by Alex Shaw
“Yes Jack?
“Enjoy the rest of your day.” The phone went dead. Patchem, as always, did not waste words.
Vickers leant back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. Two hats; always two hats and just one head. It was nine, he had just an hour before he was to brief the missioners.
*
British Consulate, Kyiv
Classical music played softly in the background and waiting staff offered canapés to the assembled guests. For a modern building this room had ‘come up’ better than expected although Vickers much preferred the smaller but more interesting rooms in the embassy to these large and emotionless ones at the new consulate building. The fourteen members of the trade mission mingled with their invited guests. Some mission members, such as the Director of International Studies from the Language School, had more guests arrive than others. In fact the Saville Row tailor seemed lonely. He looked longingly at the four attractive women buzzing around the school rep. Vickers scanned the faces, some names he had known on the list but most he did not. These were small businessmen, and women, he corrected himself, who had come on the trade mission. Multinational companies seemed to jump in with both feet then complain to him that they were out of their depth. He heard giggles from another invitee when the giftware export sales manager gave her an ‘orgasm key ring’ to try. She pressed the button and it made groaning sounds. Vickers shook his head, what were these people trying to sell? And furthermore why would Ukrainians want to buy?
“Tom Watkins, Thomas Watkins Associates.” The businessman held out his hand.
“Alistair Vickers, commercial attaché.”
“Yes I saw you at the briefing this morning – sorry I couldn’t stay afterwards and say hello; I’ve had so many meetings.”
Vickers took the business card. It was in English on one side and Ukrainian on the other. “You’ve done your homework.” He had lost count of the number of foreign businessmen who had come to Ukraine with only English language versions of their corporate brochure and product literature.
“I pride myself on that, knowing the market.” He looked around the room. “The last two of these things I’ve been on were to Saudi.”
Vickers made an appropriate face. “Really?”
“Yep. Two receptions, two years running and both times the same ex-pats turned up to drink ‘legally’ at the embassy.” He held his neck and pretended to choke. “I couldn’t live there.”
“Well I can assure you that you won’t run dry here. Jesus may have walked on water but Ukrainians run on vodka.”
Watkins gave Vickers a double take. “That’s good. I’ll have to remember that one.” He closed his eyes for a second to file the quip.
“Have your invitees turned up?”
“No. I only invited one person – I already had meetings arranged with other potential clients.”
Vickers ran through the invitees in his head. He had a near-photographic memory – a prerequisite for an intelligence officer – but could not recall any that Thomas Watkins Associates had invited. The businessman continued, “Oh I didn’t fill out any of those cards – I didn’t think I needed to.”
Vickers concealed his annoyance. “Hm, the thing is that, we cannot just let anyone into the consulate, security reasons, etc.”
“Oh.” Watkins took a red caviar sandwich from a passing waiter. “Sorry.”
Bondarenko, one of the local embassy employees, appeared at the door and beckoned Vickers over. “Well, no harm done. If you’ll excuse me I believe that I am wanted.”
“Of course.”
Vickers crossed the room. “Yes?”
“We have an invitee at the door that is not on the list.”
“I see.” Vickers looked back at Watkins, who was busily helping himself to a second glass of wine. “Have they been invited by Thomas Watkins Associates?”
“Yes. Here is the name of the person.” He handed Vickers a card.
Vickers looked at the card. It read, Valeriy Ivanovich Varchenko, General Director Odessa-Invest. Vickers swallowed. General Varchenko had been invited by Watkins? Vickers did not let his surprise show for long and acted matter-of-fact.
“That’s fine, show him up.” Vickers straightened his tie and waited for the former KGB general. Watkins was still busy, now choosing another nibble so did not notice when Vickers greeted the latest arrival. Varchenko entered the room, his head held high like an old school actor appearing on stage, and surveyed the other guests. He was used to attention and had had an almost celebrity-like reverence in the old days when he had been awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal.
Vickers approached. “General Varchenko, how very good to see you here on British soil.” The consulate and their grounds legally constituted British territory.
Varchenko smiled and replied in English. “It is not the first time that I have invaded… Mr –?”
“Alistair Vickers, commercial attaché.”
“Pleased to meet you Alistair.” Varchenko liked to use first names when speaking to foreigners; he felt it made him more cosmopolitan. “I have been invited by a Thomas Watkins. Is he here?”
Vickers pointed “There he is, general.”
“Thank you. If you will excuse me, Alistair.” Varchenko nodded regally and crossed the room. Watkins was drinking wine oblivious to the fact that he had several crumbs on his tie. Inwardly Varchenko sighed. Why were British businessmen so scruffy? Why couldn’t they wear $4,000 suits like he did? The reason of course was he was a man of means.
“Tom, how nice to see you again!” Varchenko had his game face on once more.
Vickers looked on. This was a very peculiar incident. A second British citizen with a link to this guest had just been butchered yet here he was bold as brass in the consulate on British soil. An audacious idea made him smile. He could arrest the general; Ukraine did not have jurisdiction inside the building. A team from London could then question him. It would cause an international incident if word got out but it could be done. Why the father and son, what had they done and to whom? His mind would not be able to rest until he knew why. He was an intelligence officer yet here he had no intelligence at all. Vickers loved puzzles but hated those that he could not solve, like the ten thousand piece jigsaw with the missing bit. He felt a tap on the arm, it was the tailor.
“That man looks remarkably well dressed.”
Vickers’s train of though was broken. “He is a multi-millionaire, he can afford to be.”
The tailor gulped. “Who is he, I wonder if you could… if I could…?”
“He is a former KGB general turned businessman. I suggest you give him your card.”
The tailor nodded enthusiastically, flattened his laps and trotted towards his prey. Vickers continued with his thought process. Varchenko had to know something, may have even authorised the killings. They would not have been his first. Had he just come to the reception to better his cover story? Vickers had to call London, this was too big for him to handle. He could not hold a foreign national, let alone a Ukrainian Oligarch, without a direct order. Vickers left the room and made for the nearest secure telephone.
THIRTEEN
Mars Strip Bar, Kyiv
The waitress removed the reserved sign and they sat. Without a word a tequila bottle and four glasses were placed on the table. Mitch was mother and poured Snow, Arnaud, Michael and himself a shot in turn.
“Shit! This stuff doesn’t get any better,” complained Arnaud.
“I personally prefer a good malt,” commented Michael.
“I’m happy to drink anything if Mitch’s paying,” stated Snow.
Mitch held up his middle finger. “Sod the lot of you then, tossers! Is that better Arnaud?”
“Yep, we’ll make you a Brit yet.” Arnaud had been trying to teach his new friend real ‘English’ English.
The lights dimmed and Snow’s favourite, the blonde in the green bikini, entered through velvet curtains. She danced to the techno beat and gradually removed first
her long white gloves and then her top. “And the British judge gives her a nine point eight for artistic interpretation.”
“I’d give her one,” Michael made his usual joke.
“I have,” said Mitch between puffs on his Havana. “She told me I had the body of a god.”
“Yeah… Buddha,” retorted Snow.
The stripper came nearer and rubbed against Snow’s crotch before turning and whispering in his ear. Snow put a twenty Hryvnia note into her bikini bottoms and was rewarded with a close up of her pert round buttocks before she moved onto the next table. The song over, she disappeared through the curtains holding her costume and a second dancer appeared.
“She’s new.” Mitch knew all the girls by name and a couple better than that. The new stripper cavorted on the small stage then moved from table to table before landing next to Mitch. “I’m Peaches,” she whispered.
Mitch was in his element. “Hi Peaches. Have you seen Cream recently?”
The stripper paused, mentally translated the comment and started to giggle. She retreated as the music ended.
“Was it something I said?” Mitch adopted a pained expression.
“Right, I’m off for a leak.” Snow stood and moved towards the toilets.
Background music started again but this time the lights did not dim as a gypsy violinist accompanied by a belly dancer started their routine.
“Do you think she likes to fiddle?”
“Michael they’re getting worse,” groaned Mitch.
“What, you can’t stomach them?”
The waitress passed in front of table followed by a group of men in suits. She removed another reserved sign from the table next to the stage and they sat.
“Hello, there’s my neighbour.”
“Russian Tina Turner?” Arnaud stared at the stage expectantly.
“No, the Mafia guy.”
Arnaud turned. “Where?”
“Over there by the stage, Mr Subtle.” Mitch motioned with a nod.
“Looks mean,” Michael commented, “but probably just buys and sells on eBay.”
“Yeah auctions off the odd AK47 when he needs a bit of cash.” Mitch raised his hand in acknowledgement as the neighbour looked over. The man smiled and did the same. The entertainment continued with the belly dancer wobbling, she almost knocked Mitch’s neighbour over as he made for the toilets.
Snow could hear the belly dancer’s music, albeit muffled, through the toilet door. He splashed cold water on his face as another customer entered the room. The man walked to the basin and washed his hands. Without looking directly at Snow he acknowledged him in Russian, “Zdravstvyite.”
Snow replied with the same in his Moscow Russian. The man continued to scrub his hands, drying them before he adjusted his dark tie, making sure it sat well on his colour coordinated shirt. Snow dried his face and looked up. Less than a meter away he looked into a pair of green snake-like eyes. After ten years the eyes and face had hardly aged. A chill ran through him and he felt his body quiver. Snow tensed, his fight or flight instinct had suddenly been switched on. He wiped his face again and kept his hands raised to protect and obscure his face. The man continued to adjust his tie and then pushed an errant hair back from his forehead. Snow stepped away from the sink and towards the door. The man did not seem to be interested. Passing through the toilet doors Snow immediately turned left and exited the club. He quickly, but not hurriedly, walked up Karl Marx Street putting himself further away from the club, Khreshatik, Pushkinskaya and his flat. At the corner of Karl Marx and the Ivana Franka Theatre square he sprinted up the hill towards the Presidential administration building and the safety of its armed guards. Reaching the top he leant against the railing looking back over the way he had come. The two guards across the road looked at him with suspicion but lost interest when he started to use his phone and they heard him speaking English. Arnaud’s phone rang in his pocket. Unheard over the music it went to voice mail, which never let him leave a message, before going dead. Snow swore, waved at the guards and then tried Mitch.
The stripper spoke into Mitch’s ear. “You are vibrating.”
For a moment Mitch though it was a compliment then realised that his phone in his pants’ pocket was ringing. He pushed his hand past the stripper’s naked buttock. “Turney.”
The background noise almost drowned out the voice but Mitch could hear it was Snow. “Where are ya buddy?”
“I’m outside. Listen, you have to leave.”
“What? I can’t hear ya. You outside?”
It was hopeless. A booze-and-lust-upped Mitch was like a dog with a bone. “You have to leave. NOW.”
“What? Leave… what…”
The phone went dead as Bull shook the hand of his American neighbour. He liked mixing with the foreign business people; it gave him an air of respectability. Returning to his own table he had a bottle of Mitch’s favourite sent over to the American. He was in a celebratory mood.
“Where’s Aidan?” Arnaud had taken his eyes off of the girls long enough to see that Snow was still not back.
“I think his homing beacon went off. He gets like it sometimes when he drinks, he goes home,” Michael explained. Arnaud accepted this, too drunk to find it unusual, and downed his shot.
*
British Embassy, Kyiv
Vickers leaned back in his chair and munched on a custard cream. He’d received two breathless messages on his mobile from Aidan Snow demanding a meet. The call had been made at 11.35 p.m., and at 8.30 a.m. the next morning Vickers found Snow sitting opposite him in his office.
“Shouldn’t you be at school?” Vickers quipped with a smirk.
Snow, dressed in his usual mock tweed fleece and black jeans, ignored the comment. “Alistair. I told you I wanted to speak to the embassy’s Six man.”
“The Six man?” Vickers copied Snow by using the nickname for the Secret Intelligence Service. “Aidan, with respect, you can’t surely expect me to allow any Tom, Dick or Aidan who barges into the embassy to be allowed to meet a representative from HM Intelligence. What makes you think we even have one stationed here?”
“Don’t mess about. I’ve got some urgent information I need passing on.” Snow had expected this.
Vickers sighed even though inside he was intrigued to hear what his acquaintance, the ex-pat teacher, had to say. “You can talk to me. If it’s important I can arrange for the ‘right people’ to hear it.”
“Alistair, this is no time to play games.” Snow started to feel angry but reigned himself in. Getting annoyed at Vickers would not be helpful. “I take it that you have signed the Official Secrets Act?”
“Of course, as a serving civil servant.” Vickers’s interest grew.
Snow rolled his eyes in resignation. “Fine. What I am now going to tell you puts me in breach of the Official Secrets Act.” Vickers’s eyes widened slightly but he made no comment. Snow continued, “In 1996 I was a serving member of the British Army. I was involved in a training operation in Poznan, Poland. My team was training a Polish paramilitary police unit in CT techniques…”
“Counter Terrorist techniques?” Vickers interrupted. “This would have been a training team from Hereford?” Vickers fished for confirmation of his sudden suspicion.
Nodding, Snow went on, “It was a three month assignment to help bring their boys up to standard.” Snow continued with the explanation, giving only as much information as was absolutely necessary. He told Vickers how his SAS instructor group and their trainees had been the nearest police unit to the ‘robbery in progress’ call on SchreinerBank, the subsequent fire fight and the losses sustained. “The two transits were rigged to explode. We lost eight team members in the first blast. That included the driver of the car I was in, the Polish inspector in the front seat and two lads from the regiment, sitting in the second car.” His mouth suddenly dry, Snow took a sip of his embassy Nescafe. Pulling his mind back from the events of that day he continued. “They escaped with approximately four million
Deutsche marks. Where they went after that we never knew. The cars were found abandoned outside Poznan; locals reported seeing a military helicopter.”
Vickers no longer showed any sign of humour. “Go on.”
Snow inhaled deeply. “Last night in Mars I saw their leader. The same man who pushed a gun in my face in 1996. He’s here Alistair, in Kyiv.”
*
The Offices of Perry & Roe, Horizon Tower, Kyiv
Within ten minutes of leaving the embassy Snow arrived at Horizon Tower. He nodded at the security guard. “I have a meeting with the director of Perry & Roe.”
Hearing English the guard immediately straightened and called upstairs. On getting the OK from Mitch’s receptionist, Snow was ushered into the lift. Getting out on the twelfth floor he was met by Mitch’s gushing secretary Vera, who led him to Mitch’s large corner office.
“Come.” Mitch attempted to sound professional. Snow entered, shut the door, and sat.
“Morning.”
Mitch looked at his watch; it was ten a.m. “Middle of the night man!” Mitch was wearing, as per usual, a crumpled blue Oxford shirt and stripy tie.
“Don’t you own an iron?” It was a running joke.
“It’s a non-iron shirt.”
“It is now.”
Mitch poured them both a ridiculously strong coffee from his private pot. “You’ve decided to come and work for me? Well done. Have a cigar.”
“No.”
“OK, shoot. Why are you messing up my office?”
“Last night I saw someone from my time in the regiment.”
Mitch’s smile vanished, his face became serious. “Like who?”
“Someone who tried to kill me.”
Mitch whistled. “Ya sure?” There was a silence as both men drank the American coffee.
“He was in the toilet in Mars.”
“Ya shitting me, bud?” Mitch winced.
Snow ignored the pun. “Dark suit and tie, athletic, mid-forties, shoulder length hair – gelled back like a footballer, green eyes.”