Free Haven by Tim Stevens

ONE
     
    Everything about the man’s face was sharp: the right-angled nose, the cliffs of his cheekbones, the way the features snagged Purkiss and dragged him into a past that was only a handful of years away but seemed as distant as childhood.
    The man was leaning on the railing of a wall that dropped to the rocky beach, a mobile phone clamped to his ear. Purkiss was approaching from his left, and would reach him in ten paces. Taking care not to attract attention by slowing down, Purkiss instead angled the direction of his stride so that he’d pass well behind the man. As he drew nearer he risked another glance at the profile.
    Yes, there was no doubt about it.
    The man’s name was Oleksander Motruk. A Ukrainian national, he had until 2003 been an officer in the MVS, his country’s Ministry of Internal Affairs. A security policeman, and one with a reputation for brutality and corruption that eventually became an embarrassment too far. After his sacking, he’d set up a freelance business running guns in the western Mediterranean. His clients had included drug lords, nascent resistance movements in North Africa which had been quashed by their ruling regimes before they’d got off the ground, and Islamist groups in France and along the Dalmatian coast.
    Purkiss knew this because in the middle years of the previous decade he’d been stationed in Marseille himself, an agent of Britain’s Special Intelligence Service. Motruk’s was one of the faces he’d burned into his memory, the data in his dossier attached to the image using a peg-based memory system Purkiss had adopted and customised. He’d never encountered Motruk personally, but his interest in the man had been keen; Purkiss’s brief had been the detection and monitoring of suspected Islamist terrorist cells in the city and the Ukrainian’s name had come up time and again in connection with possible candidates. Motruk’s name had faded from the local intelligence chatter around 2006, and the assumption was that he’d been killed, was in jail somewhere, or had moved on to new pastures.
    So what was he doing here in Malta, seven years later?
    Purkiss stopped and turned and leaned on the rail, gazing out over the harbour. The distant glitter of the sea hazed into the skyline, the horizon molten by the heat. Gulls circled the high uncovered sun. A few yards away, below him, the fishing boats, the luzzu , bobbed and nudged one another, resembling aquatic peacocks with their bright colours and painted eyes. Along the railing to Purkiss’s left, he became aware of Motruk straightening and beginning to amble away.
    Purkiss gave it three seconds, as long as he dared. Then he began to follow.
     
    *
     
    Motruk walked with purpose but no hurry, ignoring the murmured entreaties of the waiters lolling outside the pavement seafood restaurants. Purkiss kept up easily, noting that the Ukrainian wasn’t employing any counter-surveillance methods. The streets were ancient, the buildings almost uniformly rustic looking and sunbleached. It was an ancient fishing village, Marsaxlokk – pronounced Marsa-schlock , the guide book said – and Purkiss had come there for the sense of history and the nearby ruins. Both were now forgotten.
    After ten minutes Motruk took an abrupt turn down a side street and went through a grimy glass door. Purkiss passed by, noting the sign in English: Three Ships Guest House.
    He waited at the far end of the street, watching the entrance, for fifteen minutes. Motruk didn’t emerge. The sun burned its way across the zenith and Purkiss shifted in his cotton shirt and chinos, feeling the sweat in the creases.
    Stepping into the shade of a grocer’s awning, Purkiss took out his phone. The voice that answered was ragged with tobacco tar.
    ‘Vale.’
    ‘Quentin, it’s me.’
    ‘John? You’re supposed to be on holiday.’
    ‘I am.’ Though a holiday wasn’t what Purkiss thought of it as. ‘I need a favour. The number of the local Service head