Exit wound

She smiled fleetingly. ‘I am lucky. My source told me about the Tehran meeting. The Cold War may have ended, but there is little affection in the upper echelons of the Russian government for the West. Nor, as you can imagine, do Russian defence companies care particularly about the fate of the average NATO soldier.’

I took a taste of muddy coffee and changed tack. ‘Is Brin normally involved in heroin?’

She smiled again, but bleakly this time. ‘Defence is a declining market. With George Bush gone and Barack Obama in power, the amount of money that the Americans are due to set aside for their defence and intelligence expenditure is declining dramatically. It is the same in Russia. Apart from anything else, few people in the grip of the current economic crisis can afford highly sophisticated weapons. The Russian government certainly can’t. It is raiding any budget it can to pay for the current debt crisis. And that isn’t going to change any time soon.

‘Brin is not a fool. Quite the opposite – he remains a driven, highly ambitious man. He needs to look for new sources of revenue, and yields do not come any bigger than those to be found in the opium and heroin market. The Taliban want highly sophisticated missiles? They pay for them with heroin – and Brin cements another part of his developing trade.

‘That is the picture that I went to Tehran to capture. I needed to see an employee of Brin dealing directly with the Taliban. I needed a photograph of the meeting that would make those responsible for that transaction completely transparent. The evidence would be published and it would lead to Brin. The story is ninety per cent written, I just need that picture. Then you can do whatever you have to do…’

Anna didn’t have quite as much of the story as she thought. She didn’t have the bit I had – and that bit was Altun. I suddenly saw a whole lot more – more, even, than I’d tumbled to in the past twenty-four hours. The only thing I didn’t understand was where Spag fitted in.

Did I care about Brin? He was Anna’s demon, not mine. My attention remained fixed on Altun and Spag – and it would stay there until I’d got payback for Red Ken and Dex. No – that wasn’t true. I wanted every fucker on the trail to get what was coming to them for what had happened in Dubai. Brin had just been added to the list.

‘Anna, why are you telling me all this?’

She looked at her watch and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Because you need to understand.’

94

Moscow Sheremetyevo

1730 hrs

The seatbelts sign was still illuminated, but the engines were winding down. That was good enough for most of the locals. They were up and out of their seats as if the first to the exit got a free bottle of vodka.

Anna and I let the initial wave scramble for the door.

If I’d been able to speak the language, we’d have disembarked separately, but my Russian didn’t stretch any further than da, niet, spasibo and dasvidaniya, and that wasn’t going to get me to the bottom of the steps. I needed Anna. Only with her help could I remain the grey man.

She zipped her camera and laptop into her day-sack and looked out of the window. ‘In Moscow we have only two seasons, summer and winter. The snow has melted and the sun is out. It must be summer.’ She smiled, waiting. It must have been a joke.

All the same, it wasn’t going to be as hot as Tehran. I wished Tattoo’s jacket was a little thicker.

We eventually joined the scrum – I didn’t want us to be the last off. We reached the galley area, turned left and shuffled towards the door. I’d slung my day-sack over my shoulder. On the ramp there were three guys in fluorescent jackets – normal airport staff manning the air-bridge. No men in black leather waiting to push us back onto the plane until the real people had gone.

We walked up the ramp and joined the spur that led to the main terminal. People milled about at gates or drifted in and out of shops that seemed to sell nothing apart from chunky watches and bottles of vodka shaped like AK-47s. I finally spotted a pharmacy.

I’d briefed Anna. She went in, and came out again with a pack of tissues and a jar of stuff that stank of eucalyptus. I looked at her with obvious gratitude and rubbed a handful round my throat. It made my eyes water. I opened the tissues and had a good blow. The airport was bound to be crawling with CCTV. Untold pairs of eyes would already be watching us. This was no time to look furtive or guilty, or anything other than a passenger with two days’ growth and a bad cold.