by Roger Pearce
‘I am with Mr Rigov,’ he said, heading in the general direction of the rumpus and pointing. ‘Rest room this way? Refreshments?’ Blanking Karl’s smile, the smaller of the two directed him down a spiral staircase to the basement.
He found himself in what was probably the old kitchen. There were already three or four drivers gathered around a flash coffee machine and water cooler, one still with Bluetooth bolted to his ear. Ex-Royal Military Police and Special Forces, he guessed, going to seed while they reminisced about better days. They fell silent for the split second it took them to sense he did not belong, then resumed their talk of good times in Africa and great limousines in London. There was no way in, so Karl settled by the American fridge in the corner of the room to the left of the staircase. As he reached in for a Diet Coke the room went quiet again.
‘Excuse me, sir.’ The request was heavily accented because it came from Russia.
‘Sure.’ Out of good manners, because the voice behind him belonged to a woman, Karl stepped back and held the door open. No, not Russian. The beautiful woman who stood before him was definitely from Romania – he could tell by the high cheekbones. Her skin was pale, with no trace of blusher, in beautiful contrast to the bright red lipstick; in the white light from the fridge it looked almost translucent.
‘I need more champagne.’ Elegant and perfectly cool, she was smiling as she leant past him. Karl caught the scent of flowers, then glimpsed the dark valley between her breasts. Her fine chestnut hair shone with vitality, and he felt a sudden urge to release it from its sparkly clasp. He watched her reach inside for a bottle of Krug, then a Diet Coke. For a split second he imagined her naked, shaking her hair free.
She put the champagne on the counter, expertly popped the can and held it out to him, ignoring the gawpers but letting him know she had caught his eyes all over her body. This time she spoke in Russian. ‘I imagine you’re having to drink this stuff, yes?’
‘Only while on duty,’ murmured Karl.
‘From Kazan, I think? You were born east of the Volga River, yes? Very special, you see, I could tell.’ She had intelligent green eyes, and they were smiling at him, too. ‘Already we know each other, wonderful, and you are come to save me. One moment.’
She turned to the men behind her, their faces still fixed on the vision in basque and stockings. Shrugging, palms outstretched, she signalled the show was over. ‘Come, boys, you will have lots more important things to talk about. What would your wives say?’ When she had finished staring them down she opened Karl’s Coke for him, then leant against the fridge, her legs loosely crossed. ‘I know you are not with these voyeurs,’ she said quietly, her eyes flitting to the pin in Karl’s lapel. ‘I say you are an officer, yes? Protection duty, it is obvious.’
Karl said nothing.
She thrust out her hand, bracelet rattling. ‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘My name is Olga, and it is very nice to meet you.’ She had long, manicured fingers and the grip was dry and firm. She held him a moment longer than was necessary, changing from party girl to poised business professional. Karl saw a woman who was intelligent and perfectly groomed, complete except for pencil skirt and jacket, and it completely disarmed him. He had not visited Kazan for eight years, but Olga had made him think of home.
‘Karl,’ he said.
She reached to the pin on his lapel. ‘And you are from Scotland Yard, I can see. Looking after the embassy man, I expect?’
‘And you are having to keep him occupied?’
‘I go nowhere near any of them.’ Olga nodded at the spiral staircase. Halfway down, demure in a lime green summer dress, stood a young girl. She had olive skin and, despite her makeup, much heavier than Olga’s, looked in her mid-teens. She held onto the highly polished brass handrail with one foot on the higher step, as if ready to scamper back upstairs. ‘Tania and I are here to serve the drinks and be decorative,’ she continued. ‘Nothing more. Do we look ridiculous to you?’
Karl glanced at the staircase again. Rebuffed by Olga, the clutch of drivers had turned their eyes on the girl. They were smiling now, not leering, perhaps thinking she was young enough to be their daughter, but the attention seemed to intimidate her. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Quite the reverse.’
He felt her shrewd eyes fixed on him. ‘May I?’ she asked quietly, reaching for his Coke and taking a sip. ‘I tell you, they will send your man back to his hotel by midnight. Then you will be off duty.’ Karl sensed renewed interest from the direction of the coffee machine. ‘Tell me, Karl, what do you drink after work? Or do you go straight home to your wife?’
‘Not exactly.’
They gazed at each other silently, until she tore off a strip of kitchen roll and reached into his jacket for his pen. ‘I think you still like to drink vodka, for old times’ sake?’ She scribbled her mobile number, then held out the pen and paper to him. ‘The secret drink, which leaves no trace,’ she murmured. ‘Perfect for the man from Scotland Yard.’
‘Provided we are both off duty?’
Olga laughed. ‘Oh, how I love Tartar men. You always think you are a gift from God.’ She reached out and deftly stroked his cheek, then sighed and picked up the bottle of champagne. ‘Now I have to spread more sunshine, but only for a little longer,’ she said, lowering her voice again, as if their audience could suddenly understand every word. ‘Then we should enjoy life for ourselves.’
With that, she shimmied from the room, blowing a kiss in the general direction of the water cooler.
In fact it was close to one-thirty when Anatoli Rigov finally detached himself from Karl outside his suite at the Dorchester. He did not go straight to bed but told Boris to await further instructions, then ordered a light supper and nightcap from room service. While he was waiting, he stood by the window overlooking Hyde Park, deep in thought. Rigov was a carefully calculating man, and the evening’s unexpected turn of events had presented him with an opportunity. When he had worked out his plan he sank into one of the deep sofas and rang his most trusted associate in London, ordering him to test it for every possible contingency. Within ten minutes, they had agreed the proposal was workable.
Rigov’s next call, much briefer, was to the Russian ambassador, who made no complaint at being woken in the early hours. Before retiring to his four-poster bed, Rigov settled at the ornate desk and wrote a message on Dorchester notepaper, handing it to Boris for immediate delivery to the embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens. The ambassador was to have it translated into diplomatic language and sent to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office first thing on Saturday morning.
Twenty
Saturday, 15 September, 09.12, Wanstead
Saturday dawned bright and fresh, a brief interlude of blue sky and sunshine before the onset of winter as Justin collected the dummy British Gas van from the surveillance-vehicle hideout in Wandsworth. The van was a fall-back, a contingency for urgent daytime incursions involving occupants, and Justin hoped it would prove unnecessary.
Julia Bakkour’s law office formed part of a handsome, three-storey Georgian terrace a stone’s throw from Wanstead Underground station in north-east London. The terrace, fifty metres long, formed one side of a quiet square overlooking a neatly mown green. Residential houses, some divided into apartments, shared the space with the offices of an architect, an accountant and another law firm. A pollarded oak, ringed by daffodils each spring, towered over the tranquil green, and a traditional award-winning real-ale pub nestled unobtrusively in the corner farthest from the road.
The square was an idyllic middle-class enclave cushioned by Wanstead Flats from the featureless urban sprawl to the south. Access from the arterial road linking Leytonstone with Ilford was through a single narrow thoroughfare, with scarcely room for two cars to pass. It was a no-go area for heavy vehicles, with car parking strictly with permit only. Julia Bakkour had chosen well. Residents knew their neighbours, collected litter, used the dog-waste bins on the green and watched for anything suspicious. At the far end of the green an old woman
in a fleece was trailing her arthritic terrier, plastic bag at the ready, and Justin could hear birdsong from the oak tree to his right. Private yet overlooked, the area was a perfect oasis for the surveillance conscious.
Sensing the old woman’s eyes on him, Justin drove round the square in a slow recce before committing himself. He needed to check the layout, locate any CCTV and generally satisfy himself that the operation was viable. Bakkour’s office was at number twenty-three but, with no name-plate, could have passed as a normal residence identical to the others along the terrace. A couple of cyclists were dismounting near the pub as he paused outside number thirty to take a call from Melanie, who confirmed that Julia Bakkour had arrived at Paddington Green with her laptop. Had she left it in the office, the intelligence opportunity would have been greater but he would have needed more time inside. While Melanie was speaking he assessed the challenge. He saw Yale and Banham locks protecting the door, and a standard domestic alarm on the wall. Conditions were difficult, but he had faced far worse.
As he parked outside Bakkour’s address he clocked the illuminated desk lamp in the ground-floor office and a figure moving around inside. He swore beneath his breath, automatically pulling on his British Gas jacket. He checked his toolbox and fake laminated pass, then called Langton on the radio. ‘Someone’s home, Jack.’
‘What about the building to the right?’
‘Munro Investments. Looks unoccupied. Hard to say.’
‘I’ll cover the neighbours while you do the business.’
Justin drove fast to the house adjacent to the solicitors’ offices, opened the rear doors of the van and activated the disguised canisters his engineers had developed for this type of operation. He rapidly cordoned off a section of the square with plastic tape as the air filled with the pungent smell of domestic gas and the dog walker retreated to her front door.
Jack Langton rode up a minute later on a marked police motorcycle, smart in the uniform of a conventional traffic PC, and took up position outside the front door to the right of the target address.
Justin rang the intercom. When a voice spoke, he replied, ‘Emergency gas engineer. Can you come to the door, please?’ A dark-skinned man in white T-shirt and jeans opened the heavy door. He was mid-twenties with a black moustache, wire-rimmed glasses and a pencil wedged behind his ear. Leaning against the staircase was a bicycle, its tyre marks still damp on the carpet tiles. Justin held his pass in front of the young man’s nose, but he scarcely glanced at it. ‘Sorry, mate. We’ve got a major leak. Need to evacuate you while we fix it.’
‘Where?’ the man asked, wrinkling his nostrils and looking at Justin’s tape. ‘Oh, smells serious.’
‘Neighbour.’ Justin’s eyes flickered to the alarm pad just inside the door. It was new and conventional, but might complicate things.
‘Health and safety, yes?’
Justin indicated the bike. ‘Anyone else in the building?’
‘No. It’s mine.’ That was good. Justin would not have to call on Langton’s uniform for persuasion. The man was already picking his jacket off the hook and reaching in his pocket for the keys. ‘Just me on Saturday mornings.’
‘So get yourself a coffee, yeah?’ Justin was already heading back to the van, a man with an emergency to handle. ‘Shouldn’t take more than an hour. If the van’s gone you’re in the clear. And don’t bother with the alarm,’ he called, making it sound like an afterthought. ‘Electrical charge could set things off.’
Langton, loitering outside the neighbour’s front door to demonstrate other engineers were already inside, gave Justin the all-clear as the young man ambled out of the square towards Wanstead station. Toolbox in hand, Justin trotted back to the offices. He defeated the Yale in less than thirty seconds. The Banham took ninety, and Langton covered him for both. On the ground floor a clump of office chairs in a waiting area faced an untidy reception desk. To the side were a small kitchen and washroom. The business area was on the first floor, converted to open plan with plain white walls and strip lighting, the staircase, with its original wooden banisters, ascending directly into the office.
Justin found five utilitarian oak desks heaped with documents, all in Arabic. There were more papers on wooden chairs around the room, and even piled on the floor. He spotted the wall safe in the corner while he was pulling on his gloves, a newish combination job. A half-full cup of coffee, still warm, marked out Saturday Boy’s workstation.
Flitting around the other four he eventually found an envelope with Julia Bakkour’s name beneath some sort of deed on the desk in the gloomiest corner next to the safe. The other stations had desktop computers but Bakkour’s had only a docking unit for a laptop, which Justin assumed she must remove every time she left the office. Almost buried beneath the papers was a small gilt frame with a photograph of a boy and girl aged around five and seven. The two unlocked drawers contained stationery, cosmetics, a clump of business cards in a rubber band and a couple of practitioners’ magazines, but nothing to catch his eye.
He took out his adapted Pentax Optio V10, switched on the desk lamp and photographed as many documents as he could, taking care to replace the papers exactly as he had found them. There were twelve business cards. He rapidly spread them on top of the desk to photograph them, then re-bound them in the same order. ‘You getting me, Jack?’
‘Go.’
‘I’ve got most of the surface stuff. No laptop. I want to have a crack at the safe. OK?’
‘I’m covering.’
Justin already had his magnetic calibrating sensor locked over the combination dial. The safe was the type on which he regularly practised in the workshop at Camberwell and he estimated he would need five minutes. He did it in just under four. Documents crammed the two interior shelves, with nothing of obvious reference to Ahmed Jibril. On the top shelf was an A4 desk diary, also marked in Arabic. He turned back two days to Thursday, the morning of Jibril’s arrest, and found an entry in script and numerals with a series of exclamation marks.
He almost confused the sound of a door being unlocked in the depths of the house with the shuffle of his Pentax as he grabbed shots of the diary. ‘What’s happening, Jack?’
‘All quiet. How long?’
‘Stand by.’ Justin froze, screwing his eyes in concentration. There was the sound of a door gently being pushed shut, coming from the rear of the house. ‘Signs of life downstairs. He must have come back early. Rear door, from the golf course.’
‘I’ll intercept him.’
The back door must have been swollen with damp, for the lawyer took a while to completely close it. Then there was the sound of the key being turned again.
‘No. I’ll handle it.’ Justin estimated he had about twenty seconds. He repacked his bag and spun the combination in fifteen seconds, leaving the same numerals on the dial. He could hear footsteps and stole a look from the banisters. The lawyer was carrying a Starbucks cappuccino and texting as he slowly climbed the stairs. Justin retreated into the office and checked around him again. The open plan left him no place to hide except behind one of the desks. His hand reached over the gas meter in his jacket pocket and he prepared to talk his way out.
Then he heard the lawyer’s mobile ring, a torrent of Arabic, and laughter. He took cover behind the safe as the young man walked past him into the office and peered through the window at Justin’s van, then at Langton standing by his bike. He was laughing so much at his cleverness in deceiving the gasman that he slopped coffee over his shirt. The distraction gave Justin the perfect cover to sneak past in his fake uniform and pad downstairs, remembering to avoid the steps that had creaked on the way up.
He opened the front door an inch and paused, waiting for sounds of movement above him. When he heard the floorboards groan again and the sound of the chair rolling over the thin carpet he stepped outside, silently pulled the door shut and hugged the front wall until he reached the safety of Munro Investments and Jack Langton.
They were clear in three minutes,
Langton riding off while Justin was still rolling up his tape, each sensing the young man’s mocking eyes on them as they sped away to Lambeth.
Twenty-one
Saturday, 15 September, 12.17, Lambeth
They dropped off the cover vehicles at Wandsworth, changed and made mugs of instant coffee. Langton had already called Alan Fargo, waiting in 1830, and Justin had emailed the photographs even before the kettle boiled.
Before noon they were on the road again, heading for Lambeth and Ahmed Jibril’s safe-house. Justin rode pillion on Langton’s Suzuki, its high performance camouflaged by a scuffed and dented black chassis. Weaving through the Saturday shopping traffic they reached the rambling, three-storey Victorian house in less than fifteen minutes. This time Langton dropped Justin round the corner out of sight in the nearest side-street, then parked right outside the address.
The house was served by a communal front door reached by a short concrete path only five metres from the pavement. Speed bumps had done little to deter the constant flow of traffic using the street as a rat-run between Clapham Road and South Lambeth Road. Lining both sides of the street, once-grand houses had been converted into flats, interrupted by a launderette and a shabby twenty-four-hour convenience store. Across the road from Jibril’s safe-house, an ugly block of council flats dated back to the fifties and was in serious need of renovation. SAS secondee Steve Gibb had conducted the observation of Jibril from the tiny front bedroom of an uninhabitable flat on the top floor.
Langton dismounted, flipped up the visor and leant against the bike. He was just another courier checking a parcel against his job sheet, except that his attention was totally focused on the communal front door.
After a couple of minutes a girl appeared from the junction with South Lambeth Road and, absently searching for her key, turned into the path. She was wearing a sweatshirt and headscarf, and Langton saw the white iPod wire trailing into her jeans pocket. Immersed in the music, she only became aware of him when she unlocked the front door, which swung inwards of its own accord. ‘Cheers, love,’ he grunted, as pre-recorded fake messages from a non-existent dispatcher crackled from his helmet, making any challenge pointless.
