The Isis Covenant

by Douglas, James

  ‘I think that if some of these guys weren’t on the rich list, they’d be on the most wanted list. You?’

  ‘To be honest, I’m surprised there are so few dodgy characters, given the kind of murky stuff that was going on after the communists were kicked out. Mind you, there was a kind of natural selection. The weak were either disposed of or forced to go bust, and the real bad guys either are in jail or are Mafia bosses who’d rather not have their name in the paper and keep their wealth secret. There may be a few skeletons in the cupboard among the people on the list, but you could say that about any rich and powerful man anywhere.’

  ‘What I also think is that we aren’t getting anywhere.’

  ‘Not yet,’ he admitted. ‘But maybe that’s not a bad thing. He’s here somewhere, I’m certain of it. The fact that so few people fit the profile means that when we do find him it will be obvious.’

  So obvious that by the time they reached the end of the list they had fifteen possibles and zero probables.

  ‘He has to be here,’ Jamie repeated.

  ‘Sure,’ Danny said soothingly. ‘The essence of all detective work. If at first you don’t succeed …’

  ‘Go through the possibles again. We said Lisin was unlikely, why?’

  ‘Because his father was a foreman in a steelworks and I can’t see an NKVD war hero ending up in a steelworks in Kazakhstan. From what you’ve told me, that’s not the way the system worked, especially while Stalin was still alive. You kept your nose clean and were lucky, you rose through the ranks. If you didn’t, it was Siberia, or more likely the Lubyanka and a bullet in the back of the neck.’

  ‘Okay, who’s next?’

  ‘Vekselberg, Viktor, head of the Renova Group and worth a cool thirteen billion. Around the right age, but we have no information about his parents.’

  Jamie read the Forbes biography and clicked through the pages on his laptop screen. He shook his head. ‘My gut says no. This bloke had to work to make his money and it was his contacts with the Yeltsin administration that made him rich.’

  By the time they had gone through the list for a second time, they were left with just five possible candidates. Jamie ripped the sheet from the flip chart and tore the surviving names off in strips before placing them face up on the bed. He frowned over them for so long that Danny eventually said: ‘Do you think he’s going to jump up and introduce himself, Saintclair?’

  He grinned self-consciously. ‘They’re all the right age, but their past lives seem to have been wiped clean, which is suspicious in itself. We can’t find any record of their parentage on any website, Russian or otherwise. They all made the kind of dramatic rises that could only have been made with the right contacts and backing, which means high-ranking party membership or the KGB.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Danny said thoughtfully. ‘But maybe we’ve been so caught up in this hunt-the-thimble exercise that we’ve been forgetting something.’ She moved three of the names off the bed onto the floor and pointed at the two survivors. ‘Only these could be called the richest of the rich.’

  Jamie studied the two names and felt his heart beat faster. ‘You, my dearest Yank, are a genius. Get that laptop cranked up and find everything there is to find about these two gentlemen.’

  The first thing they discovered was that both men were resident in London, one voluntarily, the other because if he returned to Russia he would immediately be arrested on multi-billion-pound fraud charges.

  ‘Would you say this guy gives being rich a bad name?’

  ‘Maybe not in Russia.’ Jamie grinned and stepped behind her, so he could see what was on her screen. ‘Anyway, let’s not count our chickens. Keep scrolling.’

  ‘Nothing about their backgrounds. They’re both relatively low profile for billionaire businessmen. No yachts or football teams or nightclubs. In fact, judging from the picture file they don’t seem to get out much, which seems a waste with all that—’

  ‘Wait.’

  Her finger froze on the mousepad.

  ‘Where was that picture taken?’

  The photograph focused on one man among a group of about a dozen, all wearing dark overcoats. It was only when you studied it carefully you noticed the sub-group; stone-faced young men with alert, searching eyes fixed on different points of the compass, with the picture’s subject at their geographical centre.

  ‘At the Cenotaph in Whitehall, November two thousand and six, it says here, I guess that would account for the buttonholes, huh?’

  ‘Poppies,’ Jamie corrected. He’d noticed that all the men were wearing the Remembrance Day symbols, but that wasn’t what had drawn his attention to the picture. ‘Can you home in on that other red spot on his chest just below the poppy.’

  She double clicked on the picture and it formed a separate image no larger than the original. ‘Not in this program.’ She clicked her teeth. ‘Maybe if I open it in Photoshop. Depends how sharp the original is. Looks like it was one frame, taken in a hurry before his security detail reacted. They appear to be some tough hombres.’

  While Danny fiddled with the computer, Jamie went to the window. It was still early afternoon, but the kind of dull, mist-wrapped London day that turned the city into a patchwork of individual, gloomy Victorian townscapes filled with rushing figures wrapped in warm overcoats. A sort of between-seasons limbo: the golden days of autumn were nothing but a memory, but winter was somewhere in the future, if the self-generated micro-climate of a city of seven million souls ever condescended to give it house room. Somewhere out there, the enemy was waiting, and perhaps not waiting, but hunting. The textbook Special Forces-style raid on Berndt Hartmann’s lakeside mansion had shown him what they were up against and he had no illusions about his chances of defeating these men. But he had promised Danny Fisher his support and Jamie Saintclair kept his promises. And afterward, when she went back to Brooklyn? Well, he’d have to think about that. She’d hinted, in her clod-hopping cowboy way, that he could go back with her – his business was international, he was as likely to succeed in New York, or not, as he was in London – but somehow that didn’t appeal at the breakfast table the same way it did in bed. She was wonderful; exhilarating, exhausting, challenging and infuriating at one and the same time, but, apart from Danny Fisher, his life was here, in his maddeningly English, stuck-up, sometimes horribly vulgar, little corner of this vast cosmopolitan metropolis. She knew as well as he did that when she got on that plane, he’d be there to wave her off. And, then, unless some miracle happened, he would have to face the enemy alone. There was no question of a truce, he was certain of that. These men had left their traces like the scent mark of a leopard, with utter cruelty and ruthless efficiency, on both sides of the Atlantic. Unless they had what they wanted they would never leave him alone. This was a fight to the death.

  ‘It looks like some kind of medal.’ Danny’s voice cut through his gloom. ‘Hard to tell, but it could be a gold star on a red ribbon. There’s another one beside it, but it’s a little harder to make out.’

  ‘Bring up a website with images of Soviet military decorations!’ he ordered.

  ‘Anything you want to tell me, Sherlock?’ She looked up sharply at the excitement in his voice. ‘Because if you aren’t wetting your panties about something all those psychology classes I went to were a waste of time.’

  ‘Why would someone who’s never been anywhere near a battle march in a Remembrance Day parade wearing a medal he wasn’t entitled to?’

  Danny saw where he was going with the argument, but she had to play Devil’s advocate. ‘He would have been a conscript. Every Russian of his age had to do their national service. Maybe he won it in Afghanistan. Plenty of glory to go round in that one.’

  He stared impatiently at the screen. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Or it could be some kind of industrial award. Why shouldn’t he wear his Order of the Filled Pig Iron Quota when he’s got the chance?’

  A page came up on the screen. It had dozens of awards arrayed in rows acr
oss the screen. ‘Can you refine it?’

  ‘Sure, I’ll just add star, see what comes up.’

  This time there were many fewer.

  ‘Order of the Red Star,’ she quoted. ‘Looks like they gave that one out just for getting up in the morning.’

  ‘Our star isn’t red, it’s gold, maybe you hadn’t noticed.’ She heard the edge in his voice and grinned.

  ‘Keep your hair on, Sherlock, we’ll get there. How’s about that? Gold star on a red ribbon.’ She divided the screen so that the image of Oleg Samsonov and his retinue was on the left and the medal on the right. ‘Could be?’ She turned to him.

  ‘Jackpot,’ he whispered. After she managed to unwrap him from their spontaneous embrace, she threatened to use the fruit knife in all sorts of interesting ways unless he spilled the beans. ‘It looks like a medal. A simple gold star on a red ribbon. But it’s actually a title: Hero of the Soviet Union. It was awarded to the bravest of the brave, or generals who were ruthless enough to win their battles at any cost. I doubt Oleg Samsonov won it, but I’m betting that his father did.’

  ‘We can’t approach him on a hunch. We have to know for sure.’

  ‘I know. I’m thinking.’

  ‘Well, think fast, pardner, because time is running short.’

  He reached to the bedside for his mobile phone, but before he could dial she laid a hand on his.

  ‘I’ve been thinking, since Zurich and Hamburg, that it’s possible that our phones have been compromised in some way.’

  ‘Bugged, you mean? I never let it out of my sight. It’s like an electronic tag.’ She gave him the look. ‘Oh, I see. You mean there are ways they could find out where we are.’

  ‘It’s possible. Not to the nearest foot or anything close, and certainly not on the seventh floor of a concrete hotel, but anything that brings them closer to us is off limits.’

  He looked at the little oblong of plastic with new understanding and switched off the power button. Instead, he picked up the hotel phone.

  ‘That’s not a good idea either, unless you’re phoning someone who’s not on their radar. It’s possible we led them to Bernie Hartmann, but if we didn’t the chances are they found him electronically. Bernie was a careful man. If they could do that to him, they can bug your office and your home, and anyone who happens to be in your address book.’

  ‘Aren’t you being a little paranoid?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask Bernie?’

  ‘The person I’m phoning is not on their radar.’

  ‘You certain?’

  ‘It’s Sir William Melrose.’

  She thought about it. ‘Okaaay.’

  He dialled the number and when the secretary answered he asked to be put through to the great man. When Sir William came on the line he apologized for disturbing him. ‘Not at all, young man.’ The writer’s jovial tones echoed in the earpiece. ‘A long shift on the Burma Railway can be rather wearing on the senses. Glad to be out of it for a few minutes. How goes the grand quest?’

  ‘It seems to be one step forward, two steps back, sir, but we’re making progress.’

  ‘Well, how can I help you make a little more?’

  ‘Would I be correct in thinking that the title of Hero of the Soviet Union has not been awarded too often?’

  ‘Good God, no, what makes you think that? They handed out thousands of the damn things.’

  Jamie tried to disguise his disappointment. ‘I’m thinking in particular of the battle for Berlin or just prior to it. This would be an award to a relatively junior NKVD officer named, possibly, Samsonov, who was somewhere near Potsdamer Platz on the twenty-ninth of April.’

  There was a low moan from the other end of the line and Jamie wondered if Sir William was in pain, but the author was mentally dredging the voluminous mountains of research in his brain. ‘Yeeees, that would make him part of Zhukov’s Third Shock Army, almost certainly with the 150th Rifle Division under Pereveretkin. You’re not after the chaps who raised the Red Banner over the Reichstag, are you? Entirely different names I’m afraid. Yegorov and Kantaria, and neither of them was NKVD.’

  ‘No, sir, I’m afraid this chap wasn’t quite so famous.’

  ‘On the other hand, not many of the NKVD people became Heroes of the Soviet Union, unless it was their generals. They tended to command blocking detachments, you see, the people who shot down their own chaps when the attack faltered. Not a particularly heroic job. Seems even Stalin thought that. Samsonov, you say?’

  ‘We believe so.’

  ‘See what I can do. Might take a few hours. Can you give me a call tomorrow morning?’

  ‘Of course. Around ten?’

  ‘Excellent. Hey, ho. Back to the rice and mealies.’

  He told Danny the outcome of the conversation.

  ‘Damn. We can’t afford to wait another day. We have to do something now.’

  ‘What do you suggest? Pop around and say, “Dear Oleg, we think your old dad might have been an NKVD man who looted a fabulous diamond during the Second World War. Hand said sparkler over and we’ll say nothing more about it. Oh, and by the way, someone’s probably coming to kill you.” I’m not sure that would work. Apart from the fact he’d think we were mad, at this very moment we have no idea where he lives.’

  She rewarded him with a look that would have withered a cactus. ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘Well, we have time on our hands and,’ he bounced suggestively on the mattress, ‘a perfectly good bed. I’ll leave it to your licentious mind to work out the rest. Afterwards, you dress for dinner and I’ll do so some errands.’

  ‘I hope you’re not going to do anything crazy?’

  ‘Before or after?’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘I haven’t spoken to Gail for two weeks. She’ll be worried sick. I owe her a call just to let her know I’m still alive. She will also be able to make a few discreet enquiries about the whereabouts of Oleg Samsonov’s London pied-à-terre. And I just remembered I have an acquaintance who drifts about in those circles.’ He saw her confusion. ‘Minor royalty, politicians on the make, football club owners and the like. The last time I saw her was at an exhibition Samsonov may even have attended. If nothing else, she’ll know who his friends are. You’ve made me nervous about using the room phone. I’ll wander around until I find a telephone box that works and call the office from there. Satisfied?’

  ‘I’ll let you know later.’ She grinned and began un-buttoning her jeans.

  An hour later, Jamie walked along the murky streets near the hotel lit by a warm internal glow and with a head that wasn’t quite on this planet. The first telephone booth he found had the handset cord cut and the second wouldn’t take his money. He cursed under his breath and carried on. Gradually, the glow faded. All around him people were going about their daily business oblivious of the enemy in their midst. Somewhere out there, a man was plotting murder. Probably more than one murder. Somewhere out there, a child might already be at the killer’s mercy. He clutched his overcoat closer against the raw chill, but it wasn’t only the cold that made him shiver. At times, he felt like a wraith, part-human, part-ghost, gliding through the midst of an unseeing crowd. He searched the faces and it seemed to him that he would know the murderer by his aura, and the murderer would know him in turn, because they had both been polluted by the taint of the Crown of Isis. The thought made him smile. This bloody thing is driving me off my rocker.

  A figure appeared in front of him. ‘Spare a fag, mate?’

  Jamie tensed, his right fist curling into a ball with the third knuckle protruding, ready to make the straight-arm jab to the throat the instructors said would disable or kill with the single blow. Then he saw the flickering lids and dull eyes of the addict and the drooping, defeated shoulders of a man beyond help. Not even a man; the boy couldn’t be more than seventeen. No threat here. He relaxed, shook his head – thought about handing over his spare change before remembering he needed it – and walked on towards the light
s of Lancaster Gate.

  The public telephone in the Tube station worked and he called Gail’s home number first, waiting for a dozen rings before returning the receiver to its cradle. That probably meant she was working late. He called the office and this time it gave five rings before clicking to the answering machine. While he listened to his own voice telling him to leave a message after the tone, he made up his mind.

  ‘Gail, Jamie here,’ he said in that curiously stilted tone people use when they’re talking to a machine. ‘Sorry not to have been in touch, but as you can see … er, hear, I’m fine. Look, I need some info on a potential client. Rich Russian. Oleg Samsonov, O-Oscar, L-Lima …’ he spelled the name out phonetically, ‘… address, telephone number, current whereabouts, you know the form. Might be worth trying Charlie at Bonhams, first, but be very discreet. It’s important that no one gets to know anything about this. Top secret, okay? When you get it, e-mail the details to me. And can you do me a favour and nip round to the flat and see if there’s anything that looks interesting in my post. The spare key’s in my desk drawer under the box of business cards. Er, take care.’ He hung up. What would he do without that bloody woman? He was walking back to the hotel when he remembered something.

  ‘Bugger.’

  He reversed his direction. It wouldn’t take long and Danny would never know.

  ‘… Er, take care.’ In the darkened office overlooking Old Bond Street, the impassive figure listened to the end of the message before reaching with his gloved hand to replay it. When he was certain he had every detail memorized he stepped over the body crumpled into the narrow space beside the desk and retrieved the key from the drawer. He was barely conscious of the woman on the floor as he made his way to the door. All she had needed to do was answer his questions, but no, she had to be a hero. She was an underling. A nobody. Why had she felt the need to sacrifice herself for someone like Jamie Saintclair?

  He closed the door behind him and looked down at the key in his hand. It had a brown label tied to it. ‘16C Kensington High Street.’