by Ray Christie
SIXTEEN
Slicing through Muji’s greeting and regular bullshit she fires her questions, “Muji, where are your assets?” Émilie constructs a mental map of Europe and her favourite border country crossings waiting for Muji to answer.
“Two leaving Brussels and two in Paris getting their tools ready, give me locations and I’ll give you results, then we can have our breakfast together Paris lady.”
“Not so fast charmer, there is a lot of work to do, these guys are not amateurs, they will eat your guys for breakfast as they did to mine this morning”, Émilie knows the importance of fear. She needs Muji to fully understand who the hell these guys are if they smell a rat in the zoo the whole zoo will be wiped out. No one stands a chance; these spy killers know the government has too much to lose in bringing them in. If they stay off the grid that is good. Both the British and French governments cannot deal with such a PR disaster, if they wind up dead that is a result if they disappear that is fine, everyone has a disappearing act, even her.
“Keep online and I’ll update you with new locations,” hanging up she then calls her lover and delivers the news about the two dead men.
***
“Wake up Frank, Frank,” fast asleep after his sandwich Frank was now shook awake by Jack. He slowly adjusted his eyes to view the laptop in front of him, peering at a photograph of a heavily disguised female. He recognised the photograph as he was the one that took it, and many other’s hours ago on the plane as he walked to and from the bathroom.
“Zoom in and clean up the image on her my boy,” in a soft voice Frank was studying the photograph, something was not right.
With that Jack opened up a split-screen where a live feed with Arthur, back in Frank’s country estate, was seated behind the big mahogany desk.
“Good day fellows,” Arthur was in charge of delivering the news. “Frank, the lady seated behind you was, in fact, our lady working with Trevor, the one and only ‘Anjeze Kokalari’, don’t feel bad for not recognising her. I ran all your photographs through the MI5 facial recognition software, from that it stripped the make-up, wig, and fake glasses from her, and focused on skull structures. The rest of the business class was clean, as she is on your tail that could mean a handful of Albanians, Russians or whoever Trevor has at his disposal is also.”
“My oh my, I am sorry boy’s, I led her straight here, I never even noticed.” Noticing Frank’s guilt Sam spoke first.
“Hey don’t worry, that was a great disguise, would have fooled us all, and besides that, she would have known where we were at, it was comms that she was after, Jack took the bug off you, all good old mate.”
Jack followed up, “Sam is right, Trevor was cheekily looking for a few words of information, a cheap tactic which didn’t pay off, the good thing is she doesn’t know she has been spotted, it was good work getting her photograph.”
Arthur continued with his impromptu briefing, “The important thing to consider is how big is this web, we can tie together a few people, we have Trevor the head, then Anjeze Kokalari and a French woman. We can dismiss this Anjeze as being French, from what I found online she speaks with such a strong accent her French would be noticeably out of tune. So far you have a bloke and a couple of girls on your tails.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad, not like Afghanistan then, might as well turn around and come home,” laughing at the simplified summary from Arthur, Ben shakes his head at the mere thought of how uneventful he put it.
“Not so fast Arthur, we have a sophisticated group behind us, we are only scraping the surface, don’t forget London and how we started. We just arrived in France and have left four dead men there; I feel the real actors have not arrived yet. Those assets were simply the nearest contacts they could reach out to in the time available. See what you can come up with on your side, we are going to the farm soon. Once we get on their network in Germany, I will switch phones, right now I want you to dig deep and figure out who Trevor meets when he is off the grid.”
“When someone is off the grid, they are off the grid Jack,” The video call shows Arthur rubbing his eyes then tapping on the keyboard some more before coming up with a suggestion. “If I delve into and push the AI with Trevor’s behavioural patterns adding the deep mining tools then I need to access the agencies powerful computers, I would then have to head into London to do that, trouble is Trevor would have access to those machines, at least be able to have the engineers shut the AI off on his activities, the results would not be one hundred percent, at this stage his intentions would only be a theory.”
“You are confusing me Arthur”, says Jack, “Can’t you do some old fashioned spy work, and hack the life out of everything connected to Frank, even if he isn’t on the Grid his contacts may not employ the same level of operational security.”
“Well, yep that could work, I was thinking of hacking his mind, but tools and tools of others are way simpler, you should have said.”
Shaking his head at the eccentric geek Jack laughs and closes the connection with a simple task, “Report back with names, connections, photographs and abilities.”
Going ahead on the plan with the men Jack calls Mark and Gordon to ensure they are on course. “Hey mate, head to Freiburg im Breisgau as planned and look for anyone following us in, what about your security team?”
“All good, I spoke to a couple of the deltas, they are up in Berlin I’ll set up a meet with them outside town and they can provide security when we check the next vault, give us an hour to set up. The Berlin team will take eight hours to get here by road.”
Quickly doing some route knowledge in his head Jack offers a different suggestion, “Ok, we will come in from the north via Strasbourg, you move in through Besançon, I want to know who they are following, that will give you about thirty minutes to set up, the Strasbourg vault is quite small, we can’t wait too long and I don’t want this bearded git or whoever he is working with to get there in front of us, we will pick up but make sure we are covered coming in.”
“Copy that,” the connection is terminated and Mark and Gordon floor the Audi towards the Schwabentor in Freiburg im Breisgau, a perfect vantage point.
***
London, England
“Zoom in a lot closer than that, I can hardly bloody see anything.” The newly appointed member of the satellite control staff obeys the incredibly important and intimidating man standing behind him. It is unusual that he is called away from his regular pattern of work to commandeer a satellite to work on the verbal orders of anyone without approval from his superior, but who was he to enquire about the legalities of such irregularities. Intrigued he tries to solicit more information, “Yes sir, if you can tell me more about the target, I can perhaps assist you better.”
“You don’t have clearance to know anything about the target, just move the damn machine,” barks Trevor. Watching a member of the committee doing something treacherous is making his blood boil. ‘What the bloody hell is this thug up to? Mikhail you dirty pig, who are you after?’ Trevor has been in this room for the best part of the morning, using his high-level clearance to conduct surveillance on high valued targets planning an attack on her majesties land. That is his official excuse, however, his personal activities right this very minute is to watch Mikhail, another weak link in the shrinking committee board.
Walking along the street, boarding a bus, getting off when it stops under a bridge, walking to an underground carpark, appearing at the other end having removed and disposed of a jacket. Mikhail was doing everything he could to do throw off any followers. Trevor’s advantage was the eye in the sky, he knew sooner rather than later the cost of moving the satellite would have to be justified with various reports. That can wait, he can come up with something as he had done on numerous occasions before. On the images recorded he will simply put it down to another false lead, weak human intelligence, wrong target, my apologises ma’am as he shares a glass of port with the defence minister is the usual way Trevor handles such matter
s. For now, he had the target in his sights, the young satellite controller was highly professional, never taking his eye off the slightly pixelated figure of a man walking up into the yacht. No longer able to keep the satellite in position and unwilling to jeopardise his personal work he calls for the image to be sharpened then the satellite to be shut down.
Trevor makes a mental note of the yacht’s name and its location, “Thank you for your work this morning, I’ll pass a good word to your commander.” Trevor makes for the door pulling a phone from his pocket, “Security please, this is Alpha Five.”
Trevor and a security team of SBS special forces dressed as the Met’s specialised firearms police descend on the location of the yacht, firearms were drawn and pointed in front of them, the men advance in formation along the wooden planks only to find an empty berth. Studying the layout of the dock he storms over to the dockmaster's office flanked by two disappointed SBS officers.
“Where has this boat disappeared to old mate? I have reason to believe it was here only an hour ago.” Holding out a high-resolution photograph of the yacht the dockmaster studies it for some time before answering.
“That boat was not seaworthy, I refused to let it sail, once it was lifted out and placed on a truck it is not my problem, registered to a company which I now realised is false, Moroccan man, glad he buggered off when he did.”
Sensing something is very murky, much murkier than he planned Trevor asks to view the CCTV of the marina so he can check out what this Moroccan looks like.
“No can do I am afraid, the CCTV has been on the blink since last night, the wires have all been cut, as it happens the system went down around the time that yacht came in.”
Trevor eyeballed this old man for a few seconds, “You are full of the bullshit old man, I’ll drive your head through that window and maybe you can give me what I want.”
“Sir, that is not how we operate, you lay a finger on this man and you will be answerable to myself and my partner,” one of the SBS men stood in front of Trevor and his cool steel eyes stripped Trevor of his illegal and out of control power trip.
The SBS spoke into his comms unit, “Ok, let’s rollout, waste of time here.” With the order given, all the men walked back to the Range Rovers and made their way back to their secretive base on the banks of the Thames. Trevor feeling belittled, outranked, and outsmarted declined the ride back. He had work to do, which meant being away from the bright lights of London. Knowing he has been lied to but unable to use extreme pain on the dockmaster he has to back off. In his experience, he knows the yacht will be long gone and will never return under the same name.
Back in the dock master’s office the old man sat down at the monitors and flicked the CCTV back to life. Watching the arrogant baboon getting into a taxi he then went and retrieved a bag from under the dock’s wooden planks below his office. Standing excitedly beside his desk he moved the ashtray and cold tea to one side and resumed counting the bag of money the charismatic French man had gave him before he sailed out of the marina and down the River Thames.
SEVENTEEN
Moscow Oblast, Russia
In the underworld throughout London and the major cities of Europe there is not much the SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service, do not know about organised crime. Kolmogorov Trediakovsky spent the best part of the morning thirty kilometres south of Moscow in their headquarters. The intelligence he was looking over was not related to technological or scientific espionage in the petrochemical fields or geopolitical, military, or strategic concerns, it was directly focused on his sideline business. Most Russian security and external operations passed over Kolmogorov’s desk, the copious amount of information can be passed off for reviewing later, the text message he received from Trevor was like a shot over the bow. ‘Mikhail is not playing by the committee rules, setting up meets in London.’
The committee rules were simple, do not conduct any ‘private’ business during times of internal operations, as the committee was winding up and about to cash in, this rule was ironclad. Perpetrators were eliminated. Kolmogorov thinks back to one assassination he was involved in directly, killing Yevgeniy Bissengaliyev a high-ranking member of the Syrbar, the Kazakhstan foreign intelligence services. Kolmogorov watched his target for two months, as he did business around the city of Nur-Sultan, difficult to get at as he was surrounded by bodyguards. After getting cosy with the CIA the Kazakhstanis were no longer interested in dirty money coming in from Europe. Money used to invest in their oil and gas industry with the goal of laundering their dirty Euros and Sterling.
The only place Kolmogorov noticed his man without his security detail was within the confines of the Hazrat Sultan Mosque. The largest mosque in Central Asia holding ten thousand people during Friday prayers was always going to be a challenge. Yevgeniy took Koran reading classes in one of the rooms contained within the mosque. Signing up himself to the Koran reading alerted no concerns from the security detail, those members were happy to remain in the surrounding area drinking coffee and telling old tales from their time in the military. Having allowed the room to settle the men all sat down crossed legged with their own Korans in various colours, some leather-bound and etched with gold, some worn from years of use and handed down through the generations. The room contained mainly old and frail men, some young boys also but no one that would cause a threat. Rising to his feet and apologising to the Iman Kolmogorov pointed to his stomach signalling bowel problems. He walked towards the exit leaving his Koran on the cushion knowing he will never return, as he passed close to Yevgeniy he removed the cap from the syringe and rammed the hypodermic needle into his neck, forcing the liquid deep into the flesh.
There was a moment of disbelief at what had happened, no one seen the needle which was covered by Kolmogorov huge hands. “This man is having a heart attack, quickly lay him down,” in the confusion the worshippers quickly moved the cushions out of the way and laid Yevgeniy stretched out over the finely woven carpet, someone asked for an ambulance, but all mobile phones were well out of reach in the cloakrooms. Kolmogorov was walking briskly through the large crowd of men making their way around the seventeen hectares of grounds.
Back in the room, a young boy screamed as he has seen the blood coming out of the side of the man’s neck staining the bleached white robes. The sight of this blood, Yevgeniy’s bulging eyes and white foam coming up from the lungs as the chemical has done its work told the men this was no heart attack. A few old men ran out of the building towards the medical office to raise the alarm, some of the young boys went crying in search of their fathers, meanwhile, Kolmogorov was in the back of a car removing his clothes as it sped along Raqymjan Qoshqarbayev Avenue towards the Russian embassy.
By the time Yevgeniy’s security detail was alerted by the screaming and chaos coming from the reading rooms the mosque was finally being cordoned off. One committee member eliminated. Kolmogorov’s days of wet work were well in the past, the past he thinks now is never that far away.
Now he sits fifteen minutes away from the SVR in Khoteli Pili-Yeli drinking a glass of zedazeni beer. Mikhail, the top tier gangster, lacks the trust of most of the others, however, his connections and ability to get the job done marked him as highly valuable. Due to their Russian connection, Kolmogorov owns the task and decides he must exert an act of extreme discipline on his fellow counterpart.
Mikhail also has connections in the upper reaches of the Kremlin, and this meeting in Khoteli Pili-Yeli will require two different factors, respect, and balls. Even for a man who rules the security world with an iron fist, he will not know what to expect.
From his seat, he watches the staff work fast to prepare for the gentlemen who have just arrived outside. A look of heightened professionalism yet he senses a slight nervousness in their more experienced staff. He knows from their actions his dining guests have arrived.
Seated at the back in the high-backed leather chairs Kolmogorov once again traces the route to the exit, to the adjoining bar an
d the toilets. He has two couples also dining in this restaurant, within easy access to one of his favourite weapons the 9mm GSh-18. Directed to stand and eliminate any threats not stopping until he has safely departed, these special force operators will obey commands of their highly respected boss. He observes how one couple is holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes like a couple who have found love for the first time. The reflection in the woman’s spectacles allows the man a great view of the door behind him.
The exposed brick and whitewashed walls leading up to the wooden beams provide a sense of country charm in the Georgian restaurant, far from the confines of safe houses or military installations around Moscow. Kolmogorov watches with a smile on his face as two of the countries most respected men of men walk through the door. If they were Italian mafia mobsters in New York or Sicily they would be considered ‘made men’, in Russia, they are simply the leaders of another batch of highly organised and lethal gangsters. Handing the staff his heavy coat and cap Radoslav immediately looks to where Kolmogorov is seated. This meant someone is either planted here watching him or one of the staff has provided this information. Kolmogorov breathes deeply and calmly, ‘Oh Russia, what a country, spies use their own spies who also have their own in turn’, Time to switch on my game face.
Kolmogorov lifts the menu and allows the men to sit without acknowledging them or offering his hand.
“You dragged me out of my office, down here for Georgian food for what? This better be good Kolmogorov”, Radoslav never bothered either with greetings. Last time they met was in 2016 when Kolmogorov needed them to wipe out a house full of Chechens. What Radoslav did not know was the house was full of innocent migrants and the complete assault was recorded, evidence to be used against them if required. As to date, there is no need to use this leverage.