by Andy Maslen
Sasha bestowed her best smile on the young woman.
“Xièxiè,” she said – it sounded like she she.
“You’re welcome,” the woman said, beaming.
Sasha strolled away from the desk, her smart, navy-blue suit complemented by a red, white and blue scarf knotted at her neck. While she waited for Pender to arrive, she opened her carry-on and extracted a neat navy, red-and-white forage cap, which she settled at a jaunty angle over her hair, which today she wore in a French pleat against the back of her head. The methylone was still active in her brain’s chemistry, bringing with it the careless high of a mild antidepressant. Her vision had also sharpened, and she used its heightened acuity now to scan the milling crowds as the woman at the desk repeated her message.
“Mr Krit Pender. Message for Mr Krit Pender. Please come—”
Stupid name, Sasha thought, as she swivelled her head left and right, a predator on high alert. There! The target was striding across the concourse towards the information desk. An immensely fat man, well over six feet tall, in a shiny, silver-grey suit that screamed “designer” with every flap of its scarlet-lined jacket. His countenance was florid, beneath a thatch of wiry reddish-blond hair cut en brosse. The frown and the set of the thick lips communicated his displeasure at being summoned away from his seat in the Air France First Class Lounge.
Sasha moved to intercept him. No need for the young woman on the desk to have to deal with him. Falling in step with Pender, she touched him lightly on the left forearm, causing him to stop mid-stride and turn to stare at her.
“Mr Pender?” she said, adopting a French accent.
“Yah. Who the fuck are you?”
I am death. “I am Melinda Schwartz. Air France Executive Privilege Club.”
“Schwartz, eh? Another troublemaking black, yah?” Then he bellowed with laughter at his own joke, reddened jowls shaking.
Sasha smiled demurely, bowing her head, staring at a point six inches to the left of the man’s second shirt button.
“Captain Marais has asked me to invite you, on his behalf, to sit with him for takeoff. Would you like to follow me, please?”
“What? Up front with the flyboys? Hah! I knew I made the right decision flying frog airlines. Lead on, Blackie!”
High heels clicking on the polished stone floor, Sasha led Pender out of the concourse and through a set of double doors.
“Secret passageway, yah?”
“Something like that, sir, yes. Stay close, please. It is the next door on the right.”
Sasha arrived at a plain grey door and stood aside to let Pender in front of her. She pulled the door open, and, as Pender pushed past her, shoved him hard in the small of the back, followed him in, and shut the door.
Pender stumbled, catching his foot on a cleaner’s bucket, and sprawled onto the concrete floor.
Sasha gripped the end of the nylon thread in her cheek and drew it out in a single, flowing movement, coughing as the plastic cylinder emerged from her mouth.
“What the fuck is this? You’re fucking with the wrong man,” Pender said, struggling to get to his knees and looking balefully at Sasha, his pale-blue eyes slits in his face.
“No, darling,” Sasha said, cracking the cylinder in half and withdrawing a shiny steel object. With a snap, she pulled the metal object out at both ends, transforming it into a perfectly cylindrical, needle-pointed stiletto that locked with a snick.
“You,” she bent down and jabbed it hard into the spot she’d picked a few minutes earlier.
“Are fucking,” she withdrew it, leaving Pender gasping as blood welled through the front of his shirt.
“With the wrong,” in it went again, an inch to the right of the first blow,
“Woman.” A third blow, forming an equilateral triangle of entry wounds over the man’s already failing heart.
With blood pooling beneath Pender’s body and, worse for him, she knew, inside his chest cavity, Sasha wiped the pencil-thin steel on the man’s suit jacket, closed it and packed it away in its little plastic scabbard. Then she left.
Just before boarding, she sent three texts. The first, to the man who’d paid her three million to despatch Pender, read,
Job done. 2nd payment now due.
The second, to Erin Ayers, read,
Item four, completed.
And the third, to Gabriel Wolfe, read,
Sorry about Master Zhao, darling. But you know what they say. Live by the sword … SB xxx
Who is Timur Kamenko?
SALISBURY
TWO days later, Gabriel was sitting at his kitchen table with Eli, devouring a plate of bacon, eggs, and toast with hot sauce shaken over the lot. By no coincidence whatsoever, Sasha Beck was enjoying a continental breakfast not two miles away, in a rural pub where she had booked a room for a couple of nights.
“What day is it?” Gabriel asked Eli, using a triangle of toast to mop up the remains of the yolk, which had turned coral-pink thanks to the sauce.
“You have been busy, haven’t you? It’s Saturday. Listen, I’m sorry about your old friend. That’s terrible, what she did.”
Gabriel heaved a sigh. “It is. But to her I think it’s all a game. I don’t know if she enjoys killing people or finds it amusing. I met her after she’d blown an office building in Harare to shit and she could have just come from a game of bridge. Then in Hong Kong—”
Eli’s eyes widened. “You spoke to her?”
“No, I mean the last time I was there, not this one. She dropped a couple of bouncers outside a gambling club and strolled in as if she was there to while away a few hours at the tables.”
“What, she’s a psychopath? Is that what you’re saying?”
He shrugged and took a swig of tea before answering.
“I don’t know, maybe. But there’s definitely something off about her.”
“Other than being a paid killer, you mean,” Eli deadpanned.
He smiled. “Other than that, yes. Did the cops try to get in touch while I was gone?”
She shook her head. “Nobody’s been round. They would have called you anyway.”
“I know, and they didn’t. So either they’ve decided I can’t add anything, or they’re avoiding me.”
“So why don’t you call them? I’m going for a walk. See you later.”
Anita Woods sounded stressed when she answered her phone. Learning that Gabriel was her caller didn’t seem to improve her mood.
“Yes, what can I do for you, Gabriel?”
“I just wondered whether you’d made any progress on the case.”
“Well, strange as this may seem, we haven’t. Looks like your Mystic Meg act was on the money. No witnesses. No forensics worth shit. And to top it all off, your friend,” she laid heavy sarcasm on this last word, “Mr Donald Webster swooped down like some fucking secret agent overlord and relieved us of the investigation. I was told in no uncertain terms to spend my time and energies on solving another case.”
“Look, I didn’t mean to be a smart-arse when I told you that you wouldn’t find her. It’s her profession. And I’m sorry Don did his act. But that’s the way we work.”
If he’d been hoping this apology would mollify the detective superintendent, Gabriel had misjudged the situation.
“Oh, well perhaps you’d like to tell Don,” even heavier sarcasm, “next time you two are sipping dry sherry in Whitehall, how grateful I am to be treated like some rookie straight out of Hendon Police College in front of my team.”
She ended the call before he could think of anything that might repair the damage.
He’d barely had a chance to put his phone away when it rang in his hand. It was Don.
“Jesus, Don, are you psychic or something?”
“What’s the matter, Old Sport?”
“Nothing. Well, nothing really. I just got off the phone to Detective Superintendent Woods. She was, how shall I put this?”
“Royally pissed off and spitting feathers?”
&nb
sp; “Something like that.”
“Couldn’t be helped. I needed the brass from the shooter, and she was stamping her size sixes and getting all territorial with me.”
“So you gave her the queen and country speech?”
“More or less. It never goes down well, but this was, I think, a record-breaking performance. I’d avoid any entanglements with the Wiltshire CID for a while if you can possibly help it.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“I’m sorry about Zhao Xi, Gabriel. I really am. After I got your text, I put in a call to Britta’s boss over at MI5. But she’s undercover and their SOPs call for a total comms blackout except for a weekly debrief.”
“I know. I’ve been trying to reach her myself.”
“You worried?”
“No. Britta can take care of herself. I warned her Sasha was around and causing mischief, so she’ll be on her guard.”
“Let’s hope so. Now, I may have something that will help you track down the mischievous Ms Beck, and possibly her employer.”
“What is it? I told you I have a name but nothing else.”
“I had our technical bods run some analysis on the bullet casing. Turns out it has a very unusual metallurgical composition. The exact chemistry went over my head, something of a goose at school, I’m afraid. But we know who manufactured it.”
Gabriel sat down and pulled a pencil and notebook from a drawer breath the kitchen table. “Who? I thought it would be a standard brand like Federal.”
“The lab boys ran it against our database. Over seventy manufacturers on it: everything from shotgun shells to tracer rounds. They matched it to a factory in Kazakhstan.”
Gabriel’s heart stuttered. Back to Astana, then.
“I didn’t know there were any ammunition manufacturers there. I thought they all got their stuff from the old Soviet producers.”
“You’re right. Or at least partially right. There aren’t any official ammunition manufacturers in Kazakhstan, or not yet. They’re building one as we speak. But there is one unofficial supplier. They specialise in what you’d call the grey market. People who have trouble getting ammunition from Federal, say. Or, to be honest, any of the approved NATO or former Soviet suppliers.”
“Warlords, you mean? Criminals?”
“Yes to both of those. Plus militias, terrorists, hitters like our friend Ms Beck, and good old-fashioned gangsters. If they don’t fancy knocking over an official shipment or breaking into a factory, they just turn up at the gates of TK Industries with a suitcase full of dollars and hey, ho, away they go with as much ammunition as they can carry.”
Gabriel scribbled down the name.
“TK Industries?”
“Yes. Owned by a chap goes by the name of Timur Kamenko. Interesting CV. Started off as a low-grade thug in a street gang, worked his way up through the ranks till he took it over, then invested his ill-gotten gains in this manufacturing plant. Saw a gap in the market, like the best entrepreneurs do, and bingo! Supplies ammunition to half the bad guys around the world. Now he harbours political ambitions, too. Heads up this ultra-nationalist party called Kazakh Purity.”
“So how come he hasn’t been shut down?”
“Protection, in a word. Man’s extremely well connected to the current establishment, not to mention extremely rich. We talk occasionally about mounting an operation, but it’s never risen high enough up the old to-do list.”
“But now?”
“But now, I think we could envisage sending a small team in. You could gather some intel, maybe discover who Erin Ayers really is. Take things from there.”
“Me and Eli?”
Don chuckled. “In one, Old Sport. I’ve made the usual arrangements. Why don’t you pop up to town to see me? I might even stand you lunch.”
Neighbourhood Watching
MANHATTAN
ERIN put the phone down, smiling. She was alone in the penthouse. Guy was at an empty house on her land in Ithaca, getting things ready.
“So, Miss Falskog,” she said out loud. “Now you’re mine. Poor old Gabriel will be beside himself with worry. Only just got engaged and now his fiancée is in the hands of his mortal enemy. Well, boohoo to both of you.”
She poured herself a generous measure of Grey Goose vodka, added a handful of chunky ice cubes, and took it out onto the roof terrace. The night was clear and cold, but the fur coat she wore over her nakedness kept the chill out. She stood, leaning against the reinforced glass wall, and looked down and to her left. The traffic streaming up Fifth Avenue past Trump Tower and alongside the park was beautiful to her eyes. They were guzzling gas, streaming music and wearing out tyres from companies she either owned directly or held significant stakes in, and they were making her rich. She raised the heavy tumbler and toasted them before sinking half the vodka in a single gulp. Her phone rang.
“Erin, it’s Ava. Are you in Manhattan?”
“Yes, I am. At the penthouse. Are you looking for some company?”
“Mm-hmm. We just finished our executive council meeting. I’m on West Fifty-Seventh.”
Erin felt her nipples tightening beneath the fur coat. “Come over. Now.”
Sitting opposite Erin in the sunken bath was a slim, auburn-haired woman with large, heavily made-up eyes of smoky grey. Both women were drinking from tumblers of vodka on the rocks. Ava Blankefeld’s small breasts were just covered by the water. She was trailing her fingertips across them as she spoke.
“Things are looking good for us at the moment, you know.”
“You and me ‘us’ or you and the Free America movement ‘us’?”
Ava smiled, and deep dimples appeared on each side of her mouth. “Both, actually. Now the political situation is more favourable to Free America, I’ll be in New York a lot more often.”
“Yes, well Free America sounds a lot more respectable than ‘white supremacists,’ doesn’t it?”
Ava grinned. “It does. But it isn’t just about rebranding. Look around you. Look at your own country. Look at Europe. Ordinary people are waking up to the lies the liberal elite having been feeding them since the end of the Second World War. And they’re turning to people who offer something different. People like your father, God rest his soul.”
“Oh, I doubt God is very interested in resting Daddy’s soul. Probably sees it as somewhat tarnished. But as to your main point, yes, I agree. People are starting to ask what globalisation has done for them, apart from giving them shitty jobs that don’t pay the bills, and taking away their pride.”
Ava sat up and Erin watched the water streaming over her breasts. She leaned forward and kissed Ava on the lips, then drew back a little.
“Poor fools,” Ava said. “When we’re making so much money out of globalisation, it almost seems unfair to be winning them over to our side.”
Erin shrugged, finishing her drink. “You’d still be better for them than the alternative. Well, better for the whites, anyway.”
She stood, enjoying the way Ava’s gaze trailed up her body, and stepped out of the bath. Wrapping herself in a white towel, she headed for the bedroom.
“Come on,” she said, looking over her shoulder. “It’s been ages.”
On the banks of the boating lake, far below in Central Park, Guy stood as still as a sentry, looking up at the penthouse through binoculars. He watched as the two naked women strolled from bathroom to bedroom. A voice to his left made him turn.
“Hey, buddy,” a tall, thickset man called over. He was striding towards Guy, hands hanging loose by his sides, accompanied by a shorter, fatter man wearing gold-rimmed glasses. “What’re you doing?”
Guy faced the two men, adjusting his balance as he did. “What’s it to you?”
“Neighbourhood Watch, and we don’t like Peeping Toms.”
The two men had arrived in front of him now. Neither looked like a fighter, although something was making them confident. Maybe they had concealed carry permits. He scanned their waists, then the spaces under their ar
ms. No telltale bulges, but their clothes were loose enough to make spotting a pistol a game of chance.
“Me neither, but I’m working security for my employer. She likes me to check on her from time to time.”
“Oh, yeah,” the fat man said, in a sarcastic tone of voice. “Check in with binoculars. What, were you training them on her bedroom?”
Uncomfortable with the man’s pinpoint accurate observation, Guy decided attack was the best form of defence.
“Listen, boys, I’m not doing anything wrong, so why don’t you just patrol somewhere else before I decide to exercise my rights to protect myself?”
Now he did see something. The taller man had placed his right hand on his hip and the blocky shape of a pistol appeared as his wind breaker was pushed back.
“I have a better idea. Why don’t you,” he pointed with his left hand, “find somewhere else to take your evening constitutional, and we’ll head in the opposite direction?”
“Fair enough,” Guy said, preparing to move.
The two men nodded and the wind breaker dropped back to cover the pistol.
Guy moved.
He leapt forwards, closing the gap between him and the two men to less than an arm’s length. He spread his own arms wide, grabbed them by the sides of the head and clattered their skulls together with a noise like a fairground coconut shy.
They dropped, beasts stunned by an expert slaughterman, into an untidy pile of limbs at his feet.
“Hoerenjong! Next time don’t fuck with the big boys,” he said, before strolling away, to a bar he liked that served Bavaria Hollandia, the beer he’d learned to love as a teenager in Rotterdam.
Lies We Tell Ourselves
LONDON
GABRIEL had two hours before his meeting with Don. He was spending the first in the private consulting room of Fariyah Crace at The Ravenswood Hospital in Mayfair.
