Lewis fiddles with the plastic lid of his cup, his eyes focusing hard on trying to put the lid back on the styrofoam container. They have been over most of this ground already. “I hadn’t been keeping an eye on the time. I thought it was gone three-thirty and my appointment at the gym was at four. It was only when I had left the coffee shop that I realised I still had time to kill.”
“Unfortunate choice of words, in the circumstance, don’t you think, Ben?” Zeltinger taking care to write them verbatim in his notebook, each heavily underlined as if to make the point.
They continue in this vein for nearly an hour, the same story dissected and reassembled from all angles under Zeltinger’s microscopic examination. At one point Lewis looks at his watch. It is just after five-thirty. The evening rush hour would be about to get going in earnest.
“Sorry about the questions, Ben. You’ve well and truly missed that four o’clock appointment. Just a couple more, if that’s all right?”
Ben Lewis shrugs and smiles weakly. As if he had any choice.
“When you moved to get close to the woman, right after the shot had been fired and she lay slumped onto the floor. You say that she was alive but only just. Are you sure she didn’t say anything to you? Nothing muttered in haste as the life was being drained, literally, out of her. No special last requests or pleas for help and such like?”
Lewis shakes his head, staring down at the table and refusing to make eye contact with Zeltinger. Or least that is what Zeltinger later finds he has recorded in his notebook. “No. Absolutely nothing.”
“You’re quite certain about that?” Zeltinger pushes. Something about Lewis’s answer to this particular question is troubling the policeman. Perhaps it is the lack of eye contact or Lewis’s intonation, he isn’t certain. Either way, the two of them sit in uncomfortable silence for several seconds before Lewis finally feels compelled to repeat himself. This time he looks up and stares into the cold blue eyes of his interrogator. “Quite certain. She never said anything. I’m sorry.”
Saul Zeltinger says nothing, staring hard at his witness before scribbling something quickly in his notebook. “And the bag, Ben?” he says, again looking up, their eyes locking onto each other once more. “Tell me again why you felt the need to move the bag? Wanted to have a look inside did you? Find anything interesting?” They are shadow boxing, Lewis about to duck and weave around the question, Zeltinger feels certain.
“It belonged to her. I guess I felt it should be beside her body and not abandoned for someone to come along and pinch later. I don’t know why I moved it, to be honest. It seemed the right thing to do.” He shrugs his shoulders and spreads his hands. A gesture of pure innocence. ‘Nice moves’, Zeltinger writes in his notebook. Shame it wasn’t a totally convincing performance, although the Detective Inspector felt powerless at this stage to prove anything to the contrary. He’d be assigning one or two of his team to keep a watch on this young man over the next few days.
He closes his black notebook with a loud snap, the conversation at an end. There is an uneasy feeling lurking, something nagging. Perhaps Lewis was the innocent passer-by? Zeltinger remains unconvinced. There’s something that he just can’t quite lay his finger on.
3
Kensington
A cell comprising four agents had been conducting the primary surveillance on the woman. Three were on foot and one on a motorbike. A further back-up vehicle had never been more than two minutes away.
In the blacked-out communications room of the Kensington safe house, Oleg Panich had been watching and listening to the unfolding events in and around Hanover Square. He was able to do this courtesy of eye-cams embedded in specially adapted spectacle frames and neck microphones worn by each of his field team. The mission objective thus far had been surveillance. Panich hated surveillance, which was why he was letting others do the legwork right now. Instead he was sat by himself drawing tobacco smoke into his lungs and drinking black coffee. He alone would pull the trigger. As and only when they knew for certain whether the woman was acting by herself or whether others had become involved. They had to be certain. An air of desperation had begun creeping into the tone of signal traffic from senior staff back at Yasenovo following his brief call with Sandpiper the previous evening. Panich was curious to know why this journalist so damned critical to Moscow? What was it about her that was raising blood pressure so badly back home? His orders had been unequivocal. Ensure that there were no loose ends. In agent speak that meant no accomplices or back-up arrangements. Then and only then was he to make the problem go away. Permanently.
The field team had noticed the man shortly before the woman had entered the garden square. They had no idea where he had come from. Olga, one of Panich’s agents on the ground, had thought that he might have been waiting in a nearby coffee shop, but she couldn’t be certain. Panich had run the man’s digital image through the department’s databases. The priority scan had come back with no matches. An innocent passer-by? Panich didn’t believe such people existed. The man had stall seats in the theatre of the main event and was connected, whether he intended to be or otherwise.
The gunshot took everyone totally by surprise. Panich was suddenly yelling at his team, firing questions in rapid succession. Learning that none of the cell had been responsible, he quickly started giving clear, crisp instructions. Some order of calm was restored but with none of the urgency lost. On the screens in front of him and from two different angles, Panich had live feeds showing the unknown man kneeling alongside the fatally injured woman. Two of his team were positioned at different locations outside the garden. Each had a clear view directly onto where the woman had fallen. Panich saw the man cradling the woman’s head. He watched as he moved his head closer to hers and saw him finally laying the woman’s head down after she had died. The man’s body was partially obstructing Panich’s view. However, he was still able to see the woman’s jacket being placed over her dead body and then subsequently the man picking up her handbag.
“Olga, I need to know who fired the shot,” he demanded. “Alexei, what the fuck’s he doing with her bag?”
Truth was, Olga couldn’t see anyone obvious who might have been the assassin. Three construction workers were standing outside an office building on the eastern side of the square smoking cigarettes. They seemed oblivious to what was happening in the garden only metres from them. Then there was a middle-aged woman exiting the square heading southwards. Her movements were laboured and slow, weighed down by a heavy shopping bag. She seemed an unlikely assassin as well. Panich thought that the shot most likely would have come from a passing car. The hedge around the garden was thin. This would have made it possible for a passenger in a rear seat to take aim, execute the shot, and then exit the kill zone without anyone being any the wiser. That was how he would have done it. Either that or have a sniper located on one of the adjacent office buildings that surrounded the square. Absent of any other leads, Panich asked Olga to follow up on the woman with the heavy shopping just to be certain.
“He’s searching the journalist’s bag,” Panich heard from one of his team. It was Zig, the other agent beside Alexei who was standing on the opposite side of the square watching what was going on.
“What’s he up to? I need more than this guys?”
“Still uncertain,” Alexei answered, his line of sight better than his colleague.
“For fuck’s sake, I need answers, everyone,” Panich was losing patience. The man had placed the handbag on the floor beside the woman’s body and was in the process of sitting back on the bench beside the dead woman.
“What the hell’s happening?” Panich yelled. “Why the fuck is he sitting there like a zombie?”
“Do you want us to try and bring him in?” Alexei asked.
“Olga, can you get to him? What about that other woman?”
“Negative. She’d hailed a ca
b before I could get to her. There are police sirens approaching. Do you still want us to go in?”
They could hear Panich cursing. If the police were arriving, his team would need to cut and run. “Negative. Everyone back off and keep your distance. I want you all well out of the police cordon. Stefan, I need you and your bike back here at the house – immediately.” A burst of engine noise could be heard from the fourth agent on his BMW F800 G. The bike was by now already accelerating through traffic heading westwards in the direction of Park Lane. “With you in less than three,” was Stefan’s curt reply.
“Listen up, the rest of you. I am coming to join you. When the police have finished with questioning this man, I want him brought in. Start working on a plan. We can discuss it when I get there.”
4
Hanover Square
The second floor office window of the vacant office building looked directly down onto the garden square. Sui-Lee was pleased to have such a good vantage point. She had relied on charm, a false identification card and the curly black wig that she always carried with her to bluff her way past a bored security guard on the ground floor. Thanks to the tip-off they had received from Teheran earlier, the journalist had been under surveillance the moment she had left her hotel that morning. Sui-Lee’s team had been a man down, the sudden disappearance of one of her agents late the previous evening was still a mystery. Despite that setback and knowing the journalist’s expected movements, Sui-Lee had been able to plan ahead. She had been in position several minutes ahead of the woman’s planned rendezvous. Even so, she had been much relieved when the woman had arrived at the garden square right on schedule.
The appearance of the young man a short while later had been an interesting and unexpected development. She had studied his face carefully through the 20x magnification afforded by her Minolta binoculars. She didn’t recognise him. She liked the look of him, though. Fit, athletic, chiselled features, clean-shaven, a bit of hunk. Who exactly was he and for whom was he working? No matter, she would find out in due course. She’d look forward to getting to know more about this man, for certain. Was he the person the woman was meant to be meeting? She hoped so. If not, what was his role?
Quite unexpectedly, the woman had slumped forward off her bench seat, collapsing onto the ground in front of her. It had taken a split-second before the sound of the single gunshot became audible through the thick glass of the office window. Sui-Lee’s professional training automatically kicked in. She scanned the area around the garden rapidly to see where the shot might have come from. Who might have fired it? There weren’t any obvious candidates. Had it been a sniper on a nearby building? Sui-Lee thought it unlikely and focused on those in the immediate vicinity around the square itself.
Three construction workers dressed in fluorescent orange jackets and white safety helmets were enjoying a cigarette, chatting together on the east side of the square. All three seemed unaware that a woman lay dying close to where they stood. They seemed unlikely. To the south, a lone female pedestrian was moving slowly but steadily away from the garden. Sui-Lee put her at around late forties or early fifties. A heavy shopping bag was dragging her down. It could be good cover, but Sui-Lee thought it also unlikely. Finally, two men in their late twenties had rushed onto the scene at the same time, each on opposite sides of the garden square. Had one of them pulled the trigger? They were both too much in the right place and at the right time to be coincidence. She studied them through her binoculars. Both male Caucasians, one had a black droopy moustache and receding hairline and wore black leather jacket and jeans. The other was dressed in a well-worn sports coat and baggy trousers, with a long, distinguishing scar down the length of one cheek. Sui-Lee recognised him. He was an SVR field agent, name of Alexei Polunin. Bad news. Had the Russians also wanted the woman dead? She turned her attention back to the garden.
The handsome young male was now at the woman’s side, his head bent close to hers. Was she saying something to him? There was a lot of blood, the woman was about to die, Sui-Lee felt sure of it. The two Russians looked as anxious as Sui-Lee to know what was going on. Perhaps they hadn’t fired the shot after all? If not them, however, then whom? Things were suddenly getting complicated.
She trained her binoculars on the man, watching as he draped the woman’s jacket over her dead body before picking up her handbag. After a moment’s hesitation, he began looking inside. Sui-Lee adjusted the magnification. He was looking for something, the professional in her knew it. Seconds later, he withdrew his hand hastily and swivelled his body as he moved to place the bag alongside the dead woman.
It had been an expert palm job, of that she was in no doubt. This young man was just her type. He had the makings of a real pro. As the left hand held onto the handbag, the right hand had been withdrawn from inside the bag and had begun a rapid and purposeful movement away from the bag towards an inner jacket pocket. The manoeuvre had been difficult to observe due to the man’s simultaneous body rotation. However, Sui-Lee had been watching for such a move. Skilfully hidden within the man’s right palm, almost completely covered by his sizeable digits, was a mobile phone.
5
Hanover Square
It was always going to be a difficult shot. There wasn’t enough time to ensure that her aim was totally on target. Farah needed to withdraw her weapon, aim it quickly, fire and then hide the gun away all in a matter of seconds, five at the most. It never mattered how many times she practiced this scenario. In the field everything was always orders of magnitude times more complicated.
Farah had wanted to time it perfectly. Ideally this would be when there was no passing traffic and no pedestrians in close proximity. She would take her chances with anyone watching from an office window. With luck her disguise would prevent her from being identified.
In the days before the revolution, the then Shah, Mohammad Reza had, with the co-operation of the American Central Intelligence Agency, helped finance and train several thousand operatives of the secret police force, SAVAK. Since the revolution, what became known as the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and National Security or VEVAK was much less well funded – and thus trained. Operations outside of Iran were rare, and usually put together on a shoestring. Farah had been the obvious choice to send to London given the circumstances, but she had received very little support. Her department, the secretive unit within VEVAK known as Oghab 2, usually dealt with matters to do with protecting Iranian nuclear secrets on Iranian soil. Not the sending of operatives on assassination missions to London.
A contact from the embassy had provided her with a weapon and some ammunition. It had been up to Farah to take care of all the other arrangements. She’d had to plan the hit and to organise her own getaway.
She had noticed three construction workers standing around smoking and enjoying a rest break. To avoid being seen, she had moved further around the square clockwise towards the south-east corner. There she still had a good line of sight to the woman sitting on the bench. The bushes around the outside provided an element of cover. One or two were tall enough so that, when she took aim, the gun would be hidden within their thin branches. Farah’s weapon, an Iranian-made PC9 9mm pistol was a carbon copy of the Swiss-made SIG Sauer. It was already concealed in the depths of a large shopping bag, the safety switched off, ready to fire.
In the end, everything happened in less than a blink of an eye. The shot fired and the gun once more safely concealed in her shopping bag, Farah was back on stage acting out her disguise as a middle-aged shopper struggling with heavy bags. She even managed a disinterested sideways glance at the dying woman in the garden. Then Farah, satisfied that her job was done, had hailed a passing black cab with its orange ‘for hire’ light glowing. She had climbed in slowly, taking one final look at the garden scene as the cab pulled away. A man was standing beside the body, appearing to search through the dead woman’s handbag. He didn’t look familiar, but
she wasn’t bothered. Her part of the mission was over. It was time for her to return to Teheran. If there were others that needed taking care of, then it would be up to someone else.
6
Hanover Square
It is nearly six o’clock in the early evening when Ben Lewis emerges from the side door of the police van. Head down and hands deep in the pockets of his leather jacket, he is escorted past the security cordon to the south of the garden square. From there he begins a contemplative meander under his own steam in the general direction of Green Park.
The events of the last few hours have been surreal. The parallels with Newquay four years ago are still preying on his mind. Then as now, a woman lay dying in his arms. Then as now promises had been made. Mercifully for Lewis there is no culpability, real or implied, for the woman’s death this time around. This was despite Saul Zeltinger’s at times accusatory line of enquiry. Lewis had managed to dodge some of the questions about what had happened in the garden square earlier. The woman had been so emphatic about keeping everything secret. For that reason, Lewis had deliberately not mentioned anything about the iPhone that she’d insisted he take and keep safe. He is hopeful that he has got away with this one small deception, despite Zeltinger’s detailed cross-examination.
He is musing about Zeltinger as he crosses Maddox Street heading south. The policeman had surprised him. During his time in the Marines, the military police had universally been a tough and unforgiving bunch. They were all pretty much out of the same mould, always relying on a well-defined rulebook and the threat of their own special brand of punishment to enforce law and order. Typically there had been little room for grey in between the black and white lines of what was right and wrong. That afternoon Zeltinger, by contrast, had approached a similar objective in a completely different manner. Lewis was not at all convinced that Zeltinger’s approach might not have been more effective. Outwardly a more relaxed version of his military counterparts, first impressions could and did mislead. Behind the slightly eccentric matching tie and handkerchief façade, Lewis had witnessed a razor sharp and agile inquisitor’s mind. Someone who arrived without preconception; took time to explore the situation from all angles; and appeared well-able to make interpretations at his own pace without the need of rigid frameworks predetermined by black and white boundaries. The detective had also been thorough. Without effort he had covered the bases, deploying deceptively disarming techniques. These included diving rapidly and unpredictably down from the big picture into the tiniest detail and then back again without missing a beat. Lewis had been subjected to a grilling, a workout at the hands of a professional investigator. It had been impressive, certainly surprising.
The Dossier (Ben Lewis Thriller Book 1) Page 2