NATIONAL TREASURE

by Barry Faulkner

  ‘Be nice to know who the driver was, he might know where the money is.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What are you going to do next?

  ‘Nothing until we get the girl back.’

  ‘We?’ I didn’t like the ‘we’ bit.

  ‘I can get the Romanian police to work with you – they have a unit called the Special Operations Directorate who I’ve worked with before on getting info on Romanian organised crime gangs with branches over here.’

  ‘No, definitely not – I do this solo. I don’t want anybody to know I’m coming, least of all the local police. The Bogdan family is big, you know that – big and rich, and they would have friends in the force.’

  ‘You worried about leaks?’

  ‘Yes. You’re the only person who knows what I’m doing, so if it goes belly-up and something happens to me Gold has orders to kill you.’

  ‘I hope you are kidding, Nevis.’

  ‘I am, but you and I are the only ones on this at the moment. Let’s keep it that way until I get the girl back and trace the money.’

  Clancy thought for a few moments. ‘Okay, but if it does go belly-up you are on your own. I know nothing about it, and we’ve not had this conversation.’

  ‘You’d better change your SIM card then.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘One thing you can do.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Harry Cohen, theatrical agent with offices in Wardour Street – he’s a bit player in all this as far as I know, but he might be bigger than he lets on. Keep an eye on him, he might try to hop it. You can get his photo off the internet – might be worth putting a flag on him at the borders.’

  ‘Harry Cohen… Okay, will do.’

  ‘And another thing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you realise how much you’ve just cost the British taxpayer in mobile roaming charges?’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  Click.

  I went back to my clouds with a slight smile on my face. I’d managed to keep official law enforcement out of the case, which meant I could make decisions and generally wreak havoc if I needed to. One thing was for sure, Janie Johnson was coming home with me.

  CHAPTER 8

  I changed five hundred pounds into euros at the money exchange in Debrecen Airport and used some of it to rent a Range Rover at the SIXT car rental counter, all cash and using my George Hadlow passport and international driver’s licence. I always carry a thousand pounds in fifties in a small waterproof wallet strapped to my left ankle. I never use ATMs abroad; I wasn’t going to leave a trace of the real me anywhere. The drive over the border to Romania was without incident, drove straight through.

  I got a text from Gold, Marriot Hotel name Mr and Mrs Springer. Gold likes dogs. That didn’t mean we’d be sharing a room – she would have booked another room for herself – but by booking a double for Mr and Mrs it meant that if anything went wrong and I had to take a low profile at the hotel, the police would be checking the hotels for a recent booking for a single male, not a couple.

  I parked up in the hotel car park and checked in, keeping my head down and my face away from the CCTV camera. Fifth floor; nice room – should be for €180! Gold had paid upfront – cash, no doubt. So that was a bill going Marcia’s way sometime in the future, together with the cost of the flights. I took a shower, changed into casual and sent a text to Gold to say I was in. I checked my watch: four o’clock. With a bit of luck I’d have Janie out from wherever the Bogdans were holding her that night and back to Debrecen, onto the charter flight and home by the morning. Well, that’s the plan. Simple, eh? Well, aren’t they all on paper.

  Gold came into my room half an hour later. She was dressed to kill – and by that I mean literally to kill. All in black: black jeans, black ankle boots, black sweater and black padded jacket over a stab-proof vest. She had her Burberry shoulder bag with her; Gold’s shoulder bag is our toolbox, inside would be night vision glasses, gloves, balaclavas, earpieces and clip mics with belt clip batteries, and double-edged eight-inch knives and sheaths, flares and a grenade. See what I mean? Dressed to kill. If she’d been stopped at Customs I’d probably be bailing her out now.

  She took out a street map and laid it out on the table.

  ‘She’s here.’ Gold pointed to a street not far from the hotel. ‘It’s a club called The Amsterdam, big place with three floors above. The club’s in the basement, so Janie will be upstairs somewhere. First floor is illegal gaming with machines and tables, and then second and third are the Bogdans’ storerooms and living space. If you get in and find her, the only way out without risking being seen is down a steel zigzag fire escape bolted on the back of the building that comes down into a back alley. And it is an alley, not wide enough for a car.’

  I sat back. ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘The wonderful internet – the city planner’s office is all online, plans of just about every building in the city.’ She pulled out a copy of a building plan. ‘This is The Amsterdam Club – I looked it up, went back to the original planning permission details and hey presto.’ She pushed it in front of me. ‘All the planning details down to where the gambling machines and table were to be put and every room labelled, ‘birouri’, office, ‘magazine’, stores, and ‘spatiu de locuit’, living area.’

  ‘A burglar’s route map, eh?’

  ‘Your route map – study it.’ She stood to go. ‘I’m going to go and have a good look round, I’ll be back about ten o’clock – be ready. Everything’s in here.’ She put the shoulder bag on the bed. ‘If you eat, get room service to bring something up. Don’t leave the room – we don’t want your face on any CCTV.’ And with that instruction she left without another word.

  I ordered a chicken salad and coffee and watched the BBC World News on the TV as I ate it – nothing about the Bucharest Club in London – set my mobile alarm for nine and then slept.

  **********************************

  The mobile buzzed and woke me up. It wasn’t nine and caller ID showed Gold. I swung my legs off the bed and took it.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’ve got company.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘I was checking the alley behind The Amsterdam Club and two heavies came out. I followed them in case the Bogdans had another place nearby where the girl might be. They came straight to the hotel, spent some time at reception, and are now outside your door. I’ll do a walk by and we can do a double shift. I’ll take your left-hand one’

  ‘Okay.’

  A double shift is an attack method using one of you from the front of the targets and one from the back. Gold taking the left hand one meant she’d take care of the one on my left when I opened the door; I had to take the one on the right.

  ‘Five seconds.’

  I moved to the side of the door. If I’d looked through the peephole I’d probably have seen another eye looking in, so I kept under it, counting the seconds away in my head – one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five Mississippi... I pulled the door open as fast as I could and reached for the coat lapels of the goon on the right, pulling him towards me into the room, and smashed my forehead into his nose before he knew what was happening. I swung him round, kicked him in the back of his legs so he went down on his knees, and putting a lock on his head twisted until the sudden relaxation of his body told me I’d broken his neck and he was dead. I let him slump to the floor and turned to help Gold. Needless to say, she didn’t need any help; her goon was already dead, face down on the floor, blood seeping from the slit in his carotid neck artery onto a very expensive Marriot carpet. Gold kicked the room door shut behind her and went into the bathroom to clean blood from her knife and hands. I searched their overcoat pockets and found what I was looking for: each had a PPKS 9mm short pistol with a full clip.

  I took the duvet from the bed and covered the bodies.

  ‘That was lucky,’ I said as she came back out, and I passed
one of the pistols over and pocketed the other. Gold checked it over and put it in the shoulder bag.

  ‘We have to be clear by the morning, room service comes round about ten,’ she said, pushing the clean knife back into the sheaf Velcroed round her right ankle and switching on the hotel’s electric kettle. ‘Tea?’ I think there must be an English ancestor somewhere in her family history.

  Good job I’d persuaded Clancy not to involve the local police; we’d been in the country a few hours and already two dead! Let’s hope they’re not missed and nobody comes looking for them. Hotel reception would say they came up to this room.

  We drank our tea and went over the plan of the club building again. If Janie was there she’d be on one of the upper floors, probably the one with the stores; if the top two floors were living quarters I couldn’t see whoever lived there wanting a hostage for company. I wouldn’t see how to get up from the ground floor until I was inside, although there was always the fire escape on the back. First problem was getting into the club. I had thought of creating another ‘Big Tony’ incident, but I’d prefer to get inside quietly and un-noticed as it might take time to find Janie. I would need a distraction to get me in, something Gold specialises in.

  We finished our tea and I went into the bathroom and changed into my black gear: black suede ankle boots with thick rubber soles, black polo neck thermal jumper and black jeans with thigh, shin and back pockets, and of course my stab-proof vest. I put my knife sheath round my right ankle, the PKK in my right pocket, safety on, and fastened our communication battery pack onto my belt, pushed in my earpiece and clipped my microphone onto my polo neck; all wireless, so no leads to get tangled or pulled out. I was all set. Last thing was black gloves and balaclava ready for use in left thigh pocket. I gave Gold the hire car keys and told her whereabouts in the hotel garage it was; I always try to park as near to a car park exit as I can, for obvious reasons. Once I was in the club, Gold would fetch the car and be on hand for a speedy getaway, with or without Janie Johnson, but hopefully with her.

  Gold took the lift to the main entrance and I took the overcoat from my goon, checked it wasn’t bloody, slipped it on over my black gear and made my way out down the back stairs to the car park, onto the hotel front apron and across into the street. Darkness had thrown its cape over Bucharest. Hello darkness, my old friend.

  CHAPTER 9

  The Amsterdam Club was busy, very busy – I liked that, crowds give good cover. The queue of punters waiting to get in past the two very large doorman was a good fifty metres long and spilling from the pavement into the road. I edged near to the front of the queue on the opposite side of the road and waited for Gold to start the show.

  I didn’t have to wait long; a verbal altercation near the front of the queue quickly escalated to pushing and shoving as Gold pushed herself in. I watched the doormen taking a look and then exchanging words and laughter. That changed when a perfectly placed right uppercut from Gold laid out a young man on the pavement and all hell broke loose. The doormen were quick to skip down the club steps two at a time and push into the crowd. I was just as quick to skip up the steps, through the doors and into the club. Others in the queue had the same idea and quickly followed; that was good, the more the better. Any inside security hadn’t a chance of stopping them and the many others who had the same idea behind them.

  Inside the entrance to the club a short wide foyer area led to wide stairs going down to the dance area from where the incessant thud, thud, thud of dance beats could be heard. On the left before the stairs was a door marked ‘numai personalul’, staff only. I tried it and it opened. Once inside I closed it behind me and took stock of my bearings. I was in a corridor lit by fluorescent strips, with doors on both sides. I worked quickly along; the first two were an empty office and a storeroom, and the third door opened into a cloakroom, presumably for staff clothes as there were club logo T-shirts on a table and coats on wall hangers. I took off my borrowed goon overcoat and hung it up, taking my balaclava from my pocket and putting it on with my night vision glasses fastened tight around my forehead, ready to be flicked down to my eyes if needed. I took the PPK from the overcoat and slipped it into my right-hand thigh pocket, then I continued my room search. Next was a room of boxes – no time to look inside – followed by a room of old promotional material, stand-up adverts for events and a toilet. At the end of the corridor another door opened onto stairs going up and down; I chose up. I remembered the plan, the next floor would be the Casino; there was nobody on the stairs, so presumably it was shut.I crept up and I was right; double glass doors showed the Casino empty, lights off.

  Onto the next floor which should be more promising; this would be the storerooms on the building plan. A swing door led off the stairs into a corridor; a pair of lift doors on the left seemed to fit the storerooms scenario – crates of beer were heavy to carry up and down stairs, so the lift must be for getting that. The LED indicator showed the lift to be on the bottom floor; must be the actual club room. I checked the rooms along the corridor; yes, all stores, with beer barrels, crates and boxes of bottled spirits and bar snacks.

  A noise from the lift shaft caught my attention. The LED was now one above the bottom; the lift was on its way up, and this floor was next. I slipped quickly into the first room and stood to the side of the closed door. Anyone opening it wouldn’t see me until they stepped right into the room, by which time they’d be out cold. I hoped the lift would carry on up to the living accommodation floors. It didn’t.

  I heard a metallic scraping as the lift doors opened and then voices; two people, both male. They gave my door a miss and went into the next room. I heard crates being pulled from that room along the corridor and into the lift – quite a few, business in the club must be good. At last the lift doors clanged shut and it was gone. I peeked out of the room; all clear, the lift LED showed at the bottom again. I carried on with the rooms. The last one was locked – none of the others had been locked. I hadn’t time to play around with lock picks – anyway, I hadn’t got a pair with me – and it looked a common or garden cheap Yale one lever cylinder lock that wouldn’t offer much resistance, I planted my right boot dead centre on the lock with as much force as I could give. There was a loud splintering of wood and the door swung open, taking half the jamb with it. I moved quickly inside and knelt in the darkness, my gun poised in my right hand as my left flicked down my night vision glasses.

  It was a big room, bigger than the others, with the back half-partitioned off halfway to the ceiling with a door-sized opening. Something moved with a slight noise behind the partition. I moved quickly to the wall and crept silently along until I reached the partition, and laying sideways on the floor slid towards the opening; if there was anybody inside they wouldn’t expect me to be lowdown, and if armed would be aiming chest-high towards the opening. Slowly I looked around the opening; in the darkness my night visions picked out a figure huddled on the floor in the far corner.

  ‘Janie?’ I whispered across the floor.

  ‘Yes,’ came back a trembling answer.

  ‘Is there anybody in there with you?’

  ‘No.’

  I stood and walked in, checking around just in case. She was alone. There was a light switch by the opening; I flicked it and a single bulb hanging from the ceiling lit up the partitioned area. Janie Johnson was sat in a far corner on a mattress, next to a small table on which the remains of a bowl of soup and a bottle of mineral water stood. She stood up; she was wearing a blue boiler suit and I noticed her left wrist had a wide steel bracelet fastened round it like a handcuff, with a chain going from it to a hasp set into the floor. That was going to be a problem.

  ‘Who are you?’ Her voice was still trembling.

  ‘Mummy sent me. Don’t ask questions, just do as I say, okay? Questions can come later.’

  She nodded. ‘Okay.’

  I pointed to the bracelet. ‘Where’s the key?’

  ‘They have it, they unlock it when I go to the toilet.
’

  ‘When’s that, once a day?’

  ‘No, no, I call and somebody comes.’ She pointed to a cheap child’s battery intercom on the table.

  ‘Call now.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes, now.’

  I walked out of the partition area and out of the room as she pressed it. I took a gamble that whoever answered Janie’s call of nature would come from the door at the end of the corridor, which I guessed would lead to a staircase like the other end of the corridor had. I went into the room nearest that end and waited. I had to get to whoever came before they saw the damage to the door to Janie’s room and raised the alarm. I had to be quick. I stood behind the door, keeping it open just a crack so I could see who went past; hopefully it would be just one person. It was, one middle-aged lady wearing an apron – staff from the living quarters upstairs? I quietly slipped out behind her and brought the gun down hard and fast on the side of her head with my right hand, as my left arm encircled her as she slumped forward. I pulled her through the broken door and into where Janie waited. Her eyes opened wide in horror.

  ‘Don’t worry, she’s not dead.’ I lowered the lady onto the mattress, pulled the key to the bracelet from the apron pocket and took it off Janie’s wrist. I could see her wrist was red raw with the chafing. Nice people, the Bogdans – they could have put a bandage on first. I slipped the bracelet onto the lady’s wrist, clicked it shut and threw the key into the opposite corner.

  ‘Right, let’s go. Stay close.’

  ‘Hang on.’ Janie gave the woman a good hard kick in the ribs, which brought a moan from her lips.

  I raised my eyebrows at Janie.

  ‘It’s what she did to me every time,’ she explained, and gave the body one for luck. ‘Bastard bitch.’

  I was beginning to like Janie, a lot.

  We left the room and went along to the end of the corridor and through the door onto the stairs. I thought about calling the lift, but I didn’t know where it ended up on the ground floor, and really didn’t like the prospect of the doors opening in front of a load of Bogdan’s goons. I started up the stairs; I reasoned that there would be an exit onto the outside fire escape from the next floor, as that was marked as the living accommodation on the plan. Two zigzag flights of stairs up and we came to a small landing and a wall with a door. Music and voices were coming from inside. Too dangerous; if it was a living area there would be people, and people around Bogdan have guns. One or two I could deal with, but maybe there would be kids as well. Complicated. If we got trapped on that floor by goons coming up the stairs, we’d be in deep trouble.