The Last Bike Ride - Chapter 7/15

Chapter 7

In the Kremlin, reports had been received that Chechnya could be the source of their problems. It had been for years, of course, but this was something entirely and dangerously different. There were no nuclear devices, certainly no ICBMs, left in the country, so where to look with the US deadline looming. Every resource available was targeted to that part of the Caucusus, but with the nature of that mountainous area, it was like looking for a moral politician.
Nikolay Zheldak had been ordered to collate all rebel contacts in Chechnya. He felt a bit luckier than some of his colleagues who had been ordered to stay on, but he was only beginning his night shift. Everyone had now been called in and the office was buzzing with activity.
Zheldak was considered an expert in the region and knew the country reasonably well having volunteered many years ago for a posting there.
His enthusiasm wasn’t for the country - he hated Chechnya - but for a former girlfriend who he had once been together with in Moscow. She had ended up marrying Usman Akhmadov, but Yana was never far from Nikolay’s thoughts and they had started to meet up again when she visited her family in Moscow twice a year while Akhmadov was up in Vedeno.
“Yana, it’s Niki!” said Nikolay as she answered the phone.
“Niki, my darling, what a surprise! I’ve told you about calling here, but this is a good time to call as Usman is away somewhere.”
“That’s why I’m calling, Yana. The Kremlin thinks the London bomb came from Chechnya and they’ve only got until 6 in the morning to get proof so they can call off the American threat.”
“And you think Usman might be involved?!” she laughed, “I know he’s an animal but he’s not capable of that, and anyway, where would he find a nuclear bomb?”
“I know, honey, it all sounds crazy, but we’re all going to be in the shit if we don’t get that proof,” replied Nikolay, “but if you hear anything, no matter how trivial, just let me know, please.”
“Of course, Niki baby. I’ll do whatever I can. Bye.”
Yana called Vasily. He would know what’s going on, she thought.
“Yana, not now, this isn’t a good time,” answered Vasily, when she finally got through.
“Listen, Vasily, my lover, I’ve just had a call from Nikolay Zheldak.”
“What does that wanker want?” he spat out, his loathing of Nikolay now raising his blood pressure.
He had found out about Yana’s trips to Moscow and her visits to Nikolay and had threatened to go there himself and cut him to pieces.
“You’ve got to hear this Vasily. The Kremlin thinks the London bomb came from our region and the Americans have given us an ultimatum. If you know anything about it you’ve got to tell Niki,” she pleaded, “I’ll text you his number.”
“How could anyone around here be able to do that?” said Vasily.
“Vasily, do you know something?” Yana was surprised how quickly he had calmed down and his voice sounded a bit muted.
“I’ll see if I can find out anything. Bye.”
Potemkin could see an opportunity to finally have Yana to himself. As much as he despised Nikolay Zheldak he knew he would have to talk to him, and he knew he’d be able to keep him away from Yana if his plan worked. Of course, if it didn’t, nobody would have Yana - their country would be wiped out.
His feelings for Akhmadov had changed in recent months, mainly because of Yana, but the final straw had been the shootings in the silo just before the launch. Word had got through to him that one of the three killed by Akhmadov had been his cousin, Yury, brother of his cousin Eva.
He thought of being able to live together openly with Yana and Maya now, and being able to form a close, very close, family. Maybe they’d move to Moscow where he would be welcomed as a saviour rather than being despised as a disruptive rebel as he was now. He knew how much Yana missed her mother since she was brought here to Chechnya by Akhmadov when she was pregnant with Maya. He didn’t regard Nikolay as much of a threat as a lover of Yana, and knew he’d be able to deal with him.
Nikolay answered the phone.
“Zheldak here.”
“Nikolay, this is Vasily Potemkin from Kalinovskaya.”
The name brought a cold shiver down Nikolay’s spine.
“What can I do for you?”
“I can lead you to where the London bomb came from and to the team that launched it. It was Usman Akhmadov.”
Hearing that name, Nikolay shot bolt upright. He knew this would be genuine, coming from Potemkin. His mind was racing.
“Vasily, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. I need to send this info up to Command.”
“OK, Nikolay, I’ll be here.”
Zheldak was soon back on to Potemkin.
“They’re arranging a Vympel team to meet you just outside Kalinovskaya. It’ll be a few hours until they’re with you. This has to be planned very carefully. They will want you to be wired up. Are you OK with that?”
“Of course. Nikolay, they must know that I’m not part of the team. Can I trust you to make sure they know that?”
“Yes, Vasily, leave that with me. You have my word.”
Vasily made his way over to Yana’s to spend the next few hours in bed with her and Maya. He’ll tell them about their new life afterwards; he didn’t want her to know what was about to happen. He couldn’t be sure if either of them would warn Usman or not.

***

Winchester was up ahead and Steve knew that this was going to be the toughest passage of his odyssey home. He had already been surprised at how steep some of the motorway climbs had been but those around Winchester through the Twyford Gap were going to be the steepest yet. If he could get through these, he thought, it should be easy after that. But there would still be a long way to go before home.
These hills not only swooped up and down but also left to right and Steve thought back to one clear winter’s night a couple of years before when the crescent moon had the bright Venus close to one its ‘tails’. As the road swung back and forth from east to west, the two looked like a Tom and Jerry cartoon with the moon as Tom first chasing Venus’s Jerry, then Jerry chasing Tom as the road veered back the other way.
Tonight there was something missing from the clear sky. With the slight tail-breeze, planes would have normally been taking off from Southampton airport and their flight-path would have been over the M3. With no flights coming into the country since the attack, the last flight had taken off from here some time ago and the skies had been left to the moon and the stars.
Steve also thought of the summer days. This was the most dangerous part of the M3, catching out the inexperienced holiday drivers whose driving wasn’t as good as the regular commuters who knew the M3’s vagaries very well. The skidding tyres left some interesting patterns on the tarmac. It was obvious where some of the black lines ended up, either into the concrete or steel central reservation, or off the edge of the carriageway and up or down the embankment. Other tyre marks just left flower-like arrangements on the road.
There had been very few Friday nights during the school summer holidays when the matrix 40mph lights were not showing, with smashed cars at the end of the traffic jam, and holidays ruined.
Before the hills, though, the Winchester services couldn’t have been more different than at Fleet. Here, all lights had been turned off but he could still make out a mass of vehicles jammed into the fuel area. No one had shot a petrol pump here, or if they had, they had been a pretty poor shot.
Once safely past, Steve stopped and climbed up the embankment where he knew he would get a good view of the old historic city. This was the first chance of the night of seeing a place of civilisation. What struck him initially was that it seemed that all the city’s lights were on. It had long been thought that the main targets of a nuclear attack were the power stations and industrial areas rather than population centres.
‘Maybe they’ve hit the North first,’ thought Steve, ‘but Mum did say that there had been no other attacks reported.’
It seemed an age since he had managed to get through to Juliette, and then his parents. He then remembered Pete’s phone in his pocket and took it out to make the call he had promised. The signal was not good, but the battery had a bit of life in it.
“Daddy!” cried out Susie, who had obviously seen his name on the phone display.
“No, it’s not, it’s one of your Dad’s friends,” he lied, “can you be a good girl and put your Mum on the phone, please.”
She had sounded like a five year-old, but he didn’t want to take the chance on it being Susie’s sister and so didn’t wish her a happy birthday as he had thought of doing at first.
“Who is this” Why have you got Pete’s phone?” demanded Hattie.
“This signal’s not good. I can’t hear you very clearly. Are you Hattie?”
“Yes, just tell me what’s going on!”
“I’m sorry, Hattie. I don’t have the right words for this, but there’s been an accident and I’m afraid Pete has died. He asked me to try and phone you.”
There was silence for a few seconds and Steve thought he had lost the signal, but then he heard her start sobbing and he thought of hanging up but wanted to tell her what Pete had asked him to say.
“Hattie, I have to tell you something – it’s something Pete wanted you to know.”
“What is it?”
“He wanted to tell you how much he loves you all and wished he had tried to get home to you when he had the chance.”
“Thank you, I’m really grateful to you for that. The girls are going to ….”
“I didn’t catch all of that. Hattie, would you mind if I used this phone to call my wife? I’m trying to get back home to Bournemouth.”
“No, of course not. What’s your name, by the way?”
“Thanks, it’s Steve.”
But the breaking signal meant that Hattie could only make out the ‘S’ of his name.
“Hattie, there’s something else you should know. Pete got me to do something for him. He asked me to …”
The signal had gone. Steve tried a few more times to call home but it was no good and he flung the phone away into the darkness.
“Bollocks!”
As he stood on top of the bank and looked down across the city, he tried to make out the famous 11th century Gothic cathedral, one of the largest in the country, and the equally renowned Winchester College.
The college was one of the oldest schools in the country and regarded as one of the top public schools. There had been a couple of old Wykehamists, as those who had been to Winchester College were known, sitting in the cabinet earlier.
This city had once been made the capital of England under King Alfred the Great.
‘If the country was to survive somehow, where would the new capital be?’ pondered Steve, ‘perhaps Basingstoke?!’
He reached into his rucksack and found a banana and two energy bars.
‘The banana and one of the bars should be enough to get me beyond Winchester’ he hoped.
Soon he was climbing the first of the hills, and he was reminded of the Isle of Wight and the very steep Blackgang Chine which he had cycled up occasionally.
JDG had added a ‘Round the Island’ cycle ride to its sponsorship of a sailing event around the island and Steve had done that event twice. The first time he had been met by his good friends Frank and Anne, and their two lovely grand-daughters, who had all cheered him on to the top of Blackgang Chine.
He was thinking of them now as he reached the top of this motorway hill. Frank had been his best man at his wedding and Anne was one of the best women he had known. They had had some good times together, some of the best, and some very drunken ones, too.
When they had a pub in Kent, Frank had started his own golf society and had organised some riotous golfing trips to the golf courses of northern France. He had also made the arrangements for Steve’s small stag party in Boulogne. Those involved soon knew what they were in for when red wine was ordered for breakfast on the ferry from Dover. The trip was remembered as ‘Five go mad in Boulogne’. More than five had got on the ferry but were too drunk to get off and just stayed on board and poured themselves off again in Dover.
A fast, downhill run now and then another steep climb. Even above the roar of the traffic on the other side Steve could make out the rhythmic beat of some trance music ahead. As he got nearer the top of this climb he could see a group of cars parked on the opposite hard shoulder. He could now see a small crowd around the cars.
Earlier, one had run out of fuel and the convoy of friends had decided to stay together and start a roadside party. Their cars might have been low on fuel but the ravers had a huge stash of drugs to fuel them through the night and into oblivion.
Steve was catching a breather now after his climb and was looking over towards the party, but when he looked back to the road his blood drained.
Two of the party opposite, a couple of stoners, way off their heads, had made their way over to his side and had noticed this strange sight of someone on a bicycle coming towards them.
Steve’s eyes were more alert and accustomed to the moonlight than this pair’s, but it was going to be a tricky situation.
The first of them, the biggest of the two, shouted to Steve,
“Give us your fucking bike!”
At the same time he took a swing but Steve was able easily to duck under it and felt a bump as his attacker had swung himself to the ground catching his fingers in Steve’s rear spokes. The bump was a couple of those fingers being torn from the hand whose spaced-out owner would not notice for a while. Steve was now concentrating on the second attacker who was coming for him. There was only to be one chance, otherwise this would be as far as Steve gets.
As this thug got closer he did a double-take on Steve’s Spurs hat, and that slight hesitancy gave Steve his chance. He aimed his steel toe-cap, missed both of his assailant’s legs, but got him squarely in the groin with the satisfying sound of crunching testicles. Unlike his friend, this guy had definitely felt that and, as he doubled up in pain, contemplating a future castrato role, Steve caught him squarely on the jaw with his next kick, scattering teeth over the tarmac.
‘Time to get out of here!’ thought Steve, and after he looked over his shoulder to see one of his attackers out cold and the other crawling around helplessly, he was soon away down the hill.
Winchester College’s motto was ‘Manners maketh Man’, but Steve was thinking, after his latest close call, that there can’t be many men being made tonight.
As he was climbing that last of the steep Winchester hills his thoughts turned back to London.
He had an uncle and aunt there, but he hoped they were away in their holiday home in the Italian mountains. There were some cousins there too, and it was unlikely that they had all been away from London at the same time. He wondered if any of them hadn’t made it.
‘Let’s hope it was quick for them,’ he thought.
He thought of White Hart Lane and the crowd which would have been inside, or milling around outside, before kick-off, excited about another great Spurs European night. The ground, full of fantastic memories of some of the greatest players to have ever played the game, would have perished in seconds.
Not far away from Tottenham, the new Emirates stadium, empty tonight, and home of the Arsenal, would also have gone in the blink of an eye.
‘It’s probably improved the atmosphere there!’ he chuckled to himself.
Steve was close now to the junction where the M3 ends and the link road swoops round to merge into the M27. Across on the other side he noticed the motorway sign lit up by the oncoming traffic showing ‘Bournemouth 34’. Still a long way to go, but he had those Winchester hills behind him now.