by Andy Maslen
Once inside, he showed the guard the company name on the paper Silvi had given him, tapping it twice.
“I’m here to see Medved Investments.”
The guard held the card close to his eyes, squinting at the tiny, black type, then repeated the name. “Medved. Yes. OK. You stand there.”
He levered his frame out of the swivel chair and came round the desk to stand in front of Gabriel, lifted his own arms in a crucifixion position, then nodded at Gabriel. Gabriel raised his arms to shoulder height, straight out. As he did so, locking eyes with the guard, he let his left hand skim the man’s side. It ran over a hard, bulky object under the waist of the man’s suit jacket. The guard noticed nothing and subjected him to a thorough, and very professional search: chest, stomach, back, armpits, groin, buttocks, thighs, down the shins and calves, check the ankles, run the hands down the arms from shoulder to wrist, finally a thick finger round the inside of the T-shirt neck. Gabriel was impressed. The man’s expression never flickered from its impassive stare, the pressure was firm enough to root out the thinnest concealed blade without hurting, and the whole process was over in less than thirty seconds.
“I call Medved,” were his only words.
Gabriel stood while the man picked up his phone and punched a couple of buttons. With someone on the other end, the guard rattled off a couple of sentences in thickly accented Russian. Not a Muscovite, Gabriel concluded, but I can still get the gist. English guy to see you. Small. No threat. Not carrying.
The guard clicked the receiver back into its cradle and pointed to a narrow-doored lift. “Six floor. They meet you.”
When the door slid open on the sixth floor, Gabriel was confronted by two more specimens of what he referred to privately as Homo sapiens giganticus. Seemingly constructed rather than grown, these men either were or had been soldiers. Their bearing gave them away. None of the swagger of the amateur bodyguard, none of the flab. Just a quiet confidence and a certain watchfulness in the gaze. Both heads were shaved, revealing a diverse array of lumps, nicks, scars and, visible at the back when the lead man turned, small smudgy tattoos. Soldiers who’d done time – these were Russian prison tats, with their own intricate code for offences, years served, fights won and gang affiliations. Gabriel didn’t know the code, but he’d fought against men with similar inking.
He walked between them, feeling like the meat in a very rough and ready sandwich, towards a plain, wooden door. The lead man knocked twice, then opened the door and preceded Gabriel across the threshold. Volkov stood up and came around the desk to greet Gabriel. He motioned the two guards away, and they both left the office, closing the door silently behind them.
“So you are the fearless Fox?” he said, striding across the expanse of cream carpet and grasping Gabriel’s hand in his own, then covering it with his other hand and shaking vigorously. “You proved yourself very capable last night, so I hear. Come, sit down.”
He gestured for Gabriel to take one of two armchairs facing each other across a low table.
“Would you like a drink? I have excellent vodka, if that isn’t too much of a cliché for you?”
“Vodka’s fine by me. How come you talk like you grew up in London instead of Moscow? If you don’t mind me asking?”
“I am a businessman. You have to learn English to do business, yes? So, I hired a tutor in the US. Very expensive, two hundred dollars an hour.”
“Fuck me! I hope you learned the whole language for that kind of money.”
Volkov laughed and walked over to a mini-bar with a glass door, selected a bottle with a red-and-gold label, and cracked the seal on the metal cap. He poured a couple of fingers into two cut-glass tumblers, added a fistful of ice cubes, and brought them back to the table where he clanked them down onto the polished wooden surface. Gabriel picked his up, and they clinked and drank.
“So, my friend,” Volkov said, “Silvi is my favourite employee. She is like a daughter to me. I owe you a favour for last night. Ask me anything.” He smiled, spreading his arm along the back of his chair.
Your favourite? Unlike Astrid, then?
“OK then. Look, I’ve been asked to do a little bit of freelance private detective work. I got this friend, and his mum and sister have gone missing. He told me they were here, in Tallinn, on holiday. They’re not answering calls or texts, not posting on Facebook. Just gone. I only got one thing to go on.”
Volkov leaned forward, hands hanging down between his knees. “Tell me, Terry. What can I do to help?”
“I got this tip from an old mate of mine. He works in security for an oil company in the Caucasus. Told me if they was kidnapped, it’d most likely be Chechens. That’s their MO, he reckons, taking Western hostages for ransom. So, I was wondering, you’re obviously a big man in Tallinn, you must know a few people. Maybe you’ve heard of something I could use.”
Volkov’s face had remained expressionless until Gabriel mentioned Chechens. Then his eyes blazed, his nostrils flared, and he glowered at Gabriel, his mouth compressing into a thin line so tight his lips disappeared. Breathing heavily through his nose, he spoke.
“Chechens! They are tarakany. Cockroaches. Worse than animals. What they do to innocent Russians, schoolchildren and their teachers, or people going out for the evening. Yes, my friend, we have an infestation here in Tallinn, and I can tell you all about them.”
The older man got to his feet and poured two more huge vodkas, added ice and brought the drinks back to the table, and carried on talking.
“There is a gang led by a man called Kasym Drezna.”
Gabriel finally had the hard evidence he needed. His hunch was replaced with certainty. A grim smile flitted across his face, to be replaced with a bland stare a second later.
“Funny sort of name,” he said.
“No my friend. There is nothing funny about it. Or Drezna. He has three close associates: a woman and two men. They are all veterans of the Chechen wars, and Drezna even fought for us against the Mujahideen. They are running protection rackets, trying to muscle in on my clubs, and they have insulted me personally by ruining a very valuable car.”
“No love lost there, then?” Gabriel said.
“Love? Ha! If . . . when . . . I find Drezna, he will learn why nobody who crossed Yuri Volkov still walks the Earth. There is a man you should talk to. His name is Ferdinand Tarvas. He sold them a truck. Maybe they had cargo they needed to transport out of Tallinn. Here . . .” Volkov pulled a sleek, black Mont Blanc fountain pen from his pocket, uncapped it and scribbled a phone number and an address on the back of a stiff cream business card. “Take this. Everybody calls him Ferdy Motors. Phone him and say you’re working for me. You’ll find he is most willing to cooperate. Maybe you find the registration plate of the truck or a description and we track it, yes? I have a couple of people in the council on my payroll. We can access CCTV records, but I have a strong feeling I know where Drezna and his pack of rats are heading.”
Gabriel took a pull on the vodka, feeling the smooth heat all the way from his lips to the pit of his stomach. “Where’s that?”
“Drezna bought a scrapyard over in the southeast about a year ago, just after he moved over here. Near a town called Tartu. I’ve never had it checked out, but now maybe I think we should.”
“We?” Gabriel said, putting his tumbler back down. “I’m kind of a solo operator, if you know what I mean. No offence, but I’m not much of a team player these days.”
Volkov put his own drink down and smiled, showing a lot of expensively restored teeth – no Russian could have a mouthful as white as that without help from an American dentist. “Listen. You are my employee anyway. You’re doing some freelance work for your friend on the side. Fine. Now you can freelance for me, too. Plus I will pay you. Erik and Konstantin will go with you. They are ex-Spetsnaz – you know, Russian Special Forces. I will give you a hundred fifty thousand Euros between the three of you when you bring me proof the Chechens are dead. There! You can be the white knight and
rescue your friend’s womenfolk, and get rich doing it.”
“Sounds like a lot of money just for slotting four people. I’ve been offered much less than that in my time.”
Volkov smiled a humourless smile. The mouth curved up, but the eyes were cold. “I don’t doubt it. If they were Russians, or Estonians, I’d give you five thousand euros a head and you’d be grateful to have it. But they aren’t Russians or Estonians. They breed them different down there. Savagery from the nursery onwards. Even three against four is not good odds. So take my offer and remember my words while you’re earning your money.”
“All right, fine. But it’s my party, yes? You’re the boss of us, but I’m the boss of your boys Erik and Konstantin. Deal?” he said, extending his hand across the table.
Volkov spat into his palm and slapped it into Gabriel’s hand. They shook. “Deal,” Volkov said, not smiling now. “But remember, the hundred fifty thousand is for proof. Photos can be faked, videos too. You know what I want?”
“I think so. Something in the way of physical evidence, yes?”
Volkov nodded twice, slowly, his eyes never leaving Gabriel’s. “Now go. Call Ferdy. Find out about the truck. I will brief Erik and Konstantin and put together a vehicle and some equipment. You are ex-Army, I think?”
“I think you already know that I am,” Gabriel said.
“Clever fellow, yes I do. You know your way around weapons. Good. I will be your quartermaster. What do you need?”
Jesus! All that funny business with my “brother” and now I have the Russian mafia offering to go shopping for me anyway.
“You know a word I like, Yuri? Overkill. Can you source three assault rifles? M16s, for choice. And a sniper rifle. Best you can find, please, equipped with a telescopic sight, zeroed for seven hundred and fifty yards. Plus pistols, decent make. Glocks, Berettas, SIGs, something like that. Plenty of ammunition. Maybe add in a few grenades, teargas and smoke. Then we ought to think about explosives. A little bit of plastique wouldn’t go amiss. That should do it, unless they’ve got tanks. Mainly what we’re going to turn up with is the element of surprise. Oh, and better throw in some night-vision binoculars.”
Volkov laughed. “This I like, Terry. You are planning a military campaign. I will have a vehicle fully stocked and ready to go in the car park behind my building this time tomorrow. You have a preference for what you drive?”
“Something fast and anonymous. Maybe a secondhand Volvo estate with a decent motor, something like that. Boring colour, too, dark-blue or green.”
“Fine. Consider it done. Now, give me your number and I swap with mine.”
After the exchange of numbers, Volkov stood. The interview was over. It couldn’t have gone much better. Gabriel had weapons, a couple of seriously experienced Russian veterans in support, a tactical vehicle, a rich, discreet and unscrupulous backer, and, best of all, a solid lead on both the kidnappers’ vehicle and their likely destination.
Chapter 35
The Chechens had begun allowing Sarah and Chloe to walk, escorted, around the scrapyard and the derelict land beyond the piles of wrecked vehicles and household appliances. They had to take turns: one woman in the morning, one in the afternoon. It was 11.00 a.m., and Sarah’s turn for some fresh air and exercise.
“See you later, darling,” she said to Chloe, before leaving with Kasym.
Kasym had already given his orders to Dukka, who was “saddled” with guard duty.
“Don’t get up to any mischief, Dukka. Just sit and read the paper until we’re back. I told Elsbeta and Makhmad to fetch some of those cakes you like from the shops.
That Dukka could read was a fiction the two men maintained between them to save Dukka’s face in front of others. In fact, Dukka was quite happy to sit doing nothing but singing old folk songs, or just staring off into space, day-dreaming about the ducks and geese he would raise on the farm he intended to buy once the fighting was over.
*
With her mother gone for at least an hour, and only one of the Chechens in the building, Chloe put the plan she’d been formulating into action. First, she took one of the wooden spindles out of the back of the chair in the corner of the cabin she shared with her mother. She’d loosened it the first night they’d stayed at the scrapyard. Wrapping it in a few turns of blanket, she placed it on the floor with one end propped up on a book. With her pillow placed over the entire assembly to act as further sound insulation, she drew her right knee up then stamped down hard on the approximate centre of the spindle. There was a muffled crack.
She bent and unwrapped the bundle, frowning with concentration.
“Yes!” she whispered.
The spindle had fractured, leaving two six-inch-long pieces, each tipped with a dagger-point where the wood had split apart. She selected the piece with the stronger-looking tip and slid it beneath the pillow, which she’d replaced on the bed. The second piece she secreted in her holdall.
Her pulse throbbed uncomfortably in her throat, and her ears filled with a rushing noise as she undid the button on her jeans and pulled them off. Then she took off her sweatshirt. The T-shirt she’d picked to wear that morning had a scooped neck. She tried leaning towards her reflection in the mirror hanging from a nail in the wall and was gratified to see plenty of cleavage.
She heaved a deep breath, let it out again, smiled brightly in the mirror, followed it with what she hoped was a seductive pout, then walked through the door into the kitchen area.
The fat Chechen, whom she had identified as being mentally slow, was sitting at the table, staring at the scrubbed wooden surface. He looked up with a start as Chloe came into the room. Then he grinned, as he took in her lack of clothes. The T-shirt was only just long enough to cover her knickers, leaving her long, coltish legs exposed. She sidled over to him, heart pounding, and nudged his shoulder with her left hip.
“I’m bored,” she said.
The Chechen said something in his own language, then reached out a hand and squeezed her buttock. She smiled at him and leaned down to whisper in his ear.
“Why don’t you come into my bedroom?”
He clearly caught her meaning, because he nodded rapidly and leered at her, before getting to his feet.
“Two minutes,” she said, then smiled again and held up two fingers before tapping her watch.
He nodded again and spoke in English. “Two. Yes. I wait.”
With her stomach fluttering, Chloe walked back into her cabin, hoping the dim Chechen would give her enough time. With the door shut she grabbed the sharpened piece of wood and stood with her back pressed against the wall on the hinge side, gripping the makeshift dagger so hard it drove all the blood out of her fingers, leaving her knuckles yellow and waxy. Outside the door she could hear the Chechen pacing up and down. Either he couldn’t count or his patience had evaporated, but after just thirty seconds, she saw the door handle move down.
Her breathing was fast and shallow, and she made an effort to slow it down before the excess oxygen made her pass out. The door opened wide as the Chechen squeezed his body through the narrow gap. He had taken off his shirt and was looking down, yanking at his belt buckle. He took a couple more steps and then stopped as he saw the empty bed. Peeping around the edge of the door and staring at his broad, hairy back, Chloe knew she had to time, and aim, her strike to perfection.
A big blood vessel pulsed beneath the skin on the left side of his bull-neck. There! That was the target.
In a single, silent step she closed the distance between her and the Chechen, the makeshift dagger in her fist gripped for a stab.
Time seemed to slow down for her as the sharp point of the spindle descended towards the vein, or artery. She could see individual pulses swelling the thick tube in his neck and imagined the next few moments as a welter of horror-film blood, splashing out and covering her face.
Then there was a shout from the kitchen.
“Dukka!”
The Chechen turned his head towards the so
und just as her blow landed. He yelled in pain as the force of the thrust drove the splintered wood an inch deep into the muscles of his neck and whirled around, felling Chloe with a massive backhanded blow before snatching the bloodied wood from his neck.
Kasym burst into the room and restrained his friend before he could kill Chloe, which he was clearly preparing to do.
“Outside, now!” Kasym shouted at him.
Dukka complied, his hand clapped to the wound on his neck, blood leaking out between his stubby fingers.
Sarah rushed into the room behind Kasym, and her mouth dropped open when she took in the sight of her daughter, half-naked, with a spray of blood across the front of her T-shirt.
“Oh, my God darling! What were you thinking?”
“Never mind that,” Kasym barked. Then, to Chloe, “Get dressed. No food or water for you for the next twenty-four hours. Try anything like that again and we’ll take both your ears off.”
He stormed back out of the cabin and slammed the door. The women heard the sound of a key turning in the cheap aluminium lock.
“Oh, Chloe,” Sarah exclaimed, as her daughter broke down in sobs and shook in her arms. “That was such a stupid thing to do. He would have raped you. Maybe even killed you.”
“I just had to do something, Mum,” Chloe said, through the snot and tears. “They’re not our friends. I don’t think they care if we live or die.”
Chapter 36
When Gabriel awoke, seven hours had passed. It was midday. Beyond the curtains, the sun was baking Tallinn’s pavements, warming the backs of tourists. If they had detoured to an industrial estate north of the Old Town, they would have witnessed two burly men with shaved heads taking a series of canvas-wrapped bundles out of a pickup truck and loading them into the back of a grey estate car. The bundles were long and slim, and tied with green canvas tapes. A red-and-yellow sports bag followed them, bulging with uneven corners and angles where the contents forced the material outwards.
