Smart had then proceeded to tell her boss of the potential benefits of her being in the employment of the mob.
‘Think of the intelligence we could gather on organised crime London,’ she had argued. ‘In return for feeding them some insignificant information on police operations against Stratovsky, we get access to their network. There is nothing goes on in London that the Russians don’t know about in advance. We might have stopped the bus bombings had I been on their books. This could be a win-win.’
The expression on her chief’s face was one of disgust but he eventually replied, ‘I will want sight of what you will share with them. I don’t want you giving away too much information.’
‘Understood, Sir,’ she had replied excitedly, and for the next two hours, they had continued to discuss the parameters in which she would be able to operate and the kinds of returns that would be expected.
Lauren Smart: a double agent.
It had sounded so exciting, at first. She had commenced an affair with Robert. He had probably been ordered to start an affair with her too, and it seemed sad that they had both willingly entered the relationship with hidden agendas. That didn’t mean the sex wasn’t great though. In fact the sex was incredible. They would meet once a week on average, although some weeks they met more frequently and other weeks they would hardly see each other; but when they were together it was electric, both consumed by an animal instinct that would not stop them creating fire when they touched.
The trouble was, she had been working both sides against each other for so long that she no longer knew which team she wanted to win. Leaking the whereabouts of Laboué had been in breach of her operational parameters, but she had been able to justify it in her mind as just another dead terrorist. Ultimately, if he hadn’t messed up the wiring on the vest, he would have been dead anyway, so what did it matter that he went on to die in custody? The agent who had been at the house guarding Laboué was an unfortunate casualty, but innocent people had to die in war and that was what she felt she was fighting.
Advising Robert that Vincent would be at the safe house for him to deal with had crossed the line. She had known it as soon as she had told him but she had needed to do it to keep him on-side. Her chief would never have sanctioned the death of a British police officer, unless it was absolutely vital to an operation, and even then it would have required signing off by other senior figures in the ministry. She had been stunned to see Vincent appear from the hole in the wall, and even more surprised to see him survive the bomb that Robert had arranged to be planted in his flat. It was like the man had nine lives!
As she now reached the bottom of the staircase she spied Stratovsky at the back of the room, sitting in a hideous booth. There were three other men at the table with him and they were deep in conversation. One of Stratovsky’s security guards spotted her and grunted towards his boss who ushered him away with a dismissive wave of his hand. The guard sauntered over, looking distinctly uncomfortable squeezing all his muscle into the tight, dark overcoat he was wearing. He waved his hand in an upward direction to indicate that she should lift her arms. She complied and allowed him to pat her down, in search of a weapon. Finding nothing of interest the guard indicated that she could proceed further into the room.
At the back of the room was the bar, and men in white overalls were busy carrying boxes in from somewhere out the back to stock up the many fridges behind the counter. Her mouth felt dry as she continued to worry about the real reason she had been asked to appear before the king this morning. She had never formally met him, although she knew what he looked like from the hundreds of surveillance photographs she had been privy to. Robert had always told her that she would not meet Stratovsky and all her dealings would be through him instead. It was an arrangement that suited her, as subconsciously it allowed her to believe that she wasn’t directly contributing to organised crime in the U.K.
All Robert had said on the phone two hours ago was that she was to meet him and Nicolai at the club at eleven thirty. She recognised two of the three men at the table as captains in Stratovsky’s organisation. She could not shake the sensation of dread she was feeling. Where was Robert?
As if in answer to her prayers, two hands gripped her shoulders from behind and his warm breath whispered into her ear, ‘You’re early.’
She felt relief and fear in equal measure.
‘Let’s sit down,’ he added before she could speak. ‘I’ll fetch us coffees.’
Robert pointed to a nearby table with two chairs and placed his coat over the back of one of them. He then meandered his way through to the back bar where he spoke to one of the men in white and then returned to where she was waiting.
‘They will bring them over in a moment,’ he said as he took his seat.
She smiled her acknowledgement.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked, slight concern in his tone. ‘You look like you have seen a ghost. Is everything okay?’
‘You tell me,’ she whispered back. ‘What am I doing here?’
‘Nikolai said he wanted to meet you: to thank you personally for the role you played in aiding his release from prison. Why did you think you were here?’
She considered the nature of his response. He had spoken confidently and maintained eye contact throughout; either he was telling the truth or he was an exceptionally well-trained liar.
‘I thought I wasn’t supposed to meet him,’ she whispered. ‘What if someone got a picture of us together? My cover would be blown.’
Robert laughed, ‘It’s okay. Nobody will be taking any pictures. You will be free to leave here when you are ready, and can take the exit under the floor. Nobody will see you leave.’
Smart frowned back at him, ‘There is an exit underground?’
He laughed again, ‘Of course there is. You don’t think Nikolai leaves through the front door, do you? There is a tunnel that leads from this building to a secret location down by the river. We have been using it for years to bring merchandise here.’
She tried to relax as a waiter brought a small tray with two coffees over. She glanced up at the man, his face was familiar but she was uncertain where she had seen it before. The waiter turned and made his way back to the bar before she could get a better look.
‘Look,’ Robert indicated, ‘Nikolai has finished his meeting. We can see him now. Bring your coffee.’
Smart stood and picked up her cup. Robert was already over at the table shaking hands with the men who were now leaving Stratovsky’s booth and heading up the staircase. A thought struck her as she gripped the handle of the cup. It was a thought so ridiculous that she nearly burst into laughter. The face of the waiter reminded her of somebody from the past; somebody who was now very much dead, or so she thought. She looked back over towards the bar to try and verify the inaccuracy of the thought and saw the waiter chatting to another man. Smart nearly dropped her cup when she saw that the other man was Jack Vincent.
44
‘Who is Lauren Smart?’ Mark asked Vincent who was staring through the windscreen, his mouth agape.
‘She is M.I.5. She’s the woman who has been telling me to trust the AAIB report into the plane crash. She is the same woman who abducted Laboué from the police station to put him in safe custody and wound up getting him killed. What the hell is she doing here?’
‘I don’t know, Vincent. You tell me!’
He looked questioningly at Mark, ‘What? You think I told her to come here?’
‘Well, did you?’
‘No of course not!’ he shouted. ‘If anything, it is just as likely your father has told her about our plan. Once a spy: always a spy, you said!’
‘Don’t you dare question my father!’ Mark roared back. ‘He wouldn’t betray us. I would stake my life on it.’
‘So what is she doing here?’
Mark shook his head disbelievingly, ‘Maybe she is here to detain Stratovsky? You said yourself that she is now running the investigation. Maybe your team have managed to connect t
he various dots and she is here to bring him in.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Vincent admonished.
‘Well, it’s either that or she’s on the take!’ Mark spat back, and as he did they both knew that he had nailed the real reason for her presence at Stratovsky’s club.
‘That would explain a lot,’ Vincent mused, surprised by his own lack of anger.
‘My father said there was something about the woman he didn’t trust. We knew there was someone helping your team out but we didn’t have a face or name. I guess now we do.’
‘So are we going to abort?’ Vincent questioned.
‘Abort? What for? The plan goes ahead!’
‘Are you crazy? Not only does he have three of his captains in there with him but he now has a member of the British Security Services there too. Your plan was for us to slip in and slip out again unnoticed. How the hell do you presume to avoid all those additional sets of eyes on us?’
‘I don’t know, yet, but I do know that I am not giving up on this job. It has been a year in the making, and I may not get a better chance to have my revenge.’
‘If we go in there now we are as likely to get killed as we are to be arrested. There is no chance we will get Stratovsky alone.’
‘We have to try,’ Mark answered calmly. ‘For Ali.’
Vincent scanned Mark’s face, looking for any kind of doubt, but all he saw was determination.
‘This is suicide, you do know that, right?’ he asked as he buttoned up the thick white overalls Mark had supplied him with.
Mark smiled broadly back at him, ‘At least our destiny is in our own hands, right Jack?’
Vincent ignored the rhetorical question, opened the van door and slid out. The plan that Mark and his father had pulled together indicated that the club would be stocked up by a local refreshments company on a Monday morning. It hadn’t been too difficult for them to identify the company’s uniform and insignia and replicate it. Mark and Vincent slipped across the road and walked cautiously around to the rear of the club. The refreshment company’s van was parked up outside with the rear door wide open. There were boxes of bottles covered in cellophane stacked up in piles. Nobody was on guard protecting the goods, allowing them the opportunity to each select a box and carry it in through the back door of the club.
The rear entrance led into a small, but surprisingly sanitary-looking, kitchen area, presumably for those rare occasions when food was served to guests of the club. Ahead of them, Mark and Vincent could see other men in overalls walking through the bright kitchen out into the more dimly-lit bar area. They followed suit, keeping their heads low, to avoid recognition and to prevent anybody realising they didn’t belong. The club itself, they soon saw, was a large dance floor with booths around the edge. There were small tables with a couple of chairs apiece on the dance floor in front of a small stage to the right-hand side of the bar. Mark had explained in the truck that the club was used as a nightclub at the weekends, with the smaller tables and chairs packed away, but during the week it was used for comedy nights and adult-dance parties.
The men in overalls were stacking up their boxes at the far side of the bar, but there was no sign that any of them were emptying the contents into the waiting refrigerators. Vincent was stooping low, while Mark was scanning the room looking for Stratovsky.
‘Keep your eyes down,’ Vincent hissed as a large-framed man in a dark suit approached the bar.
‘You,’ he directed at Mark. ‘I want two small espresso. You bring over?’
‘Dar,’ Mark grunted and watched the man walk back to a small table where Smart was sitting.
‘I told you…’ Vincent admonished.
‘Relax, Jack,’ he replied calmly. ‘They don’t know me; it will be fine. Now where the hell is the coffee maker?’
The two men returned to the kitchen and finding a small kettle in a corner of the room that felt recently boiled he filled two glass cups with water and a spoonful of freeze-dried coffee that was in a nearby pot.
‘Are you mad?’ Vincent asked when he saw what Mark was doing. They will know they’re not drinking real coffee.’
‘Who gives a shit,’ Mark replied. He put the cups on a small tray and wandered back out to the bar. He had been quite grateful when the burly Russian had approached him, as delivering the drinks to the table gave him the opportunity to wander into the open space of the club for a better view of the layout. As he crossed the wooden dance floor, he spotted Stratovsky to his left, at a booth with three of his stooges, huddled in secret talks. As he got closer to the table where the Smart and the Russian were sitting, he was able to see that the Russian was armed but she didn’t appear to be. She looked nervous about being in her present company and when her eyes met his there was no obvious sign of recognition, suggesting she had no idea who he was. He couldn’t help smiling to himself as he walked back across the dance-floor towards the bar.
‘What did they say?’ Vincent asked as soon as he was back. ‘Did you find out why she is here?’
‘Look, Jack, just relax, will you?’ he replied calmly.
‘Oh shit, she’s moving tables,’ Vincent commented, looking over Mark’s shoulder.
Mark turned slightly so he could see the movement out of the corner of his eye.
‘That’s where our man is sitting,’ he commented. ‘The big bastard she is with is armed and I would imagine Stratovsky is too. I couldn’t see that your spook has a weapon, which suggests she isn’t here to arrest him.’
‘I wouldn’t be too sure,’ Vincent replied.
Mark turned fully to see Agent Smart with her right arm extended, pointing a weapon at Stratovsky and his associate.’
‘Oh shit!’ Mark exclaimed.
*
Smart stared over at Vincent and the living ghost that was Mark Baines. She couldn’t understand or believe that he was still alive. What were they doing at the club? Mark had always claimed that he had been set up by the Russians and his presence here meant only one thing: revenge. But why was Vincent with him?
She knew brief details of the undercover operation that had been launched against the Stratovsky family, and the minor role that Vincent’s team had played in helping the C.P.S. bring the case against the Russian. She knew that the undercover officer had been killed, allegedly by one of Stratovsky’s men in a hotel in Southampton and that Mark had been killed as he had left the scene. How was it possible that he was still alive?
And then it dawned on her. The prosecution’s star witness, the target of the plane crash the week before: it had to have been Baines. If the two men had managed to put together the details that showed Stratovsky as responsible for the pilot’s action that day, then, regardless of whether they were here to kill him or arrest him, it would not look good if she was found at the scene in cahoots with him. It would be the end of her career and probably a life behind bars. Unless…
Carefully, placing her coffee cup back down on the table, she put her hand in her trouser pocket and was able to unclip the small garter belt around her right thigh. The garter fell to the floor, the weight of the small pistol aiding gravity. Bending down, she was able to quickly scoop up the gun and keep it hidden in her hand without anybody spotting her action. Striding over to the booth where Robert was now seated in conversation with the Russian, she coughed to attract their attention.
Both men looked up and smiled when they saw her.
‘Nikolai, may I introduce Agent Lauren Smart. Lauren, this is Nikolai.’
Stratovsky extended his hand to take hers but before he had the chance to grip it, she had extended her own arm and was now pointing the tiny pistol in his face. His expression was one of bemusement: not sure whether her action was serious or just part of some joke.
‘What is this?’ he asked, glancing to see Robert’s reaction.
‘Lauren?’ Robert asked. ‘What are you doing?’
She smiled at the two of them, pleased to have gained the upper hand.
‘Didn’t you
know, Robert? I have been working against you from the outset. You might have thought you had been bribing me for information but actually the shoe has been on the other foot the whole time. I have extensive records of meetings and actions you have both been involved in, and enough evidence to see you both locked up for the rest of your lives. You thought your problems had all gone when you walked free yesterday? They were only just beginning my friends.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, you stupid whore,’ Stratovsky replied, not scared, but decidedly angry. ‘You think you can take me down? You and who’s army?’
He had a point, a mere call out from Stratovsky and his captains would be back down the stairs leaping to his protection, and God only knew how many of the men currently carrying in boxes of drinks were armed. And then she remembered…
‘Vincent, Baines, get your arses over here,’ she bellowed towards the bar.
The two Russians looked over to where she was shouting and saw two men in white coats walking reluctantly towards the booth.
‘Gentlemen, let me introduce my back-up here. Mark Baines, you may remember from when you framed him for money laundering and murder. He has been working for us on exposing your operation. And of course you’ll recognise Detective Inspector Jack Vincent of Hampshire Constabulary; you have tried to kill him three times this week, haven’t you?’
Stratovsky laughed out loud, ‘Hampshire Constabulary has no jurisdiction in these parts. Besides, you are all trespassing on private property; it should be me phoning the police to have you all arrested.’
‘Not this time, Stratovsky,’ Smart replied evenly. ‘Your time is up. Why don’t you do the sensible thing and place your weapons on the table and come quietly. It will be better for us all in the end.’
‘Why don’t you get out of my fucking club before I am forced to use necessary means to defend myself?’ he spat back.
‘Are you armed?’ she whispered to Vincent, but before he could answer a shot rang out.
Shadow Line Page 27
