Transition

by Ethan Arkwright

  On the roof, guests could look over the Moscow skyline in summer, from the repose of a beautiful Mediterranean terrazzo.

  Café Pushkin was one of the most famous restaurants in Moscow. Most of the locals and Westerners lucky enough to get a table, and wealthy enough to pay the exorbitant prices, were where predominantly there to show that they were somebody.

  Two streets up from the restaurant, an unmarked limousine was passing Pushkin Square. The famous eatery was its destination.

  ‘Wow. Look at all the neon,’ said Mitchell’s head of security, his face pressing against the blacked-out, bullet-proof glass.

  Calvin Mitchell sat opposite, looking distinctly unimpressed.

  ‘Nah,’ Mitchell said. ‘The lights in Vegas are way better. Hey, did you organize me a girl?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good. I heard about this place we’re going to. This Caf Poochkin. I wanna sit in the chair that Clinton sat in.’ Mitchell said, his southern drawl becoming more prominent as he began to relax.

  ‘Yes, sir. I thought so, sir. It’s arranged.’

  The car pulled up outside the restaurant and the entourage of Calvin Mitchell swept inside.

  ‘Dang!’ Mitchell exclaimed, as he looked sideways at the alcohol bottles mixed in amongst apothecary vessels in the pharmacy bar. He did not get long to take things in though, as his security officer and two bodyguards shuffled him upstairs.

  On the second floor, the restaurant manager was already behind a waiting chair at a table for two. Sitting in the second chair was a gorgeous blonde, with outrageously long legs that stretched out from beneath a classic little black dress.

  There was a thin Russian in a tuxedo holding out the other chair at the table. ‘I am Fedyev, manager of Café Pushkin,’ said the host ingratiatingly.

  ‘And this ...’ Fedyev said, motioning to the showcase of Russian genetics tightly wrapped in black fabric, ‘ ... is Svetlana.’

  Svetlana demurely lowered her eyelids half a centimetre. Calvin Mitchell’s eyes widened. He had been with some of the best high-class hookers money could buy – this girl was right up there with the best.

  ‘And this,’ Fedyev said, motioning to the chair in front of him. ‘Is the chair President Bill Clinton of USA sat in, when he ate here.’ Fedyev stepped back and pulled the chair out for Mitchell to be seated.

  ‘What I expect,’ Mitchell said, as the chair was pushed in behind him. ‘Take a hike,’ he said to his security as he settled in. He jerked his thumb toward the exit to emphasize the point.

  ‘Uh, yes, sir,’ the security man replied.

  The security officer made a hand signal to the two bodyguards and they all melted into the background of the room.

  ‘So, Monica,’ Calvin Mitchell began. ‘Do you mind if I call you Monica?’

  ‘You ken call me votever you like,’ Svetlana purred.

  ‘Excellent. What’s good to eat here?’ Mitchell asked.

  ‘Borshch very good,’ Svetlana said.

  ‘Huh?’ grunted Mitchell.

  ‘Russian soup,’ Svetlana explained.

  ‘Yeah, foreign soup, I like soup. Hey Feddie!’ Mitchell yelled to the manager, who was a few tables away. ‘Get us two of the bosch!’

  The manager winced, but nodded his head. A waiter in a white jacket was dispatched to the kitchen.

  A few minutes later, two steaming bowls of soup materialized in front of the couple. Calvin Mitchell picked up his spoon and looked at Svetlana.

  ‘Well, Monica, here’s to the bosch,’ Mitchell said, dipping the spoon into the bowl of steaming red beet soup. As he raised a full spoon for the first taste, his mobile phone rang in his inner jacket pocket.

  ‘Dammit. Who in the hell is that?’ Mitchell dropped the spoon and fumbled around in his jacket, eventually fishing out a slim, silver phone. He pressed the screen and brought it to his ear.

  ‘Yeah?’ Mitchell said, annoyed at the intrusion.

  ‘Calvin Mitchell?’ a voice asked.

  ‘O’ course, jackass! It’s my ph-’

  Calvin Mitchell’s words were cut short as a forty-five-calibre slug tore a small hole through the front of his head and a big hole out the back. A little splat sound was heard as his head dropped, face first, into the soup bowl.

  Svetlana screamed.

  From a rooftop opposite, the man in a grey coat turned off a mobile phone that was connected to his ear via an earpiece. He then quickly disconnected his high-powered sniper rifle and packed away the pieces into an innocuous-looking business briefcase.

  He carefully scanned the ground for any debris that might have fallen onto the floor before walking away and melting into the stairwell.

  6

  Moscow, London,

  Washington DC, Houston

  Andrei Demetchev, the head of domestic investigations at the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, the FSB, was slowly dragged from the depths of a deep sleep. A consistent, piercing ringing gradually entered his consciousness. It was his office mobile phone. He looked dazedly at the clock on the wall opposite, to see it was eleven-thirty at night.

  Demetchev had made a special effort to come home early, and had fallen asleep in his comfy chair watching the television. His bleary eyes gradually refocused on the pulsating square of the television screen.

  Moscow Sparta was losing by two goals in the Champions League football tournament.

  ‘Atyebis!’ Demetchev swore at the television, before stirring his large frame to pick up the ringing phone. He looked at the number flashing blue on the screen. It was the office. He had left strict instructions not to be disturbed unless it was an emergency.

  He snatched up the phone.

  ‘Da,’ he grunted into it as he glared at the television in disgust. His eyes widened as his brain interpreted the words coming through his ear.

  There was an explosion of blankets and snacks as Demetchev shot out of his chair like a man possessed.

  ‘Na Kuye!’ he swore violently, racing for the door. There was already a car waiting for him downstairs.

  Twenty minutes later, Demetchev was raging at his cowering reports in the FSB offices on Lubyanka Square.

  ‘How could this have happened?’ he yelled. ‘In the conference centre of all places. Heads will roll for this!’

  The yelling came in waves, and his team bobbed and weaved slightly as they rode the storm. Many of them had this down to an art form from experience. Most of them knew that the real reason Demetchev was raging was that the Russian president would be calling imminently – with the sole purpose of raging at Demetchev.

  Somebody brought another phone in and passed it to Demetchev.

  ‘It’s him, Medvjed,’ the man said, as Demetchev took the phone.

  Demetchev was a huge man; he had been a weightlifter in his student days, but was drafted into the secret service instead of turning professional. He had picked up the nickname Medvjed, meaning ‘Russian Bear’, when he was an athlete. He still lifted weights and maintained large muscle mass. Thus the name had stuck long after he had finished competing.

  As he took the phone everybody watched his huge frame sink a couple of inches lower.

  They could hear the yelling coming from the small phone held up to Demetchev’s head. Demetchev pinched the top of the bridge of his nose in pain and kept muttering ‘Da’ into the phone. He grimaced occasionally and pulled the phone away momentarily, every so often when the yelling hit a peak.

  The Russian president was unflappable in front of the media and public. Those who worked for him, though, knew full well that the man was capable of colossal tempers. After a couple of minutes of intense yelling and obedient agreeing, Demetchev hung up the phone. His eyes darkened.

  ‘Well, that about sums up our lives for the next few weeks,’ he said. ‘Our exclusive mission is to find who ordered these murders that have so badly embarrassed the Russian Federation – and damn quickly.’

  It was four in the afternoon in London. In the
headquarters of the British secret service on the south bank of the Thames, William Gladstone, the head of MI6, took another sip of tea while looking over the churning river.

  ‘I’m sorry you’ve decided to go early, Henry,’ Gladstone said, as he replaced his cup onto its saucer with a clink. ‘Sorry I had to say goodbye over afternoon tea. In another four hours we could have done this in an even more civilized manner with a whisky.’

  ‘It’s not a problem, sir. Retirement comes to us all. For me, I know the time is right – it’s not like the old days,’ said Henry Marsdon, an MI6 manager in his early sixties.

  ‘I’m glad we could sit opposite your desk for a final cup of tea, though,’ Henry said.

  Gladstone turned from the window and returned to sitting in his high-backed, red leather chair.

  ‘I know what you mean – about the old days,’ Gladstone sighed.

  He was also in his early sixties but his full head of completely white hair had always made him look older than he was. Recently, he had been feeling his age.

  ‘The world seems as dangerous a place as it has ever been in my lifetime, Henry.’ Henry nodded philosophically and took another sip of tea.

  ‘When we started in this game, there was only one enemy and you knew who they were,’ Gladstone continued. ‘Today, threats come at you from every angle. Even within your own country; sometimes ...’ he paused, ‘ ... Sometimes within your own government.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Henry agreed. ‘People were better when we had one giant dragon to slay. Everyone was united. Since there’s been no dragon, it’s as though everyone has turned to picking fights over minor disagreements or, dare I say it sir, just plain greed.’

  ‘It’s nice to reminisce,’ Gladstone said. ‘Still, as my mother always said to me, one must continue and do one’s best, if it’s right – if it’s duty. These are the important things.’

  Henry Marsden laughed. ‘Right you are, sir. Right you are,’ he said. ‘Keep calm and carry on.’

  One of the phones on Gladstone’s desk rang sharply to end the interlude with an old colleague. Gladstone’s left eyebrow arched as he looked at it. It was the special phone.

  Henry Marsden knew what the phone meant. Both men stood and shook hands. Marsden turned to wordlessly exit the office.

  William Gladstone sat down, adjusted his tie, cleared his throat, and picked up the phone.

  ‘Yes, prime minister,’ he said into the receiver.

  ‘Ah, Gladstone,’ said the haughty, yet slightly camp, voice of the British prime minister down the line. ‘You’ve seen this business with Maslov and Calvin Michell.’

  ‘Yes, prime minister. Fifteen minutes ago.’

  ‘I want you to quietly get some people involved.’

  ‘I thought you might, prime minister. I’ve already given the orders.’

  ‘Ah, very good. We need to find out why the head of a global company that brings in so much revenue in tax with being domiciled in the UK has been slain.’

  ‘Yes, prime minister,’ Gladstone said.

  ‘And find out if it was a one-off thing with terrorists or something, or if it’s part of something wider. The chancellor is quite worried, you understand. His budget surplus is already looking decidedly … squiffy.’

  ‘I understand fully, prime minister. The wheels are in motion,’ Gladstone said.

  ‘Good man. Good man. Keep me abreast.’

  The line went dead. Gladstone turned in his chair to face the river again. There was still two minutes of afternoon tea left. He was already looking forward to the whisky.

  It was ten in the morning in Washington DC. Chris Calhoun, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, was in a semi-lit briefing room deep within the Pentagon.

  The President of the United States was on the phone.

  ‘Dammit, Calhoun,’ said the president. ‘I want a briefing on my desk this afternoon of what happened in Moscow – dispatch people on this.’

  ‘But sir, the Russian vice president seems to be a Russian issue, and Mitchell, although an American, was head of a company based in Europe. We have no direct remit or reason to be involved. We could be treading on a lot of toes here.’

  ‘Dispatch people quietly.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but we still need ...’

  ‘Dammit, Calhoun!’ the president interjected. ‘Calvin Mitchell was a damn fine American. I want to know, and the American people want to know, how, and more importantly why, such a grand captain of industry was assassinated.’

  Calhoun knew the president was of the old-school mould of commanders-in-chief. The president was having a presidential “Because I said so” moment. Yet in the current political structure and climate, Calhoun needed to cover himself if the indictments started flying.

  ‘Yes sir, I maintain we need a stronger mandate.’

  ‘This call being taped?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Calhoun lied. He smiled.

  ‘Good. Then here’s your reason for being involved – because we damn well should be, and I damn well said so!’

  Calhoun’s smile grew wider.

  ‘Yes, sir. Agents dispatched. Report by this afternoon.’

  ‘That’s more like it,’ the president said, before hanging up.

  Calhoun put down the phone and stopped the recording.

  He picked up the receiver again to issue instructions.

  It was nine in the morning in Houston, Texas, the global capital of oil. The kingpin of the city was surveying his domain from the top of the tallest building on the skyline.

  ‘That’s a damn fine sight,’ Roscoe Ickes said, as he watched the sun stretch its rays over a city that looked like an unplanned car park.

  Roscoe Ickes was the head of the largest American oil company and the second-largest oil company on the planet.

  ‘Get me Kaczynski!’ he barked at his assistant near the door.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Ickes was not known for his small talk or manners. A third-generation Texan oil man who had never left America, he had gone straight into refining after qualifying as an engineer, and was soon hurdling his way to the top. He was famous for making unilateral decisions in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. His meteoric rise was due to all of his contrarian decisions paying off handsomely.

  Everybody from the most high-profile analyst on Wall Street to the mail boy in his own company was waiting with bated breath for the day, and the accompanying fallout, when one of his unilateral decisions went spectacularly against him.

  In the meantime, as he surveyed the city – he was the top dog in oil town.

  A man in a black suit entered the expansive office.

  ‘Kaczynski,’ Ickes said. ‘You heard about this business with Calvin Mitchell?’

  ‘Yes sir, it’s just breaking on the news networks now.’

  ‘Good. Look into it.’ Ickes ordered.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You know what I mean. Calvin and I used to play golf together. Regulators would shit their pants if they ever knew what we really talked about. He was a great son of Texas. It’s a crying shame for a man like that to go out that way,’ Ickes said.

  ‘Yes, sir. Do you want me to release the Cajun?’ Kaczynski asked.

  ‘No, no, no. Did I say that? Listen carefully from now on. So … No! No need to go that far. Just have some of our boys on the unofficial payroll look into it – real quiet, like.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Kaczynski said, already turning for the door.

  7

  London

  It was five in the afternoon in London as Jonathan Marshall made his way home from work. He had just finished a couple of hours on the ‘loser shift’. This was when all the consultants who were behind on their projects went in on Saturday afternoon to try and catch up. It was a good idea in theory, but so many other consultants turned up that the distractions one was trying to get away from in the week were there again on the weekend.

  He had completed some work on his piece for Falcus Loader, bef
ore the noise of the office got to him. Once he decided he was no longer being productive, he shut his laptop down.

  It was October in London, and the days were the customary grey with light rain. It was not yet cold, but he could feel on his face that the air was starting to drop in temperature.

  He walked past an electronics store that had rammed the window display full of televisions on special offer. All the televisions were tuned into BBC News.

  Jonathan’s jaw almost hit the pavement when he read the ticker tape of ‘breaking news’ at the bottom of a screen.

  I don’t believe it! his mind screamed.

  The scrolling text kept going from left to right across the screen: Calvin Mitchell, CEO of largest oil company, and Viktor Maslov, Russian vice president, both assassinated in Moscow.

  Jonathan was dumbstruck.

  Calvin Mitchell was the CEO of his company!

  He stood mute for a while as the news sank in.

  There was no sound, and the ticker tape was not providing any more information.

  Eventually, Jonathan closed his mouth and decided to continue going home to get the full story: it would be running on repeat all day on the news channels.

  He set off again as quickly as possible, hoping his flatmate, Harry, was not at home; he needed some space to process what was going on.

  Once he was home, he checked that Harry wasn’t there, changed, grabbed a beer and sat down in front of the television. He pushed aside the pile of DVDs of spy movies on the couch that was going to be his evening’s entertainment, selected from his vast collection of espionage focussed movies and books. He had a mild obsession in with the genre, which always injected a thrill into his otherwise dull weekend evenings. He turned on the television and caught up with the patchy details that were available; then wondered who to call.