One Damn Thing After Another

by Dan Latus

  ‘Because I trust you, Frank. And you’re a capable man. I’d like you on my side. Then,’ he continued, ‘I would like you to come back here and protect Olga, while she settles in and the renovation work on the house is organized. I’m talking just a few weeks, five or six maybe. Then I will have my problems sorted, and you will be able to go your own way.

  ‘No, hear me out!’ he said, as I tried to tell him what I thought of the proposal. ‘If you do all that for me, Frank, you can name your own price – seriously. And I will pay upfront. What do you say?’

  That last bit shut me up. Name my own price. Payment upfront. I knew it was a genuine offer, and it made me think again. Name my own price? I could do that. All I needed was a pencil and the back of an envelope. Perhaps not even that.

  ‘I charge by the day,’ I said slowly, thinking hard. ‘My daily rate is £1,000, and this would be a 24/7 commitment. Six weeks max, you say? That would be a lot of money.’

  ‘Forty-two thousand pounds sterling,’ Leon said, while I was still doing the arithmetic. ‘I’ll make it up to fifty. Plus expenses. What do you think?’

  A sum like that didn’t seem to trouble Leon. Probably it didn’t mean as much to him as it did to me. I felt like doubling my daily rate, but I guessed even that wouldn’t put him off. For some reason I didn’t really understand, he wanted me on board.

  The other thing I thought was that this was big league, a lot bigger than the usual stuff I did.

  ‘What do you say, Frank?’

  Could I handle it? Well, there was only one way to find out.

  ‘OK, Leon,’ I said with a sigh. ‘Let’s do it.’

  We shook hands. Then we went to see where Olga had got to.

  One wing of the house was habitable. In it, there were half a dozen bedrooms plus several living rooms, a couple of bathrooms and a huge kitchen. That seemed to me to be more than enough for anything but an absolutely enormous family. Not for Olga and Leon, though. They obviously had thoughts about restoring, or rebuilding, the whole place. Good luck to them. They had their work cut out.

  Olga and one of the Russians there already, who seemed to be some sort of architectural adviser, were soon deep in conversation about their plans. Leon interrupted them only to tell Olga that we were leaving, but that I would be returning in a couple of days to help out. She seemed pleased about that. She gave me a flowery little speech of thanks, and us both kisses on the cheek. Then we left.

  It was quite dark by then. I had a sense of big stone walls, but not much else about the house. That would have to wait until I returned and saw it in daylight at my leisure. Another of Leon’s men on the spot drove. Leon sat in the back with me. It seemed a good time to try to straighten out a few things.

  ‘It would be helpful if you told me something of what’s going on, Leon. What are we heading into?’

  ‘It is complicated,’ Leon said, ‘but you are right. Some things you need to know.’

  Then he went silent, as if he didn’t know where to start. We sped along lonely roads, the powerful engine purring and the headlights showing us trees dancing in the squalls of wind and rain. My patience grew thin.

  ‘Do you really have things to do in Prague?’ I asked. ‘Or do we go straight to Montenegro?’

  ‘We go to Montenegro, to the town called Kotor.’

  ‘And there?’

  ‘We will stay on my yacht while I make arrangements for us to meet Bobrik.’

  It was a start. Now I had to grasp the end of the tangle and gently tug and tease a bit more information out of him.

  ‘What’s the problem between you two? Bobrik obviously wants something you have, or can do. What is it?’

  Leon pulled his thoughts together, and with a sigh, made an effort.

  ‘You must understand all this goes back a long way, Frank. It started in Russia many years ago.’

  ‘Now there’s a surprise.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ he agreed with a chuckle.

  ‘Yvgeny Bobrik and I were both in the army. We were colleagues. I wouldn’t say friends, but we fought together, and kept each other out of trouble on the battlefield.’

  ‘Battlefield? Where would that have been?’

  ‘The North Caucasus,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Chechnya and Dagestan mostly. Sometimes in the borderlands in the Far East and Siberia, where there are always struggles with Afghans and the Chinese. Places like that. There was no shortage of battlefields. Russia is a big, big country, with plenty of hostile neighbours.’

  ‘Battlefields overseas, too?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  He declined to elaborate. I could guess some of it, but Serbia and Kosovo weren’t the only places that had been visited by Russian special forces in the past decade or two.

  ‘When we left the army, we left as business partners. We had some projects running already, and we expanded fast. There were opportunities. Lots of industrial sectors were run down and badly in need of investment. People who could bring in investment could often buy whole industries very cheaply.

  ‘It wasn’t like it had been in the very early nineties, when Yeltsin was around, but there was no shortage of opportunities for ambitious young businessmen.’

  ‘Like you?’

  ‘Like me, and like Bobrik, yes. We did well.’

  The driver broke in then. He called something over his shoulder. I gathered a message had come in on the car phone. Leon leant forward to discuss it and to pass on instructions.

  I wondered what the joint business had been. Presumably not hotels. Presumably something for which service in the army, in special forces even, gave you a good launch platform.

  I winced. I didn’t like the direction my thoughts were taking. Illicit trade in weapons was one obvious possibility. I really hoped it wasn’t that.

  ‘Trouble?’ I asked, when Leon leant back again.

  He shrugged. ‘Perhaps. I don’t know.’

  ‘The bodies?’

  ‘No. Gregor will have disposed of them.’

  No risk of them being discovered then. Nothing to tie anything like that to Leon. No reason even for anyone not involved to suspect anything at all had happened in that disused department store.

  ‘Presumably Bobrik knows what went down?’

  Leon nodded. ‘He knows. It’s why he wants to meet.’

  We were headed for a damage limitation conversation, then. Not a bad thing. Far better than a shoot-out. I’m all in favour of talk-talk when it’s possible.

  That made me wonder if it was why Leon had wanted me on board. Perhaps his own men were better at war-war. My own inclinations must have been very obvious when we rescued Olga. Lenka certainly hadn’t been in any doubt.

  I waited for Leon to continue with his tale and tell me why, and how, he and Bobrik had fallen out. It didn’t happen. He was no longer in the mood for reminiscing. We were close to the airport now. There were things to be done there. Phone calls to be made. I tried to relax. There would be time later to hear more of the story. I intended to make sure of that.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THERE WAS THICK CLOUD over the airport. We saw nothing of the Montenegrin landscape until we were down to the last few hundred feet.

  ‘Disappointing,’ I said. ‘This is the Med, isn’t it?’

  ‘The Adriatic,’ Leon said. ‘They get a lot of rain this time of year. Come in the summer if you want it hot and dry.’

  ‘I’ll try to remember that,’ I said with a grin. ‘But perhaps you won’t need me in the summer?’

  He grimaced. ‘Who knows?’

  Fortunately, Leon’s pilot was too good to be worried by low cloud. We landed with scarcely a bump and swept effortlessly along the runway before turning into a taxi lane, and, eventually, a berth. Leon was on the phone long before we came to a stop.

  The co-pilot, or whatever he was, got up and came back to us. ‘They’re here,’ he announced.

  Leon nodded. ‘Thank you, Yuri. Let’s go.’

  By then the door was op
en, steps were in place and I could see a Range Rover with darkened windows waiting for us. Somebody had been efficient.

  Two men who looked both vigilant and capable waited for us at the bottom of the steps. Security, or bodyguards, obviously. Leon spoke to one of them and shook his hand, and then led the way to the vehicle. Within half a minute we were moving. Both of the guards came with us.

  ‘Where did you say it was we were going?’ I asked Leon.

  ‘Kotor. Originally a Roman town, then something else, then Venetian, Serbian, French – and even British for a time – before we slavs took it back.’

  ‘A cosmopolitan history, then.’

  He smiled and leant forward to speak in Russian to one of the men who had come with us.

  ‘No problems,’ he said to me, when he sat back up again. ‘Andrei says all is quiet. We should be there in twenty minutes, despite the cloud and the rain.’

  We were. And a hair-raising drive it had been, on a narrow road over jagged mountains in dense cloud. There was little to be seen most of the way. Mid-afternoon here, I decided, was no different to England at this time of year. The oligarchs would be well advised to move their yachts.

  Then we crested a ridge, and suddenly we were dropping down out of the cloud. I leant forward to study the view. It was worth the effort.

  We were coming down from a high ridge. Below was an immense fjord, with steep-sided mountains rising from sea level on each side. Somehow, down at waterside, a town had been built to service a port. The big cruise ships I could see lined up against the stone jetties were ultra modern, but the town was not. The castle and huge town walls, together with a cathedral-like church, indicated medieval origins, even if the Romans had been here first.

  I was impressed. No wonder the place had changed hands so often. Kotor must always have been seen as a great prize for warring states and pirate raiders.

  ‘And this is where you keep your yacht?’

  ‘This is where it is right now,’ Leon said. ‘It spent the summer here, with all the others.’

  I got it. Kotor was where the oligarchs had gathered this year. A conclave of oligarchs. Who knew where they would head for the deep winter?

  ‘With you on it?’ I asked.

  ‘Occasionally.’ He shook his head and added, ‘I don’t really like the sea.’

  ‘Or boats?’

  ‘Or boats,’ he agreed. Then he grinned and added, ‘But I do need to keep an eye on everybody!’

  The trials of the oligarchs, I was thinking. What a life!

  Leon’s yacht was called Samarkand. I don’t suppose it was particularly big, for one of its kind, but it certainly impressed me. It didn’t have its own submarine or its own anti-ballistic missile system, like some I’ve read about, but it did have its own helicopter, and a lot more besides. It seemed too big to be called a yacht, but you could say that about a lot of vessels that come into the category these days.

  The Range Rover came to a stop nearby on the quayside. My hand went to the door lever. Leon’s hand closed on my arm. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Wait a moment.’

  The bodyguards got out first. They moved around the vehicle and checked things out. Two or three more men came from the yacht. Together, they formed a huddle.

  ‘OK,’ Leon said. ‘Let’s go.’

  We got out and joined the crowd, which then began to move over to the yacht. Leon was in the middle, like the President of the United States, the hired help gathered around him and supposedly prepared to stop the bullets. It was sensible of Leon to be taking precautions, but I couldn’t help also thinking it was a hell of a way to live.

  Once on board, we went straight below deck to a beautifully furnished wardroom – I believe it would be called – where Leon went into conference with his skipper and a couple of advisers. I felt like a spare part, which was what I was really. I was out of my depth here. Why Leon had thought it would be useful to have me along I couldn’t imagine.

  But perhaps I would find out soon enough.

  The initial meeting didn’t take long. As the group began to disperse, Leon spoke to me.

  ‘With all this racing around, there hasn’t been time for you to replace the clothes and other things you lost in Prague, Frank. You can do that now, if you like. Would you like to go ashore with Yuri to do some shopping, or do you trust him to bring you something suitable?’

  ‘If I’m going to be wearing ’em, I want to choose ’em,’ I said with a wry smile.

  Leon nodded. ‘OK. Yuri will take you.’

  Yuri spoke English, a kind of English, which was a relief.

  ‘When we get to the town,’ he said, ‘you follow me. OK? But don’t come with me. Follow me. OK?’

  ‘You mean you don’t want it to look like I’m with you?’

  He smiled, nodded and said, ‘Is very bad here. Enemies everywhere. Better for you to be alone.’

  I shrugged. ‘OK, Yuri. You’re the expert.’

  But I wondered why Leon had agreed to meet Bobrik here, if it was as bad as that. Pride, perhaps? Defiance? Refusal to be intimidated?

  Still, these were serious, experienced people, and well used to threat and violence. They knew what they were talking about. So I had no hesitation in accepting Yuri’s advice.

  I followed him across the quayside and over a timber bridge that spanned the moat in front of the town wall, and I followed him through the massive stone archway into the town proper. My first impression was that it was indeed an historic town, one of great interest and beauty. The massive defensive walls, fifty feet high and more, suggested it had long been a town of great riches, too.

  I followed Yuri along a narrow street between tall limestone walls belonging to ancient buildings five, six and even more storeys high. We walked on limestone that had been polished into marble by the passage of untold numbers of feet. Small craft shops and coffee bars lined our way at first. Well-dressed people in expensive, fashionable clothes threaded between us. These were not the peasants and serfs of a medieval mountain kingdom; these were people from the rich men’s yachts and the cruise liners waiting along the quayside and in the berths set aside for them.

  But perhaps the locals, too, belonged to that world now. Money, big money, was here in evidence all around us, and I didn’t like it. I felt exposed and vulnerable, not least because of my association with Leon. This wasn’t my world. But I had signed on for the voyage. So I had to see it through.

  Yuri lifted an arm and dropped it again. Some sort of signal. I stopped and turned to gaze at Russian eggs in the window of a souvenir shop for tourists. Yuri turned and came back in my direction. He reached me, passed me and kept on walking. Twenty paces further on he turned into a shop doorway. I waited a minute or so, and then turned and headed for the same shop.

  As I neared the doorway, two men came directly at me, fast. In the couple of seconds before they reached me, I saw them and understood their intent. I saw the knife blade flash and instinctively I braced myself. The gun in my pocket was of no use. I couldn’t reach it in time. I just had to avoid the knife.

  As the blade was thrust at me, I lurched aside and grabbed the arm behind it. I forced it up and backwards. The man was off-balance now and I rammed him into the wall. He jabbed me hard in the ribs with his free hand. I smashed the knife hand against the wall and tore it down against the rough stone.

  The man kept hold of the knife and kicked out. Low down, an iron bolt stuck out from the wall. I smashed the back of his hand hard against it. He yelped. I did it again. This time, the bolt went right through his hand. Blood spurted. While he was distracted, I slammed his head against the wall. That did it. He finally slumped to the ground.

  But it had all taken time, too much time, and there were two of them. I spun round desperately, looking for the second man, knowing I was too late. There was no time, no time!

  He was almost on me when I heard the crack-crack of pistol shots. Someone screamed. I turned. Someone else shouted. The crowd parted. Then Yuri was between us, a
nd falling, dropped by a bullet from the gun the man was holding.

  I hurled myself sideways as the gun turned in my direction. The wall stopped me. I jerked frantically in the opposite direction.

  Then the man seemed to stumble as I heard another crack-crack. He, too, went down, the gun falling from his lifeless fingers.

  A space had suddenly cleared in front of me. I straightened up, desperate to get out of the way – but which way?

  I heard another scream from somewhere nearby. Then a face I recognized appeared in front of me: Lenka.

  Lenka?

  There was no time to be surprised. With flashing eyes and a ferocious expression, she pushed me towards the entrance to the shop. I resisted, trying to stoop to see how Yuri was.

  ‘He is gone,’ Lenka snapped. She hurled herself against me. ‘Move, Frank! Move!’

  We fell through the shop doorway and barged into the cavernous interior, as I struggled to get to grips with what had happened.

  My shocked brain registered racks of clothes everywhere, some even hanging from the ceiling. Plenty of clothes here, where Yuri had brought me, but clothes were the last thing on my mind now. Lenka pushed past and ran in front of me. She seemed to know where she was going. I raced after her.

  Towards the back of the shop, an elderly man dressed formally in a black suit and white shirt and tie opened a door and bowed as we passed him. We ran through the gap and hit a wrought-iron staircase. Lenka led the way up it fast, our feet clattering on the metal, the sound echoing in the confined space of the stairwell.

  On an upper floor, we ran along a tiled passageway that was half open to the elements, one side protected only by a low wall and by pillars every few yards that supported stone arches.

  We fled along interior corridors, and up and down staircases. Lenka never looked back once. But I was breathing heavily and struggling to keep up. I was afraid of losing her.

  Then we plunged downwards, and, finally, we hit the street again. It was a busy street in late afternoon sunlight, where people passing by were unaware of what had happened just a short distance away. Our frantic hustle stopped instantly. We straightened up. Lenka looked at me questioningly. I nodded. She turned. Together now, we walked away steadily, heading I had no idea where.