Land of Ghosts Read online

  Moscow: eight o’clock the following morning

  Pavel Polyakova was a bitter man. That he, a Russian general, should be reduced to taking his kids to school was a source of profound humiliation to him. Not for the first time he screamed at them to hurry.

  ‘Coming,’ Leonid yelled back, pulling a face. Eyes fixed on his father, he hissed to his younger brother, who was struggling with a shoelace, to get a move on.

  Polyakova surveyed his two young sons. He noticed the way they looked at him, registered the fear and loathing. He’d observed the same insolent expression on the faces of idiot soldiers he’d once had the misfortune to command.

  ‘We want Mama,’ the youngest whined, his mouth pulled down into an ugly expression, threatening tears.

  ‘Well, you can’t have her,’ Polyakova growled back. Mama, dressed in skin-tight Diesel jeans and high heels, had left an hour ago to work for a friend who owned a new boutique off Red Square. Although the shop didn’t open until later, Tanya was going in early to sort out the stock, or so she said. Since she’d taken the job, she kept the strangest of hours, often returning late, reeking of vodka. If questioned, she reacted with anger, waving a wad of notes under his nose and demanding to know who was putting food on the table. It was enough to raise a man’s blood pressure to dangerous levels. Tanya might be a shining example of Ivanov’s new vision for Russia, but she had lost all interest in the home, in the kids, and, Mother of God, in him. Mr Ivanov, in his wisdom, had created a generation of cuckolds.

  Polyakova glowered at his broken-down surroundings, a rented dump of rust and exposed brickwork not far from the US Embassy. Not for him the gateway to the elite, the poplar-lined boulevards, the dachas, the three-storey affairs with maid service. Christ, he couldn’t even resort to taxi-cabbing because his car was so old.

  ‘Are you two ready yet?’ he snarled, snatching up his car keys. Rush hour should be renamed death hour, in his opinion. Traffic jams were so intrinsic to Russian life it was quite possible to die in one’s vehicle from boredom.

  Leonid cast his father a sullen look from underneath a set of dark lashes. ‘Boris has gone to the lavatory.’

  Letting out a stream of expletives worthy of a military man, Polyakova turned on the worn-down heels of his boots and stormed out of the apartment. Outside lay a rabbit warren of concrete panel walls, shabby stairwells and non-existent lighting. Five flights down, he was still raging. As he emerged from the apartment block, fresh snow began to fall. Now God Almighty was against him, he fulminated, pulling up the threadbare collar of his jacket and banging his gloved hands together as he looked out at the vast expanse of streets and avenues. Freed from the old Soviet restrictions, the city felt horribly alive, he thought. Even at that time in the morning, it lay on its back like a whore, trading and bartering, selling itself to the highest bidder. Commerce was the new buzzword and, greased by the State, a new generation of entrepreneurs was stepping up to party in the playground of the rich. But not he: General Pavel Polyakova.

  Stamping towards the parking lot, his beat-up Lada became the next recipient of his ire. First, he ripped off the tarpaulin and threw it into the boot then wrenched the driver door open, his large, dishevelled frame scrambling inside.

  What was he to do? There were many impoverished military men like him slung onto the scrap heap. Naturally, he’d tried to call in favours. There had been mutterings of a governorship in Siberia but nothing had come of it. He’d offered his expertise in the fight against the latest batch of warlords but, apparently, he was deemed too out of touch—so much for doing his duty in the service of the motherland.

  Unhappy men clung to former glory days with the same passion they reserved for slights. Polyakova was no exception. As he drummed his fingers on the dashboard, and with the snow tumbling about him, he found himself willingly transported back to Chechnya. It was 2002, weeks after the infamous Nord-Ost theatre siege. They had flown in from Moscow to Mozdok and then taken a helicopter armed with light-calibre shells. Like many helicopters, it doubled as a carrier for injured troops. Its interior smelt of dried blood, he remembered.

  Following the line of the river Terek, they crossed over the Argun Gorge and landed near the village of Vedeno. The official line was that they were searching for Chechen snipers. In reality they were seeking revenge. He had a young lieutenant with him, Ivan, a man after his own heart, as hard working as he was hard drinking. They pitched down late afternoon when the sun was making its escape from the sky. With its grey fields, dirt roads, silent ruins and absent population, Chechnya was a godforsaken place. Always was. Always would be.

  ‘Another trip to hell,’ Ivan spat, as they pitched out of the helicopter.

  As expected the ‘dukh’, or ‘spirit’, and military slang for the Chechens, had gone to ground. Those in evidence were old men with unwashed beards who stared at them with undisguised hatred. One of the conscripts lifted his rifle to a particularly gnarled specimen and threatened to shoot. Polyakova ordered the soldier, a former inmate of a prison in Ukraine, to lower his weapon, not because he was a compassionate man but because it would be a waste of a good bullet.

  Underfoot, thick black mud. Up ahead, hills and peaks and mountains. Somewhere in the distance a stray dog barked. After a fifteen-minute trudge along a cratered road, they came to a group of mean little huts, clay-encrusted, that served as dwellings. The first two were deserted. Sticking to normal clean-up procedure, they burst in, checked the place for rebels and boobytraps then smashed the place to pieces before searching for spoils of war, jewellery, money and suchlike. It was a disappointing haul, nothing more than two necklaces, a diamond ring and a total of a thousand roubles. The last hovel, however, was a different matter. The last yielded gold.

  They found the three occupants huddled together in one room: a babushka, a mentally disabled boy—by all accounts the old woman’s grandson—and a duskyskinned teenage girl. Polyakova felt himself harden in spite of the bitter temperature in the car.

  That was the start of it all.

  After turning the place over, Ivan trained a gun on the whimpering cretin.

  ‘Please, don’t hurt him,’ the girl said. She had black hair, eyes so dark it was impossible to tell whether they were blue or brown. Polyakova noticed that she spoke Russian. He strode towards her, circled like a shark eyeing up his next meal, the leather of his boots making a cracking sound. He paused in front of her, and looked down into those deep, ensnaring eyes.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Aimani.’

  ‘And how old are you, Aimani?’

  ‘I am fifteen.’

  ‘At school?’

  ‘No longer.’

  ‘But you used to go to school, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that is where you learned to speak the language of the motherland.’

  Aimani said nothing. The atmosphere in the room was electric. And that was good in Polyakova’s book.

  ‘I will not hurt him,’ Polyakova said, inclining his head in the direction of the snivelling boy, ‘as long as you tell me the truth.’ His smile was met with defiance. He transferred his gaze to her body. He could not help but notice the swell of the girl’s breasts, the curve of her hips beneath her clothes, a mishmash of sweaters and cardigans over a long dark skirt. A mental image of her vulnerable and naked flashed before his eyes. ‘Now, tell me, where are the men of the household?’

  ‘They are out.’

  ‘Where?’

  His eyes were still on the girl. She opened her full lips to respond but instead the babushka answered. In halting Russian, the crone told him they had gone to gather firewood.

  Polyakova spun on his heel. He viewed the woman’s shrivelled features, the toothless gums and the hook nose. ‘You lie, old woman.’

  ‘Nyet…’

  Polyakova nodded to Ivan who hit the boy across the head with the rifle butt. Letting out a loud scream, a wound opened up on his over-large head. Blood spurted and trickled
down his face, dripping onto the dirt floor.

  The old woman’s gnarled hands shot to her face in distress. She began to cry, her sobs mingling with the cretin’s. But the girl was different. She stood rooted, proud, dark eyes flashing, a mutinous look in her eyes.

  ‘I will ask you again,’ Polyakova said, speaking slowly, weighing each syllable. ‘Where are the men?’

  Nobody spoke. In the absence of an answer, the white-faced boy attempted to flee. Not so stupid after all, Polyakova thought as Ivan knocked the youth to the ground and swung back his boot to kick him.

  That’s when the girl made her move.

  Pulling a knife from nowhere, she launched herself at Ivan, slicing at his arm. One-handed, Ivan caught hold of her, forcing the blade from her hand. ‘We have a vixen here.’ Ivan laughed, throwing her towards Polyakova. As the babushka scurried to the girl’s aid, Polyakova calmly took out his pistol and shot the old woman in the face then turned his gun on the boy.

  The girl’s screams echoed in Polyakova’s ears. He could still hear them, even now years on, in the freezing interior of his car. My, she’d been a sturdy one. Fought with the same ferocity as the Spetsnaz.

  Where the hell are those kids? he cursed, wiping the steam from the window and peering out through a mirage of sleet and snow.

  Naturally, he had taken the girl, taught her what it was to be a true Russian. He smiled to himself. He had kept a lock of her hair as a keepsake so that no matter how many times he washed, he could smell her skin, taste her sweat, hear her cries as she yielded to his demands. Unlike Tanya, he thought blackly, who yielded to nobody.

  His eyes drifted to the window again. Leonid and Boris were still nowhere to be seen. My God, would he teach them a lesson, he thought, tooting the car horn angrily.

  Afterwards, he’d smothered the girl. No point in leaving loose ends. He believed shepherds found the charred remains of her body several days later.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flurry of activity. At last his sons emerged from the entrance, skittering in a fresh fall of snow, the youngest trailing behind as usual. Infuriated, Polyakova wound the window down. He was about to issue further admonishment, but Boris slipped over, hitting the ground hard with a yell. The child began to wail.

  ‘Sweet Jesus!’ Polyakova roared, switching on the engine, the last action of a condemned man.

  As the car exploded into a fireball, and the young brothers dived for cover, the noise of the blast was heard several streets away.

  Berlin

  At the same time as Pavel Polyakova’s head was detaching from its body, Tallis was waking up. He’d slept badly. It wasn’t due to the room’s close proximity to the lift, the sound booming from the shaft suggesting that he was sleeping in the hull of an old trawler. It wasn’t even as a result of the artificial orange light shining in through the bedroom window, casting weird shadows on the ceiling, or the absurd level of heat, or the fact that construction workers outside and cleaners inside had made an early start. Burning curiosity was responsible for his insomnia. He felt like a kid on the night before Christmas.

  Tallis took a hot shower, then shaved. He was not a vain man but, through force of habit, he regarded himself in the mirror. The scar over his left eyebrow, inflicted during a childhood punch-up with his older brother, looked less pronounced in spite of his naturally dark colouring. Unlike a more recent scar on his cheek. The woman responsible had been a Romanian murderess who slashed her victims with a lethally sharpened fingernail. His hair was still thick, no grey yet. Eyes might have a couple more lines at the edges but this was a matter of observation rather than interest or concern. Of greater significance, his body was still in good nick. He couldn’t undertake his type of work without a high level of fitness and at thirty-five years of age it was impossible to wing it. Recently, he’d added weight training to his workout. He briefly considered how many years he might have left in the game. Ten years, tops, he reckoned.

  After taking a European-style breakfast in the conservatory, Tallis returned to his room, cleaned his teeth, checked his destination on the map and retrieved his leather jacket and gloves. As he stepped out into the corridor, a pretty chambermaid smiled and wished him ‘Guten tag’, a greeting he duly returned. And it was a good morning, Tallis thought as he sauntered towards the lift. In spite of the urgency of the meeting, the danger he would ultimately encounter, he was intrigued by Asim’s phone call. More than anything, after a break of a couple of months he relished the thought of being operational again.

  The day was crisp and clear and, at barely four degrees, cold though not unpleasant. Turning right out of the hotel to avoid a group of workmen digging up the pavement, Tallis passed by a ten-storey block of flats, grey and granite, as grim a construct as anything he’d seen in the rougher bits of Birmingham. In front of the building, bins spilt litter onto a tiny scrub of land with a solitary scrawny tree under which two young teenage girls were standing smoking. They both turned, cupping their hands in the chill southeast wind, and looked at him, shuffling a little in their thin jackets.

  At the end of the one-way street, Tallis found himself on a wide main road, shops one side and vast open space on the other. He crossed over, negotiating a tramline running between the two opposing carriageways and onto the square where the Marienkirche, or St Mary’s Church, stood proud and alone in the shadow of the Fernsehturm, the television tower and the city’s tallest structure. Rolling up the collar of his jacket, he passed a fountain of Neptune around which a gaggle of schoolchildren were crowding. Ahead lay the Rathaus, Berlin’s town hall, an imposing red brick building, and another crossing, which took him down Rathausstrasse, past shops and cafés and boutiques. A man with white-blond hair and skin as pale as an albino approached from the opposite direction. He wore a dark trench coat with a white silk cravat at his throat. His smart, shiny shoes clicked as he walked along the pavement. Drawing level with Tallis, he minutely adjusted his designer sunglasses. Tallis registered the gesture, slowed down a little, quartering the street to check for surveillance, but there was nobody in sight. Nothing more than a fashion-conscious German, he thought, glancing over his shoulder, seeing the man disappear round the corner and from view.

  Within seconds he reached Nikolaiviertel, a quaint quarter of cobbled streets on the bank of the river Spree. The place was crammed with bars and clubs, though none were open and all possessed a slightly addled, sleepy look. Few people were milling about. A lone chauffeur-driven Mercedes prowled down the street, a Japanese woman dressed in a fur coat seated in the rear.

  Tallis walked on past a statue of a bear holding a shield, a toyshop selling teddies, two souvenir shops and a high-class and exclusive gift emporium, no prices on the merchandise. Then he caught sight of the twin towers of the Nicholaikirche, the oldest, most sacred building in Berlin.

  The door of the church was closed. Outside, a gravelled path on which a number of orange-eyed pigeons were pecking at the dirt. Underneath, a sign that said no football, no bikes, dogs welcome; a solitary bicycle was propped against a lamppost. To the right of the path, a grassy section with a single fledgling fir tree stood next to a large statue of a woman, half Boudicca, half pre-Raphaelite in style. Her naked foot rested on a helmet. Tallis gazed up at the church, a blaze of sunshine catching the leaded glass, then followed the path, passing the statue and a number of green garden seats with flaking, peeling paint until he came to a large half-moon-shaped bench hidden in a recess, secluded, cool and shadowy. Asim, wearing a dark cashmere overcoat and sunglasses, was already seated.

  At the sound of Tallis’s approaching footsteps, Asim neither turned nor flinched. Mysterious and inscrutable, he sat as still as one of the many statues Tallis had passed en route. Tallis slipped down next to him.

  ‘Bonjour,’ Asim said. ‘ça va?’

  ‘Bien, merci,’ Tallis replied, slipping easily into French. This had to be a first, he thought. His conversations with Asim were usually conducted in English. He hadn’t even k
nown that Asim spoke French.

  ‘I need you to travel to Russia,’ Asim said without preamble. ‘You’ll be based in Moscow for a short time, building up your cover. From there, you’ll go to Chechnya.’

  Chechnya? An image flashed before his eyes. It was the same image that had taken the world by storm when the fighting had first broken out over a decade before: the picture of a woman in a headscarf, a bony hand clasped to her face, crying over the ruin that was Grozny. And things had just got sticky there again. Terrific, Tallis thought, shootings, bombings, and abductions. From Tallis’s understanding, Chechen gangsters were like a high-octane version of the Sicilian Mafia. Winter in the mountains wasn’t his idea of fun either. Many of them were mined.

  ‘You speak Chechen?’ Asim continued.

  ‘I’m rusty. Why? I had a fr—’

  ‘How long would it take you to become fluent?’ Asim cut across. ‘Could you do it in a week?’

  ‘You must be joking.’

  ‘Two?’

  ‘Busting a gut, but, yes, probably.’ Good job it wasn’t Cantonese, Tallis thought.

  Asim’s dark head dipped slightly as though nodding approval. He explained the approach made to him by Christian Fazan, and that Tallis was to be temporarily seconded to the Secret Intelligence Service. ‘I want you to locate an intelligence officer belonging to the SIS. The man was sent to penetrate a fundamentalist group loyal to a Chechen warlord, Akhmet Elimkhanova. The officer has been under cover since 2003. From my understanding, he yielded high-quality intelligence. For the past twelve months, nothing has been heard of him.’

  ‘So it’s basically a search and rescue, that right?’ Tallis had the clear impression he was only being given edited highlights. There were too many gaps in the commentary. Best to stay tuned.

  ‘It’s a little more complicated than that,’ Asim said, the hesitation in his voice so minor it would normally have passed unnoticed. Sitting next to him, however, Tallis spotted the body language, the slight twitch in Asim’s jaw. ‘We believe he’s gone native.’