by Mark A Biggs
‘She’s your responsibility, Inspector. I assume that you have a plan of how you are going to skip the flight to Australia and escape from France undetected. I don’t want to know what it is. Go to Rome and see what you can discover. Inspector, if your plan for leaving France is to hijack a plane, I will be most disappointed.’
‘Stephen,’ I said indignantly, ‘I would never do anything so rash as to hijack a plane.’
He ignored me totally and continued speaking to the Inspector. ‘She is your responsibility Axel! Do we understand one another?’
‘Yes,’ replied the Inspector.
‘I’m not some chattel to be talked over,’ I said.
‘Indeed, you’re not,’ said Stephen kindly. ‘You’re a wonderful but exasperating lady and one that I can’t help but admire. I wonder how you do it sometimes. You’re not as young as you once were!’
I thought for a second before responding proudly, ‘Intensity of desire, Stephen, that’s the secret.’
Stephen smiled softly and said, ‘Indeed it is, Olivia, intensity of desire, yes I like that. I like that very much. If we can help you, we will, but next time you might not be so lucky. Take your cell phone with you, the one we gave you, so we can track you and be careful!’
CHAPTER SIX
Russia
Claudia
The morning light that shimmered off the window woke me before the alarm, set for 6.00 am on my watch, had a chance to go off. He was still sleeping and, for a fifty-year-old man, some fifteen years my senior, Monya was not unattractive. Unlike many of the Mafia bosses I’d met, Monya kept himself in shape. He was not obsessed with physical fitness as I was, but looked after himself.
Trying not to disturb Monya, I arose and slipped into my sports gear before heading out for a 14km run, followed by a thirty-minute workout in the gym, a hot shower and breakfast. With luck, Monya would be gone by the time I returned and I could leave for Dubrovnik without having to saying goodbye.
There was no frost on the ground when I left the gates of our fortress to pound the roads for the next hour. Jogging gave me the opportunity to enjoy the solitude.
I’d discovered the magic of exercise after running away from my parents who lived in a little village called Kula Grad, near Zvornik, in Bosnia Herzegovina. I was seventeen at the time and it was at the height of the Balkan War. I left to be with my boyfriend Ratimir, a commander in one of General Ratko Mladic’s paramilitary militia. He let me train with him and his troops, a militia called the Yellow Wasps. I discovered that extreme workouts could distract me, helping me shelve the worries of daily life and ease the mental stress that I carried from childhood. I came to realise that a strong body needed a strong mind too. Through military training, I learned to focus and control my anger. What started as Ratimir’s girlfriend joining him, changed and I became a supreme, cold and calculating killing machine as part of the militia.
During the training, they sent me on 10km cross country runs with a sniper rifle strapped to my back. While still breathless, I would have to drop to the ground and take a shot. I was taught to smother all distractions by visualising a tunnel to shoot down. It hid the rest of the world, leaving only the target to focus on. I learned to control my breathing and regulate my heartbeat. I would command my heart to stop and my breathing to cease, pulling the trigger in that moment when there was no movement from my body. The bullet would run true. The instant the shot was taken, I would rise again and run once more, only to drop to the ground for another shot. On occasions, my training would force me to hide, lying or sitting still for hours, waiting for that perfect shot.
Normally when I jogged I freed my mind from its clutter. Not today – thoughts circulated and I felt the anger, one long ago suppressed, bubbling to the surface.
Is it seeing Max again after all these years that has awoken my past and reminded me that I despise who I have become? Is it his fault?
I ran, pounding harder.
Is it that I must go back to the house in Macinec, the place where, as a child, that I was held prisoner, that is making me so angry? Monya knows how much I hate going there, although I don’t think he knows why.
I increased my running pace but still my mind swirled.
I remember seeing Max from my bedroom window. He looked up at me. Me, fourteen-year-old Lucia. When our eyes met, for the first time in my life, I felt safe. Then he came to my bedroom door and I ran into his arms. Then he left me! Max and Olivia stayed for a few days but then the police took me to my parents in the village of Kula Grad. It was Max who abandoned me to people I no longer knew, a family who expected me to be the eight-year-old child they lost six years earlier, little Lucia Da-dic, the girl of their dreams but a fantasy. I was no longer that girl. Max promised me that he would stay in contact, that he would write and visit but he didn’t. Like everyone else, he deserted me. I hated this life almost as much as I hated living with Tamara.
Ahead, our fortress, Monya’s mansion, came into view. On my watch, not even an hour had passed and, despite running as fast and as hard as I could, I was still angry. Uncontrolled rage made me vulnerable so I went straight to the gym. I filled the bench press machine with the heaviest weights I’d ever lifted and pushed up.
If Max had not abandoned me, I would never have joined the Yellow Wasps.
The thought enraged me and I pumped the weights as hard as I could up and down until my arms, chest and heart were about to burst.
If I had never joined the Yellow Wasps, I wouldn’t be here! But this is my life, a life I love. Thankyou Max.
Straining, I tried to push the weights up for one final time, but was overcome by the resistance and had to give in to the machine. Exhausted, I felt at peace. Panting, flat on my back, calm and control had returned.
I am Claudia.
It had been my boyfriend Ratimir’s suggestion.
‘If you are going to join the Yellow Wasps, you should be known by another name,’ he had said. ‘A name that will strike fear in the hearts of those who hear it.’
I invented it by rearranging the letters in my first name and using the first two letters of my family name. I went from Lucia Da-dic to Claudia. It was also his idea that, before I was introduced to General Karlovic to demonstrate my talents, I should make up a tag line: a word or phrase I would say to someone, just before I killed them.
The night I met General Karlovic, we were waiting in an old disused factory in the town of Zvornic. Ratimir had told me that this was to be a test of my loyalty, to see if I could be trusted to carry out a special mission, one that would make me revered and feared across the Republic. I remember seeing General Karlovic walking towards us. He was prominent, even in the dim light, and I could hear his boots crisply striking the concrete floor, splashing through the pools of water that gathered there from the rain seeping in through the leaking roof.
His soldiers, dressed in their military fatigues, dragged three prisoners tied and blindfolded behind him. He halted a few feet in front of us and Ratimir saluted before taking a couple of steps closer and they embraced warmly. I watched in silence as they talked together, paying no attention to me. I still remember gazing out of the cracked windows, seeing nothing but the bleakness of the night and hearing the howling wind rattling the loose iron that clad the building. Finally, after ten minutes, I was introduced.
‘Ah, Claudia,’ he said, looking me up and down, ‘I’ve heard so much about you.’ He looked me up and down again, slower this time, before continuing. ‘These scum,’ pointing to the three men, ‘are traitors to the Republic.’
‘On your knees,’ General Karlovic said as he waved to the soldiers accompanying the prisoners, who pushed them to the ground. ‘Claudia, remove their blindfolds, so they can see us.’
I walked over to where they were kneeling and, one by one I ripped the blindfolds from their heads. Watching them, I took two steps backwards.
The General came and stood beside me.
‘They have been giving information to t
he United Nations,’ continued Karlovic, ‘and we must make an example of them. This one here,’ he added, pointing to a person who was around eighteen years of age, ‘was helping his father by spying on us.’
‘Please don’t hurt my son,’ begged the man kneeling next to the boy.
‘Which one shall we kill first, Claudia?’
It was not a question to me but to himself.
‘That one,’ said General Karlovic, pointing to the man who was neither the father or the son.
‘I want you to shoot him, Claudia, over there, where it won’t make such a mess.’
He pointed to a spot on the concrete floor a few metres from where we were standing.
General Karlovic then nodded to two of his soldiers, the ones accompanying the prisoners. Standing either side of the condemned man, they put an arm under each shoulder and hauled him unceremoniously to his feet. The prisoner let his legs hang limply below him as he was dragged across the floor with his feet scraping behind. When they reached the execution spot, he was pushed onto his knees again.
I walked slowly, but without hesitation, to where the man was waiting to die.
The soldiers stepped away and he remained motionless on his knees watching me approach. Withdrawing my pistol, I made sure that our eyes met and, when they did I, gave him a half-smile.
Lifting the automatic gun, I levelled it in front of me. Taking my other hand, exaggerating my movements to increase the theatre of his death, I put a round into the chamber by pulling back and releasing the slide mechanism. It made that distinctive metallic noise, the sound of imminent death. Letting the pistol drop to my side, I continued straight to him and then shifted, finally standing next to him.
‘Hello, sweetie,’ I said in a calm, sexy and alluring tone.
I raised the pistol to his head, making sure that he felt the cold of its steel resting against his temple. Without faltering, I squeezed the trigger, discharging the round.
Bang!
A single shot rang out and he fell to the ground.
Stepping away, I lifted the muzzle of the pistol to my lips, and gently blew as if blowing away any residual smoke.
The two remaining prisoners, the son and the father, now sobbed in fear.
‘Who’s next?’ I asked General Karlovic.
‘You can choose, Claudia. I am going to let one of them live, to tell the others what happens to those who betray us. You decide which one it will be.’
‘Please, please, take me,’ wept the father.
‘You speak again, either of you, and I will find and kill all your family, your wife, daughter, mother. All of them!’ snapped General Karlovic.
I made my way back to where the remaining prisoners were kneeling on the floor.
Standing in between but in front of them I said coolly, ‘Look at me, both of you.’
They obeyed and lifted their teary eyes.
‘Do I have the father or the son!’ I said while lifting the pistol to my lips.
I licked its barrel, and then rubbed it up and down the son’s face.
‘Sweetie, I think I want you. I’m getting excited just thinking about killing you. Oh, so young. Delicious.’
His sobbing became an uncontrolled howling and a puddle of urine formed around his knees.
‘He’s pissed himself,’ I said with an air of disgust in my voice. ‘Goodnight sweetie.’
Without bothering to drag him to the execution spot.
Bang, he was gone.
I rose from the bench press machine, annoyed that memories had again invaded my thoughts, and made my way to the shower room. Inside, I turned the water pressure up as high as it would go and the temperature to as hot as I could bear. The flow and heat pounded my body. Taking the soap in what had become a daily ritual, I scrubbed my body repeatedly, pushing harder as I rubbed. Still I felt dirty – unclean. Holding the soap, I rolled it around and around between my hands and found myself reciting Shakespeare aloud:
‘What is it she does now? Look how she rubs her hands.
It is an accustom’d action with her, to seem thus
washing her hands. I have known her continue in this a quarter of
an hour.
Yet here’s a spot.
Hark, she speaks. I will set down what comes from her, to
satisfy my remembrance the more strongly.
Out, damn’d spot! Out, I say! – One; two: why, then
‘tis time to do’t. – Hell is murky. – Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier, and
afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our
pow’r to accompt? – Yet who would have thought the old man to
have had so much blood in him?’
Letting the soap fall to the ground, I lifted my head towards the shower head and felt the cleansing water washing across my face.
I am Claudia. I AM CLAUDIA.
After fifteen minutes or longer, I turned off the water, took a large white towel, and gently dried myself. After dressing, I felt refreshed, renewed and ready to face another day.
Max was in the dining room drinking a cup of tea when I joined him.
‘Good morning Max, I trust you slept well.’
‘Claudia. I see you’re still with us.’
‘I saved your life, so perhaps you should show me a little gratitude.’
‘You have a perverse way of looking at the world, Claudia. Where’s your boyfriend, Monya?’
‘He had some other business to attend to this morning, otherwise I am sure he would have seen you off personally. An important man like yourself.’
Why do I find Max so infuriating?
Outwardly, I maintained my calm appearance but, having just seated myself at the table, I stood and said, ‘Let’s go, we are leaving for Dubrovnik.’
‘I haven’t had my breakfast yet,’ he replied in a grumpy old man way.
That will teach you for pissing me off.
‘I apologise Max but the plane is waiting for us. We can arrange for some breakfast on board, caviar perhaps! I wouldn’t want you going hungry.’ Without giving him the opportunity to reply, continued, ‘Now, wait here until I return.’
‘Do you mind if I wait outside? I would like to have some fresh air before the flight.’
Before I could say no. Max had left the table and was heading towards the door. All I could do was watch him leave.
Unbelievable.
A few moments later, whilst gazing out of the window, I saw him appear at the front door and walk down the steps onto the gravel driveway. He stopped next to one of our guards who was watching a fellow of his on a scooter doing donuts in the gravel. Max and the guard appeared to talk, then they laughed.
Can he speak Russian? No that would be impossible.
The guard gave him a slap on the back before waving to his companion who rode over.
‘No!’ I yelled, as loudly as I could, but the guards couldn’t hear me through the window.
Both guards were hysterical as they steadied the scooter and helped the eighty-seven-year-old Max onto the seat. Zoom! He was off and the scooter wobbled from side to side. For a moment, it seemed as if he would fall. Then the scooter steadied and I saw Max turn, raising his hand to wave, then grabbing the handlebars again before he tumbled. This brought more laughter from the guards and it reminded me of a clown I had once seen riding a motorbike at the circus. Then the scooter was upright and accelerating away, down the driveway and out the gates. He was gone before the guards knew what was happening.
Here we go again.
I had just spent the last few weeks chasing him and Olivia all over the UK and now I was in Russia and about to do it again.
‘Sweeties, what were you thinking?’ I demanded of the guards as I walked outside.
They were laughing and refusing to take his escape seriously.
‘Well?’ I repeated, ‘Sweeties, what were you thinking?’
‘It’s all right Claudia,’ said Ivan, one of the guards. ‘It has no petrol. He will
be waiting for you a hundred metres down the road, tops.’
‘You’d better be right,’ I snapped. ‘Send for the Rolls, I have a plane to catch.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Rome
Olivia
Having pissed off the Romanians, we believed that it was only a matter of time before they told the Russians we were searching for Claudia. The Russians would then come looking for us. The Inspector and I agreed that it would be safest if we vanished, using the new identities, passports and credit cards given to us by Cliff. I became Lady Olivia Suzanne Elizabeth Huggins and the Inspector my private secretary, Mr Jean-Marc Lemery. With MI6’s tacit blessing, we no longer had to flee France by the next day, to return to Australia. Instead, I used my new credit card and spent Wednesday shopping for a wardrobe and luggage suitable for Lady Olivia.
The Inspector hadn’t wanted me wandering the streets but I argued that, with the protection of MI6 and the threat of Mossad, the Romanian crime gangs wouldn’t dare touch me.
‘What about the Russians?’
‘Too soon,’ I replied.
My first task on Wednesday was to hire a driver for the day, Sebastian, who arrived at our hotel promptly at 9.30am. The instruction to his company was clear, the itinerary was dream shopping for the day. We started on the left bank of the river, at the Boulevard Saint Germain, taking Rue du Bac, which runs through the elegant 7th arrondissement. The neighbourhood streets were exquisite and Sebastian recommended we follow Rue d’Assas past the Luxembourg gardens before doubling back and navigating the Boulevard Saint Germain for morning tea and then some luxury shopping around St-Germain des Prés. Before returning to the Boulevard Saint Germain, I asked that we visit a small speciality store, Au Service de la Liturgie (Liturgical Vestments), at 8 Rue Madame.