by Andy McNab
He still didn’t say anything, but I saw a ghost of a smile when I carried him up the bank and he spotted the Honda. I settled him on the front of the saddle and strapped our bags to the rear rack with the bungee cords. I didn’t bother refilling the water bottle. Now that we had wheels, dying of thirst wasn’t an issue.
I climbed on behind him, and told him to hang on to my arms. When I turned the ignition key, even the cows took no notice. I aimed the machine directly across the slope towards the trees. The incline wasn’t too steep, but I didn’t go into Red Bull Extreme mode. Rolling it would really fuck us up.
Once we were twenty metres or so in cover I spotted a track, which was probably a ski run in the winter. I turned on to it and opened up the throttle whenever the gradient allowed. I knew this wasn’t the first time today I’d travelled downhill at speed through trees, but now I could see our route stretching ahead of us, and the further we got, the more confident I became that we weren’t going to launch ourselves into space.
I stopped every so often to scan the open ground below us, and to check the compass and the map. I wasn’t worried about taking a wrong turning: I needed to keep fixing the bearings of our journey in my head. It wasn’t leaking so badly now.
Shit from my past had started to bubble up through my brain. Maybe the drama in the barn had triggered something way beneath the waterline.
I knew I was ex-Special Forces.
I knew Frank Timis was a Ukrainian oligarch.
I knew I’d rescued his son in Somalia, back in the day.
I knew he had needed my help again.
I knew that whoever had killed him wanted me dead too.
But I didn’t know why. Maybe the Timis house in Courchevel would give me some answers.
The mountain air made everything ahead of me pin sharp. I was still a long way short of total recall, but the breeze against my face seemed to be blowing away some of my confusion. It was also drying off the bomber nicely.
Once we’d got well away from the body on the mountain and the flashing lights around what was left of my wagon, I brought the ATV to a halt. I lifted Stefan off and told him to take a piss while I unhooked the bungees and took my stained T-shirt out of my day sack, emptied the rest of the water bottle on to it and dabbed as much of the blood off my head as I could manage. There was fuck-all I could do about the wound itself right now, but at least I’d look a bit tidier.
Then I had a closer look at the contents of his rucksack. Under the hand towel and washbag there was a paperback the size of a small breezeblock. ‘You’re kidding me, right?’ My Russian wasn’t anything to shout about, but I recognized Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment when I saw it. Fuck, he was only seven. I hadn’t even managed Jack and Jill by the time I was his age.
He gave me the kind of look that suddenly reminded me of his dad. No, he wasn’t kidding.
I carried my bloodstained T-shirt and his Brindisi strip ten metres in from the track, scraped back some loose earth and leaf litter behind a tree and buried it. Being caught with Frank’s son would compromise me big-time. Having the dead man’s blood on my clothing and his would be even more difficult to explain.
8
We made it to the outskirts of Courchevel 1850 an hour or so before last light. The ATV had done what it said on the cowling; I’d managed to go the whole way without spending any more time on tarmac than we had to.
I pulled up beneath an empty chairlift on the high ground. We were still sheltered by trees, but had a clear view of the layout of the resort. Hotels and apartment blocks rubbed shoulders with cable-car stations and overpriced restaurants.
Further up the valley, the dying rays of the sun glinted off the canopy of a Bell Jetranger coming in to land at the Altiport, the airfield of choice for the super-rich that popped out there for the weekend. Snow still dusted the peaks that dominated the skyline behind it.
I’d seen Frank’s place before. But from the front, not the back. I asked Stefan to ID it and he pointed at the middle building in a row of massive fairy-tale chalets with gently sloping roofs and wide eaves a few hundred metres to our left.
I could see that he was straining to get in there, like a puppy on a lead. I steadied him with a hand on the shoulder. ‘Mate, we can’t rush this. Whoever fucked up your dad on the mountain might be paying it a visit …’
I swept the binos across the rear of the property. Massive picture windows on the top floor reflected knock-out views of the upper slopes. Most of the shutters on those below were closed, either against the sunlight or because nobody was home.
A party-size Jacuzzi took pride of place in a walled terrace that separated the back door from the granite hillside. The whole set-up had been built to repel boarders, but you could obviously ski straight in there during the winter, through a steel security gate set into an archway.
I couldn’t see any sign of movement, inside or out.
I’d definitely been to this three-storey slice of paradise, though I still couldn’t remember exactly when. Whatever, poor people obviously weren’t allowed in this part of town: we were looking at Oligarch Central.
Before hitting Frank’s place, I had to hide my day sack. If everything went to rat-shit in there I needed to have travel docs and cash securely in a place I could get back to. I tucked it behind the bright orange padding that surrounded the base of the nearest chairlift pylon, then parked the ATV behind the one fifty metres below. It wasn’t completely out of sight, but you’d have to be right on top of the thing before you pinged it.
I swung Stefan off the saddle. ‘How’s that ankle? Do you think you can walk?’
He nodded, and gave me the gritty, determined look I’d seen on the hillside. But after a couple of paces I knew it still wasn’t working. I picked him up and carried him back to our original vantage-point. He started to shiver. The temperature was dropping now. I hadn’t noticed.
I sat him down beside me and brought up the binos again. Nothing had changed. No big lads had emerged to enjoy an early-evening vodka on the balcony. I checked out the various approaches to the rear entrance for concealment and ease of access. A four-metre-wide alleyway separated it from the palaces on either side. They seemed to be empty too.
I wondered about leaping from the slope on to the top of the wall, but binned the idea almost immediately. A keypad was set into the stonework beside the security gate, with a camera above it. Two more cameras were mounted at each end of the rear elevation. Short of shooting them off the walls, all I could do was hope that if anyone unfriendly was inside they weren’t watching the monitors.
I turned to Stefan. He was following my every move, eyes like saucers. ‘We can get in through the back, yeah?’
He nodded.
‘Will there be anyone there? A maid, maybe? A cook? A bodyguard?’
He gave me something halfway between a shake of the head and a shrug.
‘Do you know the entry code?’
He nodded again.
I brought out the UZI pen and lifted my left hand.
He flinched like I was about to hit him. I went down on one knee, so we could get eye to eye. ‘Steady, mate. I just want you to write it here …’ I tapped my palm.
Concentrating hard, his tongue jutting out a fraction between his teeth, he drew a nine-square grid on my very grimy skin. Then he touched six of them in sequence and wrote the numbers below it.
‘Is there an alarm system?’
Another nod. The tongue stayed where it was as he added a second set of figures.
‘OK. Let’s do it.’
I lifted him on to my back. He wrapped his arms around my chest and I threaded my wrists under his knees; this was starting to feel more like teamwork. I shifted the pistol in my waistband so I could still draw down with my right hand.
We were able to stay inside the treeline most of the way, and drop down on to the ski track at the last moment. I kept eyes on the three buildings every step of the way, only stopping a couple of times to glance backwards a
nd forwards along the path.
I put Stefan down and tapped in the code. The locking mechanism clicked. I pushed open the gate, then hid him behind the Jacuzzi before repeating the process at the back entrance. This time the door swung back automatically, on some kind of hydraulic arm.
I stepped across the threshold into a room lined with top-of-the-range skis in a variety of sizes, bright quilted jackets and matching helmets on a row of wooden hooks. The alarm panel was alongside one of those boot-driers with stalks that breathed warm air into your liners after a day on the piste. I brought up my left palm, read the numbers and disarmed it.
I fetched Stefan and pressed the button to shut the door.
We moved through into an entrance hall that was more Manhattan penthouse than rustic mountain lodge. Frank had had a whole lot of fingers in a whole lot of pies, and judging by what was on display there, he’d cornered the market in grey marble as well. I wondered how much of this I’d paid for. He had once laundered a big chunk of money I’d stolen from a Mexican drug baron, and taken twenty-five cents on the dollar.
I felt a big stupid grin spread across my face. If I still knew that, there was hope for me yet.
I stopped and listened. The fact that the alarm had been set meant that no one was likely to be inside, but old habits die hard, even when you’re struggling. That was the whole point of them, after all.
Once I was sure no one was there, I could comb the place for clues to what the fuck was going on, and why I was in the shit.
I walked across the shiniest floor I’d ever seen and Stefan hobbled after me. The huge wooden front door ahead of us was firmly shut. I wanted to keep it that way. Another to our right was far enough ajar for me to get a glimpse of the corner of a brushed-aluminium four-poster bed. No surprises there. Most of these mountain homes were designed to save the best views for the living areas, not waste them on the bits where you shut your eyes.
The room was enormous but minimally furnished – mostly in suede and metal. The bed and a formal portrait of Frank with a dark-haired beauty above it told me this was where the master of the house got his head down. The bed was made, but the slight dip in the mattress told me that for a while only one person had slept in it.
There were two more bedrooms across the hall. One was pink and fluffy and untouched; the other was a shrine to Brindisi football club and Spider-Man. A couple of dinosaurs acted as bookends for yet more homework. There was no mess anywhere. It reminded me of Frank’s love of precision – and the seriousness with which he had been schooling Stefan to take over his empire. I told the boy to wait there until I came back.
A wide glass and steel staircase ran up the centre of the building.
I climbed it soundlessly. The first floor was similarly sleek and minimalist. Immediately ahead there was a panoramic view of lush greenery and snow-capped mountains. A maroon Bentley Continental swept past the front driveway, heading for the centre of town. I kept well back from the window.
A set of huge double doors led right, into a high-ceilinged family room. A very tidy high-ceilinged family room. Tall panelled windows overlooked a lone dog-walker making her way up the path we’d taken through the trees. A corridor opposite led into yet more rooms with views of mountains or trees. One was a dining room, complete with dumb waiter.
The floor above had a couple of giant Velux skylights that opened on to the roof, and an attic filled with the kind of stuff everyone leaves in an attic. Frank probably didn’t even know it existed.
There was a glass and steel lift at the far end. It had been the highlight of the guided tour he’d given me when he’d bought the place. As I drew closer to it I heard his voice: ‘Italian design, German hydraulics. Precision-built houses and Swiss watches – they are very nice things to have, Nick. But there is always someone in more control than you are …’
Keep talking, Frank. Don’t just go on about the fucking lift. Tell me what this shit is all about. Once I know that, I can work out what to do about it – and how to keep me and your boy safe …
As we’d moved smoothly downwards his jaw had tightened, and he’d given me a rare insight into his relationship with the big dog immediately above him in the food chain. ‘Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Prime minister of the Russian Federation, chairman of both United Russia and the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. A truly powerful man …’
I’d asked him who Putin’s boss was.
‘People like me who buy chalets in this village.’ He wasn’t smiling. ‘If he wants to be elected president again.’
I hoped he was right about that.
I wasn’t going to take the lift this time. I preferred the stairs. They gave me the illusion of control.
There were two more storeys below ground. The bottom one contained a swimming-pool, which filled the entire footprint of the building. So I hadn’t been imagining it. Carved out of the mountainside, it looked like a South Pacific rock-pool. The water was crystal clear. I was glad something around here was.
Above it, a two-car garage housed another gleaming black Range Rover alongside a workbench complete with vices and all the tools you could need to keep the motor running and your skis edged and waxed. At one end, there was a neat little Dremel rotary tool and a set of silicone carbide grinders. Alongside them was an empty Marlboro packet. Cyrillic script. Bad-news photograph. I fished around in my pocket and brought out its identical twin. I wondered who was in charge of the DIY around here. I had the feeling it had been some time since Frank had got his hands dirty.
Next came a gym, a sauna and a massage room. Then a state-of-the-art kitchen, whose centrepiece was a coffee machine the size of a nuclear reactor. Frank did love a brew. The fridge was like a stainless-steel shipping container. An empty stainless-steel shipping container. And the matching pedal bin was empty too. So no clues there either.
I had more luck with the dishwasher. It had reached the end of its cycle and been switched off, but no one had bothered to empty it. There was dinner and breakfast stuff in there. Four of everything. I reckoned that meant Frank, Stefan, me and a BG.
Close by were four box rooms, each with a single bed, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, and an en-suite shower and toilet. This was where the hired help hung out. I’d give them a closer look later.
At the far end of the corridor, next to his precious lift, was the place I really wanted to explore: Frank’s hideaway. I went and fetched Stefan from his room. Trauma or not, it was time for him to make himself useful.
9
Mr T’s enthusiasm for metal, suede and gleaming coffee machines was as obvious here as it had been everywhere else, but three walls were painted the green of an English gentlemen’s club. The fourth was bare granite, coated with some kind of sealant. The only thing missing was a pool full of piranhas.
‘A pool full of piranhas …?’ Frank had frowned when I’d cracked that funny.
I could see his expression now. Eyes narrowed as he sat down behind a desk the size of a championship snooker table. This desk. In this room.
He hadn’t understood the Blofeld joke. But he’d gone on to make a bad one of his own. ‘There are enough piranhas out there in the world, Nick. I don’t need them in here as well.’
Frank never had been much of a stand-up.
The wall to the left of it was lined with shelves, mostly displaying portraits and photos of the dead man and his family. I pointed to one. ‘Your dad …’
Stefan nodded.
‘My friend Frank …’
He nodded again.
I’d had a blow to the head, but I hadn’t completely lost it. I’d been Frank’s gun for hire. He’d sorted some finances for me. But he and I had never been friends. The boy seemed to like the idea, though, so I was happy to stick with it.
I stopped in front of an informal snapshot of father and son. A couple of heavies were standing on either side of them. On the left, a chunky Asiatic, who looked like Genghis Khan. Hesco? I didn’t think so. On the right, wi
th a cigarette in his left hand and his right protectively on the boy’s shoulder, a huge Nigerian with dreads brushing his shoulders.
I leant in closer. I couldn’t see what brand of smoke he liked, but the chunky gold bracelet around his wrist was impossible to miss. He was wearing blindingly white trainers with a red flash. And his dreads seemed to have a life of their own.
I’d seen this lad before. He was one of Frank’s most trusted BGs. I’d spent time with him and Genghis in Somalia. And, a handful of hours ago, I’d watched his back as he and Hesco admired the wreckage of my wagon on the mountain.
I’d never known his name. I’d always called him Mr Lover Man. I hadn’t a clue why. I knew he would have sacrificed himself to save Stefan. He’d once warned me that he’d kill me if I harmed one hair on the boy’s head.
Stefan reached up and placed the tips of his fingers against the glass, almost as if he was trying to touch his BG. For the first time since I’d dragged him out of the Evoque, he started to cry.
I left him to it. Getting emotional was not on my agenda. It got in the way. I didn’t need that right now. I needed answers.
I knelt down beside him. ‘I’ve been here before, haven’t I? Last night?’
Another nod.
‘And this morning?’
I suddenly didn’t need his confirmation. I remembered Frank bringing me here. Telling me he needed my help. Telling me his and his son’s life were under threat.
I’d immediately thought of the fuckers who’d kidnapped Stefan in Somalia. ‘Who from? Those fucking Georgians?’
Frank had had no idea. Insiders, maybe. A takeover bid. Some shit was happening in a couple of his companies that was causing him dramas. The four of us had to go on a journey. Because he no longer knew who else to trust.
My eyes moved back to the picture of Mr Lover Man and the boy. Who to trust? I knew that was where I came in. And I knew his briefing hadn’t stopped there. But the deeper I tried to dig in my memory, the less I could recall.
