by Tim Heath
Yet Alex was gone.
She hadn’t seen that coming. She hadn’t considered Alex would have just believed her the way he apparently had. She didn’t think he would give up on her so quickly. Had she really broken his heart? Surely when he was back, the truth could be told. She would tell him. By then her husband might already have been arrested. Anastasia had done her part. Now it was over to the authorities.
“Look, I think I’d better leave you to get on with things,” Anastasia said finally, the emotions under control, the tears wiped away for the time being.
“If, as you say, this incriminates your husband in a crime or crimes, I’ll make sure it falls into the right hands. You can trust me.” Anissa could say that much with certainty. She’d been trying to bring a case against these oligarchs for years, and while Kaminski himself wasn’t foremost in her thinking, he would be a start. Maybe they could get him to turn on others, trading time for names, not that Anissa would share that thought with Anastasia. The Belarusian wanted the man put away for life.
“Thank you,” Anastasia said, taking Anissa’s hands in hers. Anissa could see what Alex saw in her, a warmth radiating from her towards Anissa at that moment, the Belarusian undoubtedly profoundly thankful to have someone willing to help her. She also seemed relieved to have given it away, to have got the pressure or fear or whatever it was, finally removed.
Anissa watched Anastasia move away, her eyes following her for a full sixty-seconds before Anissa too turned and went back the way she’d come, now in the opposite direction to Anastasia. Anissa weighed the device in her right hand, before slipping it into her pocket, zipping up the pocket for good measure. She then quickened her pace and headed back towards the office. If the data drive had what Anissa hoped, it would make for an exciting afternoon.
Two hours later, Anissa was standing behind Gordon Peacock, with Sasha next to her. They’d been going through the data and they had pulled in Gordon because of his expertise in the field. He was now processing and labelling the information so it could be easily categorised.
They’d hardly scratched the surface, but there was irrefutable evidence included that would lead to the arrest of Dmitry Kaminski. What remained to be seen would be how long the charge sheet might finally be.
Anissa had put through a call to the head of the Serious Crimes Unit at New Scotland Yard, and a high-ranking member was apparently on her way over later that day. Anissa trusted that by then her little team would have worked through the information available a lot more and would have a clearer idea of what they were playing with.
“Do we need to get Anastasia into protective custody?” Sasha asked. He knew how these kinds of things went in his homeland though London was another matter.
“She didn’t ask for it, and for now, I think she isn’t under any suspicion. If we get this right, the first Kaminski will know about anything is when he’s arrested. We can assess her situation then. But with Lev Kaminski out of the picture, Dmitry doesn’t have a lot of people to turn to in the UK. And given what we have––anyone could have passed us this from the house, not just Anastasia––we don’t need her as a witness. The documents speak for themselves.”
Before Anissa left the building that day, they’d handed over nearly half of the data, printed out and grouped together by relevance. They issued an arrest warrant the following morning. By the time Kaminski was in custody, they hoped the police would have all the documents in their possession.
What Anissa was most interested in, was everything to do with the Games. If she could make a link to any of the other oligarchs, she would. For the first time since picking up on their scent, Anissa knew she had something. She grabbed her bag, packed with printouts to read that evening at home, and headed to her car. Anissa had heard nothing from Alex––not that she expected to for a while––so she hadn’t been able to fill him in on the latest developments. She hoped that she would see him again before too long.
29
Kaminski Residence, London––England
Dmitry and Anastasia were still in bed when there was a knock on their bedroom door.
“What?” Dmitry shouted at the man who’d just come in. It was highly irregular for his security personnel to disturb him upstairs.
“The police are downstairs.”
“Well, send them away!” he stormed back, glancing at his clock. “It’s not even eight in the morning, for Pete’s sake. What could they possibly want?”
Anastasia had got herself out of bed, a dressing gown tied in place, and had gone into the bathroom. She couldn’t be around her husband at that moment. She needed to hide.
“They have a warrant.”
Dmitry swore. “Destroy everything downstairs. I’ll hold them in the front lounge,” he said, now pulling on his own dressing gown as he got out of bed.
“Sir, they are already in your office.”
Kaminski swore again, charging out of the door and down the stairs, though two officers were already on their way up. They met halfway up the stairs.
“Dmitry Kaminski, you are under arrest,” the lead officer said, handcuffs ready in his hands.
“On what grounds?” Kaminski demanded, his eyes shifting between the officer directly in front of him and the half dozen walking back and forth from the office to the front drive with boxes of his files.
“Bribery, embezzlement, kidnapping, illegal financial deals… the list is long,” the officer said, pushing a sheet of paper into his face as if that would make it all clear.
Kaminski didn’t need to know what the charges were. They were in his office. They were taking his files. They had everything.
“Can I at least get changed?” he asked, pointing down to his dressing gown. The two officers looked at each other. This apparently wasn’t in their preparation notes.
“You have five minutes, and we must come upstairs with you,” the lead guy said, at last. Kaminski turned, climbing the stairs fast, the officers a few steps behind but close enough. Anastasia was coming out of the bedroom, having been listening to the conversation on the stairs. As Dmitry passed her, he spoke fast, his voice low, and in Russian.
“Get me the name of the man who betrayed me,” he snapped, continuing on into his bedroom, the two male officers following him in behind. Anastasia carried on downstairs, seeing the team already at work in the office, most of the files packed away. The four men who made up the building’s security detail stood to one side in the kitchen. They looked Anastasia’s way the moment she appeared. Nothing was said by any of them.
Ten minutes later they were all gone as quickly as they’d arrived, Kaminski himself led out in cuffs, having dressed in a simple jacket and jeans, a t-shirt underneath. They had taken his phone from him. On his way out, he’d looked each man in the face, before gazing at his wife’s face, the only one that seemed to show any fear. She knew they were coming for him. She’d betrayed him.
“Get my lawyer to call me,” had been the last thing Dmitry had said, this not to Anastasia, but to the head of his security detail.
Then it was just the four men and Anastasia. They had emptied the office of everything but the furniture. Anastasia turned and went back upstairs without saying a word. She knew her husband now suspected she’d been the one to lead the police to him. She had to get away from there immediately.
The Bank, Zurich––Switzerland
The unit of Filipov’s men––mostly FSB personnel, though many had army combat experience as well––were in place as the first employee stepped up to the nondescript doors on a private residential street in the heart of Zurich. If those living in that road knew anything of what sat in their midst, Filipov was not aware.
The Russians, armed with massive firepower and carrying plenty of explosives, followed the man in through the entranceway, forcing the door open while the rest poured in, causing the man to run. He had nowhere to go, and two soldiers caught up with him quickly.
“Get us in, and no alarms or you’ll die, and every
one you know will soon follow.” He had a gun in the man’s face, and spoke in English, though with an accent. It wasn’t the first time a group had tried to rob the bank. The policy was to let them have a go. The criminals had always been tracked down later in the past. There was nothing like trying to steal money from men who knew how to accumulate vast wealth, mostly through criminal activity. It wasn’t a bank the Pope would use.
“Okay, okay, I hear you. There is nothing kept here, no safes, no cash. This is just an office,” though, by the amount of equipment and boxes being carried through as he spoke, he could tell these were not your average chancers. These were heavily financed mercenaries.
Once inside, they put a bullet through the skull of the employee––a move deemed the quickest way to contain the danger––and two men stood guard on the main doors, waiting for anyone else to arrive.
“We’re in,” the team leader confirmed to Filipov, who was on the line, alert and ready. He’d been waiting for this moment for a long time already.
“Okay, I’m sending you the code now,” Filipov said, the confirmation ping coming through seconds later. Filipov had heard it at his end. “Remember, await my command once inside.”
At the central console––the room seemed to offer nothing to a would-be thief––the team leader sat down and started carefully inputting the code he’d just received. Somewhere deep underneath, as they input each sequence, locks turned, combinations untwisted as if the entire floor itself was opening. With the final code, the wall behind them moved to one side, a hidden entrance revealed, the vault to the underground bunker already open. A rush of excitement flooded through the unit.
“We’re in,” the team leader said, poking his head through the now revealed entranceway.
“Good. Get your men in place. Nobody comes in. Use the explosives I sent you. Booby-trap the entire upper floor. Have your men stand guard. I need you to go into the vault for me. Did you bring the camera I asked you about?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Give the order to the men and then proceed into the vault.” Filipov could hear the spoken commands, the eleven men receiving the order then fully unpacking the explosives they’d brought in, and getting to work on securing the upstairs section of the facility.
“I’m going down,” the team leader said into the phone, now just him and Filipov. Seconds later, the astonished Russian could be heard swearing under his breath. He’d never seen so much gold in all of his life.
“Impressive, right?” Filipov had never been inside, not that he would let on the fact. He quite envied the unit leader at that moment. Yet, gold was only a fraction of what was stored in the depths. “Start recording. And get your men to bring down to you the boxes I sent.”
Five minutes later Filipov was back on the phone. He’d received the video from the vault. A team at the Kremlin were working on the quality of the recording while he waited. It would soon be ready to show to Filipov’s particular audience. He would not broadcast it to the world, not yet, anyway. This had to be handled a little more discreetly. There was also a photo of various chemical agents, including Aqua Regia, the only known substance to dissolve gold. With everything else he’d had delivered, he could, if he wanted, wipe out the entire gold stockpile held there. Trillions in assets wiped out in an instant.
The threat had to be real.
Mark Orlov was the first to be informed. A photo from inside the vault––somewhere he recognised having been there himself many times––stopping him in his tracks. Filipov’s words were equally ominous. Mark grabbed the phone. His own team, minutes behind Filipov it seemed, confirmed to the oligarch that a group of Russians were, in fact, inside the Bank.
Orlov threw his handset to the ground so hard it smashed into three pieces instantly. Sergej, coming in from the other room, was alarmed at what had happened. Orlov soon filled him in, Volkov’s jaw dropping. Of the three oligarchs gathered, Sergej had the most to lose, as nearly everything else he owned that was outside the vault he’d signed over to Svetlana in the ongoing divorce. Sergej hadn’t thought he needed any of that money as he had stored five times that amount in Zurich. He stood to lose everything.
Filipov then contacted a whole range of people. Nobody connected directly to the ICC in the Hague, but the message was clear: Svetlana walks, or you lose everything.
The pressure was applied like never before. By midday, a legal case had been rushed through the criminal court, supposedly coming from Svetlana’s own legal team, though they knew nothing about it. It challenged the validity of her arrest, on multiple levels. With so much at stake, it barely touched the table of those in power, and they ordered Svetlana’s release.
She walked out of prison shortly before one. There was no waiting press––no one would see her departure––and a car took her straight to the airport where Filipov’s jet was ready. Once she was in the air, she called Filipov.
“You did it!” she beamed, happy that her faith in him had proved well founded. It had surprised Filipov at how quickly the people he was targeting had given up. He hadn’t expected them to release Svetlana. It caused Filipov a dilemma. He had hoped he would have to destroy the entire vault, because of their unwillingness to give in to his terms, but instead, they’d given in straightaway. It made Filipov wonder what they were so afraid of losing.
“Everything belonging to Mark Orlov and Sergej Volkov gets destroyed,” he called through to the unit leader. “Am I clear on that?”
“Yes, sir. And the gold? You aren’t really going to destroy it, are you?” There seemed almost desperation on the man’s voice.
“It’s nothing to do with you. Besides, we might still need it to get your team out of there.” The whole unit was no doubt now trapped in central Zurich unless they could bargain their way out. The gold would help with that. “Make sure everything is ready. I don’t know when you’ll have to leave.”
Ordering them to destroy the gold would cripple not only dozens of oligarchs but also several nations around the world. He would also hurt those who had agreed to back him. Another option was to leave the team to fight it out, eventually being overpowered themselves. But that would also alert the authorities to the existence of all the treasure. That would be the same as destroying the gold for the oligarchs onboard with their new President.
The way to go was strategic destruction, cherry picking the deposits that needed to be destroyed, anything belonging to Orlov, Volkov or Lev Kaminski for starters. If there was something from Putin, then that too could be ruined or stolen. There were a few other names on Filipov’s list.
Filipov turned on the television. There was no news coming from Zurich. It was apparently being kept quiet, which made sense.
Before Filipov had the chance to make any further demands, however, a force of much greater strength was closing in on the Bank. Mark Orlov had many units in the city. An individual or group making a move on the Bank had always been one of his worst-case scenarios. Now it had happened.
What Filipov had never known was that the entire compound was laced with explosives and now Orlov gave the order to detonate them. The blast took out the main floor––sucking in nine of the twelve-man unit––as a column of smoke followed the sound of a small explosion. Debris lay everywhere, visibility was low and squads of troops wearing special headgear stormed in through the battered and crumbling entrance way. It cut down the final three men under Filipov’s control within seconds, having run up from the vault when the explosion had rocked the foundations, only to be met by armed soldiers emerging suddenly through the dust.
They put the entire area on lockdown, the residents home at that moment told to stay indoors. A gas main had ruptured, someone told them. They said nothing of the military personnel seen leaving the area half an hour after the explosion.
“Is it contained?” Mark Orlov asked, his speech fast, his tone high.
“Yes, we have control back.”
“Thank you,” he said, the handset falling to his side.
“It’s done,” he said to Sergej, passing him back his phone.
“And the deposits?” There was fear in his eyes, something Orlov had rarely seen in the eyes of a man with such a reputation.
“They are checking,” was all Mark could confirm. Little did either man know, but they’d just lost billions.
Filipov had lost contact with his unit in Zurich. That told him one of two things. Either the team leader was taking the money and running––and they all knew better than that, as there was nowhere they could hide that he wouldn’t find them. Or they were dead.
He called Svetlana, her jet still in the sky. They were due to clear into Russian airspace any moment.
“I’ve lost touch with Zurich,” he said, filling her in for a moment.
“Did you get what you needed?”
“No,” he said, the first confirmation to Svetlana that there had been more in play than just her release from prison. “But we’ll regroup. Orlov showed his hand today. He’s more dangerous than I ever gave him credit for.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“He had the greater firepower. We’ll just have to have more men next time I take him on. Have you heard anything from Rad lately?”
“Yes,” Svetlana said, and she brought the President up to speed over the next ten minutes.
30
London & Moscow
