Before Angus could go further, the telephone rang. Kim swiftly answered the call, nodding a couple of times, and then passing the phone over the desk to Angus. ‘It’s a Mr Fisher from the Bank of England.’
‘You’d better listen in to this,’ whispered Angus as he took the phone from her and switched on the speaker with the other hand. ‘Unexpected call from you, Bill, something about the conference or the launch tomorrow?’
‘Afraid not,’ replied Fisher. He then went on to give a full account of the events in Manila and his conversations with Scale. He finished by saying, ‘so, as you’ve told me before, something you’ve been expecting, an attempt to find Athena by attacking a bank.’
‘Yes it was only a question of time, but that’s okay,’ said Angus.
‘Does the fact that Athena is now being asked to defend a bank and still keep its location hidden give you any extra problems?’ asked Fisher.
‘Nothing we can’t handle. I’ll get onto the team right now but you don’t worry about any of that.’
‘It’s not just me doing the worrying,’ said Fisher, ‘what should I tell all the people who’ll be going to the Cobra Meeting the Secretary to the Cabinet is organising. Only one or two of them know about Athena.’
‘So, you’re asking me if Athena’s going to save the day?’
‘Exactly that,’ replied Fisher.
‘The answer’s yes. Anything else?’
‘I’m afraid I already told a couple of people that thanks to Athena, there’s not going to be any banking collapse − I hope I didn’t overstate that?’ A note of doubt had crept in Fisher’s voice.
‘As I said, Bill,’ replied Angus, ‘don’t you worry about a thing, just ooze confidence, say you’ve spoken to me and got all the reassurance you needed. Now, pass that message back to all the quivering politicians and I can get on with seeing if it’s true or not.’
‘Oh God, tell me you’re joking,’ said Fisher,
‘I’m joking. Just keep the politicians calm, will you?’
As soon as Angus had put the telephone down and switched off the speaker, he smiled at Kim. But, uncertain whether he had or had not been joking with Fisher, she leant forward across the desk. ‘Come on, you can tell me,’ she said. ‘Can Athena defend the bank and keep its location a secret at the same time?’
‘Let’s find out,’ said Angus. ‘In theory the answer’s yes it can – that’s what it’s been designed to do; but in practice I’ll leave it to the team to give the final answer. But first we need to check how many institutions are still not installing the Athena software.’
‘You mean there are some who are still relying on their old standard digital defence systems?’
‘Afraid so,’ replied Angus, ‘though the demonstration this afternoon should fix that.’
‘The demonstration?’
‘Yes I’ll tell you about that later,’ said Angus. ‘It’s key to getting Athena’s protection into the companies that need it most. But first we need to do something I’ve been meaning to do for some time. I’ve been relying for its security on Athena being hidden away up on Craithe, but, with this news, that’s not going to be enough. I need to speak to Tom Traynor though I’ll do that when we get to Craithe. Right now I need to talk to Borislav Boreyev, in Moscow. I’ve spoken to both of them since you joined the bank haven’t I, so you’ll know their numbers?’
‘Yes,’ answered Kim. ‘but like now you only asked to get them for you, you haven’t told me anything about them yet.’
‘Better put that right, as both are going to play critical roles in Athena’s life from now on. First Tom Traynor. He was at Cambridge University with me. We both got passable two-one degrees – not bad considering the time we spent on other activities. Anyway, I was side-tracked into the Towneley Bank and Tom joined a well-known law firm. In no time he found that he loathed the work and after only a month he left them. His father told him that as he’d shot up in height to his six-foot-five in too short a space of time, resulting in his finishing up as thin as a broom-handle; told him he needed to toughen up if he was going to amount to anything in life – good old-fashioned parenting. Anyway, he got Tom into his old regiment to build him up a bit and, typical of Tom, he got the Sword of Honour at Sandhurst Academy; soon after joining his regiment, he was seconded into the SAS. It was while in Helmand province that he got blown up while rescuing a couple of his mates. Got the MC for his gallantry but also a metal plate to cover the hole the IED had blown open in his skull.’
‘Good God,’ whispered Kim.
‘That was just the start. Invalided out of the army at that very moment and old great-aunt died and, as the last of her line, passed her huge estates and fortune to him. At that point he could just have settled into a bucolic life of ease. But not him. Felt he needed to do something for others in return for all his good fortune.’
‘So, what did he do? From what you’ve said so far something way-out I would guess?’
‘That’s putting it mildly,’ replied Angus. ‘He joined one of the largest international private investigation organisations in the world.’
Kim laughed. ‘What, he became a private detective? You’re kidding me.’
‘Well, not exactly. He’s very near free-lance. Only takes cases that will benefit from his legal and SAS backgrounds - so that cuts out divorce cases for example. Trouble from our point of view is though he would love to my offer and come and join us as head of security, he doesn’t want to leave IPI in the lurch and so he can’t be with us permanently till after this Easter weekend.’
‘Ah well, that’s not long now, just a few days,’ said Kim.
‘Yes but with the launch and the news we just got, I going to try and get Borislav Boreyev to protect us till Tom gets here and builds his own team. Hell, we’ve also got the launch of Athena at the Bank of England tomorrow.’
‘And from listening to you talking to Mr Boreyev, he seems to be a good friend as well.’
‘Yes, but for very different reason. Even just his name brings the whole nightmare rushing back over me,’ said Angus. Kim watched as his eyes seemed to glaze and for a moment he shut them.
‘Why don’t you tell me about it, we’ve plenty of time before the helicopter’s due to take us north.’
Angus smiled and then relented.
‘It was in my third year with the Vassilov Bank in Moscow. I’d been seconded there from the Towneley Bank. I’d struck up a great rapport with ‘The Boss’, Mikhail Vassilov. He had been invited several times to join his family for weekends at their Dacha in the Crimea. It was the second time I’d been invited down there.’
He shook his head but then, looking up at the ceiling and went on.
‘I can see it all right in front of me right now. We’re all having evening drinks on the veranda under the striped awning. It’s flapping a bit in a welcome breeze. The day’s been a scorcher. There are just the five of us, Mikhail and his wife Olga, their daughter - my beautiful Tatiana - Borislav Boreyev and me. We’re all chatting away, by now my Russian’s quite good. Huh, I remember I told my first Russian joke and even got a laugh out of the others.’
Kim watched as he smiled briefly at this point.
‘Yeah, even got a laugh out of Tatiana too. Used to think she was a bit aloof, only discovered much later how difficult it had been for her as her father fought his way up to becoming one of the top Oligarchs. Made lots of enemies along the way too – probably the reason for what we all call the incident.’
‘The incident?’
‘Yes, suddenly, there they are. Three gunmen, wearing black balaclavas. They’ve, appeared up over the balustrade and bushes round the far edge of the patio - right there, no more than twenty yards away. They must have scaled the cliffs from the beaches of the Black Sea three hundred feet below.’
A thin film of sweat now glistened on his forehead.
‘They come running straight for us. The leader fires his pistol right at us. God. Mikhail’s wife Olga is down and so i
s he, knocked over by her as she falls, killed instantly by the first shot. We all go down, trying to get cover behind the white filigree cast-iron table and chairs. They’re scattering. As they fall over, plates of eats, glasses, bottles, Christ what chaos everything falling all round us – and all the shooting. Crazy, I see it now in slow motion, a small plate of sliced lemons, a water jug, and some glasses in the air and crashing onto the stone floor around us.’
‘Borislav Boreyev threw me a heavy Yarygin Viking automatic pistol. The safety catch must have already been pushed to ‘off’. I fire it before it was properly in my hand. God it slams into the ball of my thumb. But I get off two shots into the chest of the man towering directly above Tatiana. He falls like a felled tree. Then I feel a sudden searing pain in my left shoulder and another near my left knee as a couple of bullets get me. Must have been fired by another of the gang. Before I can even turn on this huge brute, he’s gunned down by Boreyev. God knows how many shots were fired or by whom. As I said, it was like a living nightmare.’
‘So how did it end?’
‘By the end Olga lay dead. Mikhail Vassilov, Boreyev and myself had been wounded − though none of us seriously. Tatiana was the only one of us unscathed − physically at least. She finished up on the ground, like everyone else, but enveloped in my arms and spattered slightly by blood from a bullet-graze on my left temple. God I was lucky another few millimetres further to the left, and I’d have been killed.’
‘After it was over, it proved almost impossible for any of us to recall how many shots had been fired, by whom, or how quickly. It was seemingly over as soon as it had started. Death, wounding and terror – all in mere seconds. All three of the assailants were killed. Later I chatted over it with Boreyev and we came to the conclusion that whoever was behind the assault had not picked the best of attackers. We reckoned that had the three of them been professionals, the outcome would undoubtedly have been much worse.’
‘So you see,’ concluded Angus looking across to Kim, ‘that incident at the Dacha left Mikhail, Tatty, Boris and me pretty close.’
* * * * *
She left the room and a couple of minutes later buzzed through on the telecom. ‘Mr Boreyev’s in a meeting but I told his secretary it was urgent’ said Kim. ‘She promised he’d ring back as soon as he comes out of the meeting.’
‘Thanks,’ replied Angus, and thought again about the new security problem he would discuss as soon as his old friend rang back. It seemed to him that a state-backed team intent on the theft of Athena would not do anything too openly to get at it − such as an invading group − much more likely would be the stuff of films, a James Bond-like approach perhaps. Either China or Russia would have no shortage of people capable of theft in that manner, and Boreyev’s people would be ideal for protection against such an approach – his security company being one of the best equipped in Europe. He also knew that Boreyev’s people had been used to deal with Russian upheavals in several of the countries round the fringes of the Russian Federation, and they would do well now in providing for Craithe’s defence.
The telephone rang, and Kim announced that it was Boreyev on the line.
‘Hello, my old friend, how are you doing?’ said Angus in Russian.
‘Fine except for the bloody President’s people, following me, listening in on all of my telephone calls – pain in the arse,’ replied Boreyev, getting his current whinge off his chest right away,
‘What did you do to get all this? I thought you and the President were pals.’
‘We were, we were. Stupid of me, I suppose, I took three of my elite men down to the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, checking security on Mikhail’s place and some other clients’ places. You know our illustrious President is up to his elbows in the Crimean secession and the nonsense in Ukraine, and is ultra-sensitive about any criticism, especially criticism at home.’
‘Yes, it’s made its way into the media here,’ said Angus,
‘As a result, the people around him are also paranoid about anyone who’s been anywhere near that part of the world – hence the tailing me and my people all the time,’
‘Last time we spoke you said you’d had lunch with Tatty and Mikhail and you apparently told them something about getting away from Moscow for a bit.’
‘I did, you’re right,’ said Boreyev. ‘Just haven’t done anything about it yet. Though this is becoming a more attractive idea as each day passes.’
‘What about doing just that, come away right now to Scotland? You’d be doing me a favour at the same time.’
He went on to explain the threat both to a bank and to people may be trying to locate Athena and the Team and the need for short-term protection till he could build a more permanent solution to these security issues.
‘Sure, we can manage that.’ said Boreyev. ‘But as you were speaking, I was also thinking. At short notice, even with a small amount of equipment we couldn’t fly commercial. I’d need to see if I can borrow a plane off Mikhail, maybe. Trouble is, with the kinds of equipment I’d be bringing, I would need to unload direct from a plane into a van of some kind − not the kind of stuff you can put through usual customs channels, if you get my meaning. Could you fix that? Diplomatic bag perhaps? Couldn’t be doing with prying customs people and awkward questions.’
‘I’m sure I could arrange something along those lines,’ replied Angus with no present notion of how he might arrange it, ‘and if Mikhail can lend you his plane, how soon could you put all this together and get yourselves in to Glasgow?’
‘Assuming Mikhail’s got a plane lying idle, could get there tomorrow morning.’
‘That would be great. Let me have details later and I’ll organise a van, customs, and a marked map to get you to Crinan. We’ll pick you all up there and take you to the island. I’ll sort out a place to stay for your five elites. You, yourself, must stay with us up at the Castle.’
‘Okay, I’ll ring Mikhail and get back to you shortly,’ said Boreyev.
‘I look forward to getting your arrival details in due course, then, it will be great to see you again,’
‘Likewise.’ said Boreyev. ‘Made my day, as you say in the West. One minute I’m stuck here with the President breathing down my neck, the next I’m on holiday in Scotland.’ He laughed, his deep guttural chuckles sounding reassuring to Angus.
Under the word ‘Boreyev’ written on his pad, Angus had added a few notes. There were reminders to contact others, a question around diplomatic immunity, the right kind of vehicle to hire for the six of them and their equipment, accommodation for the five elites at the Derby Arms Hotel in Stanleytoun. He would deal with each of these shortly.
Putting down his pen and leaning back in his chair, he reflected, he must be losing his grip on reality. He had just arranged for a mini-army to fly in from Moscow tomorrow morning. To do what? As yet there was no known adversary; maybe there wasn’t even a real physical threat. He consoled himself − at the least, Boreyev’s small group would allay any concerns the team might have for the continued safety of Athena.
After his call to Boreyev, Angus dealt with the last banking matters before leaving for the Easter weekend and was surprised when Kim buzzed though to him to say that, after a space of less than an hour, Mr Boreyev was on the line again from Moscow. He confirmed that he had indeed managed to borrow Mikhail Vassilov’s Hawker 800 private jet and had even lodged a provisional flight plan to get them from Moscow to Glasgow, arriving at around 9 a.m. tomorrow.
‘The other reason I rang; is I’m worried about what’s just been happening to me. I don’t believe in coincidences and strange things have been going on since I lodged a flight plan for my trip tomorrow.’
‘I don’t understand,’ replied Angus. ‘Have you been having more bother from the President’s people again?’
‘Maybe, maybe not − though I suspect so. If I tell you what happened, will you see if you can help me out?’
‘Of course.’
‘As I told you, got my
people to lodge the flight plan,’ said Boreyev, ‘and was cleaning everything up in case I’m away for a bit, so I began to gather in some of my money from here and there. The first, the largest, was to move ten million Euro’s from a small bank I use in Spain for my businesses in the Middle East. I used to use Cyprus for this, but so many of my dubious Russian compatriots use Cyprus for laundering money, I changed that a year ago.’
‘I hope you’re going to swear on your mother’s grave that this is all clean money, Borislav,’ said Angus,
‘Kneeling by her grave itself, I promise. It’s all legit, most of it out of my Israeli businesses - you know how many Israelis are originally from Russia.’
This at least sounded genuine to Angus.
‘You said you tried to move the money?’
‘Yes, I did as I always do. But my UK bank recently split in two, and suddenly the people I had always dealt with are gone. With ten million involved, these new people talk about ‘looking further into this’ or ‘looking into that’. For Christ’s sake I don’t want people looking further into anything, do I? Even though it’s all completely above board.’
‘So?’ asked Angus.
‘So I got onto my man in Spain, Victor Seryogin - he’s based in the little town of Mijas on the Costa Brava where my Mediterranean operations bank is.’
‘Yup.’ Angus was now jotting a note on his pad.
‘Suddenly, as soon as he’s in the bank and trying the transfer, Victor hears rumours. Talk of it closing the doors, bomb scare or something. But this is before I can get my money out. What the hell am I to do? Ten million for Christ’s sake. And then I think. All of this happened within minutes of my lodging my flight plan, and, as I said, I don’t believe in coincidences.’
‘As they’re watching your every move, didn’t you think to lodge the flight plan in Mikhail’s name?’ asked Angus.
‘I did, but Mikhail had said that with Tatiana and his grandson flying to Scotland today, him lodging a flight plan to follow them at the same time wouldn’t look, er…?’
Betrayed: (A Financial and Conspiracies Thriller – Book 1 in the Legacy Thriller Series) Page 3