The Gambit (Ben Lewis Thriller Book 2)

by David N Robinson

  This is likely to be a push over.

  The door to apartment number twenty-five is ten metres further along the corridor from Lewis’s hiding place. He can hear the Russian searching for keys. It is intriguing that he doesn’t try to pick the lock. Scarface is in possession of the right keys for the Nemikov apartment. As is Lewis. Except that Lewis acquired his from Sergei Fedorov. So how did the Russian and his overweight companion get theirs? Was it from Olena? Or had someone been here earlier in the evening? For example, a snatch team? Perhaps even these two? Had they taken Borys, and his set of keys, into safe custody? It seemed probable.

  Concluding it futile to rush into the apartment after them, Lewis decides it is better to wait outside. He wants to see who, or what, eventually emerges.

  He’s not kept waiting long.

  82

  Inside the apartment, the front door closed, Vince waited downstairs whilst Polunin went to check the status of the upper floor. Exactly as he had done earlier that evening, the Russian inched his way up the stairs, his P-22 pistol out in front. At the top, he peered gingerly over the concrete balustrade to see into the main living area. The body of the dead security man was on the floor, precisely where he had fallen earlier. The television is still on, exactly as before. A pool of blood had oozed onto the wooden floorboards beside the dead man. Apart from that, everything appeared to be unchanged and undisturbed. Retreating downstairs, Polunin covered Vince with his gun as they checked the bedrooms: one by one. The flat was empty. There was no sign of Lewis anywhere.

  It was almost time to begin their stake out. Before taking up their agreed positions, Polunin, being the professional that he was, made Vince wait whilst he walked a full circuit of the entire first floor corridor. Polunin did this carrying his gun: he wanted to make certain Lewis wasn’t waiting for them around the next corner. The circuit didn’t take long, Polunin stopping a short distance beyond the stairwell, beckoning in silence for Vince to come and join him.

  Lewis has chosen his position well. Twice the Russian and his muscular friend walk right by where he remains hidden. He hears the other man speaking as they pass him the first time. He is a Brit; a Londoner from the sound of it. Scarface then stops almost directly in front of Lewis on his subsequent reconnaissance of the corridor: still with no inkling that Lewis is just inches from him. Lewis sees the Russian’s gun. It is a small semi-automatic: a Walther P-22. It has a silencer attached: most likely a Gemtech suppressor. Silent and quite deadly at close quarters. Beckoning to his overweight colleague to follow, Scarface heads back towards the lift stairwell. Lewis has a decision to take: whether to follow; or firstly to check out the apartment? Lewis feels in a mood to follow.

  He is about to move from his hiding place when the Russian stops suddenly, about thirty metres away, taking up a new vigil adjacent to the stairs down to the ground floor. His colleague has gone on ahead, presumably down to street level. Lewis watches intently. The other man is pacing. He has the look of someone expecting action, but doesn’t know when. The time is almost three o’clock in the morning. People don’t normally creep around apartment blocks at this hour of the night. Scarface is waiting for something to happen. He doesn’t know where it is going to be coming from; but he knows it is coming. And he’s not waiting for the good guys either. Scarface is nervous. His body language and entire demeanour indicate that he is expecting trouble: his gun is drawn; it is silenced and ready to fire; and he continues pacing.

  So, who is he waiting for?

  Lewis knows. An SVR agent, already known to him, turns up out of the blue in the middle of the night, armed with a gun. Not one, but two of them, both arriving almost exactly the moment that he gets here on his motorbike. Is this all a happy coincidence? Not likely. Lewis doesn’t believe in such things. They are here because of him. The million-dollar question is this: how is it that Scarface and his friend know that Lewis is going to be here?

  A lucky guess on their part? Like happy coincidences, Lewis doesn’t believe in such things.

  It wouldn’t be because of Saul Zeltinger either, of that Lewis is totally confident. He briefly considers Jake Sullivan or Laura, the department head whom he had recently met – but quickly rejects both as non-starters. MI5 wouldn’t be sending a Russian agent to lie in wait for Ben Lewis to show up.

  So, that really only leaves one possibility. If the Russian and his friend truly are part of a Ben Lewis reception committee, there could only be one person able to inform either of them about Lewis’s impending arrival: Sergei Fedorov.

  Fedorov certainly had a bone to pick with Lewis. But Fedorov, working for Plushenko or the Russians? That feels bizarre. Could Arkady Nemikov have had Fedorov working for him all these years whilst the man was simultaneously working for the opposition? It is certainly a possibility, Lewis concedes.

  For the moment, Lewis has more pressing issues to deal with. For instance, how to take out a Russian armed with a Walther P-22 pistol?

  He knows the answer to that.

  The Russian is too far away for what Lewis has in mind: Lewis first needs to be a little nearer. He also needs to find something small and reasonably heavy. Once he has accomplished both, Scarface is definitely going down.

  Peering over the top of the lockers next to him, he spots something that looks ideal. Tucked away at the back, hidden next to the wall, is an old, discarded, brass padlock. It is about two inches square, with a simple combination lock: three brass number wheels that rotate down one edge. It is broken but that is of no concern to Lewis. He swings the metal clasp around into the closed position before feeling the weight of it in the palm of his hand. It seems perfect.

  He sets off in a crouching walk, edging stealthily around the corner of his hiding place, into and along the corridor, halting when no more than ten metres from the Russian. It is time to wait; until he can be confident that the other man’s back will remain turned away from him for a sufficient period.

  Lewis has this knack of throwing objects with pinpoint accuracy. Cricket balls at a wicket; coconuts at a fairground shy. Nearly always he is deadly accurate. Whether throwing them gently, or hurling them with deadly force – he seldom misses. It is an innate talent – and one that he uses to great effect. Scarface is talking. He has an earpiece microphone in one ear, most likely speaking with his buddy outside. Open channel communication. Out goes the element of surprise. It’s a risk Lewis can live with. It might even help. Choosing his moment, he extends to full height, hurling the padlock at the Russian with maximum force. It hits exactly where Lewis had intended it to: directly behind the ear, in the soft fleshy tissue: the most dangerous and lethal place. The man sinks to the floor like a stone.

  Quickly on his feet, Lewis runs towards the fallen man. The P-22 handgun has dropped to the floor beside the body. Lewis picks it up, contemplates using it for a second before thinking again; instead, he places it in the rear waistband of his trousers. He feels for a pulse. It is very faint – the Russian is out cold, and will be for a while. Calmly, Lewis locates the Russian’s earpiece microphone. He yanks the ear bud out of the dead man’s ear and brings the microphone closer to his own mouth. It is time to send the other man outside an urgent SOS.

  83

  Vince was pacing as he was talking with Polunin. Outside, the temperature had fallen, his breath condensing heavily in the cool night air. He had located a good place to watch and wait for Lewis: the cold, however, meant that he needed to keep moving.

  “What’s the plan once we’ve nabbed him?” Vince was asking.

  “Keep him here in the flat, initially. Possibly they’ll want him brought back to the farmhouse. Either way, they’ll want to interrogate him, for sure.”

  “There’s a lot of interrogation going on. What’s that all about?”

  “Some things that are best not asked,” Polunin said.

  “What’s this Lewis gone and done t
o annoy you lot, anyway?”

  “He’s a nasty piece of work. A few months ago, he nearly killed me. I had to quit my job because of him.”

  “Want to tell me about it?”

  “Not real . . . .” The line went dead.

  “Hello,” said Vince into his mouthpiece. “Alexei, can you hear me? Hello.”

  Vince heard muffled noises and a crackling sound that lasted several seconds before hearing what he assumed was still Polunin’s voice in his ear.

  “Help . . . . you’ve . . . got . . . to . . . help. . . . me . . . quickly . . . need . . . you . . . here . . . ” The voice sounded strained, faint and anxious, hardly like the Russian’s at all. Vince reached into his pocket for the key fob, already running towards the front door of the apartment block.

  Running up the staircase, two steps at a time, takes its toll. Despite his sessions at the gym, the man arrives at the first floor landing out of breath. Pushing open the door at the top of the stairs, he nearly falls over Polunin’s inert body.

  Soldiers have it drilled into them: thinking on their feet and not freezing when confronted with the unexpected. It means the difference between life and death – especially when, emerging from a lit stairwell into a darkened corridor, you discover your comrade lying motionless on the deck in front of you. A good reaction would have been rolling out of the light into the relative safety of the darkness to one side. Another might have been slamming the door wide open – in case Lewis, or whoever, happened to be hiding behind it.

  Not behaving as Vince does: freezing in the doorway, slowly taking stock; silently looking for unknowns; and patiently listening for the unexpected.

  It is not a wise countermeasure.

  Especially since Lewis has the padlock back in his hand.

  It is going to be a repeat performance, but with some very minor variations.

  Lewis is once more back in the shadows, this time on the other side of the corridor: but again in a dark recess, a place that makes it difficult for him to be noticed.

  As he did with the Russian, he waits to pick his moment: when the man decides that it is safe to bend down to inspect his fallen colleague.

  Which Lewis predicts should be within the next few seconds.

  Which, in point of fact, turns out to be wrong.

  The man surprises Lewis by his inertia. In all other respects he is a sitting target, the light from the stairwell illuminating him so clearly from behind. He remains like this for almost a minute, his heavy breathing gradually subsiding.

  Finally, after what seems like an age, he considers it safe to snatch a quick look. Stepping forward, out of the light, he bends down to check the Russian’s pulse.

  Which is the moment when Lewis, too, steps forward, taking careful aim. This second time around he doesn’t need the man unconscious. Questions need answering urgently. So he plans to throw the padlock with slightly less force.

  The man senses something is wrong. Unwisely, he chooses to raise his head just as the padlock is in mid-flight. So that, when it hits him, it is not the glancing blow that Lewis had planned. It makes contact directly on the right temple causing the man to collapse.

  Rushing forward, Lewis tries to keep the man conscious by shaking him, slapping him hard around the face several times. The man groans, groggy and confused by what has just happened. After further vigorous shaking, he opens one eye. Lewis places the P-22 pistol hard against the man’s throat to avoid any ambiguity.

  “Name?”

  “Vince,” comes a weak response.

  “Who told you I would be here tonight, Vince?”

  The man tries to swallow but the pressure from the gun at his throat prevents him. The very act of trying makes him wince involuntarily. Pain receptors in the area around where the padlock hit him are starting to send danger signals into Vince’s nervous system. Close to the edge of a complete melt down, his eyes start sliding behind the eyelids. Lewis responds by slapping him hard on the cheek with the palm of his left hand once more. Lewis needs Vince focused and still conscious. Temporarily, it does the trick.

  “Panich . . . . someone . . . . told . . . . him . . . . I . . . . don’t. . . . know.”

  It had to be Fedorov. He is the only person who would have known.

  “Where are Olena and Borys?”

  The man shakes his head weakly, his face grimacing. Lewis needs a fast change of tactics. He moves the P-22 away from the man’s throat and fires one shot into Vince’s left hand. The gun hardly makes a sound. The same is not true of Vince. His whole body jolts, as if a surge of electricity has just flowed through it. He lets out a cry of pain. Changing gun hands, Lewis uses his right forearm to exert downward pressure on Vince’s throat: placing the gun, now in his left hand, hard against the man’s other hand, pinning it to the ground.

  “If you don’t want to lose this hand as well, I suggest you talk. Where are Olena and Borys?”

  Vince grits his teeth but doesn’t answer. Lewis’s face is now very close to his. He contemplates a head butt – but rules this out for the moment. Time to start a countdown.

  “I’m counting down from five. Ready? Five. . . . four . . . . three . . . . I’m serious, Vince, I will pull the trigger, . . . . two . . . . “

  “Wait,” Vince gasps. It’s . . . . a . . . . farmhouse . . . . south . . . . of . . . . Cambridge. . . . near . . . . Newton . . . . and . . . .”

  The man is fading. Lewis releases the pressure on Vince’s throat momentarily.

  “That’s better. Come on, Vince. Between Newton and where, exactly?”

  Vince starts coughing involuntarily, the physical movement causing the pain in his head to intensify. He is about to pass out. Lewis tries shaking him: it is no good. The man slips into unconsciousness. Lewis is not about to get anything more out of him in a hurry.

  84

  When Mikhail Volkov had learnt that the Russian-made RDX explosive was being used to build a bomb deep underground at London’s Tottenham Court Road station, he had known that Hakim’s London operation was a potential liability. When he heard that London’s anti-terrorist police had arrested three Pakistani males at the location where the RDX was being stored, he knew the liability was in danger of becoming a full-blown disaster. Discovering several blocks of Russian-made C-4 explosive sewn into sandbags at the Kilburn flat might be one thing: linking these same explosives to a massive terrorist tunnel bomb, currently under construction beneath the centre of London would, politically, be quite another. Chemical analysis of the explosive would link the RDX back to Moscow. The public humiliation caused by Russian state sponsorship of terrorism in the heart of London would be devastating – especially at a time of sanctions and increased tension with the West. For Volkov personally it had all the hallmarks of being a career limiting, if not life shortening, experience. His orders from the highest level had been quite specific: nothing overt to be carried out against the West that could be linked back to Moscow.

  At the time, there had seemed only one appropriate course of action: Sadiq had to be eliminated – and quickly. Fortunately, Volkov had just the operative. The Russian trained assassin, Rafiq Virenque, had just arrived on the ground in London, about to start his assignment with Panich. An urgent instruction had been transmitted and Virenque had rapidly set to work. Adopting the disguise of a TfL maintenance worker, he had travelled late at night to Canary Wharf underground Station where Sadiq had been working as part of a track repair crew. Within three hours of starting his shift, Sadiq had mysteriously slipped and fallen under the wheels of his maintenance train, his body crushed to a pulp.

  Volkov was an early riser – which on this particular day proved to be a useful habit. Over his first cup of coffee, he was using the time to trawl through various emails on the subject of Arkady Nemikov’s unexpected demise. He was drinking his second cup when he took the
call from Viktor Plushenko. By the time he had listened to what Plushenko had to say about the subject, he was fully awake.

  “Cunning bastard.” Volkov said. He had been listening to Plushenko explaining Nemikov’s secret arrangements for protecting his assets. “That could be a game changer.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe not,” Plushenko replied. “We have certain contingency plans kicking in. Oleg Panich is, as you promised, indeed hugely resourceful.”

  Volkov smiled when he heard this. Panich was indeed very resourceful – he had, after all, been the one to request Rafiq Virenque be made available to work with him. Together, the pair made a formidable team.

  “I appreciate the heads up. Given that Panich is officially your property on this Nemikov operation and not mine, I need to ask: is there another reason you are ringing me, Viktor, or is this simply a courtesy call?”

  There was a grunt from the other end of the line. It was only because of Volkov’s immense power and authority within the SVR that Plushenko wasn’t shouting down the phone at the Yasenevo deskman for his impertinence. People normally showed much more deference to such a powerful oligarch.

  “Nemikov’s demise, you can appreciate, makes aspects of our little field operation more complicated. It might prove enormously helpful to our cause if the boys and girls of the SVR were willing to increase the level of field support you felt able to provide: without attribution, of course. I suspect we might only be talking about a small amount of specialised equipment procurement here, the occasional exchange of information there, that sort of thing. Is that likely to be a problem? I, for one, would be hugely in your debt.”

  This last remark made Volkov smile. Was he mistaken or had one of the most powerful men in Russia just come to him, cap in hand, asking for his help?