Spider Shepherd 10 - True Colours

by Leather, Stephen

  ‘Well, that’s certainly true,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘He said that every day was different, that you never got into a routine. That the job challenged you and stretched you.’

  ‘Again, that’s true. But there’s a lot of waiting around. But he’s right, every day is different.’

  ‘And you get to travel.’

  ‘You don’t need to be in the army to travel,’ said Shepherd. ‘But OK, if you’re really interested then I can put you in touch with people in different branches of the services. And next time we’re in Hereford you can come into Stirling Lines and talk to some of the guys there.’

  ‘I don’t want to be in the SAS, Dad.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘I don’t think I’d be good enough.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Shepherd. ‘If you want to be a soldier I’ll make sure you’re the best darn soldier there is.’

  Liam laughed. ‘I’m not running around with a rucksack full of bricks on my back,’ he said.

  ‘It builds stamina,’ said Shepherd. ‘But seriously, if you’re thinking about it then let’s go and talk to some people, see what your options are. But I want you going to university first. That way if the army thing doesn’t work out you’ve got something to fall back on.’

  ‘That’s cool,’ said Liam. He looked at his watch. ‘I’ve got to go, Dad. I’ve got to finish this maths.’

  ‘You take care,’ said Shepherd. ‘And good luck with the match.’

  He ended the call and closed his laptop. He lay back on the sofa, picked up the television remote and flicked through the channels, looking for something to watch. Part of him was pleased that Liam wanted to follow in his footsteps, but he was very aware of what his mother would have said if she had been alive. Sue had been no great fan of the army and there was no way that she would have agreed to Liam signing up. The Royal Marines captain had been right about military service – it was worthwhile and it was exciting, and Shepherd had relished the buzz he’d always had in combat, the knowledge that it was kill or be killed and that every breath could be your last. But it was one thing to experience the adrenalin rush for yourself and quite another to know that your child was in mortal danger. Shepherd wasn’t sure how he’d be able to cope with the knowledge that his son was in a combat zone and that at any moment there could be a knock on his door and two men in uniform would be there to break the bad news. He shuddered. For the first time in his life he had an inkling of what it must have been like for Sue when he was away. Time and time again she’d begged him to quit the SAS and get a job where he’d be closer to home and where she wouldn’t be lying awake at night fearing the worst. He’d told her that it was just a job and that it was no more dangerous than driving a cab or stocking shelves in a supermarket. That had been a lie, of course, and she’d known it. Shepherd had loved being in the SAS, though it was only once he’d left that he was able to admit to himself that he had been addicted to the adrenalin rush of putting his life on the line. He closed his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Sue,’ he whispered.

  In Monte Carlo on the weekend of the Monaco Grand Prix even the super-rich sometimes struggled to find a berth for their yachts in Port Hercules, the tiny principality’s main harbour. First priority was notionally given to citizens and permanent residents of Monaco, and there were such long waiting lists that applications from non-residents were supposedly not even considered, yet somehow Russian oligarchs and other billionaires always found a way to secure a berth for their yachts, while the eye-watering cost of such rentals, like the revenues from the casino, disappeared into the capacious pockets of officials serving ‘His Serene Highness, the Prince of Monaco’.

  The marinas were packed with scores of super-yachts, moored at right angles to the quayside. The multi-millionaire and billionaire owners and their privileged friends and guests had watched the race from the decks in the afternoon and now, as night was falling, the after-race parties were beginning on almost all of them. Like Hollywood stars at Oscar night parties, the grand prix drivers could pick and choose from dozens of invitations, and their diminutive figures, head and shoulders shorter than the tall, willowy models clustered around them, strolled the decks of many of the super-yachts like deities. On others there were gangsters, money launderers and traffickers in everything from guns and drugs to women rubbing shoulders with an array of fixers, wheelers, dealers, tax exiles, princes and titled paupers, descendants of obscure European royal houses. Monaco had not changed an iota since the 1920s, when Somerset Maugham witheringly dismissed it as ‘a sunny place for shady people’.

  One of the largest yachts of all, its name picked out in Cyrillic script, was moored to a small pontoon covered with an awning and separating the yacht from the quay. The yacht was decked out with bunting, flags and lights, Eurotrash music was playing and beautiful young women and rather older and less beautiful men were drinking, dancing and partying. Others paired up and disappeared together below decks.

  There was a small marquee at the quay end of the jetty and inside it, a security team was very carefully screening the invitations of the guests – most of them yet more beautiful young women – as they arrived, and confiscating any cameras or mobile phones. Those would not be returned to the guests until they left. The owner valued his privacy and could afford to ensure that it was maintained. The covered walkway had its own security system, and as the guests walked through it, they were scanned by concealed machines to ensure that they were not carrying anything that the security guards had missed. Cocaine or ecstasy were fine, but knives, guns or other weapons were not. The yacht owner, Oleg Zakharov, was a Russian oligarch and billionaire, and like most of his kind he had attracted more than his fair share of enemies over the years.

  Those monitoring the security system could see the guests’ bodies under their clothes – one of the perks of the job for the two men monitoring the screens, who got to see some of the most beautiful women they’d ever come across stark naked. As usual, Zakharov himself had joined them, moistening his lips with his tongue as he leaned over the screen, seeing what would be available for his pleasure later that night.

  The man they called Monotok had already been to Genoa to visit the shipyard where Zakharov’s yacht was built. Posing as the fixer and right-hand man of yet another Russian billionaire looking for a super-yacht, he was given a tour of the yard and shown a model of Zakharov’s yacht. The Genoese boat-builders were so proud of it that they even showed him the plans. If not quite the biggest yacht in the world – an American software billionaire had one a few feet longer, they said, grinding their teeth – it was ‘definitely the most beautiful and luxurious’. Monotok had smiled and nodded sympathetically, keeping them talking, and then sending them off in search of more information while he memorised the lay-out of the yacht and took a few discreet photographs with his iPhone while they were distracted.

  Getting the yacht’s schedule had been harder, but he had that and a copy of Zakharov’s diary showing him when he’d be on board. Even as he toured the boatyard he had decided that Monte Carlo was the place to strike. After he left the boatyard, he went to a workshop, once a manufacturer of beautifully crafted sextants but now specialising in making one-off gadgets for rich men. Monotok commissioned an extending climbing-pole, sketching what he wanted on a piece of paper. He told the technician who took his order that he was going rock and ice climbing in the Alps and would be using the pole to bridge crevasses and ‘unclimbable’ sections of rock face. The device was a telescoping aluminium tube made up of six sections, four inches at its widest and tapering down to half that in the final section. Pressing a lever broke the seal on a small gas bottle and the released gas caused the pole to extend swiftly and silently to its full length. A four-pronged grapple covered with sprayed-on rubber was fixed to the top, and when extended, each section also had a couple of narrow footholds along its sides that sprang out as it extended and retracted when it was collapsed again.

  From a diving shop he bought a
neoprene scuba drysuit that clamped tight around his neck, wrists and ankles, giving a watertight seal, but leaving his hands, feet and face exposed. In the prolonged immersion in the sea that he was planning, they would get very cold, so he also bought gloves, boots and a hood, as well as a spear gun and a diving knife.

  On the night of the grand prix, he waited for nightfall and then made his way down through the Japanese Gardens, near Larvotto Beach, a mile east of the marina. He climbed down the short, rocky cliff and slipped into the sea, then swam and finned his way along to the marina, using a slow but powerful stroke. He moved along the lines of yachts, a dark shape barely distinguishable from the darkness of the sea itself, and eventually slipped under the pontoon, next to Zakharov’s super-yacht.

  He watched and waited for several hours while the party was still in full swing on the yacht. All the security was focused on those walking on to the yacht from the jetty, and there was only the most cursory surveillance of the yacht itself and even less of its seaward side. Eventually, in the early hours, the music and noise from the yacht died down and the cabin lights were extinguished one by one. There were still two bored security men standing on the quayside, but the yacht itself was quiet.

  He finned his way across to the seaward side of the yacht. He popped the seal on the gas bottle to extend the climbing pole and hooked the rubber grapple over the deck rail of the yacht, then removed his fins, attached them to his belt with a karabiner, and then began to climb the pole. Monotok’s heart was not even beating fast as he swung himself over the rail and began to pad silently along the deck, the spear gun on a strap over his shoulder and the knife held ready in his hand. The spear gun made little noise but it could not be guaranteed to kill instantly, and it would be a last resort, to be used only if a target was too far from him to be dealt with by a swift, silent kill with the knife. But the spear gun and the knife were there only in case something went wrong and he was discovered. If all went to plan only one man would die, and that would be Zakharov. And Monotok wouldn’t be using the spear or the knife to take the oligarch’s life.

  As he reached the midpoint of the deck in the shadow of the main mast, he heard a noise from the far side of the yacht. He froze and turned to look down the deck. One of the beautiful young women, out of her head on cocaine and alcohol and barely aware of what was happening, had been pinned to the deck and was being screwed by one of the crewmen, while a line of four or five others waited their turn, all eyes fixed on her naked body, oblivious to the black-clad figure ghosting between the shadows on the other side of the yacht.

  As Monotok watched, the crewman got up, wiped himself down with the woman’s torn and discarded designer silk blouse and was at once replaced by the next man in the queue. As the crewman lowered himself on to the woman, her head rolled sideways, her blond hair matted and her vacant, drugged eyes staring straight at Monotok. She looked no more than sixteen or seventeen, but Monotok merely made certain that she had not registered his presence before moving on along the deck. He was coldly indifferent to what was happening to her, and even grateful for the distraction she was providing for the crew and security men awaiting their turn.

  The lay-out of the yacht imprinted on his mind, he moved along the deck until he reached an open hatch, and then went down the companionway. Below decks, he made his way to the main stateroom in the stern. After listening for a couple of minutes, he eased open the door. It wasn’t locked; on his own yacht, surrounded by his security team, Zakharov obviously felt he had nothing to fear. The room was littered with empty champagne bottles and discarded clothes. Lines of cocaine were still laid out on the glass-topped dressing table, with a bag of the white powder spilling across the glass, and there seemed to be powdery traces of cocaine on every flat surface.

  Zakharov had passed out and lay snoring, naked on the silk sheets of the super-king-size bed while three naked young women lay around the cabin, two on the bed, the other sprawled across the floor. Monotok knew that Zakharov always plied his women with gamma-hydroxybutyrate, GHB, the date rape drug. That way they neither remembered nor complained about whatever he did to them. They were close to unconsciousness and would be feeling no pain.

  Monotok leaned his spear gun by the door and slid his knife back into its scabbard. He reached for a waterproof pouch on his belt and quietly popped it open. He took out a syringe, eased off the cap and bent down over the woman on the floor. He didn’t bother looking for a vein, the liquid Valium was just as effective when it was injected into muscle. With this combined with the GHB already in their bloodstream, the girls would be out for hours. He put the empty syringe back into the pouch and repeated the process with the two girls on the bed before lifting them up and placing them on the floor.

  He took four lengths of cord from the pouch and used it to carefully tie Zakharov’s wrists and ankles to the bed, then took out a roll of duct tape and used his teeth to bite off a piece. He climbed on to the bed and straddled Zakharov, shoving the tape over his mouth and winding it around his face several times. Only then did Zakharov start to wake up, but it was too late. He was bound and gagged. As the oligarch struggled, Monotok walked slowly around the bed, tightening the cords, until Zakharov was spreadeagled like a stranded starfish.

  Monotok sat down on the edge of the bed and stared down at Zakharov. ‘Do you know me, Oleg?’ he asked in Russian. ‘Do you have any idea who I am?’

  Zakharov tried to speak but the duct tape made it impossible.

  Monotok smiled and patted him on the cheek. ‘You don’t need to say anything, my fat little friend,’ he said. ‘In fact, I don’t want you to say anything. There is nothing you can say that will be of any interest to me. And you will only embarrass yourself by threatening me or offering me money or begging me to spare your life. All I need you to do is to nod or shake your head.’ His massive hand reached for Zakharov’s throat and gave it a little squeeze. ‘Now, do you understand me?’

  Monotok released his grip on the man’s throat and he nodded, quickly. Monotok smiled and patted him on the cheek again. ‘That’s a good little fat man,’ he said. ‘So, do you recognise me?’

  Zakharov shook his head.

  ‘And does the name Kirill Luchenko mean anything to you?’

  Zakharov shook his head again.

  ‘Well, by the time I have finished that name will mean something to you. What about my father? Mark Luchenko?’

  Another shake of his head. More frantic this time.

  ‘Or my mother? Misha?’

  Zakharov stared fearfully at Monotok, and then shook his head.

  Monotok smiled sadly. ‘How quickly you forget,’ he said. ‘That’s what I don’t understand. I’ve killed a lot of people and in most cases I never got to know their names. I was in Chechnya, killing for our masters. And there wasn’t time to ask for names. But when I did know their names, I remembered. I still remember. I don’t see how you can take a life and not show the respect to at least remember the life you have taken.’ He patted Zakharov on the cheek again. ‘You will remember me, my little fat friend. But not for long. I’m going to explain to you who my parents were and who I am and how what you did made me the man I am. You will understand who I am and why I am going to kill you. Then I will take your life. But at least I will do you the courtesy of remembering your name. So now, let’s get started. I’m going to tell you a story, about a nine-year-old boy.’

  Monotok spoke for the next ten minutes, his voice barely above a whisper. From time to time he patted Zakharov’s face and once he gripped his cheek tightly between his thumb and forefinger. As he spoke, Zakharov struggled to free himself, but his efforts were futile. Eventually he gave up and tears rolled down his cheeks. When Monotok finished talking and pulled out the syringe, Zakharov’s bowels emptied and he soiled the bed.

  Monotok reached over with his left hand and squeezed the oligarch’s throat until his face went purple and his heels were drumming on the mattress. When Zakharov’s veins were fully engorged, Monotok p
lunged the needle into the carotid artery and injected the entire contents of the syringe, then released his grip on Zakharov’s throat. The girls had been injected with concentrated Valium, ensuring a deep dreamless sleep. But the syringe Monotok used on Zakharov contained a concentrated cocaine solution. Zakharov died quickly, but painfully, his eyes filled with a mixture of fear and hatred.

  Once Zakharov had stopped breathing, Monotok pulled off the duct tape and undid the cords around his wrists and ankles. He picked up his spear gun, slipped out of the cabin and moved back along the deck, silently passing the point where the crewmen were still taking turns with the now unconscious young woman. He climbed back down to the water, collapsed the pole and swam away into the night.

  Shepherd arrived at Grechko’s house at 6.30. He wound down the window of his X5 and waved at the CCTV camera and the metal gate immediately rolled back. Max Barsky, the young Ukrainian, was in the gatehouse, and he waved through the window as Shepherd drove by.

  The doors to the garage were already up and Shepherd drove down to the car parking area. He left the X5 next to Grechko’s Bentley, which they would be using to drive to Northolt airfield. He took with him a kitbag containing his running gear – most of his day was spent in the control centre and he had decided that he was going to start exercising every day. The gym was available twenty-four hours a day but he had never been a fan of exercise equipment or weights.

  He walked over to the control centre, pressed his thumb against the sensor and tapped in his four-digit code before pushing the door open. Mikhail Ulyashin was sitting in front of the screens, his aluminium crutches next to him on the floor. Ulyashin nodded and pointed at the connecting door. Shepherd pushed it open. Alina Podolski was making coffee and she looked over at Shepherd and raised one eyebrow. ‘Splash of milk and no sugar,’ he said in answer to her unspoken question. He dropped his bag by the wall and sat down at the end of the table, facing Popov. Alexei Dudko, Boris Volkov and Grigory Sokolov were already seated. Dudko was munching on a banana and Sokolov was eating a yoghurt with a plastic spoon.