True Colours ss-10

by Stephen Leather

  Shepherd heard Popov laugh. ‘Fifteen!’ he said. Shepherd stayed focused. He was tired now and his biceps felt as if they were on fire but he ignored the pain. It was the brain trying to fool him, he knew that. His muscles still had maybe half their energy reserves left but the brain was trying to get him to pack it in before he did himself serious damage. It was the same with running — if you ran hard and fast you hit a wall where you thought you couldn’t go any farther but if you forced yourself on your brain would eventually realise that it wasn’t fooling anyone and stop complaining. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. His arms felt like lead but he knew he had more left, it was just a question of forcing his brain to issue the necessary instructions. He took a deep breath, squeezed his glutes hard to lock his legs and forced himself up, staring at the bar all the time. His chin crested the bar and he exhaled.

  ‘Nineteen!’ said Popov.

  Someone grunted contemptuously, probably Tarasov, but all Shepherd’s energy was focused on the bar. He lowered himself down. Every fibre of his being wanted to let go of the bar and drop to the floor but he was determined to do at least another one. It wasn’t about beating Tarasov — he’d already done that — it was about proving to himself that he could do twenty. He took two deep breaths, ignored the burning pain in his arms and back and forced himself up. He began to groan through gritted teeth and almost stopped short of the bar but then he kicked out with his legs and managed to gain another couple of inches. He held his chin above the bar for a full two seconds and then dropped down.

  Popov clapped him on the back. ‘Twenty!’ he said. ‘You’re the man.’

  Serov patted Shepherd on the shoulder and even Tarasov flashed him a thumbs-up. ‘I’ll pay you later,’ said Tarasov.

  Popov pointed at him. ‘Sixty pounds,’ he said. ‘Don’t you forget.’

  ‘I won’t,’ said Tarasov. He turned and walked over to a set of free weights and picked up two twenty-kilo dumbbells. And began pumping them into the air.

  Shepherd pulled out his tie, put on his shoes and rolled down his shirtsleeves before holstering his Glock and pulling on his jacket. Popov was still chuckling and he put his arm around Shepherd’s shoulder as he guided him out of the gym. ‘You’re stronger than you look,’ said the Russian.

  ‘I’ve been told that before,’ said Shepherd. He pointed at an unmarked door. ‘What’s in there?’

  ‘The gun range.’

  ‘The gun range? You’ve got guns?’

  ‘Airguns,’ said Popov. ‘Mr Grechko’s children used to like playing with them.’

  ‘But you’re not armed, are you?’

  Popov looked offended. ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘Handguns are illegal in this country.’

  ‘I just thought maybe you’d been given special permission.’

  Popov shook his head. ‘I think Mr Grechko asked but permission was refused.’ He pushed open the door. The room was about fifteen feet wide and sixty feet long. The walls and ceiling were soundproofed and there was a wall of sandbags at the far end, reaching from the floor to the ceiling. There were three targets in front of the sandbags, figures of terrorists holding AK-47s. By the door was a bench from where the guns could be fired, and there was a wire system that allowed the targets to be run back and forth.

  ‘This is pretty elaborate for airguns,’ said Shepherd.

  Popov walked over to a metal cabinet with a keypad on the door. He tapped out a four-digit code and pressed his thumb against a sensor. The door opened and Popov stepped to the side to show Shepherd a dozen air rifles and half a dozen pistols of various shapes and sizes. All of them seemed to be air-operated. The bigger ones would provide quite a kick but you would have to be very lucky — or unlucky, depending on your point of view — to kill anyone with them. Popov closed the door of the cabinet.

  ‘So what’s the story with the kids?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘They spend most of their time with Mrs Grechko, when they’re not at school,’ said Popov. ‘The first Mrs Grechko. She has a Cypriot passport. So does Mr Grechko and the children. He invested a lot of money in Cyprus many years ago and they were all given passports.’

  ‘And they’re on good terms?’

  Popov frowned, not understanding. ‘Good terms?’

  ‘The divorce was amicable? Friendly? They’re not fighting?’

  ‘Mr Grechko is a very generous man,’ he said. ‘Mrs Grechko wants for nothing. They both love their sons. They have nothing to fight about.’ He walked out of the gun range with Shepherd and pushed open another door marked fire exit. It led to a concrete stairwell. ‘This is one of the three stairways that serve as emergency exits in the event of a fire. Also covered by CCTV. There are no locks or keypads on the doors on the outside for obvious reasons, but every inch is covered by CCTV. Once inside the stairwell, you need a thumbprint and code to exit at any level other than the ground floor. So again, we know who is where at any point just by tracking what doors they’ve opened.’

  He walked down the stairs and pushed open a door that led to the second basement level. They stepped into a wood-panelled corridor with recessed lighting. ‘This is where the family comes for fun,’ said Popov. He showed Shepherd a full-size bowling alley with two lanes, a billiards room with two tables, a games room packed with video arcade games, pinball machines and two pool tables. He pushed open red double doors that opened into a plush red-velvet-lined cinema with twenty large La-Z-Boy reclining chairs and sofas facing a screen as big as Shepherd had ever seen. ‘Now this I like,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Mr Grechko likes to watch movies,’ said Popov. ‘He gets to see a lot of them before they are released. He owns a movie studio in Los Angeles.’

  He closed the doors to the cinema and pushed open another door that led to the concrete stairwell. They went down to the third basement level.

  Popov nodded at a pair of teak double doors with the omnipresent keypad. ‘That’s Mr Grechko’s gym,’ he said. ‘He has two personal trainers and a Thai man who teaches him Muay Thai. You can box, Tony?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m more of a lover than a fighter.’

  ‘Pity, if you were any good we could have a bet as to whether you could beat our Thai boxer.’

  ‘Is he good?’

  ‘Hard as nails,’ said Popov. ‘Half my size but I wouldn’t go into the ring with him.’

  ‘How often do the trainers come?’

  ‘Monday and Thursday. They take it in turns. The boxer is here on Saturdays if Mr Grechko is home.’ From the other side of the doors they heard a loud grunt. Popov grinned. ‘That’s Mr Grechko,’ he said. ‘He’s doing weight training today. He can bench-press more than Leo.’

  Popov gestured at frosted double doors at the far end of a tiled corridor. ‘And that’s the pool. That’s out of bounds when Mrs Grechko and the kids are here, but when she’s away Mr Grechko allows us to use the pool. Absolutely no smoking or drinking.’

  ‘No problem, Dmitry, I won’t be doing either.’ He looked up at the ceiling and caught their reflection in yet another black plastic dome. ‘You’re constantly monitoring the CCTV?’

  ‘In the security centre on Basement One,’ said Popov. ‘We’ll go there now.’ He took Shepherd along to a lift and they went up two floors. Popov pressed his thumb against the scanner and tapped in his four-digit code on the keypad outside the security centre. The lock clicked and he pushed open the door. There was a large room with three high-backed chairs facing a dozen large LCD screens. Each of the screens was filled with nine camera views from around the mansion and the grounds.

  Only one of the chairs was occupied, by a thin man in his twenties who was trying in vain to disguise a receding hairline with a waxed comb-over. Shepherd recognised him from his file picture but said nothing as Popov introduced him as Vlad Molchanov. Molchanov was holding an iPad and he switched it off and placed it on a desk as Popov walked over to the screens. ‘As you can see we have eleven screens each with nine cameras,’ he said. ‘Ninety-
nine in all.’ He pointed at the largest of the screens, which showed a view of the main gate. ‘This screen we use for anything of interest, to get a better view. The screens on the left are pre-programmed with the cameras we want to be watching all the time. The grounds, the corridors, the garage. The screens on the right take feeds from the rest of the cameras in a pre-programmed order but that can be overridden if any movement is spotted. The motion detectors take precedence over the timer so if something moves, we see it on one of these screens straight away.’

  ‘What about recordings?’

  ‘It all goes straight on to hard discs, but the discs are recycled every seven days,’ said Popov.

  ‘OK, as of today let’s stop doing any recycling. Keep everything.’ There was a row of transceivers in charging docks on a table against one wall. ‘How does the communication system work?’ he asked.

  ‘We all speak on the same channel. Channel One. If I need a personal chat we move to another frequency.’

  ‘Are the conversations recorded?’ Popov shook his head. ‘And you allow conversations in Russian?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘OK, well, from now on I want all chatter to be in English. All of it. I have to know what’s going on at all times.’

  ‘I’ll make sure that happens,’ said the Russian. He waved Shepherd to a chair and they both sat down. ‘This is Vlad Molchanov, he’s usually in here.’

  Molchanov leaned over and shook hands with Shepherd. His grip was weak and clammy and Shepherd had to resist the urge to wipe his hand on his trousers.

  Popov opened a door to reveal a larger room with a table surrounded by a dozen high-backed chairs. In one corner there was a kitchen area.

  ‘What time can I see Mr Grechko?’

  There was a bank of clocks up on the wall above the screens showing the time in six different cities, from Los Angeles to Sydney. ‘He’s in the gym for another half-hour, then he has a massage and then he will shower and rest. He is eating at six and can see you for half an hour before that.’

  ‘Very good of him,’ said Shepherd. ‘It’ll give me time to do a walk-around outside. Now, what’s happening with the guy who was shot? Ulyashin?’

  ‘Mikhail’s coming back tomorrow,’ said Popov. ‘He’s using crutches but we can put him in here, he’ll be fine.’

  ‘If it’s OK with you I’d like to take a run out to where the shooting happened. You can talk me through it.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Popov. ‘Mr Grechko is here all day tomorrow.’

  ‘Can you fix it so that everything is pretty much the same as when you were shot at? Same guys, same car.’

  ‘We can do that,’ said Popov. ‘But why?’

  ‘I want to get a feel for what happened,’ said Shepherd. ‘It’ll give me an idea of what we’re up against.’

  Shepherd and Popov walked around the outside of the house and then around the extensive grounds, which included an orchard, a large terrace and barbecue pit, a basketball court and a kennels where three large Dobermans watched Shepherd with suspicion through a chain-link fence. ‘We let the dogs out at night,’ said Popov. ‘Be careful when they are around, their bites are much worse than their bark.’ One of the dogs bared its teeth at Shepherd as if to prove his point. ‘They are trained in German,’ said Popov, ‘but they won’t obey strangers.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Shepherd. ‘I have my gun.’

  Popov turned to look at him and then he smiled when he realised that Shepherd was joking. ‘English humour,’ said the Russian.

  ‘I hope so,’ said Shepherd. He had a Bluetooth earpiece in his left ear and a transceiver clipped to his belt in the small of his back. Popov had also scanned the thumb of his right hand and had him set up his own four-digit security code for the keypads.

  Popov showed Shepherd several sensors in the ground that picked up vibrations and sound. ‘We had these installed after the sniping incident,’ Popov explained. ‘They are fed to a console in the security centre but at the moment they’re oversensitive and of course the dogs keep setting them off.’

  ‘You’d be better off with movement-activated security lights,’ said Shepherd. ‘Though again the dogs will set them off. What about your people? Do they patrol?’

  Popov nodded. ‘We make that random,’ he said. ‘But there’s always at least one of us somewhere in the grounds. Day and night.’ He looked at his watch, a rugged stainless-steel Omega. ‘Mr Grechko will be ready for you now.’ He took Shepherd in through one of the back entrances. Again it took a thumbprint and a four-digit code for them to gain access before they headed along a hallway to the library. Grechko was already sitting behind a large desk. He stood up and walked towards Shepherd, his arm outstretched. He was a big man with hair so black that it could only have been dyed, with a square chin, a snub nose and thick eyebrows that had grown together so that they formed a single line across his forehead. ‘Welcome to my home,’ he said, offering a big hand with manicured nails, a diamond-encrusted Chopard watch on his wrist. He was wearing black trousers and a white silk shirt open to reveal a thick gold chain around his neck and greying chest hair that seemed to confirm that the hair on his head was indeed dyed.

  There were two sofas at the far end of the library and he headed for them. As they sat down facing each other across a coffee table piled high with glossy books about antiques, Dmitry slipped out, pulling the double doors closed behind him. The walls were lined with books, thousands of them pristine and, by the look of it, unopened. There were stepladders on rails that ran the length of the walls, allowing access to the top shelves, and there were leather-bound books in display cases that were probably first editions. Grechko didn’t look like a reader, though. He sat with his arms outstretched along the back of the sofa and crossed his legs. The soles of his shoes were totally unmarked, as if he only ever wore them indoors. ‘So what do you think of my security?’ asked the Russian.

  Shepherd wasn’t sure whether he meant the people on his team or the physical security arrangements, but either way he had no intention of badmouthing Popov to his boss. ‘Everything’s professional,’ he said.

  ‘Do I need more people?’ asked Grechko. ‘I can bring in extra staff if necessary.’

  ‘I think manpower-wise you’re probably OK,’ Shepherd said. ‘And you’ve done everything that needs to be done here. But I’d like to make some changes to the way you move around away from the house.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The fact that a sniper was able to get you in his sights shows that you are predictable,’ said Shepherd. ‘Getting a sniper into position takes a lot of planning. You have to know where the target will be at a particular time, and that can only happen if the target is following a set timetable. You should never use the same route consecutively, you should vary entrances and exits when you visit a location, and you shouldn’t have any regular meetings. For instance, Dmitry tells me that on the first Friday of every month you go to The Ivy.’

  Grechko nodded. ‘There are six of us. Good friends. If we are in London, we meet. Is that a problem?’

  ‘The problem is that if you are predictable, you are vulnerable. I bet you have the same table each time, right?’

  ‘Of course. They know us there.’

  ‘Exactly. You’re known. So suppose I book the same table the day before the first Friday of the month. And suppose I take with me an explosive device. Nothing special, just a few ounces of C4 and some nuts and bolts for shrapnel. And a simple timer, set for twenty-four hours. And I fix the device to the underside of the table.’ He smiled at Grechko. ‘Bang!’ He mimed the explosion with his hands.

  Grechko flashed him a tight smile. ‘You realise that every time I go to The Ivy I’m now going to be looking under the table?’

  ‘If you continue being predictable, that wouldn’t be a bad thing to do,’ said Shepherd. ‘Same goes for your route. When you drive from here to The Ivy, do you go the same way each time?’

  Grechko nodded.
r />   ‘So I get a car and fill it full of explosives made from ammonium nitrate and fuel oil and I park it on the route. Detonated via a mobile phone. I wait until your car drives by and …’ He mimed an explosion again. ‘Bang!’

  ‘I understand,’ said Grechko.

  ‘But it doesn’t have to be as dramatic as that,’ said Shepherd. ‘Do you eat the same food? Drink the same wine?’

  ‘I am a big fan of their steak. And they have a Chateau Neuf du Pape that is out of this world.’

  ‘So I get a job in the kitchen and on the day you’re in I poison the steaks or the wine. It’s not an easy thing to do, but it’s happened in the past. The CIA and Mossad are especially good with poisons.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m not saying that you have to be paranoid, but you have to be careful. The only way that a sniper can take a shot at you is if you are predictable. Instead of meeting at the same restaurant, vary it. And leave it until the day before you decide where to go. I’ll talk to Dmitry about varying your routes. But a lot of it you can do yourself. If you have to meet your lawyer, meet him in a hotel rather than his office. Or have him come to you. If you’re out socialising, vary the location and, if you can, vary your entry and exit.’

  ‘You talk a lot of sense, Tony.’

  ‘It’s my job, Mr Grechko.’ Shepherd nodded at a large framed photograph of the Russian with his wife and sons. ‘Do you mind me asking about the security arrangements you have in place for your family while they’re away?’

  ‘My family?’

  ‘Your ex-wife and sons are in Cyprus, right?’