by Dan Latus
After that he ranged around the house, desperate to find something out of the ordinary, something that might provide a clue as to where his family had gone. He found nothing, nothing at all that helped.
He returned to the living room and sat on the sofa, keeping his phone next to him. He willed himself to be still and stared resolutely at the wall opposite, ignoring the painting of the hills that he liked so much, focusing on the blank, white space beside it instead. He conjured up images of his wife and son, and willed them to appear in person before him. There was nothing else he could do. For the moment, at least, he seemed to have exhausted all other possibilities.
Then the phone rang, and the situation suddenly became much worse.
‘You know who we are,’ a voice said, ‘and what we want.’
And he did. He believed he did.
Chapter Four
Slovakia, 23 April 2004
The place was a dump. One look was enough to see that. But he didn’t care. He was across the border, Uzghorod behind him, and he had to stop somewhere. He’d come far enough for one day. It was dark now and he was utterly exhausted.
He got out of the car, taking a small bag containing a dictionary and a few other personal items with him. The bag was all he had, and he was lucky to have that. A few hours ago he would gladly have settled for less, just to get out of Lviv.
He straightened up, stretched his aching back muscles and stood for a few moments, looking around pensively. The forest, dark and brooding, closed right up to the car park. There were a few desultory lights on poles, and a few more in windows in the building behind him, but the place was pretty well deserted. The ski season was over now and the snow just about gone, apart from a few dirty piles in corners the sun didn’t reach. Still cold, though. He ducked his head against a sudden gust of icy wind and headed for the entrance.
There was no-one in the foyer. The place wasn’t big enough to justify a permanently manned reception desk, especially at this time of year. A handwritten notice suggested ringing the hand bell placed nearby on a small wooden table for attention. He glanced around first.
The building was exactly what it had seemed: a small ski chalet. Probably with about a dozen guest rooms. At this time of year it was shabby and looking worn out. It would no doubt be fixed up a bit over the coming summer months, but then a new horde of impoverished youngsters would arrive to trample the industrial carpet, scuff the walls and break the chairs all over again. In season it would be cheap and cheerful, buzzing with the energy and the noise of the young. Right now, it was dead and miserable, and ought to be even cheaper. It suited him perfectly.
He picked up the bell and rang for attention.
A young man who might have been a student, and who was almost certainly very adept on skis, came eventually to see what he wanted.
Speaking in Czech, he said he wanted a room for the night.
‘Just for one night?’ the man responded in Slovak, which was not so very different a language.
He nodded.
‘Two hundred Slovenských Korún,’ the young man said.
Slovak crowns. Four quid, approximately.
‘Fine. Euros OK?’
‘Euros, yes. Or dollars.’
He handed over a ten euro banknote, the only money he had with him. The mayhem back in Lviv had seen to that.
‘You will accept Korún as change?’ the young man asked as he made a calculation with pen and paper.
He nodded and pocketed the change when it came without checking it.
‘There is no-one else here,’ the young man confided. ‘So you can choose a room for yourself. The keys are over there,’ he added, nodding towards a panel on the wall, home to clusters of keys. ‘Help yourself.’
‘Děkuju. Thank you. Will there be breakfast?’
‘Possibly,’ the young man said with a sigh. ‘If I can find something, I will put it on the table over there for you. And hot water in a thermos jug, for tea or coffee.’
He nodded his thanks and turned away to look for a room, thinking, thank God it’s cheap!
On the first floor there was a long corridor, with three or four rooms off to each side. He opened a couple of doors, to see that the rooms were pretty much identical. They were simply furnished, with IKEA-style furniture. Bed, wardrobe, bedside table, all in cheap blond veneer, and a padded chair with a tubular metal frame that might once have been comfortable. There was nothing to choose between the rooms.
The door to one room was partially open. He pushed it open wider, and hastily apologized to the man sitting there in a chair before he pulled back. The man didn’t reply.
After that, he decided he didn’t need to try any more rooms. They were all the same anyway. So he opened the next door, tossed his bag onto the bed and went back downstairs to get the key.
Sleep didn’t come easily. He was tired enough, God knew. But that didn’t help. He was on edge, too much running through his mind. He couldn’t believe how sudden and catastrophic the end had been in Lviv. Viktor Sirko’s wide-ranging empire had turned out to be built on sand, and powerless to resist the incoming tide from the east. Once Yugov and the Russians arrived, it had all gone in a matter of an hour or two – even Viktor himself. Bodies everywhere. Security had been no match for what hit them without warning.
It was a miracle that he had got out in time, and it took some believing that he had. He couldn’t have done it without Vlasta’s warning. He wouldn’t have had a chance.
Leave, she had said when she phoned him. Go! Just drop everything and leave right now. John, you must – now!
He grimaced as he recalled how close he had been to laughing at her. The warning had made no sense, had seemed like a practical joke, but somehow she had impressed him enough to humour her. He had followed her instruction and left the main building to walk across the road to the little park, where he was supposed to meet her.
Vlasta did not appear. He still didn’t know what had happened to her. From the park he had seen Sirko’s enemies arrive in trucks. Perhaps two dozen men. They had stormed the building with automatic weapons and for an agonizing time, there had been sustained gunfire. When it stopped, Viktor was dead, and his businesses in the east taken over. A lot of other people were dead, too.
But he had been lucky, thanks to Vlasta. He had walked away and got out of town, with nothing but the clothes in which he stood. He knew who the attackers were, but there had been nothing he could have done to stop them. There was nothing he could do now either, except hope to survive. He just had to hope that Vlasta had somehow managed it, too.
For several hours he lay awake in this peaceful place in another country, listening to the sound of the building journeying through the night. Heating pipes clanked as they cooled. Floorboards creaked. A sudden gusty wind tugged at the corners of the window for a few minutes. Once he heard voices in the distance, in the depths of the building perhaps, and wondered why the young man who had responded to the bell had said no-one else was here. Had he forgotten the guest in the room along the corridor?
Eventually, mercifully, he slept for a while. It was very dark when he awoke. The external lights in the car park had been switched off, and the only light in the room came from his wrist watch on the bedside table. He lay still, listening intently, on edge, automatically ready for flight. But the building was silent now, sleeping at last. There was no noise from outside, either. The wind had dropped, and the world seemed peaceful and still, deceptively so.
But he, at least, was fully awake now. Not rested and recovered. It would take more than a few hours out of the cauldron for that. But he knew he wouldn’t sleep again this night.
There was no point lying in bed any longer. The road beckoned. He should be on it, moving, going somewhere – anywhere. Every mile he put behind him would be a mile more distant from the danger zone, if not actually a mile closer to safety.
His watch said it was just after five. If he got up now, he could be on his way by half past. Sooner, perhaps
. He got up.
As he dressed, he thought it unlikely that food had been put out yet, even if the young man downstairs had found anything. It didn’t matter. He could do without breakfast. He wasn’t hungry. Food would probably make him sick anyway, the way he felt.
After a quick wash, he checked the contents of his wallet and winced. Nothing had changed since he gave the man in reception his last banknote. If he ate today, he wouldn’t be eating tomorrow. It was as simple and as bad as that. With a shrug, he put the wallet away carefully in a zipped pocket where he kept his passport. That was with him at all times, and always had been these past several years.
He was ready. A last look around the room. Then he left, quietly closing the door after him. The corridor was bathed in dim light from the emergency lighting system. As he headed for the stairs, he passed the other room that had an occupant. The door was open still, and he caught a glimpse of the man sitting in the chair. Another insomniac, he thought with a rueful smile.
He had reached the staircase, and was about to head down it, when he stopped and frowned. Uneasily, he thought that wasn’t right. The man. Sitting there, like that. Still?
It was no time for just thinking and wondering. The road was beckoning and he was ready to go. He turned and walked back along the corridor to the room with the open door. The man was still there. He hadn’t moved. Even now, with a stranger staring at him from the open doorway, he didn’t move a muscle.
He stared for a moment. Then he entered the room and walked over to the man in the chair, sure now that his fellow guest would not move again – ever.
Chapter Five
There was no pulse. The man was stone cold dead. Shot. Not suicide, either. Murdered.
Not much blood, and not a lot of damage to look at, but you could see where the bullet had entered the skull. A small calibre weapon, and the shooter had been very close when he, or she, had pulled the trigger.
He grimaced and stepped back, his mind racing. What to do? Report it, and get sucked into a police investigation?
He didn’t think so. It was time he was away from here. The border, and any pursuit that might be coming, was too close. He didn’t suppose for one moment that that had all stopped in Lviv. He couldn’t afford to think like that. All Viktor’s people, himself included, were at risk.
Still, that aside, what the fuck had gone on here? What was this about?
He thought for a moment. Was it connected to what had happened back there? It couldn’t be, surely? But it might be. He couldn’t afford to dismiss the possibility. Maybe they had come for him, and got the wrong man? Unlikely, but possible.
He studied the dead man. Late thirties or early forties. Well-built. Probably not particularly tall. Thinning hair. The pale complexion suggested he wasn’t a ski enthusiast, or an outdoors guy of any description. Dressed in a good quality brown tweed suit, and collar and tie, he looked more like some young person’s visiting businessman father – the young man’s downstairs, perhaps? Or a travelling salesman for a prestigious company. Or an academic on holiday, or … or anything at all, really. An ordinary sort of guy. But modestly well-off.
There seemed to be nothing to connect him with what had gone down in Ukraine, apart from his having been shot dead so close to the border. He considered a moment longer. Then he stooped to pat the man’s jacket. There was something heavy in the breast pocket. He hesitated only briefly before reaching into the pocket to draw out a bulging wallet. It contained a lot of money, in various currencies: dollars, euros, both Czech and Slovak crowns, and even sterling. Some big denomination notes, too.
The breast pocket on the other side of the jacket held a Czech passport – and an American passport. Dual nationality? He frowned and studied the passports thoughtfully. They carried the same photo, but they had been issued in different names. Which was the genuine one, he wondered? Either of them?
The photo was a bit of a shock. He couldn’t take his eyes off it for a moment. The cogs of his mind began to whir ever faster. Then he shook his head, putting the discovery to one side for the moment.
The man’s right hand was out of sight, tucked under a loose cushion. He leant down and gently eased up the cushion. The hand had firm hold of a gun, a Glock 17 pistol. That was another surprise.
He stared at the gun for a moment, thinking that the guy must have had some warning, or premonition, but simply hadn’t been able to get it out fast enough. Why the hell had he stuck it under a cushion but kept hold of it? What did that mean?
He shrugged. Then he worked the fingers loose and took the gun away. He placed it, together with the wallet and passports, on the bedside table. Next, he turned his attention to the man’s travel bag resting on the bed. He zipped the bag open and stared with incredulity at the contents. Jesus Christ!
By then, he had expected to find money – but not this much.
He sat heavily on the bed and studied the neat bundles of banknotes inside the unassuming green holdall. He couldn’t even begin to guess how much there was. But it was a vast amount.
He took out a few of the bundles, and confirmed that the bundles underneath were just as real as the ones on top. Mostly dollars, as well. An absolute bloody fortune!
Reaching to the bottom, he felt beneath the loose panel that served to stiffen the bag and pulled out two more passports. One was German, the other French. He reached down again and pulled out a Russian passport.
Like the first two passports he had seen, they carried different names but the same photograph. He stared at the photograph in the Russian passport. He couldn’t help it. The photograph looked uncannily like the picture he saw every morning in the bathroom mirror.
Shit! What to do? He thought for a moment. Just a moment. No more. Then he shook his head and put everything back in the bag.
Belatedly, he stood up and crossed the room to close the door. He knew exactly what he was going to do. He had been given a get-out-of-jail-free card, and he was going to use it.
For the next five minutes he worked quickly and methodically, going through every drawer and cupboard in the room, and every pocket in every garment he could find. He searched for paperwork and for anything else that might prove useful or informative.
Every instinct but one told him to get out – to get out now! He hadn’t the time for this shit.
But the instinct that was the one exception told him he did have a little time, a brief moment, and he had to hang on and do things right. There would be no coming back, no second chance. That was the instinct, the voice he listened to. It was the voice of logic.
Before he left the room, he placed the car keys and the passport he had arrived with on the bedside table. Then he thought better of it and picked the passport up to slip back into his pocket. He didn’t think he would be needing it again. He was Jack Olsson now. But you never knew.
Chapter Six
He let himself out of the front door and stood for a moment at the top of the steps leading to the entrance while he surveyed the car park in the grey half-light of the pre-dawn. Although he had been told there were no other guests, there were a dozen cars parked outside. Some, surrounded by heaps of frozen snow, looked as if they had been there all winter.
Which one was it? He pressed the button on the key and was rewarded by the sight of an Audi lighting up. It was nearby, in a cleared space. He didn’t need to dig it out.
He set off across the gravelled forecourt, and was immediately assailed by searing cold and a whiff of rotting snow and old diesel fumes. It was a grim, icy morning, spring not yet able to make a firm claim on the land. There was no-one in sight and he doubted if any vehicle had entered or left the car park that morning. People would be stirring, somewhere, but they were not outside yet. Even the village dogs were still tucked up in their kennels. It was a good time to be leaving.
A quick walk round the Audi assured him that the tyres were sound. He got in and started the engine first go. Switched on the heater and fan, and directed the air flow at the windsc
reen. The glass fogged instantly. He wiped it clear with one hand. Then he switched on the lights and backed out of the parking bay. Time he was gone.
He was on edge. One of the many thoughts troubling him, an insidious little thing nagging away at the back of his mind, was that whoever had killed Olsson – or whatever his name really was – had walked away from a huge pile of money. Why? Even if the man himself had been the target, why ignore such a fortune? Who would do that, and why?
He could suggest an answer, but he didn’t like it. The murder could have been a targeted killing, with the killer operating under instruction. Taking a pile of money from the victim was not part of the job, and the killer had not dared to risk it. He had feared the consequences. So whoever had ordered the hit was not someone to be taken lightly.
He paused and sat with the car in neutral for a moment, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel while he worked it out. It didn’t take him long. It meant someone else would probably be along shortly to check and investigate, and perhaps to lay claim to what Olsson had been carrying. At first light, perhaps. Any minute now even.
Fuck it! He’d take his chances.
In other circumstances, he might have enjoyed the early morning drive. Now he just wanted to get moving and put some distance behind him. But he still drove carefully. There was ice on the road, and no sign of a recent gritting. He couldn’t afford to be immobilized in a ditch. Especially not now, he thought with a wince. How would he explain the money?
The money. The money was a worry, as well as an opportunity. For the moment, it had even eclipsed thoughts of the debacle in Lviv. A big worry. But he was still keeping it. Damn right he was! He had to have something for the time he’d put in out here.
