Dead Centre - Andy McNab [138]
33
AS I STARTED up the steps I whispered into the little boy’s ear, ‘Daddy’s here, Stefan! Look!’
His head lifted and turned. At last there was a smile on the boy’s face too. He struggled to release himself. ‘Papa! Papa!’
We reached the door.
Frank held out his arms and took him from me. They hugged each other hard. Tears streamed down Frank’s cheeks as he kissed his son’s face. ‘Oh, my Stefan …’
Frank carried him into the interior, a feast of white leather La-Z-Boy type seats and sofas and thick-pile carpets. I stayed where I was, just inside the door. Frank walked further into the aircraft. He sat down on a curved settee with his son. They embraced and kissed.
Stefan sparked up in Russian. I didn’t know what he was saying but he was tripping over himself as he raced to explain everything that had happened. I heard, ‘Mama, Mama,’ a couple of times.
Frank wiped the boy’s tears from his cheeks. His own were drenched. He couldn’t control himself.
Soon Frank was talking to him gently in Russian and stroking his face. He made some sort of funny, as you do with kids. It didn’t work.
An older woman emerged from the door nearest the cockpit, set into a wall of varnished walnut veneer. She said a gentle but cheerful hello to the boy and stroked his hair.
Stefan knew her. She led him away by the hand, but not before he got one more kiss on the forehead from his father.
Frank watched him all the way to the bedroom, where his son turned and waved.
His Zenith rattled as he beckoned me into the cabin. ‘Nick, please. Come. Sit.’
My attention stayed for a moment on the bedroom door, and then I joined them.
‘Stefan’s wounds need to be cleaned, Nick. And then she will give him something to help him rest until we get back to Moscow.’
I dropped my arse into the curved sofa opposite him. He wiped his eyes and leant forward. His hand came up and shook mine. ‘Nick, thank you. Thank you.’
He offered me a real glass bottle of water. The cap gave a hiss as I untwisted it. I glanced out of the window as I took a couple of big thirsty gulps. Mr Lover Man and Genghis were transferring the tarpaulin bundles into the hold.
‘What happens to the heads?’
‘They’ll be sent to certain people in Tbilisi. As a gift.’
‘Some gift.’
‘I will make the regime in Tbilisi crumble and my country will be free. Georgia is an enemy of Russia, Nick. An enemy of South Ossetia. There will be violence on the streets of Tbilisi very soon. The people I support and finance will make sure of that. Those heads – they are a gift to those who would try to use my son as a weapon against me.
‘I am treating them to a vision of their future – because soon I will have their heads as well. My mother and my father, they were in their seventies when the Georgians came into my country. They were old, gentle people, no threat to anyone.’
When Georgia launched its military offensive in 2008 to retake the breakaway South Ossetia, about fourteen hundred locals were killed. Frank’s parents must have been among them.
We both went quiet as Tracy’s body was loaded.
There had been anger in his voice when he spoke about his parents, but now sadness replaced the more familiar Terminator look.
‘We’ll bury her in Moscow. Stefan needs to be close to her always.’
Frank suddenly couldn’t meet my eye.
‘What are you going to tell him?’
He shrugged.
‘If it helps, Frank, when I first saw Tracy in Merca, she was stroking his head and singing a nursery rhyme. What about telling him that his mum has gone to heaven to teach the angels to sing “Three Blind Mice”?’
The tears welled up again in Frank’s eyes. I didn’t think they were just for Stefan. A hand came up, trying to push them back into his head rather than wipe them away.
‘Yes, that will be a very good idea. Thank you, Nick.’
My job was done, but I suddenly felt this might