by RJ Bailey
Not every ex-soldier joins The Circuit. The percentage among the hard guys – the SAS, the SBS, the Royal Marines and the Paras – is high. They work for the outfits, mostly British, American and South African, that specialise in Hostile Environments. One day they could be escorting a convoy in Afghanistan for HM Government, the next doing it on ten times as much pay for Frontline Services or Stemler Solutions. Quite a few work for the likes of Nicholls Steyn & Associates, which provides security for the Oscars in LA and the Indian Cricket Board, or for Matrix A, another South African firm which covers the Pakistan CB (neither of them easy accounts, as cricket really is war by other means out there).
Most officers leaving for Civvy Street, though, gravitate towards the City, and not usually in security roles but in management and personnel. And the enlisted men and women? Well, I was lucky, lucky that people on The Circuit were just beginning to recognise that a woman with medical training and a basic grasp of the game could be of some use.
But every day I saw others without that good fortune. Sure, they were outnumbered by those who came out of the forces and got on with life. You don’t notice those, the reintegrated. But the streets of London and other cities are littered with the others, and not just the obviously homeless, although ex-military make up a disproportionate percentage of rough sleepers.
No, there is another category of the war-damaged, almost invisible to regular people, those who cross the road when they come to a petrol station, because even the slightest whiff of fumes sends them back to the day when they pulled body parts from a downed Chinook, the ones who crouch behind a wall when a car backfires or reach for an SA80 they are no longer allowed to carry. Then there are those that walk with their heads in the air. Not out of any sense of superiority. They are scanning for half-opened sash windows or roof tiles that had mysteriously lifted despite there being no recent gales. Sniper patrol.
I found myself wondering what the story was with Tom Buchan, the canal boatman. A continuous cruiser, he’d said. Someone who wouldn’t stay more than a few days in one place. Bad things must have happened around him. To people he liked. And he keeps moving on in case it happens again, keeping contacts to a minimum, not risking making friends. The canals would suit that. And, apart from the chug of the engine, it’s quiet down there. For many who succumb to PTSD – and I think that is all of us who served, albeit to varying degrees – it is the sounds that are the commonest trigger for an episode.
I wondered which conflict or conflicts he would have seen. He was about Paul’s age, so perhaps Northern Ireland or Bosnia. I would put him at too young for the Falklands, too old for Iraq and Afghanistan. It didn’t matter, combat stress had certain repeatable and predictable parameters whichever conflict you served in.
Why was I thinking of Tom Buchan suddenly? I switched to thinking about something else, before one of Freddie’s lewd comments popped into my head unbidden. I began to consider how I would tackle the Russian, now he had agreed to see me.
There were no stupid drones buzzing overhead this time. I pressed the intercom at the gate, said I was there to see Mr Asparov and it swung open. No robot, RSCA car was offering to save my legs by whisking me up the drive. The cameras still followed me, though, and there was one black-suited security monkey next to a Range Rover, arms folded across his chest, face impassive, eyes invisible behind sunglasses. It was overcast so the Persols were unnecessary. He was probably the sort that wore them indoors. Never a good look for a PPO – you might as well wear a Bodyguards’R’Us T-shirt. There was a uniformed chauffeur polishing the Range Rover’s bonnet. Another bad choice by Mr Asparov. The chauffeur, not the Range Rover.
The butler opened the door as I approached and stepped aside with a slight inclination of his head and something – pity? – I couldn’t quite place in his eyes. The Slavic cheekbones-on-heels was there too, more solicitous this time. ‘I’d just like to apologise for the manner of your last visit.’
The manner? As if someone had used the wrong fork in my presence. ‘Let’s get this over with. I have things to do.’ People to see, crimes to commit.
She showed me into the same office as before, the one where Mitval had interviewed me and I’d witnessed the dance of the revolving artworks. It was empty.
‘Mr Asparov will see you shortly. Please take a seat.’
I did so and placed the aluminium flight case I had been carrying on the desk in front of me. The house seemed to settle into quiet. The tick of a clock, the hum and growl of a vacuum cleaner on an upper floor, the faintest tinkle of piano music.
I looked at my phone. I had to be back in north London within two hours. I wasn’t in the mood for games. I stood, put the attaché case on my vacated chair and turned to leave.
‘I do love my wife, you know.’
The voice coincided with the whirr of electric motors and the thunk of magnetic bolts being thrown. A crack had appeared in one corner of the panelled wall behind the desk, and it grew as I watched, bleeding a bright, modern light into the gloomy office.
As the wall retreated, so Asparov was revealed, rather melodramatically, I thought. The room behind him was mostly shades of white and grey, and it reduced him to a mere silhouette.
‘Come through, please.’
‘Said the spider to the fly.’ I was well aware of what that space behind him was – a panic room. Windowless, secure, soundproof. I’m not a fan. In a panic room, nobody can hear you scream. And there’s usually only one way out.
‘I shall leave this section open, if it would make you more comfortable.’
I picked up both the flight case and the chair it had been resting on. The chair, I left straddling the groove the hidden door travelled on. I doubted the electric motors were powerful enough to crush even a repro Chippendale.
‘That’s rather an expensive door stop,’ Asparov said with amusement in his voice. So maybe it wasn’t a repro after all.
‘You’ll be less likely to close it, then.’
I looked around the room. There was no desk in here. It was contemporary compared to outside, with pieces that suggested Danish design. At one end there was a small kitchen. I checked the walls and spotted a faint outline in the paintwork. ‘Pull-down bed?’
A nod. ‘Electrically controlled.’ Of course it was. No oligarch would do anything as vulgar as operating something manually.
‘Very nice.’
He pointed to one of two couches. ‘Please, sit.’
I did so, in the centre, so that he was forced to sit elsewhere. As he selected an armchair, I got a good look at him. His blue suit was beautifully cut – Brioni or similar – to hide a little paunch. He was smaller than I expected, probably misled by the swimming pool mural, at around five-seven or eight. His hair was thinning, swept back and probably dyed. The face was long, slightly lugubrious, and I suspected he’d had work done. He certainly had on the teeth, because they outshone everything else in the room.
‘Why the change of style in here?’ I asked. ‘Boodles out there, Bauhaus in here.’
‘Oh, this is what I prefer. Eames, Baughman, Aarnio.’
I pointed to one of the pictures on the wall. It was mostly matt white, with a single glossy stripe down the centre. ‘And does this rotate?’
‘The Ryman? Hardly. That out there? I inherited it. The whole place. But you know, it’s how people expect we Russians to be, so why change it? More money than taste. And if we show our taste, well, we are simply phoneys playing at having a good eye. A Russian can’t really like Ryman or Richter. You would be surprised how easy it is to lull people into a false sense of security when they think they are dealing with someone who has just popped out of a yurt in the Urals.’
Did they have yurts in the Urals? Well, he was in a better position to know. I pushed the case towards him with the toe of my ankle boot. ‘Yours, I believe.’
He looked down at it with something like distaste.
‘It’s a bomb.’
I saw the flash of panic cross his fac
e, the body tense so that he all but levitated, his eyes swivel towards the open wall panel.
‘At least, it could have been.’ I reached down and flicked it open, letting one side fall to reveal the neat stacks of cash within. ‘I walked past one guy in the grounds, was eyed up by half a dozen cameras, so at least one CCTV operative is on duty, let in by Jeeves up there.’ Yes, I knew Jeeves wasn’t a butler in the books, but it was a convenient shorthand. ‘And escorted by Svetlana or whatever her name is. Nobody asked to look inside the case.’
‘Sloppy,’ he said.
‘Not as sloppy as you’d be if a couple of pounds of Semtex had gone off at your feet. Where do you get your people from?’
‘Mitval I brought from Russia. The others I got from the best. At least, I was told it was the best. UBG.’
Universal Body Guards.
‘But they only have male security operatives, which is why I went to Hippolyte for you.’ I was guessing Svetlana didn’t count as muscle.
What UBG has is the best website, the most gushing testimonials, and Colonel Forbes-ffrench, late of the SAS.
I told him what I thought. ‘The people they employ are bumped-up bouncers who have done a five-day course and got themselves a bit of paper that says “qualified bodyguard”. Look closely at Forbes-ffrench’s medals and you’ll see they are a mix of eBay buys and decorations from pre-WW2. I mean, he’s not a young man, but I don’t think he served at the Somme.’
Asparov looked pained. ‘He’s a fraud?’
‘He is.’ Although not all his people are rogues, some just took everything at face value and wondered why they were looked down upon on The Circuit when they produced their UBG certificate.
‘But the SAS?’
‘Slovenian Air Security. Which, incidentally, Colin Brown, that’s his real name, incorporated in Ljubljana so he could use the initials.’ There were plenty of guys who have served in The Regiment who would love to give him a good kicking for that. They don’t take kindly to their name being taken in vain.
‘I see I shall have to reconsider my staffing.’
‘Did the chauffeur come from UBG?’
‘No. Why?’
I don’t like chauffeurs. Not personally, but as a concept. They are usually very good people individually, capable and droll, and perfect if their role is to be a posh cab driver. The problems start when they try and combine chauffeuring with a PPO role. They do love their cars, you see. They spend more time with them than their employers. Or wives and husbands come to that. So when there is that split-second situation where they might have to ram another car to force their way out of a jam, they often hesitate. Just for a vital half-second. You can see it in their eyes: But I’ll scratch the car if I do that. They love their vehicles too much, and it can become a liability.
‘No reason,’ I said, not feeling like giving away too many trade secrets. ‘I assume you had Hippolyte’s computer hacked just to get my address? So you could deliver the money?’
He gave an enigmatic smile. ‘You’ll take a coffee?’
‘Only if you make it.’ Three would be a crowd in that room. Plus I didn’t want him to invite a third party in who might not really be there to act as a barista.
‘Of course.’ He rose and walked over to the kitchen area.
‘And regular, please. Not something that has been crapped out of a rodent’s arse.’
He looked upset at my choice of language, which pleased me. Childish, but rewarding all the same. ‘I don’t think civets are rodents,’ he said evenly. ‘How is Jamaican?’
‘Perfect.’
As he set about grinding the beans, I picked up the flight case and placed it on his seat. ‘So what was this payment? Blood money? Yet another problem that could be solved by throwing cash at it?’
‘Not at all. But I thought you deserved compensation.’
‘I won.’
‘Prize money, then,’ he said with a smile.
‘How did you find out about it so quickly?’
‘Elliott was outraged, or as outraged as a butler can be. He sent a CCTV file to me in Moscow of the, er, incident in the gym.’ Good old Jeeves. ‘That was totally unacceptable. The men had been dismissed immediately. I hoped the money would go some way to an apology.’ The coffee machine began to make its gurgling sounds. ‘I still do. You don’t have to return it.’
‘But I do. Otherwise you’ll just go on thinking money fixes everything.’
‘Doesn’t it?’ Asparov raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. He thought for a moment, rubbing his chin as he did so, as if expecting to find stubble. ‘It was meant as a genuine mea culpa, not a . . . a sticking plaster. You think we oligarchs, as you like to call us, are all immoral robber barons. Isn’t that right?’
I had no opinion on that. But if pressed, I’d come down on the side of yes.
‘But all I did to make my money, initially at least, was what your government does all the time when it sells off the Post Office or Lloyds Bank to its friends in the City. Is that immoral?’
I’d probably go with yes again. But I said nothing.
‘Such things happen all the time, all over the world. I simply offered to buy up shares from the public at a fair price to give me control of a fertiliser company. And most did sell, making a thousand per cent profit along the way.’
I bet there are not that many of the public that now had chauffeurs and wannabe pop-star wives, I thought, but again kept quiet. He came over with two cups of black coffee, moved the case and sat.
‘Look, Mr Asparov, I’m sure you’re a regular Robin Hood compared to most, but it’s immaterial to me. I appreciate the gesture of the money, even if I deplore your choice in staff, but I can’t take it. It feels . . .’
‘Wrong?’ he suggested.
‘Toxic.’
He flinched at that. I had upset him – again. But then that’s partly what I was there for. I’d been very upset in that house myself.
‘You said you loved your wife, when you first did the trick with the wall. What was that all about?’
‘Something else other people find hard to believe. You obviously didn’t hear the beginning of the sentence. I said: I wanted to hire you, or someone like you, because I love my wife. I value her. I know what people think. She is a gold-digger, I am a fool who wants a trophy wife. And I have seen Citizen Kane.’
‘I haven’t.’ It was true. Paul went on and on about it until in the end I was frightened to watch it, because nothing could possibly live up to that billing.
‘Well, Kane creates a career for his wife as an opera singer, even though she can’t sing. I can see the parallels.’
I drank some of my coffee.
‘And because she is wife number three, they expect her not to last long. I think they underestimate her. But they are right – it is very difficult to find a woman who is not blinded by money.’
He made a gesture that suggested I was one of these few. Well, I won’t be blinded by ten grand. You’d have to bid me up a little.
‘How is the coffee?’
‘Lovely. Forgive me, but I must be going.’ I took a larger hit of the coffee and put the cup and saucer on a low fibreglass table.
‘Coincidentally we are off to Jamaica soon, Katya and I. Geejam. You know it?’ I shook my head. ‘A hotel and recording studio. Katya is doing some work with Max Martin. Then New York, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris. I’ll be away for ten days, two weeks. So, while I have you here, I’d like to ask you a question. Perhaps two.’
I stood, just to show him my time was precious and I really did need to be going. ‘Ask away.’
‘Who would you go to for better security people?’
‘Someone specialising in your niche. Not doing a jack-of-all-trades or doors or mainly serving governments in hostile environments. Domestic close-protection specialist. Maybe draw some from Hippolyte, because ideally you need a mix of men and women, and then maybe go to someone like FrontFirst. But really, anyone who knows The Circuit could put you a h
alf-decent team together.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ He drained his own coffee and also stood. ‘Next question.’
‘Yes?’
‘Would you like the job?’
TWENTY-EIGHT
An hour later I watched an RAC van pull into the courtyard outside the health club. I raised a hand and the vehicle turned towards me. With a deft spin of the wheel, the driver positioned it diagonally, behind the BMW X1, blocking it from the view of anyone else using the car park. The van’s hazard lights flicked on to show it was attending an emergency. The door opened and One-Eyed Jack stepped stiffly from the cab with a chorus of groans and grunts.
‘My God, are you OK?’ I hissed.
‘Never better.’ He opened a compartment in the side panel of the truck and extracted a Snap-On toolbox. ‘I decided to play in a dads’ football match last night. Bloody hell, most of them have forty years on me. Look, I’m walking like Boris Karloff. I don’t think me knees can bend any more. All that and driving in London, I forget how horrible it is . . .’
‘Jack, when a man is tired of London . . .’
‘He’s tired of strife, I know. Now, what do you want to do here?’
We both looked at Mrs Sharif’s X1. It was parked in a numbered bay outside the health club at Alexandra Palace where she allegedly did Pilates. Lord knew what it cost her to have it there permanently. I had seen it leaving shortly after I had dropped her off that first afternoon, in the wake of my kidnap by Bojan and Mitval. I hadn’t looked at the reversing camera footage immediately and I almost missed the fact it was her, except she was fussing with a hijab as she drove. And that movement caught my eye. Still, it could have been mistaken identity, so I got Jack to run the plates. It was her car. And on each subsequent occasion when I took her to ‘Pilates’, I had watched the bronze-coloured X1 leave within five or ten minutes of me pulling away.
She was up to something, all right. But what? In any other family I might have thought – a secret lover. In fact, I hoped it was. Because with the Blade of Islam hanging over the household, it was possible that she had even less pure motives. Could it be that Mrs Sharif was the link to BOI? I didn’t want to make that accusation until I could be sure.