His phone rang again. It was Amanda Savage at the CCTV control centre on the Euston Road.
“Lewis switched trains at Marble Arch. About two minutes ago, we spotted him on an eastbound Central Line train back at Bond Street Station. I thought you’d like to know. Any time now, the order to close the entire tube network is about to be implemented.”
“Good work, Amanda, thanks.” He ended the call.
Zeltinger quickly performed the maths in his head. Assuming that Lewis had received no further instructions to change trains, by the time that the Underground network was shut down, Lewis would be at or near Tottenham Court Road. Something of a coincidence, given what Adam Cartwright had just hypothesised.
Especially since it was less than half a mile away from Zeltinger’s current location.
126
“Ben!”
Lewis turns around and sees Saul Zeltinger racing towards him along the station platform.
“Saul! Thank God! We’ve got less than three and a half minutes before this bomb explodes. The room has to be close by. Panich primed the bomb with a radio-controlled device. In these tunnels, it wouldn’t have a long range. We have to find it, quickly!”
They narrow it down to just two possibilities: the dark blue painted door that Lewis passed earlier; and a door that purportedly has electrical equipment inside it positioned further down the platform. Lewis hobbles to the dark blue door and is joined by Zeltinger. One hundred and eighty seconds left. They bang on the door, but hear nothing. Deciding not to use his P-22 pistol to shoot the lock in case explosives are inside, it takes Zeltinger twenty seconds to pick the lock.
Olena and Borys sit side by side on the floor, their arms and legs bound, their mouths gagged. They look petrified. They both wear explosive vests but, as in the photograph that Panich had sent earlier, only Olena’s has a timed detonator attached to hers. The countdown is displayed on the face of the detonator by bright red light-emitting diodes in large format. Lewis was being overly optimistic. There are only ninety-five seconds remaining and counting.
Zeltinger undoes the gag on Olena first.
“Oh my God, Ben” she gasps. “You have to help, hurry! Please, please, hurry!”
Lewis is examining the device. Below the LEDs showing the countdown, there is a simple keyboard and various wires of different colours. He is not an expert: the chances of a booby trap have to be high. Pulling out various wires has to be a last resort.
“Did Panich say anything to you when he set the device?”
Olena shakes her head, but Borys is nodding vigorously. As Zeltinger releases his gag, words flow in a big torrent.
Seventy-two seconds remaining.
“He did say something,” he says, looking at his sister. “I asked him, don’t you remember? ‘Only by following the greatest Russian chess move ever,’ was his cryptic reply. I thought it odd at the time.”
Fifty-four seconds.
“Saul, the greatest Russian chess move ever? What do you think?”
“Kasparov. Against the Bulgarian, Topalov. Rxd4.”
“I agree. It has to be. Arkady Nemikov also agreed. He and I discussed it. Let’s try entering that.”
Lewis keys in Rxd4 and hits the enter key on the keyboard. Nothing happens and the clock continues its countdown.
Thirty-two seconds.
“Shit. What else, Ben?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps Karpov versus Korchnoi, the fourteenth move: Ng4.” He keys in this combination and hits enter. Again nothing happens.
“Say again, Borys, What were Panich’s exact words?”
“Only by following the greatest Russian chess move ever will you stop this thing, or words to that effect.”
Lewis stops and thinks. Twenty-four seconds.
Only by following. Only by following. He has an idea.
“Saul, what moves came immediately after Rxd4”
“I’ve no idea, I’m sorry.”
“Topalov takes the rook Kasparov sacrificed with his pawn: cd4. Then Kasparov moves his other rook to e7. It’s worth a shot.” Fifteen seconds on the clock.
He enters ‘cd4re7’ on the keypad and then hits enter.
Nothing happens. Perhaps he hasn’t entered enough moves? How many more should he enter? Nemikov’s codes all had either four or five moves in them. Maybe Panich’s code needed the same. What came next? Black moved his King. Was it to b6 or b7? Lewis tries to visualise it. It had to be b6. He knows this game backwards. White’s subsequent move was Queen takes Topalov’s pawn on d4.
Eight seconds left.
He is going to try entering four moves first.
He enters ‘cd4Re7Kb6’, holds his breath and presses enter.
The clock miraculously stops.
Only four seconds remaining.
The only sound in the room is one of a collective exhaling of breath.
First on site are the bomb disposal experts from 101 Engineer Regiment based at Carver Barracks, near Saffron Walden. Their first and immediate task is to remove, and safely take to the surface, both of the explosive vests being worn by each of the Nemikovs. It is not an easy task. Lewis is not surprised to learn that the vests had, indeed, been booby-trapped by Panich: if he had tried to remove them before the device had been disarmed, they would have exploded.
Next comes the job of removing the sandbags containing the RDX explosives. Since, in the absence of any detonation device, the RDX is considered relatively inert, various officials are given permission to venture down to the platform level. One of the first to arrive is a small team of paramedics from the London Ambulance service.
Lewis’s femur bone is examined and the paramedic declares that the bone is, indeed, not broken; the thigh muscles, though, are badly bruised and damaged. Lewis asks for strapping and some painkillers, the combination of the two immediately improving his mobility. Borys’s hand is more problematic. The paramedics administer a large painkilling injection and his hand is carefully bandaged. Arrangements are hastily made for him to be transported to a leading orthopaedic surgeon specialising in hand trauma. Before the two of them are led gingerly away, they both stop to say thank you to both Zeltinger and Lewis.
“Don’t thank me,” says a typically, self-effacing Zeltinger.
“This is the man,” he says, one arm around Lewis’s shoulder, “who you need to thank. He’s the one who’s responsible for us all being alive at the moment.”
Borys gives Lewis a clumsy, but spontaneous, hug. Tears in his eyes, he avoids contact with his now heavily bandaged right hand as the two men embrace. Next is Olena, the stress of the last twenty-four hours evident all over her face. She gives Lewis a huge embrace, at the end of which she holds his face in both her hands and kisses him, firmly and deliberately, on the lips.
“I can’t thank you enough, Ben. Can’t you come with us? I am scared to be left alone after all this.”
“I’ll be back with you soon, I promise, Olena. Some of Saul’s team will help you over the next twenty-four hours or so. I have something I need to do first. Something that I promised your father I would do for him.”
They embrace once more, and then Olena and Borys are led away by the ambulance crew, two policewomen from Saul’s team following close behind.
“How did you guess Tottenham Court Road, Saul? That was genius, you turning up when you did.”
“We were lucky. One of the CCTV crew at the Met’s Euston Road surveillance centre guessed that you must have changed trains at Marble Arch and then we had a break: you were spotted leaning out of the door of an eastbound train at Bond Street station a short while later. When you didn’t get off the train at Oxford Circus and, with the tube network closed shortly thereafter, it seemed likely that you would be at Tottenham Court Road.”
“So this wasn’t
the work of a genius super-sleuth who had worked out the room’s location by deduction, Saul?”
“Well, to be frank, someone in my office did call me, only five minutes before I turned up at the station here, to tell me the reason why he thought the bomb was located here.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him it was a crazy idea and that you were heading in the other direction. It turns out that he was right after all! What clinched it was that, as I was speeding in a taxi towards Tottenham Court Road station, one of the CCTV team rang to say that you’d been seen at this station on one of the remote cameras.”
“I’m surprised there are any,” Lewis says. “I couldn’t see them. I was checking the platform everywhere.”
“Not down here. On the upper level, along the corridor you took when you changed from the Central to the Northern Line platforms.”
They were riding the up escalator, on their way out of the station.
“Tell me about Panich? Did he jump or did he have help, Ben? I won’t take issue either way, I’d just like to know.”
“He did that to himself voluntarily. For some reason he had a knife sticking out of his left arm and I’d given him a helping hand in removing his prosthesis. He responded by priming the detonator on the bomb and then leaping on to the live rails. He had cancer, or so he said. Probably all the cigarettes.”
“Not a nice way to go.”
“It would have been quick.”
“Where are you off to in such a hurry? I would have thought you’d have been consoling Olena. She’s lovely, by the way.”
Lewis explains what he plans to do.
“My colleagues are not going to be happy. They have so many questions they want to ask, Ben. It’s not helpful, you going AWOL.”
“No, I’m sure it’s not. But then, I’m sure that you’ll be able to cover for me. One friend to another?”
“You’re pushing your luck, Ben Lewis. The clock is ticking. I need you back here in twenty-four hours. Go, before I change my mind!”
127
Viktor Plushenko’s Bombardier BD 700 jet left Moscow’s international private airport at Ostafyevo shortly after five in the morning Moscow time. The three and a half hour flight direct to Zurich’s Kloten airport was smooth and uneventful, the time difference such that it was a little after seven-thirty in the morning, local time, when the plane touched down on Swiss soil. Kloten ground controllers directed the plane to the airport’s Private Terminal, the separate facility used by VIP visitors to the city. Formalities completed, Viktor was, in short order, ushered into a waiting Mercedes limousine for the brief drive into the heart of the city’s financial district. Rush-hour traffic being what it was, it was almost exactly eight-thirty that morning by the time the limousine arrived outside the small and nondescript offices of Hildebrandt Private Bank AG.
Viktor Plushenko pressed the brass buzzer. It was positioned adjacent to a small, faded, brass plaque bearing the bank’s name. Unaccustomed to being kept waiting by anyone, the Russian felt decidedly exposed as he stood waiting on the Zurich pavement: the chill November air, moist from the lake, icy on his skin. What seemed to him like an uncomfortable length of time later and a muted ‘click’ followed by a buzzing sound emanated from the door latch. Plushenko pushed the door open and gratefully went inside.
A male receptionist stepped forward to greet him. Plushenko preferred flirting with pretty female receptionists before most of his business meetings back home in Moscow. He wasn’t about to make a fuss, however. It wasn’t every day that he was presented with an opportunity to lay his hands on nearly ten billion US dollars of someone else’s money. So instead, he shook the offered male hand warmly.
“Herr Plushenko. Welcome to Zurich. I trust your flight was in order and to your satisfaction?”
When Viktor announced that indeed it had been and that all was well in his world, he was instructed to follow the receptionist to their private meeting room.
Somewhat to Viktor’s surprise, the meeting room was not on the ground floor, but in the basement. The two men took a lift down one floor, and Plushenko was directed down a dimly lit corridor that wound its way in various directions until they reached the allocated room. The door had a sign on the outside: Konferenzraum Zug: Privat. Plushenko was ushered in and told to make himself comfortable. Hot tea, coffee and pastries on a trolley soon followed him into the room. Plushenko was on his second cup and third pastry by the time the door was pushed wide open and Rudi Hildebrandt came in to greet his guest.
“Herr Plushenko, it is my genuine pleasure to meet such a distinguished and honoured guest. Welcome to Zurich. I hope you didn’t mind us using a basement room? It is so much more private.”
Plushenko nodded, clearing pastry crumbs from off the table in front of him and wiping his hands on some paper napkins before raising his large body from the chair. He shook Hildebrandt’s proffered hand before sitting down again.
“I see that you have helped yourself to coffee and pastries. Excellent. Is there anything else that you need before we begin?”
Plushenko shook his head.
“Very good. So, to business. How may I be of service, today?”
Plushenko sat upright and opened his calfskin leather portfolio.
“One of my former business partners and life-long friends, Arkady Nemikov, is, as I am sure you are aware, no longer with us. His death is a great sadness to us all. Already he is greatly missed.” He looked across at Hildebrandt, pleased to see the Swiss banker following his every word, nodding sagely at appropriate moments.
“Arkady and I have had our ups and downs, over the years. Somehow, despite that, we have always maintained this long-term bond of trust between us. As I understand it, he put in place certain arrangements designed to protect his assets. He gave his wife, daughter and son a specific code. Three codes in total, each Nemikov family member not knowing the others’. Following his death, his assets were automatically frozen, this freezing order to remain in place until, or unless, you, his private banker, received all three unlock codes. Then, and only then, would you be in a position, as custodian of his assets, to release either some or all of them. How I am doing?”
“Herr Plushenko, I am not, as I am sure you will understand, in a position to either confirm or deny any of what you are saying about my client’s instructions. It would be entirely inappropriate. However, is there some specific request or information you might have for me today?”
Slightly taken aback at the degree of frostiness, Plushenko decided not to take affront but instead carried on.
“Yes, there is.” He reached into his calfskin folder and extracted a single sheet of paper. “I have in my possession, on this sheet of paper, the three codes. Each has been given to me entirely voluntarily. It is each code holder’s express wish, and thus my specific instruction to you today, to effect a cash transfer from Arkady Nemikov’s estate to my own bank account with immediate and irrevocable effect.”
“How much money are we talking about, Herr Plushenko?”
“Ten billion US dollars,” he said, sliding the piece of paper across the table to Hildebrandt.
Hildebrandt’s facial expression never changed in the slightest. Instead, he stood up, picked up the piece of paper that Plushenko had passed to him, and walked towards the door.
“Please help yourself to more coffee and pastries. I have to make certain investigations, as I am sure you appreciate. I will try not to keep you too long.”
It was nearly twenty minutes later before the door swung open. Two people entered. Neither of them was Rudi Hildebrandt. One came and sat down opposite Plushenko, the other stood by the door. The one by the door was younger. In his late twenties, or early thirties, he was athletic, muscular, wearing a dark brown leather jacket and jeans, clothing that looked out of place in the offices of Hild
ebrandt Private Bank AG. The man who came and sat down was older. He was thickset with few distinguishing features other than a small shock of silvery-white hair to one side of his otherwise thick, black, mane.
“Who exactly are you?” Plushenko asked, taken aback by the lack of introductions from his visitors. The temperature in the room felt suddenly hot. The Russian was beginning to perspire.
“Part of the verification team,” the man sitting opposite him said, his English sounding slightly mid-Atlantic.
“How long does verification take?” Plushenko asked. He received no reply to his question.
“Who is the man by the door?” Plushenko was becoming rattled, his voice louder, more imperious. Again, neither man answered. Becoming angry at their impertinence, Plushenko stood up. Without warning, the man at the door withdrew a supressed Heckler & Koch HK P30 from a jacket pocket, pointing it directly at Plushenko. It was a powerful 9mm semi-automatic that made a clear statement. No words were exchanged: they weren’t needed. Plushenko sat down, producing a handkerchief from a pocket and mopped his brow. The man by the door lowered the weapon, this time keeping it in his hand.
They stayed like this for five minutes, the temperature in the room rising. Still no words were spoken. At one point Plushenko slammed his fist on the table, demanding to see Hildebrandt. Again, no one took any notice.
Then a remarkable thing happened. There was a knocking on the door. The man in the leather jacket holding the Heckler & Koch stepped to one side. It allowed the door to swing open.
Into the room walked none other than Arkady Nemikov.
128
It is the Saturday night. The twins are in bed, almost asleep, having been read the most exciting bedtime story ever by a real life super-hero: the new best friend of their father: Ben Lewis. Hattie is clearing away the supper, having enjoyed an evening mildly flirting with their guest who, in turn, seemed not to notice a single hair flick. Zeltinger and Lewis are sitting in front of a chessboard, both nursing a glass of the excellent German Spatzburgunder that Zeltinger has been serving all evening. Lewis raises his glass to his new friend.
The Gambit (Ben Lewis Thriller Book 2) Page 31
