Land of Ghosts Read online

  E.V. Seymour lives in a small village in Worcestershire. Before turning to writing, E.V. worked in P.R. in London and Birmingham, then moved to Devon where, five children later, she began writing. E.V. has bent the ears of numerous police officers in Devon, West Mercia and the West Midlands – including Scenes of Crime and firearms officers – in a ruthless bid to make her writing as authentic as possible.

  Also available by E.V. Seymour

  THE LAST EXILE

  THE MEPHISTO THREAT

  Land of Ghosts

  E.V. Seymour

  www.mirabooks.co.uk

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I have never been to Chechnya and was, therefore, reliant on the published work of a number of writers and journalists. They are Arkady Babchenko, Yuri Felshtinsky, the late Alexander Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya. Politkovskaya’s work was particularly invaluable as she spoke to both Russians and Chechens directly caught up in the last two conflicts. Much of it makes sombre reading. I also recommend the travel journals of Colin Thubron and Andrew Meier, especially for Meier’s historical perspective on Russia. To gain an understanding of combat, I must make mention of Sniper One by Sergeant Dan Mills, a riveting narrative of fighting under siege in Iraq.

  Personal thanks are due to Phillip Williams, Operations Manager, The Refugee Council, Birmingham, for giving up a morning in a very busy schedule to talk to me. Any views expressed in the book are entirely my take, and with poetic licence, and are not necessarily representative of the Council. I’m grateful to Jim O’Kane, formerly of the Mine Action Coordination Centre, who was assiduous in providing me with up-to-date information on mines and whose knowledge was key for a major scene in the novel. Thanks also to Eddie Todd, of VIP Helicopters, Doncaster, for entertaining me with hilarious tales of flying derring-do, and who provided the inspiration for Tallis’s unconventional flight to Berlin. Huge thanks to Martin Rutty at Fly-Q, Leominster, for his generosity, humour and patience, more especially for introducing me to the thrills of flying at two thousand feet! Any technical mistakes in the text are my own, not his.

  As always, I’m grateful to my agent, Broo Doherty, for her tireless enthusiasm and friendship, to Catherine Burke, my editor at MIRA, and, indeed, all the MIRA team. Ali Karim and Mike Stotter, of Shots magazine, deserve a special mention for rooting for Tallis from the very beginning.

  Lastly, this was a difficult book to write. In common with many thriller writers, I study the news, apply the what if principle, add two and two and come up with five. Essentially, I write fiction and must make clear I have no political axe to grind, no side to take. Nevertheless, and inevitably, I found myself inhabiting some fairly dark places during the course of research. In short, I was not an easy person to live with. My husband, Ian, deserves a medal for putting up with my sombre moods without complaint or criticism, which is why this book is dedicated to him.

  For Ian

  PROLOGUE

  Lubyanka Prison, Moscow, 1984

  SHE was beyond terror. The drugs had seen to that. Hope, the last refuge of the desperate, had all but abandoned her, yet even now in her despair she clung to the belief that she had a chance, a last chance.

  She’d seen and heard of places like this. Every Russian had. With its monstrous granite exterior, the Lubyanka, more than any other prison in Moscow, symbolised the might and ruthlessness of the State. For ordinary Muscovites, it held a morbid fascination. Walking within its shadow most days, it was at once familiar and alien to her. That she should now be incarcerated deep within the grey and crumbling construct remained a mystery.

  Noise. She flinched, eyes straining through the cloak of darkness. She’d been kept for so long in solitary that even the slightest sound assaulted her ears. But, no, it was nothing more than the far-away cry of a soul in torment. Should feel sympathy, or fear or something, she thought, but she felt nothing other than gratitude it wasn’t her.

  It was bitterly cold in the cell. And damp. Spaced-out, she couldn’t even move or control her limbs—unlike her thoughts, which tumbled, shrill and feverish. In a bid to find some mental foothold, she stared purposefully at the dripping walls, her mind tumbling back to memories of cool fresh air against her skin, snow on her boots, the reassuring voice of a colleague congratulating her on a job well done. A lifetime ago, it seemed. In here everything felt far-away, disjointed. Even herself. Since the time she’d spotted the surveillance officers—easy enough because of the shortness of their stature—and been followed, then picked up off the street, it was as if everything that had happened to her had really happened to another human being, another Malika Motova.

  She shifted position and idly traced the line of bruises on her thigh—mementoes of where they’d held her down and injected her. However much she resisted, however much she fought against them the outcome was inevitable: mind-rape. Maybe that’s why she felt so vacant, so physically disconnected from her surroundings. The only thing that felt even vaguely real was the insane beat of her heart inside her chest. In an obscure, desperate part of her she suspected that this odd physical symptom was what happened when the human spirit was pushed to the limit.

  The air smelt of cold decay. She sniffed at it and wondered what hour it was, whether it was day or night.

  During the early part of her incarceration she was left in a cement-coloured room, its only adornment a filthy mattress and bucket. A meagre ration of food and water was pushed through a grille. It was her only form of human contact. Other than that, she was simply ignored. Naturally she’d tried to assert her rights, to argue her cause. She was an intelligent woman with independent views. There had been a gross miscarriage of justice, a mistake, maliciousness at work. But it was no good. Nobody was listening. Swiftly, she became a non-person, a wraith, slipping into a limbo where no organisation was responsible for her, and nobody would admit to her existence. Sleep became a stranger, hunger a friend. This was the way the KGB worked.

  She did not remember exactly when her anger had turned to despair. There had been no particular event or turning point. Hours and days alone in isolation had allowed her fear to build, to grind her down until every trace of her personality was ransacked, stripped away and eliminated. Clever really. By doing nothing those dry and dusty instruments of the State had convinced her mind to disintegrate and destroy itself. She wondered about its minions, those people who carried out its bidding. Didn’t her captors have family and lovers, sons and daughters? Had they, too, been divested of their humanity?

  Then they came for her.

  She touched a hand to her face, felt the skin papery and desiccated. Is this me, Malika Motova? she wondered blindly.

  There were two men, one woman. She was stripped, physically degraded and put in an isolator cell that measured eight by ten. Her questions, her cries, went unanswered. She could not rest for the constant light shining in her eyes and the screams in her ears from the interrogation units. During that terrible time, her fear had smelt stronger than the odour of her own urine. When the questions began they always followed the same pattern—analysis of her personal details, re-examination of her answers, her interrogators exhausting her, putting words into her mouth, dissecting her motives, making lies of the truth, truth of the lies. Interrogation assumed a brutal rhythm in her life. And always the same question: how long have you been spying?

  Darkness, once an enemy, became a friend and on his shoulder she wept—for herself, for her friends, for her lover. She remembered Andrei’s clean-shaven looks, those piercing blue eyes that seemed to stare right into her crowded imagination. She thought of his cool sophistication, a cover for the passionate soul beneath. Oh, if only he were here, if only she could get word to him, he alone would know what to do. He would make them see the mistake they’d made, the in
justice they’d done her. He would set her free. But Andrei was working countries away, in London.

  Noise again, this time closer. At the sound of the bolts being shot, the lock being sprung, she cowered in the corner furthest away from those who came for her. Strong hands reached in and took hold, physically lifting her out. There was no point in resisting. She’d learnt that lesson early. Still had the broken teeth to prove it.

  Corridors and doors looked the same. Overhead illumination. Dun-coloured walls. Dirt. Flaking paint. And everywhere that penetrating odour of desperation. At last she was brought to a room she had not seen before. Inside the light was a dull yellow glow. As she was escorted in she made out a table behind which sat a man she did not recognise. He was looking at a thick file, one hand resting lightly on a page. In front of the table was a stool on which she was ordered to sit. The others, her escorts, left. So it was just the two of them, her and her interrogator.

  The man glanced up. He had dull features and tired eyes, his mediocrity typical of a person who worked for the State. Looking more closely, she saw that his hair was thin, his lips too full and red. Oddly sexless. That’s when something strange rallied inside her. Even though she had no idea of his rank, she sensed that this time things would be different. She tried very hard to concentrate.

  ‘Your name?’ he said.

  ‘Malika Motova.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘Thirty.’

  ‘Occupation?’

  ‘Journalist.’

  ‘You work for Izvestiya.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The man nodded. She was unsure whether she was answering well or badly. ‘You live where exactly?’ he said.

  She’d been through this many times but she repeated what she’d told the others, that she lived in a faceless block of flats in the northern suburbs of Moscow.

  ‘And you live alone?’

  ‘No, I live with Filip and Lyudmila Korovin.’ The apartment, in reality a cramped dwelling, was an oasis of sanity in a very mad world.

  ‘Ah, yes, a poet and writer, I understand.’

  ‘Yes, I—’

  ‘And I gather you have many artistic friends.’ It was enunciated as if he was saying she harboured a contagious disease. ‘Olga Gusinsky for one.’

  Olga, she thought, red-haired, green-eyed, wild and beautiful. Her mind spun back to what now seemed a lifetime ago, to the many nights they’d sat, all of them together, sharing food, drinking vodka, exchanging ideas, laughing at the absurdity of Russian life, ridiculing the frail old men in power. She had taken so much for granted, her freedom included. And what a painful illusion that now seemed.

  Her interrogator was still talking. ‘And, of course, we must not forget the Englishman.’

  She blinked. Dark memory stirred within her. A faint smile played across the man’s features. His lips looked redder than ever. He turned back to the folder, turning the pages, his finger tracing the text. ‘I understand you and Edward Rose are close.’

  ‘He is a friend, yes.’

  ‘And you have many friends.’

  ‘A few.’ She licked the corner of her mouth.

  ‘And lovers?’ he said, glancing up.

  ‘I…’

  ‘Andrei Ivanov.’

  She swallowed. What should she say? It was true but by agreeing with her interrogator was she denouncing Andrei? It took so little. An image of him being arrested at the airport on his return to Moscow streaked through her mind. All it would take was one wrong word, one misplaced gesture, one…

  ‘Is this correct?’

  She nodded dumbly.

  ‘Speak up.’

  ‘Yes,’ she murmured.

  ‘Yes,’ he repeated, his full lips caressing the word. ‘Ivanov works,’ he paused, glancing down at the text, ‘at the Tass News Agency.’

  ‘In London,’ she said, thinking, Thank God.

  ‘And the Englishman, Rose, what does he do?’

  ‘He also works for the media.’

  Her interrogator studied her for several long moments. ‘Do you know why you are here?’

  ‘I know why you say I am here, but you have no evidence to support it.’

  A sharp feral smile twitched across the man’s flat face. At that precise moment the air in the room seemed to alter. The staleness of her surroundings was overpowered by the stench of something stronger, yet she couldn’t identify it. ‘You are a Chechen, I understand,’ he said, polite, as though it were a matter of record.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I am a Russian born in Chechnya.’ She knew the State valued the importance of accuracy.

  The man turned several pages, his small eyes raking the print. ‘To a Chechen mother.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘It explains your blue eyes and dark hair.’

  ‘My mother was a pro-Russian Chechen.’

  ‘Indeed. And what would you say you are?’ His look was searing.

  ‘I am like her,’ she said, remembering that her mother’s blood ran through her veins, that a Chechen was known for courage and loyalty and honour.

  ‘Is that so?’

  She remained silent.

  The man leant forward, resting his elbows on the table. He put his hands together in prayer, tips of his fingers touching his chin. ‘Does Andrei Ivanov know that you sleep with the Englishman?’

  She clenched her teeth. How could he possibly know? Nobody knew. Nobody, other than…Oh, Christ, she thought. Had she made a terrible mistake? Had she made a fatal misjudgement? The man behind the desk shuffled the papers in front of him. It sounded like the branches of a tree scratching against a windowpane in the night. In that gut-churning moment, she realised that her terror had only begun.

  ‘You deny it?’

  ‘I do not deny sharing a bed with him on one occasion,’ she said, flushing at her confession.

  ‘While your lover was away,’ he said accusingly.

  ‘Yes, but it only hap—’

  ‘So that you could trade information.’

  ‘That’s absurd,’ she gasped. ‘I don’t have that type of information to trade.’

  ‘And what sort of information would that be?’

  She wanted to put her hands over her ears, to scream and drown out the voice, the madness.

  ‘You deal in information,’ he said, hawkish. ‘You’re a journalist.’ His tone suggested that this fact alone was proof enough of espionage.

  ‘I am also a loyal servant of the State,’ she said, her voice cracking with desperation.

  ‘We believe otherwise. You are a spy.’

  ‘You have no proof.’

  ‘On the contrary.’ The man swivelled his eyes to the door. It swung open. Rather than increase the illumination in the room, what little light there was receded. A figure stepped forward and took up a position inches from her.

  ‘Hello, Malika.’

  She recoiled in shock and horror. A chill cloaked her soul.

  ‘What, no greeting?’ He bent down, brushing her cheek lightly with his lips, an act that once had made her shiver with rapture.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she faltered.

  ‘Nothing to say? That’s not like you.’ He slipped a packet of cigarettes from his jacket, taking one out and lighting it. Tossing the dead match to the floor, he looked down, met her terrified gaze. In that moment she understood that cruelty loitered beneath the skin, that his cool sophistication was nothing more than a complex disguise for his sadistic intentions. The eyes, which once had seemed Andrei Ivanov’s most appealing feature, now belonged to the face of a fanatic.

  ‘Right,’ he said, voice dripping with menace. ‘Let us start from the beginning.’

  CHAPTER ONE

  St Pancras International, London: present day

  ASIM walked with a smooth and measured stride through the station concourse and up onto the upper level from where the Eurostar departed. Sexy and impressive though his surroundings were, he barely noticed them. As an ex
perienced intelligence officer for MI5, his mind was on higher things: the defence of the nation and the curious reason Christian Fazan, a long-serving MI6 officer, currently based in Moscow, had requested an urgent meeting in the Champagne Bar. Inter-agency conferences were not a rarity, but unscheduled, top-priority appointments were.

  Fazan was already inside, immediately identifiable by the Financial Times spread out in front of him, glass of champagne in hand. He hadn’t changed so very much over the years he’d known him, Asim thought. His dark hair was going grey. With a naturally heavy build, he obviously worked hard to keep his weight down. Still had that rogue look in the deep blue eyes that made him so attractive to the opposite sex; Fazan’s track record was legendary, although he’d never married. At Asim’s approach, Fazan glanced up, smiled, raising his glass slightly in a gesture of conviviality. Asim slipped into the seat next to him. It was too early to drink, but he allowed Fazan to pour him a glass from the bottle of Dom Perignon already on the bar. Asim glanced around the chic surroundings. It wasn’t that busy: middle-aged female shoppers clutching the spoils of war from Oxford Street, and travellers killing time. To be expected on a cold Monday in early February.

  ‘I thought the Zoo would be a more likely choice of venue,’ Asim said with a droll smile.

  ‘Too clichéd. Anyway, since they closed the parrot house twenty years ago, it’s not so much fun.’

  ‘I was thinking more along the lines of endangered species,’ Asim said. He was alluding to the fact that Fazan was the last of four MI6 officers or, as they were known now, secret intelligence officers, to be stationed at the Embassy. The rest had been chucked out by Moscow. Asim rated Fazan as the most senior, the equivalent of a station head.

  ‘One down, three to go.’ Fazan smiled, seeing the joke. ‘I’m taking up a posting in Berlin.’

  ‘Congratulations.’ He didn’t think Fazan had got him there simply to share the good news.