by Tim Heath
“Of course,” she snapped. She wasn’t stupid; two, three, five… she’d known them since she was seven years old. There were eight sequences of Vladić’s code to send. With the first message due out at ten, by her quick calculation, she would send the final section of code at half eleven in the nineteenth message. She had eleven minutes to prepare for the first message which given Filipov’s elaborate idea, she would have to make up.
“Superb. I’ll be waiting for the messages. Be careful. Once I have it all, I’ll instruct the team in Zurich to storm the vault. By this time tomorrow, I expect we’ll have you out of there,” he said, though she got the impression that wasn’t the thing he was most excited about. She said nothing, the line going dead moments after. She stood up, putting her ear to the door. There was no sound. She went back over to the bed. Sleep wasn’t possible anyway, and she had a lot of work to do. She wrote the prime numbers on a piece of paper, double checking she had them right. The eighth one was indeed number nineteen. She checked her watch. Eight-minutes. Opening the message screen, she invented a sequence of code that looked similar to each of the twelve character combinations she had from Vladić but would reveal nothing to anyone looking in. With nineteen to send in total, and only Filipov able to work out which order the code went in, even if someone were to look at the messages on the device, it wouldn’t make any sense. She would delete each one after she sent it, anyway, as a final precaution.
As half eleven came around, she pressed send for the final time, the message confirmation coming it had sent, and Svetlana deleted the record of the transmitted message. She didn’t know if anyone could still locate the message on the phone somehow, but knew it would not make much difference. She was in Filipov’s hands now. She lay her head on the pillow, but sleep wasn’t possible for her that night. With everything she’d learnt about the Bank from Filipov, if he was about to gain control, two things were about to happen––besides her release. She wondered for the first time how highly her release ranked in the negotiations. The first thing would be unparalleled wealth for Filipov and coupled with the second, it was almost irrelevant. He could equally wipe out the wealth and fortunes of all his rivals, destroying what they had stashed away if not using it himself. He could cut the legs off anyone not willing to do what he demanded.
Come the morning, Filipov would be almost unstoppable.
27
The Kremlin
Filipov had not slept. After everything that Svetlana had sent through, he looked at the printed output, each message time-stamped, its order recorded accurately. He had received each message seconds after the agreed time. Svetlana was good.
Filipov circled the second, third, fifth, seventh, eleventh, thirteenth, seventeenth and nineteenth messages. There sat his code. Then he pulled out the letters from Vladić. He had used the first two characters in each code to determine the sequence. Filipov quickly went through the eight codes he had just circled and added a number to each, starting with one and finishing with eight. He had his order.
Over the next thirty minutes, he carefully typed out the code onto his tablet device. He needed to be able to send it quickly and accurately. An intercept was less likely, and it wouldn’t matter. His men would already be in place. It would be too late for anyone else to act by that point.
At one that night, he sent through the instructions to the team leader in Zurich, telling him to have them all ready early in the morning. The unit was to be in place for when the first workers arrived to open up at the Bank. They were under orders to storm the building, using any means possible. That had been attempted in the past, too, but had always been fruitless. No one working there had access to the actual vault. They just used the investment to make money––for the Bank and those lucky enough to have deposited there in the past. Withdrawals were a rare thing and required significant planning.
Today, a withdrawal was more than possible.
Having sent the instruction to the unit in Switzerland, Filipov walked down into his office. Nobody was about though security was inevitably around outside. It had been so his whole life, his new status making no difference in that regard. He missed his son, however. Mark Orlov had so far avoided payback. Orlov’s treasure would be the first to be looted in Zurich, Filipov would make sure. He would pull the rug from under those who led the Machine, so they had nothing to come at him with.
Alex had been the one to feel most alarmed that Anissa had even given Phelan the time of day when he’d called her recently. Everything Alex had read about the Irishman in the information they’d been sent only pointed to a ruthless killer. It was far from the image of the man he’d known of over recent years.
Alex had seen the news reports: what Anissa had said about Filipov having leaked it to the press now made total sense, especially when they didn’t have a name. Alex was waiting for the revelation of the name as he had been during his own incident when the papers had wind of an affair involving Anastasia Kaminski with an unnamed member of the British Security Service. Phelan apparently gravely concerned Filipov. That gave Alex an idea.
“What if we offer Phelan a proposition?” Alex said to his two colleagues as he came striding back into their shared office with a little more gusto than was otherwise necessary. He explained his thinking.
“I can’t see anybody signing off on that!” Anissa said, the first to react once Alex had shared what he had.
“They’ve not issued the arrest warrant yet. The real damage isn’t done.”
Sasha sat watching his two colleagues thrashing out their thoughts, for the time being leaving them to it. Alex’s idea, however, was more Sasha’s own nation’s way of doing things than how he had assumed his current country carried things out.
“You want MI6 to hold off the arrest? That would take clearance from the top. The government would need to get involved, too.”
“They already are. Someone wanted a change in Russia. They just didn’t want this change.”
“They won’t sign off on it.” Anissa was shaking her head.
“Then we don’t tell them.”
“Are you crazy?”
He felt that way but it that had nothing to do with the situation with Phelan and his now uncovered past. He was heartbroken and anything Russian––Sasha aside––that he could lash out at; he was going to.
“We offer Phelan this one chance to put things right, and we look the other way with these allegations.”
“But the press already know!” Anissa said, though it was true they didn’t have a name. Phelan could just as quickly disappear into the void he’d happily been hiding in before anyone had broken the story.
“You are talking about killing the President of Russia?” Sasha asked, his silence broken at last, raising the one point neither of his colleagues seemed concerned about. “You are actually proposing setting Phelan onto Filipov and asking him to take down the President?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m suggesting,” Alex said as if he would have asked either of them to do the same. Sasha sat back in his chair and laughed. He felt no loyalty to Russia, and he knew the President would undoubtedly do the same to him if Filipov found out he was working for the British. Alex had said that much from the very beginning.
“Phelan has nothing to lose, his anonymity and freedom to gain, and all the skills required to carry out the act.”
Sasha’s input had awoken Anissa to that part of Alex’s plan afresh. The sheer scale of the task weighed heavy.
“It would be a huge problem if he failed.”
“You said yourself, Anissa, that he claimed he never failed. Legend has it, he was the best the IRA ever had. He’s got the perfect motivation to take out Filipov.”
“We are talking about taking out the head of a foreign state? Am I hearing right here?” Anissa said, herself half laughing, half appalled by the whole idea. How quickly the images of many a nightmare came flooding back to Anissa. The hanging body of Maggie Thompson, the death of Josée in a St Petersburg pri
son. All Filipov’s doing: besides the countless other victims.
“We are merely offering Phelan an olive branch.”
“Olive branch my backside, we’re asking him to kill again.”
“Kill a man who has controlled, crushed and potentially now ruined his life for far too long.”
“The UK can’t be involved in this.” Anissa was thinking through the potential pitfalls, though taking out the source of all her night terrors was something she was warming to.
“Of course not. It’ll be deniable. One man on his own mission.”
“He would need help in Russia,” Sasha said, knowing Russia had banned Anissa from the country and he was hardly welcome back himself.
“I’ll do it,” Alex said before either of his colleagues had time to think. “Some space would do me good. It would allow me to clear my head.” Anissa could see that he was still hurting after the breakup with Anastasia. She wanted to help him but didn’t know how. She’d warned him off Anastasia long before it had got as bad as it had now become.
“You can’t be anywhere near Phelan when he makes his attempt.” She hadn’t thought about that final stage. “That’s assuming he can even get anywhere near Moscow.”
Sasha had been tapping away on his computer while the others were speaking.
“We don’t need him to go to Moscow. Filipov will be in St Petersburg,” Sasha said, turning the laptop around for the others to see, though their pained expression reminding Sasha that neither of them could read Russian. Sasha turned the screen back to face him. “It’s from an official FSB source. There is nothing public. Filipov will stay at the Volkov residence in August. He has a few high-profile meetings in the city but isn’t there officially. It’s being kept a secret.” Alex had watched the mansion before, during the Games events, and knew it to be well secured, but probably much more accessible than the Kremlin in the heart of Moscow. If Filipov were holding meetings around the city, it would make him even more exposed.
“We must act fast,” Anissa said, aware on multiple counts that time was not on their side. “I’ll call New Scotland Yard,” she said, picking up her phone in clear acceptance of the situation now.
An hour later they connected with Phelan on a conference call. He’d called back to Anissa with a contact number, and she’d just reached out to him on it.
“So you want me to take out the President?” Phelan said, swearing under his breath.
“We aren’t officially asking you to do anything, Phelan,” Anissa asserted, though five minutes before that was precisely what Alex had alluded to.
“Oh, I see. And what assurances do I get?”
“You can’t get any, officially, as this isn’t happening. What you do or don’t do is on you. What I can say is that we’ll make the information on you go away. No one will know your real identity.” Such a move by the agents to bury the evidence of Phelan’s identity would not be ethical, but it still was possible.
“And my family?” It was the thing he was most concerned about.
“Where they go and who you invite to join you is totally up to you. I’d suggest your time in the UK is over, however, and you’d better pick one of the thirty-three nations we don’t have an extradition treaty with; might I suggest the Dominican Republic? But really, the choice is yours. You could stay in Russia, but I doubt that would be a good idea.”
“No, I don’t think it would.” He was warming to the idea. Closure had portrayed itself as many things over the months and years since he had claimed the money, but nothing had ever been permanent. This felt on another level entirely. If Filipov was out of the equation, most of his problems would go away. MI6 still knew his identity, but they were the ones now offering him a way out.
And what a way out.
Could Phelan be that man again, however? Phelan knew the answer to that. For Filipov, though he’d made a vow to himself when he laid down his old self never to pick it up again, for this oligarch, Phelan was prepared to make an exception.
“Alex has offered to get you in.”
That point had alarmed Phelan initially. It could all be a trick to get their hands on him. Yet why go to such extremes? Now, repeated and in context, Phelan felt somewhat more on board with the idea. He did not know about getting into Russia by himself.
“So when do we leave?” The three MI6 agents looked at each other, a smile on Alex’s face, concern on Anissa’s and a mixture of the two on Sasha’s. Phelan was in.
28
Anissa slipped out of the office just before eleven. She had said nothing to Sasha about where she was going, Alex no longer around to ask. While she was grateful for not having to explain where she was going, Anissa couldn’t help but think about Alex, somewhere in northern Finland as she walked from Vauxhall House. He might even have been over the border already.
She was meeting with Anastasia; the appointment finalised the day before, Anissa confident at last that the connection was valid, and today was all on her terms. Anissa picked the time and place––the location the park not too far from the office. It had been a long time since Anissa had last walked there with Alex, their usual routine––before all the craziness––meaning they would often spend time there each week breathing in the fresher air, watching the runners, and discussing the most pressing issues. There was something about doing that outside the office environment for getting a clearer perspective on things.
Anissa pushed those thoughts from her mind as she quickened her pace, now clear of Vauxhall House. It was about ten minutes to the park at this faster speed.
Anastasia was waiting for Anissa when the British MI6 agent entered the park, already in the agreed location, though she didn’t flinch or react at the appearance of Anissa. The Belarusian looked as concerned as Anissa felt, which went some way to allaying Anissa’s doubts as she closed the gap between them. It was only the second time they’d met each other, though both knew a lot of each other because of Alex. Anissa wished she didn’t know as much.
“Thank you for meeting me,” Anastasia said, the pair instinctively walking off together at a slow pace as Anissa approached. They were both looking directly ahead, not apparently in conversation with each other.
“You said it was urgent?”
“It is. I’ve been collecting evidence against Dmitry.” Anastasia paused at that moment, maybe for effect, perhaps because she didn’t know what more to say. Anissa had stopped now, cut short in her flow of thoughts, the Belarusian’s opening line not any of the scenarios Anissa had imagined in the build-up to their meeting. It also fascinated Anissa to note that Anastasia had just referred to Kaminski by his first name, instead of calling him my husband.
“Evidence linking him to what, exactly?”
“Everything. Anything Dmitry’s ever been involved in. There are crimes there, I’m certain. I’ve put it all onto this data stick,” she said, holding out the device towards Anissa, though the agent wasn’t reaching out for it yet. Anastasia continued, lowering her hand after a few seconds, the device still in her possession. “There is information about how he selected his Contestants. How he purchased the lottery tickets. Who he used. There is a lot of information.” Anastasia had seen the spark of interest flicker even more with the mention of the Games, and this time Anissa took the device from her when she offered it.
“Why are you giving me this?”
“Because Alex was right. Dmitry would never have given up, never have allowed me to be with Alex. Never allowed us to be together. Alex had asked me to do this months ago––he’d pleaded with me––but I couldn’t back then.”
“What changed?”
“I finally understood what Alex meant. I saw Dmitry for who he really was. I would not be his prisoner. So I played it his way. Played the good wife, talked the talk about getting back together, working things through, being over Alex. I am a convincing liar when I need to be.”
“You still love Alex?”
“Yes.” Anissa’s reaction caused Anastasia to sense
a sudden fear rising. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“You convinced him, Anastasia.”
“Who?”
“Alex. You convinced him it was over. He was heartbroken. And now he’s gone.”
“Gone?” There were tears in her eyes. She thought Anissa meant he was dead.
“No, not gone gone, but he’s overseas. He said he needed a mission, but I know he needed distance. The last few months have been hell for him you know.”
“Hell for him? I’ve had to live a lie! I’ve had to creep around behind my husband’s back and break into his office when I got the chance, recording everything he’s ever done. I had to be with him day after day. When I met with Alex to tell him it was over, I thought he would know I staged it. Realise that Dmitry was listening, and that he was watching. That he’d demanded I make it public and that he got to watch it. I had to convince him I really didn’t love Alex. I had to hurt Alex to save him.”
“You convinced him.”
“Where is he?”
“Look, I can’t say.”
“Is he in danger?” Anissa’s silence and her inability to make eye contact spoke far more than any words might offer. Anastasia took a deep breath.
“Alex knows what he’s doing,” Anissa said, which was about as much as she could let on.
“Oh god,” Anastasia let out. She was crying.
They walked in silence as rain gently fell on them. They said nothing to each other for a few minutes, passing groups of tourists being shown around the park. Joggers were going through their usual rituals. Life seemed so normal. Yet for Anastasia, it was far from ordinary. She’d been working to that end for weeks, and now it could all be over. She’d just handed enough incriminating data to the British for someone to arrest her husband, and if convicted, he would spend a long time behind bars. She didn’t know how that all worked, but she trusted the system. She had no reason to doubt it.