One Damn Thing After Another

by Dan Latus

  Chapter Fifteen

  I DIDN’T BOTHER ASKING her why or how she was here. I was just grateful she was.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said when I’d got my breath back. ‘I’ve never been more pleased to see you.’

  She almost smiled at that. ‘Always,’ she said, ‘we watch over our people when they are on a mission.’

  ‘Without telling them?’

  ‘It is necessary.’ She shrugged. ‘It is how we have always done things.’

  I knew it probably was, too. Russian clandestine operators never had operated totally alone in the field. That was not the Russian way. Whether in the old Soviet days it had been protective cover or a need to keep an eye on people in case they tried to defect was a moot point. I was just glad Leon had retained the practice, even if all I had been doing at the time was shopping.

  ‘I’m very sorry about Yuri, Lenka. He lost his life trying to save mine.’

  She grimaced. ‘Nowhere is safe. Yuri knew that. We are used to it.’

  Some life they led, I couldn’t help thinking once again. You had to wonder if the wealth and the exciting foreign travel opportunities made up for it. Or were they in it simply because they were competitors, and were hooked on the exhilaration of playing the game?

  ‘Where now, Lenka? Back to the boat?’

  She nodded. ‘I think so. This town is not safe for us.’

  But was the boat safe? By then, I was beginning to wonder.

  Leon listened with a grave face as Lenka told him her version of the story. I felt for him. Yuri had clearly been a well-liked and trusted employee and colleague, and perhaps a friend, too.

  He turned to me and said casually, ‘So you didn’t get any new clothes, Frank?’

  ‘Not one,’ I replied. ‘And I’m not interested in doing any more shopping, either. I’m happy with what I’m wearing, I’ve decided.’

  He nodded without much interest and looked past me. He was understandably distracted.

  ‘I’m sorry about Yuri, Leon. He got hit because of me, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. I’m just lucky Lenka arrived when she did.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said with a sigh. ‘That’s how it sometimes goes.’

  So that was that. Whatever arrangements were made about Yuri, I knew nothing about them. I didn’t want to know, either. This was not my world, I thought yet again. The sooner we were done and out of here the better, so far as I was concerned.

  I said, ‘Leon, it’s not safe here – for any of us. I think you should consider pulling out, while you still can.’

  ‘I must attend the meeting.’

  ‘Leon, they called the meeting, but they are still trying to kill us! They did kill Yuri. This is not a genuine truce. It’s not even a cease-fire.’

  ‘Even so,’ he said equably, ‘I must meet Bobrik. Perhaps we can settle it, if we meet.’

  His mind was made up. I could see it was useless to argue.

  ‘OK. Well, count me in,’ I said with some reluctance. ‘I’m still with you, for what that’s worth.’

  He smiled and slapped me on the back. ‘Thank you, Frank!’

  The venue for the meeting was supposedly neutral ground, a terrace restaurant overlooking the harbour. Frankly, I didn’t like it even before I saw it. Open-air meetings are notoriously hard to secure. Besides, I didn’t believe anywhere in or near this town could reasonably be regarded as neutral, let alone safe, for Leon – or for me. Not now. Yuri had known what it was like here, and had tipped me off, but he still hadn’t been able to stave off disaster.

  The arrangements agreed for the meeting were sensible, so long as both sides stuck to the rules. But would they? I couldn’t be sure, but I suspected not.

  Leon and Bobrik were each allowed to have one other person with them. They would meet at a table in the centre of the terrace, amidst the diners who were there for a normal evening out.

  I assumed it would be me accompanying Leon, but he shook his head when I asked him. Now Lenka was here, and exposed, he said, he would take her with him. The main reasons were that she was family and she spoke Russian.

  I accepted that. Lenka would be more use to him in negotiations. As well as the reasons Leon had given, she knew what was going on. I still didn’t. She had also proved she didn’t mind shooting people, and could do it without hesitation. That was another way in which she would be more use than me.

  Guns and other weapons were not to be taken to the table. Leon said the four of them would be searched on their way into the restaurant to make sure of that.

  ‘Who by?’ I asked. ‘Who will do the searching?’

  ‘Each by a person from the other side,’ Leon said. ‘I will tell Bobrik he must bring a woman to search Lenka.’

  A wise precaution, I couldn’t help thinking, given Lenka’s mercurial temperament.

  Otherwise, they probably wouldn’t even get inside the restaurant, never mind hold a meeting.

  ‘What about me? Where do you want me?’

  He said he wanted me on the terrace, enjoying a meal, well before the meeting was due to start. My role would be to be on the lookout for foul play. Bobrik couldn’t be trusted.

  ‘They don’t know you,’ he added.

  Maybe, maybe not. I certainly hoped not. But someone had spotted me that afternoon. Perhaps they had assumed I was just Yuri’s sidekick, rather than a player.

  ‘I’ll stand out like a sore thumb, won’t I – a solitary male diner?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said with a twinkle in his eye. ‘You will have a companion for the evening, a woman.’

  ‘Really? Sounds too good to be true.’

  ‘You will like her, I think.’

  I wasn’t too sure about that. Some unknown woman? Who would she be – the mysterious Martha, perhaps? A prostitute, hired for the evening? Whoever it was, the arrangement didn’t sound very good to me.

  ‘Leon, I’m not sure that’s a great idea.’

  ‘Trust me, Frank. I know what I’m doing. And I want you there to use your skills and sensitivity to make sure nothing bad happens. Bobrik knows my people. He doesn’t know you.’

  So, basically, that was the reason he’d wanted me along. I was from outside the circle. It made sense, and I couldn’t say I blamed him. Even so, I wasn’t sure about the arrangement. In fact, I still wasn’t sure about the whole damn thing.

  ‘I should be armed,’ I said.

  ‘Of course,’ he agreed. ‘There would be little point in you being there otherwise.’

  Any of Bobrik’s men who just happened to be around the terrace in mufti would also be armed, of course. It wouldn’t be plain sailing, or shooting.

  Something else on my mind was what I could possibly talk about over dinner to a woman I didn’t know, and had never even met, in such testing circumstances. That was a worry, too.

  Leon and I slipped away from the boat in the dusk of early evening. Others went before and after us, left and in most cases returned, to create a sense of movement to confuse anyone who might be watching. We timed our own departure to coincide with a flood of tourists from one of the big cruise liners in the harbour. It would have been a challenge for anyone watching to spot us.

  Once inside the town walls, we walked briskly, threading our way through some very narrow lanes and alleys. Leon seemed to know the place well. No doubt he had spent some time in this town. Even so, I was surprised by how confident he was. After the shooting of Yuri, I saw dangerous shadows everywhere. Dangerous looking people, too. But Leon was like an old-fashioned cavalry officer, eager to confront danger head on, and in the open.

  He paused in a quiet street and glanced around. There was no-one else in sight. We stood in silence for a moment, waiting and listening. Someone, somewhere, whistled, a soft single note that echoed briefly between the walls.

  Leon touched my arm. ‘My man, Petr,’ he said. ‘We have not been followed.’

  Then he turned to a recessed doorway in deep shadow. We passed through and began to climb stone st
eps.

  On the third floor, he used a key to go through a heavy door that led to another corridor, and possibly another building. He strode briskly along. I followed, thinking this reminded me of his hotel in Prague. I had no doubt now that we had entered another of Leon’s many properties.

  He tapped softly on a door at the end of the corridor and then used a key to open it, calling a quiet greeting as we entered the apartment. Once inside, the door locked again behind us, he led the way into a living room.

  There, he paused, chuckled at me and said, ‘Meet your lady for the evening, Frank.’

  It took me a few moments to recognize her. Then I stared with astonishment at the figure that had risen from a chair to greet us.

  ‘Hello, Frank,’ she said with an amused smile.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘OLGA! HOW DID YOU get…?’

  ‘Lenka brought me,’ she said with a smile. ‘She thought I might be useful.’

  ‘But we left you in England.’

  ‘The Podolsky family has more than one little plane, Frank.’

  She was laughing at me now. It was a huge joke. To me, it was a huge deception. The whole lot of them were at it, the entire family. I was more than a little pissed off.

  I turned to Leon. ‘Is this a good idea?’

  ‘Olga being your companion?’ Leon said, smiling. ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Do you disapprove, Frank?’ Olga asked archly.

  I slumped into a chair and stared from one to the other of them, wondering what to say, and what to do. ‘This is a very serious and dangerous situation, Leon. Yuri has been killed already. You and Lenka will be at serious risk tonight. Now Olga, too, and she is not …’

  I stopped. I had been going to say she was not a suitable person to thrust into the firing line. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it, not in front of her.

  ‘They know you, Olga,’ I pointed out. ‘If you are with me on that terrace, we won’t last two minutes.’

  She shook her head. ‘Bobrik doesn’t know me, and the people who abducted me are no longer with us, as you know.’

  That, at least, was true. She didn’t seem troubled by the thought either. Tough lady, despite appearances.

  ‘Frank,’ Leon said, ‘you didn’t recognize Olga at first. I watched your face. So her disguise works well.’

  That was true, too. Her hair colour was dark brown now, instead of straw blonde. She was dressed smartly in fashionable city clothes, instead of the retro hippy-style stuff I’d seen her wearing previously. She wore high heels, too, instead of winter boots. The difference all that made was huge. So maybe Bobrik and his thugs wouldn’t spot her after all. Maybe.

  ‘We haven’t much time,’ I said wearily, with a glance at my watch. ‘Get your stuff together, Olga. Let’s move.’

  It was early when we arrived. Six thirty. The restaurant was almost empty. On the outside terrace, where the meeting was to be held at 7.30, only two of the dozen tables were occupied. At one of them, half a dozen American tourists were enjoying themselves noisily, making the most of their holiday in such an historic place. Two couples who might have been locals, but were probably also visitors, were at the other table. They looked as if the evening chill was getting to them, despite the umbrella overhead and the nearby presence of big patio heaters.

  The Maitre d’ who had greeted us was leading the way out onto the terrace but I stopped him. ‘It’s a little cool this evening,’ I pointed out. ‘My wife would prefer to be inside, I think.’

  ‘Certainly, sir.’ He spun round and asked, ‘Which table do you prefer? At this time of the evening you can choose.’

  I chose a table with a view of the terrace through a big window. It was just one over from the aisle accessing the terrace. Olga seemed puzzled. I smiled confidently, inviting her to trust me.

  She had probably expected to be close to the table marked “Reserved”, out there on the terrace, close to where the action would be. Tactically, though, that would have been a poor choice. Here, where the Maitre d’ was seating us, was a much better position.

  However the meeting went, the participants would not engage in a shooting match. I was confident of that. For one thing, none of them would be armed. So I didn’t need to be that close to them. Because of the weather, the big umbrellas and the difficult light, I ruled out a sniper up on the cliffs above the restaurant. Any danger would probably come from back here, where we were going to sit. Any attackers would need to come past us and go through the door onto the terrace. They would then have me behind them, ready to intervene.

  Well, that was the idea, the plan.

  ‘You think it is better here?’ Olga asked anxiously after the Maitre d’ had departed to find us a wine waiter.

  ‘I do,’ I said firmly. ‘Anybody going to intrude on the meeting would need to come past us. I’m here to stop that.’

  She looked doubtful for a moment. Then her face cleared and she smiled. ‘You have done this before, I think.’

  ‘Well, not exactly this, but …’

  ‘So you know what you are doing,’ she said with satisfaction.

  ‘I like to think so. This is the kind of stuff I do for a living. Security, protection and so on.’ I shrugged and added, ‘Amongst other things.’

  ‘It is why my brother trusts you. I trust you, too.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ I said, grinning.

  We ordered a bottle of a Montenegrin red from the wine waiter, and a salad starter and grilled fish with a name unknown to me. Two or three couples wandered in to take tables, in one case on the terrace itself. None of them looked like a threat. We stayed calm, if not exactly relaxed, and waited.

  The waiter returned with a bottle. He poured a little. I approved it. Then he filled both our glasses with the red, and two more with water. The civilized preliminaries observed. I toasted Olga, and we smiled happily at one another, the way couples out on the town for the evening generally do.

  ‘But I won’t be drinking the wine,’ I said quietly. ‘Not tonight.’

  Olga nodded. She knew what I meant. I needed to stay sharp.

  ‘So what’s a nice girl like you doing in a dump like this?’ I asked.

  She had the grace to laugh and pretend it was funny. I was grateful for her effort. We couldn’t afford to look like anything other than happy visitors.

  ‘I used to like it here,’ she confided. ‘Then things changed.’

  ‘This feud with your brother’s ex-buddy?’

  She nodded.

  ‘What’s it about? Do you know?’

  ‘Greed, I think. And power. Things have not been good for several years.’

  So it seemed. Whatever the origins of the trouble, the effects had been dramatic. Still, I didn’t want to go any further into that now. History was for another occasion. That kind of history, at least.

  ‘This town must have an interesting story to tell?’ I suggested. ‘It seems to be a very historic place.’

  ‘Oh, yes. It is.’

  She told me the same story I’d heard from Leon. That was OK. We couldn’t just sit in silence. Besides, Kotor really was a place with a lot to talk about.

  ‘The French had it for a while,’ she said. ‘Then… Oh, here they come, Frank!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The French were not here too long, though,’ she continued with remarkable self-control, one eye on me and the other looking over my shoulder. ‘Then I believe the English captured it from the French.’

  ‘Who’s coming?’

  ‘Leon and Lenka. Only them.’

  I nodded. So Leon was here first. Not a good move. I hoped they wouldn’t go straight out to the terrace. I didn’t want him and Lenka sitting out there alone, big juicy targets for a sniper on the rock wall behind the restaurant despite the poor light.

  But Leon knew that.

  ‘They have paused,’ Olga said. ‘They are waiting.’

  ‘For Bobrik,’ I said quietly. ‘Leon will want the four of them to go
to the table together.’

  Olga stared pensively at me. ‘This really is dangerous, isn’t it?’

  I shrugged. ‘We’ll see. Maybe not. Maybe they will settle their differences.’

  ‘I think not.’

  Well, there was nothing I could do about that. We would just have to sit here and wait. And hope. Maybe the killings that had taken place so far would turn out to have been enough.

  ‘The others have arrived now,’ Olga said calmly. ‘Tell me about your life in England, Frank. I would like to know.’

  We had to talk about something. So I began to tell her about my home at Risky Point on the Cleveland coast. As the four participants in the meeting approached, I told her about how I made my living from security work and private investigations. She appeared fascinated but I couldn’t believe she heard a single thing I said.

  ‘Now,’ she said, her smile broadening deceptively into happy laughter.

  I nodded but didn’t look up as the four of them came past and stepped through the doorway and out onto the terrace, ushered by the Maitre d’ and a waiter. Clearly, they were known, and favoured guests. Some of them, at least. But for how much longer?

  ‘Anybody else?’ I asked.

  She shook her head. ‘Are you the only person who lives at Risky Point?’

  ‘Not quite. I have a neighbour.’

  As I watched Leon and company get settled at their table, I told her about Jimmy Mack, a semi-retired fisherman who lives in the other cottage at Risky Point. Once, before coastal erosion took its toll, there was a small village there. Now there are just the two cottages left, and Jimmy and I are the only inhabitants.

  ‘It would be wonderful to live close to the sea again,’ Olga mused.

  ‘The sea there isn’t like it is here,’ I said with a chuckle. ‘It’s cold and rough most of the time, even in summer. You need warm clothing most of the year when you’re on the beach at Risky Point.’

  ‘Even so,’ she said with a sigh.

  Discussions out on the terrace had begun. They were not going well, though. The four of them were too animated, seemed too argumentative. I winced inwardly. My guess was that they wouldn’t even bother ordering a meal.