The Protector: A gripping, action-packed spy thriller Read online

  “No,” he said softly. “Can’t do that.”

  “Why not, Ti? I’m sure the Russian police would advise it.”

  “Because he would get caught and I wouldn’t and because he is my friend.”

  There seemed to be no arguing with that so she went inside, took a another bottle of wine from the fridge, and came back carrying it and the kitten together.

  “When?” she asked, too casually, screwing the corkscrew down.

  “Maybe next year. Just one trip would be best. In through Kiev and make the buys. Set up a conduit to get the pieces out. Shouldn’t be a problem...”

  And then the sweat broke out on his forehead. Someone had said that about the Libya job. Just pop in and pick up the plans for the chemical factory. Easy as falling off a log. But they were there at the buy, black uniformed police everywhere. They had known he was coming.

  There was no trial, no phone call, no contact. Just the blindfolded bone-jarring ride in the back of the truck and the boot in his back and the dirt and blood in his mouth and Jebel Muhkta Prison.

  Holly saw the look in his eyes and moved quickly to break the spell.

  “Here,” she said placing the little black street fighter on his lap, “I will pour the wine,” and she watched with satisfaction as his big scarred hand moved gently over the cat’s back.

  That night they made love for the first time, Holly lying beneath his bulk, feeling his strength, loving him back fiercely as the warm wind blew through the window. Afterwards she lay in the crook of his arm, her head on his chest, and listened to him breathe, frightened of losing him because she loved him.

  *

  KGB General Nikolai Borshin climbed from the car and told his driver to wait. Holding his pass up to the guards with his good left hand, he walked through the massive wooden gates with a mixture of trepidation and delight. He wasn’t sure what he expected of the grounds, but it wasn’t only the huge firs and old pines that rutted the path. He took a deep breath and inhaled the scent of summer trees, the rich sap and pine needles taking him back to memories of his boyhood. He had always liked things in their natural state. The basic wholesome things.

  As he stepped over a fallen branch, he saw the house through the trees. It was a traditional Russian building, low-eaved and with split log walls, the chinks long ago filled with the moss that grew across the timbers like a green velvet mantle. Bright blooms sprang from painted wooden tubs in the warm summer sunlight and only the small forest of communications aerials in the background gave any hint that this was the twentieth century.

  As he walked, he straightened his blouse and squared away his cap. Head of the Fourth Directorate KGB he may be, but this was the dacha of the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet himself.

  Soon he was ushered into the cool entrance hall by a woman servant, a withered old woman who, the stories said, had been found standing on a rubble strewn roadside on a bitterly cold Leningrad morning, the Nazis only six miles away, trying to sell a pair of shoes to buy potatoes for the children at the orphanage. But no-one wanted shoes and there were no potatoes anyway – and people thought she was crazy because she saw things in the future and avoided her. Things were looking bad until a tank came along. Up in its turret was a young man, a boy almost, who saw something in her eyes, something different, something he recognised. He called to the driver to stop and jumped down, behind him the huge metal monster’s engines still rumbling. Moments later, he called up and told them to throw food down, holding out a burlap bag of bread and beets and a dead chicken for the woman to take.

  “Take it and feed your little ones,” he had said.

  “Thank you, oh thank you!” the woman said. “How did you know?”

  “I remember you” he laughed. “I was there for a while.”

  He had an aura even then, a strength, a will that other men saw and followed.

  She looked at him, her dark pebble-like eyes growing sharp with the visions, and then spoke, “You will survive this. Your destiny is greatness.”

  The boy – whose name was Peytor Gorbov – smiled and jumped back up on the tank, waving as it roared away. Half a century later he was still feeding the woman’s orphans – but now they were kittens in his kitchen and he was General Secretary of the Supreme Soviet.

  Borshin took a seat on the hard monk’s bench in the hall, hiding his gloved useless hand under one crossed leg. Alone now, he listened to the sounds of the house. In another room, a clock was chiming. Somewhere, someone polishing silverware; he supposed it would be real silver here, but with the stories about basics it might just be camping utensils. He smiled at the thought and was still smiling when Peytor Gorbov walked into the hall. The smile was there, the same expansive smile he offered to Presidents and Prime Ministers, and the hand was out to shake.

  He stood briefly to attention and then took the hand, nodding formally.

  “I am honoured, Comrade General Secretary.” It was said stiffly, for the man was uncomfortable here at the Dacha. Other meetings had been in the more familiar Kremlin.

  “Nonsense,” Gorbov said charmingly. “You honour no-one but God. How’s your daughter?”

  Borshin was taken aback a second and it showed. He was a devout Christian in the home of atheism and he had not known that Gorbov knew that. His daughter was the other immense joy in his life. She was an actress, opinionated, outspoken and constantly in trouble with the militia at the University. Even though Borshin scolded her, he was secretly proud of the fire in her blood. Gorbov smiled.

  “Come, come Nikolai, you love her to bits, but she drives you crazy, yes? Mine is the same.”

  “You are right.” Borshin smiled and Gorbov did the same.

  “Come through.” Gorbov led the way into what was a study, the walls lined with books. Three chairs sat at the table, and Gorbov pulled two out. “Sit down.”

  Borshin sat, his cap on his lap.

  “So how goes the Fourth?”

  “It goes well Comrade Gorbov. It is still full of brown noses and politicians, but I’m getting there.”

  Gorbov laughed. Seven years before, he had spotted the lean purity in Nikolai Borshin – who had been wasted in a dying section of the Second Directorate. He was youthful, strong, astonishingly talented, incorruptible and completely apolitical, despising those who curried favour and sought out influence.

  Gorbov had plucked him from that obscurity and given him the plum job of Head of the Fourth Directorate, riding roughshod over the then head of the KGB, alienating other more senior men and rocking the old boy network. Gorbov didn’t want his own man in the job; he wanted no-one’s man in the job. He wanted a man who was untouchable, with deep convictions in something other than just the Rodina – the party – but who would die for it if asked.

  As he spoke, Gorbov studied the man for the hundredth time. He never got used to the dramatic appeal, the lean hawk-like good looks only enhanced by the eye patch – which, with the short iron grey hair, gave him a swashbuckling air. But there was always something a photograph never caught, and in Nikolai Borshin it was the rebel, the non-political ‘stuff-the-Party and just get it done’ attitude that had stopped so many good men.

  “Have you got a man, someone on the outside you can trust implicitly?” Gorbov asked.

  “You better tell me what you have in mind,” Borshin answered.

  “I have a source in your department,” he began. Borshin nodded. He expected nothing else. “Long Knives has raised its head again.”

  “I know,” Borshin said.

  “Are we still...”

  “At a dead end? Yes, I’m afraid we are – but something has broken in England, as you know. I think we should put a... that was what you wanted?”

  “Yes, Nikolai. That is what I want. Take a good man. The best you have. He must be in position to capitalise on anything that breaks open there.”

  Borshin nodded. He had pre-empted the decision by almost two months with a man on the ground in the United Kingdom, but he thought – in t
he light of the new interest – he would now change the individual.

  The current operative was a fifty two year old Polish émigré, a man whose forte was silent observation and piecing together the bits, who reported through to the KGB man at the Embassy. He would need a new man, a man who could do both that and have the experience and confidence to react on his own initiative – because there would be no embassy orders now. He would be on his own. He thought quickly about the killings at the safe house. They may think that was us. The new man must be able to deal with that.

  “He is to report directly to you,” Gorbov said.

  Borshin was thinking fast. He must be able to take care of himself. He needs to have been through the mill a few times. He needs to be loyal to me and to the Rodina above all. He needs to be like me. Compulsive, a man who doesn’t give up. A real bastard when it counts.

  “I will find the right man,” he replied.

  That night he worked late, methodically going through the files. There was a constant stream of perfectly cloned talent coming out of the training schools, but he went to the other end of the spectrum. He began with older men who had commendations on their files – but for some reason had been passed over for the sort of promotion one would expect for that generation. He knew what he was looking for but, unable to explain it in words, he had his secretary bring him the files in batches.

  He had sent his assistant, a bright young captain, home, preferring to allow Svetlana to help. She was a graduate of the academy. Tall, blonde and lithe, she wore her hair up in a bun and was the only person in the Directorate who would look him in the eye and disagree, and he loved her for it. His wife had been dead sixteen years now and he had tired of the KGB house girls very quickly. Virtually celibate until he had met Svetlana, he disliked the thought that a girl would go to bed with him simply because he was powerful and could provide influence. She arrived one day from the typing pool downstairs to use the typewriter in his outer office, his own secretary away. He had walked back to his office having forgotten something, dressed to go home, overcoat on over his uniform, and found her there and raised an eyebrow. She had raised one back, then turned away and kept working.

  “He’s gone,” she said.

  He smiled to himself. “Oh,” he said, looking into the tiny kitchenette alongside her desk. “I hear the old bugger has real French brandy up here.”

  She looked up frostily.

  “If he has it’s because he’s earned it!”

  He liked that. This girl had steel in her bones.

  “Oh. Fond of him, are you?”

  “Never met him. I’m just using his girl’s typewriter. Now leave me alone to finish this.”

  “Dinner?” he asked.

  “With you?”

  “Yes. With me.”

  “I might – but I won’t go to bed with you... and give me more than an hour’s notice when you ask properly, won’t you?” She looked up from the keyboard smiling, but the message there. I’m not some department tart.

  Let’s see how much steel you really have, he thought.

  “I am not without influence, and bed won’t be too bad now, will it?”

  “Go to hell,” she said fiercely.

  He threw back his head and laughed, delighted with the find.

  He leant across the desk and took the phone, dialling an internal number to the head of Administration.

  “Borshin here! There is a girl in my office name of...” He looked at her. She had gone pale and stood straight to attention behind the desk. “Well?” he asked.

  “Svetlana Taber, Comrade General. I’m sorry about…”

  He waved a hand at her and spoke back into the phone.

  “...Taber. Svetlana. I want her transferred to my office first thing tomorrow. No – as my secretary. I know she is only new.” He smiled, then “Get rid of the other one. Move her to a senior position somewhere... No, no, no problem. She just doesn’t have any balls.” He hung up and looked at her across the desk, still standing to attention. “And you do. I like that.”

  He turned and walked out, his greatcoat flapping round his knees.

  Now, three years later, they worked together as a closely welded team, her understanding of his style and moods absolute. She was also fiercely loyal – which he appreciated beyond anything else.

  She entered the room with another batch of files and placed them at his side.

  “You are tired,” she said.

  “I’m OK.” He did not look up.

  “What are you looking for, Nikolai? Let me help.”

  “No.”

  “Oh don’t be so bloody pigheaded!” she retorted.

  He laughed softly and ran a hand across his eye patch. Twenty years on and sometimes it still hurt. “I need a man. A very experienced man. Stubborn, good at his job, a loner, because he will be alone most of the time. Smart, canny, a hunter who thinks like his quarry. A man who gets things done without worrying about having his back patted.”

  “A man like you,” she said.

  He smiled. She understood.

  “Yes.”

  She pulled up a chair and, sitting opposite, took a batch of files and began to read.

  Two days later, she was sifting through department circulars that had arrived on her desk overnight, a collection of requests, memos, notifications and transfer orders for Borshin’s signature. She was authorised to deal with all of it, but she took one item from the stack, read it twice carefully and put it to one side for him to look at. It was a pink disciplinary sheet, stapled to a non-requested transfer order. Later that morning, she requested the man’s file from personnel and took it through to Borshin.

  “I have one you may want to look at.”

  He looked up from his desk. Its surface was covered in the buff coloured folders. He nodded, leant back and lifted his coffee to his lips.

  “He is younger than you had envisaged, but it’s all here. Major Alexi Lenoid Kirov, born 1950. Joined late from the Army. Distinguished at the Academy, languages, English and German. Just scraped out of a committee hearing in ‘81 by his boss... He, ah, told a second assistant attaché what to do.”

  Borshin chuckled out loud and she read on, “That was in Budapest, did a tour without problems in Bonn, another in Amsterdam.”

  “Who was his boss?”

  “A Major Sokolov.”

  “Initial?”

  “S.K.”

  Borshin nodded. He knew him.

  “He is on his way back now. There has been an incident in Mexico City.”

  Mexico City, once a prime source of intelligence, was now just a backwater. “What’s he doing in that shithole?”

  “He doesn’t seem to have many friends in the department.”

  “What was the incident?” Borshin asked.

  “He assaulted the Head of Rezidentura.”

  Borshin stood and walked to his window. Attacking a senior officer was bad, but attacking the senior KGB man in a foreign location was a very serious offence.

  “Otherwise?” he asked, still looking out of the window.

  “Exemplary. Two commendations for his work, positive acclaim from the people in Bonn.”

  “Pull the rest of the file. I want to know what happened in Mexico City. When is he due back here?”

  “Monday. This is the file, General. All of it.”

  “Nothing further on the Mexico thing?”

  “No.”

  “Someone is covering something up here.” He didn’t say it but she knew who he was talking about. The old boy network. “Waive normal debrief and relocation as yet. I want to meet this Major Alexi Kirov... Who did he have a go at in Mexico?”

  She passed him a slip of paper with a name on it.

  Kirov walked through the airport, tired and grainy-eyed. It had been a long flight via Cairo and he had not slept for three days. He was noticeable amongst the people at the baggage reclaim area because he was one of the few who were not tourists, and in spite of his western clothing and hai
rcut, his bored demeanour made him stand out. A man of even height, with sandy blonde hair and nondescript green eyes, he hadn’t shaved recently and his stubble had a reddish tinge that was softened a little by the light suntan. Collecting his bags cheerlessly, he walked through to the customs men at their barrier, not happy at all with the prospect of being back in Russia for his disciplinary enquiry. He wasn’t so much concerned with the prospect of reprimand, demotion and possible suspension as he was bored with the whole affair. He just wanted it over.

  He took a taxi, illegally offering hard currency to travel alone, and sat silent in the back during the drive into the city and his apartment. His sister had said she would get some milk and bread and vodka in, put some soup in the fridge, clean up the place a bit. He looked out the window at the grey colourless people and the grey colourless streets. Moscow. He hated the place. He was from Kiev.

  Throwing his bags on the floor, he walked through to the tiny kitchen to turn the heating on. It might have been summer but the nights were still chilly, and the one good thing about a KGB apartment building was that they didn’t scrimp on the heating.

  There on the sink was a bottle of vodka. Should be in the bloody fridge, he thought, picking it up and taking a glass from the cupboard. Blowing the dust clear, he walked though to the small sitting room and sprawled in a chair. Welcome home Alexi, he said to himself, and miserably tilted the bottle to his lips.

  Half an hour later, he got up, stripped his clothing off and stood under a sad little trickle of water that should have been a shower. He had just begun to soap up his hair when he thought he heard a knock at the door. He paused, shrugged to himself and kept on going. When he was finished, he walked through to the sitting room, a towel round his waist – and there, sitting in one of his two chairs, was a man, lean and hard with greying hair and an eye patch. He was wearing well-cut Italian slacks and an English blazer over a silk shirt.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he asked.

  The man stood and looked around the apartment, the drab walls brightened only by a fading calendar and a picture of a lake in the spring. Standard issue.

  “I used to live in a place like this,” he said. He turned and fixed his one good eye on Kirov. “Nikolai Borshin.”