by Dan Latus
Yet he knew the car would have to be abandoned at some point. It was a hire vehicle, belonging to one of the big car hire firms. It could be traced, and might even have a tracker fitted. He didn’t want a search ending up at his door.
Wherever he abandoned it, the car would be an arrow pointing to where he was going next. But in that sense, he supposed, it didn’t really matter whether he abandoned it now or when he was across the Channel. Anyone who knew of him would also know he was English. It would be obvious where he’d gone. So he might as well keep it for now, and dump it on the other side.
In Victoria he parked on a side street, picked up the money bag and walked away from the Audi. He took a cab to King’s Cross. Then he took another one to Euston, and one after that to Paddington. Finally, he took the tube and surface line north and west to Hatch End, where he booked into a nondescript B & B. His movements were random. Following in his footsteps, or retracing them, would be a tough challenge for anyone who wasn’t close behind right now.
Even then, he didn’t stand still. Before night arrived, he bought an old banger from a nearby garage that offered good deals, paying cash for it. What he got was a fifteen-year old Volkswagen Golf that set him back £500, a price he thought he could risk paying with banknotes without raising eyebrows. Already, he was beginning to lament the lack of plastic he could use safely, but he was determined not to leave a trail. That had to be a priority.
Once he had the car – a gift for his 17-year-old son, he said – he toured a couple of neighbourhood shopping centres, where he bought clothes and a few other necessities. His purchases did little to reduce the cash mountain in the bag.
There followed an uneasy night, one full of foreboding and tension. He believed he was in the clear, but he couldn’t be sure. A little voice kept whispering in his ear, reminding him that it wasn’t necessarily so. In the morning he quit the guest house very early and headed north, heading for a place where he hoped to feel more secure and comfortable. The supposed anonymity of the big city didn’t work for him.
North Northumberland, the English Borders, was where he was headed. Not exactly home – he’d never really had one of those – but it was somewhere of which he had fond childhood memories. It was where one of his grandmothers had lived all her life, and where his own mother had spent her growing up years. He had himself spent a couple of summers there, glorious times in his memory, and it was where he wanted to be right now. He had to take stock and build a new life for himself, and he could think of nowhere better to do it.
On the way, he traded for a better car. He got half of what he’d paid for the Golf, and put in that and another £500 in cash to buy a Golf a year or two younger and in slightly better condition. Again, he restrained himself. It wouldn’t do to splash the cash too obviously. He didn’t want to be remembered. He just wanted wheels that would serve their purpose for a little while longer.
At an outdoor supplier’s near Bawtry he bought a tent, a sleeping bag and a few other eminently practical items. For his son, he explained, who was going on a school camping trip. The salesman nodded and recommended taking a couple of maps, as well. He chose maps of North Wales, Snowdonia, where he said his son was going.
Food, he thought when he left the shop. That’s what I need next. A Tesco superstore not far away provided him with enough groceries to fill the boot of the car. He also bought a little gas camping stove there, and some cooking utensils. And a couple of large water bottles. They were all from an aisle they were getting ready for the summer season.
Back on the road, he felt satisfied. He was self-sufficient now. His new life had begun. He had the time and freedom to think. Most of all, he wanted to think about Vlasta, and what could be done. Was she alive even? He had no idea. All he could do was hope. God, how he missed her!
First, he camped for a few days at a site near Wooler, in the foothills of the Cheviots. Then he moved over to the coast and pitched his tent at Beadnell, all the time watching his back. When he was satisfied, he moved to the Clennel Hall campsite, near Alwinton. There, he was closer to where he wanted to be. Finally, he drove into the village, and looked around the place of which he had such happy memories.
It hadn’t changed much. But even here, it seemed, the population was growing. There were a lot of new houses. Yet the ancient parish church was still there, as was the war memorial in the centre of the village. Majestic trees, a mixture of oak, horse chestnut and sycamore, still surrounded the green. There was more traffic than he remembered, but to someone more used to London the centre of the village was almost a pedestrianized zone.
He was satisfied. He could live here, he decided. He just didn’t want to do it alone.
For many days he had been phoning Vlasta at intervals, without success. All he had ever got was the standard voice inviting him to leave a message, which he never did. He worried that the phone might be a way of tracing him, but he shrugged it off. He had no choice. Not to use the phone would mean abandoning Vlasta altogether. He had no other means of contacting her, assuming she wasn’t dead like her father.
He phoned once more, this time from the village, with the same result. For a moment he was almost overcome by despair. Then he shrugged and got himself back on track. He would find her. If she was alive still, he would find her – or she him.
What gave him hope still, expectations even, was the simple fact that Vlasta had warned him to leave. Surely she would not have remained in the fire zone herself when she knew terrible events were about to unfold there? It was at least possible that she had been some distance away at the time. Otherwise she would surely have tried to help her father, and died with him.
He shied away from the question of how Vlasta could have known something was about to kick off. He didn’t want to go there. Not now. Not yet.
Back at the campsite near Alwinton, he took stock and thought some more about what he was going to do, and how he was going to go about it. He would continue trying to reach Vlasta, and continue hoping and believing that she was alive still, but there were also other issues for him now. He couldn’t be a permanent holidaymaker, living on campsites, for example. He needed to get on with making a new life for himself.
Although it had been a lifeline tossed to him by a kindly fate, the money was also a worry now. What on earth was he to do with it?
An inventory had told him that he had seven or eight million worth in sterling – depending on the exchange rates – in his possession, mostly in dollars. It was a big responsibility, he thought with a wry smile. It was taking some looking after. He daren’t let it out of his sight.
Along the way, he had purchased a rucksack for the money, and dumped the holdall. That had made it easier to carry. But the question of what to do with it remained.
For the moment, he was still carrying the damned rucksack everywhere he went. He daren’t risk leaving it in the tent or the car. Soon he needed to get it off his back and into a safe place, and he needed to do that without provoking awkward and dangerous questions.
Then there was the matter of his identity. Who was he? Somehow, now he was back in Northumberland, he no longer felt like Jack Olsson, or even John Carlisle, the name he had used in Ukraine. He felt much more like John Tait, the name he had come into the world with. It wasn’t the name he had used for many years but he felt surprisingly comfortable with it. Was there any reason not to revert to it? He couldn’t see any.
John Tait had a passport, just as John Carlisle and Jack Olsson did, and Tait wasn’t a name anybody searching for him would be looking out for. John Tait also had a bank account, and a safe deposit box where he kept his passport.
Now he was here, he couldn’t see any compelling reason to use either the Carlisle or the Olsson identity. He would keep them both, in case of need, but he was going to be John Tait all over again from now on.
That settled, he started looking around for somewhere more permanent to live.
With the money in his rucksack, he could easily have afforded
to buy the dozen most expensive houses in the village, but he hadn’t yet worked out how he could safely use the money, except in small dollops at a time. He could rent, though, trickling money through his existing bank account for the purpose. So that’s what he did.
He found a cottage he liked well enough on the edge of the village and took out the standard six month lease. The cottage was furnished and available immediately. He sorted things out with the owners, an elderly couple, and moved in the very next day. So now he had an address.
He was self-employed, he told the owners and the bank, and looking to start up a business in the area. That, and the address, gave him apparent legitimacy in the eyes of anyone curious about his circumstances.
Next, he needed to legitimize some transport. There was no paperwork with the Golf, which was pretty well clapped-out anyway. He needed to have a decent car that he owned legally, one that he could tax and insure legitimately.
In Morpeth he visited a dealer and bought another Golf, a much newer one, signing up to make monthly payments that would not raise eyebrows at his bank. He picked up his new car, together with all the paperwork, the next day.
He drove his old Golf into the centre of Newcastle and left it in a long-stay car park in Byker, unlocked and with the keys in the ignition. Then he caught a bus back into the city centre, and another one to Morpeth, where he picked up his new ride and drove back to the valley in it.
That was something else he could cross off his to-do list, he thought with satisfaction. His new life was starting to take shape. Things were coming together nicely.
Chapter Nine
Something else he needed to do was work out what he was going to do for a living. It would be better if people could see he had some sort of occupation. Besides, he was going to need something to do for his own peace of mind and sense of self-worth. A life of idleness held no appeal whatsoever. For now, though, all that would have to wait. He had no idea what the answer was, and meanwhile there were more pressing matters to address.
For one, he still had no idea what had happened to Vlasta, and he did desperately need to know.
Then there was the money. It was going to be difficult to use. He knew that. Banks and other recipients of cash were all under legal requirement to report unusual movements of money these days. The movements didn’t even have to be big – just unusual. Even casinos, traditionally favoured for laundering money, were no doubt under continuing observation and monitoring by somebody.
The short term solution was to keep a small amount to meet his immediate needs and store the rest. For storage, he thought he might use a bank’s safe deposit box, the traditional answer for people looking to store cash, but virtually all the banks – including his own – had either stopped providing the service or were in the process of closing it down.
That was what he found when he went to use the deposit box he had rented for some years. He was under notice to quit, with the end date not far away. Cost cutting, so often the justification for change, was once again invoked by his unapologetic bank.
A search on his new laptop revealed that a number of companies had stepped into the gap and were offering some kind of storage facility for valuables. The cost varied wildly, not that cost mattered much to him in the circumstances in which he found himself.
More importantly, the companies in question all seemed to be located in either London or the Midlands. They were the areas with the large and prosperous Asian populations that comprised a large part of the market for such a service. Family gold and jewellery, often handed down between the generations, was far too valuable and dangerous to keep at home, seemingly.
He grimaced. He didn’t want to store the money so far away. What else could he do? There must be something.
In the end, he went for a small secure storage unit provided by a nationwide company that had a depot in Wallsend, on Tyneside. Mostly, it seemed, they stored stuff for folks who were going to be working abroad for a year or two. Furniture and personal belongings. So he bought a load of second-hand furniture and household goods, and delivered it himself in a van he rented for the purpose. He hid the money bag inside the washing machine.
Security wasn’t what it would be in the heart of the jewellery district in Birmingham, perhaps, or in a Swiss bank in London, but it seemed good enough. His cache of old furniture was no more likely to be broken into and stolen than anyone else’s in the depot. The risk was worth taking. He’d slept with that damned bag long enough.
The money he needed for now he kept back. He wanted to forget about the rest of it, and think about the things that really mattered to him. He wasn’t prepared to serve as a guard for a bag of money for the rest of his life. To hell with that!
Something else he did was study job adverts in local papers and on the web. He had no idea what to look for in particular. Working for himself seemed a good idea in principle, but doing what?
One thing he knew was that he was keeping well away from his old life and work. He’d had enough of working as an adviser with Special Forces in conflict zones. It was too dangerous for him to carry on doing that. His time had run out. He knew enough to quit while he was still ahead.
And all the time, somewhere in his mind, whatever else he was doing, he was thinking of Vlasta. Every day he phoned her on the special phone that held no number but hers. Every time he let the phone ring five times, and then he rang another five times immediately afterwards. Their special code, on the special phones they had each acquired for the purpose.
In their world, their dangerous, if exciting, world, such arrangements had been necessary because they had known that one day they might be needed. That day had come.
But there was never a response. So all he could do was fret, and worry. He began to despair.
He was in the kitchen, taking washing from the tumble dryer, when the phone rang. He listened, automatically counting the rings. Five. Five only.
He stopped what he was doing, dropped everything and ran through to the living room. Just as he reached the phone, it began to ring again. Five times. Five times!
Chapter Ten
He snatched the phone up and put it to his ear. He said nothing, waiting, hardly daring to breathe. The silence grew.
‘John?’
Thank God! His eyes closed briefly with relief.
‘Vlasta! Are you all right? Where are you?’
The words, the sentences, tumbled out of him. He scarcely knew what to ask first.
‘I’m OK, John. I’m fine. Safe. You?’
‘Me, too. Where are you?’
‘Better not to say, perhaps. You know?’
What did that mean? Was there someone with her, listening in, or was she being cautious on principle? He had almost forgotten the rules when it came to safe mobile phone use.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You’re quite right. But can I take it you’re not where I last saw you?’
Lviv, he meant. All those weeks ago. An eternity.
‘Not there, no. Somewhere safe for now, I think. And you?’
‘I came home.’
‘Good. I thought you would. I hoped you would. This is no country for you, especially now.’
He wanted to hear about the disaster, and how deep it ran, but not yet. They hadn’t the time.
‘Will you join me?’ he asked instead, daring to hope.
‘Of course. It’s what I want to do.’
‘Good. Come soon, Vlasta.’
‘Very soon, John. There’s nothing left here for me either now. They took everything.’
So things were as bad as he had feared. He grimaced. There was nothing left. But his relief that Vlasta was at least safe was immeasurable.
‘I gathered that,’ he said gently. ‘I’m very sorry about Viktor, and the others. But at least we have survived.’
‘So far,’ she said.
Yes. So far, he thought afterwards.
He would meet her in London. She would fly into Heathrow and make her way to a hotel he
knew and would book in Bayswater, where he would meet her. That was all she needed to know, he said. She should leave the rest to him.
She hesitated, and he guessed it was because she would prefer him to meet her at the airport.
‘We’ll do it this way,’ he said gently. ‘It’s safer.’
‘Yes,’ she said with a weary sigh, but trusting him. ‘We need to be sure.’
She texted him before she left Kiev, and then again when her plane landed at Heathrow. He sighed with relief. She had not been prevented from leaving. She was here at last!
Like so many others waiting outside Arrivals, he held up a strip of cardboard in lieu of a proper message board. The name on it was not hers, nor did it belong to anyone else he knew. But the cardboard justified his presence. He wanted to avoid appearing suspicious to anyone who might be watching out for Vlasta.
He saw her emerge, and for a moment he held his breath, torn between joy at seeing her again and fear for her safety. Even in London she was in peril. Possibly even more so, given the size of the Russian community. Not all Russians in London were peace loving, honest and decent people. There would be plenty amongst them who would happily take Yugov’s shilling.
Vlasta made her way towards a taxi. Just before she reached it, two men came from nowhere to close up behind her. Heavy-set men, wearing leather jackets and jeans, they were moving fast. There could be little doubt about their target.
He moved fast himself, closing in on the three of them in a second or two. Vlasta didn’t know what was behind her, but the two men behind her had no idea what was behind them either.
He jumped and stamped on the back of one man’s leg, causing him to collapse with a cry. As his partner turned, John pretended to trip and slammed into him with his shoulder, sending him sprawling aside. In the resultant melee, he managed to stamp heavily on the first man’s hand.
‘Sorry!’ he said. ‘An accident. Here, let me help you.’
But he melted into the crowd without doing anything at all to help, having seen Vlasta getting into a taxi and closing the door after her. It had been so neatly done that no-one in the crowd seemed to have noticed anything terribly amiss.
