The sun was dropping behind the mountains, casting an orange glow across the well-tended garden. Still warm, the air was stirred by a light breeze. The scent of the grass, trees and the multitude of flowers allowed him to drift back to a moment many years before. A time in his childhood. A brief snapshot in time that he’d spent with his parents before they died. He knew they were there too, in that snapshot. Somewhere, but he couldn’t visualize them. A family photograph, without the family.
“You look tired, Michael,” she said, sitting opposite him now, smiling.
The breeze gently tossed her hair, eyes bright and playful, challenging him to contradict her.
“Not tired. Thoughtful. Your uncle wants me to leave. To steal away in the early hours of the morning and save you from a fate worse than death,” he said, allowing a hint of drama to creep into his voice.
“Which, of course, you’re not going to do.”
“No. I wouldn’t have told you if I was. We’re both wrapped up in this together. The way I see it, neither of us has very much to lose.”
“What do you mean?” said Tereza.
“István filled in the gaps. Your family. I don’t think either of us has a choice. We need to nail this guy. He needs to pay for what he’s done. If we don’t work together, he’ll get away with it and God knows what else. We’ll be left with nothing. Or worse. I don’t think Rivello’s the type to leave loose ends lying around.”
“And I thought you blonds weren’t meant to have too much up top.” She laughed. “Come on, let’s go, I’m tired as well. I’ll show you to your room.”
As she stood and gathered the dishes, he couldn’t help but notice that, without the bulky leather jacket, Tereza had an incredibly shapely figure. Below her long dark hair, her back gently arched downwards to a slim waist. He had already noticed the long attractive legs, but it was only now in the fading light of day that he noticed the well-formed outline of her breasts pushing against her white blouse as she leant forward to lift up the dishes. He rose and reached out towards her arm, laid his hand on her wrist and waited for her to turn towards him. When she did, there was no hesitation in her eyes.
“Michael, I really need to get these inside,” gesturing with her other hand towards the tray of crockery on the table. She pulled her wrist away, lifted the tray, and moved off in the direction of the kitchen.
She showed him to a room on the first floor. Tereza pushed open the wooden door, reached around, hit the light switch.
Just as he said good night and tossed his backpack onto the bed, he heard her behind him. Standing in the doorway. Any playfulness had disappeared from her voice.
“Michael, thank you for staying. I mean it. You’re right, we need to do this together. No more using you as bait. Besides, you look better with your arms and legs attached to your body. Sleep well.” She turned and went. A few seconds later he heard a door close a few meters down the corridor.
Chapter 42
The room was not exactly what you would call spacious. As far as he was concerned, this made the whole experience exquisitely more enjoyable. One of the best things about Moscow real estate was that it took very little in the way of renovation to create the right effect. Atmosphere was crucial, he had discovered a long time ago. It made the difference between having a truly memorable experience and merely going through the motions. Particularly if the girl was claustrophobic. The level of her angst would perceptibly increase.
Augustus wiped himself down and threw the towel to the cobbled floor. He reached for the hook on the door and swung the dressing gown over his shoulders. The girl hung from the rope, looped through the swivel embedded in the ceiling. Her hands were bound tightly, a leather strap under the rope taking some of the pressure from her wrists. The balls of her feet were touching the floor, the heels poised tantalisingly in the air. She had been positioned in this way for two hours. Punishment enough.
At intervals, Augustus had loosened the other end of the rope, fixed through a steel ring in the brick wall, and on four occasions allowed her feet to fully touch the ground and the girl to recover herself. Two hours was long enough.
The girl moaned, her body now completely slumped forward, her hands and arms no longer having the strength to hold her body upright. Augustus walked over to her, not yet ready to release her from discomfort. The girl’s eyes were closed, her face unblemished. He never touched the face. Some did, if they paid enough for it. But those people he thought of as no more than animals.
He stroked her head as he swept his hand down her back, across the bright red lesions he had created. Augustus felt himself going hard again as he slipped the other hand from her hair and slid it up along the inside of her thigh. Now he was thinking back to the moment when he had punished her there and the high pitched sound of the delighted squeals that she had emitted.
“My gorgeous darling,” he whispered in her ear, “that was most beautiful. Sadly I need to leave you now, but first something to reward you for being such a wonderful girl.”
Augustus moved across the floor, took a chair from beside the sink and placed it underneath her. He fetched the water, the tablets. He placed them on the floor and then crossed to the wall where he untied the rope and gently lowered the girl onto the chair. She slumped down into it, moaning.
He enjoyed the ritual, liked to reward the girls afterwards by giving them painkillers, usually a medium dose of morphine. He enjoyed seeing the look on their faces slip from taught, painful exhaustion to blissful contentedness. Augustus would never admit it to himself, but it helped to remove a soupcon of guilt that he tended, even if only fleetingly, to carry with him after occasions such as this. He lifted her head gently, cradling it, sweeping the long dark hair away from the front of her face.
“Water,” he said, pushing the girl’s lips apart with the rim of the glass and letting her taste the liquid. Her eyes opened, not seeing him, dazed from her experience at the end of the rope. He took each tablet, one after the other, and fed them to the girl from between his index finger and thumb, giving her a final sip of water with which to wash them down. Augustus smiled down at her, and gently let her head drop again to the side.
He walked over to the wooden bench between the sink and the door, took off his dressing gown and lifted his trousers. He seated himself. It had been many years since he was able to put his trousers on while standing, and as he did so, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror that covered the entirety of the opposite wall. The pale, blue veined, flabby legs, the overly distended stomach, rolls of fat hanging from his middle and his chest. Although he rarely chose to look in a mirror, his own image had long ceased to bother him. Augustus was at an age where, even if he didn’t feel comfortable with himself, he had long ago accepted who, or rather, what he was.
Gagging noises from the girl pulled him from his thoughts. She abruptly rose, vomited violently, gagged, vomited once more and collapsed to the ground. She spasmed on the floor, naked, writhing in agony, convulsing, vomiting until she could only gag and gasp for air, limbs writhing frantically.
Augustus froze with the horror of what was happening in front of his eyes.
“Dmitri,” he screamed, “help me!”
The door slammed inwards, Dmitri barged through, stood for a split second surveying the scene, ran towards the girl.
“Get out, upstairs and wait. Now,” he shouted to Augustus.
Faster than he had moved in some time, Augustus snatched up his remaining clothes and bolted for the door.
---
He sat in the changing room slumped on a high-backed wooden bench, the steam from the banya curling its way across the ceiling. Men, most accompanied by young women, entered the traditional Russian sauna, liniment soaked birch twigs in hand. Augustus wanted to get out of there, disappear onto the first plane out of Sheremetyevo and find his way back to London. He knew, though, despite the feelings of panic and fear racing through his system, that his only way out of this was to do exactly what Dmitri said. It
would be expensive, but he knew these people had a way of doing things.
He’d been waiting for fifteen minutes. It felt like a lot longer. Augustus, not immune to sweating at the best of times, was soaking, clothes sticking to his body, sweat and steam combining to create a clawing, clammy wetness. Aided by his physical discomfort, Augustus’s fear addled brain was now racing to the conclusion that perhaps he should in fact get out of the bordello as soon as possible. He was about to lever himself out of the bench when Dmitri appeared.
Dmitri was not a small man, at least six feet four inches tall. One could easily mistake his bulk as that of a man who had grown too fond of pelmeni and beer. It was a mistake many people had made. Generally only once. In the bright light of the changing room, the white dome of his large round head contrasted comically with his all black attire. Augustus wasn’t laughing.
“This way.”
Augustus stood, unable to look the man in the eyes. They turned away from the changing room entrance, went through a small door and climbed a narrow wooden staircase. While ascending the stairs, Augustus noticed the index finger of Dmitri’s left hand was missing, an off-white bandage wrapped around his wrist and threaded through his middle finger and thumb, the finger severed just above the first joint. Better not to ask.
Dmitri opened the door to a near empty room, a few chairs stacked in one corner, and motioned Augustus over to the window.
Dmitri pulled out two chairs and placed them facing each other in the middle of the room.
He sat.
Augustus looked from the window down into an empty courtyard surrounded by a rusting steel fence. A car was parked close to the gate.
“What am I looking at?” said Augustus, confused.
“You’ll see.”
He was completely at the mercy of these people. They could kill him and within one hour there wouldn’t be a body part to identify him by. They wouldn’t turn him over to the police, who would either close the place down or more probably increase the establishment’s monthly operating “tax.”
A door opened two floors below, at the same level as the basement, and a dull light flooded the courtyard. Two men appeared, one walking behind the other, carrying an object between them. They walked into the middle of the courtyard, the man at the front of the bundle turning his face towards the window. He cradled what looked like a carpet or tarpaulin under one arm and lifted the corner. The girl’s lifeless eyes bore straight into his, set in a rigid, sheet white face that would never again laugh at the joke of a friend or feel stroked by the warmth of the sun.
Augustus reeled backwards and felt the bile rise in his throat. He vomited onto the floor by the base of the window. Suddenly light-headed, the shock of looking into those dead, soulless eyes causing him to lose all feeling in his legs and crumple to the floor. He lay, wrapped in the fetal position, crying like a small child.
The sharp pain in his left side momentarily halted his breathing. Again and again he felt Dmitri’s boot sear against his ribs, layers of fat doing nothing to shield him from the metal caps sewn into the tough leather army boots.
“You are a fat piece of shit. A fucking pig. What did you do to her? She was one of the best. Do you know how much money you have cost me? Now I pay the police. I pay to get rid of the body. I pay her parents. You are a worthless fucking pig.” Another kick to the ribs.
“I should just kill you here, have you filleted and thrown into the Moskva.”
“Anything, I’ll do anything. Money, anything you want,” Augustus whimpered, the left side of his body on fire. “Just please get me away from here. I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened to her. I didn’t do anything to her. It was the drugs.”
“You didn’t do anything to her. You beat her black and blue for two hours, hanging from a rope. You fucking pervert. You didn’t do anything to her?”
No kick this time. As distressed as Augustus was, he knew it was deal making time. He drew himself up painfully against the slat board wall.
“How much do you want?” the rasping noise coming from his mouth he barely recognized as his own voice.
Chapter 43
He replaced the handset and lifted the Cohiba from the ashtray. He took a deep draw on the pungent, robustly flavored smoke, held it for just a moment, letting it sting the roof of his mouth and then ejected it through his nose and mouth simultaneously.
Rykov had been right about Dmitri. Dmitri had earned his ten thousand dollars. Probably been more than amply compensated for the finger too, depending on how much he had managed to frighten out of Goodfriend. How could someone so stupid have gotten into a position of such power? Even after Goodfriend had been blackmailed into losing his bank and the best part of two hundred million euros, he kept going back for more. It didn’t occur to him that Jay would find his new playground of choice and keep a close eye on his perverted obsession? Powerful people, brought down by their own uncontrolled base instincts.
That was what kept Jay separate from the rest of them. He controlled his urges, focused on the endgame, allowed nothing to get in his way, distract him or compromise his purpose.
He lifted the handset and called Switzerland.
“Bonjour, Banque Privé de Genève. Puis-je vous aider?” the receptionist answered.
“Marcel Blanc.”
“Of course, sir, one moment.”
“Marcel Blanc.”
“Marcel, Jay Rivello, I want you to execute my order.”
“Of course, monsieur. Right away.”
“Marcel, no, not right away. You execute now, it’ll scare the hell out of the markets. Do it over seven days. This is ten billion in negative positions.”
“Of course, Monsieur Rivello, I will instruct my colleagues to do exactly as you have requested.”
“That’s all, Marcel, tell me when you’ve placed the orders.” He rang off.
Rivello had more than one billion euros cash in his personal account at the Banque Privé de Genève. The eighty plus million euro contribution from the pugnacious, yet fatally overconfident Mr. Berg had taken him over the one billion mark. While not the bank’s wealthiest customer, he had made sure that he’d chosen an institution where he was important enough to get red carpet treatment. No questions asked.
Rivello was placing the biggest, one-off personal bet that the financial markets had ever seen. He was able to leverage his one billion, ten times over. He was shorting the market, wagering ten billion euros that banking stocks would universally fall in the coming weeks. If his bet came off, he would generate close to one hundred billion euros.
Most people would have thought him insane to take such a risk. Rivello knew he couldn’t lose. The game was rigged. Beirsdorf would go down and the resulting panic would send dozens of other banks into an irreversible tailspin.
He had the human key that would unlock the floodgates so dramatically that nothing would stop the contagion. Elisabeth Kennedy’s love for her son would cause her to do something completely unexpected when Beirsdorf Klein was torpedoed. She would let it go down. Share prices would plummet. Even the healthiest banks would see their shares fall faster than a stone. Rivello would emerge as one of the world’s richest men. He would be able to pick his way through the world’s choicest companies, assets and real estate and buy anything he wanted for cents on the dollar. He dialed a London number.
“Augustus.”
“Jay, is that you?”
“The day after tomorrow. Wednesday. You know what to do.”
“Jay,” Augustus pleaded, “the bank will go bust. We’ll have to seek funding from the Fed. This bank’s more than a hundred years old. You’ll destroy it.”
“Exactly,” said Jay, “do it or you’ll be spending a hell of a long time in prison. Depending, of course, on how long they let you live.”
“Listen, Rivello, I have it on good advice that for a first time offense against a minor, I may spend two, maybe three years in prison, following which I’ll be let out on good behavior if I keep my nos
e clean. You thought I wouldn’t become fully informed after the last, shall we say, unfortunate situation?”
“Sure, Augustus. Listen, a tip. Next time you feed horse tranquilizer to an underage whore, make sure you’re not jerking-off in front of a video camera.”
Chapter 44
Pisti,
I’m so sorry. I had no choice. You’d have stopped me if I’d waited to say good-bye. I’ll call.
XXX
Tesz
István stood by the table in the kitchen. He’d found the note only moments before. It was seven a.m. He’d been awake since six.
They had to have left soon after dawn, perhaps earlier. He could’ve kicked himself for being so stupid. He had taken a risk pleading with Berg to leave without her. He should’ve known that Berg would tell her and Tereza would do the only thing she could. Now they’d both die. He’d done what he could to stop it.
As he slipped the note into the pocket of his dressing gown, he heard footsteps outside the front door. Ahh, of course, I knew she couldn’t just walk out on me like that. Relief flowed through him as he hastily made his way towards the front door. As he reached for the handle, the door imploded, the leading edge missing his head by a fraction of a centimeter. The handle smacked into the wall, taking a chunk out of the plaster before ricocheting backwards, the door this time prevented from completing its trajectory by a heavy black boot on the foot of a leg the width of a tree trunk. István was transfixed, frozen to the spot by the ferocity of what had happened. The man on the other side of the door was a goliath, his face devoid of emotion, eyes as cold as any István had seen. The man was poised to rush into the house, gun already drawn and grasped in his right hand.
“You’re too late, Rykov,” snapped István, his teeth gritted in irritation, “they’ve gone. And next time give me some warning, will you? You almost took my damn head off.”
The Paper Factory (Michael Berg Book 1) Page 11
