Never Back Down

by Solomon Carter

  “I will tell you everything when I can.” If I want to.

  “Promise me you will stay safe.”

  “No, Richard. I can’t do that. I’ll call you soon.” She was pulling the phone away from her ear when his voice called her back.

  “Eva… I don’t believe you.” And then he hung up. When Dan pulled that kind of stunt in the old days, she always had to ring him back so she could win the argument, and sometimes he would kill it with a joke, and other times he would let her win. He knew how to play her. But Richard didn’t. Richard was right. She had excluded him ever since Dan Bradley had come back on the scene demanding her full attention once again. The warmth of anger, shame, and embarrassment returned. She remembered her drunken father spluttering that she was too much of a fool for boys and always would be. Nothing like an inspiring prophecy from a loving father to help you on your way in life. But she had always worked to overcome those words, to work against them, rejecting the advances of the sparkle eyed hunks and good-looking charmers until she went to University. And then she spent her time with the most select few, careful never to be predictable, never to be a patsy for men. Until Dan, that is. And no matter how she tried to avoid it, Dan Bradley always managed to make a daft little girl out of her, even now into her thirties, through a matter of life and death he had done it again. She smiled a little, and found Jess watching her with a look of impatience and a little knowing smile of her own. “Enough with the boy trouble. You’ve got work to do.”

  “You’re right, Jess. One way or another, this mess has to end today.”

  “I don’t see how. But that would be a relief.”

  “It has to end, Jess. I can’t stand any more of this madness.”

  Jess carried on isolating possible venues where a prisoner could be held within the Marka Real Estate portfolio, while Eva began to call every number in the old notebook. Not many answered. There were dead ends. There were live wires, the untrustworthy, and names who had since become so close to Marka they had to be avoided. Several had been crossed out, and she realised it was because these ones were dead. But before long, one of the calls turned up trumps, and all the while Jess was eliminating properties that would waste their time. Being busy had pulled Jess from the shaking trance she had been in. While the girls worked, Laura looked unsettled and fidgety, until she eventually declared, “I’m going for a walk.” They were so busy, Eva simply nodded and said ‘be careful and don’t forget the key,’ before dialling another number, and Jess didn’t say a word. And in being busy, they failed to notice a car that had drawn up on the street outside nearby, with one man sitting patiently inside, occasionally turning his head to watch their offices from his darkened windows.

  The man was extremely thickset, patient, wore a smart pinstripe suit too hot for the summer. The air-con was turned up high in his four by four. And there was a tattoo on his neck, a coil of black Celtic ribbons wound into a circle, with a spear-like arrow tracing from the centre up towards his strong jutting jaw, and a ribbon-like tail which drew down the column of his neck under his silk shirt collar. He was just out of sight of the office window and was under orders to remain so. For the time being.

  The big call came unexpectedly. It was a name hastily written in Dan’s big bubble scrawl. It read YURI with a mobile number next to it. She dialled the number, expecting another dead-end-dead-air, but within three rings a man with a deep resonating Eastern European accent answered clearly. “Yes?” was all he said.

  “Is this Yuri?”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Dan Bradley’s partner. Well, I was actually. We were, well, together as well for many years. Do you know him?”

  “Is he still alive? He’s a mad man. A danger to himself and others… but a good man too, I think.”

  “He’s missing.”

  “Ah. Sorry to hear that. But he knew what to expect from this mess.”

  “Well, he didn’t expect this. Look, I’m sorry – Yuri? I’m at a complete disadvantage here. All I have is a book of names and numbers, most of which don’t work anymore or don’t lead anywhere. Dan was abducted two days ago, and unless I find him—“

  “-he will be killed.”

  Eva’s mouth went to speak, but she could not. He spoke with authority, as if he already knew… she waited for him to continue.

  “I’m sorry. What I mean is that if the Russian has him – and I am virtually certain he does – then he only has a certain amount of time before the punishments become execution.”

  “Then he may be alive.”

  “Two days? Alive, possibly. But in serious pain.”

  “You called him a Russian, like a separate nationality to you. Are you not Russian?”

  “Georgian. We Georgians have been under Moscow’s rule one way of another for centuries. We are different in character and origin. But we know each other’s history, though mainly from a Russian Soviet taught perspective. And then we know the truth, as taught by our families. You are worried about him. You are making these calls. What do you plan to do, Miss, Mrs…?”

  “Eva. At this point, I don’t know enough to make a clear decision. I have ideas, all of them seem dangerous.”

  “If you plan to rescue him, then yes, any plan will be extremely dangerous and unlikely to succeed.”

  “Can you tell me anything at all that will help? Please? You knew Dan. You know he doesn’t deserve this.”

  “No one deserves this. But it happens frequently. I was almost a victim of this man.”

  “You don’t mention him by name.”

  “None of this is safe, Miss Eva. It is better to speak carefully if we must speak at all. In your situation there may be layers of surveillance involved, there is in mine.”

  Eva looked at the clock on the wall. The man read her silence as a prompt.

  “Yes, let us be quick then. I was on the board of Gazprom, the vast utility corporation created to maintain and run the whole gas business which was once state-owned by the Soviet regime. As you may know, when these organisations were created and privatised, they were sold in a way that they were as near as given to men who were friends of the regime. The new free Russian Regime was officially friendly to the West, since those in power at the time of Yeltsin were fearful of the world and its threats, and fearful also of the chaos all around them. The former powers were disparate, all at sea. But soon, the world began to right itself. The former KGB saw avenues to secure its power base by obtaining key stakes in the old utilities. They steered the sale of them at marked down rates towards people who had been sympathisers to the KGB or had worked with them. This meant that former secret service and current secret service men suddenly had the monopoly on state wealth within a ridiculously short space of time. Soon after this, the government began to stabilise, grow confident as the old Russia had been the centre of the Soviet empire. With growing KGB influence, the Russia of smiles and freedom, still wearing its Glasnost party hat, gave way to a cold assertive and austere face, the true face of the secret services, and the face which the Soviet state had maintained under all the state leaders until Gorbachev. The new Russia, with a KGB President, used the capitalistic system against those who had believed Russia would become a weak pawn in the new post-communist world. They didn’t understand Russia could now play without any rules. It wasn’t attached to communism or free market economics and certainly not maintaining an illusion of democracy as your governments in the west insist on. No, the Russians are now the true free marketeers, using the power of gangsters, soldiers, weapons and the old KGB to broker power and make advances across the world. I was a small part of those initial advances, post Yeltsin. I came over here to initiate cross country deals between your gas companies and Gazprom. But we were here for several purposes, and one of them was to persuade the UK government we were trustworthy to do business with, as was our mission with your multi-nationals, and also at a lower level to persuade Russian led businesses that there was a place for them within our network – and a piec
e of the profits – so long as they helped and protected us. This was a two-way persuasion process – these people were not exclusively traditional businessmen. They included the new Russian gangsters too. And among these was the man of whom we speak. My associates held a separate meeting with him and two other men about a specific problem the government wanted taking care of as a sign of goodwill. The government men could have done it themselves, but through offering business and money in return, they could now have their will done for merely the promise of greasing some palms. Life was cheap in the case of Yevgeny Tregenev. Dan Bradley was obsessed by that case, wasn’t he? And one thing he knew all too well was that gangsters do not come by radioactive Polonium by mistake. Everyone who heard of Tregenev’s death knew that it had to be state sponsored. But the government were safe. They could not be implicated. It was not them who actually killed him. It was someone else. And Dan Bradley was convinced that it was the man who now holds him captive.”

  Eva was keeping up with the man’s racing monologue, but so far there was nothing new she could use beyond a further insight into the power which created Dan’s plight.

  “Was Marka involved in the assassination?”

  “In a sense, it does not matter. There were consultations with a few individuals about the Tregenev problem. The name of Tregenev would never have been mentioned, such was the infamy of the man after he publicly defected and became a British citizen - as well as the loudest Russian dissident in the west. You may remember he made a point of criticising the President almost weekly. The coverage Tregenev got in England was nothing to the coverage he received in the remaining free press in Russia – at least until it was closed down. Tregenev had put his head in the noose the moment he defected, but he made it all the more definite with every complaint and condemnation of Russia’s autocratic shift. Therefore, none of the people involved had to hear specifically the name of the planned victim, all they needed was a point in the right direction and a nod from a Russian representative to give them a green light to act.”

  “Which means?”

  “That everyone can plead innocence and deny knowledge of giving or accepting an order to kill. But the blood is on someone’s hands, and yes, Marka would have gladly done it I think. He is ambitious. Dan was sure he was guilty, and he told me he had the evidence to prove it. He talked me through most of it, and said he was going to show me the smoking gun. He never managed to do this because by now his involvement had been leaked and Marka’s men destroyed and deleted his evidence. I think everything he told me made sense - to a point. I think Dan must have had real proof at one stage. But it can never be proven now.”

  “That’s not my concern here. It never was. Getting Dan back alive is my concern.”

  “Yes, but you need to understand Marka if you are going to do this. He is the cruellest man I have ever known – he stakes his reputation on it. The good news is that this means your husband may be alive.”

  Husband? Wrong! But she didn’t interrupt the Georgian’s flow.

  “But the bad news is he will not be alive for long, and you will not want me to mince my words, for time is short – he will have ensured as best he can that Dan will be unable to escape, that he will be killed slowly and painfully, so the manner of his death will be reported as widely as possible to ensure maximum effect in the people he wants to fear him.”

  “Yuri - I don’t want to be scared of this man. I need to know where Dan is and that is all.”

  “I cannot give you a precise location, my dear. But I can give you what I know. Before he was killed, I had a contact - a kind of friendship which sometimes involved a few minor bribes – a man who had fought in Grozny. He was as savage as they came, which was probably why Marka had employed him. Killing had become second nature to him, easy, without a tweak of his conscience. But the one thing this man did enjoy was watches to show off his wealth. Very Russian. I gave this man a Rolex – small change to Gazprom – for some insight into Marka’s operation.”

  “And?”

  “He worked in a gang removing threats to Marka in a roving capacity. They were known as the Outfit or something like this. They worked on easing his problems and eradicating them. Sometimes, they would be asked to bring in enemies of Marka to ensure they had suffered enough to merit the stress they had caused him. On two occasions this happened, he told me that they used a storage space in East London, and a warehouse somewhere in Dagenham, I think. And the other time they used a basement at one of Marka’s companies in Southwark. I recall these incidents because in all these cases there was such cruelty involved I felt compelled to ask more – it seemed to me that a modern man could not get away with such depravity in a country like England. But I know different now. Even this land is not what it seems. But it is still light years from the Russian way. Russia is now a police state. But the phrase is misleading, because in league with the autocrats are the oligarchs and the gangsters, who all merge into one. The nightmare visions of the Communist dreamers have all come true, I’m afraid. But only in Russia, would you believe! How grim and how perfect.”

  Eva had scribbled her way through the man’s words, but a new fear began to dawn on her as she felt the end of the conversation approaching.

  “Yuri?”

  “Yes?”

  “Who are you? Nobody so far has helped us. Everybody has lied.”

  “Ah. Yes. I understand. Let me tell you this. As I speak, I am looking out of the window. There is a car below with a man in it who has been there all day today, and yesterday, and the day before that. This line is probably bugged. This is unfortunate. Because then they will know about you, but I have been able to see the way forward clearly for some time now. My fate is a matter of the balance of power between the interests of my hosts, and the interests of the regime in Russia that I once served. I have no power, no wealth, nothing. All I have while I wait to die is the fact that I can I offer the truth. Since I defected, that is all I have left. I have no intention of dying as painfully as Tregenev or the man before him, but what can I do? It may be a hail of bullets or a sea of poison. Either way, no one would ever give you odds on me making my old age. All I have now, I give those in search of the truth. Does that answer your question?”

  “In a way, yes it does. And more besides.”

  “That is enough. I hope you find him alive and well. Send him my warm regards.”

  “Thank you, Yuri.”

  Her eyes glazing in thought about the man Yuri, and the information he had given her, Eva considered whether she could trust what he had said. She had a gut instinct for these things, and it had not let her down in the case of Parker. If anything, she knew she had trusted her head over her heart for far too long. This Yuri sounded like a man who had honour, who was facing death square on. She made the decision there and then to trust the feeling in her stomach, the feeling which also told her to run and hide, and to dowse it with a bottle of wine. At her core was a determination to get to the heart of this, to rescue Dan or collect his body. And if she lived to do so, then there was a chance that she could bring down the most evil man she had ever heard of. She would not do it for Yevgeny Tregenev, for she knew little of him. She would do it for Dan, and through Dan. The Tregenev murder was likely to remain unsolved forever, since to solve it would always be a British Government finger pointing towards the Russian President. For the sake of international diplomacy, it could never happen. But to make Marka fall on the name of Dan Bradley, that had a different ring to it, the sound of justice, and Eva liked the idea very much. It was insane to think of, but no less sane than any other ideas or actions she had made since all of this crazy business started. She looked at Jess and found the young woman already poised, analysing Eva’s face for clues to her thinking.

  “Focus on Southwark and Dagenham too. I think we have our first real leads.”

  “Southwark’s not here, but Dagenham’s on my list already. A huge warehouse for import/export under the name of White Star Gazette. Most of Marka’s firms a
re subsidiaries of White Star Gazette Holdings.”

  “We must find a connection to Southwark too. We can’t move until we’ve got a fix on it.”

  Something else Yuri had said stuck in her head. Eva got up from the sofa and walked to the window. She tweaked the blind open and peered through to the summer street. The cars thudded and weaved by, there were pedestrians ambling, and there were a few parked cars, though not many. The town centre was a way off, and no one had real need to park a car around here unless you were one of the few business owners, a resident or a teacher at the nearby school. She looked at the three cars nearby. An old Ford Escort, an old Fiat Punto, and a newer car, a large clean white four by four with tinted windows. It was a little further down the road than the rest. It was a Toyota or a Lexus, something like that, and she squinted at it. Yes, it was definitely empty. They were in the clear. She breathed a silent sigh and went back to her place on the sofa, and began again to flick through the notebook. “Twenty minutes. No more. And then we move. We need that Southwark address, Jess. Then we go.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Eva nodded.

  Outside, the man with the tattoo on his neck was standing pressed to the wall at the side of the Eva Roberts office building. He hated reconnaissance; in fact he hated any form of waiting. He preferred movement, action, fighting, eating, drinking, screwing, in fact any kind of doing. So right now, with an extra-large meat pasty in his mouth, he stood peering through a gap between the edge of the blind and the window at the side of the office. They would never see him unless they knew he was there. He chewed, watched them and shook his head. This was the most boring duty Gillespie had ever given him, but like all the others, he knew it was important to do it right. With another bite he stomped slowly back to his white Toyota and prepared to sit it out some more.

  Jess came up with the goods a minute before Eva was going to take the tablet off her to start trying the various search terms she had been going over in her head. Just as Eva was getting ready to shift, her eyes on the wall clock above Jess’s head, the girl announced, “I told you I was good.”