The gun is an all-too-familiar GSh-18 pistol.
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Champéry
It happens in almost a blink of an eye, an instinctive reflex from a man hell bent on revenge. Lewis sees it all in slow motion, first noticing the Russian as he advances cautiously into the room, checking the number of hostiles, seeing who is armed and who isn’t, locking eyes first onto Holly’s then Lewis’s, finally smiling, a nasty, sadistic sort of smile. The killer has found his prey: they are all unarmed, once more he is back on message.
Seeing no other weapons drawn, Panich changes gear, knowing that he has the advantage, momentarily this is his show, that there are debts suddenly to be settled. Out of reflex he stretches his neck in a figure of eight pattern, releasing muscle tension no doubt, his eyes never losing their target. They are now solely and exclusively locked on Lewis. Even though the weapon is not in his normal firing hand, his right elbow being heavily strapped to his body, he looks in control. In one fluid motion Panich swings the GSh-18 pistol in a deliberate horizontal arc, aiming directly to where Lewis and Holly are sitting. This is not a good development. It does not give Lewis any more time to react.
The first indication is the sound, the explosion deafening in such a confined space, the noise making Holly jump. Lewis had been expecting it, knowing that if he were in Panich’s shoes, he would be shooting first and asking questions later.
Next there is a strange feeling in Lewis’s thigh muscle, the sensation one of warmth rather than pain, a form of numbness, altogether alien. In that split second he knows that he has taken a bullet. He starts looking down then stops himself, knowing all to well that soldiers who pause to survey battle wounds in the middle of a combat zone end up coming home in body bags.
Instead, his right hand is inside his inner left jacket pocket, his fingers encircling the Taurus’s pistol grip. In a fraction of a second, the Taurus is on the move as Lewis rotates his head back to look Panich directly in the eye. The Russian has paused, unsure whether to fire his GSh-18 a second time and risk killing Lewis outright, or else wait to see how badly injured the former Marine was, doubtless hoping to have a little sadistic fun at Lewis’s expense before finishing him and Holly off later.
Too bad, Lewis thinks as he completes his arm swing. The Taurus is now aimed directly towards where his eyes are focusing, directly at Panich’s left shoulder. Without pausing even for a millisecond Lewis fires two rounds in quick succession. It is only as he pulls the trigger the second time that the room begins to move unsteadily in front of him. The impact of the shock and loss of blood from his thigh wound causing him to fight to stay conscious.
139
Champéry
Holly physically felt the bullet as it had torn through Lewis’s upper thigh. The round had even passed through the sofa cushion beside her. Like Lewis, she had been watching Dunleavy head back into the room at gunpoint. Her stomach had turned to ice when she saw Panich edge his way in behind him. She wondered for the second time in twenty-four hours whether this was going to be her moment to die. She hadn’t seen it coming, the sound and reverberation of Panich’s initial gunshot making her jump. Her mind had been distracted, puzzling over how the Russian could have possibly located them so quickly. Likewise, Lewis’s response had also been totally unexpected. She had no idea, even, that he was armed, never felt him remove or aim his gun. The two shots that he’d fired sounded even louder than the first. She saw Panich fall to the floor and watched as his gun fell from his left hand, pleased to see that Dunleavy was quick to pick up the man’s weapon and move it well away from the Russian. In the midst all of this, she was acutely aware that Lewis had been hit and was going to need attention.
The Russian was lying sprawled on the wooden floor surrounded by a growing pool of blood. He was certainly looking incapacitated if not dead with limited signs of life visible. Blood was also seeping from the wound in Lewis’s leg beside her. The nurse in her knew what to do. She headed into the adjacent kitchen to find scissors and clean tea towels, the scissors to cut lengths of material so that she could make a crude tourniquet and stem the bleeding. By the time that she had returned, however, Lewis had already moved off from the sofa.
140
Champéry
Lewis’s moment of dizziness is short lived. Despite Holly telling him to wait as she goes off in search of bandages, he is quickly off the sofa, moving across the room to where Panich has fallen, kneeling on the floor beside him.
One of the two bullets has hit the Russian directly in the upper chest area, immediately below the collarbone. The other missed its target altogether, probably Lewis’s second shot. There is a fair amount of blood, the parallels with Hanover Square two days ago not lost on Lewis. This time, however, he is not about to cradle the Russian’s head in the man’s hour of need. Lewis shakes Panich roughly to get him to stay conscious, the pool of blood on the floor getting slowly larger.
Panich opens his eyes and grimaces when he sees Lewis so close up. The Taurus in Lewis’s right hand is jabbed painfully into the soft skin beneath Panich’s chin.
“How the fuck did you find us, Panich?”
The Russian smiles thinly. “My secret, arsehole.”
Lewis hits him across the face with the barrel of his gun, shifting his body so that his knee is now positioned on top off Panich’s bandaged and badly broken right elbow. The moment Lewis brings his weight to bear on Panich’s splintered bone the Russian begins screaming in agony. Lewis maintains the pressure for a short while before gently easing off. Dunleavy, still standing close by, chooses the moment to intervene.
“I say, Lewis, don’t you think the fellow’s suffered enough?”
“Piss off, Dunleavy. Leave this to the grown ups. The man’s a killer, for fuck’s sake. Make yourself scarce,” he says, turning back to look the Russian in the face once more. Panich is whimpering, his eyes bloodshot and tearful.
“Now, as I was in the middle of asking. How the fuck did you manage to find us?”
Panich’s breathing is laboured, all too aware that Lewis could resume inflicting yet more agony in his elbow at any moment. His eyes are fearful, knowing that he has lost this fight.
“I’m listening,” Lewis says, his voice calm but the menace in his tone clear.
Panich is struggling to take lungfuls of air. The traumas in both his elbow and his shoulder, the loss of blood: all three are causing his body systems to shut down. The man is close to the abyss and Lewis senses it. He needs Panich conscious for a few moments more. Just long enough to be able to answer his question.
“Sandpiper,” the Russian says eventually, his speaking laboured, his breathing shallow. “You . . . will . . . never . . . find . . . the . . . truth,” his eyes rolling backwards under the eyelids, moments away from unconsciousness, “about . . . Sandpiper.”
Some time later and Holly has managed to clean the wound in Lewis’s thigh, pleased and relieved that the bullet missed both his femur and the major leg artery. The muscle tissue would regrow and for now the bleeding has stopped. Underneath his trousers there is a professional looking bandage strapped to his upper left leg.
“Dunleavy, are you in a fit state to drive?” Lewis asks the civil servant.
The young man still looks white with shock but claims otherwise to be fine.
“Good. We should be getting this dossier to Geneva. I am sure that both Mel and your Minister will be keen to read it.”
“What about Panich?” Holly asks, pointing at the Russian. “Is he dead?”
“Not far from it. I’ll call Zeltinger and explain what happened. The Swiss will have to sort it all out. Come on,” he says, picking up the dossier from off the table next to the sofa, “we need to get going.”
Lewis is the last to leave the chalet and is about to close and lock the door when he stops. He can hear something. Holly sees him and asks w
hat it is.
“Someone’s phone is ringing. It must be Panich’s. Take this,” he hands Holly the dossier and goes back inside to where Panich is lying unconscious on the wooden floor. He roughly searches the man’s jacket pockets and finds an Android phone vibrating. He takes it out and looks at the caller ID.
Which is the exact moment that his blood turns to ice.
Lewis recognises the number. He had seen it as an incoming call on his own phone earlier that morning.
In that split second he gets it, understanding everything, knowing in that instant exactly what this whole episode has been all about. He hits the answer button, initially saying nothing, letting the person at the other end speak first.
“Oleg? Is that you?”
Lewis waits, wanting to choose his reply carefully.
In the end he goes for something short and simple, knowing that his message can leave no room for ambiguity.
“The game’s up I’m afraid, Mel. It’s time for Sandpiper to fly its nest.”
141
Geneva Airport
“Excuse me, are any of these seats taken?” the neatly dressed man in a sports coat, checked shirt and tie asks in near-perfect English. There is only a slight trace of an underlying European accent discernible. Mel Allen looks up and nods wearily, waving her hand to indicate that the other three chairs around the rectangular table are indeed unoccupied.
“Sure, help yourself.” She glances a quick look at her new companion. When she sees that it isn’t someone she recognises she continues reading that day’s Financial Times. Saul Zeltinger places his circular plastic tray down diagonally opposite where Allen is positioned, pulls back his chair and sits down. The two sit in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Allen is busy reading, and Zeltinger is casually observing the comings and goings of everyone around them. Airside at Geneva airport is busy that afternoon: many tables at their tiny coffee shop are occupied. Fellow travellers are passing the time drinking teas and coffees as they wait for flights to be called.
“Going far?” the man asks out of the blue, leaning forward as he talks. He places his elbows on the table, both hands clasping a white china cup full of strong black coffee. She lays the paper down briefly, not at all certain she is in the mood for conversation. The man has enquiring eyes, she notices, and a nice smile. “Moscow,” she says truthfully, instantly regretting that she hadn’t said somewhere different. Too late, the man now knew: she was beyond caring anymore.
“Why?”
She can hear German in his voice, she is certain. His question is strange, unusually direct. It is perhaps a good question, even a very good question, but not one that she feels prepared to answer. She is debating her reply when another voice calls out from behind her.
“Saul, I didn’t expect to see you here. Mind if I join you?”
She looks around and it is then that her heart sinks. It is Ben Lewis, coming to sit at her table. Which could only mean that the man sitting opposite her must be the German detective that he had told her about.
“Hello, Mel,” Lewis says, sitting next to Saul, immediately opposite from her. Two on one, this wasn’t an interview: it was going to be a grilling. “Surprised to see me alive? Have you been properly introduced to Detective Saul Zeltinger?”
Saul nods and smiles. “Detective Inspector actually. Yes, we were just getting acquainted. I was asking why she was heading to Moscow and she seemed a little lost for words.”
Tears begin to well in the corner of Allen’s eyes. Lewis sees that her bottom lip has developed a slight tremble.
“I suspect Oleg Panich is dead,” Lewis says after a short pause. “He shot me first, in the leg, as it happens, but nothing life threatening. He, poor man, suffered a bad chest wound, most probably fatal. Spilled the beans about Sandpiper, though. I’m surprised Moscow has allowed you to make your escape by flying commercial. Don’t they charter private planes for their star defectors? Or did you simply run out of time?”
Zeltinger removes his black notebook from a pocket. Thumbing through several pages of handwritten notes, he eventually finds a blank page and starts writing.
“Ben,” he says looking up, as if remembering something. “Did I mention on the phone earlier that we managed to track Bronwyn Adams down?”
“Perhaps I ought to let Mel read Leyla’s letter first?” He reaches into his jacket and removes the ‘To Whom It May Concern’ letter. He passes it across to her. “Fancy a read?”
She says nothing, simply nodding, weeping openly now and sniffing hard. Tears are rolling down her cheeks. She reaches into a handbag for a handkerchief. As before, Lewis notices that this one is linen. It too is nicely ironed.
A while later, having read the letter, she simply leans forward, her elbows on the table, her head in her hands, sobbing quietly. From time to time she dabs at her eyes with her handkerchief, her waterproof mascara holding up well against the cascade of tears.
“I never meant to hurt anyone. Especially not Leyla,” she sobs.
“Perhaps now is the moment to return to Bronwyn Adams,” Lewis says.
Zeltinger nods. “It transpires that Bronwyn is a former paparazzi, someone well-used to the black arts of tracking down certain individuals, taking covert photographs over long distances, that sort of thing. She had met Leyla in Paris a while back, the two of them apparently worked on some assignment together. Only last week Leyla had contacted her with an unusual commission. She wanted to place you, Mel, under surveillance. She asked Bronwyn to record the people that you met with, especially anything furtive or unusual. Leyla never apparently explained her motives but she had paid well, and in cash apparently. Want to see what she found?”
Zeltinger reaches into his jacket and produces several grainy photographs, laying them on the table in front of Lewis and Allen. “Here’s you, Mel, sitting alone on a bench in London’s Green Park; this one shows the commercial attaché at the Russian embassy, Alexei Yurichenko, walking by and sitting next to you; now Yurichenko picking up a newspaper that you have left on the bench beside you; another one here of the two of you at a West End sushi outlet, sitting at adjacent tables only a couple of days earlier; and so on.” He fans out several more pictures, the facts speaking for themselves. “All circumstantial evidence. However a lot is beginning to stack up against you, I’m afraid.”
“What exactly are my options?” Mel says after a suitable pause.
“Well,” Zeltinger says looking around the tiny coffee shop, “There are at least six armed members of the Swiss police force stationed within spitting distance of where we are currently sat. I suspect that would rule out you trying to make a dash for it. I suppose that leaves two other options.”
“Which are?”
“Come back to the UK, face a not too public trial and then look forward to enjoying several years at her Majesty’s pleasure.”
“Or?”
“Or we let you go to Russia, never to darken our doors in the West again.”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“Probably not, but it would save us all a lot of time and effort if we could.”
142
Geneva Airport
The specialist arrived at Geneva airport on a Lufthansa flight from Munich. The flight was on time and the specialist had only hand luggage.
The particular logistics of flight arrivals at the mushroom-like satellite terminals of Geneva airport were helpful to his plan. The specialist was one of the first off the plane. Having passed through no-return glass doors that swung open to let passengers through into the basement passageways beneath the satellite, he didn’t continue to the immigration booths in the distance, instead stopping at the toilets that were close by and availing himself of the facilities.
Minutes later, with most passengers off the plane and a queue having formed for Swiss immigration
control up ahead, the specialist instead turned in the other direction, able to access the departure area of the satellite hub he had recently left by means of an escalator up one floor.
He spotted the woman quickly, sitting as she was by herself, reading a newspaper and drinking coffee, waiting for the Moscow flight to be called. He was about to initiate his planned intervention when a complication had arisen. The woman had not one, but shortly two visitors, both of whom chose to sit immediately opposite her at her table. One was a man he recognised, the same person Oleg Panich had been tasked with killing. It was a certain former Marine called Ben Lewis. The other was an unfamiliar face.
The specialist chose to keep well away from all three, positioning himself at a distance, diagonally across the mushroom-shaped satellite from where they were sat. As he watched, the woman began crying, sobbing into a handkerchief. Then the specialist noticed something else. This was much more worrying. Several armed Swiss police had started appearing in the satellite departure area. The woman was going to be arrested, of that he was now certain. Would they handcuff her? Unlikely. Would they quietly march her out of the airport to a waiting car, bundling her in the back and taking her away for a through cross-examination? That was much more likely. Which meant that a new plan of action was urgently needed. There was little time left.
The specialist already had his boarding pass for the return flight to Munich. This was convenient since it allowed him to assume the identity not of a recently arrived passenger, but of a soon-to-be departing passenger about to head home to Germany. Making his way back down to the subterranean corridor once more, he approached the immigration booths that by this time were devoid of queues. He held up his boarding pass, asking the immigration officer if he be allowed back to the main terminal briefly, pretending to have left his briefcase at the airline’s business class lounge. As he had surmised, the bored Swiss official simply waved him through without even bothering to check his passport.
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