by A P Bateman
“What about the Russian government?” Sally Robinson asked. “Can’t the British government put pressure on them?”
The Home Secretary laughed, taking a mouthful of wine. “The Russian’s neither care, nor fear any sanctions we may consider. We need their oil and gas and we have nothing in the same league as their military might. No, I’m afraid that Russia is the big boy in the playground and we’re poking our head around the toilet door hoping to be left alone.” She paused. “And the Russian president is the biggest gangster of them all…”
“Careful, honey,” Harold laughed. “Don’t get on the front pages with a quote like that!”
Robinson grinned. “I think present company can be trusted.”
“I’m thinking about the waiting staff.” He stopped speaking as one of the servers glided towards them and asked if they would like desserts. Robinson went for the cheese selection and the Home Secretary decided on an espresso. She said she had a speech to prepare for and would be up until the early hours. Harold kept coming back to the baked Alaska, and as it was a ‘serve two’ dessert, Sally dutifully accepted his request to share. Robinson decided he would not invite them again, but he ordered them a box of the homemade chocolates to go with his own to take home.
“This is wonderful, though,” said the Home Secretary as the waitress bustled away. “I do enjoy this place.” She raised a glass to him and said, “To the expense account!”
“To Wetherspoons and Harvesters!” he replied, chinking glasses. “Where much of my business has to be endured to balance the books for a meal like this!”
The Home Secretary smiled. “Oh dear, we may have to look at upping your expense account, after all.”
They all laughed, but Robinson laughed harder than the others as he thought about how he had side-lined funding to cover the costs of the team from MI5. He hoped they were nearing a positive result. Hoped they could hold back the tide against the surge of Russian crime. He would not be able to claim credit for the MI5 team’s ‘sanctions’, but at least the crime statistics would fall dramatically under his watch.
***
From his table - three removed from Commander Robinson, the Home Secretary and their respective partners - Major Diminov was seated at a booth beside the stained-glass window, where he sipped from his Courvoisier as he paid the bill. With a cover charge and tip included in the price, he refused the prompt on the card machine to leave a discretionary tip, shaking his head and thinking how Western capitalism had peaked, but under no illusion that it had. There would always be surprises when he travelled abroad but he could see the changes happening in his own country more and more. His homeland had changed so much since the fall of the wall. Barely out of his teens when it had happened, he had welcomed the progressive evolution of his country and its people, but like so many of his comrades, now wished for a middle ground between the two extremes his country had experienced in just a few decades.
Diminov had chosen only a main dish – to enable him to be ready when the group finished their meal - much to the consternation of his dinner date. But she was being paid over five hundred pounds for the evening, so she could get on with it without complaint. She was on the books of one of London’s top escort agencies, and her presence in the CCTV footage that would later be scrutinised by the police and both MI5 and MI6 would undoubtedly throw up another avenue of investigation and keep them busy long after he was back behind his desk in Moscow tomorrow evening.
Diminov took out his phone and typed out a text. He sent it as he watched the foursome drain their glasses and look to make a move to leave. He kept his phone on the table, then smiled and felt relieved when he saw the reply. He nodded to his date as he slipped the phone back into his pocket. She finished her glass of champagne and picked up her clutch, dutifully following the man as he walked past the table. He hesitated for a moment in front of the Home Secretary, and a stocky man in a dark grey suit got up from a nearby table and stepped between them. Diminov frowned, but the man did not move, shielding the Home Secretary from him. He could see the bulge of the pistol under the cut of the man’s suit, his jacket buttons undone and his hands hovering at waist level in front of him, ready to give him a shove or draw his standard issue Glock 17 9mm pistol.
“Sorry,” Diminov said, stepping around him. He ushered the girl around the bodyguards, glancing back at the woman that the man had been dining with. She was dressed a little austere and somewhat manly in a trouser suit, and he could see the earpiece she was wearing in her left ear. That made her righthanded, the earpiece being further away from her gun hand. She was looking worried but starting to relax as Diminov continued to walk away, but he turned and watched them, feigning enlightenment, and recognition. The Home Secretary. It happened all the time. The bodyguard was returning to the table where his partner was taking a sip of water. Diminov could see they had been dining on nothing but a complimentary basket of bread, their cutlery untouched, and an empty water jug with ice and lemon separated the two of them. “My fault,” he mouthed with a smile. The bodyguard made a gesture like it was nothing.
Diminov took out his phone and typed a short text. Outside, he could see the black Jaguar the Home Secretary and her husband had arrived in, parked on the road opposite. Parked three cars behind was the black Range Rover support vehicle. Inside both cars was a driver, and in the Jaguar’s passenger seat the primary bodyguard waited, a mobile phone to his ear. Diminov could imagine the Home Secretary and her husband exiting, the two close protection officers a discreet two metres behind. Escorting them to the car, where the primary bodyguard would have already swept around the car and have the door open ready for them. The close protection officers veering off to the support vehicle and the convoy of two vehicles pulling seamlessly out and sweeping past the restaurant. But it would not happen like that.
Commander Robinson and his wife did not have the same degree of protection, but he did have an unmarked Jaguar saloon at his disposal, and a plain-clothed protection officer-come-driver. Diminov did not see the police commander’s vehicle, but he imagined a short phone call would see it pull to the curb less than a minute later.
Timing would be everything. He checked his phone again, ignoring the escort’s question regarding the rest of the evening. He hadn’t been out to impress her, simply wanted the inconspicuousness of being viewed as a couple. He had been told by the agency that sex would be by mutual arrangement, and on her terms. He still hadn’t decided whether he wanted her yet. Diminov hailed a taxi as he crossed the road. The taxi pulled in fifty metres further up the street at the next available space. He checked his phone again, looked at the entrance to the restaurant, then pressed send to the text his thumb had been hovering over the whole time.
It was a go.
The Home Secretary and her husband paused on the steps long enough to exchange air kisses with Commander Robinson and his wife, the two men shaking hands. The lights on both protection vehicles came on as their engines started. A dark coloured van drove down West Street, past The Ivy, and put on its hazards and stopped in the road as another van stopped on the junction on Lichfield Street, the façade of the triangular-fronted restaurant occupying real estate on both streets. Robinson’s Jaguar swept to the curb outside the restaurant on West Street and the driver got out and opened the rear door. A third van pulled up behind.
Diminov smiled. Textbook. The entire entourage was boxed in, a van at each point of the triangle. He opened the taxi door, told the driver the name of the hotel and slapped the escort’s buttocks as she bent down and clambered inside. She let out a giggle, that sounded altogether fake. He was feeling powerful, the surge of testosterone thumping through him, his heart pounding at the exhilaration, and he would unleash it upon the escort as soon as he closed the hotel door.
***
Commander Robinson watched, the scene playing in slow motion. He was on his knees, crouching for cover beside his vehicle. He saw his driver glance behind him, the van stopping in the middle of the roa
d. He had his weapon in his hand, and Robinson noticed it was shaking. The Home Secretary and her husband were climbing into their vehicle – the most vulnerable and dangerous time in any escorted journey was widely considered to be the embus/debus. The bodyguards knew it, and the Home Secretary knew it. And the seven, armed Russian agents that alighted from the three vans knew it, too. Robinson saw the muzzle flashes, heard the roar of automatic gunfire and was aware of his wife’s screams. But the slow motion suddenly sped up to full speed, and it all happened so quickly. Bodyguards returning fire, their 9mm Glocks sounding like popguns compared to the roar of the Kalashnikovs. He could see the desperation in the bodyguards’ faces, their movements as they frantically attempted to halt the tide, but to no avail. He could see the body armour worn by the attackers, the bandoliers carrying spare magazines. They were professional, too. Soldiers. Taking a knee and finding cover to change magazines, make their weapons ready again, before moving on. Amid the chaos, two bodyguards had broken cover to attempt to save their charges but were mown down by round upon round of 7.62mm short that left the barrel at thirteen rounds per second. The attackers gained ground, casually aiming head shots at the dying protection officers on the ground, not pausing or slowing momentum as they delivered an emotionless coup de grâce. He could see that one of the attackers had opened the door of the Home Secretary’s Jaguar. His heart was pounding, he was aware of his wife’s screams beside him, but he could not take his eyes off the scene of murder and mayhem. He looked at his bodyguard for guidance, but the man was down. A lone attacker crossed the road, briefly hesitated behind the body of his driver, and fired a shot into the man’s head, splitting it like a watermelon. The muzzle of the assault rifle raised and then hovered in front of his wife’s face.
“Please, no…” Robinson managed. His throat and mouth as dry as he’d ever known, and the words barely made it out. He swallowed hard and said, “Not my wife,” he said quietly. “She is a mother of two…”
The gunman moved the weapon and aimed it directly at Robinson’s face. The gunfire had ceased. The night eerily silent. The ominous sound of a battle won, a battle lost. Behind him, the rest of the attackers were heading for the vehicle further down West Street. The smoking wreckage of the two protection vehicles were blocking the road, and cars that had pulled up in the short time of the attack had been left abandoned as the other drivers had fled. He looked at Robinson, his eyes cold and hard and steady. The rest of his face was obscured by the balaclava. He checked his aim, and Robinson closed his eyes. The gunman then moved his weapon and fired three shots into the woman’s face. Commander Robinson opened his eyes. Blood and brain matter and fragments of skull had smattered his face and his wife had fallen backwards, propped up against the wall of the restaurant, the top half of her head missing. Robinson stared at the man, his lips quivering and his hands trembling.
“Znay svoyego vraga…” said the Gunman. “Znay svoyego vraga.”
20
Albania
King had rented the only car with off-road pretensions on the hire company’s books. It was a Suzuki Vitara which had seen better days, but at least the taller wheelbase and larger tyres made the potholed road more bearable as he drove through the tight bends of the mountain road.
“Romanovitch is in St. Petersburg, I still don’t see why we should have come to Albania.”
King glanced at Alaina, battling with the jarring steering wheel as the front wheels found another pothole deep enough to grate the underside of the vehicle on the road surface. “I told you, I need to start the ball rolling here first. And for what I have in mind, I need considerable finances. Feel free to go after Romanovitch yourself, by all means.”
Alaina folded her arms across her chest. “And feel free to go into the lion’s den without what I know.”
King shrugged. “I was all set to do just that,” he said irritably. He worked best alone. Or at the very least with Caroline or Rashid. Big Dave had gone back to London, an assignment he had walked away from still waiting for him, but he had made it quite clear that he thought Alaina should have remained at the property in the Urals. But King had not only felt for the woman, he had formulated a new plan after talking to her at great depth about Romanovitch’s most trusted men. She had something he needed, only she did not know it yet.
“I miss her,” she said quietly. “My sister did not deserve to die like that.”
King nodded. “You truly believe her to be dead?”
“The cook had no reason to lie.”
“She may have been mistaken.”
Alaina shrugged. “And if she is not dead, then the life she would have in one of Romanovitch’s brothels would be worse than death.”
“Nothing is worse than death,” said King. “No matter how bad it is, it’s still living, and there is still hope that your situation can improve.”
“You believe that?”
“Of course.”
“Then you can’t have known pain and anguish, or illness or despair.” She paused. “What do you know of such things?”
“All there is.”
“Because you are a tough guy? A killer? You think you know what it is to ache inside, in the way I do?”
King said nothing. He had nursed a dying wife, come back to her body and a curt note telling him that she would now be free from pain and that he should forget her and move on with his life. It had taken him five years before he had succumbed to another woman. And she had been a double agent, and he had held her hand as she had died, comforting her in her last moments. Told her to remember the love of her deceased husband. And not one day since had he not regretted her giving him no choice but to pull the trigger. He had killed many times, and he had been close to death himself. Nobody would ever convince him that there was a case for giving up, a reason not to go on. He believed it was a primal instinct, that survival was all there was, and he did not understand those who would succumb to a quick release.
He bumped over the last of the ruts and pulled the small four-by-four into the farmyard. Flymo’s vehicle was parked beside the large barn that had served as a hangar to the helicopter. He hoped the man had managed to procure what King had asked him to get. King parked next to the house and switched off the engine.
“What is this place?” she asked nervously.
“Somewhere for you to stay,” he said. “While I do what has to be done.”
“And what is that?”
“I work better alone.”
“No way! I am not staying here!”
King got out, putting the keys in his pocket. He headed towards the large barn without looking back. Alaina followed begrudgingly, choosing to remain with King, rather than to risk losing sight of him. King wondered whether she was experiencing a form of Stockholm Syndrome, although he was not holding her against her will, since leaving with her she had only wanted to remain with him.
Flymo stepped out from the barn, cleaning his hands on a rag. He frowned when he noticed Alaina. “Who is this?”
“Long story,” said King.
“Alaina Kopolova,” she replied, walking past King and holding out her hand.
“Leroy,” he replied. “But they call me Flymo.”
“Flymo,” she frowned. “That is a strange name.”
“I’m a pilot,” he said. “A helicopter driver. I get so low, not even a Flymo can hover lower.”
“And what is this Flymo?”
“It’s a type of lawnmower.”
“I see…” she said, but clearly did not. “And you are a gardener also?”
“No, a pilot.”
“And this Flymo is good, yes?”
“No, not really. But it hovers on air, just above the ground. That was its unique selling point.” He paused. “It’s just a joke, and jokes aren’t all that funny when you have to explain them in detail.”
“Have you got the things I asked for?” King asked, interrupting the struggling conversation.
“All in the barn,” he said.
“Okey dokey,” he replied amiably. “But we have a problem there. The pick-up died where I parked it. It struggled all the way up the mountain pass. I tried moving it this morning but no joy.” He paused. “And the bird is on skid pans, ready for me to tow it out.”
“Can you fix the truck?”
“I doubt it. I mean, I can have a go, but the engine is ceased solid and I tinker with helicopter engines a little, not cars. I’m certainly not a mechanic, I just do enough to keep a well serviced helicopter in the air. Do you have a tow hitch on that thing?” he asked, looking at the tiny four by four.
“No,” King shook his head.
“Right.”
“You could unfasten the skids and fly it out.”
Flymo looked back at the opening. “I guess. I mean, it will be tight.”
“Not for someone who has earned the name Flymo. You hover mere inches above the ground, after all…” King said sarcastically. He wanted to test him and was sure the pilot would take the bait.
“Fine,” Flymo replied curtly and headed for the barn.
“A pilot? I was confused by the gardener thing…” Alaina said, watching him leave. “You have your own helicopter?”
“The missing team did, yes,” King replied.
“And you will use this to take down Romanovitch? How?”
“Not Romanovitch,” King answered tersely. “His Albanian counterpart. The Russians and the Albanians are doing business together. The team were meant to disrupt their business, cause them a loss in profits and a break in the supply chain.”
“But they went missing…”
“Yes.”
“The Albanians visited the lodge in the Urals. Two men,” said Alaina, her face sullen, like the memory pained her. “Something terrible happened. I did not see what happened and was told by Draco to remain inside. Then just one of the Albanians left. The next day I cleaned up the dishes and remains of a meal from the table on the pool terrace. There was dried blood on the grass. A huge amount. It had soaked in, but I could tell what it was. The other Albanian had died there, been butchered there. Later, there were many vodka bottles loose in the cellar. They should have been in the wooden crates, but they had been emptied out and the boxes removed. I think he was put into these crates, but I said nothing and asked nothing.” She paused. “These are ruthless people. If your friends have been captured, then I do not hold out much hope for them. And you shouldn’t, either. If they are not dead already, then they are as good as.”
