“This ‘Pietr’ Gromatski clown” Joey spoke up, “says he’s also known as ‘Igor’, he looks a real nasty piece of work, what is this?” he was looking at the Interpol ‘rap sheet’ with the photo, “suspected of three gang-related killings in Kiev, one where an innocent kid was gunned down. He threw the paper back down onto the table, raising his head he looked Jacko right in the eye as if asking the boss what he thought.
“You’re right” Jacko spoke softly, every syllable deliberately chosen to drive home the emphasis, “killing this piece of crap would be too quick, a few years in a Ukrainian gulag first would be more fitting.” he stopped for the slightest moment, then went on, “and the Ukrainians just love sticking it to their old masters the Russians!”
There are some places where prison is real harsh punishment, then there are places where its a fate worse than death, Ukraine, while not the worst, it is enough to strike terror into the heart of the hardest criminal, and Gromatski would have reason to fear, in their eyes he was a child killer, the worst punishment was reserved for them.
One by one they replaced the photos, Sandy gathered them up, she would shred and incinerate them later, but for now, she had a briefing to run.
“Gromatski works for Alexei Serkhov, the ‘businessman’ in the East end” she passed a piece of paper round, nothing in this briefing was going via electronic channels, there was no way of knowing how much was being passed to the other side, especially when they couldn't be sure exactly how much information the mole had access to.
“I take it you've got an address then?” Jacko was all business.
“On the paper, I just gave you” Sandy replied, “along with the details about his boss, might be good to pay the boss a visit too, I can’t see him letting his employees go freelance” she turned to Jacko, “so how do you want to run this?”
Chapter 22
“Am I a prisoner or what?” Paul still didn't know what to make of the situation, one minute he’d been playing a computer game, the next he was being shot at, bundled into a car like a sack of spuds and sent careering across the country, at least he thought it was across the country, the driving had been fast and furious and he’d spent the time sweltering under a huge heavy blanket. The fact that the ‘blanket’ had kevlar plates in it had escaped him, it was one of the things that had kept him alive.
“No, you’re not” Sam began to reply, he began to say something, but she cut him off, holding up one hand she went on “you’re under our protection”.
He looked uncomfortable, unsure what to say, “still feels like a prison to me” he mumbled, “can’t go anywhere, where are we by the way?”
“Couple of hours from your house.” Sandy replied she had ‘this shift’ looking after ‘the pax’ as Mac had called Paul when they handed him over, impersonal but practical.
“I gathered that!” He shot back slightly frustrated, “but where the hell is that?”
“Well, you’re still in England” she sounded almost apologetic, “that’s all I can tell you, the less you know about your location, the safer you’ll be.”
“I don’t even know what I’ve done, I mean one minute I’m minding my own business” he was mumbling, half talking to whoever would listen, but half talking to himself, expecting no sympathy from anyone, “next minute I’m”
“Bundled into a car,” Sam cut in, “after being shot at by some pretty serious firepower” she went on, “lets not forget someone wanting to kill you” she’d been making coffee, one mug went down with a little force in front of him, the ‘nursemaid routine was beginning to grate on all of them.
The two of them were sat around what looked like a kitchen table, the place looked old. Not the ‘tired’ or worn down old, more like a house from previous centuries, yet kept as if to preserve the history, but there was a distinctly utilitarian feel about the place.
The walls didn't have the smooth plaster of the modern house, just whitewash over the stone, it reminded Paul of the prison movies from the 1930s.
“Place even looks like a prison!” he grunted as he reached for the mug, he slowly lifted it and took a sip, at least the coffee was okay, “how old is this place anyway?”
“Dunno really” Sam replied, “but I was told at least a couple of hundred years old, kinda impressive don’t you think?”
“ Depends on if you’re impressed with prisons” Paul shot back, “looks strong enough to be one!”
“Fortress would be a better word” a voice from the left spoke up, they both turned, Hene had just walked through the door, “think about it” he went on, “thick walls, no musket ball would get through them” he pointed to the walls, “small windows, heavy wooden shutters, probably oak,” he indicated a place on the wall where evidence of stonework could still be seen, if you looked hard enough.
“What ARE you saying?” Paul asked, “so far I’ve been”
“Yeah, I know” Hene cut him off, “spare us the speech” he sat down at the table, “the fact is when you took down that ransomware, you pissed off some pretty seriously bad people”
“I've heard all that” Paul cut back in, “but all I did was stop the thing! It's not like it was going to make ‘em lots, the damn thing was easy”
“It was meant to be” Sam replied, “but not for you, they wanted someone else to do it”
“But that makes no sense” Paul pushed his chair back, frustration coming through, “why?”
“You any idea who they were?”
“Men with guns” he shrugged.
“Try the Russian Mafia” Hene went to pour himself an instant coffee, there was no water in the jug, he got up and sauntered across the kitchen, “oh and the Triads, ever heard of them? Yeah, and the Yakuza”
“Who the hell are they?” Paul had no idea who they were talking about.
“Japanese Mafia” Sam added, “Kinda like the criminal Samurai, only worse, and they don’t usually take prisoners, you’re lucky they let the Russians do the job!”
“Shit” was all he could say.
Chapter 23
“Thanks for picking me up Jimmie, I owe you one,” Billie struggled to stand, she wasn't entirely sure discharging herself was her brightest idea, the doc had made it plain she didn’t think it a good one, ‘but doctors are like that’ she thought.
“Don’t talk soft boss” Jimmie reached out to help her, she brushed him off, if she was going to do this she had to do it herself. “you’d do the same for us.”
“Nah” she replied, “I’d tell you not to be such a bloody idiot” she turned to him, “but don’t you even think about saying it!” her face looked stern, but there was a mischievous twinkle in her eye.
Jimmy might be the youngest on her squad and the keenest, but he was reliable and could keep his mouth shut when he needed to, right now she didn’t know who to trust, but Jimmie had been trustworthy in the past.
“We’ve got some digs arranged for you, wanna go there first?”
“Maybe second, take me to my place first” she replied, “there are a few things”
“You sure about that?” he came back, “it’s pretty rough”
“I can handle it” she wasn’t offended that he’d asked that she would be asking the same thing if it was anyone else, actually she’d probably be forbidding them from even going near, using the excuse of ‘not wanting to tamper with the crime scene’ even though everyone knew that the Crime Scene forensics unit had finished with the scene. “Besides, what I need isn’t actually in the flat!”
They got to the car and started to make their way back towards the flat. Traffic was pretty light for a major city, thanks to the extension of the traffic monitoring system that London uses, a very simple and effective way to cut down on traffic within a certain area.
Back in the late 1990s, London was grinding to a halt with the sheer volume of traffic on its streets, around the centre of the city a journey of just a mile could take up to two hours so the local authority came up with a very simple system.
Every vehicle within that area would have a ‘tag’ that they could purchase which would allow them to drive within the area, every vehicle needing to drive within that area would also be able to purchase them, they would be displayed in the front left-hand side of the windscreen. You could purchase a tag for a day (24 hours) a week, a month or a year.
The system was monitored by CCTV cameras set up in a ‘ring’ around the perimeter, each camera was linked to a computer that would ensure that every vehicle in the area would be photographed both entering and leaving the area, if you were a permanent resident in the area you could arrange to pay by direct debit from your Bank, in that case, you’d only pay for what you’d already used (on a monthly basis) and would only get the bill for the hours you spent within the area.
The real ‘kicker’ or punishment was any vehicle caught within the area without the ‘tag’ would be identified by the computer which would then interrogate the Driver Licencing Centre (D.V.L.C) where all the vehicle records were kept, and the owner of the vehicle would be sent the bill for a whole year, some thousand pounds (the fee for a day’s use was about three pounds) and anyone who didn’t pay within the month got their vehicle impounded and crushed, it paid to either pay up, or stay away.
Portobello Road, where Billie’s ‘flat’ had been was well within the boundaries, it was also ideally located for working in central London. Just north of the world famous tourist mecca of Hyde Park it was in an area known as Notting Hill, a working-class enclave within what had become middle-class inner London, a vibrant and colourful community from just about every nation on earth, it wasn’t uncommon to go about your day speaking Swahili with the Africans, Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil or Gujarati with the Indians, or any one of the hundreds of languages from the subcontinent, not to mention Arabic, Farsi or even Aramaic to name a few of the languages, sometimes using two or three of the languages mixed with English in the same sentence, Billie loved it, it made her feel at home, ‘Just like Moss Side’ she thought.
“I need to pick something up from the old place first” Bille spoke up as she gently eased herself into the car, “then I need to go get a cheap laptop, then you can take me wherever the new place is”
“Guv” (a slang expression cops in London use for their boss, any senior ranking officer in an investigation is ‘the Guv’ short for Governor) Jimmy began, “We took everything we could from the flat” he tried to reassure her, thinking she was wanting to go and confront the demon of fear, “It’s all at the new”
“It wasn’t at the flat” she cut him off, “I knew something was off, so I hid it before I got there, it’s what those bastards were looking for,”
“Scuse me?” he started to form a question.
“When I got dropped off, the lights were out in the entry, broken,” she began, “Five years I’ve lived here, and they’ve never once been broken at night, the folks in the flats value their safety too much to leave them that way, someone had just busted them, I knew something was coming down, so I hid what I’d just picked up.”
“Then why the hell didn’t you call and?”
“And sound like a little girl crying because of the dark?” she shot back, Jimmy was taken aback, “not to you maybe” she went on, “but to the likes of that prick Townsend, that’s exactly what it would sound like, and get me busted out of the position for wasting police resources, I didn’t have any proof, just a gut feeling.” her face was a picture of determination. “Nah, I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure. Now take me there so I can get it.”
“But what’s so important about this whatever it is?”
“That: she replied, “we’ll only know when I get it, and a cheap laptop, one that doesn’t have an internet connection built in, so I can open the file without them being able to stop me”
“So it’s a computer file then?”
“Dunno. I was just told to make sure it didn’t have internet connection when I opened the file” she shrugged.
“Guv” they’d stopped at the car park barrier arms, they were rising, but he took the opportunity to give her an enquiring look, “how can you not know?”
“Bloody easy,” she replied sarcastically, “someone with enough clout to find my number, not the one you guys have, but my personal phone, hell only my Mum and sister have that number! It's not even in the phone book, but they got it and wanted me to have some pretty serious information about our body in the river,” she shifted in the seat as Jimmy accelerated away, she was still nervous, trying to see if they were followed, “somebody else doesn’t want that information getting out,” she stopped for a moment.
“And?” Jimmy asked.
“And they’re prepared to kill to stop it getting out” she stopped for a moment, then went on, “But someone else wants us to have that information, and I want to know why!”
Chapter 24
“Serkov doesn’t go anywhere without at least one bodyguard” Sandy was conducting the briefing, they were still outside London, holed up in the ‘safe house’ preparing for the next part of the operation, they’d found a ‘tentacle’ of the organisation, now it was time to cut the thing off, and see who squeals, “Gromatski is one of his Lieutenants, usually gets the job of ‘disciplining’ the others” she made the inverted comma sign, making it clear she was quoting someone, “kinda valuable to him, but he’s not usually the bodyguard”
“If he’s a valuable asset” Smithy began to ask, “then why to take such a big risk?”
“Yeah” Mac added, “they had to know it would be picked up by cameras?”
“Unless they already knew they had the cameras covered” Jacko replied, “our mole would have done that!”
Notting Hill is northwest of the famous Hyde Park, it’s a multicultural area with a large Jamaican and Caribbean community, but there are also Indians, Africans and dozens of other nationalities living in that area and it's all working class, just Paddington that sits just to the east of it, the North and South of the park are just like the famous horror novel “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” with the North being whichever you think the working classes should be.
If Dr Jekyll’s opposite was a ‘Mr Hyde’ then the opposite of Notting Hill and Paddington would be Knightsbridge and Chelsea.
Knightsbridge looks just as multicultural until you look beneath the veneer, that is the Middle Eastern oil money being spent in places like Harrods, Chelsea is just rich, with even the smallest place fetching five or six million pounds sterling, and that’s the starting prices, they’re like to different planets, yet only a couple of miles apart.
“Will ya look at the bloody money around here” Joey was constantly flabbergasted at the incredible wealth is some places, and the poverty that seemed to exist ‘side by side’, It didn’t help that almost every car in the street they were in was either a high-end Rolls Royce, Ferrari or a Bentley, “Makes yer wanna weep”
“Welcome to the financial capital of the world” Sandy replied almost wistfully, she loved London, but the sheer opulence at times was too much, especially in Knightsbridge where most of the wealth wasn’t even English, it was Arab oil money, very few English could afford to live here.
“Gromatski is in there at the moment” Jacko pointed to the front door of the huge department store that was Harrods, “He’s looking after one of Serkhov’s mistresses, she’s in there buying whatever she wants”
“Sugar daddy?” Jacko asked.
“He’s nearly sixty, she’s nineteen” Sandy replied.
“Talk about cradle snatching” Joey replied.
“Only one he smuggled here that it turned out well for” Sandy came back, “but even she’s on a very short leash, gilded prison if you know what I mean?” it came out more like a question. “And besides, as soon as he tires of her, guess where she’ll be going, it won’t be pleasant!”
“Hence Gromatski” Joey replied as they saw the man leaving, he was looking around, as if trying to spot any unwelcome visitors, like journalists, or cops, no one w
as looking at a black taxi cab with two tourists seemingly arguing over a fare, Jacko was decked out as the driver, Joey and Sandy as the tourists, Mac and Smithy were close by, they would be needed for the next part, “I take it, no one ever found any evidence then?”
“Always a whiff” Sandy replied, “Never any proof, and too many friends in the right place to make sure no one asked questions”
“And here we are” Jacko came back into the discussion, “One of his men driving the vehicle that takes potshots at one being guarded by MI6! Makes you wonder at times”
“No one ever said criminals were the smart boss” Joey chipped in cheekily, “But it must be hellishly important to them, whatever they were hoping for”
“About a billion reasons and I’m talking pounds sterling, not US dollars” Sandy replied, they both turned and stared at her, their jaws on the floor, “What?” she went on, “where did you think the new toys you got to play within Iran came from? You don’t honestly think HM government would put up the money for the Op did you?”
“Sandy” Joey spoke slowly, “we knew that it’s just that the amount, it’s bloody huge”
“And it put a serious hole in the drug trade worldwide” Sandy replied, “we were getting nowhere with the old methods, so we turned things around, we knew we could get at some of the money, but rather than just locking it up in bank accounts, and getting them to freeze the accounts, you freeze an account, all you do is reward the Bankers for being corrupt, take the money and everyone is at each other’s throats, no one trusts the others, that’s what we did”
“And what did they hope to achieve?”
“Simple really” Sandy replied, “They’ve got someone on the inside, once the ransomware got as far as MI6, with Farid out of the way, their person on the inside could send the deactivation code, but with a difference, it would have MI6’s Banks listed, and they’d be able to clean us out, not just of the money we took, but everything, secrets as well, and that means every agent in the field, the motherlode!”
Scorpion's Vengeance Page 11
