Interquels

by Macalister Stevens

  Hannah had stared at the envelope: the flap had been tucked in, not sealed. Something told Hannah this was a Gwyneth-Paltrow-racing-against-the-tube-doors moment. ‘Put it under the seat,’ she’d said.

  ‘What?’ Eilidh had squeaked a few hours later. ‘You left it there?’

  Hannah’s cheeks had flushed. And she’d held up the light blue envelope and pulled out the card. The artwork on the front had a smiling couple speeding through fairytale countryside in a blue Delage D8. Inside it read:

  Can’t have my man with a scratched car.

  Consider this a thank you for our trip to Geneva.

  Love, V.

  Hannah had to admit the car handled well, and she could appreciate a little more why Todd loved his sleek toy. Hannah hadn’t understood why he’d bought it in Tonbridge when there was a dealership ten minutes from his home in Guildford. ‘I got a better deal,’ Todd had told her, (in hindsight) without his trademark grin.

  All became clear when Hannah found out who had sold him the car, and about the extra servicing the skank-slut-whore had included in the after-sales care.

  ‘So he thinks he got a better deal does he?’ Eilidh had growled, just before she invented the term skank-slut-whore.

  ‘What’s the skank-slut-whore’s name?’

  ‘Virginia Noble.’

  ‘Well that’s another kick in the crotch for nominative determinism.’

  That had cracked a tiny smile. By the time Eilidh had mixed a third batch of margaritas, Hannah had giggled uncontrollably at the revenge they’d brainstormed.

  Can you imagine his face if we did that? Those were the words Hannah had actually said. But Eilidh had heard the subtext, and she’d leered over the salted rim of her glass. ‘Imagination is hard to sustain. Let’s do it and take a photo.’

  Hannah pulled up outside Todd’s house. The number plates of the twin sports cars were swapped. Then, with Todd’s car moved further down the drive, the stolen car was positioned in its place. The stolen car’s radio pre-sets were tuned to Todd’s favourites, and various bits of Todd paraphernalia (along with a light blue envelope from under the driver’s seat) were moved to the stolen car and arranged in the exact positions they’d occupied in Todd’s vehicle. Hannah then let herself into Todd’s house and placed the stolen car’s electronic key where Todd kept his key. With a final glance back at the stolen sports car, Hannah slid behind the wheel of Todd’s car and drove off.

  Hannah wriggled into her tracksuit and tied the laces of her running shoes. About the same time, Eilidh would be dressed in an identical outfit, and, sporting a long, dark wig, she’d be leaving the hotel for a run round Regent’s Park. They’d meet at the boating lake, where Hannah would hand over the holdall (containing Hannah’s burglar gear) for Eilidh to dispose of on her way to Tonbridge to pick up and return the hire car. Hannah would then work up a sweat before returning to the hotel and apologising profusely for her late night behaviour.

  She walked away from Todd’s sports car.

  As arranged with a contact of one of her uncles, the electronic key was taped under the rear bumper. Todd would never see his beloved toy again. Not that he’d realise that for a while. Todd and the skank-slut-whore wouldn’t return from Switzerland for a couple of days, and Hannah would let Todd drive around in the stolen car for a week or so before involving the police.

  Perhaps he and the skank-slut-whore would clear themselves.

  Perhaps they wouldn’t.

  PRICE TAG (first draft)

  CHAPTER 6

  ‘You did what?’ Larissa glared at Hannah.

  Outrage had always been on the cards. And, as she’d anticipated, Kai Degen was attempting to camouflage his anger by sitting very still and very quiet; he’d remain silent for a little longer. Hannah had been sure that if anyone was going to pop a vein it would be Macrae, but he’d just closed his eyes and sighed. Larissa was the one Hannah had expected would be supportive. After all it was the kind of thing Larissa would have done.

  ‘You reckless idiot.’ Larissa had dialled down the fury in her voice, but not the intensity of her glare.

  Rather than employing the aggressive defence strategy of staring back—which never won over anyone—Hannah attempted a defuse and diffuse technique: shifting her gaze from the right eye for a few seconds, to the left for a few more, to the mouth for a little less, then back to right eye, and so on.

  Larissa bristled. ‘Are you forgetting who taught you that triangle trick?’

  Shit.

  Hannah turned to Degen, ‘The planning was thorough. Nothing will trace back to me.’ She glanced at Macrae. ‘Or Eilidh.’

  ‘No plan survives,’ Degen said quietly.

  ‘Yours did. All the time.’ Hannah winced; she’d sounded a little too foot-stompy.

  Degen sighed. ‘No Hannah, they never did. No plan survives contact with the enemy.’

  PRICE TAG (first draft

  CHAPTER 7

  17 years ago

  Degen had made his usual checks: weather forecasts were good; air traffic controllers and baggage handlers had no plans for industrial action. But there was no way to predict the wife of one pilot going into labour early, and another pilot being hit by norovirus. The delay to his flight meant he and Larissa had arrived back in Ohrid an hour before the dance school’s annual show. By then Hannah and her classmates were in their costumes enviously watching the older girls applying make-up, so Degen hadn’t had the chance to wish her luck.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Larissa had said. ‘She’s five. You’d only confuse her by telling her to break a leg.’

  Degen had allowed himself to relax and enjoy the routines. Hannah’s class performed twice: in a Grease pastiche, half were pink-clad Sandys, half were bewigged Dannys; later in the show they all shuffle-danced in penguin costumes. Degen’s enthusiastic applause had earned him an elbow in his ribs and a hissed warning not to draw unnecessary attention, but he’d still been beaming when they’d collected Hannah after the show. Until he saw the frown on her face.

  Hannah stomped over to him. ‘Did you know that penguins don’t live next to polar bears?’

  ‘Eh, yes I did know that.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you tell me?’

  Hannah spun on her heels and took hold of Scott Macrae’s hand. Macrae covered a smile with his other hand and led Hannah to the mini-bus crammed with her other uncles.

  ‘What was that?’

  Larissa pushed Degen’s slack jaw closed. ‘The price of being her favourite.’ Larissa’s eyes narrowed. ‘Oh Kai. Don’t tell me you hadn’t worked that out.’

  No words came.

  Larissa laughed and took his hand. ‘Come on, I’ll buy you a drink. I hear that’s the custom when someone becomes a father.’

  Javier walked away from Korikov and his daughter. There were many reasons to admire Vasiliy Vladimirovich Korikov. No … admire was the wrong word.

  Respect?

  No.

  Appreciate, that was close enough.

  Yes, there was much to appreciate, but only in the way a shark can be appreciated when no-one you care about is in the water with it.

  Korikov was many things, but today, when Javier looked at Korikov with Zhenya, he saw only a parent. Javier had never expected to feel sympathy for the man. But he did, and that comforted Javier; it meant he still possessed the humanity he’d feared he might lose: if you lie down with dogs …

  Javier waved at Pavel Bazarov. Zhenya’s driver sat on a bench at the far end of the courtyard, near the door that led to the five-car underground garage. Standing next to Bazarov was a short, broad-shouldered man with the pained expression of someone who’d just been chewing bees.

  ‘Stanislav is your new shadow,’ Korikov had said. Javier had known better than to protest.

  Javier pointed at the door behind Bazarov. ‘I am told I am hungry. We are to have an early lunch.’

  That pleased Bazarov. He was immediately on his feet, recommending a few restaurants a
round the Dahlem area of Berlin.

  ‘Anything Spanish?’ Javier asked as they walked to a black Volkswagen Touran.

  Bazarov scrunched his features while he thought. ‘A good one? Not close.’ He eased himself into the driver’s seat. ‘Thirty minute drive. That okay?’ The question was for Stanislav.

  Stanislav nodded and sat up front next to Bazarov.

  Javier clambered into the back of the seven-seater and stretched out. He’d hoped for a longer journey.

  The restaurant was named for the beach at San Sebastián, and La Concha played the Basque card to set itself apart from Berlin’s other Spanish eateries. That meant Marmitako (a fish stew) and Salt Cod on the menu alongside Piperade and a wide selection of Pintxos (kin to Tapas, but with sticks).

  A dark-haired waitress greeted them. ‘Ongi etorri. Bienvenida. Willkommen. Welcome.’

  ‘Kaixo,’ said Bazarov. ‘Hiru Mahaiak mesedez.’

  The waitress cocked an eyebrow.

  Javier leaned into Bazarov’s ear and whispered. ‘You just asked for three tables.’

  Bazarov’s pinkness deepened.

  Javier switched from English to Basque. ‘My companions speak Russian and English and some German. The ugly one at the back also speaks Spanish. But not Basque.’ Javier placed a hand on Bazarov’s shoulder. ‘My friend is mortified to have been let down by his translator app. But he knows good food, and he recommended we eat here.’

  The waitress smiled and led them to a table.

  From the rear, Stanislav growled, ‘What were you saying?’

  Javier twisted back and said, ‘I was saying that Pasha had recommended the Pintxos.’

  ‘Careful,’ barked Stanislav. But Javier’s elbow caught the neck of a wine bottle at the side of a table occupied by two women. Rioja sloshed across the table. One of the women shrieked and pushed her chair back to avoid the pool of wine rushing towards her lap.

  ‘Es tut mir leid!’ Javier exclaimed, grabbing the edges of the tablecloth to corral the Rioja into the centre of the table.

  Two waitresses rushed to clear the mess, and Javier—in German—insisted on paying for the flooded food and their replacement dishes plus a much more expensive bottle of wine. ‘Please, bring the bill straight away,’ he said, pushing a credit card into a waitress’s hand.

  A few minutes later, Javier was entering his pin; the card he’d chosen was being monitored in real time by Berlin’s Landeskriminalamt (office of the State Police), and activity meant Javier was requesting immediate contact with the German-Spanish task force he was part of.

  From the adjoining stall, a mobile phone slid across the toilet floor towards Javier’s feet; his own phone had been transferred to Stanislav’s custody. The phone was already awake with its email app open. Javier typed:

  Korikov has retrieved his daughter, but police not yet informed. Human traffickers responsible for Zhenya’s abduction. She was sold to Polish organisation in Munich. Traffickers and Poles linked to Luitger Brandt. Korikov wants blood. First casualty is Kadir Özçelik, Turkish associate of Brandt. More reprisals imminent.

  Javier waited.

  A reply flashed open:

  Those reprisals may be underway. Brandt’s operation in Amsterdam has been hit. One attacker. Dutch police have provided images. Can you identify the suspect in the attached image as one of Korikov’s men?

  Javier opened the image. What he saw made no sense.

  Negative. This is not one of Korikov’s crew. This is one of Zhenya’s kidnappers.

  When Javier returned to the table, Bazarov was still eating; he’d ordered more Pintxos. Stanislav’s chewed-bee grimace seemed tighter. Javier guessed their lunch break was over.

  With a Pintxos-filled doggy bag at his feet, Javier stared between the heads of the two Russians sitting up front. His time undercover would end soon. As long as Zhenya still wanted Javier around, her father had a use for him. But since Zhenya’s ordeal, she’d been distant; whatever she had felt for him was cooling, and it was only a matter of time before she ended things between them. When that happened, in Korikov’s eyes, Javier would be nothing more than a witness to Korikov’s execution of his man Ryakhovsky; and why would Korikov let such a witness live? Javier had decided that whatever intelligence there was to be gathered wasn’t worth the risks he was taking, and he’d asked to be pulled out. He could testify that Korikov was a murderer. That would have to be enough.

  But …

  A few more days, they’d said. A week at most. It looked likely Korikov and Luitger Brandt were being manipulated into a war. Dealing with that exceeded the task force’s remit; they needed to consult with the government departments they answered to. In the meantime they needed to keep track of Korikov’s whereabouts. If Javier just disappeared, Korikov might be spooked. Would he give them a few more days?

  Reluctantly, Javier agreed.

  PRICE TAG (first draft)

  CHAPTER 8

  ‘I can send you a copy of the report.’ Tommy Amberson said; he was video-calling from the tech-hub in Vienna, Virginia.

  ‘Thanks, but no need.’ Kai Degen glanced at Scott Macrae. ‘They’ll kill the Spaniard.’

  Macrae nodded.

  In the days since Degen and Larissa had abducted Korikov’s daughter, Amberson had been monitoring police progress. Although the abduction had taken place outside of the EU, three factors—the evidence suggesting the kidnappers were Spanish, the victim’s residency in Germany, and her ties to organised crime—met Europol’s preconditions to become involved and support the Moroccan police investigation. While hacking into Europol’s file on the abduction of Korikov’s daughter, Amberson had discovered that a report from a separate investigation—an ongoing undercover operation—had been attached to Zhenya Korikova’s file. The report stated that an undercover operative had identified one of Korikova’s abductors as an Axel Ziegler, who was wanted by Dutch police regarding a robbery in Amsterdam.

  ‘There are only two people who could identify Ziegler from Korikova’s abduction,’ Macrae said. ‘The Moroccan driver and the girl’s boyfriend. Don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to work out the Spanish kid is the undercover cop.’

  ‘I could delete the report from the daughter’s Europol file,’ said Amberson. ‘But it’ll already have been shared with police in Morocco, Spain and Germany.’

  ‘And Korikov will have paid to have access to updates to investigations in one or more of those countries.’ Macrae sighed. ‘Poor kid’s going to die because of a filing error.’

  At the centre of Vasiliy Korikov’s Dahlem villa was a special room. Because of its superb soundproofing and ivory leather furnishings, Tokarev thought of it as the Fortress of Solitude. Korikov was never to be disturbed there. It was his space. And Tokarev knew that the room becoming a makeshift holding cell would irritate Korikov.

  But needs must.

  Tokarev had acted swiftly after receiving the latest information from his contact within the Moroccan police, and the Spaniard now sat in a high-backed chair—a Charles Rennie Mackintosh reproduction relocated from the dining room—with his arms crossed over his chest and held there by duct tape wrapped again and again and again round both him and the chair to form a silver straight jacket. No part of the tape touched his skin; Tokarev had instructed that he be bound in such a way that there would be no marks.

  Slowly circling the young man, Tokarev said, ‘You know you are getting older when policemen start to look younger and younger. It is a curious thing.’ Tokarev stopped in front of the Spaniard and studied the young man’s face. ‘What age are you? Mid to late twenties? But all I see is a baby face. Even with the nasty scar you picked up in Morocco, I still see the face of someone barely out of their teens. Do you know why that is?’

  The Spaniard remained silent.

  ‘It is because of the way we feel.’ Tokarev resumed circling the Spaniard. ‘Teenagers invariably feel older than their actual age, and this continues until around twenty-seven or twenty-eight. The short period
between then and thirty is the only time we feel our actual age. From thirty onwards we feel younger than our actual age. Someone in their early fifties feels mid-forties. Someone in their mid-forties feels late-thirties. And so on. When we look in the mirror, we see the age we feel, not the age we actually are. From the age of thirty our age perception becomes skewed. And it becomes worse the older we get.’

  Tokarev stopped behind the Spaniard. ‘Very cunning of your superiors to exploit that particular human flaw. I fear it made our background checks less diligent than they could have been.’

  The fallout from that lack of thoroughness would be unpleasant.

  Tokarev said, ‘You will not have asked for this assignment. I understand this. I understand they came to you because they needed a charming pretty-boy. I understand that you were merely doing your job.’ Tokarev placed a hand on the young man’s shoulder. ‘I hope you understand I am merely doing mine.’

  Korikov had returned to the villa. He’d been briefed. He hadn’t marched into the Fortress of Solitude with a gun and sprayed gore over the ivory leather. He’d remained seated at the dining table—next to the missing chair—and said, ‘I presume you have a plan.’

  Tokarev nodded. ‘Javier witnessed you shooting Ryakhovsky. He will have reported this. Therefore killing him will not solve our problem. Javier must be discredited as a witness. I will organise evidence of a continuing existence for Ryakhovsky. Hotel bookings, bank card use, and so on, with appropriate corroborating witnesses. We still have access to Kadir Özçelik’s cadaver. DNA evidence will link Javier to the Turks death. Javier will be portrayed as being in league with Zhenya’s kidnapper, Axel Ziegler. Their plan was to extort money from Zhenya’s wealthy father, threatening that they took her once, they could do it again.’