The Ice House
Dedication
For Anna, Sara and Tom
Title Page
THE ICE HOUSE
John Connor
Contents
Dedication
Title Page
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Copyright
1
He wore hooded, black, sterile overalls, nylon galoshes and a filter face mask that covered his mouth and nose. A small, lightweight pack went under the disposable outer layer, and he carried the gun in a long, padded bag, slung over his shoulder. It was an L115A3, a British-made, bolt-action sniper rifle fitted with a suppressor, firing .338 magnum cartridges that came in five-round magazines. He’d been very careful only to handle it with gloves, whilst wearing the overalls – the intention was to discard it later. It weighed nearly seven kilos and was over 1.2 metres long. It wasn’t what he had asked for, but it was good. A soldier firing one of these in 2009 had reportedly killed two Taliban machine gunners at a range of 2,475 metres. It had taken nine rounds to get the range, a luxury he wouldn’t have. As a sports shooter, in an altogether past life, he had hit targets at just over half that distance. His objective now was to locate a good position, in cover, about five hundred metres from the road.
Earlier, in a parallel valley with a dirt track, he had sat in the car and attached the suppressor, set up the gun and the sights, so that he didn’t have to fumble around in the dark. It was nearly 2 a.m. as he got over the ridge and into the valley. There was a moon, but enough cloud to conceal it and make progress slow. He moved without a flashlight, as slowly as necessary. There was no rush. He had about four hours before daylight. In that time he would need to dig himself in and set up the gun so that it was stable and pointing in the right direction, then get comfortable. After that he didn’t intend to move until after he’d taken the shot, which, if all went to plan, would be mid-afternoon. So there was a lot of waiting ahead.
It wasn’t ideal. The more he rested in one place the more DNA he would shed, despite the precautions. But the arrangements had forced him out of his normal routines. The money had transferred in the usual way, two weeks ago, but it was twice the amount he was accustomed to. With care he could live on it for two years. No objection to that. But other changes had left him exposed.
Normally the contact initiating a contract was at a distance. There were complex and laborious procedures to transmit the details, a supposedly anonymous notification system limiting the paperwork and information trail that gave him funds and a target. But this time he’d been informed there was to be a team involved and to coordinate it he would need to meet someone in person.
He knew enough about law enforcement to guess that nearly every precaution he could take was a waste of time and money if they were already looking at him, but on the assumption they weren’t, he’d spent the better part of nine years taking meticulous care to minimise his traces. He kept up to date with forensic science developments, court cases and police techniques. The most crucial prophylactic measure, throughout the nine years, was not being on any DNA databases. But all this was farcical if he then had to meet someone face to face. If the security was that compromised then why not go cheap – hire an Albanian for five hundred quid? The whole point of his service was the guarantee of invisibility. For this reason he had wasted almost two days of his preparation time querying the arrangements, but to no effect. This was how they wanted it.
The designated contact called himself Philip Jones. The meet with him had gone down five days ago, in London, without apparent hitch. At the time he had no idea who Jones was, no way of verifying the site used was clean, no way of knowing that Jones wasn’t undercover police, or, more likely, just someone earning a sideline by selling info to some agency. Jones had looked genuine enough – clean-shaven, dark hair cut neatly above his ears, blue eyes, angular face, very pale skin, dressed in the usual suit, about thirty years old, trim physique, an ex-soldier’s build and bearing. No scars, twitches, odd mannerisms, nothing conspicuous. He had spoken with confidence and experience, as if the work was very familiar to him. They had met in the Chelsea Club, a private health and social facility attached to the back of the Stamford Bridge development.
But appearances were rarely reliable. So here he was in the middle of the night, determined to get in early, to wait, to watch. Jones had told him that key local police were on the payroll, bought off, and that there were six in the team, dealing with other targets in the same area. If true, that would make it the most complicated and well-funded job he had been involved in. But the more people used, the greater the risk. If there were others in this valley then he wanted to know their positions before he squeezed the trigger.
He had looked at maps and photographs of the terrain. He knew roughly where there were a range of suitable positions. In the past he might have used the GPS he had in the pack to locate them, but he had recently learned of a case where police in America had got a court order and gained access to records of GPS location searches, proving an interest in a key building in a murder case. Spain – where he was – might not be quite so advanced, but he wasn’t certain of that, so he was feeling his way around in the darkness, GPS and phones switched off.
It took nearly an hour to get down to the level of the road. The hillside was a mix of knee-high grass, dense bushes and scattered groves of small, stunted trees, with knurled bark, all interspersed with boulders and rocks of varying sizes. He had to go very carefully. He thought it would have taken him fifteen to twenty minutes to cover the same ground in daylight.
Once at the road he crouched for a while considering the options, trying to get a clear picture of the angles. To his right was the house Jones had briefed him about, where the target lived, though from where he was he couldn’t see it. The next nearest house was roughly two kilometres back down the valley. He looked in that direction but could see no lights. The night around him was still and warm, filled with the rasp of crickets and the scent of wild rosemary. He could smell it even through the mask. There were dogs barking every now and then lower down, but a long way off, maybe even as far as Marbella. That was the next big town. Between the dark, jagged shapes of the hills he could see a lighter area that he assumed was the sea, and somewhere way out in that, twinkling gently, lights that were probably over the straits, in Africa.
He moved back up the hill, looking for flatter ground, counting his paces until he was about three hundred metres back. This would be an optimal range, he thought, but
yesterday, seventy kilometres further in land, in deserted scrub, he had zeroed the rifle and scope for five hundred metres, so now he worked his way a couple of hundred metres higher. The shot would be marginally harder, but it was a shorter distance back to the car after he’d fired. He found an area effectively screened with the thick bushes, a little overgrown ledge above some boulders. He crawled under and got out the spotting scope, checked the field of fire. He saw no one, heard no cars. When he was sure he’d found the best position available, he started to dig a shallow indentation with a small, lightweight trenching tool.
The soil was dry and loose, once he got the roots away, and he worked quickly. By 4.30 he was settling in with the rifle positioned, foliage pulled over him, thinking about whether he could risk dozing for an hour. He calculated he was so well hidden that you wouldn’t know he was there until you tripped over him.
If everything Jones had told him was true then the shot would be relatively easy. Certainly smoother than the last time he had done this. That was only about eight weeks ago. The target then had been a man called Barsukov, a Russian. When he had finally laid the sights over him he had been on the patio of a house near a Black Sea resort, lying on a sunlounger beside a pool. There was a woman with him, on the next lounger, and a child, a little boy, running around between them and the pool. On that occasion his position had been seven hundred metres away, in woods.
He had lined up three times, but each time the little boy had come over and stood right in the cross hairs, at the side of the lounger, his head or upper body blocking the shot.
The first three times he had paused and waited. But the fourth time he had started to compute the thing, keeping the aim steady. Seven hundred metres with the bullet travelling at near enough one thousand metres per second. A clean, sunny day, no head wind, perfectly still air between his position and the target. He reckoned the bullet would enter the child’s head through the back, exit through the face and still be accurate enough to take down the target, who was lying just the other side. It was even possible the round would still be supersonic as it hit. So it was a solution.
Or he could wait, and go through his set-up again.
Time had been limited. He was actually within the grounds of the house, and there was a security presence – albeit a sloppy one – to be factored in. As he went through the options his finger was on the trigger, his breathing controlled, everything ready. He had watched the child’s head bobbing around, giving him an intermittent view of Barsukov. Barsukov was laughing at something the kid was saying, perfectly relaxed.
In the end he hadn’t fired, because he wasn’t sure about the parameters of the contract. Back in London his brother had been working to get past the anonymity. They had discovered the company behind the money, but hadn’t got behind the company yet. For all they knew the woman lying next to Barsukov had placed the hit. And if the child was hers – as seemed likely – then she wouldn’t be happy, which would be bad for future business.
So he had waited and taken his shot about five minutes later. Then paused whilst the child had run off screaming in fright, watching to see the security reaction.
It wasn’t quite the same as this job, but nevertheless Jones had found it necessary to provide him with some specious justification: they had picked him because that way it would be more humane, he had said. They – the others in ‘the team’ – were not to be so clinical in their methods, it seemed, but this way, with a clean shot from a high-powered rifle, the death would be quick. A concession to humanity. Jones had thought he would need that rationalisation as he fitted her face under the cross hairs.
2
It was a nightmare – the recurrent nightmare. She was in a tightly constricted, airless space, chilled to the bone, shivering so her teeth were chattering. Where her hands were pressed against the trapdoor centimetres above her face – trying to force it open – she could feel a slippery layer of ice covering the wood, rivulets of meltwater running through her fingers, dropping down into her eyes. Beneath her was a half-frozen puddle, getting deeper by the minute.
She got her elbows against the trapdoor and heaved at it with all the strength she could summon. But the angle was restricting her. It wouldn’t move. Yet she had shut it herself, it wasn’t locked – she knew it wasn’t locked. She gave in momentarily and started shouting out for him, the words swallowed dead in the pitch-black enclosure, then held her breath and listened to the noises from above. The seal was so tight she could see nothing, but the sounds came through clearly enough. Had they heard her? Her muscles twitched and shuddered as she strained to hear. The temperature below her had to be sub-zero. The living heat was being sucked out of her. She wanted to scream with panic, kept moving her hands away from the trapdoor, down to her mouth, pushing her knuckles between her teeth and biting down on them.
She had to get out. Not for herself, but because if she didn’t they were going to kill him. She had to get out and get to him. She could hear shooting now, and screaming. She knew what they were doing. She could hear him gasping for breath, could see it happening as if she were up there, in the room with them – they were putting a noose around his neck, hauling him off the floor …
The image shifted without warning. The person under the boards vanished and now she was outside the hole, not even in the house, but on that hill where the stables were, to the west of the place. She was standing looking back at the house – the enormous, beautiful sprawl of it – up to her knees in snow, her breath puffing out in front of her, ice crystals on her eyelids and in her nostrils. And he was right beside her, standing with her, holding her hand. Alex. She whispered his name. She couldn’t see his face, but she could feel his presence like something intoxicating, exactly as it had been back then. An enormous wave of relief flooded through her. There was no danger, no screaming or gunshots, they hadn’t got to him, or strung him up, or killed him. She had been imagining it – none of that had happened. He was here, back with her, everything OK.
I thought I’d lost you, she said, and started crying quietly. I thought I’d never see you again. She let her head rest against his shoulder, felt him squeeze her fingers. She took a huge breath.
It was something she had only ever experienced with him – a feeling that she was home. Not here in this place in the snow – not anywhere that depended on a specific place. She belonged with him. As if it were programmed into her DNA.
She moved in the bed, opened her eyes. For a few seconds she couldn’t orientate herself. She lay in confusion with the aching loss like a gap in her chest, her heart thudding uselessly, his absence blotting out the fear that had preceded it. She tried to listen to the real night around her. Then gradually her pulse slowed, the feeling of his physical presence slipped away. She put her hand on her chest, over her heart.
The transition was painful. From that intense, rich feeling, coursing through her, filling her with an overpowering, physical sense of completion – to this, the shabby reality of where she was, who she was. The horror, the trapdoor, the feeling of his hand – none of it was real. She had been dreaming.
She turned her head and looked to where her husband was, in the bed, centimetres away. She could smell him, smell his faint night odour of male sweat. Juan Martin. That was his name, and that was who she was – Julia Martin. She started to piece together the essential elements of the existence she was living – who she was, who she was with, who she loved, what she did, where she lived.
When she was relatively calm she slipped the sheet aside and slid her feet onto the floor, stood up quietly, carefully, not wanting to wake Juan, not wanting to have to explain. She looked around, noting the objects that should be familiar to her – the bed, the man, the pictures on the walls, the bathroom, her clothes on the chair, the mirror. She was here, at home, in the warm Spanish night, in the hills to the west of Marbella, windows wide open, mosquito frames in place. No danger anywhere.
She moved qu
ickly and silently to check the room next to theirs, stared at the bed where her ten-year-old daughter lay. Rebecca. She could see her in the half-light, on her back, sheet bunched up around her, sleeping peacefully, her face beautiful, yet unlike anything else Julia might call beautiful. Something consoling kicked into her blood like a drug and brought a smile to her lips. But it couldn’t get rid of the memory of him.
She disabled the alarm and walked out onto the terrace in her T-shirt and pyjama bottoms. The night was hotter out here, replete with insect noises, the dry smell of undergrowth in need of a downpour, and the ubiquitous, intermittent dogs, barking somewhere off in the distance. She sat down on one of the chairs by the little metal table and looked at the dark, jagged line of the mountains almost ringing the house, the lights from the next house twinkling down the valley, about two kilometres distant. She thought it must be about three in the morning. She could smell the sea.
The recurrent nightmare. It wasn’t the same every time but the key elements were always there. The snow and ice were new this time, not even part of her memories of the place. When she had been there, a naive silly girl, out of her depth and barely out of her teens – or so it seemed now – it had never been like that, frozen in midwinter, everything frosted and glacial, clothed in shimmering ribbons and fantastic shards of ice, the thermometers showing thirty below zero. That wasn’t how she knew it at all. Her imagination had supplied all that, maybe because the place had been called The Ice House, though not in English – she had seen the name in Russian, in indecipherable Cyrillic lettering. She had even learned how to say it in Russian.
A vast eighteenth-century mansion in a forgotten corner of Russia, hundreds of unused rooms, cupolas of gleaming glass, copper domes rearing out of nowhere in the endless forest. It belonged to a man called Michael Rugojev, the man she had gone there to work for, the man who had showed her that hole beneath the kitchen floorboards, just in case. But when she had been there it had been high summer, with long, bright northern nights and heat. And the place had been like a dream for her, not a nightmare.