The Gambit (Ben Lewis Thriller Book 2)

by David N Robinson

  74

  The Lamborghini Aventador was a seriously fast road car. A six and a half litre, V-12, engine powered the sleek carbon fibre monocoque outer body with its aluminium front and rear frames. It enabled the car to go from a standing start to sixty miles an hour in less than three seconds – thus potentially losing an owner their driving licence in one simple, careless moment of misjudgement. Designed with a sleek, aerodynamic body shape, it was a rare – and much coveted – vehicle whenever sighted on London’s congested roadways. Despite its gull wing doors and Formula One-style side air vents, when Arkady Nemikov had taken delivery of his three hundred thousand pound car, it had been the colour that had immediately caught the eye. Finished in what the manufacturers described as Giallo Orion, a glossy yellow colour with black trimmings, it was never going to be a car driven by someone who didn’t want to be noticed. Which might have explained why Nemikov had kept his parked in a lock-up garage beside his property at Lexham Mews and not on the street outside.

  By the time that Saul Zeltinger arrived at the crash scene, it was almost exactly two-fifteen in the morning. By that stage, the fireball that had engulfed both the Lamborghini and the navy-blue transit into which it had collided had been extinguished. The whole of the southbound carriageway of the A3 was closed. Two fire trucks that had first attended the blazing wreckage were parked in the nearside carriageway, adjacent to the cindered remains of both vehicles. Their crews were busy tidying away various lengths of fire hose. An ambulance from nearby Kingston Hospital was also waiting. It had soon become clear upon arrival at the scene that there would be no survivors; the crew were waiting final permission from the senior traffic officer at the scene, Adam Hitching, to be allowed to leave.

  Strong arc lights, positioned on the roof bar of a breakdown lorry that had been summoned to the scene, flooded the area. This artificial light enabled Zeltinger, once out of his car, to locate Hitching relatively easily standing, as he was, close to the burnt-out remains of the Lamborghini. Introductions over, the two got down to ‘brass tacks’, as Hitching, a Yorkshire-man by birth, put it.

  “What do you think happened?” the Detective Inspector began.

  “As far as we can make out, the driver of the Lamborghini was, one,” Hitching looked at his notebook to confirm the pronunciation, “Arkady Nemikov, I think it’s pronounced.”

  “That’s correct. Nemikov is, or rather was, Ukrainian.”

  “Very good. Well, we reckon he must’ve been travelling at a fair old lick. At this time of night, folks are usually heading home from the clubs and restaurants in town. Once past all the speed cameras up at Hook underpass, they come round the bend, see this unlit stretch of road, put their foot down and go for it. Often they are doing well over a hundred miles an hour when they pass by where we’re standing right now, especially at this time of night. In a car like this,” he said, pointing to the wrecked Lamborghini with a gloved hand, “he might only have had to tap the accelerator and he’d be doing more than that, easy.” He bangs his hands together to get the blood flowing through chilled fingers. The night air was cool; there was almost a frost on the ground.

  “Whether this poor fellow has a blow-out, or whether he falls asleep at the wheel, we’re not sure. However, at approximately one forty-six in the morning, as best we can judge, he comes around the bend up there,” he said pointing back towards the direction of the Hook Underpass. “For whatever reason, he then veers off the nearside carriageway, on to the hard shoulder, and straight into the back of this Mercedes van. Boom!” he says, once more banging his hands together. “Why it was where it was, on the hard shoulder at that time of the night, we’re not yet sure. The Lamborghini was definitely shifting it a bit, though. You can tell by the rubber skid marks on the hard shoulder, here,” he points with a handheld flashlight. “Both vehicles were shunted forward during the collision by several metres. The compression at the Lamborghini’s front end, and the degree of buckling of the Mercedes’s rear chassis – they are also tell-tale signs of his excessive speed.”

  “Likely to be over a hundred miles an hour?”

  “Making an educated guess, I reckon well over that.”

  “Have you been able to recover the body?”

  Hitching shook his head, adjusting his peaked cap with his hand as he did so.

  “It was a hell of an inferno. My guess is that death was pretty much instantaneous. There was nothing much left of him by the time we got here.”

  “You’re sure it was Nemikov who was driving?”

  “Who can say? They might run various tests: DNA, dental records, that sort of thing. Likely as not, however, if this Ukrainian was reliably witnessed leaving his house a short while before the accident, driving this particular car; then, minutes later, the same vehicle is involved in a total write-off, there’s unlikely to be much dispute about the identity of the dead body behind the wheel.”

  “Anything suspicious about the accident? You must have seen a fair number of these in your time, Adam.”

  Hitchings thought about this for a moment, before shaking his head.

  “No, nothing really. High impact collisions at speed are invariably fatal.” He paused for a moment. Zeltinger’s silence seemed to egg him on.

  “One thing’s a bit curious: the Lamborghini has its engine mounted at the rear. Its petrol tank is behind the driver. The Mercedes van also has a rear fuel tank, but it was a diesel: much less flammable that petrol. I don’t yet fully understand why there was so much combustion when the two vehicles collided.”

  “Probably it was exacerbated by the speed of the collision, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” he said pensively. “You’re may be right.”

  “Won’t forensics be able to tell us, in any event?”

  “Probably not. There may be little point in any event. Once we find out who the owner of the other van was and why it had been left on the motorway hard shoulder, I suspect that the case will be closed. We only do forensics these days if we’re concerned about a potential crime having been committed. It’s all part of the cuts.”

  Zeltinger thanked Hitching and returned to his car. He hadn’t wanted to say it to Hitching: however, given who Nemikov was, and the recent circumstances surrounding what had been happening to his family, Zeltinger thought it highly unlikely that the case would be closed that quickly.

  75

  News travelled fast. Within minutes of accident investigators arriving at the scene, a journalist working for the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper had received a tip off. Less than twenty minutes after the accident, a short story had been posted online. As yet unconfirmed, it speculated that Nemikov had been killed during the early hours on the A3 to the south of Surbiton, driving his yellow Lamborghini. There was speculation that he might have been driving too fast. Shortly after two o’clock the same morning, the story was hitting several of the major international news wires. At ten minutes after four in the morning Moscow-time, Viktor Plushenko was being woken from a vodka-induced slumber to be told the same story by his personal valet. Viktor had been lying in his large king-sized bed, snoring loudly, with a pretty blonde Russian girl gently purring beside him when he’d been awoken.

  Despite the alcohol undoubtedly still in his system, Plushenko became awake instantly. Instinctively realising that he should be trying to connect with Panich, he reached for his silk dressing gown. He grabbed one of three mobile phones on his bedside table, and waddled out of the room into the living room next door. Finding Oleg Panich’s number easily, he hit ‘dial’, surprised when the call was answered on its third ring.

  “Da.”

  “It’s Viktor. I am told Nemikov may be dead. Did you know anything about this?”

  “When?”

  “How the fuck do I know when? Not long, apparently. In his car so the story goes.”

  “Shit. That could be disas
trous.”

  “Tell me something I haven’t already worked out for myself!”

  “I spoke to him only an hour ago, on the telephone. I had his daughter make the call, if you follow me?”

  “Sure. But she’s going to be fuck-all use to us now if her father is dead.”

  “What do you want me to do now?”

  “How the fuck do I know? Did you have any hand in this, assuming it’s all true?”

  “Me? Of course not. He and I had just begun our negotiations, as it were.”

  “Be in no doubt. It is absolutely, one hundred per cent, non-negotiably imperative: we need to get our hands on Nemikov’s money. None of it can be allowed to find its way to Kiev. See what you can find out for yourself about Nemikov, whether this story has any truth in it. I am going to call someone and then I’ll ring you back.” Plushenko hung up, and began searching for another number.

  Ten minutes later, Viktor Plushenko called Panich back on his mobile.

  “Any news?” the oligarch asked Panich.

  “We’re still checking. There are definitely reports circulating online about Nemikov’s death.”

  “Well, I might have something. All may not be quite as bleak as we feared. As you are aware, Sergei Fedorov’s been working for me on the inside of Nemikov’s operation for several years. Perhaps Fedorov may already have been helping you a little bit as well?”

  “He has. He texted me information about which car the Nemikov girl had been in. It proved invaluable.”

  “Good. As it should have been. Fedorov’s father and I did a lot of work together, in Donetsk, several years ago. He also worked with Nemikov. However, for reasons that are, shall we say, complicated, the father owed me a huge personal debt. Ten years ago, I called this in. Ever since, the son has been working for me, in secret, passing me information from time to time. I’ve just spoken to him. Nemikov apparently put in place certain arrangements that were specifically intended to keep his fortune safe in the event that he was either kidnapped or was killed. Would you like to know how it works?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “He gave his wife and two children each their own unique code. Each doesn’t know the others, apparently. If Nemikov dies or goes missing, his assets get frozen; the only way to get access to them is for the wife and two children to give their individual codes to Nemikov’s Swiss banker. Only then, when the banker has all three, can the money be released.”

  “But the wife is dead. She was killed this afternoon in Venice. That had always been part of the plan.”

  “I know. However, and you are not going to like this: apparently, before he died, Nemikov was already beginning to wonder whether his wife might have been amongst those who perished in yesterday’s Venice bombing. As a precautionary measure, Fedorov believes that Nemikov may have deliberately passed his wife’s codes to someone else. It was something the daughter let slip to Fedorov earlier this evening, apparently.”

  Panich said nothing, letting the implication of what Plushenko was saying sink in.

  “The bottom line is this. With Nemikov dead, if we want to lay our hands on his money – and trust me on this, Oleg, we most certainly do – then we certainly need both children, as well as this new person, not just found, but kept alive. They need to be in a co-operative frame of mind: willing and able to share their secrets freely, if you understand my drift?”

  Panich knew what was coming next.

  “I thought that sounded like something right up your street, wouldn’t you agree, Oleg?”

  76

  “I’ve just been speaking with Virenque. He’s acquired a motorbike from somewhere and should be with us, here at the farm, within the half hour.” Panich was buzzing, drawing nervously on a Turkish cigarette. A half-finished cup of strong, black coffee lay unfinished on the table in front of him. Even Alexei Polunin, who had worked with the legendary killer over several years, had rarely seen him this fired up.

  “What next?” Polunin asked him.

  “During the period I was recovering from my field injuries,” he said, waving his prosthetic arm in the air to make a point, “I learnt to play chess. I studied many Russian grandmasters. I learned a lot of their games by heart. This assignment is fast becoming like one of those complicated games – perhaps more than anything I’ve worked on before. We had all the moves to checkmate planned out; every move has been going down like clockwork. Then Nemikov gets killed, and the whole game has been fundamentally changed. It’s as if we’re almost back at the beginning.”

  He ground out the thin stub of his cigarette on a saucer. In the next breath, he reached for another one from the carton in his shirt pocket, placing it in his mouth and using a lighter with his left hand.

  “So, at two-fifteen in the morning, we start again. Our two Nemikov hostages now need to be kept alive. They have each been given a code, which they have, apparently, committed to memory. We now need those codes. As soon as Virenque gets here, he and I are going to start our own little interrogation. We also need a third code, from someone as yet unspecified. Nemikov’s wife had it: as I have just been led to believe, following her presumed death this afternoon, Nemikov has assigned it to someone else. Apparently, the girl knows who has it. Give Virenque and I a little time, and I am confident that she will tell all.” He drew on his cigarette, inhaling the acrid smoke deep within his lungs.

  “Do you think he might have given it to our friend, Ben Lewis?” Polunin asks.

  “Funny, I’ve been wondering the same thing. There has to be a chance. I know Lewis is meant to be off limits, but it would be so convenient and not a little ironic. Not that I need any excuse to find and nail that bastard, but it would have a certain symmetry. Imagine the fun we could have trying to persuade Lewis to give us his code?”

  “You and me both, Oleg.”

  “Just think. If that bomb really had gone off on the train today, the girl would have been killed – then we’d really have been in the shit.”

  “Yes and no. Perhaps her death might have compelled Nemikov to give her code to someone else as well?”

  “Perhaps. Anyway, we’ve got two out of our three people in custody. Once Virenque is here, we’ll soon know the identity of the third person, assuming Olena really does know who it is.” He drew on his cigarette and Polunin watched as Panich continued pacing.

  “So I’ve been thinking. If we wanted a way to lure Lewis to us, whether he’s the mysterious third code carrier or not, the way to do it is to let him think he stands a chance of rescuing either the boy or the girl, perhaps both.”

  “Do you have a plan?”

  “Of sorts. Put yourself in his shoes for the moment. What is his next move likely to be?”

  “He’ll want to know why Olena never showed up at Luton airport.”

  “Correct. But assuming he believes Olena is missing, most likely kidnapped, what next?”

  “Will he know yet about Nemikov’s death?”

  “Even if he does. What, besides finding the daughter, will be uppermost on his mind?”

  “Checking that Borys is alive.”

  “Precisely!”

  “But we have him here.”

  Panich looks momentarily exasperated. “Yes, but Lewis doesn’t know that. He thinks Borys is still in the Nemikov apartment in Cambridge. That’s where Lewis will be heading next.”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “It’s more than that. I may not have told you this before, but Plushenko has had a deep cover asset working for Nemikov for several years: his head of security, Sergei Fedorov. Fedorov has already helped us earlier this evening whilst we were waiting for the girl at Lexham Gardens. I’ve just spoken to him again. He was with Lewis, literally moments ago, out at Luton Airport. Lewis has just left, taking the keys to the Nemikov apartment in Cambridge with him. L
ewis is heading there right now.” He looked at his watch. “He’ll most likely be there within the half hour. You and Vince need to get over there right away. He won’t be expecting anyone, so surprise the bastard. Then restrain him, and either keep him in the apartment or bring him back here. Whatever is easier. Do you think you can manage that?”

  “Nothing would give me more pleasure.”

  “Good. Be very careful, my friend. In particular, please remind Vince that we need Lewis kept alive. If he really does knows Nemikov’s third and final code, I want him to sing like a canary before he is allowed the chance to die.”

  77

  Lewis is back on his bike, passing the outskirts of Hitchin. He is heading towards the A1 motorway before cutting across country on the A505 towards Royston and then Cambridge. His location is very close, once more, to where he had, only hours earlier, rammed the bomber’s vehicle and then rescued Olena from out of the car’s boot space.