The Ninth Circle

by Dominic Adler

  “They have been here for a month” said the Russian quietly, “I would expect them to have completed initial reconnaissance and be ready to carry out their operation soon.”

  I opened the car door, felt cold air on my face “I’ll get Andy to take a look at Mikhail Baburin. Colonel Turov, I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

  Turov’s eyes narrowed. “May I ask how you found me?”

  “No” I replied, “you may not. We’ll drop you back at your flat.”

  She slid across the back seat next to me and slid out of the car. She smelt of something expensive, “I will make my own way.”

  “How do I contact you?” I shrugged, pulling a cigar tube out of my jacket. I handed her my number, printed on a small card with no name or other details.

  “I’m sure you’ll figure something out,” she smiled. She walked past Andy, gave him a wave, and was gone.

  I watched her. I liked her attitude. Oz was tapping his Blackberry, “here it is, Spartak Security. Just off Dalston Lane.”

  The satellite phone was in the boot. I walked around the car and dialled Harry’s number.

  “What do you know?” he barked impatiently.

  I explained what Turov had told me about Mikhail Baburin.

  “I’ll get on it, see what my contacts can come up with but I need to be careful.”

  “Sure Harry, but I don’t think time is on our side.”

  “Never is” sniffed the Handler, “leave it with me. Are you sending Andy over there?”

  “Yeah, I’ll give him the details” I said, “can you find out more about Pieter Van Basten?

  The SVR officer we had a friendly chat with doesn’t seem to know that part of the story.”

  “Will try my best” said Harry, “what’s the SVR officer like?”

  “Attractive, sharp as a tack, morally flexible …”

  “Just my type,” he said matter-of-factly.

  Ending the call, I gave Andy the details of Spartak Security. He nodded and went back to the snack van to stock up on bacon sandwiches and coffee. Andy had a battery of large lens cameras in the back of his wagon, and I asked him to get some imagery of the building and people coming in and out.

  Getting back into the front of the Volvo, my mobile phone rang.

  “Cal, Melissa Compton.”

  “Hi Melissa, how can I …”

  “Somebody tried to kill Sergei ten minutes ago,” she gasped.

  “He’s OK?”

  “Fine, one of his bodyguards got there first and saved his life!”

  “Who was it? Are the police involved?”

  Melissa’s voice was shaky. “No police, the bodyguards have taken the man away, I don’t know where …”

  “Tell them not to harm the prisoner” I ordered, “We’re on our way.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Sergei Belov held a white handkerchief to his blackened eye. “I cannot believe this was a professional attempt on my life,” he laughed unconvincingly. With his free hand he shakily poured cognac into a glass until it was near full. He wore a dark suit and a blue open-necked shirt, stained with spots of blood.

  Melissa fussed over him, holding a first aid box. Oz padded around the room, taking in details. He raised his eyebrows at the triptych over the fire.

  “Tell me what happened,” I said.

  “Every morning I walk my Husky, Vladimir, to the café. As a creature of habit, I buy fresh bagels, sour cream and smoked salmon. I like to have a moment of freedom in the morning, outside of this cage. I always have a bodyguard with me, this morning it was Gareth, an ex-Paratrooper. I owe him my life.”

  “Doesn’t Gareth tell you to vary your routine as a security precaution?” I sniffed.

  “Of course!” the Russian chuckled, draining the glass and wincing, “all the time. But I am terrible at taking good advice. And the bagels there are excellent.”

  “You must listen, Sergei” pleaded Melissa.

  “Please, Melissa, I do not pay you for fucking lectures! I have a wife for those.”

  Melissa reddened and put the first aid box down on the desk “of course, Mister Belov” she pouted, “I’ll be in my office if you need me.”

  “I am sorry Melissa” sighed the Russian, “I am not myself.”

  “No, I was out of turn.” The personal assistant nodded at me and left.

  “You were saying?” said Oz.

  “This is Mister Osborne” I said, “my associate.”

  Belov nodded and offered his hand, “many thanks for your assistance, this is a difficult time …”

  “No drama,” Oz replied.

  “As I left the café a man attacked me. He looked like a tramp, like he lived on the street. He punched me first, babbling like a lunatic! He had a knife.”

  I sat on the edge of my desk, shaking my head at the offered cognac, “who else saw this?”

  “It was early, and it happened in an instant. Not many people about at all. Gareth disarmed him, struck him and escorted me home. He radioed the other bodyguards: there is always a mobile team nearby. They found the assassin minutes later and picked him up” Belov said, pointing at his desk, “there’s the knife this wild man attacked me with.”

  Oz examined it, “L85A2 bayonet, military issue.”

  “Not exactly the mugger’s first choice,” I said.

  “Where is this bloke?” said Oz quietly, looking at the bayonet.

  Belov looked gingerly at the weapon and re-filled his glass. “My men have taken him to one of my properties, an empty office. I am sure they will discover the truth.”

  “Sergei Nikolayevich, call them off” I said, “I’ll speak with this man, and if necessary dispose of him. It’s what you’re paying us for.”

  “Of course” nodded the Russian, reaching for his mobile, “you are correct.”

  “Who heads up your security?” asked Oz.

  Belov’s fingers shook as he dialled a number. “Dmitri Aseyev is in charge. He has been with me for ten years, I trust him utterly.”

  “He’s the only one who meets us then” said Oz icily, “tell the rest of the security team to disappear. OK?”

  Belov looked the ex-SBS man up and down, “you are used to giving orders, Mister Osborne?”

  “Yes” said Oz easily.”

  “It’s time to start taking advice Sergei Nikolayevich” I said, “if you want to live.”

  Belov smiled uneasily, his little brown eyes darting around the room, “I knew it was a good idea to employ your organisation.”

  We left my battered Volvo in the underground car park below Sergei’s townhouse, among a fleet of Range Rovers and top-end German engineering. Melissa got into a 7-series BMW and drove us north through the early morning traffic. She looked excited at the drama of it all.

  “Where are we going?” I said.

  “The office is in Paddington,” she replied, weaving in and out of side streets and double-backs.

  Oz nodded approvingly. “Where did you learn to drive?”

  “When I joined the company Sergei he sent me on an anti-hijack course with BMW, in Munich,” she smiled proudly.

  I opened the mini-bar in the back of the Beemer. I looked at the cognac, gritted my teeth and helped myself to a Diet Coke. “How does a nice English girl like you end up getting involved in anti-hijack driving and kidnapping?”

  She looked at me in the rear view mirror. “After I finished my degree in Russian at Cambridge I joined the Foreign Office. I was on the fast-track scheme, sent to Moscow, but it was rather dull to be honest. I met some of Sergei’s people, had seen first-hand how rotten the Russian government was. So when I was offered a job with his organisation at ten times my civil service salary …”

  “You decided to become a secretary with a sugar daddy?” I said.

  “Fuck you, Mister Winter” she said airily “Sergei and me? I don’t think so.”

  “Fair enough” I pulled a cigar from my pocket, “only asking. Mind if I have a cigar?”

  “
Yes, I do.”

  I lit the Montecristo and handed one to Oz. “I’d say, Melissa, given the company you’re keeping that passive smoking is the last of your worries.” I looked out the window, at cheap hotels and careworn pedestrians.

  “That’s my business.”

  “Don’t take it personally” said Oz, “but no it ain’t. We don’t know you. And this is heavy shit. Do you understand?”

  Melissa treated us to a throaty, crone-like chuckle. “I work for Sergei Belov: his inner circle. Don’t worry yourself too much, Mister Osborne. I’ve got some dirt under my fingernails.”

  “They look pretty well-manicured to me” I said, “can you tell me about Pieter Van Basten?”

  Her eyes narrowed when I mentioned the internet genius. “He’s incredible, not just at a technical level but in how he understands the culture of communications … conceptually. Sergei sees it too. Pieter isn’t the easiest person to get on with, but he’s certainly changed the way governments do business. Do you think that’s a bad thing?”

  So Belov hadn’t mentioned his grip on Van Basten’s online operation to his PA. I shrugged, “depends on whether it affects me or not.”

  Melissa sniffed haughtily, “as long as we know where you stand, Mister Winter.”

  Oz stretched like a cat in his upholstered seat. “We’re about to do some medieval style interrogation on somebody. So it’s OK for us to play Guantanamo Bay with some poor bastard because we’re on the side of the angels?”

  “Yes” she said easily, “absolutely.”

  “As long as we know where you stand,” said Oz.

  She dropped us outside a row of run-down regency townhouses houses near St. Mary’s Hospital. “Dmitri is in number seven. The other men have been stood down.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Oh, and don’t talk to me like that again” she glowered, pushing her blonde hair back under her sunglasses, “you’re hired help just like I am. I don’t care how many men you’ve killed.”

  “I’ll try my best,” I grunted.

  “I won’t” said Oz, “I’m the nice one.”

  The door sprung open as we reached number seven. The building was divided into small offices and had a ‘TO LET’ sign outside. The few items of furniture left were covered with dust sheets, packing crates containing lonely computer parts lying here and there.

  “Mister Winter?” said a Russian voice. It belonged to a bulky, crop-headed man in his forties. His face looked like it was no stranger to fists and boots. He wore dark jeans, Chelsea boots and a black waxed jacket. He offered me his hand, shod in a black leather glove. “I am Dmitri Asayev. I run Mister Belov’s security operation.”

  “Where is he?” I said, shaking his hand.

  “Come with me” said Aseyev, leading us into an empty office, “I hope you have better luck than I.”

  The scrawny young man was sat on an office chair, hands and feet bound with cable ties. Over his head was a hessian sand-bag, secured around his neck with duct tape. He sat erect, but still. He was wearing a dirty, blood-stained T-shirt and jogging trousers. A jumbled pile of tatty outer clothes lay by the door, along with a pair of filthy training shoes.

  I pointed at the sand-bag, “Your guys ex-HM Forces?” It was good drills as far as I was concerned. The hood would stop the prisoner knowing where he was, stop him spitting on you and stop him identifying you. Admittedly, it would probably fuck up your invitation to the Amnesty International Winterval vegan buffet. But you can’t have everything.

  “Some of them” Aseyev nodded, “they said they used the sand-bags in Iraq as hoods. They always keep some in the car.”

  Oz walked carefully towards the prisoner, snapping on surgical gloves and a balaclava helmet. I did the same. He positioned himself behind the man’s head. “Mate” he said gently, “I’m going to take this bag off, OK? If you move, or spit or try to bite me I’m going to hurt you. So say still and everything will be good.”

  The sand bag moved as he nodded his head gently. I could smell the street on him from five feet away.

  Oz pulled a small pocket knife and cut the duct tape, then pulled the sand-bag off the man’s head. “There you go” said Oz, “now let’s have a chat, eh?”

  The man was in his twenties, with wild matted hair and a wispy beard. His face was pinched and pale, like he spent a lot of time in the outdoors. His arms were covered with intricate tattoos, stars and beasts and runes. My eyes were drawn to his upper arm, where his blood group and a distinctive glider design was inked. It was the Tactical Recognition Flash of the old Staffordshire regiment.

  “See that?” I said to Oz.

  “Yeah, ex-Squaddie” he whispered, “now the bayonet makes sense.”

  “Yes, some of my men noticed the tattoo” said Dmitri, “he was a soldier.”

  Oz crouched down in front of the man. “What’s your name?”

  “Kill me” groaned the prisoner, “I’ve failed. Kill me.”

  “That can certainly be arranged” I said, “but first we need information.”

  “I’ve nothin’ to say,” he wept. His eyes reddened as tears flowed down his hollow cheeks.

  “Let’s start with name, rank and serial number. You were a Mercian, right?” said Oz.

  “That was before” said the prisoner, “it doesn’t matter now.”

  “Let’s burn him” I said, “Dmitri, get me some petrol.”

  “It might be the only way,” agreed Oz casually.

  “What?” said the Russian, “but what about the office?”

  “No problem” I shrugged, “we make it look like rat-boy here was looking for somewhere to sleep. He started a fire to keep warm and whoosh!”

  “Nice one” agreed Oz, “what do you think, mate? You want to die, right?”

  The prisoner’s eyes bulged as Dmitri nodded grimly and left the room. He fidgeted in his chair. “Are you serious?”

  I pulled out my Zippo and lit it. “Yeah” I said, “sadly. But on the positive side, there won’t be much in the way of forensics to worry about after a nice big fire. Just some charred bones and your teeth. They’ll probably ID you via those.”

  Oz put his hand on the man’s shoulders and spoke quietly “look, all this talk about death? What a load of bollocks. You’re a veteran, you’ve probably seen worse. You tell us why you tried to kill Belov this morning and we have a brew, maybe a sandwich then you can go. You have my word. We’re not the police, for fuck’s sake.”

  The prisoner’s eyes narrowed as he tried to focus. He twitched and blinked. He reminded me of some of the guys on my ward when I was in hospital. “It’s so fucking complicated” he said mournfully, “serious, mate. It just is.”

  We sat with him for a bit, calming him down and being as sensitive as two big guys wearing balaclavas can be with a bloke strapped to an office chair.

  Finally he told us his name was Alex, that he’d fought in Afghanistan and that he’d been homeless until six months ago. A Russian he’d met on the street had taken him into a squat, which sounded like a commune or something. The Russian, who he refused to name or describe, was friendly. After a month or so Alex was supplied with free heroin, encouraged to have sex with girls from the commune and make promises about an exciting, alternative future. Alex was vague about this part of his story, and wouldn’t elaborate.

  He was vulnerable and homeless and he’d been groomed by an expert.

  “He wanted me to kill a man called Belov” said Alex, sniffing back bloody snot. “Then my place in the group would be sorted.”

  “What’s the score with this commune?” I asked.

  “I can’t tell you,” said Alex.

  “Why were you asked specifically to kill Belov this morning?”

  “No reason. I was asked” he whined, “as a favour for a friend.”

  I shook my head, “what do you mean you were asked? Its murder we’re talking about here Alex, not popping out for a pint of milk.”

  He looked at me with red-rimmed,
dead eyes “I was in the army. I followed orders to kill people there. And they weren’t my friends.”

  Dmitri came back in with a jerry can of petrol. “How are things?” he said hopefully.

  “We’re making some progress, aren’t we Alex?”

  “Yes” he nodded, “I don’t want to burn to death. This is doing my head in.”

  Oz ruffled his hair and headed for the door, “let’s get you a brew and something to eat.”

  “Thanks” he mumbled, “you’re not going to call the police?”

  “No” said Oz, “we’re not.”

  I motioned for Dmitri Aseyev to join me in the corridor. On the way out I picked up Alex’s filthy green field jacket and battered trainers and dropped them by the stairs.

  “What now?” Aseyev said.

  Tugging off my balaclava, I pulled out my phone, “we let the hare run and see where he goes.”

  I rang Andy.

  He answered on the third ring. “What’s occurring?”

  “I’m going to give you a postcode in Paddington” I said, “can you join me with a dog collar, if you’ve got one in the wagon?”

  “Fucking typical, I’ve just got on the plot in Dalston. Been taking photos.”

  I updated him on the situation, “so it’s all part of the glamour and excitement of The Firm, Andrew. ETA?”

  “Fair enough, Cal. I’ll be there in an hour and a bit” he whistled, “I’ve got a dog collar in my tech bag, one of the new ones.”

  “How small is it?” I asked.

  “Oh, about the size of your dick” he dead-panned. Squaddie humour, how I missed it so.

  “Just fucking get over here,” I said.

  Andy laughed and rang off.

  “Dog collar?” said Dmitri, “what are you talking about?”

  “We’re English” I smiled, “we’re going to have a bit of a wait and a chat, a cuppa then walk the dog.” I offered the baffled Russian a cigar and waited for Oz to come back with the brews.

  From the office I could hear Alex howling and begging forgiveness, like he was praying or trying to cast a hex or curse. I didn’t understand the words. They sounded a little like Latin, or perhaps something Middle Eastern.

  Crazy.

  Bat-shit crazy.