by Rob Aspinall
He handed me my bag. “Here. Don’t forget this.”
No, wouldn’t want to forget the thing with the $48 million smoking gun inside. I took the handbag off him and hooked it nervily over a shoulder.
“Wait,” I said, as Alexei moved towards the door. I ruffled his thick blonde hair and pulled the other shirt tail out over his suit pants. I unzipped his fly and unbuckled his belt for good measure. He grabbed me by the hair and messed it up in reply. Rubbed a firm thumb across my lips and onto my cheek, smudging my lipstick. I reached under the front of my dress and pulled my knickers around my knees. It was funny and romantic and made all the more electric for the circumstance. It was better than a kiss.
The man in the hallway pounded on the door again. “Alexei, please.”
Alexei yanked the door open, zipping up his fly. “I heard you the first time, Boris.”
18
Caught Blue-Handed
I followed Alexei out of the door, pulling my knickers back up as if we’d just been you-know-whatting. Alexei buckled up his belt, a couple of the other guests doing the same, as Irina, Katya and Christina emerged into the hallway, arranging their outfits.
We trudged downstairs into the lobby, where Antonenko was standing, flanked by Nikolai and his wife, Arina, a tissue held up to a tearful eye. Antonenko stood legs apart in front of the entrance to the house, hands behind his back and a face brighter than a red-hot poker. We all gathered together in the lobby. Staff, girls, guests, security and all. Alexei leaned casually against a staircase pillar, hand in a trouser pocket.
“There you go, Daddy,” he said to Antonenko. “I fucked your little whore girl. Happy now?”
Antonenko had bigger things on his plate.
“What are we doing out here, Vladimir?” Sokolov asked.
“Yes. Why the rude interruption?” asked Yurkovich.
Antonenko scanned every pair of eyes in the room. “I, being a thoughtful employer and a courteous host, sent Arina here down with coffee and sandwiches for the men guarding the vault,” he said, voice booming across the lobby. “Only she gets down there and there are no guards. So I send Nikolai …”
“I hear a faint banging. Voices coming from inside,” Nikolai said.
“So he calls me down,” said Antonenko. “He says, boss, the guards are on the wrong side of the door. I think, what the hell? I open up the safe and what do I find? The two of them with bruises on the face and neck. Empty weapons and radios gone.”
Arina wiped a tear from her eye and sniffled. Antonenko put a comforting hand on her arm.
“And what do I find in the vault, inside the display case, where the diamond should be?”
Antonenko brought his other hand round from behind his back. He unfurled his fingers and held the mountain rock in his palm. “You can only imagine how this hurts my Arina.”
No one spoke a word at the news. But everyone eyed each other, like it was some kind of whodunnit. I swallowed hard.
“How about the guards?” Yurkovich asked. “Surely they—”
“The guards say they didn’t see it coming,” said Nikolai. “All they remember is waking up inside the vault.”
“Either they don’t remember, or they’re hiding something,” said Antonenko.
“Either way, the guards will be dealt with,” said Nikolai.
“In the meantime,” Antonenko said, “my darling wife and son aside, everyone will be subject to a search. As I have absolutely no suspicions regarding my friends and associates, we’ll begin with the staff. Security. Catering. Girls.”
Antonenko’s security team were first.
Antonenko padded Nikolai down, leaving Nikolai to pad Boris down. Nikolai and Boris then searched another pair and that pair joined in the search until the whole security team were cleared.
Nikolai called the catering staff forward – waiters, bar staff, chefs, hostess and all. I felt my heart racing. My eyes darted from one potential exit to another. The front door. The ground-floor hallway. Out through one of the living areas, perhaps? Each one blocked off as the guards stepped back into their positions.
Nikolai and Boris worked their way through the petrified catering team. They had nothing to fear, of course. But we were in the home of a mafia kingpin and his pals. Who knew what he’d do to them? Looking at Nikolai and his men, stuffed inside their XXL suits, I recognised a few of from the Mobutu–Belinsky exchange, including Boris. If the mercenaries had been hired to protect the diamond, Antonenko’s heavies were there to do the dirty work.
The catering staff were told to return to their posts. They couldn’t wait to scurry out of there, to the safety of the kitchen.
“Now the whores,” Antonenko said, no longer dressing up the reason we were here.
I was so nervous I could feel my bum hole twitching. I just wanted to get on with it. Start the fight. See what happened. Anything was better than waiting.
All throughout, Philippe said nothing. There was nothing he could do. Nothing I could ask him. It was better for him to listen in and wait for the code phrase we’d agreed on (suggested by me):
Gummy Bears.
It meant come and get me. All guns blazing. But I’d wait until the last second before I deployed the Vasquez nuke. The way I saw it, I was screwed whatever I did.
If I ran and fought, they’d know.
If I let them search me, they’d know.
Same diff. So why waste the bullets right now? I only had one shot with the code phrase and I didn’t want to use it until the shit was permanently welded to the fan.
Nikolai waved Boris away from us girls. He’d handle us personally. Irina was first. Arms out. Full body pad. A glance down her cleavage. A look up her dress. A feel of her boobs. Handbag tipped out all over the floor. Now Christina. And Katya. Same drill each time, the girls left to gather their belongings and tuck them back in their handbags.
Meantime, I’d been shrinking off behind a few of the guests, hoping they’d forget about me when Nikolai called me forward. “You. Green dress. Come here.”
I edged into the middle of the lobby. Nikolai gave me the full going over. He felt my boobs but not the scar. He looked under my dress and ran his hands around my knickers and waist. It was a rough padding rather than a grope. Non-sexual. But I still tensed up like a startled cat. He yanked the strap of the handbag from around my shoulder and zipped it open. I glanced over at Antonenko. There was no more pseudo-friendly arm around the shoulder this time. He stared at me like it must be me. Who else could it be?
Nikolai opened the top of my handbag and tossed the contents out on the floor. Lipstick. Mints. The fake can of deodorant. The plastic film. No one clicked what the film was for. It wafted to the floor without comment or question. Only one thing left in there now.
I waited for the diamond to come out in Nikolai’s hand, big and blue and sparkly as a star.
I waited to say Gummy Bears.
19
Escape Hole
19. ESCAPE HOLE
Nikolai’s brow furrowed like a caterpillar contorting its way up a tree trunk. He looked up over his fat, crooked nose at me, as confused as I was. He shook the handbag upside down, but nothing came out. He threw it back at me. “Pick up your shit.”
I squatted and gathered my things, stuffing them back in my bag.
What the frig? Where the hell was the diamond?
I backed away and stood with the other girls.
Antonenko held out his arms. “I’m sorry, my friends, but we must search you too.”
Nikolai and his heavies moved in amongst the crowd and pulled out guests at random. Grumbles. Complaints. Resistance from the guests.
“Ridiculous!”
“Are you calling me a crook?”
“Take your hands off me!”
“Vladimir! How could you think—”
“It will only take a moment,” said Nikolai. “Please …”
In the jostling and the shouting, I managed to sneak off up the nearest staircase. As soo
n as I hit the landing, I got on the radio to Philippe. “Abort mission,” I said. “The pot is empty.”
“What?” he asked.
I hung a left and took another flight of stairs up to the second floor. “I lost Baby Blue,” I said. “On the bright side, I’m getting the hell out of here.”
The stairs to the top of the house led me up into a second living area with sofas and another small cinema screen, a hallway breaking off to the far right of the room and a sun terrace, like Philippe had said, directly behind me.
I slid open a mammoth glass door and slipped off my shoes. Didn’t want to make any undue noise making my escape. I scooped up my heels and stepped out onto the decked terrace, the wooden boards warm from the sun, the air like a pine-fresh toilet. Only better, obviously. It smelled like freedom.
As I turned to slide the door shut behind me, Alexei stood watching.
I jumped out of my skin.
“Yana.”
“Alex.”
“I knew you weren’t one of Dad’s girls,” he said with a wry smile. “You didn’t have the same look of defeat. Or the powdered nose.”
Had he been playing me all this time? How stupid was I?
He stepped onto the decking with me. Up close. “When they said the diamond had been stolen, I had a strange feeling it was you. So I checked your handbag when you weren’t looking.”
I acted dumb. “Me? Steal the diamond?” I laughed. “You’re crazy.”
“I don’t know how the hell you did it,” Alexei said, bringing a fist out of his pocket.
Oh shit, I really didn’t want to fight him.
He took me by the hand and pushed something hard and smooth in my palm. No, not his personal pocket rocket. It was the Arina Diamond. He closed my fingers around it.
“Go,” he said.
“Really? But what about—”
“Go before they find you.”
I balanced on my tip toes and kissed him on the cheek. “Seriously, thank you. I wish—”
“Me too,” he said with a rueful smile.
“The chicken’s back in the pot,” I said to Philippe. “Make a hole.”
With a puff of concrete and a muffled explosion, a square section of the garden wall blew in and fell on the grass in a perfect, Lorna-sized square.
“Hey what’s your real name? Your first name?” Alexei asked. “I won’t tell. I just wanna know.”
“Lorna,” I said, slipping the diamond in my handbag and zipping it up.
“Bye, Lorna.”
“Bye, Alex.”
I could have floated right off the mountain right there and then and flown home on the butterfly beats of my heart. Whatever this feeling was, I’d never felt this giddy since the Becki kiss.
I turned and ran across the terrace, feet thumping gently on the boards. I set off down the narrow set of white stone steps that curved down the side of the house onto the immaculate lawns.
Halfway down the steps, I stopped. I looked at the hole. Philippe would be packing up right now, coming down the mountain to pick me up on his bike. We’d be on the wind before Nikolai could beat the truth out of the two men guarding the vault.
The hole in the wall meant a clean getaway, sure. And all the funds we needed to fight JPAC. But what about the girls in the house? Where was their escape hole?
“Actually, cancel that lift,” I said. “I’ll make my own way home.”
“Lorna, what are you doing?” Philippe asked.
“What needs to be done,” I said. “I’m going back in the house.”
“Get through the hole now.”
Philippe continued his protests in my ear, but I pretended like he was breaking up. “Oops. Something wrong with my radio. Sorry!”
I ran back across the sun terrace, a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Me and my sodding conscience.
Alexei stepped back inside, sliding the door shut behind him. I knocked on the glass. He looked confused, opening the door.
“What are you doing?” he whispered. “Get out of here.”
I smiled at him sweetly. “Want to really get back at your dad?”
20
Gummy Bears
Antonenko was still arguing with the so-called friends he’d just had frisked for stolen jewellery. Nikolai was busy playing peacekeeper. The girls were being shoved out of the front door towards the limo, back to cold storage. The catering staff hurried around, clearing up. Party officially over.
Meanwhile, half of Antonenko’s security team debated what had gone wrong amongst themselves. Without breaking stride, Alexei scooped an open vodka bottle off the hallway floor and took a swig. He walked lazily to the bottom of the stairs. He pulled the gun from the holster on Nikolai’s hip and waved it around in the air, taking another slug from the bottle and spitting it out like one of Mobutu’s gold mermaids.
“Hey, you soul-sucking bunch of stiffs! Let’s get this party back on! Woo-hoo!”
“Take it easy, Alexei,” Nikolai said. “Give me back my gun.”
“Alexei!” Antonenko shouted. “Give it back or I’ll beat the hide off you.”
Alexei looked up at the glass ceiling above the lobby.
“Hey, Dad, I wonder how bulletproof this glass really is.”
He pointed the gun at the glass ceiling over the lobby. “Let’s test it out.”
Alexei let off an ear-splitting round at the glass ceiling, the bullet bedding into the glass, but failing to crack it. The guests shrunk away from him in fear.
Nikolai lunged forward. Alexei pointed the gun at him and laughed. It was the perfect distraction. I took off my shoes for the umpteenth time and hopped onto the banister bum-first, bag strapped across my chest. I shoved off and slid all the way down the smooth, straight banister, the varnish on the wood only adding to the speed.
Boris stood at the foot of the stairs. He didn’t see me as I came whizzing down. And no one noticed me plant both feet in his back, sending him sprawling across the slick limestone floor. They were all too busy either bugging out of the house or watching Alexei trying to blast his way through the ceiling. He let off another round and another. Arina in floods, hands over ears. Nikolai begging him to stop. Antonenko furious, powerless, rooted to the spot.
I think I may have broken Boris’s back. He lay crooked and groaning. I had his weapon off his hip before the first of Antonenko’s security could react. I put a bullet in the chest of a guy guarding the door and swapped Boris’s SIG pistol for his automatic rifle. I was out the door fast. I ran between supercars, some of them trying to pull out of the drive, getting in each other’s way. Honking. Swearing. High on cocaine and fear. I shot at the limo driver’s feet as he corralled the girls into the back of the SUV stretch. He danced into the air like he had ants in his pants. The long barrel of a gun in his face persuaded him to run. I stuck my head inside the portable nightclub.
“Yana?” Irina said.
“Come on,” I said. “We’re getting out of here.”
“What?” said Christina.
“But—” said Katya.
“No whats or buts,” I said, waving the gun around the limo. “Move it, or I’ll shoot you myself.”
The girls did as they were told. But we had two problems.
1. Transport. The limo was good for fat beats and champagne cocktails, but no use for escaping along winding Alpine roads.
2. Antonenko’s security team were on to my shit, filing through the fleeing guests and cars with weapons at the ready.
Actually, make that three. A shot ploughed into the limo door we huddled behind – a sniper on the roof at the front of the house, not realising the limo was bulletproof too. He must have been one of Antonenko’s mercenaries for hire. He took aim again. A shot fired, but no bullet came our way. Just a spray of blood from the guy’s head, knocking him flat on the roof.
“You forgot to say Gummy Bears,” Philippe said in my ear.
With half the cars on their way out – Ferraris, Mercs, Porsches – I spotted a sol
ution to problem one. Sokolov half-jogged to his bright-orange Bentley sports convertible on the far side of the driveway. It had four seats. Perfect.
“I’m going for the orange Bentley,” I said.
“Got you covered,” Philippe said.
I turned to the girls. “Take your shoes off. Now.”
They slipped off their heels.
“Okay, we run and we run low. Whatever you do, don’t stop. Follow me.”
The driveway was a mess of noise and metal and people. Hard to tell security from guests in all the madness. I ducked out from behind the limo door, cutting a jagged line across the drive, slipping between rolling cars and shoving past guests fleeing Alexei’s gunfire. Security came at me and the girls from all kinds of angles. We were in Philippe’s hands now.
The first heavy came lumbering at us, dead ahead. Twelve o’clock. Boom. Down. Head like a split watermelon. Gross. Three o’clock. A zip and a bloody hole punched in another guy’s chest. Then nine o’clock. A thickset mafia man with me in his sights. Now flat on his back, throat all shot to shit. Four o’clock. Gunfire rattling a car bonnet to our immediate right. A single shot through a limo driver’s hat, blowing it clean off without touching the driver. Another mercenary splattered red all over the windscreen of a yellow Lamborghini. The driver, a young man with slick hair and shades, sat motionless, stunned. Another shot rang out. Two o’clock. Cutting through one window of a car, out through the other, into the ribs of a guard I hadn’t spotted.
A red Audi sports car ran into us at slow speed. I bumped gently off the bonnet and skipped around, the girls keeping pace. A pair of mercenaries converged out of nowhere in front of us. Philippe put the first one down with a head shot. I blasted the second out of the way with my rifle.
We made it to the orange Bentley.
Sokolov, slid in behind the wheel, cowering low, head on a swivel. I yanked the door open as he fired up the engine. It roared. It thrummed. I pulled him out of the driver’s seat at gunpoint.
