Transition

by Ethan Arkwright

  ‘No sir, he didn’t. We have a mole in the oil company?’ As soon as Harry said it, he knew he had overstepped his mark.

  His boss’s eyes widened.

  Gladstone’s eyes narrowed, and he spoke in a voice of cold steel. ‘Of course we have a bloody mole in there. All the agencies do. No one trusts those oil company bastards as far as we can throw this building. The security of a country depends on the energy security of a country, and half of these damn oil firms are foreign-owned now. Anyway,’ he said, brushing his tie. ‘Scotland Yard received a call this morning from someone in the London office of the company. The caller claimed to have some information relating to the recent murder of one Calvin Mitchell, oil company chief executive. They didn’t leave a name, but apparently sounded scared as hell.’

  ‘So someone else is trying to get the information out as well?’ Ventured one of the men to the right.

  ‘Yesss,’ replied Gladstone, irritated by the obvious question. ‘Our man on the inside is trying to track them down from within – if you get my meaning. Now listen here, all of you. This information stays within these four walls. If we have any of those stupid teleconferences or ‘catch-up’ meetings with any other agencies – I want nothing mentioned. I don’t want any Johnny Foreigners catching wind of any of this, and that includes our American cousins. You, analyst ...’

  Harry jerked up in his chair again. He could feel the stains under his arms on the march.

  ‘You are now seconded to this case,’ Gladstone said. ‘I want a full debrief written up of what you know about this room-mate character. Then liaise with the case agents in preparation for if he calls again. We need to get information out of our two sources as quickly as we can. The prime minister wants an update tomorrow, so I want one by the end of today.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Harry kept a straight face, but on the inside he was the most thrilled he had ever been.

  17

  Paris

  Julie’s car changed lanes with a jerk, narrowly missing a slower car that had been in front of them. Julie planted her foot on the accelerator and the car leapt forward again to continue its headlong flight down the motorway.

  ‘Slow down,’ Jonathan demanded, trying to stay calm. ‘I know we’re on the run, but we don’t want to blatantly look like it. Besides, your little engine sounds like it’s going to explode.’

  Julie slowed the car down to something near the speed limit.

  ‘She can take it,’ Julie replied, stroking the dashboard in front of her. They were hurtling down the southern highway out of Paris in Julie’s Peugeot 106 hatchback.

  She’s clearly a skilled driver, thought Jonathan, but definitely going too fast.

  Jonathan was more worried about alerting the police at this point, than about any pursuing killers.

  He hunched back in his seat and tried to clear his head to think. It had been such a mad panic getting out of the apartment and into the car unseen. They had no plan other than to get onto the motorway without being killed.

  Once they were on the motorway, he was forced to think of what to do next, and his thoughts could only get as far as getting off the motorway alive.

  Jonathan’s fractured mind currently only stretched to the instinct that they both had to keep moving. He thought his pursuers would assume that Julie was now helping him, so they had to stay away from anything or anywhere familiar to her.

  The only plan they had so far was to get out of Paris.

  The buildings got smaller as they raced through the outskirts of the city.

  Signs were starting to appear overhead showing distances to southern, eastern and western destinations.

  ‘What’s the plan, boss?’ Julie asked, as she changed lanes with a jerk of the wheel.

  Jonathan was looking up at the next set of signs that they were approaching at speed.

  ‘Well, I’m thinking we could head south-west to Brittany or south to Cannes. I’m thinking that they will be thinking that once they know we’ve left Paris – so we will head south. Due to there being more options down there to slip out by ship.’

  ‘Slip out by ship?’ Julie laughed. ‘Ooh, like a spy movie! It’s all so … clandestine, right?’

  ‘Yup, that’s the word.’

  Julie leaned towards him slightly, still looking at the road ahead.

  ‘Were you thinking what they were thinking that you were thinking that they think you were thinking that they were thinking?’ Julie asked with a cheeky grin.

  Jonathan couldn’t help but smile. ‘Yes, it’s all a bit like that.’

  It was great having her with him. Her sense of levity in high-pressure situations eased his stress levels, and made him think it would all be okay. It still weighed on him, though, that he was putting her in danger.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you hardly know me; I’m amazed you’ve even helped me this far. I think you should drop me off at some place you’re okay to stop the car.’

  ‘Jonathan,’ she said, ‘we’ve been through this. They’re after me as well now. We probably have a better chance sticking together. Two heads are better than one, are they not?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘Good. And if I have to spell anything else out further for you, then I’m going to kick you out of this car at a hundred kilometres an hour.’

  Jonathan was secretly relieved: she was right. He also liked her, and she wanted to stay. He was normally a shy imbecile around women, but he guessed from the last exchange that she liked him too.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘let’s make it simpler. Do you have any connections or family in Brittany?’

  ‘No. Went there on a school trip once when I was twelve, but nothing that would show up on records.’

  ‘Good. Let’s head to Brittany.’

  ‘Vive le Bretagne!’ Julie cried, as she hammered down on the accelerator again with her foot.

  Jonathan became reflective again.

  Just heading there isn’t much of a plan, he thought.

  He decided that when they got there, he would call the Dutch Mentalist, as well as Harry Shaftsbury again. Julie was now involved, and he had an uneasy thought troubling him: if these guys knocked off powerful men like Calvin Mitchell and the vice president of Russia, they’d be thinking that little Johnny Marshall would be dead within twenty-four hours; so his strategy would be to keep moving and keep to thirty-second phone calls till he got to Brittany – or anywhere else that would buy him enough time to figure out his next set of moves.

  He was too distracted right now by Julie’s driving to think things through coherently.

  We’re getting away – that’s the main thing, he thought. So onward to Brittany, and when we get there, I’ll make some calls and pray those guys have some answers!

  18

  Moscow

  Anatoly Kirkov, the recently appointed vice president of the Russian Federation, was gazing through the bulletproof glass of his armoured Mercedes with satisfaction. His chauffeured car was moving slowly through the chaotic Moscow evening traffic. The police escort ahead of them was doing a good job of clearing a path through the rusted and clapped-out Ladas. Parting the peasants, Kirkov thought, like Moses parting the Red Sea.

  Kirkov was pleased because everything was going well for him.

  A vibrating in his jacket pocket interrupted his pleasure. It was a text message on his phone. He reached in and unlocked the phone. The message said something about tulips being best when planted in winter.

  His face quickly discoloured, from creamy pleasure to violet rage.

  ‘Amateurs!’ he screamed at the phone.

  Kirkov looked at his watch.

  ‘Change of plan,’ he said to the driver. ‘Take me to Oblast on Nevsky Prospekt – the back entrance. Tell the police escort to go.’

  The driver nodded in acknowledgment and reached for his walkie-talkie.

  Ten minutes later the car pulled up in an alley in front of a door with no openings or handles on the outside.

  Kirkov
leapt out of the car and banged three times on the door. A slit opened near the top of the door and a pair of eyes widened when they saw who was standing outside. A few quick clunks ensued and the door opened inward.

  A burly man with a shaved head and a suit ushered Kirkov in.

  ‘A real pleasure to see you again so soon, especially after your promotion,’ said the man.

  Kirkov shot him a look which hinted that if he opened his mouth again, the next thing it took in would be coal dust down a Siberian mine. The man turned white and pointed down the corridor. Kirkov strode through and began passing rooms on the left and right that were filled with beautiful women in lacy lingerie, generally sitting on the laps of fat, middle-aged men.

  His gaze did not deviate as he walked towards a door at the end of the corridor.

  Once he got to the door, he placed his hand on the handle and jerked it open. A rush of hot steam enveloped him and he vanished into the doorway.

  Inside was a very large banja complex, a spa where men were enjoying the traditional Russian sauna. Many were walking around in towels and holding venik, birch twigs tied together with which you whipped the skin of your neighbour, and yourself, to bring blood to the surface. The men looked at Kirkov strangely, for it was not customary to enter this place wearing clothes.

  Even though most of the men were very powerful in government and the criminal underworld, they all looked away again when they saw Kirkov.

  He headed for a private steam room at the very back. He knew who would be sitting here at this time of night: the head of the ‘Department of Vanishing Affairs’, a secret quasi-government unit resourced by funds that did not officially exist.

  Kirkov jerked open another door and was enveloped in another cloud of even hotter steam. He knew he would begin to sweat severely in about thirty seconds.

  That was all the time he needed.

  In the far corner of the room sat a solitary man in a towel, with the top half of his torso and head barely visible through the steam. His features were not recognizable. It was as though he was a dark shadow. A deep, disembodied voice came out from the shadow through the mist.

  ‘You have heard the news, then.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kirkov said with a slight hiss. ‘I order you to release the Tatar’

  ‘Are you sure?’ the deep voice asked. ‘Marshall is just an office worker. We will have him soon. If we release the Tatar, once it is done you cannot just pull him back – you know the carnage that can happen.’

  ‘Section Eight had their chance,’ Kirkov shot back. ‘Send him in. In fact, transfer five million to his Swiss account right now, to show that we are serious. In the meantime I am going to get one of my people to leak some information from Demetchev’s department. Throw everyone off the scent until this is tidied up. I order you – release him.’

  His message delivered, Kirkov turned and disappeared from the mist in the room like a wraith whose time in the mortal world was up.

  Overnight, seemingly confidential information of a highly classified nature was emailed from a web- based email account to a Bulgarian newspaper. It was leaked to the Bulgarian media because the Russian media was still tightly controlled by the Russian government, and therefore lacked credibility as a source of information leaks.

  Ten hours later, the Bulgarian newspaper hit the stands and refreshed their website. Ten hours and thirty minutes later, the story was being slammed down on the desks of managers of all the major intelligence agencies of the world, even before the Western media could print it.

  All the capital cities of consequence were ablaze.

  The leaked information and documents appeared to originate from within the Russian intelligence service.

  They suggested, implied and concluded that the major suspect in the assassinations in Moscow of Calvin Mitchell, former oil company CEO, and Viktor Maslov, the former vice president of the Russian Federation, was a retired KGB officer. The suspect was an acquaintance of a disgraced oil oligarch, who had been hounded out of Russia and was now living in exile in London.

  The lawyer for the oligarch, who was British and an expert in setting up hollow corporations to hide assets, had been conveniently killed in a helicopter accident the previous week.

  The lawyer had claimed the day before the helicopter flight that if he died within the next two weeks, ‘it wasn’t an accident’.

  Rumour was that the lawyer was cracking under pressure and thinking about going public by revealing some sordid dealings that involved the oligarch and the assassinated Russian VP and Oil CEO.

  This seemed to implicate the oligarch in the murders: an oligarch whom Russia was currently trying to extradite, but having some difficulty due to his having switched to an Israeli passport.

  In the offices of Russian intelligence, Demetchev was understandably furious: the information appearing in the newspaper looked bad for the department, as though it was leaking classified information, which reflected poorly on him.

  Even if the story was untrue, there were elements in it that were not. Elements of it, and a few choice details, were classified, giving the story some credibility and also showing that Demetchev had a leak in his unit.

  He was screaming full-throttle at his people when the call came through that the president had summoned him.

  His head sank as he reached for his coat.

  Forty minutes later, in the plush surroundings of the presidential office, the president was venting his ire at Demetchev.

  ‘This is unacceptable,’ bellowed the president. ‘You are supposed to be the best we have, and you have leaks in your own department!’

  This is Russia, thought Demetchev, there are always leaks of information, and pockets for bribes.

  He dared not say it though. Kirkov was in the room again. Standing behind and to the left of the president. Every once in a while, Demetchev thought he saw the ghost of a smile cross Kirkov’s face, like he was enjoying watching Demetchev being chewed up and spat out by the president.

  The truth was, Kirkov was fully enjoying the scene. He knew exactly where the leak had come from because he had arranged it. Furthermore, he knew Demetchev would never suspect, let alone find, the source.

  Kirkov loved modern Russia.

  ‘Anatoly.’ The president turned on him. ‘I thought you were working with him on this, taking charge. What do you know of this?’

  Demetchev breathed a sigh of relief in the background as the blowtorch was directed away from him for a moment.

  ‘Nothing of the leak. This is an unacceptable surprise to me too,’ Kirkov said.

  ‘Hurumph!’ snorted the president, back in the direction of Demetchev.

  Bastard, Demetchev thought. He’s more slippery than a greased pig.

  ‘I want a complete purge of your department,’ said the president, banging the table with one hand for effect, and jabbing his finger towards Demetchev with the other.

  ‘But ... but sir. We’ll lose too much intelligence capability. We’ll have to start all over again. That takes time. This will set us back months.’

  ‘You’ll do it, and produce results on this case,’ the president shot back. ‘Otherwise, it’s your head. Now get out of my office.’

  Demetchev turned to leave with a heavy heart. Behind him, Kirkov was smiling; it was exactly what he wanted.

  It could not have gone better if he had written the script himself.

  19

  Paris, Brittany

  Jonathan eyed the greasy counter of the store with suspicion. There was an array of euro coins spread out over it. He eyed the unkempt Frenchman behind the counter with suspicion.

  All he wanted was change for the phone.

  They were halfway to Brittany when the day began drawing to a close. It was time to stop for a break, and Jonathan had been unable to contain himself any longer in wanting to get answers.

  There was a public phone outside, and he was having another cultural tussle in trying to get change to use the phone. The problem had aris
en when Jonathan had to apparently clear the till of coins in order to make calls overseas.

  The Frenchman was gesticulating wildly and swearing incoherently about the inconvenience. Jonathan eventually settled the matter by stuffing a note for twenty euros into his top pocket and scooping all the change off the counter and into a plastic bag.

  He looked at the car outside as they crossed the parking area to the plastic phone box. Julie was already back in the car and raring to go. His admiration and feelings for her were growing by the hour as he got to know her better. She always seemed unflappable in the face of danger. By contrast, he still spent his time oscillating between anger and stark fear.

  Once in the phone box, he started feeding the coins in.

  The first person on his call list was the Dutch Mentalist: he would still be in the office. Jonathan got the number out of the SIM card reader and punched the digits in.

  ‘Yesh?’ answered the deep Dutch voice.

  ‘It’s Jonathan. What have you found out? Who did the report go to?’

  Jonathan had decided to dispense with formality. He no longer cared that this man was technically his boss’s boss. His boss was dead, and this boss could well have been in on it. Jonathan kept looking at his watch as he spoke, so as not to go over the trace limit.

  ‘Jonathan! Where are you?’ asked the Mentalist.

  ‘What did you find?’ Jonathan asked, annoyed.

  ‘Nothing yet. Nobody knows who Falcus took the report to. It wasn’t an official project.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes, nothing was logged,’ the Mentalist continued, ‘It was something Falcus did for someone else – off the books.’