The President's Fixer: (A Financial and Conspiracies Thriller – a prequel to the Legacy Thriller Series)

by William Wield

  ‘If we don’t get him a partner, do you think Evgeny’s up to it?’ said Lupo, ‘I mean we’re dealing with serious people here, hard to get higher profile than Komarov. What’s more, it’s not as though he’s going to be tailing just anyone. In their positions either or both of them are likely to have minders looking out for them. What’s equally important is we don’t want him to get caught and taken in somewhere for a chat, if you get my meaning. The last thing we need is for him to get caught shadowing either of these two characters and then, under duress, letting it out that he works for us.’

  ‘Okay, I understand your concerns,’ said Rocco, ‘but he’s one of the best, he ain’t gonna get caught, trust me.’

  ‘All right, if you say so,’ muttered Lupo, ‘better get onto him and get him to work right away.’

  ‘I’ll do it right now,’ said Rocco.

  The telephone call to Evgeny was not one of the easiest he had ever made. Although Evgeny was keen to be on an active job again at nearly ten times his standby retainer rate, his eagerness was blunted as soon as he was told that the targets he was to watch were Komarov and Silayev. Still, if he’d protested too much about the danger of stalking these two, they might have given the assignment to someone else and he cheered Rocco considerably when he said he had no other jobs on at present and could get started right away.

  * * * * *

  Evgeny chose to become familiar with Silayev’s movements first rather than Komarov’s. After hearing all the details of the brief, he also decided that it wouldn’t really matter that much which of the two he followed. As soon as they found the weapon or made any other moves connected with it, the two of them would confer and, if he’d been watching the wrong one, he would soon be able to change his main target.

  But it was not till Saturday evening that matters seemed to hot up. Evgeny became intense, even excited as he longed to have some positive news to pass back to Lupo. Komarov and Silayev met firstly for drinks and then continued on with by dinner at a small French-style restaurant. The more interesting bit came when the two of them decided to go to the night club which was a fairly regular haunt of theirs. The Maxi, just off Tverskaya and not far from Silayev’s place was one of the City’s more exclusive night-spots and there was no way in which Evgeny could follow them into the place. To overcome this drawback, he had previously taken the precaution of giving good money to Olga, a girl who had been back to Silayev’s place several times in the past; she promised to go to the club if ever Silayev decided to go there and was given a full brief on what she was to do; Evgeny gave her a considerable sum for the mission.

  He rang her at her tiny apartment just as soon as the two of them had disappeared into Maxi’s and told her that her job was on for tonight. She was also told to meet him outside the club – said he’d be in his red car opposite the main entrance to the place. She arrived in due course and she got into the back of his car. During a second briefing, he hinted rather unsubtly that she wouldn’t want anything to happen to her parents if she were foolish enough to ‘change sides’ or betray her arrangement with him. She appeared to be genuinely shocked at the suggestion that she would ever do anything so stupid. She left Evgeny’s car and he watched as she was allowed into the club.

  The evening went well in that Olga made sure that, as on occasions in the past, she got picked by Silayev to join them. Soon after that Komarov, who had consumed rather more vodka than he could handle, had to be helped away from the club by his driver who had obviously been called for that purpose – probably by Silayev.

  Evgeny was further encouraged that something might come of his rather crude honey-trap for at around eleven-thirty Olga came out of the club on her own and headed straight for his car.

  He had the windows up to keep out the cold of the night but a chink each side of the car so that it did not get steamed up. He was not sure which he saw or heard first the sound of a couple of shots from a silencer, or Olga collapsing as she got near his car. She just folded in mid-stride – like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Fear suddenly clutched at various parts of Evgeny’s body all at the same time. Amongst other things, it also slowed his reactions and he had only just got his hand to the ignition keys dangling there, when he saw barrel of a gun poking through the chink in the open window.

  ‘Out,’ said a voice from behind the gun. It was at this moment that he remembered that he had rung Rocco. There had been no reply so he had sent a lengthy text message detailing this particular mission. At the very second the horrendous implications of this permeated his half-frozen brain, the figure outside helped him to get out of the car and said in a quiet even tone, ‘Your gun and your mobile.’

  Evgeny’s panicking thoughts were interrupted by a sharp dig in the ribs from a gun and he was frog-marched to Silayev’s apartment. On the way he was pushed on with the gun many times and he knew there would be ugly bruises to his ribs – though it also occurred to him that these were likely to be the least of his problems.

  Once in the apartment he was taken into a small room, bound hand and foot and tied to a chair. He was then just left there in silence. In the dim light of a small table lamp that seemed strangely far away, he could see that he was in a small room and a feeling of claustrophobia began to add to his already deep sense of foreboding.

  As though these feelings were not enough, after he had been sitting there for some time, another chilling thought began to creep in on him. They would no doubt be finding out who he had been texting. This was not good news. Firstly, it would not take long for professionals like these to find out who Rocco was and then, God have mercy on him, they would probably use the old code which dealt with punishments laid down for those who pit mafia against mafia.

  He had no sense of time sitting there but on the three occasions over the next three or four hours, Silayev’s occasional brief visits got shorter as did his temper. Evgeny guessed that between these sessions Silayev’s people would be checking his story out in New York. This worried him greatly. He could only guess but he reckoned that, on a Saturday afternoon, Lupo’s people would have gone off for the weekend. He also guessed that Silayev would get contacts in New York to tackle Lupo’s staff rather than Lupo himself or Rocco.

  Either way it did not bode well for him and he resigned himself to making peace with his maker.

  * * * * *

  It was just on nine p.m. when the call came through to Lupo. He and Rocco had just got back to the apartment after a light supper round the corner at one their favourite Italian restaurants.

  Lupo was in good spirits, the prospects of some interesting opportunities that might arise a bit down the line when they had got their hands on Athena had put a new spring in his step. It was therefore both a shock and extremely embarrassing when he heard who was calling him. Even more so as he glanced at the small gilt clock on the top of a side-table and did a quick calculation – five in the early hours of the morning in Moscow – not good at all.

  ‘Anton, what a surprise, what can I do for you?’ he said putting as breezy a note into his voice as he could.

  ‘Just wondered if you’d like a word with your man Evgeny before he joins the celestial choirs,’ came Silayev’s guttural voice down the line. There seemed no point in trying to bluff his way out of the situation. Evgeny would have spoken to or texted Rocco and yet Silayev had chosen to call him. Under the code, this meant that he had either incontrovertible evidence that Evgeny was working for him, a confession from Evgeny, or worse, both of those.

  ‘I’d like a word with him,’ he said.

  As soon as he was through to Evgeny, but before he could say a word, Evgeny rushed out what he wanted to say.

  ‘You were right, they’re after the weapon.’ There was maybe half a second before a shot nearly deafened Lupo and immediately after that the line went dead – just the noise of an unobtainable telephone line to mark the passing of a good, if out-classed man.

  Lupo slammed down the telephone, looked across to Rocco but then turn
ed and walked briskly over to the window. He stood there in silence for a moment, then turned back to face the other. His face was twisted and red with rage. He knew now that they had been in the wrong and that his mistake had been to think that Evgeny was good enough to go up against the likes of Silayev. Rocco wondered what Lupo was going to say. He didn’t have long to wait.

  ‘This is outright war,’ was all that Lupo said as he walked briskly across to the drinks cabinet. Rocco decided that this required no comment from himself but just watched as Lupo poured two large brandies into fine balloon glasses. He then stretched out an arm with one of the glasses for Rocco to take, he raising the other in a toast.

  ‘To Evgeny,’ he said, and then after a slight pause, ‘and to war.’

  Chapter 6

  Sunday 6 March, morning

  Craithe Castle, Argyllshire

  Angus and Kim had put their time to good use after arriving on Craithe on Wednesday. Having only seen photographs of Craithe Castle it had taken Kim a much of the day to get over the surprise of seeing how vast the castle was in reality. She had met all the family and had been made to feel completely at ease, especially by Angus’s parents.

  The Laird – Sit James Macrae of Craithe, Bt. to give him his proper title – always bumbling around the castle at speed, was always dressed in the same clothes – a well-tailored but crumpled tweed jacket and an ancient kilt which was so faded that it might have come straight down to him off one of the ancestral portraits in the Great Hall. Lady Macrae had taken her aside, chatted with her and had insisted on being called Florence.

  Angus had spent much of his time with the team discussing the launch of Athena at a conference being organized on Good Friday morning at the Bank of England. Most of the work had already been done and Angus had plenty of time also to show Kim round the enormous Great Hall with its tapestries, decorative montages of armaments from the past and the numerous Macrae family portraits. He also showed her the large family history book nearly an A3 size leather-bound and more than six inches thick. After immersing herself in all of this and been round the outside of the castle with its eighty-foot walls of granite, she began to understand why Angus had thought of bringing the team here as Athena became increasingly like a honey pot to the wasps of international crime and espionage.

  Early Sunday morning the gentle pace of team planning of the earlier part of the weekend changed. And that change was abrupt as Angus and his father were called urgently to the Lab.

  As soon as he heard an outline of the reason, he telephoned down for Kim to come up and join them. During the leisurely time they had enjoyed up until that moment she had met Professor Hapsley, the leader of the Athena team and the others and marveled at the way the great mediaeval south-east tower had been converted to house the team – with some of the bedroom and bathroom accommodation spilling over into the main body of the castle, the restaurant, kitchens, sitting room and, above all the Lab were mostly within the five floors of the tower so she had no difficulty finding her way there.

  The whole team of six, Angus and the Professor were all there, anxiously waiting for her arrival so that they could get on and discuss the news that had come in last night and this morning. She apologised for keeping them waiting and as soon as she had found herself a seat Angus started the meeting.

  ‘I think that all of you know that since Athena became one of the country’s main hopes for fighting off cyber-attacks on the likes of banks – and even before its official launch at Easter – the Government insisted on a permanent link between ourselves and a small dedicated team to watch out for us at GCHQ. Yesterday there was an outburst of communications chatter of various kinds – emails, mobile telephone conversations and texts and so on – all of them referring in one way or another to Athena.’

  A ripple of murmuring went round the group.

  ‘I’ll cut out all the detail and just give you a summary.’

  He then told them of all the information that had been gathered over the past number of months by both GCHQ and the NSA in the States. He told them of Bazarov’s interest in acquiring Athena to use it for retaliation against the West in general but the UK in particular. Luckily, he told them, the move of the team from the Towneley Foundation computer training centre in London here to Craithe had thrown off Bazarov’s search. He went on to tell them of two well-known people linked to the FSB – the old KGB – had taken over Bazarov’s quest to find and steal Athena. He also told them of the two different groups of mafia in Moscow and New York getting in on this search as well.

  ‘So you see,’ he said as he got towards the end of his exposition, ‘the time has arrived which we have always feared would come one day – when the hunt for Athena has started in earnest.’

  He looked round the group and was relieved to see that they were taking the news with equanimity.

  ‘I am afraid that I have to tell you that the chances of our location remaining a secret forever are probably nil. But I shall be taking steps today to try and counter any of these people’s plans to come here to try and steal it. You should know that not even Cromwell whose sidekick General Monck tried to overcome the castle in the seventeenth century managed to breach the castle; I’ll be making some other arrangements to ensure that when the tourist season starts in a few weeks’ time that anyone looking for Athena doesn’t slip through our security cordon and get as far as any of you here. Any questions so far?’

  ‘Is there anything pre-emptive we can do to counter these people making plans to look for us and try and steal all our hard work?’ asked Johnno, one of the young super-hackers of the team.

  ‘Good question,’ replied Angus, ‘and the answer is yes. I have a call in to one consultant I’ve known for some time – one of the best. And he’ll be advising me on what else we need to do to protect ourselves even better than our present security arrangements.’

  ‘What happens after Athena is launched? Won’t the fact that so many people in London will know of us make it more difficult to keep this place a secret?’ asked another.

  ‘I can’t give you a false sense of security. Yes, progressively Athena’s warning and activation software will be installed in many companies – banks to start with. If any company with this system installed is attacked, Athena based here will instantly retaliate and render the attacker useless. In time that will realise my uncle’s dream where hackers finally understand that if they attack an Athena-protected organization, all that will happen is they’ll have all their equipment immobilized. But even with our software going into so many companies, none of them will be any the wiser about our location – that remains a secret for as long as possible. But what I am saying to you is this, even if our location is leaked one day, we will have defenses in place by then to keep unwanted people away from you and from Athena. Any questions?’

  ‘Why not just install Athena itself in these institutions? That way there would never be a connection with us here after we’d done the original installation?’

  ‘Because we don’t want people trying to unpick your work and discover how Athena works by installing the whole computer suite onto others’ machines. Our guess is that it would take anyone a considerable time before they would be anywhere near being able to understand our software. Moreover, they’ll also discover in time that Athena only works in conjunction with a quantum computer and proper working models of quantum computers are still exceedingly rare.’

  ‘So we’re going to come through all this mafia activity okay then?’

  ‘We certainly are. None of you or Athena will be in any danger.’

  The meeting broke up after that. And although everyone seemed both flattered at the recognition of ‘their’ Athena was such a sought-after prize, they also seemed resigned to the fact that even though war over it might continue for a while, Angus would ensure that their peaceful life here on Craithe would not suffer as a result.

  All that remained for Angus to do was to ensure that his comforting words about the team’s safety
could be upheld and as soon as the meeting was over, he took Kim to one side.

  ‘With this news from GCHQ of heightened interest in Athena,’ he said, ‘we need to move faster on something I had hoped we might be able to leave till after the launch. I think that’s now changed, better come with me. We’ll use my father’s study. I don’t want any of the team to hear what we’re doing as we build better protective measures around Craithe and Athena.’

  Once in the Laird’s study, Angus relaxed.

  ‘Can I ask what you have in mind to strengthen security here?’ asked Kim.

  ‘Of course. Over the Easter weekend I’m going to get and old friend of mine from my time with the Vassilov Kapital Bank in Moscow to bring some of his people over here from Moscow. They’ll to give us some temporary protection. His name’s Borislav Boreyev and he owns and runs one of Europe’s best and most innovative security firms. I’m also going to ring and old friend of mine from University days; you’ll like him, he’s a real maverick. I haven’t told anyone else about this yet because he’s still under contract to others, but he’ll be joining us after the Easter weekend on a permanent basis.’

  ‘Sounds interesting, what will to do when he joins us?’

  ‘His name’s Tom Traynor. We were at Cambridge together. We both read Law though I never had any intention of practicing it and after two months being articled to a large and famous London firm, neither did Tom. He found it boring to the point that he could not imagine spending the rest of his life at it.’

  ‘What, all that time taking degrees and then not using them to build a career – it’s almost like throwing them over.’ Kim looked shocked.

  ‘Well not exactly throwing them over, more using the knowledge and experience gained in other ways, just not in the actual practice of law. For example, in my case, as you know, Jack Towneley was drowned and I joined the Towneley Bank in his place, but my knowledge of the law was still a real asset. And as for Tom Traynor, he did something no one expected.’