“So what happened after that?” Jayne asked.
“Well, I’m screaming by this stage,” Fiona said. “Other people are shouting, and all hell’s breaking loose. Then you’ve got a huge black cloud of smoke and dust rising where the car was. People start pouring out of the houses. School kids screaming. Folks yelling into their phones, calling for police, fire, ambulances. It was crazy. Joe was the only calm one.”
Johnson smiled. “I knew we had to get out of there. I didn’t want to get caught up in some police inquiry, and I’m carrying a gun, remember. So I get Fiona to her feet—we’re covered in shit and dust and stuff—and we start walking along the road back the way we’ve just driven. The traffic starts backing up. People are doing U-turns. I hail the nearest cab, and we make a sharp exit before anyone can stop us.”
Johnson caught Jayne’s eye. “I’m a bit rusty with this kind of thing.”
Jayne pulled up one corner of her mouth wryly. “Doesn’t sound like it. They must have a lot at stake here, and you’re a threat, obviously. Exactly how is another question. If you’re going to get to the bottom of it, you’re going to have to move fast, because they’re ahead of you right now.”
Johnson sighed. “Yes, right. Tell me something I don’t know, Jayne. I need the pieces that are missing from the jigsaw, not the ones I’ve got.”
Fiona’s phone beeped, and she checked the incoming message. “It’s the office. They want a story on the car bomb blast since Obama’s over here. Dammit. I’ve nearly been blown up and—”
“They don’t relent, do they?” Jayne said.
“I can’t go out covered in shit like this.” Fiona tried to brush off some of the dirt on her coat and jacket. She looked at Jayne. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance I could borrow a few things, is there?”
Jayne pursed her lips. “Guess so, sure.”
Fiona appeared relieved. “Thanks. To be honest, work’s the last thing I feel like doing, but I’ve got a commentary on his visit to write up as well.”
Jayne stood and steered Fiona toward the bedroom to find some clothes.
Johnson smirked at her as she went past. “The bomb story? That should be interesting reading. Got any eyewitnesses you can quote?”
Fiona turned and gave him a look.
After she had disappeared, Johnson picked up Jacob’s notebook.
It contained answers to a lot of the questions he had. But there was one detail missing. Why?
Why have the Kudrows been selling gold to Guzmann? And why’s he been buying it in such large quantities?
Ignacio picked up his copy of the evening newspaper, screwed it up into a ball, and threw it at Diego.
“Que imbecil eres,” he shouted. “You fucking dickhead. Read that. You blew it. Johnson’s still walking around London. He’s alive.”
Diego picked up the newspaper.
It was blanket coverage. They had cleared the first five pages to cover the car bomb story. A huge headline was splattered over the front page, “Two Men Killed As Car Bomb Wrecks Bridge.”
There was another strap headline above it, “London on Olympics Terror Alert After Mystery Attack.”
Below the headlines was a large photograph of the collapsed bridge, with another smaller picture inset showing the crushed florist’s van, complete with firemen trying to extract the dead driver’s body from the wreckage. The story told how a passerby had also been killed by the blast as he waited to cross the road near the bridge.
But the front-page story also highlighted that no bodies had been found inside the black BMW.
Another police source indicated the BMW had been rented a few days earlier by an American man calling himself Philip Wilkinson. Checks were being carried out on his background.
Inside the paper, there were various eyewitness accounts, including one from a schoolteacher who was quoted saying he saw a man and a woman jump out of the black BMW seconds before it exploded and run into a nearby driveway. But nothing was seen of them afterward.
There were other quotes from shoppers who had come out of a nearby Tesco store and a man who had been knocked off his bicycle by the blast.
The Metropolitan Police commissioner, head of London’s police force, was quoted saying, “We are determined to get to the bottom of who planted this bomb and why. Our officers are working round the clock on this inquiry. Nobody has claimed responsibility so far, and we have no leads on the man and the woman seen running away from the BMW or what happened to those people.”
Diego stared at Ignacio from the other side of the kitchen table, not comprehending. “He can’t be alive. We blew that BMW to pieces. He was in it with the woman journalist. We watched both of them get into it at the parking garage and followed them.”
Ignacio jerked forward. “I know you blew it to pieces, idiota. You blew half of East London to pieces. Except Johnson wasn’t in it at the time. He obviously got out before it exploded.” He glared at Diego, belatedly registering what he had said, and then asked, “The woman journalist was in the car as well? The American? How come?”
“I don’t know why,” Diego said. “She got into it with Johnson.”
Ignacio kicked a wooden chair, which went flying across the kitchen floor straight into the side of the fridge. He strode into the living room of the converted pub and flicked a button on the television remote control. A BBC news bulletin was already running, and a reporter was speaking to the camera next to the collapsed rail bridge on the A13 road, which remained blocked.
“We’ve had an update from police in the last twenty minutes,” the reporter said. “Forensic tests have shown that the explosive device that destroyed the black BMW was an Argentinian antitank blast mine, they think an FMK-3, of the type that was used against British forces during the Falklands War in 1982. It was detonated using a remote control of some kind. Police have already begun a major search for those responsible and are also investigating how the device could have been brought into the U.K.”
Ignacio watched in silence as the reporter continued talking. Then he turned to Diego. “Time’s running out. The cops have identified the mine, and they’ve got Felipe in a cell somewhere. It’ll take them about two minutes to realize he’s supplied the bomb, and then how long will Felipe last under questioning before he names us? He’s bound to rat on us to try to cut some deal with the cops.”
Ignacio paced back and forth, tugging at his chin. “They’ll be on to us soon, the police. Three Argentinians in London kind of stand out. We need to get moving. We need to figure out precisely where that gold is, then we get out of the U.K. . . . rapidamente.”
Ignacio scratched his head. “We’ll work out another way of getting Johnson further down the line. He can go on the back burner now. We’ve wasted enough time on him. The priority is that map. I’ve got a plan B. Is that Ford Focus full of gas? Because we’re gonna need it.”
Johnson sat alone on the bed in Jayne’s spare bedroom and untangled a pair of headphones that were plugged into his phone.
After pushing the earpieces into his ears, he tapped on an app and keyed in a password, then listened with the volume turned up to maximum.
When Johnson had planted the listening device underneath Jacob’s office desk, he had put it into voice-activation mode, which meant it should have called his cell phone if it detected sound. But there had been no such alert—until now.
Why it hadn’t activated previously, Johnson had no idea. Perhaps there had been a problem with the 3G signal. Perhaps Jacob simply hadn’t used the office, although that seemed unlikely.
Whatever the reason previously, the voice-activation function was now working, because he could hear a conversation. The sound was quite faint, as if the voices were some distance away from the microphone, but he could make out what was being said.
One man was talking about doing another trip east and there being more stock left. Then he mentioned a master plan.
His master plan . . . that must be Jacob speaking. It was the same phra
se he’d written in his red notebook.
Then came another voice, very similar in tone but with a slight American accent. Jacob’s twin, Daniel, whom he had seen with Jacob outside the workshop a few days earlier? It must be him. Johnson listened more intently.
“Don’t talk to me about master plans. Was Keith part of your master plan? Jacob, let’s be honest, we don’t need the money anymore. There’s not much left, in any case. We should get out of this game now. We’re too old. We’ve been in it too long, and now people are getting hurt, killed. We should have gotten out long ago. That’s the truth. It’s too close. We’ve got David’s nomination to think about. If this lot gets into the U.S. media and they draw a link, he’s finished.”
Jacob’s voice came again. “No, we don’t need the money. But after coming this far, I’d like to finally finish Guzmann off. I’m telling you, Daniel, he’s behind all this, though it’ll be his cronies or his son doing the dirty work. I saw that text Keith sent to Leopold, saying he’d been kidnapped by Argentinians. It’s obvious. They’ve broken into my safe and taken my notebook. They must want to get to Sokolec next. So I’d like to do one last trip, one last delivery, and do it at a high price. And it’s got to be soon.”
There was silence for a few moments. Then came a third voice, also that of an old man, with an Eastern European twinge to his accent. Johnson assumed it was Leopold Skorupski.
“The van’s still in good condition. We could get Jonah to drive. It’s what, nine hundred miles via Leipzig? We could get there in two days. That’s doable.”
Leopold’s voice lifted, now more upbeat and enthusiastic. “It’d be like the old days. Jonah could do the hard graft, the carrying, and the belly pans. We could give him a big bonus. The customs guys still never check.”
Jacob spoke again. He also sounded more energetic.
“There’s four boxes left in there, that’s all. So that’s eighty kilos. We could just about get it all in one go. The refining kit here’s still okay. What do you think, Daniel?”
Silence. Johnson’s earpiece was working loose, so he pushed it back in again. There was a crackle. Then Daniel finally replied.
“No, it’s crazy. We just don’t need it. I don’t want to risk everything, all David’s hard work, just for one last sentimental trip. Apart from these Argentinians, we’ve got a journalist and an investigator on our tail. If they discovered we were lifting four-and-a-half million dollars’ worth of gold out just as the primaries are about to kick off, well, you can imagine what they’d do with that story. David and I would be straight in front of a grand jury.”
Johnson couldn’t resist a wry smile.
Then Jacob spoke again.
“That’s not going to happen. I think we leave this for now. We can talk to Jonah tomorrow. If he’s not up for it, then it’s not a goer. Come on, let’s get back to the house. I’m exhausted.”
There was the sound of footsteps, then the loud squeak of the office door. Then silence.
Now Johnson’s focus was not so much on the fine detail of how the Kudrow brothers and Leopold had extracted gold from Poland, fascinating though it was. It was on something entirely different that had cropped up during their conversation.
At the back of his mind, a theory was evolving.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Bristol
Oliver Kew was having a good Tuesday night. A very good night indeed.
At around eight o’clock, after several beers in different bars, Oliver and four of his fellow history students walked into the Highbury Vaults, a pub on St. Michael’s Hill, not far from the university.
The place was buzzing, and Adele’s hit “Rolling in the Deep” was blasting over the sound system.
The five friends were on a pub crawl that had started at quarter to six on the city’s historic Corn Street.
The Highbury Vaults looked rather run-down from the outside, with a weatherworn, chipped green front. Inside, though, despite the plain wooden seating and tables, it had a cozy, intimate atmosphere, making it a real student favorite. Oliver, who was nicknamed “Godders” by his friends, particularly liked the selection of Young’s ales.
He went to the bar to order a round.
And then he saw her.
Oliver, who was in the second year of a three-year degree course at Bristol University, had first noticed the blond girl in October, a couple of weeks after the autumn term began.
First, he had accidentally collided with her when they both came out of the gym. Then, after apologizing for his clumsiness, he struck up a short conversation, during which he realized she lived in the hall of residence next to his.
Since then, he had bumped into her on a few other occasions, less literally and also, he had to admit, less accidentally.
Now the girl, named Susannah, was sitting in a corner of the pub with three other girls. There was one empty bottle of chardonnay on her table and a second that was only a quarter full. They were all laughing.
After half an hour, he managed to contrive a long conversation with her at the busy bar when she went up to order another bottle. They sat down at an adjacent table when two drinkers got up to leave, and then she unexpectedly slid onto his lap, her long legs hanging over his and her short skirt riding up.
Oliver was slurring his words by now. “You’re smart, and you’re beautiful, you know. We’re going on to a club later. Would you all like to come with us?”
He began to feel a little dizzy as the heady cocktail of alcohol, adrenaline and hormones rushed through his system.
“I’d like to, but I can’t tonight. I’m on a special girls’ night out,” she said. “We’ve planned it all out. I’ve got a friend visiting from home.” Then she turned her head and kissed him, one hand ruffling his short dark hair, the other resting on his chest.
Then she pulled away and smiled. “I’ll give you my phone number. Maybe next Friday night?”
Oliver nodded and pulled out his phone to take her number. “I’d like that. Friday would be great. I’ll text you.”
He remembered he was meant to go home that weekend to see his mother in Radlett, just north of London, and his beloved grandfather and confidant, Jack Kew, who was meant to come for Sunday lunch. But he could cancel that and go the following weekend instead.
Susannah kissed him again, then jumped off his lap and wandered over to her friends, where she pulled on her coat. A minute later, the four girls had gone.
As soon as they had disappeared, Oliver’s friends, sitting ten yards away near the pool table, burst into a round of applause. “Pulled, pulled, pulled . . . ” they chanted.
Oliver did a mock bow in their direction, a smirk on his face. Now on a high after his brief encounter with Susannah, Oliver walked back over to his friends. “What about a club? Raquel’s is a guaranteed chick fest. It’s Tuesday night, student night down there. Come on, guys, I’m on a roll.”
He mimed along to Katy Perry’s “Firework,” now blaring from the pub’s speakers, as he pretended to sing into a microphone.
When the song finished, he took another mock bow. More applause.
His friends took little persuading. They staggered down St. Michael’s Hill and the steep Christmas Steps toward the city center, with its array of bars and clubs.
They passed along Quay Street, around the bend, and onto the much seedier Nelson Street, with its heavily graffitied concrete walls and stark high-rise buildings standing in contrast to much of Bristol’s elegant city center.
Raquel’s was on the left, its entrance down a dark passage. It cost ten pounds to get in, and drinks were on the pricey side, but it had dance music they liked and a good ratio of girls to guys. It was one of their favorite destinations for a night out.
Oliver was first to the bar and bought five bottles of Stella Artois and tequila chasers to go with them. “Here’s to next Friday and to Susannah,” he shouted as they sat down, sinking the tequilas in one go.
An h
our and two more Stellas later, Oliver was well and truly drunk. He got to his feet and staggered to the stairs that descended into a basement where the toilets were located.
The bottom passageway was painted entirely black, with large mirrors positioned at intervals on either side. He knew the toilet door was somewhere down at the end of the corridor. But the blackness and the array of mirrors, combined with the volume of alcohol he had drunk, made Oliver feel disoriented and dizzy.
Now where are those toilets? Come on, concentrate . . . Ah yes, there they are . . .
As Oliver neared the toilet door, he became aware of two men approaching fast, very near behind him.
As he turned around, one grabbed him around the waist and the other clamped a gloved hand over his mouth. Between them, they pushed him toward the black fire-escape double doors at the end of the corridor. One kicked open the doors, and the next thing Oliver knew, he was out in the cold night air on the pavement.
Another hand pressed a damp cloth over his nose, and he felt himself being pushed into the back of a car waiting right outside the fire doors.
As the car drove away, the last thing he saw was the flashing neon sign above the club door. Raquel’s—A Night to Remember.
A few seconds later, Oliver was unconscious.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
London
“So what will the Argentinians do next? They’ve failed once. So now what?” Jayne asked.
Johnson yawned. He felt unsure. It was the same question he had been asking himself.
He rubbed his head and walked to the kitchen counter. “I don’t know what they'll do next. I doubt they know where the gold is, otherwise they wouldn’t be in London. I need to find that out before they do, which means talking to the Kudrow brothers somehow.”
Jayne nodded. “Listen, I need to talk to you. That car bomb has set the cat among the pigeons. My bosses are getting very nervous now about the whole security situation for next year’s Olympics. The director general has had requests from the secretary of state for more detail on our plans, so that means more reports for me to write.”
The Last Nazi (A Joe Johnson Thriller, Book 1) Page 23