‘Well,’ said Jonathan, cocking his gun and marching toward the large French doors. ‘Let’s go hunting.’
Avi caught up to ensure the doors to the outside were opened quietly. The two men stepped out into a calm, cool English night. A soft wind wafted lazily over the large stone patio, decorated with Roman vases and marble busts.
There was no one in immediate sight.
Approximately fifteen metres in front of them was an arched entrance into a square, walled structure in the middle of the vast garden. As they stopped to survey the scene, Zlatan and the Arab rounded the corners of the house with guns drawn.
They both immediately signed that no one had got past them.
Avi leaned into Jonathan to whisper in his ear. ‘The last person we saw on the security system on the laptop must’ve not moved out of that structure since we surveyed the scene ten minutes ago.’
He motioned to the other two, who had come alongside them now for the group to advance toward the walled structure.
As the view through the arch widened, it became apparent that they were about to enter a Japanese zen garden. This was where the renowned Warren Tarrant relaxed, by combing stones in circular patterns to enhance the feng shui of the place and his personal aura.
Jonathan recalled that Tarrant’s oriental garden had acquired a degree of notoriety. He had claimed in press articles that some of his most important decisions about the company had been formed in his precious garden. The fact that the company share price had slipped by ten per cent since he had taken over had led some commentators in the markets to suggest the stock price might go up if the garden were mysteriously dynamited.
They filed through the archway, one at a time. The interior of the walled garden was larger than it looked from the outside. Vines covered the interior walls like green veins, boxing the space with vegetation. There was no grass in the garden, only the small grey stones which had been flown in from the steps of Mount Fuji in Japan. The stones were raked in concentric patterns around six medium-sized bonsai trees scattered at Zen-like intervals.
Tarrant could be seen at the far end of the garden. He was on his knees, facing away from the men, hunched over a bonsai tree with tiny clippers as he tended the miniature leaves. Wires leading off earphones in his ears could be seen as he relaxed to classical music while fully immersed in his hobby.
This was a good break for Jonathan and his crew. They were clustered on a square metre of brick at the entrance, and taking one more step meant crunching the stones under their shoes, which would alert anyone in the garden to their presence. Depending on how loud Tarrant had his music playing, they would be able to get close to him whilst still retaining the advantage of surprise.
Having concluded that the scene looked relatively safe, Avi motioned them forward and they all stepped up onto the stones to begin crunching their way towards Tarrant, their guns drawn and pointed at his back. Jonathan was sure he would have no qualms about shooting such a villain in the back – even if he was holding a real weapon.
The crunching of stones underfoot was quite loud, but Tarrant obviously liked his dramatic music even louder. The men stopped when they were within two metres of him. There was an odd moment of silence as the man on his knees serenely clipped away at leaves, completely oblivious to the four guns trained on his spine.
Anger welled up from deep within Jonathan.
This is the bastard who set things in motion to have me killed – to have Julie killed! To have who knows how many other people killed! He relaxes in his luxury residence and strokes tiny leaves while people die!
‘Warren Tarrant!’ he barked.
Tarrant looked up to the wall in front of him, a questioning tilt to his head. Then he slowly turned around before his body jerked with shock at the scene that confronted him. He stood up rapidly and whipped the earphones out of his ears.
‘How the hell did you get in here?’ He looked past them with alarm. ‘Look what you’ve done to my garden!’ he yelled, surveying the damage done to his carefully raked stones. At the moment Tarrant was about to scream at them as though they were subordinates who had forgotten to put sugar in his coffee, the Arab pulled his huge scimitar from the large red sash around his waist. There was a flash of silver and the razor-sharp tip came to rest against Tarrant’s throat.
‘You only answer,’ the Arab said, ‘otherwise no speak. Down, back down.’ The blade tapped Tarrant a couple of times on the shoulder to indicate for him to drop back to his knees.
‘I will not ...’ Tarrant began to protest but the blade came forward to rest ever so slightly again on his neck, until a drop of blood squeezed out of the skin. Tarrant’s eyes widened as he registered pain and realized the men were serious. He could not bully them, and they would not obey him just because of who he was. The blade tapped him on the shoulder again, and he slowly sank back down to his knees.
‘You’ve come to kill me,’ he stated flatly.
‘You deserve no less,’ Jonathan replied, looking down at his former employer. ‘Trying to kill your own employees, setting up dodgy deals with even dodgier Russians – then trying to kill them too.’
Tarrant’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who are you?’
‘Just another faceless employee who’s about to let the world know what a two-timing scumbag you really are,’ Jonathan said.
‘You don’t scare me. If you’re assassins – then get on with it. Otherwise you have no proof of anything.’
‘Au contraire,’ Jonathan replied excitedly, as his emotions began to get the better of him. ‘Au very, very contraire. Listen to this!’ A small microcassette recorder appeared out of Jonathan’s pocket: he held it up in front of Tarrant’s face and hit the play button. The sound that came out of the tinny speaker was slightly muted but still distinct; it was the conversation they had recorded in Lubyanka Square in Moscow, with a now-dead Russian yelling in a public payphone at who he thought was Tarrant himself.
‘This is how you contact us?’ The mechanical voice squawked. ‘My boss is extremely upset about the man you sent. This is not the behaviour of international businessman, especially head of major oil company!’ Tarrant’s face instantly turned from defiance to shock.
‘We send you a message when we kill him.’ Tarrant’s face turned ashen at this.
‘We kill everyone associated with this deal and make the pipeline never happen. You think I am afraid out here? We have men everywhere. You cannot touch us!’ The voice was cut off and drowned out by the sound of gunfire over the tape. Jonathan clicked it off.
‘They killed Munro,’ Tarrant said softly to himself in disbelief.
‘That’s right,’ Jonathan said. ‘Whoever you sent is dead. And now the person the Russians sent to communicate’ – he shook the tape recorder in Tarrant’s face – ‘has been killed as well. So it looks like your business partnership has been terminated and your now ex-partners will be seeking recourse, um, how shall I put this? Ah yes, outside the courts.’
Jonathan’s facetious tone caused Tarrant’s face to darken again into the mask of arrogance that had been in place for many years.
‘Be that as it may,’ Tarrant said icily. ‘There still seems a distinct lack of hard proof linking me to any Russian organisation. I can distance myself from what you have on me, without a problem. Nothing is over. Since you don’t seem to be here to kill me, or you would have done already, who you are is irrelevant. Now get off my property.’
‘Irrelevant, huh?’ Jonathan replied thoughtfully, tapping the tape recorder against his chin. ‘How irrelevant is the report that was sent to the top floor? The report that caused you to send assassins after your own employees? The report that hypothesized the building of the pipeline across former communist states that could only be achieved by nefarious means?’
Tarrant’s eyes widened, shocked that apparent outsiders knew the report existed. ‘That was just an internal analysis for an ideas meeting,’ he countered. ‘It never left the company.’ There was a note of uncer
tainty in his voice.
‘Wrong, big man,’ Jonathan said strongly, leaning forward. ‘I’m Jonathan Marshall. I’m the author of said report. I have copies, and tomorrow morning the report, originally sent on company emails, along with what we have on tape, will be splashed across the front page of every newspaper in the English-speaking world. You and the company will be investigated from every angle – and if the authorities don’t get you, the Russians will. Either way, you’re finished!’
‘No!’ Tarrant cried.
‘Yessss!’ Jonathan said.
Tarrant’s body shuddered a little before deflating slightly. His head and back bowed as his carefully constructed world of power came crashing down around him. There was a moment of silence before a gut-wrenching sob was heard from the bowed head, then another.
He knew it was all over.
‘And the final kicker is that I’ve just recorded this entire conversation as well. This will also be with the press tomorrow.’ Jonathan waved the tape recorder around again. He had surreptitiously pressed the record button, soon after playing the Russian scene.
Tarrant looked up with tears in his eyes. ‘You bastard.’
‘No, you’re the bastard,’ Jonathan replied, raising the gun in his other hand and pointing it at Tarrant. ‘You’ve had people killed, and screwed over many more – just to inflate your own ego. You deserve no less.’ He pulled the trigger of the gun and fired into Tarrant’s leg.
Tarrant screamed thinking he had been shot. His eyes quickly dilated as the drug in the dart immediately took effect. His body swayed slightly back and forth, and he fell forward to plant his face deep into his precious Zen stones.
‘How about that?’ Jonathan smiled at the others. ‘I finally got to shoot someone.’
‘Well done,’ Avi said, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘The whole thing – very well done.’
‘Thank you,’ Jonathan said.
‘Our work here is done,’ Avi said, motioning for them to go.
They turned and set off back towards the car.
After walking for a minute, Jonathan said. ‘Avi, give me your cell phone.’
He pulled from his pocket the small SIM card reader for what he hoped would be the last time. He looked up a number, and tapped it into the phone. It rang three times before it was picked up.
‘Harry. It’s Jonathan. Yes, yes, I know. Tell your people I’m coming in.’
53
The morning editions of five international newspapers broke the story.
It took up most of the front page with headlines running a range of angles from ‘GLOBAL OIL CONSPIRACY’ to ‘SLEAZY CEO AND RUSSIAN MAFIA BEDMATES’. The stories were full of quotes from the audiotape and extracts from the report.
The global effect was more than explosive.
Everyone from government agencies to underworld kingpins were hitting the roof. By midday it was in the afternoon edition of pretty much every paper on the planet, as well as being run at fifteen-minute intervals on all the news channels.
By mid-afternoon the oil company in question was being investigated by the authorities in fifty of the countries they operated in. Intelligence agents, anti-trust investigators and lawyers were having warrants and depositions printed on a volume to make a large commercial printer smile. By four o’clock in the afternoon, the international oil company issued a statement that Warrant Tarrant had been summarily dismissed for misconduct. It also stated that he had lost all rights to the ‘golden parachute’ of stock options and additional pension payments that departing CEOs came to expect. This was very rare in corporate Europe, and particularly rare at this oil company, which showed how angry the executives were over what had happened, and the internal chaos it was causing.
Tarrant himself had woken up from the effects of the drug to be confronted by MI6 agents, Interpol and Scotland Yard officers. They had arrest warrants ready for offences ranging from corporate fraud to murder. He issued a statement from prison later in the day through his lawyers, denying all charges against him and threatening to sue the company for unfair dismissal.
The evening editions focused on the ‘people’ side of the story, with cartoons depicting Tarrant drinking dollar signs pouring from petrol pumps, with headlines such as ‘UTTER HUBRIS OF EGOMANIAC’ and ‘TARRANT FINISHED FOR GOOD’.
54
London
Jonathan took another sip of freshly brewed coffee as he surveyed the daily newspapers laid out on the desk before him.
He broke into a large smile when he saw how much the company stock had dived.
He was sitting in a windowless meeting room deep within the interior of the MI6 building on London’s South Bank. Sitting around the room were the senior agents assigned to his case.
Harry Shaftsbury was also there, looking rather pleased with himself in front of the assembled seniority. All the agents kept looking at the door as they awaited the arrival of Sir William Gladstone.
Jonathan had been dropped off last night within walking distance of the building by his erstwhile band of strange colleagues on their way back to the private airfield. They were all going back to their bosses after a successful job, to regale and delight their employers with accounts of the downfall of major oil companies and politicians. These were the events that really juiced the type of men for whom money no longer held any potency to delight. The parting of the group had been brief, and Jonathan was assured that his association with the others had been much appreciated. Each gave him an unlisted number on a card, in case he needed to contact them again.
Once he had been admitted to the MI6 building, they had hurriedly rushed him to the lower levels for questioning. This had gone on for a few hours before the stress of the last week had left his body, and he finally fell asleep.
They had given him one of the guest rooms in the underground complex to sleep in, and resumed the questioning in the morning. Once the debrief was complete and the summary finally sent upstairs to Gladstone, the word had come back down that the man himself wanted to meet Jonathan.
The head of the clandestine agency swept in, a blur of dour colours, tweed jacket and carefully combed grey hair.
‘So, you’re the plucky bugger who’s caused so much grief to so many, eh?’ Gladstone asserted loudly, examining Jonathan from beneath a raised eyebrow.
‘It’s amazing what you can achieve while desperately trying to stay alive and find out why people are hunting you,’ Jonathan replied. One of the side effects of his recent experiences was that he no longer feared people in power. They were there to be questioned about what they were doing. They were not unassailable in their authority. So while all the MI6 employees visibly cowered in their chairs and Harry broke out in another cold sweat, Jonathan leaned back in his chair and placed his hands behind his head in a relaxed manner that he knew would infuriate an ex-public schoolboy like Gladstone.
‘I need to know if I’ll be safe from now on. Do I have to stay in hiding, or not?’ Jonathan asked.
‘I should think not,’ Gladstone replied, shooting daggers from his eyes at Jonathan’s relaxed posture. ‘The whole affair is out in the open. Tarrant is already done for. It’s just a matter of time till they root out any colleagues he had at the company who were complicit in his dealings. A major shake-up in the company has just been announced, and I very much doubt that anyone who had anything to do with Tarrant will have a job by the end of the week.’
‘And what about the Russians?’ Jonathan asked, ‘They’re even more ruthless.’
‘Well, there will now be so much pressure on the Russian government that they will have to launch an investigation into the vice president, and he will probably have to resign. Again, a large shake-up will happen, in the government and in the security services, since the two are intimately linked. The only reason they were all after you like a rabid foxhunt was to stop the entire affair becoming public. That has happened, so there is no reason to keep chasing you with intent to kill. It’s pointless. All these people ha
ve much hotter potatoes in their hands now. You should be perfectly safe from now on. Don’t do anything stupid like going on CNN, of course. Keep a low profile, and you should be fine.’
‘Great, just what I wanted to hear. Don’t worry, I won’t be selling my story or seeking celebrity. I just want to be in control of my own life again.’
‘Good man,’ Gladstone nodded in affirmation. ‘We’re all done then. I just wanted to meet you, and I’m bally glad I did. We need more of your type in the world. Possibly even in the intelligence services, given what you’ve done. Have you considered your next move?’
‘I don’t want another corporate job. I’ve stopped thinking like a sled dog. I’ll just take some time out first,’ Jonathan replied.
‘Fine, well, get in contact through Harry here if the idea interests you. Is there anything else you need now?’ Gladstone asked.
‘A lift to Waterloo station would be good.’
‘Done. Shaftsbury.’ Gladstone clicked his fingers.
Harry bolted upright in his chair.
‘Take your friend where he wants to go,’ Gladstone said as he stood to leave. There was another streak of grey and tweed, and he was gone from the room.
Harry was beaming like a kid who just unwrapped the ultimate Christmas present, since Gladstone had not only remembered his name – he’d said it correctly.
Jonathan winked at him, and signalled he was ready to go.
55
Moscow
In the plush offices of the vice president of the Russian Federation, a few dark-suited men were involved in an all-out brawl. Once the entire story had broken, they had eschewed tradition by skipping the preliminary vodka, and begun fighting immediately.
The vice president himself, Anatoly Kirkov, was in the thick of it, fighting through the red mist that obscured his vision as he attempted to beat his closest advisors to death with an oversize ashtray that had been a gift from the dictator of Kyrgyzstan.
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