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One of the Ukrainians stood and nodded to Caelan, then said in heavily accented English, “You’re here to negotiate?”
“Aye, I’m here to negotiate,” said Caelan.
Men around the room then turned to one another, eyes wide—Caelan’s accent seeming to confirm for them who he was.
“YouareScot?” asked the man who seemed like their leader.
“He’s the fucking Scot, all right, you bunch o’ wankers!” growled Cain, throwing his neck back and forth like a pigeon pecking at the ground.
Some of the Ukrainians stood straighter, fingers resting on triggers, so Caelan urged Cain back and to stand out of the way—which he did.
For a brief moment, Caelan and Eric locked eyes.
A lot passed between them in that moment, but there wasn’t time to dwell.
Then Caelan caught a look at the asset. He was more bloodied up than Eric and weaker, by the looks of him. His head rolled around on his shoulders and he was in and out of consciousness.
“I need to take both of these men,” said Caelan, two fingers gesturing at the men in question.
None of the Ukrainians moved a muscle or made a single facial expression. In his experience, the Ukraine people were some of the toughest on the planet. As evidenced in that here they were, not moving in the face of one of the toughest soldiers on the planet. They stared at him blankly, psychinghimout.
“What’s it gonna take?” he asked.
“Much more than you can offer,” said the Ukraine spokesperson.
Caelan swallowed hard. It was a tricky situation.
He would ask to speak to Eric alone but Caelan wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what might come out of Eric’s mouth. That in itself could jeopardise the mission. Caelan stood with his arms folded weighing it up, and eventually, his stare provoked the leader to speak again.
“We are not letting Russian scum out of our sight, nor the man who saved his life.”
The Russian scum was the asset. A spy for the West. He’d been buried deep, deep in the heart of the Kremlin, but in recent months, had come under suspicion. He’d been sent to Ukraine as part of a secretive diplomatic force, with a mission to broker some kind of peace, but he’d scarpered before the meeting between Ukrainian and Russian officials could go ahead. He’d lost his head, terrified he’d come undone—fleeing Kiev, the site of the meeting, like a thief in the night.
In fact, he was right to scarper.
The Kremlin bombed the meeting place, having sent only suspected traitors to bargain on its behalf. They’d killed all the Ukrainian diplomats, too. Respected, revered men in this country.
Caelan could understand that these men wanted blood, retribution and vengeance more than they wanted answers. In their eyes there were wounds, let alone on their bodies; there were traumas, animal instincts in charge, survival at the forefront; they were quietly terrified, hungry and cold, longing for homes that no longer existed. He had to do this right.
Caelan gestured for everyone to sit and calm down, hands out in front of him, patting the air. Taking a deep breath, he crouched on the floor and looked around the room at all of them, nodding he understood.
“This man, I can vouch, is no like those other Russians. You’ll just have to take ma word for it.”
The shaking of heads was their response. Tetchy was an understatement. They were emotionally wrought and wouldn’t give up either man easily.
From what Caelan had gathered, Eric and the team had chased the asset across country as he tried to evade capture. When they did eventually apprehend the Russian double agent, at an abandoned warehouse outside Lviv, a bomb hit killing everyone but Eric and the asset.
Eric had secured the asset in a shelter but everyone else bought it.
Too bad as the debris flew, this group of Ukrainian civilian fighters had come to check nobody was injured, then they’d recognised the asset—Russian official, Ogarkov—and now here they all were. Stalemate. It was Caelan’s understanding that Ukraine simply did not have the resources to send anyone official out to deal with Ogarkov—and these men were feeling reckless enough to want to wait it out, so they might intercept any rescuers and die for glory and revenge rather than see Ogarkov go free. It was obvious Russia had given up trying to kill Ogarkov, the cat with nine lives. Or maybe they knew enough about the man who’d rescued him… to know to steer well clear of the white-haired SAS commander, the most revered pupil of the infamous Scot.
For sure, Caelan didn’t know everything, but he would interrogate Eric later. Including on how he’d survived alongside the asset, while the rest of the team met their end. Including Caelan’s oldest army buddy, Hamish. He didn’t have time to think about that. Not yet.
“Britain is a friend to Ukraine, yes?” Caelan asked, and nobody disagreed. “I am a friend to Ukraine. I am asking for this man to be freed so that we can process him properly.”
He wasn’t sure if Ukraine knew Ogarkov had been feeding intelligence to the West or not. He couldn’t risk telling these men too much. Russian spies with flimsy allegiance were everywhere. Suspicion was high. Spies from the West… everywhere. Churchill always knew future wars would be fought through intelligence, information hoarding and psychology. He was right.
Caelan had seen enough during his almost-forty years of life to know that nothing was ever black and white and the blurred lines between good and evil meant life always teetered on the edge of catastrophe.
