village where he stopped to buy the chicken legs; after parking the car he had taken his backpack out of the boot and carried it to the barbecue stand. The Mercedes had been parked across the square. He did not remember seeing the men, but had they been there they would have seen him buy the food, return to the car, put the pack back into the boot and drive out of the town. Anyone treating a pack with such reverence was bound to attract the attention of people whose livelihood was banditry.
Zhilev swallowed his food, stood up, his heavy knees creaking, walked around to the boot of his car and pulled on the handle to check it was locked. There had been little danger getting the nuclear bomb through customs in England and Belgium. He had discarded the case in England and placed the block in the boot. The odds on being searched were low and no one would have taken notice of a block of wood that Zhilev would explain away as something used to hold up the car if a wheel needed changing. As for radiation-detecting devices, there was little chance of the plutonium registering on them. The radiation was minimal at best, and inside its specially designed skin it was impossible to detect. The device had not left his side since he took it out of the cache. He had slept beside it, taken it to shops and cafés with him in his backpack and even carried it with him on the ferry.
Zhilev was about to head to the driver’s door when he stopped. The white Mercedes was returning.
Alarm bells rang in his head and he quickly scanned around for a weapon, a piece of wood, anything he might use. In the business of survival, one did not consider coincidences. He thought about getting into his car and driving off but then decided that might not be the best tactical move available to him. They might try and block him and since the Mercedes was as strongly built as the Volvo, if they crashed, he risked injury or having to stop. Worse still, if they got to him before he could get out of his car he would be at a great disadvantage. He needed the freedom to make the first move. Taking the upper hand whenever possible was the prudent course of action, and that often meant starting the fight.
Zhilev stepped back behind his car and picked up a large rock. The Mercedes slowed as it approached. Zhilev kept the rock out of sight.
The three men stared straight at him as their car drew level and stopped on the other side of the road. The driver leaned out of his open window and said something that Zhilev did not understand and chose not to respond to.The one in the back, sitting forward in his seat, said something just for the other two to hear. The driver attempted to communicate with Zhilev once again, this time using hand gestures which looked like he was asking for directions. Zhilev remained like a statue, his sullen eyes reading theirs, waiting for the sign that would launch him into attack. He felt no fear, and was even beginning to wish they would climb out. He knew what he was going to do and unless they had guns, he felt confident. He’d had many fights during his military career, and because of his size, and being Spetsnaz, he was often a target for more than one man at a time. Fighting was a pastime in the Russian military and he’d never lost, even the day in Sevastopol when five sailors attacked him in the street when he was not expecting it. His success was partly because he never got drunk, and partly because he went for maximum damage with every blow and was prepared to wait for or create the opportunity. His problem was that he sometimes lost control, and on that day, because they had jumped him, he did not stop even after three of them had been laid unconscious and the other two were begging for mercy. He continued to stamp on and kick them, and when he walked away one had permanent brain damage, one a broken neck and the other three a dozen major bones broken between them.
The rear door of the Mercedes opened and a foot touched the ground. This was the moment Zhilev was waiting for and the furthest he was prepared to let