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

by William Wield

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Late in his teens he had shot up in height from quite small to six-foot-four in a short space of time. It left him thin as a broom handle. His father virtually took over the situation; he was a great believer in the compulsory National Service which had ceased in the late nineteen-fifties so, to toughen Tom up and put some muscle on him, he got him into his old regiment, the Coldstream Guards – short service commission. He did well, got the Sword of Honour at Sandhurst Academy, did well in active service too and was taken into the SAS in Afghanistan; he was lucky not to be killed by an IED alongside one of his mates in Helmand Province. Saved two other’s lives, got an MC for bravery but was also invalided out of the army. He was left with an unusual wound – a small metal plate to cover a hole in his skull left there by the explosion of the IED.’

  ‘That’s quite a CV; so what did he do then?’

  ‘He tried a couple of things though as he’s independently very well off – and old great-aunt heiress left him an estate which was sold and a fortune that had gone with it – so he didn’t actually have to do anything to earn a living. Typical of him though, he tried a number of things including the security industry; amongst other things it got him a suspended sentence for putting a burglar in hospital for six months and I’m afraid that sentence and a criminal record put him out of the security industry. Undaunted, he joined up with one of the largest international firms of private investigators, IPI.’

  ‘You’re joking, a private detective?

  ‘Not quite, though I’m not sure what his actual contractual arrangement with IPI are; but I know he’s not actually employed by them, I think he’s there on their books for special assignments that fit in with his specialty.’

  ‘His specialty?’

  ‘I asked him the same thing shortly after he’d joined them,’ replied Angus.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Still not sure exactly but he covers investigations into things like industrial espionage, corporate malpractice – and, for example, a case when one partner thought he was being ripped off by the other partner. But he’s also been involved in a number of cases where people have been really badly served by the justice system and want to get redress through private cases through the courts. He doesn’t do any of the legal work but his knowledge of the law helps hugely nevertheless. And handy too his training in the SAS – it means he doesn’t shy away from physical confrontation if that arises.’

  ‘Well,’ said Kim, ‘sounds an unusual character and, as you said, looks as though he’d be a good fit for our predicament right now.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Angus. He glanced at his watch. ‘You might as well stick around and listen in, I’ll ring him now.’

  He got out his mobile, looked up the number and dialed it on the landline.

  ‘Tom, it’s Angus, hope I’m not being a pain disturbing your peaceful Sunday?’ he said as soon as the telephone was answered.

  Kim listened with the telephone on speaker. For a short while the conversation caught up on what each had been doing since they’d last spoken which they worked out together had been around a year ago. There was a lot of laughter, especially over a tale of Tom being jailed in Marrakesh when he was staking someone out but, unknown to him, was doing so on the premises of a brothel and it was raided whilst he was on the stake-out. Eventually he was released and from Angus’s description of Tom’s good looks and unassuming charm, the Tunisian police believed him when he said he wasn’t in the brothel for pleasure and they let him go.

  Angus finished by saying, ‘I’m delighted that you’re joining us after Easter but I’m ringing you now because I’m hoping that if you’re winding down your work with IPI, you might be able to advise or even help us before you get here?’

  ‘Probably,’ replied Tom. ‘Why don’t you let me know what the problem is and what would be involved in time, then I can then make a judgement and see if it’s manageable without upsetting IPI. How’s that?’

  ‘Right, first the problem,’ replied Angus. ‘Right now GCHQ have told us that there’s been a flurry of activity around the Athena name – you remember the project we’ve been working on for the past couple of years?’

  ‘Yeah’.

  ‘The sources of chatter are Moscow and mafia and organized crime in Moscow and New York. In our view all of these will start trying to track Athena down by going to where it was last rumoured to be under development. That place was one of my uncle Jeremy’s Foundation’s centers. It’s called the Newby Training Centre, Newby Lane, Tower Hamlets in the east end of London. We moved the team for security reasons and secretly relocated them in a couple of stages up here to Craithe Castle. But these mafia people who now looking for Athena will use Newby Lane as the starting point for their searches. The Newby Centre will be closed over the weekend so I’ll bet that’s when they’ll send their snoopers round. Would it be possible for you to take some time off from IPI and see if you can spot anyone trying to look over it or get into it?’

  ‘Well as it’s the weekend, of course I can take a run over there and see what’s going on,’ said Tom.

  ‘They may also follow up leads like Professor Hapsley from his Cambridge days and myself from the Towneley Bank in the City, or the Towneley-Vassilov Bank on the Isle of Man; they may even try links through my PA-cum-Secretary Kim Bradley. I’ll send you an email with all this extra information but is what I’ve just told you enough for you to get started do you think?’

  ‘Yes, but could I also contact your own dedicated team at GCHQ, get a direct feed from them to me?’

  ‘Of course you can. I’ll ring them right away. I’ll give them the more flattering bits of your CV. One way or another you can count on having that direct link by midday. Oh, one last thing, I forgot to ask you about fees.’

  ‘Oh, to hell with that, we can wait till I join you after Easter. In the mean time I’ll get myself over to the Newby Centre as soon as I can. Don’t tell anyone other than GCHQ anything about taking me on or give anyone a description of me – if I were in their shoes and looking for Athena, one of the first things I’d try and find out is who’s defending it – and from now, that includes me. I’ll be in touch as soon as I have anything of interest. Love to Tatty.’

  Then he was gone.

  ‘Tatty?’ queried Kim.

  ‘That’s what all the family call Tatiana and maybe I should have mentioned, Tom was my Best Man.’

  ‘He sounds switched-on; do you think he’ll come up with anything over the weekend?’ asked Kim.

  ‘If anything is going on, he’ll find it, don’t worry about that.’

  Chapter 7

  Sunday 6 March, evening

  Newby Centre, East End, London

  Igor Komarov and Anton Silayev learned from Evgeny that at the least the New York mafia were actively pursuing an interest in Athena. To fight off anyone else stealing a march on their pursuit of the weapon, they now needed to move faster. As soon as was practicable, they needed to get a top FSB operative to go to London, make use of the Russian Embassy staff if necessary, but to track down Athena and its team by doing it there, on the ground.

  Komarov picked Izolda Valik for this urgent task. There had never been an assignment on which she had not excelled and even her fellow FSB agents admitted that she was within the top two or three in the whole service. Though petite at five-foot six, her combat skills and endurance caused one of her former instructor’s joke with his mates that even he would think twice before confronting her in a dark alley.

  Komarov comprehensively briefed her about those who were suspected of taking an interest in the Athena team, gave her mug-shots of some of their operatives and informed of their usual modus operandi. It was also made clear to her the enormous value placed by all of them on the prize – Athena – and therefore the lengths to which these others might go to find it. By the end of her briefing she was clear that this was much more than just simple investigation into a team relocation.

  Naturally the
re were some bits of the briefing which were hazy – no one knew, for example, if Guiseppe Lupo had affiliated mafia arrangements over in Europe or, more specifically, in London. For safety’s sake it was assumed that he did and that she should be on the look-out for a mafia operative. She was also reminded that, in true mafia tradition, obstacles such as difficult adversaries were to be disposed of without a pause for breath and with no concern for the law.

  She got the Newby Centre on Sunday morning and took her time to look around, familiarize herself with the geography of the place – transport links, cafes, escape routes. Her briefing had covered those she might expect to see snooping around the centre but what it had not covered – as no one on the Russian staff, not even the top surveillance people at the FSB had any knowledge of him – was that Tom Traynor would be doing exactly the same as her, familiarizing himself with the area. As was allowed by his unusual contract with IPI, he took the precaution of taking two days off for this private assignment and planned to spend the first afternoon looking around the Newby Centre and its immediate vicinity.

  After twenty minutes or so he had got a good idea of the district around the centre and quickly went back to his place in the West End to change. He looked out his oldest clothes and then dressed as casually as he could. He also took with him a canvas bag he normally used for fishing expeditions but this time filled it with some bits of equipment he might find useful for breaking into a locked premises and he also took a couple of other things that would come in handy if he was confronted by anyone else inside the centre in the dark.

  Wanting to attract as little attention to himself as possible, he took a taxi to the Poplar High Street and got it to stop a few blocks short of Newby Place. He walked, or rather ambled in its direction giving a good impression of someone who had already had a drink or two as he also wanted it to look as though he might be a nuisance but certainly not a threat to anyone else. On the way he bought a copy of the Sun Newspaper and folded it open at the racing section.

  Turning left up Newby Place, near the Foundation Centre, he went directly to the pub a short distance up it on the right. On entering he went to the bar and ordered himself a pint of Lager shandy – the kind of drink he could nurse for some time and which would need several pints to even begin to take the edge off someone as fit as himself. Except, of course, that he had no intention of drinking more than a couple of pints, however long the stake-out might take.

  He was in luck; even though dusk was now gathering, there was a small table near a window with a good view of the Newby Centre. As there were a number of other customers gathering in the pub, he decided to add a touch of credibility by acting the part of a heavy drinker who was trying to recoup his finances by betting on the horses. In particular, he spotted that he was being watched rather more than just casually by the landlord. Well-practiced in the arts of staking out a place, he spent some of his time pretending to do calculations on which dogs or horses to place bets on and made an occasional visit to the public telephone ostensibly to place bets; on these trips, although he never actually connected to the dialed number, he made a fuss of placing his bets into the unconnected handset; moving around also gave him views out of other windows to see if people were lurking elsewhere but with their eyes on the center.

  He did not have long to wait before someone clearly definitely was keeping an eye on the Newby Centre as he firstly walked over to it and then came back to the same pub. Slouching down in his chair, Traynor rather hoped that this snooper might find that this was the best seat in the pub from which to keep an eye on the centre. The man came into the pub ordered a drink whilst furtively looking round the place. Traynor, his back to the bar, kept a watch on his reflection in the window. As he had hoped, the man came over to his table. Traynor, merely took a sip from his pint, pleased that he could now keep a close watch on him and should be able to overhear if he made any phone calls.

  Shortly after this a petite young woman went to the Centre’s door and when she came away again, the man at Traynor’s table, with pitiable lack of professionalism, took a number of quick photographs of her while pretending to be taking photos of the interior of the pub. Traynor found it hard to suppress a laugh and coughed as he reached forward to hide his amusement with another sip of his drink.

  The petite lady came over to the pub, entered, went straight over to the bar and ordered a snack. Traynor noticed that she ordered sparkling water and also, from her reflection in the window, saw that she gave Traynor and his companion a long looking-over before going to a table the far side of the pub’s entrance door. He guessed that she was biding her time till it was properly dark.

  Maybe twenty minutes later with dusk now turned to twilight, the man at Traynor’s table and the athletic lady left the pub – with him following her. Traynor smiled again, wondering how many seconds it would take the young lady to spot that she was being followed. As soon as she passed by his window outside, Traynor got up from the table and quickly made his way to the front entrance. In the nick of time he stopped just as he reached the door for the man had stopped in the porch and was on his mobile phone. He was speaking in his strong East End accent and was clearly unaware that Traynor was just round the doorpost from him.

  ‘It’s her I tell you, her name’s Izolda Valik, I saw her before when I was tailing Komarov in London for you – hell that was only two weeks ago, so I should know, shouldn’t I. I’ll send you a photo of her, you’ll find she’s usually employed by Komarov.’ There was a pause while someone spoke from the far end. The East Ender then spoke again. ‘Right, so now you’ve checked the photo I sent. See what’d I tellya, Izolda Valik’s a top FSB Agent. Anyway she’s going to break into the Centre so I gotta go.’ Another pause while the other end spoke.

  ‘Yeah, yeah I can handle her. From her dress I don’t even think she’s packing. Don’t worry I’ll have what you’ve asked me for in two shakes of a duck’s ass.’

  East End man then scuttled off after Izolda Valik and, at a leisurely pace, Traynor followed. He was grateful to East End man for doing some of his work for him and later would want to know his background. East End man went to the main entrance but Traynor skirted round to the rear of the building and found a locked door there. Quietly he picked the lock and, as silently as he could manage, let himself in. He took the precaution of getting his pistol out but kept it down by his side as he crept into the building.

  He found that he had entered a service entrance which, after a short corridor, led into the darkened kitchens. Beyond there was a light on and he could hear voices. One of these was East End man and the very slightly accented woman’s voice more or less confirmed his identification of her as the FSB agent; she was speaking fluent English but with a very slight Russian accent. He edged his way through the kitchens till he reached a doorway into a corridor near the two of them, and could now see and hear that they were arguing; to Traynor’s surprise East End man had a gun pointing at her and seemed to be in control of the situation. Traynor also noticed, however, that he was far too close to be safe from a top FSB Agent.

  ‘I know you’re Izolda Valik, I saw you here with Komarov only two weeks ago, so don’t try to bluff me; and what are those papers you’ve dropped there?’

  As he took his eye off her to look down at these papers on the floor, out of sight to Traynor because it was below the four-foot walls supporting the classroom glass panels, Izolda seemed to kick him, with what looked like a lightning-fast blow into his groin. As he collapsed, bending double with pain, Izolda’s clutched two-hands-together and with this double-handed swing which started from down below her waist, the two hands met his jaw coming down with such force that his head flipped back and, momentarily, he was looking at the ceiling.

  Traynor could hear the clatter of the gun to the floor as Izolda stepped neatly backwards to allow East End man to fall beside her. She picked up the gun and the papers she had dropped earlier and put the gun on a table next to her. Stepping over the body she then came out
of the office she had earlier searched and came towards Traynor’s door. Silent as a cat he stepped back out of sight and the moment she had passed him, one swift and silent swing of his arm brought the butt of his gun down onto the back of her head. She collapsed – out cold.

  Traynor put on a pair of white rubber gloves from his canvas bag and lifted her small body as though she were a child. He carried her back to near where East End man still lay unconscious. He frisked her and then bent down and with a syringe he had taken from his black bag, he administered an injection into her neck.

  ‘Half a dose should do’, he muttered to himself as he put the syringe away again into the bag. He arranged her so that her face could not be seen from the room where East End man lay and went quickly into the kitchens returning a moment later with a bottle of Tomato Ketchup. He poured a small amount of this on the ground around her head. He then quickly went and retrieved East End man’s gun which he emptied and made sure the breach was also clear. Hurrying back to East End man, he checked that he was still out cold and took several photographs of both him and Izolda – he needed to be sure that East End man had been right in his identification of her.

  On getting back to East End man, he lifted him up into a chair, leant him against a table and going round behind him, checked the line of sight. Just right. From where he was propped up, and even better when he regained consciousness, he would be able to see clearly the sprawled body of Izolda and the pool of Ketchup around her head – suitably realistic at this distance.

  He next checked through East End man’s pockets, found his wallet, looked through it and mentally noted his name and address from his driving licence. After returning these to where he had found them, from the black bag he got out a small bottle of old-fashioned smelling-salts and uncorking it waved it under the man’s nose.