The Moscow Cipher (Ben Hope, Book 17)

by Scott Mariani

  ‘What are you, a friend of his? I get it. He send you to get his shit back, yeah? He got nothing worth having. Here, you want DVDs? I got hardcore, real hot shit.’

  ‘All I want is this,’ Ben said, finding what he was looking for. He fished the plastic bag out of the cardboard box in which it had been stored.

  Bogdan pulled a face. ‘What you want that for, man? I try fix it, but no chance. It is total fucked.’

  Which was a fairly accurate account of the phone’s condition, as Ben saw when he inspected the remains. The crooks had attempted to glue the shattered pink plastic casing back together, then obviously given up when they realised they didn’t have all the pieces. The internal chassis and keypad of the phone were badly buckled, and the screen was cracked in three places. The power button appeared to be dead. Ben replaced the bits and pocketed the bag.

  Bogdan Lebedev could hardly believe his good fortune. He’d been ready to part with a truckload of valuables in order to save himself from a beating, and all this crazy foreigner wanted was a worthless piece of junk phone that would never work again? He couldn’t stop grinning. His two younger brothers, lying injured and bleeding on the concrete outside the Zenit bar, were quite forgotten. He said to Ben, ‘You get what you want, now you leave me alone, huh?’

  Ben had, in truth, been toying with the idea of breaking a couple of minor bones and maybe punting Bogdan out of the window to teach him a lesson. Relenting, he replied, ‘All right, Bogdan, you survived this one. But let me tell you something. Your burgling days are over. You won’t see us, but we’ll be watching you. Any hint that you’re getting back to your old tricks again, you’ll be getting a visit from my associates, and believe me, they’re not half as touchy-feely as I am. You and your brothers will be hung up like deer and castrated with a blunt chisel. And that will be just the beginning. Tell me you agree with the deal.’

  No longer grinning, Bogdan hung his head and muttered, ‘Okay, man. You are the boss.’

  Ben and Tatyana left. She waited until they were back out in the street before turning to him with a crookedly mischievous smile. ‘I must say that I find your methods not unimpressive, Major Hope. Unconventional, but interesting.’

  ‘Thanks, but all we have to show for them so far is a broken phone. If anything comes of it, you can congratulate me then. As for our friend Bogdan, he’ll be back to his old ways within a week.’

  ‘I am not so sure. Russian men are very afraid of castration.’

  ‘They’re not alone, I can assure you. By the way, I never thanked you for your help back there. That was a smooth disarming move you pulled on the barman. Where did you learn a trick like that?’

  Tatyana gave a modest shrug. ‘Oh, you know, it is just something I – how do you say it – picked up along the way.’

  ‘I had no idea I was working with a lady of such talents.’

  Chapter 17

  Returning to the hotel was the reverse of the process of leaving it, undetected and unfollowed. The mystery of who had been shadowing them was still very much an open question and bugging Ben every moment, but would have to take second priority while he focused on extracting whatever information Valentina’s phone might have to offer. He and Tatyana threaded their way back to the Ararat Park Hyatt by means of a succession of buses and trams, stopping en route to purchase a recharger for the damaged Nokia. The final leg of the return journey came courtesy of a minivan-sized taxicab with tinted rear windows, whose driver Ben had take them around the back of the hotel so they could duck discreetly inside via a rear kitchen entrance. If eyes were still on the street side, the watchers would have little chance of knowing their targets had returned.

  Avoiding the main lobby for the same reason, Ben found his way to the hotel’s IT lounge, which offered the full range of technological bells and whistles as a perk for paying guests. He and Tatyana found an unused computer station in a secluded alcove of the room and pulled up two chairs. The IT lounge was as hushed as a public library, just the clicking of keys and the occasional cough from one of the other guests at their terminals.

  ‘This facility is not very private,’ Tatyana whispered, glancing around. ‘Your suite has its own wi-fi facilities. I suggest we use those instead.’

  Ben had already considered that idea, and dismissed it. He shook his head. Spider-sense, intuition, paranoia, whatever it was, a voice in his mind kept telling him that all was not right and the less anyone knew about his movements, the better. Anyone watching, given sufficient resources, could also be hacking. Anything that the Winter Garden Suite’s wi-fi was used to search for online could easily be traced to its registered occupant. By contrast, the hotel’s open network made him anonymous. And anonymity was a rare privilege these days.

  He fired up the computer. Even he had to admit, these damned things had their uses. He would soon find out whether the morning’s excursion had brought anything of value at all.

  Tatyana watched as he took the plastic bag from his pocket and spread its broken contents over the desk. She shook her head and sighed. ‘What a mess,’ she whispered. ‘If Petrov did this, he has really tried hard to destroy it.’

  ‘Let’s hope, not hard enough,’ Ben whispered back.

  Tatyana gave a nasty little smile. ‘If the data is all lost, the Lebedev brothers have suffered for nothing.’

  ‘Poor souls. I’ll arrange to have roses sent to the hospital.’

  Ben tore open the packaging for the phone recharger, plugged it in at both ends and tried switching it on. The dead device remained dark and lifeless. ‘Of course, that would have been too easy,’ he said. ‘Let’s move on to Plan B.’ He flicked the computer mouse and the screen flashed brightly into life, ready for action.

  ‘Have you done this before?’

  ‘First time for everything,’ he replied. Ben was no IT wizard, but he had a rough idea what he was doing. The hotel broadband was the fastest he’d ever seen. Superior Russian technology, once again. It took only moments to whiz through the search engine and track down the correct data recovery software online, which quickly became his second purchase of the day with Kaprisky’s expenses account credit card.

  Once the software was downloaded onto the computer, Ben returned to the smashed phone. His hope was that the SD card, containing all Valentina’s stored files, was still intact. The phone’s chassis was the flimsiest kind of lightweight, paper-thin alloy and so badly buckled that the card was stuck fast in its port. Checking that nobody was looking, he took out the stiletto knife that the Lebedev brother had tried to stick him with earlier, and gently inserted its sharp tip into the edge of the port to try to pry the card out.

  ‘Carefully,’ Tatyana winced, peering over his shoulder. ‘It is very fragile. You do not want to break it.’

  ‘Thanks for the advice.’ Ben dug the blade in as deep as he dared, gave it a little twist, and felt the card come free. He delicately slipped it out and inspected it for damage, of which he could see no external signs. Next he inserted the card into the matching port on the computer and ran the data recovery software to scan for lost files. This was the moment of truth. The card would either respond, or it would prove to be as dead as the rest of the device. Tatyana pulled her chair closer to the terminal, and her knee pressed against Ben’s. He breathed her perfume as she watched the screen with bated breath.

  After a pause, the computer did its work and a new window flashed up onscreen. The software had found a large number of data files on the card and was ready to download them to the hard drive.

  ‘Excellent,’ Tatyana said.

  ‘So far, so good,’ Ben muttered. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got.’

  Not tall, not short, casually dressed and as instantly forgettable as all good shadows should be, the man standing on the far side of Neglinnaya Street took out his phone. He spoke without taking his eyes off the front of the hotel, constantly scanning between the main entrance and the windows and terrace of the Winter Garden Suite high above the street.

&n
bsp; There had been no physical sighting of the subjects since earlier that morning, the unfortunate incident on the metro train when the man and his partner had allowed themselves to be spotted. But the GPS tracking device the man was carrying on his mission indicated their whereabouts to within a matter of inches. The team knew exactly where their targets were, the entire time.

  ‘This is Number Four, reporting,’ the man said into the phone, speaking his native Russian. ‘Hope and the woman are inside the building. Situation under control and monitoring.’

  On the other end of the line, the Mission Chief was reclining in a large, soft leather chair at a desk far, far away, inside a private and secure room filled with screens. The largest screen of all was the one on the wall opposite him, on which he was watching the real-time aerial feed of the Ararat Park Hyatt hotel as it was bounced down to Earth from a classified geostationary spy satellite some 250km up.

  Such reports from his field agents were largely superfluous, but he tasked them anyway. The Mission Chief already knew exactly where the subjects under observation had been that morning and had a pretty good idea what they had been up to during that time. He knew to the exact second when they had returned to the hotel, and would be able to freely track their movements wherever they went when they left there. The Winter Garden Suite was fully monitored with audio bugging devices, and any online activity on the room’s wi-fi connection would be instantly intercepted straight to his desk.

  In short, the Mission Chief possessed all the same data as his operatives, plus a great deal more. The footsoldiers’ role in this part of the mission was simply to keep pace down there on the ground, remain on standby, report any developing situations that might require their quick intervention, and in such cases respond accordingly.

  So far, such intervention had not been necessary and all was going according to plan. Except, of course, for that one significant glitch that the Chief was not pleased about. He was a calm man by temperament. He wouldn’t have achieved his position otherwise. But there were times when the urgency of a critical mission caused him to grill an operative, and this was one of them. He spoke slowly, Russian being not his mother tongue, but the menace in his words came over loud and clear to his underling.

  ‘Remember who you’re dealing with here, Number Four. Hope is not your normal subject. He’s as expert in surveillance and counter-surveillance as all of you lot put together, and then a good deal more. Risk blowing this whole operation by letting him spot you again, and I’ll have you replaced in a heartbeat. Understand?’

  The agent knew that to be replaced was to be eliminated. He swallowed hard and tried not to let his fear show in his voice as he replied, ‘He won’t spot us again, chief. That’s a guarantee.’

  ‘Do not screw this up, Number Four. You and your team have your orders, and they are clear. Stay well back, keep the assets in sight and move in only if and when I give the command. They’ll lead us straight to Petrov, and that’s when you can put your talents to good use.’

  The agent smiled at the thought. The one per cent of his job that wasn’t brain-numbing surveillance work made it all worthwhile. ‘Copy that, chief. Number Four, over and out.’

  Chapter 18

  Once the intact data files from the phone were all safely stored in the computer hard drive, Ben began opening them systematically. He was soon disappointed to find that the phone’s stored memory of calls and numbers, which he’d hoped to retrieve, had not survived. What remained was mostly a mixture of text messages, image and video files.

  Ben started with the texts, in case something there might offer up a clue as to Yuri Petrov’s whereabouts. It was a long shot, as he was all too aware. But even long shots could sometimes hit their target.

  As Ben now discovered, little Valentina Petrova was a prolific texter. ‘This might take a while,’ he warned, speaking softly to not be overheard by the other IT lounge users.

  ‘We have nothing else to do,’ Tatyana whispered back.

  By the time they’d sifted through the first sixty or seventy texts, patterns were emerging, none of them remotely useful. Valentina’s circle of friends included a dozen or so with whom she seemed to communicate more frequently, and one in particular, Adalie, who was her closest confidante. A brief detour to Facebook showed Adalie Beaulieu to be a resident of La Suze-sur-Sarthe, Le Mans, France, twelve and a half years old and a big fan of Demi Lovato, whom Ben had never heard of, but no surprises there. Valentina additionally kept in touch with a couple of friends back in Amsterdam, Britt and Danique, with whom she swapped messages in Dutch.

  The texts were pretty much what any bright, life-loving young kid would send to her pals. A good number of them concerned a boy called Paul back home in France, on whom Valentina obviously had a bit of a schoolgirl crush. It was all perfectly innocent stuff, but Ben felt bad about prying into the child’s personal life. There was loads of chatter about the usual pop stars and movie actors, with lively debates about who was the hunkiest and who was the creepiest. Something about a really cool birthday party for someone named Nicole and what a terrific time everyone had had; various ravings about a lovely bay pony that ‘cher Grand-Oncle Auguste’ had bought for Valentina as a Christmas present; and on, and on. Ben trawled doggedly through nearly four hundred useless texts and found nothing.

  Maybe the poor Lebedevs had suffered needlessly, after all. Ben didn’t know how he could ever forgive himself.

  Next were the image and video files. Ben recalled the framed blow-ups plastered all over the walls of Valentina’s bedroom back home, and Kaprisky’s mention of his grandniece’s love of snapping images wherever she went. It wasn’t too much of a surprise that the aspiring little photographer had crammed her phone with an endless array of pet pictures. Dogs of all shapes and sizes, all manner of moggies; but most of all horses, horses and more horses. She must have photographed every equine in France.

  ‘She is very fond of animals,’ Tatyana observed.

  ‘She wants to be a vet, apparently.’

  ‘I was the same, at her age.’

  Ben looked at her. ‘That’s amazing. You mean, there’s a softer side to your personality that we haven’t seen yet?’

  Tatyana’s eyes turned from the screen and flashed at him. ‘You know nothing about me.’ No smile this time.

  ‘True,’ he admitted, and went on clicking through the image files. Interspersed with the animal shots were ones of people and places: Ben recognised a few settings from Kaprisky’s estate, the lake, the orchard and the palatial house. There were quite a few of her granduncle and her mother taken indoors and out, plus a variety of kids around Valentina’s age who most likely included her best friend Adalie and her little beau, Paul. In one picture, Valentina’s own shadow was visible where she’d snapped Kaprisky’s Gulfstream on the tarmac at Le Mans-Arnage, Adrien Leroy standing by the plane in his uniform. Others showed the interior of the aircraft, and views of fluffy clouds taken from the windows while in flight. Ben kept clicking.

  ‘I recognise that one,’ Tatyana said, pointing. ‘Vnukovo airport, the area where the private jets land.’ Ben recognised it too, though it looked very different in the daytime. The Kaprisky jet had just landed and was parked outside its hangar, light snow on the tarmac. The file information dated the image to October 6 the previous year, during what must have been an earlier visit to Moscow.

  More clicks. The images rolled onwards, and now what Ben and Tatyana were seeing was a visual travelogue of Valentina’s trip to Moscow last October. A short video file, jerky and only a few seconds in duration, showed a scene of city traffic labouring through the icy streets, pictured from inside a scabby car with steamed-up windows and an interior that was unmistakably that of a VW Beetle, the old type with the rear-mounted engine that sounded like an outboard motor. The model of vehicle was confirmed in the next photo, which showed the pale blue Beetle parked at the snowy kerbside outside Yuri Petrov’s apartment building. Valentina had clambered on top of the car and was s
tanding on its domed roof, arms spread wide, face rosy from the cold and split by an enormous grin. Her hair was sticking out from under a woolly hat and a thick scarf was wrapped around her neck. She had grown a lot in the months since the picture had been taken. Her mother would probably not have approved of such antics, but the kid looked full of joy.

  ‘That car is not registered to him,’ Tatyana said. ‘We would have found it otherwise.’

  ‘Wherever it is now,’ Ben said, ‘we know it’s not at his apartment.’

  The next video file, dated October 7, showed the scruffy and hairy figure of Yuri Petrov, posing with a stupid expression as he stirred a pot at the stove in his tiny kitchen, pop music blaring in the background. Dated two days later, in a snowy park somewhere in Moscow, was a photo selfie of Valentina hugging her father as the two of them beamed for the camera.

  ‘That is Gorky Park,’ Tatyana said, clinking a perfect sea-blue fingernail against the screen. ‘See, the House of Artists and the Graveyard of Fallen Monuments are in the background.’

  Not all that wildly interested in Moscow sights, Ben was scrutinising the faces of father and daughter and thinking you could see the love there. However much Valentina’s father might look like Russia’s answer to Charles Manson with the hair and the beard, nothing but tenderness showed in his eyes. A pathetic excuse for a human being. A worthless imbecile. A lying deadbeat. All that Kaprisky had said about Yuri might be true.

  But a dangerous liability and a threat to his child?

  And yet, according to everything Ben had been told and all the evidence so far, this man was supposed to have abducted his beloved little girl, taken her hostage, whisked her away from everything she loved and all the good things in her life.