‘Put those round your ankles, both of you and do them up tightly – I assure you that you will not want it to be me checking them or tightening them if I think they’re slack,’ she said. As soon as they had done this, she came round behind the two of them, at the same time glancing back at the trembling Kim. ‘Hands behind your backs and turn round and get down on your knees,’ she said and as she did so, she bound the wrists of both of them with more plastic cuffs.
Leaving the two men kneeling near the trestle table, she then waved Kim to the door and cuffed her hands behind her back. Next, with Kim immediately in front of her and the gun in her back, the two left the room. Izolda practiced a couple of different holds on Kim as they walked down the corridor and then the stairs, By the time they had got to the Gallery at the top of the main stairway, she had got it to look as though the two of them were merely close friends walking arm in arm. In a leisurely manner, they descended the stairs looking as though in conversation – though, in reality, Izolda was giving Kim instructions as to where to go next and warning her against any false moves.
‘Remember, that if I have to shoot you if you don’t do exactly as I tell you,’ she whispered harshly in her ear, ‘I will do so and leave you lying where you fall. I was last year’s Moscow’s over twenty-fives two-hundred metres champion and I won’t mind at all leaving you like that as I run for the helicopter. Do you understand that?’ Kim, moist eyed, just nodded her head.
A minute or so after Kim and the young woman had gone, the Professor was able to get to his feet, hop along the bench, leaning on it from time to time until he arrived at a window. He was just in time to see the helicopter rotors start up and soon it lifted and, when some twenty feet or so off the ground, it swung quickly away down over the terraced lawns, south and out to sea.
Chapter 30
Easter Monday, lunchtime
The London Heliport, Battersea
Izolda flew the Eurocopter south towards London with Kim sitting beside her. She had warned Kim again about trying anything stupid and although Kim was probably amongst the best of PAs Angus could ever have found for himself, she was not from a mould for heroes; she sat silent and meek during the entire journey. Flying over the sea initially, she followed the route she had come. She needed to refuel at Belfast, and as she called in there, as the arrangements had already been agreed, getting it paid for by the Charter Company proved easy. From Belfast, she crossed the Irish Sea and flew along the coast of Wales, round to Cardiff, across to the River Thames, following the river after that right to the London Heliport on the south bank.
On landing, Izolda went in with its papers, explained that the pilot had been taken ill and was in the care of Sir James Macrae at Craithe Castle. She explained that she was fully certificated on Eurocopters, and her whole demeanour and the speed with which she rattled all of this off in perfect English, left the girl at reception so taken aback, that, when she was asked to get them a taxi, she got one for them immediately and without question.
While waiting for the Taxi to arrive, Kim asked if she could borrow Izolda’s mobile phone to ring or text that she was all right.
‘No, not until I’ve discussed your positon with Mr Komarov,’ said Izolda, ‘and now that you’ve come this far with me, he may have plans for you.’
As soon as they had set off for the Russian Embassy, Izolda sent a text message to Komarov to tell him that if he wished to contact them, they would be at the Embassy shortly. She also asked the taxi driver if he would mind going along the river, and he soon turned off York road, and up a side street. Inexplicably for her – as she later regretfully recalled – she had not noticed that, as soon as they had left the heliport, they had been tailed by a large black SUV. It was no more than a couple of hundred yards further on that another large SUV pulled out of a side-street and came to an abrupt halt in front of the taxi blocking its path. Within seconds there was a gun at the open window of the taxi.
‘Not a move, or I’ll blow your head off,’ said an American accent. Another gun waving man, also in dark glasses had appeared on Kim’s side of the taxi and the two of them were ordered out. Then, with no warning, as she was getting out of the taxi with her hands held empty out in front of her, as soon as Izolda’s head cleared the taxi, it received a vicious blow at its base. She crumpled towards the ground but was caught by another large man who had come round beside the one with the gun. As though she were just a rag doll, she was carried to the rear SUV and Kim was ordered into the same vehicle. The doors were slammed shut and both the unconscious Izolda and Kim were blindfolded.
Kim next felt the sharp acceleration of the SUV and was thrown from side to side on the rear seat as it was driven at speed round corners. Minutes later she was thrown forward as the car came to a sharp stop. She was helped out of the car and, as she could hear the heavy breathing of someone nearby exerting themselves, she sensed that Izolda was being carried next to her. She was helped up several flights of stairs, and along a couple of corridors. They were then both taken into a room where their blindfolds were removed. It was a small room with just one window looking out across a narrow space onto the back of another building covered in white ceramic tiles. There were only two pieces of furniture in the room – a chair and a bunk-bed and the overall it had the feel of unlet property – bare, unpainted walls, plain concrete floor and ceiling.
As soon as their captors had left the room she heard the door being locked just as Izolda began to regain consciousness. Kim got up quickly from her chair and crossed to the bunk-bed on which they had lain Izolda; she helped her as began to struggle to get upright. As soon as she had managed this, Izolda got up from the bed and wandered around the room shaking her head from side to side and round in circles. Then, quite suddenly, she came back to the bed, sat down and turned to Kim,
‘I’m sorry this had to happen to you,’ she said unexpectedly in English, ‘though there was always a risk this might happen, it was not part of my…my, how you say?’
‘Plan?’ suggested Kim in Russian.
‘Yes, it’s good that you speak Russian?’ said Izolda, ‘it might yet prove useful. But, as I was saying to you earlier, I took you with me when we were in the castle simply in case we met someone before we got into the helicopter. I did not mean it about killing you – but you know that I…’
‘Had to say it nevertheless,’ said Kim finishing her sentence for her in Russian.
‘It’s now time for us to make our escape,’ said Izolda.
‘Make our escape, how the hell are we going to manage that?’ asked Kim.
In the next instant, before Kim realised what was happening, Izolda made some movements like a circus contortionist, and got her bound hands from behind her back to out in front of her – it was so unexpected and happened so fast that Kim had only the vaguest idea how she had done it – slipping her feet through between her bound hands once these had been brought through to the front.
Izolda now put her finger up to her lips and made the gesture for silence. She went over to the door, lay down and, putting her face to the floor, looked under it, shifting her head a couple of times to get views in different directions. She got up again and listened with her ear pressed against the door. Next, she turned away from what Kim, and thrust her still bound hands down her front and deep into her underwear where she squirmed and delved around for a second or so. A moment later she took her hands out again and Kim could see that they now held a small pouch. This she brought over to the bed, sat down and, holding one end of the pouch in her mouth, she managed to undo the smallest zip that Kim had ever seen, spilling the pouch’s contents out onto the bed. She selected a tiny blade from an array of the smallest and strangest assortment of ‘things’ Kim had ever seen – even mentally she labelled them ‘things’ as she had no idea what some of them were.
‘Turn round’, she said and severed the plastic cuff around Kim’s wrists.
‘Now me’, she said handing the blade to Kim and holding her hands out in f
ront of her. All of this happened so fast that, under the guise of making their escape together, it had never occurred to Kim to try and escape from Izolda. As soon as they were both free, she took Kim by the shoulders looking intently into her eyes.
‘I want you to listen very carefully to what I’m now going to tell you,’ she said, ‘We’re now going to make our escape and I need you to do exactly what I tell you to do. Can you manage that?’
‘Depends what that is, but I’ll have a go at anything to get out of here.’
‘Good,’ said Izolda. ‘Just one minute while I prepare, then I want you to lie down on the floor over there so that you’re the first thing that anyone sees on coming into the room, Okay?’
‘Yes, I can do that.’
‘I’m going to call for help and I want you to writhe around on the floor, not too theatrical, but just enough to gain attention,’ continued Izolda.
‘But won’t whoever it is that comes in suspect that it’s a trick?’
‘Almost certainly they will. But, as you are about to see that won’t matter,’ said Izolda, ‘and as soon as I say the word ‘now’, I want you to get up as fast as you can and get behind me. Got that?’
‘Yes, just get up as fast as I can, ignore everything else that’s happening and just concentrate on getting behind you the moment you say ‘now’,’ said Kim.
‘That’s good, are you ready now for our escape?’
For a second Kim did not know how to answer as she could practically hear her heart beating in her throat and feel it in her chest, wondering at the same time what the hell was going to happen next, but she nodded her assent.
‘This will take just a second,’ said Izolda and from the bed she picked up what looked like a small white hair-band but soon saw it fitted over a thumb and finger to form a tiny catapult. She then picked out a tiny object which she somehow twiddled for a moment, turning it into a minute dart.
‘Okay, now lie down over here,’ she said, leading Kim to the right spot and lie down in the foetal position, ‘facing this way so that you can see what’s happening,’ she continued, and as soon as I fire this dart, that’s when I’ll say ‘now’, and she indicated the catapult and the tiny dart, ‘and that’s the moment you get up and rush round behind me, all right?’
‘Yes,’ said Kim, so hoarsely that only a whisper came out.
‘And from that moment on you just follow me, as fast or as slow as I go, exactly as though you are my shadow, yes?’
This time Kim just nodded ‘yes’ as Izolda helped her to lie down as instructed.
What happened next happened at such speed that, later trying to recall it, Kim had concentrate hard to remember – so many happenings in so few seconds.
As soon as Kim was lying down Izolda carefully positioned herself so that she would be just behind the door when it was pushed about half-way open. She then got herself down on the floor next to Kim, making a surprising amount of noise as she did so. Instantly she was back up onto her feet and positioned where she had been in her practice. She began shouting for help before she was even up. A moment later there was the noise of the door being unlocked and then it swung open quickly. The huge man entered and saw Kim lying on the floor. Kim watched spellbound at what happened next. Izolda said ‘Hi’ and as she did so, she raised her catapult to the man’s eye-level just as he spun round to face her. At that second, she fired the dart which, the moment it hit the gunman’s left eye, sprang alight – like a lighted match. As he yelled out in shock and pain, he dropped his gun and rushed both hands up to his burning eye. Izolda caught the falling gun before it even hit the ground and shouted ‘now’. At the same moment she struck the gunman a savage blow with the gun and he collapsed like a felled tree as Kim leapt up and got behind Izolda. No sooner this than a second gunman came racing round the corner of the corridor and Izolda put an almost silent bullet smack between his eyes. Almost as though all were but one movement, she laid the first gun on the floor as she grabbed up the gun from the second gunman. Both had silencers on them, so, instead of having to choose between them, she picked up the first and stuffed it into her trousers. She next checked the second and ensuring it was loaded, cocked and also ensured that the safety catch was off. Beckoning for Kim to follow her, she then moved out of the room and along the corridor towards the corner. She was just nearing it when a third gunman, came running round a corner shouting out, asking if everything was all right. For him it was not. As soon as he was out of sight of anyone behind him, Izolda put a bullet neatly into his left temple. The next two gun men that came running round the corner were also felled from the side and landed almost like fish on a fishmonger’s slab, side-by-side next to their earlier companion. Then there was silence.
Izolda peered cautiously round the corner and across from it could see into a room where the five of them had been playing cards. There was an eerie silence and slowly, gun held in front of her but pointing first this way then that as they crept forward, they moved towards the doorway of their guardians’ room. On reaching it, she looked round it following the point of her gun as she did so. The room was empty. She stepped over the threshold looked round the room more carefully - searching for something. Eventually she spotted it – the small hard drive with the Athena programme on it. She crossed the room, picked it up along with the bag she had had round her neck earlier which was lying nearby; the two of them retired back into the corridor.
‘Right, just wait here a moment,’ said Izolda, and she went back, collected up the other guns, bound the unconscious first gunman with plastic cuffs she had found in his pocket and did a quick search of pockets of all the dead men. She found several things which seemed to interest her, put them into her bag and hurried back to Kim.
‘You, Okay?’ she asked, smiling for the first time since they had met in the Lab at Craithe.
‘As well as can be expected – no, I’m sorry – I mean fine,’ said Kim.
‘Good, let’s get the hell out of here before anyone else appears,’ said Izolda, ‘and whilst we’re here in the building continue to follow me like a shadow again, doing exactly what I do. As soon as we get out into the street, pretend we’re just a couple of friends, arm in arm, out for a gentle stroll. I’ve got one of their mobile phones, so let’s find a café and get the Embassy to collect us this time, enough chases for one day eh?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Kim.
‘Then we’ll have to think what the hell we’re going to do with you, aren’t we?’ she said.
Kim did not answer. She hardly dared think what options might be going through this ruthless Russian’s mind.
Chapter 31
Easter Monday late morning
Craithe Castle
As soon as he was able, Perry, knocked a telephone off its hook so that it fell over onto the desk and Morag, who, in addition to her work on the team, also ran a switchboard for the Castle, came on the line.
‘Morag? it’s Perry here.’
‘Hi, Perry, what can I…’
‘Morag, just listen, the Lab has just been attacked and robbed again and the thief has also taken Kim, you know, Angus’s PA, she’s been taken hostage, they’re heading back to the…’
‘Good, God,’ shouted Morag, interrupting him, ‘I’ll get Angus, I’ll try ringing him down in the hall, hang on there,’ and left Perry hanging onto then silent telephone.
Perry’s call coincided almost exactly with Angus and Boreyev coming back into the front of the castle after locking away the invaders. The sound of the helicopter starting up drowned out the noise of the telephone ringing in the hall, but as Angus and Boreyev raced through towards the front door, Angus just heard it and picked up the remote’s hand-piece while still running out of the door. He and Boreyev were just in time to see the helicopter rising and swinging away down over the terraces, towards the sea, south towards Northern Ireland. As the two of them stood on the gravel in front of the great door, Angus answered the telephone and Morag passed on Perry’s message. Running back
into the hall, he slammed the telephone back on its stand and beckoned Boreyev.
‘Up to the Lab, quick,’ he said, ‘someone’s taken Kim, and stolen Athena again.’
‘Oh, God no,’ cried Boreyev and threw his hand up into his mouth, biting into the soft flesh below his thumb.
Both ran as fast as they could up the main stairs and then up the south-east tower stairway and into the Lab. Desperate to hear what had happened, they first untied the Professor and then Perry, both of whom scrambled over to chairs and sank onto them.
‘From her accent,’ said the Professor, ‘I think that it was another Russian – a young woman this time – God knows where she came from, just appeared in the Lab with a gun in her hand. She took the external drive we got back off the first Russian yesterday – the one containing the fake Athena suite of programmes. But, when she’d got what she came for, she also took Kim with her as a hostage. When they’d gone, I managed to sidle over to the window and was just in time to see Kim being dragged into the helicopter at gun-point.’
‘Right Perry, here’s what I want you to do,’ said Angus. ‘I want you to do some fast targeted hacking. We need to make some educated guesses as to where they’re heading and then hack into any CCTV cameras around where we think they might go. With luck we might spot them. Can you do that right away?’
‘Sure, Angus,’ said Perry and seeming to get a new source of energy from nowhere, leapt to his feet and hurried over to one of the laptops.
‘My first guess,’ said Angus, ‘is that they’ll take the helicopter back to the place they got it – they wouldn’t want to alienate the charter company and get them calling in police to help them find an overdue charter helicopter. Rollo just told us that the helicopter came from the London Heliport. Perry can you hack into them and see what they’ve got by way of CCTV?’
Betrayed: (A Financial and Conspiracies Thriller – Book 1 in the Legacy Thriller Series) Page 24