Tight Lies

by Ted Denton

  When I stepped out into the car park, the pickup was gone. I jumped into the motor, stretching my cramped muscles out in the car seat. Checked my phone, a red dot blinked reassuringly on the screen, highlighting the location I had requested with links to detailed access plans of the surrounding area. The whole process taking a few hours to set up. The party house where the hostage had been taken was still a good four hours’ drive towards Madrid from my current location. The Target would have to sit tight for now. I sent a signal back to the team in England so that Ella could track the progress and keep Mickey informed of my movements in case backup or an escape route out of there was required should things go tits up. In response, a bright sonorous tone announced the delivery of a new text message nagging for attention. It was another of Ella’s quasi-poignant military history quotes:

  A good battle plan that you act on today can be better than a perfect one tomorrow.

  - Gen George S. Patton

  I grinned and stuffed the device back into my pocket.

  Chapter 33

  ENGLAND. LONDON. BELGRAVIA.

  Boris Golich grunted as he climbed off the bony porcelain-skinned whore beneath him and wiped the sweat from his hairy belly. He rolled onto his side. Reached for the mobile phone set on the cabinet next to the circular bed decorated with a crumple of black satin sheets. He scrolled pensively through a long list of text messages. The humiliated young girl groped wordlessly at a puddle of skimpy clothing not long since discarded on the wooden floor. The oligarch didn’t look up, instead he sighed aloud, a solitary line crinkling across the bridge of his nose.

  He read the message a second time. Progress had been hindered with the UK gas deal and one man at the Foreign Office in particular didn’t appear to subscribe to the very British sense of fair play that Boris regarded with such alien admiration. His men on the inside apparently had things in hand but, irrespective of this, Golich reasoned that not only had his crucial deal schedule been placed at risk but he had also been lied to and disrespected. Not an acceptable situation. After all, he had the very word of the British Prime Minister himself as to the validity of the deal and surely he was not a man with whom to trifle. He punched in a curt reply before tossing the phone idly aside. The casually dispensed-with whore slipped from the bedroom, head bowed, without a backward glance.

  He had sent an SMS; Short Message Service. The radio frequency signal instantly transmitted a micro packet of code from the handset over the ether to the nearest base station. This, in turn, forwarded the incoming signal carrying the data onto the network of the receiver’s mobile device at a slightly different frequency. The message was received only an instant later. The device in question was held by an Anglo-Russian sleeper cell deep inside the reaches of the British government.

  It read simply: ‘English bitch must die’.

  Derek Hemmings knocked reticently upon the shiny black door of the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs on the top floor of a grand old building in Whitehall. Inside it sat Brian Weston, Member of Parliament, Cabinet Minister, Head of Department. A man more suited to bringing a cutlass to the negotiation table than a pen. Brian was Derek’s ultimate boss, known ubiquitously throughout this building as The Minister. He was also the man who was about to bring Derek’s career to a premature end, only months before he was eligible for full pension, gold watch and the litany of accolades and platitudes owing on account of laborious and devoted service to the country. It was a painful situation but one which could simply not be avoided. Out-played this time, old boy Derek thought to himself. What hurt the most was that he’d been shafted by the one man he truly detested above all.

  ‘Come.’ The solitary bark from inside the sweeping oak panelled office summoned Hemmings into the metaphorical lion’s den. He turned the door handle, wiped clammy hands on stiff suit trousers, and entered, his throat dry and coarse.

  Shuffling inside, the slim sealed envelope quivered slightly within his tight grasp. It contained the letter of resignation so kindly crafted by Andy Bartholomew on his behalf. He hadn’t bothered reading it, knowing it would be as blunt and inelegant as the author himself. No finesse. No class, Derek mused to himself with disdain. The same skills and guile were just not required like they used to be in order to forge a career within the great halls. Now it was all self-promotion and crude attempts at powerbase alignment. Still, if that’s what was required, perhaps he should have moved with the times and he might not be in the bloody mess he was now, and all over the principal of doing the right thing. What was the use in that if it didn’t make one blind jot of difference?

  The room was dark, lit only by the glow of a single lamp emanating from under an oversized green shade. He could make out two figures in easy chairs positioned to one side of the spacious, richly appointed room. A tall mahogany cabinet, glass doors yawning open, displayed a copiously stocked bar, generous array of cut glass, and innumerable bottles of spirits.

  ‘Do come in, Derek. I’m told you have something for me.’

  ‘Well, yes sir, I’m afraid I do’.

  ‘Not your day is it.’ A flat statement. No response required.

  ‘I can’t say that it is,’ Derek sniffed bitterly. He stepped forward towards the cluster of Chesterfields extending the envelope, offering it to the Minister.

  ‘I don’t believe that any introduction is necessary?’ Weston nodded towards the occupant of the chair with the back facing Derek. Charles Hand sat stony-faced, nursing a cut-glass tumbler of neat Scotch in which jagged splinters of ice bobbed, partially submerged. He turned slowly, directed his eyes to the empty chair without breaking his scowl and addressed Derek directly with the words: ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘It seems you are in grave danger, old boy,’ the Minister intoned conspiratorially as he thrust a tumbler of amber liquid and chipped ice towards Derek. He continued, ‘This is real James bloody Bond stuff, Hemmings, and I don’t know how you of all people have wound up in the middle of it. Hand will fill you in, but it doesn’t make a pretty picnic. What we’re about to share with you is classified, and some way above your pay grade, I may add. We’re only obliged to share it because somehow you’ve got yourself right in the fucking centre of the whole affair and have apparently just become a target.’

  Derek stiffened, he felt the blood draining from his face. ‘A target?’ he stammered.

  Now Hand interjected. ‘Our team have intercepted intelligence which indicates that you are to be murdered on the specific and direct orders of Boris Golich at some point in the next few days.’

  ‘Murdered? You can’t be serious? But, how?’

  ‘Probably a staged car accident, perhaps a hit and run. Or even the latest favourite, a bungled mugging after work somewhere.’ A factual unemotive response.

  ‘Christ,’ Hemmings mumbled to himself. ‘I suppose I didn’t actually mean how… more like how come? Why me?’ and his voice trailed off.

  ‘Listen, Derek,’ chimed in the Minister, ‘you’ve put yourself in harm’s way for the sake of the country. You’ve risked your career and you’ve pissed off some very serious individuals in high places in the process. It hasn’t gone unnoticed.’

  ‘I was trying to do the right thing,’ came the doleful reply.

  ‘And you bloody well have done, sir! That’s why I’m refusing to accept that phoney resignation of yours,’ Weston fired back, leaning forward and clamping his hand onto Derek’s bony knee. ‘Tell him what you know, Hand, for fuck’s sake.’

  ‘After our most pleasant meeting on the London Eye, my team undertook additional forensic accountancy investigation into the money trail. Ella really went the extra mile on this one. It seems that your gut feeling was correct, Golich’s business empire is fuelled by dirty money via Vory criminal networks and all of it is washed clean in plain sight. The money streams are from six separate strands of Russian Mafia families, or ‘Bratva’, which literally means “brotherhood”.’ Derek noted that Hand used the same splayed finger motion as h
e had done in the London Eye as he said this.

  ‘In days gone by, Golich used to be the ‘Obshchak’ for these families, the man responsible for collecting the money from their feared brigadiers in the field and tasked with bribing the government and any other officials that got in the way. He used this position of influence to get, shall we say, a little too close to that arch-ruthless-bastard-in-chief who has occupied the office of the Russian Primacy for too long for anybody’s good. He leveraged their relationship to remove the heads of the families, literally in some cases—exile in others—to seize a stranglehold of control for himself. He now holds the position of ‘Pakhan’, or overall head of the united family. It’s the Russian equivalent of the Godfather. Boris Golich is omnipotent. And their crime money is now sanitised across the globe through a network of genuine business deals with established and respected organisations.’ He stole a glance at the Minister. Was that a sneer? thought Derek.

  ‘And, of course, high profile sponsorship deals in golf and motor racing. All gilded with a halo effect from the endorsement of irreproachable friends in high places and insidious political influence.’

  ‘The PM?’ proffered Derek guardedly from beneath a pair of arched silver eyebrows.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘I thought playing golf at Queenwood together sounded just a little too cosy. I take it all this can be proved then. Unequivocally, I mean?’

  ‘Before this major gas exploration deal cropped up, Golich had selected the benign environs of the European Golf Tour to funnel his dirty money through. As you know I have men on the ground right now searching for a sports agent who appears to have uncovered corruption in the sport at a high level through overt sponsor influence on players, illegal gambling and tournament fixing. We are working on the premise that this sports agent has since been kidnapped or murdered to prevent the information being exposed.’ Derek listened, chewing off an errant hang nail from an already beleaguered thumb.

  ‘As a body hasn’t surfaced as yet, we have to work on the assumption that the Target must be withholding access to this information. The alternative that they’ve disposed of the body is not one that we can bring ourselves to consider right now when there is a chance he is still alive. Epecially given the defiant ethos of the Vory where they have never been shy about leaving their victims on display to perpetuate their terrible reputation.’ Hand shook his head solemnly and continued.

  ‘It’s apparent that they are ruthless in achieving their own ends and will stop at nothing to meet them. The Pakhan won’t deviate course. His immense reserves of money talk loudly and when Boris Golich talks, people listen very carefully indeed. Infiltrating the governing body of a sport to sanitise his company’s image and launder some petty cash, however, is small potatoes compared to the Falklands gas deal, as you well know.’ Hand nodded towards Derek.

  ‘This deal impacts real people’s lives, their jobs and their families. He has literally played world governments off against each other in their bid to woo him. And once you have entered that orbit, it seems apparent that there is no going back, regardless of who you may be.’ The men let this hang there for a while as they considered the implications.

  ‘He sounds capable of anything,’ croaked Derek, somewhat despairingly and shifting his gait uncomfortably from buttock to buttock.

  ‘Indeed so. The local mayors in regions where Golich’s organisation owns assets, Russia, Kurdistan and Ukraine, are replaced at will or simply disappear if they don’t play ball. It’s the same with dissenting journalists. Anyone who crosses the little bastard. We have evidence surrounding a protest group of eight Uzbekistani wives from blue collar families, angry at the poor treatment of their husbands following an accident at a refinery which left people maimed. They pursued one of his companies through the courts. Each was found beaten and raped in their own homes on the same night. It was no coincidence.’

  ‘Bastard,’ snorted the Minister, before draining his glass.

  ‘It gets worse,’ continued Hand, voice unwaveringly steady. ‘It was hard to find but there is a certain company located in the Cayman Islands, Hamilton Advisory, of which the sole director and employee went to Eton with our very own upstanding Prime Minister. It turns over seventy million a year and serves as principal advisor to a group of luxury developments situated on the Caspian Sea. These are ‘black holes’, vast chasms for Mafia to pour dirty money into and remove again freshly laundered. The residencies and casino resorts are supposedly constructed with the highest quality materials to the finest specifications, fit for the most demanding Emirate Sheik, but they never see a single visitor. The companies that build them for Golich use local work gangs, forced labour and cheap materials, if they even get built at all, that is. They are protected by local government from tax implications and inspection. A torrent of fee capital is directed from Hamilton Advisory via two numbered bank accounts both which are attributable back to the PM.’

  ‘I’m afraid, Derek,’ said the Minister censoriously, ‘that it has become clear the PM is up to his neck in this for personal gain and he’s endeavouring to commit Great Britain to a shotgun wedding with a notorious gangster. All under the noble subterfuge of creating countless jobs that will forge his legacy.’

  ‘I bloody knew something was amiss,’ said Derek stunned at the news. ‘And Golich wants to get rid of me, I suppose, because I’ve been a thorn in his side and delayed the timings of the deal?’

  ‘And challenged his authority, don’t forget that,’ chimed in the Minister. ‘He has an inpatient intolerance for insubordination it seems,’ smugly reflecting at the spontaneous alliteration. ‘And you’ve gone and pissed the little thug off, Hemmings. Not the done thing really.’

  Hand levelled things out again. ‘We’ve uncovered a few more in Whitehall on the payroll as well, including your friend Andy Bartholomew.’

  ‘I always knew he was a toad,’ said the civil servant triumphantly, brightening up for the first time. ‘What happens now then?’

  ‘Well, for starters, it is imperative that you lie low,’ said Hand taking control. ‘We’ve arranged for you to stay in the building tonight, in the executive suite. Telephone Alice and tell her you’ll be pulling an all-nighter. Make it convincing, the less she knows about this the better.’

  ‘She’s not in any danger is she?’

  ‘Nothing immediate that we have detected. The sleeper cell has orders to eliminate you alone for now, although we know the Vory have a history of using family members as leverage and to mete out their frightful revenge. The Minister has authorised a plain clothes officer to be placed outside your home as a precaution, Derek. I have requested that he be joined undercover by Phil Manning, one of my Unit’s guys who has been working the Golich connection in London. Alice will be safe, I can promise you that.’

  ‘This is all rather unpalatable,’ murmured the older man, wringing his hands nervously.

  ‘We need to wait and let this play out a little further, so we won’t be disrupting Bartholomew just yet. We need further firm evidence of collusion and corruption before any arrests can be made.’

  ‘Indeed,’ added in the Minister, ‘the PM is a powerful man. Many have underestimated him at their peril. I’m bloody going to make sure he swings for this. We’ll take the whole sordid matter to the press before Britain commits to a deal with that nasty Russian crook.’

  ‘Oh, I’m certain that you will, Minister,’ Derek spoke from the corner of his mouth, ‘and basking in the plaudits for having prevented such a debacle on the international stage will no doubt reflect nicely on someone with aspirations for the top job.’

  ‘Why of course,’ came the dry response. ‘Someone’s got to show some leadership to get us out of this mess. But your part won’t be forgotten either, Hemmings. You’ll have your pick of where you want to go next, Commander Hemmings of MI6, is it? If you’ve still got the fight left in you old man.’ He flashed a wolfish smile and settled back into the chesterfield, glowing with overt sat
isfaction.

  The Hand of God stood briskly. He scowled, ‘Gentlemen, when you’ve quite finished congratulating yourselves, there’s a lot of work remaining to be done. Do not forget that people’s lives still hang in the balance.’

  Chapter 34

  SPAIN. SESEÑA. OUTSKIRTS OF FRANCISCO HERNANDO VILLAGE.

  The tranquillity of the afternoon was shattered as the wooden door to the barn was unceremoniously kicked open. Ratchet’s hiding place instantly flooded with sunlight, a myriad of falling dust particles playing within the captivity of the sunbeams.

  ‘Find him,’ someone barked over the background score of snarling, salivating dogs. Men took to the barn energetically, kicking over equipment and rifling through grain bins, armfuls of produce heaped onto the floor. Black Leather Jacket Man stood legs apart in front of the mass of tightly wound hay bales, brandishing an Uzi. His weapon of choice lay nestled within hairy muscular arms like a sleeping baby. Blowback-operated, select-fire and closed-bolt, it is manufactured entirely of polymer for a lighter carry, the large lower portion of the gun comprising of grip and hand guard. The grip section was recalibrated from the regular Uzi, using Israeli engineer Uziel Gal’s 1948 design, so that it can be operated with both hands to deliver greater control when in full-automatic fire given it is such a small lightweight firearm. The gun has a cyclic rate of fire of twelve hundred rounds per minute with minimum recoil and kick back. It’s capable of delivering punishing volleys of bullets at sub-sonic speed, ripping apart any living thing within a deployment of fifty metres. But to its Russian master, it was simply a familiar old friend, sharing raw memories of putting the hammer down on the mean streets of St. Petersburg in the aftermath of Perestroika, operating as one of the Bratva’s most feared Boyeviks. The term literally meaning ‘warrior’ was hard earned amongst the Vory as a family enforcer. The Russian letters ‘МИР’ tattooed on the back of his hand denoted the pride taken in a violent and murderous past.