by steve higgs
‘Mr. Michaels you interrupted me. Please refrain from doing that again.’
With a grimace devoted to the pain in my lower back, I pushed myself upright. I didn’t respond though.
‘When I played the role of the victim yesterday morning, it was nothing more than a safety net to drive you to me if you did find something.’ He laughed. ‘It was quite brilliant actually. You were so ready to defend me. A real man of the people, always looking for someone to protect or save. You were surprisingly easy to read. I must say though that I had no notion that you might discover the operation beneath our feet. I would like to shake your hand for that.’ He said as he extended his hand toward me.
I looked down at it. ‘You have got to be kidding.’
‘Not at all, Mr. Michaels. You have played a good game. It is not my fault that you lost. I am just better than you, but I acknowledge your skills. We should part as gentlemen.’ He offered his hand again, insistent almost.
‘I’m going to have to pass.’
He blew out a breath of disappointment. ‘Very well. He can go out tonight with the others.’
Danylo Vanhkno spoke for the first time. ‘Do I put him with the others?
Alex Jordan was getting up to return to his seat behind his desk. ‘No. He is a bit too capable. Give him a beating and make sure he is well restrained.’ He didn’t even face his number two when he spoke. Everyone was dismissed.
My arms were grabbed again. This time the two nameless guards made sure they had me. I wouldn’t shake them free again. Automatically, I turned my feet toward the door. However, we were not going that way. Andriy walked to what I had assumed was Alex Jordan’s private bathroom and opened the door.
As the guards shoved me toward it, I saw Andriy begin to descend.
It was an entrance point into the underground tunnel system.
Captive. Thursday, November 24th 1201hrs
The stairs led down and down and down, the bare stone walls giving off a familiar damp smell I associated with churches and cellars. The stairs were also stone, made to last forever in an age when other materials might be less easy to obtain. The stairwell itself was rectangular, the flights leading down around a central stone column, ten steps, then a corner, six steps then another corner, another ten steps on the longer side.
I counted in my head. Allowing a six-inch drop per step every circuit took me down sixteen feet. The Admiral’s office was on the second floor, so deduct ten feet for that. By the time we reached the bottom of the dimly lit stairs I had descended roughly one-hundred feet, which by my reckoning put us below the level of the river at high tide.
Cross matching that information with what I remembered about the height of the river on Tuesday when I went to Upnor… gave me nothing useful. The tide on the day had been most of the way in I thought. There was six feet of beach between the waves and the obvious high tide mark, but not only did I not know whether the tide had been coming in or out, I also didn’t know how fast it moved on that piece of beach. It was a very gentle slope, so it would move slowly. Slowly wasn’t a useable measure though.
I decided to ask. ‘Hey, guys, what time is high tide today?’
In answer Danylo thumped the back of my head. ‘Shuddup.’
We had reached the bottom of the stairs and a large wooden door. There were faint sounds coming from the other side of it like ghostly echoes. It wasn’t locked though, Andriy in the lead opened it by grasping an ancient iron handle and putting his shoulder against it. It opened inward.
As I went through it, the two guards still gripping me tightly, I spared a glance at the door to see if it had a lock. At this moment all information was vital. I was doing my best to keep my head clear but there was no denying that I was in peril. I was alone, I still had my phone, but I doubted that would last long and it wouldn’t work this far underground anyway, plus I was surrounded by enemies that would probably kill me if I gave them any trouble. Alex hadn’t made my fate clear, he said I would be taken out with the others tonight, but if they planned to kill me later somewhere else, they could just as easily kill me now and take me out dead.
I had wagered my life that this was not to be the case. If I was to be taken somewhere else to be executed, it meant I had several hours in which to escape. The clock on the wall behind Alex’s head had given the time as 1201hrs when I was led from the room. It would be dark in less than five hours.
Behind the door was a tunnel, dark and poorly lit, but with overhead fluorescent lighting strung lazily from hooks in the ancient ceiling just as I had seen in the clip Joseph sent. It curved gently to the right eight feet ahead of me so that I could not see where it went. The tunnel was rounded at the top and only just a little more than six feet in height. Ahead of me Andriy had to tilt his head to one side to avoid scraping it.
I didn’t bother to resist as they led me along it. Doing so would just waste energy. All my focus was on memorising everything I saw and plotting a map in my head. We had wound around the stairs four times so had ended up pointing in the same direction we had started. The river therefore was behind me and we were now turning east toward it with the curve of the tunnel.
Glancing back, I could no longer see the door. Danylo was so wide that I could see little other than his chest and blockish head. He was kind enough to give me another shove, no doubt to discourage me from looking at him and face forward.
Then we reached a room. It was small, about ten feet in each direction with a table and lockers taking up one wall. That was all I was allowed to see as a bag was roughly shoved over my head from behind to an accompanying gut punch from the front.
What was with the constant gut punches?
As I doubled over, still held by the guards each side, my jacket was ripped off and my hands were drawn back, and I felt a plastic restraint on the skin of my wrists. It was ratchetted tight. Though I couldn’t see it, the zip sound it made as it closed convinced me it was the same type of plastic cuff I had used on prisoners of war in Iraq. They were designed to stay on. Then hands were in my pockets and my phone was gone.
Alex had told them to give me a beating and secure me. I was secure now, so I was really trying to take my mind to a place where I could endure what I was sure was to come next. They were speaking in Ukrainian as I made sure my mouth was closed but my jaw was loose. My head was down but no blow came.
Instead, I was grabbed by the arms again and led away again. I tried counting steps, tried keeping myself orientated by noting any turns in my head so I might be able to find my way out again if I could escape once they left me alone. It didn’t work though. For all I knew they were walking around in circles to ensure I was disorientated. We passed through what sounded like a large room, the noise of our feet was different as if the walls were further away for the noise to bounce off. Then another room which I heard coming for some time because there were machine noises coming from it. In my head, I imagined the room Joseph had shown me with the cigarettes being made.
It seemed like we covered a lot of distance, but it was less than two minutes of walking so less than half a mile in total when we stopped, and my arms were released. More Ukrainian speech, which could have been instructions to kill me or a discussion about Manchester United’s hopes in the league this season. A door opened in front of me, I heard the handle turn and felt the air move as the door swung inward. Then I was shoved hard from behind and tripped to land on the cold stone. With my hands fastened behind me, I did my best to keep my face up. I avoided a blow to my jaw or skull and took most of the impact on my right arm and shoulder. I had protected myself, but it proved to be a senseless act though as the beating was now overdue it seemed.
In retrospect, I have to be glad that they didn’t use weapons on me. Being whacked with a steel pipe would have ended my plans instantly. Thirty or more blows landed on my back and ribs, my arms, buttocks and my head, which without my hands I could not protect.
Then laughter and they were gone.
I was alone i
n a poorly lit room, deep inside the underground lair of an organised criminal gang. I was bound and blinded and beaten.
I rolled onto my back and laughed.
I had them.
Not Trapped. Thursday, November 24th Roughly 1220hrs
Plastic cuffs are considered by many to be an acceptable alternative to steel handcuffs. They are not. Once on my back, I rolled onto my shoulder blades, pulled my hands under my bum to get them to my front and then stood up.
The next bit was going to hurt, and I had to do it on top of all the bruising I already had. With my hands behind my back, the natural position was for my palms to be facing outwards. I had ensured they were not in anticipation they would use the plastic cuffs favoured by everyone other than the police. Doing so allowed me to create a small gap between my wrists so the cuffs were tight, but not as tight as they should have been. I lifted my hands away from my body then drew them back in sharply. As my wrists hit my stomach wall, my elbows flared either side and the cuffs shifted slightly. They also dug into the skin on the back of my hands quite cruelly, but they didn’t break. I was trying to shock the little ratchet inside over the lip of the lug keeping it in place. I tried again, this time harder. The same effect. It took four attempts which I considered to be a poor show on my part, but they were loose enough for me to slip out of. The hood came off and I could take in my surroundings.
I guess this is where the story started, with me escaping from the room with a pipe wrench in my hand. Had the Ukrainians received any training on prisoner handling at any point they would have removed my footwear. I might be wearing leather office shoes, but they were a lot better than nothing. I wanted my combat boots on, and my Kevlar and my black ripstop clothing. However, if I had arrived dressed in my fighting gear it would have given the game away. I needed Alex to have no idea that I was onto him.
I had found the pipe wrench, slipped out of the room and almost immediately been spotted by three Ukrainians. As I ran along the tunnel with the mob chasing me and gaining, I had been looking for the river entrance. I had found it and the plan was almost complete. But now, in the moment of truth, I felt more worried than I had at any point thus far. Now that I had my back to the door to the river entrance, my surge of confidence at finding it left me.
What if I was wrong?
‘It was a good try, Mr. Michaels.' A familiar voice echoed in the confined space. ‘Unfortunately, that door only opens from the other side.' It was Andriy Janiv, still in his immaculate suit and very clearly the boss of the twenty thugs around him.
I glanced at the door. He was right. There was no handle this side.
Andriy beckoned for me to come back to them. ‘Come along, Mr. Michaels. Enough silliness now.’
The moment of truth was here. How clever was I? How reliable were the people I had placed my trust in?
I reached out behind me to knock loudly on the solid wood door three times. Even in the dim light of the tunnels, I could see the curious expression on Andriy’s face and I got to watch the expression change to one of disbelief and then horror as everyone in the corridor heard the mechanism turn and the door behind me open.
‘How’s it going, Army?’ Asked Alan.
Without turning, I answered, ‘Honestly? I’ve been beaten, blindfolded and locked up and the worst part of this is still that I had to get the Navy to rescue me.’
Behind me, he chuckled. ‘Don’t sweat it, Army.’ Then he growled. ‘Let’s get ‘em, boys.’
Tunnel Fire Fight. Thursday, November 24th No Idea What Time it is. Don’t Really Care.
Alan, Richard, Boy George and almost two dozen other pensionable aged men stormed into the tunnel. It had been a risky play. I hadn’t counted on the beating, a few punches maybe, but I had run close to being incapacitated. It wouldn’t have taken much more for them to have broken one of my bones.
The gamble had been that Alex Jordan was not the innocent that he claimed to be. There were two clues that had smuggled into my head and stayed hidden, waiting for the rest of my brain to catch up before revealing themselves at a time when I would understand what they meant.
The first was the Ukrainian/English dictionary. I had thought nothing of it at first. With so many Ukrainian staff, it was a natural choice to learn a few words; a good managerial tactic. Only this morning did I realise that it was the wrong way around. If he was English, he would have wanted an English/Ukrainian dictionary. By itself it was too tenuous. Then there was the firing of Cedric Tilsley. Cedric claimed that Alex dismissed him when he reported the missing uniforms. The uniforms were those being worn by the ghosts which suggested to me that Alex knew what the uniforms were being used for. Also, firing Cedric felt out of character for the man I had met, a man that played the role of caring boss too well to have made such a move so easily. In isolation I would have dismissed my thoughts, but then there was the clock on the wall opposite Alex’s desk.
Once again, I hadn’t picked up on it at first but somewhere in the dark recesses of my head the maker’s mark on the clock had stuck. Kleynod was a Ukrainian clock manufacturer. I didn’t know that, of course. My general knowledge far too limited to name the Ukrainian manufacturer of anything. However, the clock was a modern item and out of keeping with the centuries old feel and look of the room. It had been enough to ask Jane to look it up and dig a little deeper into Alex’s genealogy. It had taken her minutes to find out that Alex Jordan was indeed English. He had been born and raised here, but his grandfather had travelled to England from the Ukraine at the end of the second world war. What had started out as a tenuous link had become a working principle.
Alex Jordan was the man in charge after all.
I really didn’t know how he would react when I took him the evidence, yet I thought only one or two scenarios were likely.
The first was that he would do exactly as he had and try to make me disappear. The second was that he would thank me and take the evidence, bluffing his way out by saying he would take it from there onward. It had occurred to me that a third option existed where he just had me killed on the spot, but I had elected to ignore that as it was unhelpful.
Choosing to force Alex’s hand was my best way into the tunnels beneath the Dockyard. A belief that held true and was vital to the next part of the plan. The plan I outlined to Big Ben required that he find Alan at the Dockyard, round up all his colleagues and friends and meet me at the river entrance to the tunnel system.
Alan Page and his friends were retired from the Special Boat Service, a Royal Navy version of the SAS. That was the tattoo they had shown me, silently telling me everything I needed to know. My father had one as well, though he and I had never talked about his time in the Navy or about my time in the Army. It was a well acknowledged fact that one didn’t talk about your service if you were special forces. This was mostly because it made those that did stand out as liars. If someone said they were special forces then they weren’t.
If I were locked in a battle of banter with the Navy boys, I would have called them a watered down, weak, slightly-drunk version of the SAS, but in truth they were every bit as elite and well-trained as any other special forces unit on the planet. I knew what it took to earn the badge, so when I needed help and getting it required a water-borne infiltration, I didn’t hesitate to include them. Sure, they were old. What did old mean though? They still worked a full day. They were still mobile and able, though people would call them sprightly rather than athletic now. I would get a full report from them later. Right now it was fighting time. I went with them as they charged into the tunnel, wet suits shedding water and each of them armed and ready to do violence.
In the confined space of the tunnel the first shots fired were impossibly loud. After that, my hearing was impaired, and it didn’t seem as loud even though it was. The Ukrainians had gone from looking startled to acting scared. Many had already turned and were fleeing the ageing army advancing on them. Others were armed and had drawn their weapons to return fire. None of them had anythi
ng bigger or more accurate than a hand gun though.
‘Shoot to wound!’ I yelled as loud as I could. It occurred to me that we could just kill everyone we saw and deny we were ever actually there. Alan’s crew might be up for that as well, but I couldn’t be sure there were not innocent persons down here that had been coerced into the work they were doing.
The first volley of shots had been aimed at the ceiling as Alan and his motley crew charged into the tunnel. Shooting a warning rather than trying to kill anyone. With fire being returned, the tactic changed. The distance between opposing sides had been no more than fifty feet when the door opened. Now it was less which meant that whoever shot first was going to win.
I was unarmed but hadn’t let that deter me from charging toward my Ukrainian opponents, so I had a front row view to the first four of them being cut down. The pensioners were all firing single shot not automatic fire, each target receiving only one or two hits, which took them down right enough, but probably wouldn’t kill them unless it hit something vital.
Devoid of sympathy for the wounded, I snagged a handgun, and made sure we did not advance beyond anyone that was still armed lest they shoot us in the back. In the three seconds since the first shot was fired, the tunnel ahead of us had emptied. There were no Ukrainians still in sight other than half a dozen that had been shot and were now groaning on the damp stone floor.
I swung around to face Alan’s team. ‘Anyone wounded?’ I asked. Several bullets had come in our direction, in the tight space it would have been hard to miss us all.
A voice said, ‘Yeah. Over here.’ The owner of the voice wasn’t wounded though. At his feet was Boy George, his weapon discarded next to him and blood coming between his fingers as he pressed them to his leg.
