by Rennie Airth
Addy couldn’t have put it better herself.
Just then her phone rang and when she answered – hoping it was Rose – she found herself instead talking to Mike Ryker.
‘Hey, there?’ he said. ‘How are you doing?’
‘You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.’ Addy shot a glance at Molly, whose eyebrows had gone up. She shook her head. No, it’s not Rose.
‘Trouble?’ He sounded genuinely concerned.
‘Yeah … kind of …’
‘Do you want to meet? How about dinner tonight?’
‘Could we make it a drink? Somewhere in Chelsea? I’ll explain when I see you.’
Molly was listening, her brow grooved in a faint frown.
‘Why not? I’ll think of a place and get back to you.’
He hung up. Addy took a deep breath.
‘It’s a guy I met on the plane,’ she explained. ‘I kind of liked him. He wants to meet up.’
‘Good for you.’ Molly beamed her approval. ‘But stay close. In case we hear from Rose, I mean.’
‘That’s why I suggested somewhere nearby,’ Addy replied.
She was pleased Mike had come through so quickly. She’d half wondered if he’d even bother to call. Now if only Rose were here …
FIFTEEN
‘Think of it, Ryker. The glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome, the wonder of the Renaissance, and then the beginning of mankind’s long struggle upwards by way of the Enlightenment and the near miraculous discoveries that science and technology have brought to the world. And where has it taken us – tell me that – what has it led to?’
Bela Horvath paused as though as he actually expected a reply, though Ryker could see he didn’t. This was just his schtick.
‘The Age of Greed.’
Bela spread his hands. ‘I’m sure you’re familiar with that statistic they keep quoting – the one about half the world’s wealth being in the hands of one per cent of the world’s population. If you have any doubts, look around you. We sit among them – the filthy rich.’
That much at least was true. You couldn’t mistake them, Ryker thought, the older men in their five-thousand-dollar-plus suits, hair barbered to a millimetre, the wink of gold in their cuff links when they lifted a hand to summon a waiter; the younger ones more carelessly attired, shirts open at the front, the better to display the gold chains resting on their tanned chests – hey, a good tan in winter was a sure sign of moola – and the young women who leaned forward to catch every word they said, eyes avid. They wanted a piece of it, too: the money. Not that the restaurant didn’t reek of it: snowy linen, silver cutlery, crystal glass, soft-footed waiters. They spoke a language all their own, and it wasn’t tuned to peasant ears.
Bela, though – the guy on his own was worth the price of admission. A legend in his lifetime – or so Ryker had been told – Hungarian by origin, but American now (albeit of an exotic strain) thanks to the twenty years he’d put in with the CIA before he’d joined Safe Solutions, which might or might not be the biggest security company in the world – Ryker wasn’t sure – but was certainly the most hated, being referred to openly by its competitors, and with no intent at humour, as the SS. Bela was their man in London, the guy who was going to put him in the picture, which was just as well since Ryker still didn’t know what the fuck he was doing there.
His host, meantime, was studying the menu. It had been brought to the table by one of the soft-footed crew who was standing there, head bowed in a suitably servile pose.
‘I’ll start with the gravlax, but a la Danoise.’
‘A la?’ The waiter looked anguished.
‘With a dill and mustard sauce, tell the kitchen, and a spoonful or two of caviar. What about you, Ryker?’
‘Soup, I guess.’
‘Soup?’ Bela looked as though he’d been shot between the eyes. ‘If you must.’ He sighed. ‘I see you have sea bass on the menu.’ He was talking to the waiter again.
‘It’s one of Monsieur Antoine’s specialities, sir.’
‘What about you, Ryker? Will you join me?’
‘Can they manage a steak and fries?’
Ryker had said that just so he could see the rabbit-in-the-headlights look on his host’s face, and it appeared on cue. Not that Bela needed any help in the looking weird department. His black hair, which had to be dyed, was plastered down flat on his scalp like an old movie idol’s and his dark eyes never blinked. Or so it seemed to Ryker, who knew as well as the next guy that everyone’s eyes blinked, but Bela Horvath still made him think of a lizard on a rock: patient, motionless, tongue ready to zap any passing fly.
‘Ah, money …’ He wasn’t done yet. ‘How it soothes the savage breast. What balm it brings to troubled souls. But as always there’s a catch. Do you know what it is?’
Ryker didn’t.
‘There’s never enough of it. That man sitting directly behind me – the baldy with what looks like a severe bowel blockage – has substantial holdings in two of the biggest pharmaceutical companies on earth. According to Forbes magazine he’s worth eleven billion dollars and this offends him, because he claims it’s closer to twelve. Now any normal man should be more than content with eleven billion dollars. I mean, what can you do with twelve billion dollars that you can’t do with eleven? But the rich are not normal. As a famous writer once observed, they are different from you and me. And of course they are not born this way. They acquire the disease, or should I say addiction, for which there is no known cure. Once they have made their pile, all they can think of is making more. And as I said, it’s never enough. Ah, my gravlax …’
He paused for a moment to study the artfully arranged confection on his plate.
‘So think money while I order our wine, Ryker, colossal amounts of it. And then turn your mind to things Russian.’
‘The Russians?’ Ryker blinked. He hadn’t seen this coming.
Bela didn’t respond at once. He was busy, talking in low tones to the sommelier who had sidled up to their table, wine list in hand.
‘Those champions of the proletariat.’ Satisfied, he turned back to his guest. ‘The great toilers. They’re the newest addition to the ranks of the stinking rich, and my goodness how quickly they’ve taken to it. Since Vladimir and his merry men got to work back in the nineties, they’ve managed between them to extract more than three hundred and fifty billion dollars from the economy and tuck it away in safe investments in the West. Their proclaimed justification for doing so was to protect Mother Russia’s wealth from predatory hands following the collapse of Communism and the ensuing chaos under the late but not greatly lamented Boris Yeltsin. However, since all the money went into accounts or investments controlled by them, one can draw one’s own conclusions; all, that is, except for a sizeable portion that ended up in the hands of local hoods. You may not believe it, but quite a number of these recently reformed comrades didn’t know how to handle a cheque book, let alone a credit card, and were forced to turn for help to their home-grown mafia, who had no such problems and were well situated to render assistance, at a price of course, as a result of which, as we all know, Russia is now to all intents and purposes a criminal state. This gravlax is excellent by the way.’ Bela chewed thoughtfully. ‘How’s the soup?’
‘Fine. Go on.’ They were still nowhere near the point as far as Ryker could tell, if there was any point to this Hungarian rhapsody.
‘Now, as you may have heard, much of the loot went into real estate here and elsewhere. But it wasn’t long before the ugly words “money laundering” were heard and since these shrewd muhziks knew it would not be wise to put all their eggs in one basket, a fair proportion of the pillaged funds went into shell companies scattered about the world. Of course, to carry this off they needed the help of bankers here in the West, people who knew how to bury the money in offshore accounts, using their own private network of lawyers and accountants who would lend their signatures to the paperwork involved for a fee, thus hiding the real owne
rs’ names. It’s one of these gentlemen, a Cypriot by the name of Nico Stefanidis, who is the reason behind your visit to London. The story I’m about to tell you begins with him.’
Hooray! But couldn’t they just cut to the chase? Ryker shifted restlessly on his over-padded chair. He had to wait while Bela sipped his wine and murmured his appreciation of it.
‘Exquisite. Drink your soup, Ryker. Don’t let it get cold.’ He paused to collect his thoughts. ‘Stefanidis, then … Nico of that name: he managed a small family bank in Limassol, one that barely showed up on the radar and was attractive to the Russians for that reason, but even more so when they realized what a jewel they had unearthed in his person. The man was a genius. I’m not exaggerating. One day they should put up a statue to him. We all know about conjurers who pull rabbits from hats. Nico was the man who knew how to put the bunnies back in the headgear without anyone guessing how the trick was done. The Russians sent him their money, great wads of it, and Nico did his magic, dispatching it to the four corners of the earth, from Panama to Paradise Island and beyond, leaving no trace behind. He didn’t run it through his bank, you see: he created something different, parallel, a ghost bank if you will – the Russians could never figure out how he did it and neither can we – but it was as though the money vanished for a while and then reappeared where it was supposed to be in some far-off account, under a false name, but with a password attached to it that was known only to the person to whom it belonged. Magic, as I say, and the Ivans loved him for it. They began sending him more and more of their cash.’
Bela paused. Ryker sensed they were getting close to it now: the moment of truth.
‘There was a problem, though.’ His host sighed. ‘What the Russians didn’t know was that Nico’s personal life had turned to shit. His wife had announced she was leaving him. She was joining her lover in Rio. What lover? It was the first Nico had heard of it. Oh, and taking their three kids with her.’ Bela shook his head. ‘The poor guy – he’d just seen his world blown to bits. Someone was going to pay for it. And as fate would have it, just then he happened to be holding a bigger pile of money than usual, sent to him by his Russian chums for discreet disposal: perhaps he’d been otherwise occupied worrying about his private life, but it had built up to a little over a billion bucks.’
‘Come again!’ Ryker’s jaw dropped.
‘Didn’t I say … didn’t I tell you? Think billions. These guys had been siphoning oil and gas money out so fast it was a wonder they didn’t choke on it. Nico was going through the usual motions getting ready to send it off to its final destinations when he had what they call an epiphany. Either that or it was a message from on high.’ Bela shrugged. ‘Maybe God spoke to him and said, “Nico, don’t be a schmuck. Think of yourself for once.”’
‘You’re not telling me he stole it – the billion?’ Ryker couldn’t credit what he was hearing.
Bela shook his head. ‘He wasn’t that crazy. No, he wanted it all to be straightforward and above board. He was a banker, for Christ’s sake, not a thief. He wanted a deal, and he’d come up with what seemed to him to be a perfectly reasonable proposal. He would put the details – where the money was going, the names of the accounts with new passwords he’d created, everything in fact that was needed – on to a memory stick and then tell the Russians it was there waiting for them. All he wanted in return was a measly ten million dollars. Only one per cent, no more – it probably seemed quite fair to him given the miracles he’d performed on their behalf, something they could easily afford. Once they agreed to pay up, the memory stick was theirs. Otherwise, they could whistle for their money.’
Bela started to shake in his chair. He couldn’t contain his mirth.
‘Just think of it, Ryker, try and picture the scene. Here they were, these big shots – siloviki they call them in Moscow, heavy hitters, not to mention their mobster pals with their fucking tattoos – and all of them having to take it up the ass. You’d need a heart of stone not to split your sides laughing. They say Vlad the Impaler was one of those who got burned.’
‘Putin?’
‘It’s what I heard. I can’t swear to it. But Nico, God bless him, had made a fatal mistake.’ Bela’s sigh was regretful. ‘They’d paid him well in the past for his services, and if he’d asked nicely they might even have given him the ten mill. But Nico had had changed the rules, he’d gone and threatened them, and these were guys you do not fuck with. One of them, the biggest loser by report, just happened to be the current head of the FSB, the Foreign Intelligence Service – that’s the old KGB to you and me – a mean son of a bitch called Alexei Gurov. He was charged with the job of getting their money back. Sure, he told Nico, they’d pay him the ten mill, but given that the guy he sent to Cyprus to close the deal was a hitman with a well-deserved reputation as a torturer, a sicko by the name of Grigor Klepkin, it was dollars to dimes poor old Nico wasn’t long for this world, which proved to be the case, though not quite in the manner Gurov had anticipated. When Klepkin reached Cyprus, he called back to say that someone had got there ahead of him. Nico’s body had been found floating in Limassol harbour and some very unpleasant things had been done to it.’
‘And the memory stick?’
‘Was nowhere to be found.’ Bela shrugged. ‘All the Russians had left to hold on to were their dicks, and once they’d got over the shock, a swarm of FSB agents descended on Limassol and started combing through every inch of Nico’s business dealings, every dot and comma, looking for a clue as to where the money might have gone, but it was no use. They couldn’t find a kopeck. Nico had outsmarted them. What made it worse was they couldn’t figure out who the guilty party was either: who would have had the balls to pull a stunt like that.’
Bela sighed.
‘They kept on looking, of course – for both the money and whoever it was who had ripped them off, but six months went by without them getting any closer to cracking the mystery. Then they caught a break: an anonymous tip-off in the form of a typed message that was slipped into the letterbox of the Aeroflot office in Amsterdam and which you can bet very soon found its way to Moscow. It didn’t mince words either, this billet-doux: it told them straight out who had pulled the heist and where at least one of them could be found.’
‘One of them?’ Ryker seized on the word.
‘It was a two-man job,’ Bela explained. ‘But what really burned the Russians was the discovery that one of the pair was their own Grigor Klepkin. He was the one who’d done the business on Nico, persuaded him to part with the stick – I told you he was a torturer – but then he’d stepped back and acted the innocent, joining in the hunt for the money, never giving his comrades a hint that he was in on the scam. He happened to be on assignment in Istanbul when the tip-off reached Moscow and it wasn’t long before he received an order to return home ASAP.’
Bela chuckled.
‘Maybe Gurov was just too mad to think straight. But he should have remembered his history. Ever since the days of Stalin and the Cheka, every Russian agent has had it branded on his soul that an urgent summons to return to Moscow without explanation almost invariably meant curtains. It was as good as a death sentence, and Klepkin didn’t hesitate. He dropped out of sight the same day, and hasn’t been seen or heard of since. Until yesterday, that is, when he was spotted here in London. One of my people saw him boarding a Tube train at Blackfriars.’
‘Jesus!’ Ryker was struck dumb. ‘But wait a minute – you said there were two of them.’
Bela nodded. Emptying his glass of wine, he signalled to the sommelier.
‘And now we come to the painful part,’ he said. ‘I regret to have to tell you the gentleman in question is one of ours. Was, I should say, we got rid of him a year ago, but that meant nothing to the Russians. As far as they were concerned this was down to us, and Safe Solutions had better come up with an answer.’
‘So who is he?’
‘You haven’t been with us long, have you, Ryker?’ Bela brushed an imaginary p
iece of lint off his cuff. ‘That’s one of the reasons you were chosen for this job. Your face is new. Still, word spreads. Have you ever heard the name Charon?… One moment …’
Bela Horvath raised a finger. On the point of firing off his next question, Ryker was caught with his mouth open. The sommelier had materialized from nowhere like ectoplasm and was standing by their table.
‘The Chateau Margaux you recommended was excellent.’ Bela addressed the man. ‘We’ll have another bottle. But this time we’ll go for the Premier Grand Cru. Why shouldn’t we spoil ourselves? White wine with fish is a myth in case you were wondering.’ This was for Ryker’s benefit. ‘Red goes just as well with it.’ He peered at his guest. ‘Is something troubling you, my friend?’
‘Charon … ’ Ryker finally got the word he was choking on out. ‘Is that a name?’
Bela smiled. ‘I see the Classics passed you by. Charon was the ferryman of Greek mythology. He carried the bodies of the dead across the River Styx to the underworld, but only for a fee, hence the practice employed by the ancients of slipping a coin between the lips of their nearest and dearest once they’d expired. Our Charon likes to leave his mark in the same manner, from which you might well deduce he’s yet another sick puppy, but that’s by the by.’
‘What’s his real name?’
‘He was born James Meredith Hatton in the city of Pittsburgh some forty or more years ago, or so he asserts, but how can we be sure? He’s a man of many aliases, many passports – some we know about, some we don’t – and I wouldn’t even hazard a guess as to what he might be calling himself now. Charon was the code name he chose when he worked for the CIA years ago and I dare say he still uses it. It’s how I think of him.’
‘And he’s the one who stole the memory stick?’
‘With Klepkin’s help, as I said, but Charon was the brains behind the scheme, and the Russians knew it. The man had a reputation. Nico’s little scam was a poorly kept secret. Word of it soon spread – it was just too good a story – and it couldn’t have been long before Charon got wind of it and saw there were rich pickings to be had. Don’t ask me how he talked his partner in crime into the heist, but if Klepkin had refused to go along with it I’ve a feeling he wouldn’t have left Cyprus alive. Charon was going to get his hands on that memory stick no matter what. So you can imagine how pleased Gurov was to think he would at least get his hands on him. The tip-off the Russians received told them where Charon would be on a certain day – this was only a fortnight ago – it was an apartment in Paris. They set a trap for him.’