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 Walking the Dog by Smilodon Chapter 10

   The two SAS men slipped away from the cottage as soon as it was fully
dark.  The four of us ate dinner together in a strained atmosphere.  Liam
and Niall were almost visibly quivering with anticipation.  They were
preternaturally alert.  The speculation and the good-humoured jibes at me
had vanished.  Now they were all business.  No alcohol for them tonight. 
Somehow we could sense that a line had been crossed.  Before, they had
taken it seriously but not felt we were in any real danger, not mortal
danger at any rate.  All that had changed.  The word 'operational' popped
into my head.  We were now 'operational.'

   I took the dogs outside for a last pee before turning in.  The sky was
crystal clear; a halo hung around the moon that was just a couple of days
off being new.  Ice particles in the atmosphere made the stars shimmer and
dance.  They appeared unusually close that night.  I was standing in the
small untidy garden at the back of the cottage, taking all this in and
breathing in the tangy sea air when I felt, rather than saw, Trotsky
stiffen.  I could just make out his pale coat in the faint light.  He stood
tall, head erect, the posture tense and guarded.  I tried to pick out Magic
but his black fur blended perfectly into the deeper shadows by the low
wall.

   I called them to me and pulled them quickly inside, shooting the bolts
on the door, someone was definitely out there.  The dogs sensed it and I
caught their mood.  I muttered the news to Niall and he gave a quick
whistle for Liam.  They waved me out of the room and then crouched, one
each side of the door, against the thick stone walls.

   There was a light tap on the glass and a laconic voice said, "It's
Steve, I think you'd better let us in." Niall moved away, to be behind the
door when it opened.  Liam pushed the bolts open, taking care to keep his
head and body in the cover of the wall.  The door swung inwards with a
crash and Steve was propelled into the room.  A tall figure stood just
outside of the pool of light spilling from the open doorway.  A harsh voice
called out, "Angelika!"

   Angela flew into the room, thrusting me to one side in her rush.  "Papa?
Papa?" She let go a rapid-fire burst of what I took to be Estonian.  The
half-hidden figure answered in the same tongue.  She turned to me, her face
drained of all colour.  "It's my father," she said, "he wants to come in
and talk.  He say's it's very important." Niall looked at me and I nodded.
He grimaced and then told Angela to tell her father to come in.  Steve was
looking sheepish.  Niall raised an eyebrow in his direction.  "Sorry,
boss," he said, "I fucked up big-time." Liam muttered a terse "Later." All
our attention was on the tall, slim figure that emerged from the darkness
into the lighted kitchen.

   It was his eyes that I noticed first.  They were incredibly like
Angela's but not the same.  There was a feral glint to his that Angela's
lacked.  His face was grave and unlined.  He had short grey hair that
showed just a hint of curls.  It was cut high on his forehead, emphasising
the regularity of his features.  He reminded me a little of the English
actor, Terence Stamp, even down to the cleft in his strong chin.  His face
was transformed when he smiled at his daughter.  He looked at the rest of
us and gave a sort of short bow.  Liam shut the door and the Colonel turned
and smiled at him, one professional recognising another.

   We all sat down at the table and the Colonel began to speak.  Angela did
her best to give us a running translation but at times, she was so shocked,
she would utter another burst of lightening-quick Estonian before turning
back to us.  He spoke for about half an hour.  When he finished, we were
all in shock.

   The Colonel told us he had been watching us for about a day and a half.
He had come at first to rescue Angela but had quickly realised, this with a
nod in my direction, that she was among friends who were protecting her. 
He had never meant for either of his daughters to become involved.  When
Vika had been murdered in Gothenburg, he had vowed to take revenge.  He
traced the man who killed Vika to London.  He had found him and killed him,
early on Monday morning.  Mickey-the-Mouth.  Then he had driven to Norfolk
to make contact with Angela.  The Colonel had seen Bill and Steve arrive.
He had guessed what they would do; it was what he would have done.  He set
up the decoy observation post and had baited the trap with the assorted
rubbish Liam had found, knowing that someone would have the place under
surveillance.  He had dug a scrape a few yards away, covered himself with
camouflage netting and tussocks of marrom grass, and waited.  Steve had
obligingly showed up.  The former SAS man shrugged and mouthed, "sorry,
boss." Liam shook his head.  No use crying over spilt milk.  Steve had been
careless, overconfident.

   Angela's father had related all this in a light easy, matter-of fact
tone.  Then Angela had asked him the question we all needed an answer to,
'Why?' His voice had grown flatter, harsher somehow, as he told us his
incredible story.  It had started when the Colonel returned from
Afghanistan in 1986.  He had been bitter, disillusioned by his experiences.
A group calling themselves the Estonian Democracy Committee had made
contact with him.  At first he had resisted their courtship but the more he
thought about it, the more he realised they were right.  The USSR was
rotting from within.  It couldn't last too much longer.  One day soon,
Estonia could take back the freedom it had lost in 1941.

   He did nothing, but stayed in touch.  When the Berlin Wall came down and
the Russians didn't react; when one by one, the former Soviet satellite
states exerted their own free will and became self-governing once more; it
was the Estonian Democracy Committee who moved to fill the political vacuum
left behind.  Now, as the legitimate government, they approached him again.
Would he go to Russia, they had asked him.  He was to take a job, keep his
ear to the ground.  They were particularly worried about the amount of
former Soviet armaments that seemed to be flooding out of the old USSR.  He
agreed.  His daughters had left home, one to marry, the other flying to the
west to be a 'bohemian'.

   He had set up his 'security consultancy' and waited.  Inevitably, his
clients had been of a dubious nature, crooks, conmen, people on the make.
He had picked up snippets here and there, had reported back to Tallinn. 
Some shipments of small arms and explosives, bound for who-knows-which
'liberation' army, had been intercepted and impounded.  There had been a
handful of arrests, no-one significant, of course, just couriers and
low-grade operatives.  The work was easy, he was making a good living and
he had a comfortable life in St Petersburg.

   All that changed about a year and a half ago.  He was urgently summoned
home to Tallinn.  The government were in a state of near panic.  It had
come to light that 20 tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium had gone walkabout
in the old USSR.  Originally, it was ascribed to inefficiency, poor
record-keeping, that sort of thing.  Then someone caught a whisper. 
Someone else heard talk of an 'Islamic Bomb'.  Little accretions of
evidence emerged here and there.  Not proof positive, you understand, but
enough links in the chain to get the politicos shitting themselves.  He was
sent back and told to dig some more.

   It had taken him a while, almost a year.  He had it all now.  The
Chechens, of course, were deeply involved.  Some were in it in solidarity
with their co-religionists but the majority were in it for the money.  Half
a billion dollars.  A certain Arab country whose leader had pretensions of
leading the great Jihad against Israel and its supporters provided the
money.  He traced the links out of Russia into the West; Germany, Spain,
Britain, even into the USA.  There were those, some of whom worked in their
own government agencies, for whom the lure of half a billion dollars
overwhelmed any scruples.  He had pretended to be one such.  They had
rumbled him.  He had fled to Sweden, faked his own death.  Somehow Vika had
learned of her father's death and followed him to Gothenburg.  He believed
she had been sent as bait to trap him.  He had avoided her.  It hadn't
saved her.

   At this point, the Colonel took out a roll of papers, wrapped in oilskin
to protect them from the damp.  He tossed it on the table.  "Five good men
have died for this," he said and looked grim.  "It is all there, names,
places, facts and figures." We all stared at the bundle.  The room was
completely silent.  We were all shattered by the enormity of what we had
heard.  The Colonel's mouth was a hard, compressed line; his steely blue
eyes gazed frankly back at us.  He gave a shrug.  Angela continued
translating.

   "The problem I have is to know who to trust.  There are Estonian names
on that list, too.  Everywhere, there are people prepared to sell their
country.  No!  To sell the World!  They must be stopped."

   I had a sudden thought.  "Ask him what he has to do with the ikon," I
said to Angela.  He laughed when he heard the question and Angela smiled
when she heard the reply.  She turned to us and when both father and
daughter were smiling, the resemblance between them was clear.

   "My father traced me through Frau Meyer.  He went to see her after
reading an article about her and he saw my name mentioned as one of those
artists she patronised.  The article had also said that Frau Meyer was a
great opponent of extremism in the new Germany.  He thought she would be
disposed to help him.  He explained a little of the situation and suggested
that she might help.  They hit on the idea of putting the ikon up for sale
in the UK to mislead Cornell, who was getting too close.

   "Frau Meyer wanted to do more so they agreed that she would send me some
bronze to work with.  Hidden in that shipment is about one hundred pounds
of plutonium.  My father thinks it will be at Felixstowe Docks tomorrow or
the next day.  He stole it from a shipment and substituted plain lead rods.
The plutonium is wrapped in a lead sheath and a thin skin of bronze."

   "Why send it here?" I asked, puzzled.  Angela smiled again, "It is his
evidence.  Anyone could come up with a list of names and things on paper.
He needs our help.  He wants someone to contact, someone above suspicion.
Everything in the East is too corrupt; he doesn't know who's involved and
who isn't.  Do you know anyone in the Government, Martin?"

   I admitted I knew one person, an MP I had once done some work for.  I
hadn't liked him much but as far as I knew, he was straight but didn't know
too much about him.  Then Liam chimed in.  "Do you remember Rollo Yeates?"
I did, he had been Head Boy at school when we were there.  "Rollo's now a
half-colonel in I Corps, he might be the very man!" I had to agree.  If
Rollo Yeates was now a Lieutenant Colonel in Army Intelligence, he could
certainly point us in the right direction.  All of this was explained to
Angela's father and he thought for a moment or two before answering.  He
puffed out his cheeks and then grinned.  "Good, a soldier!"

   It was agreed that Liam should contact Rollo Yeates and get him to meet
us at Felixstowe Docks the following day.  I picked up the roll of papers
and began to scan them.  They were written in a variety of languages but I
saw a few names I recognised, Cornell's among them.  Another I recognised
was a former MP, well known for his venal nature and habit of attracting
scandal, and a third was a high-profile radical journalist with a history
of penning attacks on Israel and the USA.  There were other, obviously
Western, names that didn't ring any bells.  The one name that brought me up
short was that of a prominent European Industrialist.  How the Hell could
someone like that involve themselves with this bloody mess?  I voiced this
aloud and Angela's father understood instantly.  He spread his hands in a
gesture of helplessness.  "Gelt!" he said, money.

   It had got pretty late by this stage and we were all starting to flag a
bit.  I left Angela alone to talk with her father and retired to our bed
alone.  I could still hear the soft murmur of conversation as I drifted
into a troubled sleep.  At least I now knew what was going on.  At any
rate, I thought I did.