Esther entered the waiting Mercedes-Maybach. “I’m leaving. Are you coming?”
As they neared Fallbrook Manor, Garrett asked, “You carrying? Because I don’t know where you could be hiding it in that dress.”
Esther opened her Louis Vuitton clutch purse and withdrew a gold ladies’ decorative pin, five inches long, with a black rose affixed to its top. She pulled off the rose, revealing a razor-sharp point. She attached the pin to her dress.
“Tiny, but terribly persuasive when stuck in the right spot.”
Esther’s cell phone rang. “Big Jules says they’re expecting us. How do I look?”
She shifted slightly in the rear seat so he could see her, and in doing so caused the V-neck to gap open.
“Breathtaking.”
Two Russian security guards met them at the curb and escorted them into the mansion, where they were joined by four goons in the foyer.
“He’s expecting her,” Zharkov’s chief of security said, eyeing Garrett. “Not you. You can wait outside in the car.”
“We’re a pair. Where she goes, I go.”
“A pair? You a whore too?” He laughed, and the other guards joined him.
“It’s company policy,” Esther said. “He has to be on the premises for my protection. Otherwise, I can’t stay.”
“Our company policy is, he stays in the car.”
“Then we’ll be leaving, and you can explain to your employer why you sent us away.” She started to turn but was blocked by the goons. “Get out of my way!”
“A beautiful woman with brass balls!” a voice called out. Zharkov descended from the mansion’s grand staircase.
“Sir, we haven’t checked them for concealed weapons,” the security chief warned.
“She doesn’t appear to be concealing much,” Zharkov replied, but he stopped on the second step up from the foyer floor. “Go ahead.”
The guard closest to Garrett frisked him, removing his pistol. “I’ll expect that back,” Garrett said.
The guard reached into the slit on Esther’s dress, ran his hand up her inner thigh, and groped her before lowering his hand down the opposite thigh, as Zharkov watched from the stairs. Next the guard ran his hands over her chest. He noticed the lapel pin and started to reach for it.
“Wouldn’t it be easier if I simply stripped naked?” Esther asked Zharkov. “Or is that something you would prefer me to do privately, for only you?”
Zharkov stepped forward. With his beefy right hand, he lifted her chin and kissed her lips while swinging his left paw around her, pulling her close and clenching her buttocks. His guards smirked.
“Have you ever had a Russian make love to you?” he asked, continuing to press her pelvis against his. He smelled of sweat and vodka.
“Make love?” she said. “That’s not what I plan to do to you tonight.”
He guffawed and leaned in to kiss her again.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, suddenly pulling back.
Garrett assumed Esther had bitten his lip, but it was the black rose on her pin that had poked him. He reached for it. She blocked his hand, but he knocked hers away and removed the pin, tossing it on the floor.
“A family heirloom,” she said, starting to bend down to retrieve it.
He stopped her, keeping her upright. “My men will give it back when we’re done.” Speaking to his security chief, Zharkov said, “Bring her up in an hour. I have a series of telephone calls to make.” He looked at Garrett. “Who’s he?”
“Her bodyguard.”
Zharkov returned to the staircase. “He waits in the kitchen.”
Esther bent down to retrieve her lapel pin, but the security guard next to her was quicker. He handed it to the security chief. “Mr. Zharkov said you’ll get it back after he is finished with you.”
She walked into the parlor. Garrett started to follow.
“Not you. You go to the kitchen.”
“After she goes upstairs with him,” Garrett said. “I’m not leaving her with all of you alone.”
No one stopped him. An English grandfather clock sounded the time. Ten gongs: ten o’clock. Its pendulum counted out seconds on its hand-painted dial. No one spoke. Except for the tick-tock of the clock, there was silence for a nerve-racking hour. Finally the security chief appeared. “Follow me.” He looked at Garrett. “You go to the kitchen.”
“You should give back her pin,” Garrett said. “Like she said, it’s a family heirloom.”
The security guard in charge picked it from his pocket. “We’ll see how much she values it after Mr. Zharkov finishes with her.”
Esther started for the grand staircase.
“No,” the security chief said, “we use the elevator.”
When its doors shut, she said, “I’ll take my pin now.”
He held it up between them but when she reached for it, he made a fist around it, stopping her from taking it.
“Tell me, how much do you charge for seconds?” he taunted.
“You can’t afford me.”
He sucker-punched her. She gasped for breath as the elevator doors opened into a third-floor anteroom with a domed ceiling painted with a mural of cherubs and walls of flocked black-and-silver wallpaper.
“To the right,” he said, still holding her pin. “We don’t need you wandering into Mrs. Zharkov’s private quarters.” He led her toward the double doors at the end of the hall and rapped on the left one. No answer. He spoke softly into his headset.
“Mr. Zharkov, we’re in the hallway.”
Esther’s mind was racing. Without her pin, she would have to improvise.
No response.
The security chief turned the left doorknob and gently pushed the heavy walnut door inward.
“Mr. Zharkov,” he said in a quiet voice.
Whoosh. Whoosh. Two slugs smacked into his chest, muffled by a suppressor. He toppled backward, falling onto the polished marble floor, his crisp white shirt turning red.
Esther dropped to her knees behind the closed right door, using it as a shield. She waited for a moment, readying herself to lunge upward and attack if the shooter came into the hallway. Nothing. No sounds indicating movement. She leaned forward and tugged open the dead man’s jacket, exposing a Russian MP-443 Grach semiautomatic pistol in a shoulder holster. She drew it and quickly retreated behind the closed right door.
For an entire minute she did not move; instead she listened for the slightest sound. It was obvious that Mrs. Zharkov down the hallway and the guards on the ground level had not heard the gunshots. She lowered her shoulder and dove forward through the doorway into the bedroom, her left hand extended, ready to fire the commandeered pistol.
Nothing. No reaction. She let her eyes adjust to the dimly lighted room, searching for an attacker. A breeze behind a curtain near the bed. An open window. She felt restricted in her clinging dress, so she pulled it up around her waist as she duckwalked deeper into the room, to where light was shining from an opening between the bookcases. Zharkov’s safe room. She rose slowly, letting her dress fall back into place, the pistol still extended before her. The room’s steel door was open.
Inside, she saw Zharkov sitting in his customized chair, bound with plastic zip ties. His chin was resting on his chest. His shirt had been torn open, exposing a series of cuts. Esther recognized the technique. Cause maximum pain without causing shock, unconsciousness, or death. A final deep puncture wound into the heart.
She suspected Zharkov had been surprised, thinking he was well protected in his well-guarded home—enough so that he’d left open the safe-room door. She’d heard him earlier tell his guards that he’d had telephone calls to make. She quickly looked for papers, but there was only an iPad control attached to the chair, and it was locked with a pass code. She didn’t have more time.
Backing out slowly, she exited the bedroom into the hallway and reinserted the pistol into the dead man’s holster. She pressed the diamond center of her bracelet.
“Help! Help! Please h
elp me!” she screamed.
The guards assembled on the first floor could not hear her, but Garrett shot up from his seat in the kitchen at the same time Mrs. Zharkov hit the panic button on the alarm in her quarters.
“You stay here,” one of the guards watching Garrett declared, but he hurried after them. They reached the third floor, where a hysterical Esther was perched on her haunches in the hallway, wailing next to the dead security chief’s body.
“Someone shot him!” she shrieked. “When he opened the bedroom door, someone shot him!” She rose to her feet and ran to Garrett.
The first guard reached for her arm to stop her, but she brushed by him, continuing to scream. “Someone’s in that bedroom! Someone started shooting when he opened the door!”
She thrust herself into Garrett’s arms. The guards drew their pistols, now completely focused on Zharkov’s bedroom and the possible intruder lurking there.
“Let’s go,” she whispered to Garrett, nudging him toward the stairs. They found a lone guard in the foyer with his pistol drawn.
“They need you upstairs!” Garrett exclaimed, jabbing a finger up the staircase.
The guard looked at a shaking Esther clutching Garrett’s arm. He said something in Russian and pointed his pistol at Garrett, who realized the guard didn’t understand English.
“Upstairs! Now! They want you!” Esther hollered in Russian.
The Russian lowered his gun, assuming the guards had allowed Esther and Garrett to flee, and darted past them up the stairway. Now alone in the foyer, Esther ended her theatrical performance and reached for the front door.
“Wait,” Garrett said. “Follow me. There’ll be guards out front.” He led her down the hallway into the kitchen and out an unguarded rear exit. Both broke into a run toward the hotel.
Mayberry was watching Fallbrook Manor through the binoculars when Garrett and Esther burst into the Grand Piano suite. “What happened?” she asked. “I just saw Zharkov’s security guards putting Zharkov’s wife into a car in front of the mansion.”
“She must be heading to the airport—one of his private jets,” Esther replied.
“Without Zharkov? Where’s her husband?” Mayberry asked.
“Dead!” Garrett said.
“Did you kill him?”
“No. Someone got to him before us,” Esther said.
“They’re getting the hell out of London,” Garrett said. “They won’t want Scotland Yard poking around.”
“They’re loading something into the car,” Mayberry said, still peering through the binoculars.
“The bodies,” Esther guessed.
“Bodies? More than one?” Mayberry asked.
“Zharkov and a bodyguard,” Esther replied.
“That makes sense,” Mayberry said, lowering the glasses. “With his fortune at stake, they won’t want anyone to know Zharkov is dead. What now?”
“I thought you were leaving in the morning?” Esther replied.
Mayberry glanced at Garrett. “We’re partners. Garrett and I.”
None of them spoke for several minutes as each pondered what to do next. Garrett walked to the bar to fetch a beer. Esther let out a loud sigh. Mayberry sat near the piano.
“Big Jules isn’t going to be happy,” Esther said. “We have to find a way to get back inside his mansion.”
“Esther’s right,” Garrett said. “If there’s any evidence of Zharkov being involved in a submarine attack, we still need to document it.”
“My lapel pin,” Esther said. “I’ll go back for it. If everyone is fleeing tonight, they’ll leave a skeleton crew behind.”
“What hooker returns to a house after a double homicide and asks for her gold pin?” Mayberry asked.
“I don’t hear you offering a better idea.”
“I happen to have one,” Mayberry said. “The only reason a prostitute and her bodyguard would risk returning would be if they thought they could squeeze some money out of it.”
“Blackmail?” Garrett said.
“Yes,” Mayberry replied. “Ask for money to keep silent.”
“They’d simply kill the hooker and bodyguard,” Esther said.
“Not if they showed up with an attorney from a large London law firm accompanying them,” Mayberry said. “Here’s my thinking. I pose as an attorney. Esther, call Big Jules and tell him we need . . . a nondisclosure contract, and some sort of documentation that makes it appear I’m from a major London legal firm. We’ll also need someone from the Mossad to act as the firm’s bodyguard, sent to protect me. Harder to kill four of us, especially if they believe we have an established law firm behind us.”
Esther looked at Mayberry. “I thought you didn’t want to get involved in tricks.”
“This could work. I’ll claim the firm has depositions locked in a safe about what you both saw. Then I’ll promise that you two will leave town permanently. The only risk would be if they do a background check on my legal credentials.”
“I underestimated you,” Esther said. “It’s crazy enough to actually work. I’ll call Big Jules.”
They took turns monitoring Fallbrook Manor through the binoculars but saw nothing unusual once the motorcade transporting the recently widowed Zharkov and her husband’s body had departed for the airfield. Exhaustion overrode adrenaline. Then they took turns sleeping.
Big Jules’s call came at 9:00 a.m. “Everything is arranged for two p.m. Be convincing.”
Room service appeared with lunch that Mayberry had ordered, but no one touched it. Shortly before two o’clock, Esther changed into black slacks and a black vest over a white shirt with the top three buttons undone, in keeping with her call-girl image.
Garrett was wearing denim jeans and an untucked polo shirt large enough to conceal the handgun that the Mossad had supplied, since Zharkov’s security team had confiscated his Sig Sauer.
Mayberry was dressed in a tight black skirt, cream silk blouse, and matching black blazer. “These will do,” she said as she examined the legal documents arranged by Big Jules. She tucked the paperwork into a briefcase. “Is everyone ready?”
A limo driven by a Mossad officer took them to Fallbrook Manor, where the same Russian-speaking guard who’d let them leave the night before was standing watch outside the front door. He looked confused by their arrival.
In fluent Russian, Mayberry introduced herself and handed him a business card bearing the name of a top London firm. He took it inside, leaving them on the sidewalk. Five minutes later, he reappeared and held the door open. Mayberry entered first.
“My name is Nikita,” a fiftyish-looking man standing in the foyer said in English, extending his hand. Mayberry put down her briefcase and shook his hand with her left, noting his manicured fingernails and Savile Row three-piece tailored suit.
“I’m here in my role as a solicitor,” Mayberry announced. “Are you more comfortable speaking in Russian or English?”
“English is fine. I’m in charge of this estate when Mr. Zharkov and his wife are away. How can I assist you?”
“My clients and I wish to resolve a rather delicate legal matter.” She introduced Esther and Garrett using the same fake names that they’d used the evening before.
“A legal matter? Of what sort?”
“We’re here to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement.”
“Forgive me, but . . . I’m not certain I understand what you are suggesting.”
“Then let me make this clear,” Mayberry said in a sharp tone. “If you are not interested in negotiating with us, our next stop will be Scotland Yard.”
The polite smile on Nikita’s face vanished.
“Just to be clear,” Mayberry continued, “my firm has hired a bodyguard to accompany us here and is fully aware of our arrival.” She nodded toward the Mossad officer without introducing him. “In addition, my firm has video depositions from both of our clients, attesting in detail what they observed last night.”
“Mr. Zharkov is a highly respected international
businessman who—”
“Who is dead,” Esther cut in. “Him and that other guy. The security chief.”
He glared at her. “I need to consult Moscow. Let’s move into the parlor, shall we?”
He led them into the same room off the foyer where Esther and Garrett had been taken the night before. Same grandfather clock. Same tick-tocking. Mayberry and Esther sat on a sofa near the fireplace. Garrett and the bodyguard stood at each end of the couch. Three other large Russian security guards appeared, standing between them and the front door.
No one spoke. Twenty minutes later, Nikita surfaced. “I’ve arranged a conference call between you and our lawyers.”
“Do you have a fax machine?” Mayberry asked.
“The only fax line is in Mr. Zharkov’s private office,” Nikita replied. “If you have legal materials, it would be best to send them electronically or by courier.”
She lifted her briefcase. “It’s in everyone’s best interest to finalize this agreement now. A fax is the most secure method to exchange these documents. We’re not interested in leaving an electronic trail. Nor are my clients interested in quibbling. When we leave this house, they intend to disappear.”
“The lawyers are waiting. You will discuss this with them.”
“Nikita,” Mayberry replied firmly, “I’m not going anywhere with you without my two clients and our bodyguard. Now, where is that fax?”
“Wait here,” Nikita said, again disappearing upstairs. Two more Russian goons joined the others blocking the door. Garrett rested his hand on his hip, closer to the pistol in the waistband behind his back.
Nikita reappeared. “Please come with me. We will use the fax in Mr. Zharkov’s office.” In Russian, he instructed the guards to remain downstairs, except for the one who’d met them outside on the steps and knew them from last night.
Up the stairs to the second floor, they entered Zharkov’s private office. Nikita motioned Mayberry to sit in front of the oligarch’s highly prized Nicholas II desk, where a telephone speaker had been placed. Nikita sat behind it while the Russian security guard stood at the door. Garrett, Esther, and their Mossad security guard positioned themselves along a back wall.
Shakedown Page 20