The Oxford Code

by Ray Christie

  Placing the handgun in Arthurs's hand the crime scene was set, the Serialised Inventory List had already been updated by Trevor, showing Arthur as the owner of the Sig Sauer P320. A shootout in the countryside by two men with interesting careers will give the journalists plenty of scope to sell their lies. The long-range surveillance drone hovering overhead had long since departed, once Trevor knew Arthur was alone the order was made to its operator to land and clear the hell out. Trevor figures it will likely be used again soon.

  ***

  London, England

  “What a delightful day this has turned out to be,” Muji sporting a Saville row suit, his hair gelled back covering the onset of baldness, despite the typical grey overcast skies of London he opted for a pair of dazzling Santos de Cartier sunglasses complete with green lenses to cover his dark hollow eyes. No matter the cost of the outfit he easily made it look fake. The man is someone Émilie would cross the street in order to avoid, a man she knows is only a word away from uttering something vulgar and sexist. Her only requirement is for the death of a few men, it is that simple, ‘how can this be so difficult?’ she asks herself this question as he approaches her in a cocky and confident swagger.

  “It is great to see you Muji, let us hope we can resolve our issues, get back on track and finish what we started,” Émilie wastes no time with formalities, turning away from any chance of an embrace she instead weaves her way around the tables while scanning the restaurant. Remembering only too well from the man following her previously in South Kensington, her guard is set high. Her journey to Peckham in South London had been uneventful. Taking an uber from the South Dock in Rotherhithe, then changing taxis twice, this attempt at shaking off any tails took the best part of fifteen minutes. Certain she was alone she made her way to the Albanian restaurant on Consort Road.

  Albanian food was welcomed, Émilie realises she has not eaten for the best part of a day and a half. Such as her work demands are, being on the go she forgoes the chance to sit down and refuel properly. A freshly baked Sea Bass topped with lemon and garlic was cooling on top of the marine stove on the yacht she disembarked only twenty minutes ago, capturing only the aroma she had no time to sample.

  As Émilie moved to her seat Muji stood there allowing the scent of her perfume and body to be absorbed into his. Taking a deep breath of her lingering smell he did not care what she thought of him, he wanted to capture the moment. He already knew his time with her was drawing to a close, the Albanian mafia already sent the message; ‘Asnjëri nuk mund ti shërbejë dy zotërinj’, ‘No one can serve two masters.’ Within hours or days either she or he would walk their last step.

  “Let me order something Muji before I begin, I can’t speak another word until I get food in my body.”

  Muji raises his hands in the air, “It is all taken care off, I have seen to it that the best Albanian food is prepared for you, just sit down and share a drink.”

  “If it’s all the same to you I prefer to order my own food.”

  Muji carefully eyes Émilie as she views the menu, “Më mirë syri sesa nami.”

  “Stop with your own language, speak English or French, what did you say?” snapped Émilie.

  My darling, I said it is better to lose your eye than your honour, do you know why I said that?”

  “I couldn’t care less Muji, perhaps you are losing your mind as well as your hair, order me the red bream and imam Bayadli would you please and stop talking in riddles, we need to close these accounts quickly.”

  With a snap of his fingers a young waitress looked over, Muji spoke out in his native tongue then he returned his dead sleazy glare back to his guest.

  “Why didn’t we meet in Chelsea? I thought you were a man of taste now that you have a few pounds. Yet here we are in Peckham of all places. Spent your advance already Muji?”

  With a smile only a walrus could make Muji offers his explanation. “This is a fine restaurant, you can’t eat like this in Chelsea, besides I too am busy, I have dealings around here and you little girl, you are not my only customer.”

  Throwing her head back laughing Émilie is genuinely amused, slowly returning her calming eyes upon Muji she shakes her head at him. “I am a customer to you, poor Muji, you have it all mixed up, you my dear are a small cog in a large complex machine. I pull you out and replace you with another small cog. It can’t be any simpler than that, but by all means, play the big man, I will play along with it, ok big boss man.” Émilie then sits forward in her chair, elbows placed on the table with her fingers placed on each side of her face she whispers seductively, “How many men have you killed?”

  Muji with a lump in his throat, stuck with her beauty and sultry voice, added to that the truth about his dead men and missing money he pauses for a moment. Taking a small sip from a glass of Raki, he looks over and signals to his underboss Skënder from a nearby table. The massive man dressed in a typical Eastern European gangster uniform, a black tracksuit accompanied with a black leather jacket and gold chains hanging from his thick ox-like neck. With his tattooed hands, he places a box of Tunisian dates on the table.

  Émilie looks at the box suspiciously, “Dates lovely, how thoughtful Muji.”

  With no concerns about other guests in this small restaurant, Muji spins the box around towards Émilie and removes the wooden lid.

  The world in all its complexities, and one which Émilie grapples to understands, stops spinning briefly as she stares at the contents of the box.

  “You recognise them?” With a sick air of pride, Muji now closes the box and passes it back to Skënder.

  “Should I?” Émilie determined to show no emotion, but deep inside she could feel her heartbeat banging and her stomach was turning its contents, the stench of rotten flesh was not there, still somewhat fresh. She felt like vomiting on Muji’s face and she was yet to receive her red bream.

  Nodding like an eccentric mathematics professor towards his slowly developing student, “That was your dear friend Jack and one of his British regiment pals, the best special forces in the world I am told.”

  Giving this successful news time to resonate Muji hoped his fast thinking, his deceitful plan, the deception he was stirring, would allow him more time to work with Émilie in extracting all the information on the storage locations. The day before the two Delta men had their hands hacked off moments before the German Bundespolizei arrived on the scene. Dritan and Valmir had their two Albanian hitmen sitting back in a stolen car for the changeover of the storage loot. Listening to comms they jumped into action, moving into Staudingerstraße shortly after Gordon left with Mark’s lifeless body, leaving the Deltas to the vultures of the criminal world. They quickly went to work cutting through limbs as the police closed in on them. Sending the hands back to London on Muji’s request, in itself was a grisly task, squeezing out the blood before vacuum packing the package was a trick they learned from the Mexican cartels. The white skin of the Americans with the added bonus of well-formed calluses, due to their extended weapons handling, should be enough to convince the sharp thinking French woman that these were her British targets.

  “I could have taken their heads, but it takes a bit more time to hack off, under the circumstances my men did well. I also save a fortune in medical transport costs with these hands,” Muji roars with laughter, not only at his own sick joke but at the realisation that Émilie has bought his story. With a renewed air of self-confidence, he hails the waiter for more Raki and presses them for the food.

  Still unsettled by the slightly decomposing hands Émilie barely notices her mobile phone silently buzzing in her small handbag. With her mind clicking into gear she reaches into her bag and takes her phone, glancing at the withheld number on the screen she apologises to Muji and walks outside. A welcome moment to breathe in the fresh London smog and gather her thoughts, she looks about at the civilians passing her, checking for threats.

  “Hello she says, Émilie speaking.”

  “Glad to finally speak to you,
I believe I am of deep interest to you and your Albanian friends!”

  Jack wants to give Frank a huge hug, getting this information from Arthur just before his death allowed Frank to build on his work. He learnt that Émilie is a tool, used by the committee with Trevor at the core. Hoping she is tuned into the situation he is listening intensely for markers of truth in her voice.

  Realising this is not a standard call from a human agent or official work of which she had sidestepped in the past few days Émilie probes lightly to the unknown caller. “There are a lot of people of deep interest to me, but maybe you have the wrong number, I don’t belong to any committee, I am a simple civil servant.”

  “Miss La Voisin, I agree with you, Trevor has you simply running errands around France and recently in Germany I gather” Jack acquiesced. Letting his words sink in he listens to her breathing and waits to check her pace of speech. This will allow him to determine her level of nervousness.

  Émilie paces a couple of steps from her position and walks around with no fixed pattern, constantly moving, thinking she is being watched through a scope. Adjusting her breathing slightly she casts her eyes over the rooftops before continuing.

  “Sorry to disappoint you Mr…sorry, who are you exactly?”

  “You know me as …. Jack.”

  Émilie almost let the phone slip out of her hand, she spun around almost too fast to look through the café window. ‘Shit,’ Muji was leaning over the table by the window not two feet away glaring at her, shouting to his men. It did not even take the training she completed in Tel Aviv on reading body language to know that Muji was now on the other side, a threat.

  She did not even realise she pushed a person over as she ran from the restaurant, only hearing the obscenities as she looked for a gap in the traffic to cross the road. Thinking quickly, she analysis what this caller has mentioned so far, ‘Albanians, Trevor, France, Germany and then called himself Jack’. The same Jack whose severed hand was meant to be in the box. Keeping the phone to her ear as she raced down the street she pushed for information. Glancing around she noticed Muji and Skënder looking for a break in the traffic before Skënder takes out his firearm and points it a driver forcing him to stop. Running along Consort road she turns right on Brayards Road towards St Mary Magdalene primary school. Mothers are standing waiting patiently for their kids to finish school, cigarettes in hand.

  She has not much time, “If you are who you said you are, what do you want with me?”

  Jack could hear her breathing intensifying, realising she was running he could only guess who was in pursuit. He fretted that she would be killed before he could get answers, she was his best way into this tangled mess of killers.

  “Trevor used to be a great friend, now him, Kolmogorov Trediakovsky and your own boss René Descartes are running their own European operation. Killing all links, yourself included.” Jack could hear her footsteps pounding on the footpath, she was fast, keeping a strong pace, fit.

  The name René was another game-changer, Émilie needed to work this out, her own boss, he was a great friend to her as Jack said Trevor was to him. ‘Can I trust a man I set up to kill, by a man trying now to kill me? Are Trevor and René planning to kill me?’

  Jack speaks again, “I’ll be in London, meet me tomorrow.”

  Émilie only half-listening slows to a jog, passing the cars she finds what she was hoping for. A car with the keys in the ignition while the mum doing the school run stands with the others against the school fence, smoking and making small talk. She stops suddenly and jumps in, throwing the phone in the centre console she starts the engine and locks the doors.

  Reversing quickly and bumping the car behind, Émilie pushes the gear stick firmly into first, the screaming mother realising what is happing runs over and pulls furiously on the door handle shouting and squealing unrecognisable swear words to the Parisian spy. Looking for traffic behind her Émilie speeds out into the narrow street, hurtling past the parked cars and using the pavement to get past double parkers. Positioning her rear-view mirror, she quickly finds the figure of Muji. He and Skënder have stopped at the crossroads, Skënder puts his firearm inside his waistband as Muji makes a call. She makes her way to Peckham Rye where she plans to dump the stolen car. Driving in a stolen car in London once reported has a short shelf life. She picks up the phone.

  “Jack, you still there?”

  Impressed on how Émilie is handling herself, keeping a cool head whilst carjacking and on the run, he understands she will need to drop this call soon.

  “Yes, Émilie, check what you can about two dead bodies outside London, one was working with us, the other for Trevor, he is making his way down the list, and you can bet your name is also on that list.”

  She pulls the car to a stop, sitting on double yellow lines on Blenheim Grove Émilie has no time to look for a parking spot. Jumping out of the car she heads down an alleyway putting as many changes to her direction between herself and Muji.

  “How can I be so sure, I just tried a number on you, you know that, why would I listen to you now?”

  “Because I know Trevor, he would have played you the way he played me, we are professionals, trust the person you don’t trust the least. Report back to him if you don’t believe me, he will despatch you without a second thought.”

  Jogging through the alley and under the train line she turns right then left onto Rye Lane, a red double-decker bus slows to a stop and she swiftly jumps onboard. Travelling north through the London streets she heads upstairs and checks if she has been followed. Taking a seat next to an old Pakistani man, who was doing his own thing by counting prayer beads, she returns her attention to the phone.

  Émilie is no stranger to dangerous men yet she feels her end goal of financial rewards could be all but a dream. Trevor may have been sending her on false flag operations.

  “Ok, well I always take my chances in life, always paid off, until now I guess, maybe you are on to something, maybe you are setting me up like a lamb to the wolf”, Émilie vacillated.

  Jack sitting in the Audi could feel the cheap plastic mobile phone heating up. Changing to his other ear he pressed Émilie into action.

  “Meet me at Tower bridge, one o’clock tomorrow, South end.”

  “I’ll be at the North end”, Émilie quickly countered. She has had enough of the Southside for one day.

  With that, the line then went dead.

  “The North end it is then,” Jack says to Ben and Sam who were reading between the lines. He then removes the SIM card and the battery from the phone and drops them out the window. Then he stretches his back and legs and rests his weary eyes until Ben drops him and Sam at the airport. Without asking or worrying he knows Sam is already planning the meet, content as can be he drifts off to sleep.

  TWENTY

  London, England

  Slumped in his new full-grain leather-backed chair, drinking his favoured Macallan Scotch whisky, Jonuz looks over the shipping yard from his newly acquired office in Tilbury, thirty miles East of London. The gold sign with black lettering on the door of the rented office reads ‘Jakarta Shipping Ltd.’

  After the unfortunate incident of Hekuran at the hands of ‘international terrorists’ Jonuz has made a few moves of his own. The BBC, advised by the intelligence agencies, reported that Hekuran was a well-established and honest businessman who was the victim of extortion. Unless he provided monthly allowances to an offshore account a family member would be killed each month. The BBC report added that Hekuran had been ‘cooperating with the police and enquires had been ongoing’, however after his murder the enquires had intensified and those that had information were asked to come forward. Trevor knew that no one will be coming forward, the local police would find no trails back to him and the agencies would be kept running around in circles. He could only hope his own selectmen could find the sniper before anyone else. He always knew the Americans would be snooping around also, shaking his head gently, ‘They never leave me alone,’ he
thinks silently to himself. They are a harder bunch to control, too many alphabets. He knew the critical nature of this work; firmly engaged in a highly clinical operation which was now underway meant control of the next few days cannot be interrupted by the actions of Jack and his men. Rubbing his forehead to ease the headaches only made it worse, time spent waiting on Émilie to clean up allowed him to concentrate on this Indian and London partnership. He takes a sip of whisky and without realising sinks the whole glass. Feeling somewhat awake he views Émilie as becoming incompetent, perhaps it was the Parisian beauty, her perfume or the athletic tanned frame that swayed him to work with her. Whatever it was, he had chosen her carefully; someone he could dispatch when the time was right. Having the French do the dirty work in Trevor’s opinion was fine, not anymore, it is time to strengthen the herd once again, ‘her time had expired’. Feeling better he lifts the binoculars to his eyes and slowly scans the rows and columns of containers counting as he does so.

  Looking over the ships unloading their steel containers onto the lorries below Trevor walked back to Jonuz, filled his glass, and offered a toast. The container Trevor was waiting had just been offloaded.

  “You have managed it Jonuz, simple, the world never stops spinning, people want certain things in life and who are we to stop them, agree?”

  Jonuz clinked glasses with Trevor and said, “We are businessmen now, I think Mr Lloyd-Cromwell we will have a bright future”. Putting his feet up on the desk Jonuz sips lightly on his whisky, allowing the delicate flavours of plums, cinnamon, and nutmeg to flow around his palate.

  Trevor slowly paced around the new office, disturbed when anyone uses his surname, showing no signs of discomfort he looks like a man comfortable in his new business venture.