Brigade of the OMPR and where Zhilev was to be based for much of his career.
The following two years were spent training extensively in all forms of intelligence gathering, both technical and physical, as well as advanced small arms and sabotage. He learned Special Forces diving skills, which included the use of bubble-less re-breather diving apparatus as well as mixed gas options for deep-water operations, and how to drive and navigate a number of different miniature submarines. He studied intensively a variety of Western commercial and military targets, from oil platforms to missile silos, so that he could report on them as well as mount sabotage operations against them. This was where he also learned to use several different kinds of chemical, biological and man-portable nuclear weapons or suitcase bombs.
The only negative aspect of that period was he could not see as much of his brother as he would have liked. When either of them were on leave, and that was rarely at the same time, they would make their way to the other’s nearest base town, in Vladimir’s case, Moscow, and in Zhilev’s, Ochakov, and spend as much time as they could together. By the time Zhilev’s two-year training programme was complete, Vladimir was a civilian once again, and with Zhilev’s probationary period over, it was easier for them to meet. In fact Zhilev spent every leave period back in Riga with his brother, attended his wedding as best man, and was at every one of their three children’s christenings.
During Zhilev’s operational years he took part in missions and so-called rehearsals all over the world from Cuba to China, England and America, and was involved in the training of several renowned terrorist groups and the passing of weapons to, among others, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. The day he realised his career in Spetsnaz was over was the worst in his life, until the arrival of this letter. Nothing in the world meant more to him than his brother, not even his own life. He would have given it gladly if it meant Vladimir could come back home.
Zhilev’s thoughts went to Vladimir’s wife and daughter. He wondered if they knew. Vladimir had elected Zhilev as his next of kin in the event of an emergency because there was no one in the world he trusted more. As an engineer on an oil tanker travelling all over the world, there was always the chance he might have an accident and he wanted his brother to be the first to know before his wife and children.
Zhilev decided to drive over to the house and tell Marla, Vladimir’s wife, the grave news. But first he had to recover a little more himself. She would be devastated and he wanted to have full control of his own emotions so that he could concentrate on comforting her.
He checked the letterhead for the phone number of the office in Dubai. Before going over to see Marla he would make arrangements for his brother’s body to be brought home for burial, and also find out how he died. Then he noticed the date at the top of the letter.
‘My God,’ he murmured. Vladimir had been dead for more than a week.
Chapter 4
Stratton was hunched over a desk reading a book in the office of C Squadron’s operations’ hangar, situated on the edge of the Special Boat Service’s sprawling headquarters camp a quarter of a mile from Poole harbour. The book was about the Templars, the military order established after the beginning of the first crusades, the invasion of what is now known as the Middle East at the end of the tenth century. He’d had the book for more than a year, having come across it in the television room of the south detachment undercover operations HQ in Northern Ireland and, not having had the time to read it due to a sudden increase in operational developments, it had ended up in a box of odds and ends that he brought back with him to England after prematurely finishing his tour.The book had surfaced only the other day during a much-needed sort through of the spare room of his cottage in the quaint village of Lythchet Matravers just outside Poole, and he began reading it there and then.The book actually started centuries before the famous knights and opened with the story of Abraham and Isaac, about as far back as Christian, Jewish and Muslim history went. Since the chronicles of the Templars intertwined with the beginnings of