Betrayed: (A Financial and Conspiracies Thriller – Book 1 in the Legacy Thriller Series)

by William Wield

  What the Wheeler and the Major did not know was that Morozov’s search engines began to pick up everything that happened on the stolen Towneley laptop from the moment that Wheeler had tapped the word ‘Craithe’ into his search for information on Athena’s location. Morozov’s machines had begun to record everything that followed on the laptop, the emails, their searches, everything they had been done on it. Most significantly, it had recorded Wheeler’s email to Matthews and the Major’s email to Rollo.

  Morozov also knew that it was practically certain that GCHQ, the NSA and others would also have picked up the same information. Whether or not they paid any attention to it would depend if they were focusing on such matters at present or had other priorities. None of this occurred to Wheeler or the Major, of course, but what the two of them in Cleveden Crescent had thought would be a neat, simple kidnapping affair had just about to get one hell of a lot more complicated.

  Chapter 14

  Good Friday, early morning

  The SVR, Yesenevo, Moscow

  Danil Morozov was back into the office early the next morning. He was so excited to see what his machines might have recorded overnight, that he rushed through the offices to get to them. He threw off his heavy coat as hastened across his room towards his desk, casting onto a chair on the way. As he bent his tall, thin and angular body, reaching over the top of his chair to the keyboard. He brought his computer from standby and into life and typed at speed to bring up the pages which would show him what the bank of machines had found and recorded for him.

  His heart skipped a beat as he saw the volume of data that his keywords and phrases harvested and scrambling round the chair, he sat down and spent the next twenty minutes sorting all the information into more easily readable form. He then took a further twenty minutes or so to explore what had been added to trawl of information he had received. He followed one particular file – that on Rollo – and found that, using UK and US databases in addition to those of the SVR, he was able to find much detail of Rollo’s personal history. Along with information on his exploits in the Ukraine, Bosnia and Nigeria, there accounts of many of his nefarious business operations back and forth across the Northern Ireland border with the Republic. Similar history was there on how the Towneley project, Athena, had passed from the Towneley Foundation to Angus Macrae and had then been moved to Craithe. In fact, the amount of information that Morozov’s searches had come up with had made it the most detailed and telling digital portraits of anyone’s anywhere on the key players related in some way to Athena.

  He read through the entire package and report once more, becoming so elated in the process that, as he sent it off to Komarov, he sent a separate email to ensure that he dealt with as soon as it arrived. On the basis that ‘knowledge is power’, even a minion like Morozov could see what he had amassed would be of considerable value to Komarov.

  * * * * *

  Komarov also arrived early at the office to prepare for the monitoring of the Bank of England’s Conference and to be sure that Morozov was ready to carry out full surveillance of the event. He was surprised to find that his young SVR genius had already sent him two emails – the second urging him to look at the first one right away. Intrigued – as this was so unlike Morozov – he got himself a large breakfast-sized cup of coffee, settled into his chair and began to read the long first email and its attachments. He had got about half way down the second page when he sat up with a jolt in his chair, spilling some of his coffee onto his lap. Cursing, he jumped to his feet and brushing the hot coffee off his trousers, rushed across the office to grab some paper towelling near to the coffee machine and mop himself down.

  Back at his desk, still wet and muttering to himself about his clumsiness, he pushed the now empty cup to one side, sat back down, picked up Morozov’s report again. He read again the couple of sentences that had caused the spilt coffee mishap. There was no mistaking it. The man, Macrae, to whom he had just entrusted much of his UK and European money, was the same man as was in charge of the Athena programme.

  His mouth remained open, as he was by now panting slightly, his breath coming in little gasps. How could he have been so careless? He ran back over the events in his mind, trying to see how he had come to make such an elementary mistake.

  Was his faltering relationship with the President to blame for his undue haste? Maybe. Was his need to better secure his home base to blame? Maybe. Was it urgently needing to get his money out of the clutches of the West’s sanctions before they tightened further? Yes, definitely. But witnessing the clever money moving exercise which Macrae had used for Boreyev’s money? That should never have been the basis for a decision to do the same for himself. Even the research he had done on Macrae’s Bank and the man’s personal credentials – he could see now that should never have allowed him to make this beginner’s error.

  He laid the report down on the desk and, after a while, a solution of sorts began to form in his mind. He sat up, reached across his desk, picked up the telephone and rang Anton Silayev.

  ‘I don’t know about you,’ he said as soon as Silayev answered, ‘but I’ve got one hell of a morning ahead of me and it’s been made even more difficult by something that came to my attention a few minutes ago. I’m sorry but, on account of this discovery, I need you to drop everything and meet me right away, can you do that?’

  ‘Yes, I could manage that,’ said Silayev, ‘where do you want to meet?’

  ‘The café on Nikol’skaya, the one near to my office,’ said Komarov, ‘I’ve something I need to discuss with you urgently,’

  ‘Right,’ said Silayev.

  As soon as Komarov had put the phone down, he gathered up the sheets of Morozov’s report and stuffed them into a neat green leather pouch along with an A4 pad, a couple of pencils and a slim file labelled “Athena”.

  The Café next to the office was large and busy with commuters from out of town snatching a quick breakfast. He found that his usual table by the window, somewhat apart from others, had just been vacated and sat down at it quickly before it had even been cleared. While waiting for Silayev, he gave some more thought to his dilemma.

  Naturally, he would keep his financial folly to himself just as he would keep from the President Silayev’s imminent involvement in his plans. He had begun to consider how to proceed, making full use of the mass of information Morozov had found for him. Firstly, Wheeler’s plan to kidnap Macrae’s wife might suit his own needs very well – provided, of course, that he introduced some form of control into it.

  Just before nine o’clock the café emptied as people had to get to work and shortly after that Silayev arrived. The two of them ordered croissants and coffee. Komarov began by outlining the Major’s and Rollo’s plan to kidnap Macrae’s wife but soon Silayev had to stop him.

  ‘Do you mind if I write down the names of the people involved?’ said Silayev. ‘I’m not so good with English names and it will be easier for me to remember them if I’ve first written them down in a list with a note on each too, maybe,’ He got a small pad out of his briefcase and as soon a she was ready, Komarov began, spelling them out phonetically for Silayev to translate into Cyrillic form; Matthews a partner of the Matthews Finch Hedge Fund, tampered with by Macrae, head of the Athena team on the Island of Craithe. He brought him up to date with Wheeler’s recruitment of Major Jock Hunter, referred to in emails as just ‘the Major’ and that they had both just recruited a Mick Rollo in Northern Ireland, leader of a bunch of mercenaries referred to as the ‘Coverts’. And, finally, their plan to kidnap Macrae’s wife Tatiana.’

  ‘All right so far?’ asked Komarov,

  ‘Yeah, much easier for me.’

  ‘So it struck me that we could join this mission of theirs to our advantage,’ said Komarov.

  ‘What exactly do you have in mind?’

  ‘Firstly, I know from experience, that he President will want this done covertly. He won’t want anyone castigating the Russian Federation for being involved in openly steal
ing business rights from another foreign power. So all of what we do needs to be done in the name of our partnership. Incidentally, of course, this gives us a great chance to cream off business and profits for ourselves. I know this might look a little bit like some dark conspiracy, but I assure you it’s the best way of doing it.’

  Silayev looked doubtful, rubbing his chin, frowning.

  ‘It’s not difficult. We use Silayev & Komarov LLC as the front,’ continued Komarov, ‘that way they can look up the partnership website on the internet. They should be duly impressed by our mythical list of collaborators and by the deals we’re supposed to have done in around the world.’

  ‘But what if they check in depth on some of those?’

  ‘Come on,’ replied Komarov, ‘they all stand up to as much scrutiny as is likely to be brought to bear on them – these people are hardly likely to be able to check the degree of the President’s involvement with our front company or any of its claims, are they?’

  ‘No, suppose not,’ conceded Silayev.

  ‘So, what I propose,’ went on Komarov, ‘is to allow us to join forces with them by sending this imaginary employee of our company and while they do their kidnapping, our man steals Athena, simple as that.’

  Silayev nodded his head slowly for a moment as he considered this then asked, ‘And what are we going to offer them as an incentive? I mean so that they allow their plans to be complicated by our arrival – foreigners, even enemies, you might say?’

  ‘I propose to get round that by offering a three things. One of course is the threat of exposing their plan to Macrae or even the authorities, another is something which transcends artificial boundaries of friends and enemies,’ replied Komarov, ‘that’s to say money and lots of it’. As soon as he said this Silayev looked back at him in surprise.

  ‘Whose money?’ he said, ‘we don’t want to be using our resources when we’re going to be handing Athena over to the President, we’ll get nothing out of it ourselves’ and he sat back in his chair and folded his arms – as though this was a serious objection to the plans,

  ‘Of course we don’t use our own money,’ said Komarov, ‘but we can promise substantial sums in the form of a commission percentage on our sales of Athena round the world, can’t we?’

  ‘But we’re not going to sell Athena surely?’ Silayev looked even more perplexed.

  ‘No of course we’re not,’ replied Komarov, ‘but, dealing with this chap Wheeler, what does he know? We can still offer him commission on sales, and deal with that lie later. For goodness sake, our website is chock-a-block with examples of software sales and customer computer solutions or whatever the garbage is that we’ve got written there.’

  ‘So how are you going to reconcile this with your promises to the President of delivering him the new cyber weapon?’

  Komarov gave a broad smile, reached over and struck Silayev playfully on the shoulder.

  ‘Don’t you worry about my handling of the President,’ he said, ‘I’ve being doing that in my sleep for years now. The real clincher to allow us to join their expedition, however, is I’m going to offer them the use of a helicopter for the full duration of the operation. I’ll get the London Embassy to charter a UK registered machine so that there are no unnecessary questions raised – they’ll quickly realise what a boon this will be to their plans.’

  ‘Sounds good, I like that,’ said Silayev.

  By the time they had finished their breakfasts, they had covered much of the finer detail needed to implement the plan. Silayev left the café on the promise that Komarov would speak to him as soon as he had monitored the Bank of England’s Conference. Komarov said he would pay the breakfast bill and held back until Silayev had left. It was still only a quarter to seven in the UK, so he stayed on and drank some more coffee as he began to work out in more detail how he would benefit the two of them before passing Athena over to the President. When he left some time later, he had a good idea how he would manage this and went back to his apartment full of renewed confidence. By the time he had got back there and freshened up, it would be time to ring Wheeler with his proposition.

  * * * * *

  Komarov had just a couple of hours or so to wait before he could ring Wheeler and put the time to good use jotting down, in English, Wheeler’s possible objections to allowing a Russian to join their mission and also wrote down answers to each of these objections. At eleven thirty sharp, Moscow time, he rang the telephone number Morozov had given him as Wheeler’s. Wheeler, just getting his breakfast organised, and wondered who it might be ringing him this early. Irritated by such an early call, yet intrigued when the caller display told him that the call was ‘international’, he answered it.

  ‘Mr Wheeler, we haven’t yet met,’ said Komarov in perfect yet heavily accented English, ‘my name is Igor Komarov and I am speaking to you from Moscow. I need to talk to you urgently about your proposed project with Mr Rollo.’

  Wheeler had a sudden urge to sit down and shuffling a couple of feet to his left, he felt with his hand for one of the high stools round the eating island in the kitchen, and edged himself onto it.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about Mr … er, Mr …’ said Wheeler.

  ‘Igor Komarov, my name’s Igor Komarov, and before you risk yourself and colleagues the inestimable damage of not hearing me out, I suggest listen to what I have to say.’

  Wheeler wondered what ‘inestimable damage’ might mean, but anyone who seemed to know about secret matters not more than a few hours old, might just be capable of doing just that, damage. His thoughts raced. Moscow. Plans overheard? Internet Surveillance – the Towneley laptop. Christ, was this man KGB or whatever they were called these days? Better hear him out.

  ‘I’m listening, Mr Komarov.’

  ‘Firstly may I say that, though you don’t know it, we’re on the same side. We both have business to do with Mr Macrae.’

  ‘I’m still listening,’ said Wheeler, a gripe-like pain now circling below his rib-cage.

  ‘If I understand Mr Matthews’s company’s problem correctly,’ continued Komarov, ‘if he does not have control back of its software by, say, Monday night, and his clients find out what happened with yesterday’s demonstration…’

  This appalled Wheeler further. How the hell could someone in Moscow know much detail? Definitely KGB, he concluded, but why would they be interested in Macrae?

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, as I was about to say,’ continued Komarov, ‘if Mr Matthews clients find out that they’re with a fund that can be manipulated by someone else, are they not likely to take their money out of that fund faster than you can say John Robinson?’

  ‘It’s Jack Robinson,’ said Wheeler, ‘the English idiom is Jack Robinson, not John.’

  ‘Thank you for that, Mr Wheeler,’ said Komarov with a deep chuckle, ‘but you get my meaning, I expect.’

  By now Wheeler had given up any hope of pretence, and needed to get to the point – however uncomfortable that might turn out to be.

  ‘I do, so where’s this getting us?’

  ‘You will be pleased to hear, Mr Wheeler,’ continued Komarov, ‘that I have no intention, at present, of telling Mr Macrae of your project – he’d be horrified to learn of the possibility of someone close or dear to him being kidnapped, don’t you think?’

  Wheeler said nothing. He was now sure that this nightmare was going to play out irrespective of anything he might say.

  ‘No, I’m not going to tell him,’ continued Komarov, ‘because, as I said earlier, we are on the same side. I have a couple of things I need from Mr Macrae, and as it so happens it would suit myself and my colleagues if you allowed us to add just one person to your project – your trip to the Island of Craithe. His presence will not interfere with your plans; he would go about his business whilst you go about yours. As a gesture of my good faith and so that you feel that you have something to gain from a man of mine joining your expedition, I am happy to facilitate and
speed this whole project up by offering you the unlimited use of a UK registered eight seater helicopter for the time that it takes for us to do what we have planned.’

  Wheeler suppressed what otherwise would have been a sharp intake of breath.

  ‘For both of us to do what is required on the Island of Craithe might take a day or two, yes? You need to get your hostage back to Northern Ireland although my man’s work, acquiring Athena, can be done in an hour or so. What if I say we will provide the helicopter for three days? How does that sound to you?’

  By now, Wheeler was finding bit difficult to keep pace with this Russian, and he just managed to say, ‘Fine.’

  ‘And that’s not the end of it, Mr Wheeler,’ continued Komarov, ‘if you visit our website you will see that we have much success selling computer solutions, software and so on. My partner and I would be happy to pay to a commission on all of our international sales of Athena. Naturally you will want to check us out and discuss all of this with your colleagues. So, if you have a paper and pen near you, I give you our website name. If you go to it, you will find most of the answers to the many questions you would still like to ask me. Anything else you wish to know, you can ask me when next we speak, how about that?’

  Wheeler got up went over to where the telephone base sat, got a pad and pen there and sat again ready to write down the name of the website.

  ‘Yes, on you go, the website’s name?’ he said,

  ‘It’s “silayevkomarov.com.ru” and, for the international computer software solutions marketplace, you’ll find a version of it in English. I have some other business I need to attend to this morning, but I will telephone to you after that. This will be in an hour or two from now and I shall ring you again at this same number of yours – unless you wish to give me your mobile number perhaps. I hope that this will give you time to consult with your various colleagues – Mr Matthews, Major Hunter, Mr Rollo. Unlike you, I have no time problem with what I need from Mr Macrae but you must decide if you will accept my proposal by the time I telephone back, yes? If you and friends have not decided, I make alternative plans and I would need to think again about keeping your little secret…’