Tundra by Tim Stevens

Author:Tim Stevens
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Thrillers, Action Suspense, Mystery & Suspense, Espionage, Fiction & Literature
Publisher: Caliban
Published: 2014-04-30T23:00:00+00:00

Sixteen

The call came at ten past ten in the morning, an hour after Lenilko had returned to the office.

He’d left, finally, at eleven the previous evening. Natalya had greeted him with less hostility than he’d been expecting. The twins were fast asleep.

‘I’ll spend some time with them tomorrow,’ he promised. And he had, waking at seven to prepare Sunday breakfast for them all, romping with them on the new carpet of the apartment’s living room floor. He’d left standing instructions for any call from Yarkovsky Station to be routed to his personal cell phone, but it had stayed silent through the night.

At eight thirty, with a sense of guilt assuaged, which made him feel guilty in itself, Lenilko set off through the new snowfall to Lubyanskaya Square.

When Anna put the call through to his office, he detected a trace of her usual exuberance again. She was one of only four of five other staff in on a Sunday, and as he’d expected had got there before him, her greeting pleasant but nervous.

From nearly six thousand kilometres away, Wyatt’s voice said: ‘There have been major developments.’

Lenilko felt his pulse stir. He glanced at the time-zone clock on the wall. Just after four p.m. in Yakutsk.

‘The doctor, Keys, was killed last night. And the satellite link is down. The dish has been sabotaged.’

Lenilko listened to Wyatt’s concise, impassive account with a growing excitement, avoiding interruptions until it was clear Wyatt had finished. He said: ‘Purkiss?’

‘I don’t think so. It doesn’t feel right.’

‘Why the doctor?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

Lenilko breathed deeply. The sabotage of the communication system meant some kind of action was imminent.

Wyatt asked, ‘What am I looking for, exactly?’

‘I’ll find out.’

‘Time’s short.’

‘I know,’ said Lenilko.

‘Medievsky’s told me to guard the generators. I’m on my way there after this.’

Lenilko thought about it. ‘He trusts you.’

‘Or he wants me out of the way for a while.’ Wyatt paused. ‘Purkiss may have put him up to it. The two of them have just been talking in private.’

Lenilko closed his eyes. Yes. Of course it had been Purkiss.

With a sense of stepping off the edge of a precipice, he made his decision.

‘My order to you yesterday. About treating Purkiss as an untouchable.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m revoking it.’

Silence for a few seconds.

Wyatt said: ‘You’ve received new orders?’

‘Whether or not I have is my business. You take your orders from me.’

‘Yes. I understand.’

‘Call me three hours from now, if you can,’ said Lenilko. ‘Regardless of whether you’ve learned anything new.’

‘Yes.’

Lenilko put down the handset and turned gently in his office chair, one way and then the other.

The second satellite dish had been his idea, something he didn’t regard as a stroke of genius so much as a prudent precautionary measure. There was always the possibility of the Siberian storms knocking out the main communication system, and that would have cut Wyatt off entirely. Engineers employed directly through Lenilko’s department had installed the dish twenty-five kilometres to the south east of Yarkovsky Station a week before Wyatt’s arrival there.

Wyatt was right. Time was short, and Lenilko didn’t know what Wyatt was looking for.

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