by Zoe Sharp
Radko, annoyingly, was able to ski backward while watching his class, although once he had reassured himself that we were not imminently about to plummet over the nearest precipice, he quickened the pace a little as he led us down to the start of the next lift.
“We all OK to go up?”
He grinned at the nods and deftly hopped onto the express lift to the top. This one carried riders in pairs. I took the chair alongside Dawson, with Woźniak and Madeleine just ahead of us.
As the lift rose, gained altitude, and cleared the treetops, below us instead of landscape there was only a grayish-white layer of cloud, roiling softly like a misty sea above which the tops of the mountains appeared as islands.
On one of those islands was Venko’s hunting lodge, in view for the first time. It made an impressive sight. I noticed arms extended further up the lift line as other skiers noticed the collection of buildings and pointed.
“What’s he up to, d’you think?” Dawson demanded suddenly, nudging my arm. I shifted my gaze forward and noticed that Woźniak seemed to be in some kind of clinch with Madeleine. His arm was certainly around her shoulders and she was pressed tight to his side.
“No idea,” I responded, “but if it was uninvited, he’s going to need the rescue sled to get him back down the bloody mountain, because he won’t be able to stand up well enough to ski.”
As soon as we got off the lift I moved quickly over to Madeleine. She saw the look on my face and put up a warning hand.
“Easy, Charlie. It was just cover so I could take some photographs of Venko’s place—nothing sinister.” She unzipped her jacket just far enough for me to see that underneath she had an SLR camera on a shoulder strap, with a telephoto lens.
I let my hackles subside. “All right,” I said grudgingly. “But if he starts to enjoy his work too much, let me know and I’ll break all his fingers.”
“Aw, thanks.” She gave me a sunny smile. “That’s so sweet of you.”
“Any time, ma’am.”
We couldn’t see the hunting lodge from the lift station itself, but as soon as we skied down on a narrow trail that led through the trees and burst out into bright sunlight again, it seemed very close—as the crow flies, anyway. To get there on foot would have involved going down the mountain we were on and climbing the next, submerging and surfacing through the cloud sea like a whale.
Radko grouped us all together out on the open trail to explain the route we were going to take down. I edged closer to Hamilton.
“This is about as close as we’re going to get to Venko’s place without tipping off his security,” I said. “We could do with someone taking a dive so Madeleine has a chance to get some more photos.”
“Leave it with me,” Hamilton said. She prescribed a neat serpentine through our assembled ranks and had brief words with Woźniak and one of his men. Whatever she said to them, neither looked happy about it.
The next time Radko led us off in formation, the pair was first away after him. They got onto open ground, and Woźniak made a sharp turn across the ski tips of the guy following, who couldn’t put in a turn of his own in time. The two of them collided and went down, barreling into the powdery snow. Poles and skis detached and went in opposite directions. Entirely by accident, one ski found the fall line and began a rapid solo descent. Radko gave chase.
The rest of us converged on the two fallen skiers, helping them up, patting them down, retrieving skis and goggles. Completely uninjured, they stood and gave each other good-natured grief, while Madeleine lurked in the center of the group with her camera pointed toward the far mountaintop, its motor drive whirring.
FIFTY-EIGHT
MADELEINE DOWNLOADED THE PICTURES FROM THE MEMORY CARD as soon as we were back at our chalet. I got a fire going in the living area, while Dawson inventoried the food laid in. Hamilton started making phone calls the moment we got in, disappearing into the privacy of her room to do so.
The light outside was fading fast now, and the piercing spotlights alongside each ski run had been switched on. The weather was worsening, too, the wind picking up. It had started to snow, dampening the sound from the bars and clubs along the main street.
“We’ve got the makings for a giant spag bol and garlic bread,” Dawson announced as she came through from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel.
“Sounds lovely,” Madeleine said warmly. She lived with a Michelin-starred chef, but I guess occasionally peasant food like spaghetti Bolognese had its attractions, if only for novelty value.
“I’ll give you a hand,” I offered, getting stiffly to my feet. Skiing gave a workout to muscles I hadn’t used in a while. I swear my knee joints actually creaked.
Hamilton reappeared, not looking pleased.
“The NSA tell me it will be another forty-eight hours before we can re-task a fly-by, by which time this weather will have closed in. All their birds are on trajectories over Syria or Russia, and Bulgaria is not currently a high-enough priority.”
She went briskly over to the dining table to peer over Madeleine’s shoulder. “What you got, Mad?”
Madeleine was frowning. “Not much, I fear. Really just confirmation of what we knew already.”
“Always good to have confirmation,” Hamilton said. “We—”
Whatever she’d been about to say was cut off by her phone ringing again. It reminded me that I hadn’t checked in with Parker since I left the UK. Would he be worried?
Hamilton listened to whoever was speaking in tense silence for a minute, then said, “How long before they get here?” A pause. “How come this is the first I’m hearing about it? Uh-huh. Well, in future, keep me in the goddamn loop!”
She stabbed the End Call button on her phone and threw it onto the sofa.
The three of us stood and waited without asking the obvious question. I didn’t think she could keep whatever she’d just been told bottled up for long.
“I’ve just gotten word that James Hackett has turned up in Odessa, Ukraine,” she said. “He’s with a convoy of trucks that off-loaded about an hour ago from a boat out of Rize, a port in northwest Turkey on the Black Sea.”
“How many trucks?” I asked.
“Five. They’re listed as carrying ‘reproduction antiques for use in the motion picture industry’ if you can believe that.”
“Is it too late for you to have the Customs people hold them—at least until they can be verified as reproductions?” Madeleine suggested.
“In Ukraine?” Hamilton shook her head. “Our influence there is pretty much zip.”
“Do I take it,” I said, “that they’re heading here?”
“That’s the theory. Unless they come nonstop, they’ll arrive late tomorrow or maybe the day after.”
Madeleine was tapping at the keyboard of her laptop, bringing up maps. “They would have to come through Moldova and Romania. If you think they’re carrying looted antiquities, can’t you have them intercepted at those border crossings?”
Hamilton shrugged. “Unlikely. Organized crime is a major problem in both countries. So is corruption. Even if we had the authority to ask for Hackett to be detained, chances are that money would change hands and the convoy would magically slip through their fingers. And then Venko would know we were coming.”
“Yeah, but we’re not coming, are we?” Dawson argued. “That’s the problem. We don’t have the manpower or the firepower to attack Venko’s fortress. I’d hazard a guess that we can’t call on the local authorities for any kind of backup, and your people have just made it clear that anything happening in Bulgaria is ‘low priority.’ S’cuse me for speaking out of turn, but what exactly are we doing here?”
Madeleine raised her eyebrows in silent admonishment, but she kept them raised in inquiry as she turned to Hamilton, who scowled in response.
“I have requests in for a larger covert team, but after the first tip-off—the Dolphin—didn’t pan out, my bosses want concrete proof before they make their next move.”
“By which time any
contraband will, regrettably, be long gone,” Madeleine pointed out.
“Yeah . . . maybe.”
“You mean probably.”
“And what about Sean?” I cut in. “You have your objective, Aubrey, but mine—ours,” I amended, “is to find him before he gets into anything with Parris. And at the moment we don’t have any idea where he is, except he’s most likely hot on Hackett’s trail.”
“So what do you suggest, Charlie?” she threw back. “Because right now I’m all ears.”
I glanced at the photo of the former royal hunting lodge up on Madeleine’s laptop screen. It did indeed look like a fortress surrounded by a moat, on that mountaintop isolated by the cloud.
“I find mostly in these situations, the simple solution is the best.”
“Which is?”
“I was thinking about going up there and banging on Venko’s front door.”
FIFTY-NINE
AS I APPROACHED THE OUTER GATES OF THE FORTIFIED HUNTING lodge where Gregor Venko had made his home, it’s fair to say a number of things went through my mind. Not least of which was whether the impressive set of studded oak doors had a bell-push.
If they didn’t, I was very likely to freeze to death up here.
I’d ridden up the mountainside in what was almost a blizzard, on a rented Polaris snowmobile, with Woźniak acting as wingman. He’d peeled off without even a wave as we’d neared the edge of the final stand of trees, letting me ride in the last half kilometer alone. No doubt it was a sign of his disapproval of this latest plan—if I could call it that.
I don’t know what his initial reaction had been. Hamilton had taken little convincing, mainly because her options had reached scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel territory, and my personal safety was not strictly her responsibility. I had not run the idea past Parker before embarking on it. I hadn’t had to, to know exactly what he’d say.
Madeleine had hovered in the doorway to my room while I’d changed into my thermals and regarded me gravely. “What do you hope to achieve by this, Charlie?”
I shrugged. “Like I said—getting to Sean before he gets to Parris. Or Hackett, come to that. And who knows, I might still have enough credit left with Gregor to get out of there again without a bullet in the back of my skull.”
“And if you don’t?”
“Then you can tell Parker he was right—I wasn’t up to the job after all.”
The journey up the mountain had taken an hour, with visibility closing in by the minute and the temperature dropping until the snow had felt more like hail pelting into the exposed bits of my face between scarf and goggles.
We’d seen nobody except for the occasional flare of headlights from the big mechanical groomers high on the neighboring mountain, eerie through the snowfall, flattening the trails for the following day’s skiers.
I needn’t have worried about the doorbell. By the time I reached Venko’s gates, hit the engine kill switch, and stiffly dismounted, security spotlights blazed on. A personnel door in one of the gates swung inward and a guard stepped through. He held a machine pistol across his chest on a shoulder strap, hand wrapped around the grip and gloved finger lying alongside the trigger guard. I gathered from this that I was not considered to present an immediate danger.
A second man was visible in the doorway, though, keeping back just in case.
“Kakvo iskash?” the first guard demanded, which I took to be a general inquiry along the lines of “Who the hell are you?” His voice was harsh, but that could have been a mix of language and cold rather than an actual threat. His face was hidden behind a ski mask, hat, and goggles, so I couldn’t glean anything there.
“I’m here to see Gregor Venko,” I said, keeping my movements slow and my hands in view.
The guard paused a moment, head slightly tilted. I guessed he was receiving instructions from a hidden earpiece. Then he flapped his hand in a universal “go away” gesture. I stood my ground.
Above me was a small security camera, tucked into the stonework surrounding the gates. I unsnapped the strap on my helmet, removed it, pulled my scarf down so my face was visible, and stared up at the lens.
“My name is Charlie Fox. Tell Gregor my name,” I insisted. “If you value your job, tell him.” And this time I was speaking to both the man in front of me and whoever was watching from a distance.
There was another pause. Just when I’d begun to think this really wasn’t going to work and was planning some kind of exit strategy that didn’t involve a long stay in hospital, the guard took a step forward. He lifted the machine pistol slightly in warning and motioned for me to put my arms out to the side, shoulder height.
I did as I was ordered, still staring into the unblinking eye of the camera. He patted me down, quick but thorough, and jerked his head that I should follow him through the gate. I pointed questioningly to the snowmobile. He grabbed the keys out of my hand and made the “follow me” gesture again, more impatiently this time.
I followed. As I stepped over the sill and through the inset doorway, I was surprised, if I was honest, that the gambit had worked, and I realized that a part of me had hoped it might not, that I would be sent packing and could return to Hamilton with a shrug and a “Well, I tried . . .” Now I was filled with the uneasy sense of taking a wrong turn, a bad road. I took it anyway.
On the other side of the gatehouse was a utilitarian Mercedes G-Wagon with snow chains fixed to the tires. I was bundled into the back seat. The first guard got behind the wheel, while the second slid into the passenger seat and twisted so he faced backward. He never took his eyes off me.
It was less than a minute up what might have been classed as a driveway. At the moment it was a narrow corridor cut between two walls of packed snow. The walls reached the top of the G-Wagon’s windows on either side, limiting my view of the lodge itself until we drove under an archway and pulled up inside the courtyard I’d seen in the image on Madeleine’s computer.
I wasn’t given time to admire the view, just hustled across the snow and in through a side door.
Inside was a hallway, sparsely furnished, with walls painted that shade of pale cream you find in old hospitals. Either Gregor had vastly simplified his tastes since the last time we’d met, or this was the tradesman’s entrance. Through an open doorway I glimpsed a room lined with banks of security monitors.
The heating must have been cranked to maximum. Within moments of stepping into the building, I was sweating. I unzipped my coat, still not making any sudden moves. The two men who’d brought me in patted me down again, just to be certain I didn’t have anything they’d missed the first time. They were more thorough about it this time. It was not something I enjoyed at the best of times.
Then they unstrapped their guns and shrugged out of jackets and goggles. They did it one at a time, one always keeping watch.
As they did so, I recognized the one who’d come out to intercept me. It was the ex-Spetsnaz guy who’d had me kidnapped in Kuwait City, and turned up again at the hotel in Madaba.
“Ah, Comrade Ushakov,” I said. “Or should that be Admiral . . . ?”
SIXTY
USHAKOV NEVER EVEN CRACKED A SMILE. HE JUST STARED DOWN AT me, the overhead lights making the widow’s peak of his close-clipped hair more pronounced than I remembered it.
“Tell me, Miss Fox, what part of ‘go home’ did you have the most difficulty in understanding?”
“But I did go home,” I said brightly. “And then I came here. Maybe you need to be more precise when you deliver threats. ‘Go home . . . and stay there,’ perhaps? That might have worked better.”
My flippancy produced a faint twitch at the corner of his mouth but did not add even the smallest flicker of warmth to his eyes. “Next time,” he promised, “I shall . . . not forget.”
The words were said slowly, with enough underlying menace that I struggled to hold my smile in place, keep my shoulders relaxed, and my gait loose as he waved me toward a doorway leading further into the house.
What was it about Venko and the people who surrounded him, that they prided themselves on such cold remembering?
The door led to a paneled corridor, opening out into a larger hallway clad in a rich wood the color of a chestnut horse. It had been lovingly cut to preserve the beauty of the grain, and varnished until the reflection seemed deep enough to dip your arm in to the shoulder.
The effect was like walking into an oversize cabin on a grand old yacht. Possibly owned by someone who’d spent a lot of time ashore on desert islands, skewering the wildlife. I’d never seen so many decapitated heads of wild boar and what looked like antelope stuck on a wall.
We walked another corridor. More glossy wood, more dead animals, supplemented by small dark paintings in huge ornate frames. Up a wooden staircase that would have allowed four people to walk up abreast, down another made of marble. The standard of opulence had an anesthetizing effect. The more of it there was, the less it penetrated—or meant anything.
Eventually, Ushakov stopped outside a pair of doors that were possibly ten feet tall, and still nowhere near ceiling height. He knocked, waited for a gruff order from inside, then ushered me through.
I half expected that he’d stay outside, but he and the other man followed me in and stood on either side of the doorway like sentries. Now that I looked more closely, I recognized him from Madaba, too. He’d been in the car with Ushakov, front passenger seat, when they’d pulled up at the hotel.
Inside, the room was not lined with wood, for a change. Instead it was largely gold leaf on a background that might have been pale cream or white. It was hard to tell against all that bling. Someone had gone berserk with plaster scrolls and cornices and molding, then picked them out in gold just to make absolutely sure you couldn’t miss them. It was so over the top, from the antique mirrors to the fireplaces to the crystal chandeliers, that I almost laughed out loud at the sight of it.
Then I saw the figure on a deep-buttoned leather sofa at the far end of the room, and I was glad I hadn’t.
