunition had made Lesukov and men like him very wealthy. However, once a copy of this agreement had come into the hands of the Associated Press, there had been protests in Washington and a scandal in the European media. Russia had denied the story as preposterous and Ukraine had condemned any potential arms dealing, stepping up the size of their border guards units.

Lesukov was beginning to feel the pinch as he found it harder and harder to get his goods out of the country.

Lesukov paused and refilled the glasses. ‘How many of the Orly still serve with you?’ It was a question to Bull. Orly, the Russian for ‘eagles’, wasn’t a regimental title but a traditional name used to signify fearless fighting men.

‘Of my Brigada, six; however, since becoming freelance we have many more good men.’

After leaving the Red Army Spetsnaz, Bull had recruited other former ‘Special Forces’ soldiers from numerous Soviet Republics. These were some of the most highly trained soldiers in the world, yet had been discarded when the Union crumbled. He had bought their loyalty for little more than a few hundred dollars each; as a hero of Afghanistan he already had their respect. For the past fifteen years he had built a reputation in several war zones as a ruthless leader, mercenary and surprisingly good business facilitator. He had brokered arms deals with the Mujahedeen, rebels in Georgia’s breakaway Abkhazia region, and insurgents in Africa, to name but a few. Now it was only natural that one of the main suppliers of weapons should want his direct assistance.

‘What had you in mind, my old friend?’ Bull asked.

Lesukov smiled, raised his glass again. ‘To women.’ The other two followed. It wasn’t that they especially wanted to honour women, just a Soviet tradition for every third toast. He placed his hands flat on the metal desk.

‘The Ukrainians have their own group of Orly, called the “SOCOL”. They are a highly effective anti-smuggling and anti-organised-crime unit. This I could normally admire; however, they have now turned their focus on my shipments. In the last two months alone they have intercepted three of them…’ His voice trailed off as he totted up on his large fingers how much he had lost, then doubled it. ‘They have cost me almost three million American dollars in profit!’ His face had grown red and any hint of levity had passed.

He sighed and remembered the dusty mountains of Afghanistan some eighteen years before, and the young Spetsnaz captain who had fought next to him. ‘You were the best in Kabul, saved us all. Now I ask you to save me again. I want you to stop this SOCOL team once and for all.’

Oleg, who had listened quietly, let his tongue run along the outside of his top lip. He loved action and had grown weary of ‘business’. To take on a real target was what he lived for. He looked at his CO.

Bull folded his arms and nodded. ‘It can be done, but of course there is a price.’

Lesukov’s eyes glinted; he had anticipated this. ‘I will give you ten per cent of each shipment that passes successfully into Ukraine.’