NATIONAL TREASURE

by Barry Faulkner

Gold left me and moved off into the crowded dance floor. I edged my way through towards the door. A fight broke out amongst the punters on the floor about five metres to the right of the door. Two females were arguing and then one hit the floor, and the other, Gold, started to kick her. The goon by the door was the nearest security to it and started to push his way through the crowd to sort it out. I took my chance and went through the door as fast as I could, pulling out the Beretta.

  Inside Alexandru Bogdan was sitting behind a large desk reading a magazine; opposite him two goons sitting on a sofa playing pontoon dropped their cards and started to go for their shoulder holsters.

  I put a bullet in the head of the nearest and in the arm of the other one, who cried in pain and slumped down onto the floor trying to stem the blood. I had one eye on Alexandru Bogdan, and when he reached to open a drawer at the desk he was sitting behind I put a bullet into the wall behind him, very, very close to his head.

  ‘Don’t even think about it.’

  The goon on the floor decided to try and get to his shoulder holster with his good arm. Bad decision. His head jerked back against the sofa as the bullet went through it and into the furniture. 9mm bullets are powerful things; I’ve seen one go through two bodies and still bury itself three inches into a wall.

  Bogdan was seeing sense and had slowly raised his hands above his head. I clicked the lock shut on the door to the club room and slid two heavy bolts across to secure it. The soundproofing was good, I couldn’t hear a thing. With a bit of luck the news about the episode in the front would be getting through and security’s attention moving there.

  I moved beside Bogdan and held my gun to his head as I opened the drawer and took out a PKK Walther and put it in my belt.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’ I asked.

  He was very calm. ‘Yes, Ben Nevis – named after a racehorse, not a mountain.’

  ‘Very good.’

  ‘We have done business in the past, Mr Nevis, but not business like this. I seem to recall I sent two of my men to have a word with you some time ago. They still haven’t come back. Perhaps they got lost?

  ‘Perhaps.’

  He shot a glance at his dead goons. ‘What do you want?’

  I pulled out the photo of Janie bound and gagged. ‘I want her.’

  ‘Aah, now I see. And what if I don’t have her?’

  ‘I’ll kill you.’

  ‘And what if I do have her?’

  ‘I’ll probably kill you anyway. Where is she?’

  ‘I seem to remember you were a good negotiator, Mr Nevis. Perhaps we should negotiate?’

  ‘You aren’t in a good position to negotiate, Alexadru.’

  ‘Then an offer, not a negotiation.’

  ‘An offer?’

  ‘Yes. The lady’s father owes my family a million pounds sterling, did you know that? Unfortunately the goods he promised us for that million never materialised, and nor did the refund, and he died. In our business, Mr Nevis, family is everything, but the man’s family have not refunded us. Now they will, or the daughter will disappear.’

  ‘You’re talking about James Randall and the Epping Forest delivery.’

  ‘You are well informed. Yes I am, but it was not delivered – the police intercepted it.’

  Not according to Dick Clancy they didn’t. The firearms unit SCO19 had reported that Randall’s accomplice had got away with the drugs. Perhaps Clancy needed to take a closer look at that operation. He said he would; I wondered if he’d come up with anything interesting?

  ‘The police report says the driver got away with the drugs.’

  ‘No, if he had he would have brought them to us, and if he had sold that amount to another dealer we would hear about it. No, the only way those drugs left the Forest was in a police vehicle. So I want my money back.’

  Interesting, but this wasn’t why I was here. ‘The lady you sent the ransom note to and then had beaten up knows nothing about it.’

  ‘Family, Mr Nevis, family. She is Randall’s wife – she knows where my money is.’

  ‘They divorced twenty years ago – the daughter you have kidnapped was three at the time and never knew her father. Marcia Johnson hasn’t seen Randall for twenty years. She and the daughter have nothing to do with the money.’

  ‘Perhaps you should have a word with Harry Cohen.’

  Harry Cohen? What has he to do with this? I was getting confused.

  ‘Harry Cohen the agent?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, for the last ten years we have bought our merchandise from Randall in varying amounts to send out to Romania. The border police in the EU are very, very good – they have a good network, and we were losing many mules bringing it in, and our boats coming across the Black Sea were regularly stopped. We lost a lot of money, and others were taking our business. Randall had a good idea. Cohen sends his, what you call, ‘boy bands’ out on tour round Europe using the same road crew each time. We used them – amplifiers stuffed with kilo bags of cocaine. They were never searched, works well. Randall got ninety percent of my family’s business.’

  ‘You still doing it?’

  ‘Of course, but we buy our own product now and Mr Cohen handles the logistics.’

  No wonder Harry Cohen didn’t want the police involved.

  The handle on the door turned, and the door shook as somebody put their shoulder against it. The lock and bolts held, and then there was thumping on the door; it wouldn’t hold for long. There was another door in the side wall of the room. I had to act quickly before the goons came that way too. I fired twice at the door to the dance floor; the 9mms went straight through, and I hoped I’d hit a goon and not a punter. I had; the banging stopped. I released the spent magazine from the Beretta, took a new one from my pocket and pushed it in.

  Bogdan was beginning to look worried. I pointed to the photo again.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Not here.’

  It wasn’t the answer I wanted. ‘Where?’

  ‘You won’t get out of here, no chance.’ He gave a smile.

  I’d had enough. I aimed the gun towards his groin. ‘Where?’

  ‘Somewhere you won’t find her. You could work for me, Nevis – you get my money, I pay you a finder’s fee, let the girl go, and we call it quits.’

  I knew full well that my finder’s fee would be a bullet in the head. I moved the gun slightly to the right and put a bullet in his left knee. ‘Where?’

  It sunk into his stupid brain that I meant business as he screamed in pain and fell sideways off his chair, squirming on the floor like footballers do when they feign a leg injury. I raised my gun and aimed at his other knee. ‘Where?’

  ‘Bucharest.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘She is, at The Amsterdam Club – she is!’ The pain he was in had brought out the truth. I couldn’t see that anything Alexandru Bogdan would ever do in his life would add to the wealth of mankind’s knowledge, so I put a bullet in his brain. No more widows.

  I eased open the door on the sidewall. It led into a narrow corridor, obviously an escape route for Bogdan if needed. At the end of the corridor another door with a head-height glass window led into a room full of beer kegs and boxes of bottled drinks and bar snacks; I must be behind the bar. A door led off to the right, and by the sound coming through it must lead into the bar. Another door on the opposite wall must be for deliveries. I pushed on the security bar, opened the door slowly and stepped out into a side alley; it was wide enough for delivery vehicles. To the left the alley ended with a wall, high with razor wire on the top; to the right the alley skirted to the end of the building and came out on a side road. I speed-dialled Gold.

  ‘You out?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, sounded like you were having fun. Any survivors?’

  ‘They weren’t very helpful.’

  ‘No survivors then.’ She knows me so well.

  ‘You in a motor?’

  ‘Yes, where are you?’

  ‘First left p
ast the club, with the club on your left.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Click.

  I hurried to the end of the alley and stood against the wall in the dark. Gold was there almost as soon as I was. No lights. I jumped in and we drove away.

  ‘Home?’ she asked.

  ‘I think so.’ I brought her up to speed on what I’d found out on the way.

  CHAPTER 6

  The next morning I left Gold at the front door to Harry’s office to tell anybody coming in from the street that it was closed for the day. The secretary looked halfway between disappointed and bemused that I didn’t offer a sexy quip on my through reception to Harry’s office. I stopped at his door and looked back at her. ‘No calls, he’s in conference.’

  Harry looked surprised to see me.

  ‘Ben?’ he asked as he took a pull on one of his large cigars in his hand. ‘Everything okay with Marcia? Nasty state of affairs being attacked in your own house. How’s she doing?’

  A look of perceived fear crossed his face when I didn’t take a seat and carried on round his large desk and stood very close beside him.

  ‘She’s okay. Want to tell me about Randall and Bogdan?’

  ‘Who?’

  Harry’s mind must have been turning over at warp speed trying to work out what I knew and how to answer me. I didn’t wait for it to settle. I snatched the large cigar from his hand, pushed his chair so it turned him to face me, held him steady by his tie and stubbed the cigar a few times on his forehead, sending burning tobacco flecks down his face, settling on his large neck. He squealed like a stabbed pig.

  ‘Randall and Bogdan,’ I asked again, and stubbed again. I was quite enjoying it – maybe I should get counselling?

  ‘Okay, okay!’ He was flapping his hands in surrender. I let go and sat half sideways on his large desk silently waiting, blowing softly on the cigar end to keep the leaves smouldering. ‘When Marcia married Randall, he pressured me into helping get some drugs into Europe – started off small and then grew. I wanted out, but he threatened to tell the press and involve Marcia if I didn’t go along with it. He introduced Bogdan to me as his partner. Everything went out inside the stage kit on the European tours.’

  ‘You changed Marcia and Randall’s Wikipedia entries after he died.’

  ‘They updated it about his death and drug dealing, so I took anything about Marcia being his wife out of it, and I took anything about him out of her’s – the media would have had a field day. With no divorce, to all intents and purposes they were still married. You can imagine the press feeding frenzy, she’d be ruined.’

  ‘And you carried on with Bogdan.’

  ‘I didn’t have any choice, Ben. He could have me arrested and ruin my business with one tip-off to the police. People like him have friends in the law.

  ‘So you knew that Bogdan has Janie all along.’

  ‘Yes, he told me – he says Randall owes him back the money for the deal the police stopped, and Marcia must have it. I told him she’s not involved, but he won’t listen – says she’s Randall’s wife, so she must know where it is.’

  ‘He won’t trouble her again. He’s dead.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘And you haven’t seen me.’ I got off the desk. ‘You hear me? You haven’t seen me.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  I left his office. The secretary looked at me.

  ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘If you’ve got anything for skin burns, he could use it.’

  ***********************************

  Gold dropped me back at home; I didn’t want to go to the office as that’s the first place the police would come looking. I’d be on the Bucharest Club CCTV, so no point in denying I was there.

  Home is one of those converted warehouse executive apartments off the York road with views of the Thames that I bought when I left the Met. It’s serviced and has door security officers, so nobody gets in without the okay from a resident. My apartment is pretty basic: lounge, kitchen and bedroom, with balcony looking over the Thames. As far as the council rates department are concerned, my name is George Hadlow, a name I got off a gravestone in a Great Plague cemetery in York Road; a friend of a friend of a friend made me up the appropriate ID, and that was it. So anybody trying to find where I live hits a wall. I have no home address.

  I rang Marcia Johnson. She was okay; a neighbour had come in for the afternoon and chatted, but not about Janie she assured me. I told her she’d not be getting any more nasty visitors and to blank all contact with Harry Cohen, I’d explain why when I saw her. She didn’t seem surprised. Perhaps she knew more than she was telling me?

  I rang the air charter company I use at London City Airport and booked a flight to Debrecen airport in Hungary for the morning, the nearest airport to the Romanian border, I wasn’t going to fly into Bucharest direct as no doubt the news of Alexandru’s death would have reached the family, and they’d have put two and two together and linked it to Janie’s kidnap and be watching the arrivals for me. Why me? Well, ‘Big Tony’ wouldn’t be too happy with me leaving a bullet in his foot and would have named me, no doubt. Perhaps I should have put one in his head too. Am I getting soft?

  I rang Gold and told her my plan.

  ‘Okay, I’ll get a flight into Bucharest tomorrow and sort out a place to stay, so keep a low profile until I call you.’ Sometimes she’s like a mother to me.

  The next thing on the agenda was a gun. I didn’t want to walk into the Bogdans’ home turf unarmed, but both Hungary and Rumania have some of the toughest gun laws in Europe. I’d cross that bridge when I got there.

  The evening news was full of pictures of what happened at the Bucharest Club the evening before, and vox-pops of clubbers giving their stories. I smiled at ‘Big Tony’ being stretchered into an ambulance and refusing to answer the reporters’ questions being shouted at him; he didn’t look happy. The anchor in the studio said the police had not commented, but it looked like gang warfare had broken out, probably drugs related. Well, they got that bit right. I turned my mobile off; Clancy would be after me like a pack of hounds on a hare when he got wind of it.

  I took a stroll out later that evening and picked up a couple of Big Macs; I couldn’t be bothered to cook and they’re quite filling. Washed them down with a French style coffee, watched a bit of TV and went to bed. The charter flight was booked for late morning the next day, so I could get a good night’s sleep after a good couple of days’ work.

  CHAPTER 7

  I like flying. But I don’t like flying crammed inside a steel tube with two hundred holidaymakers, and a snotty kid looking over the seat in front blowing bubbles with his nose – no, I don’t like that at all. I’m not one for crowds; a deserted beach or windswept moor, yes – Bournemouth on Bank Holiday weekend, no. So a twelve-seater Cessna charter flight with no other passengers suited me just fine. The air charter company I use know me; they know I like privacy and they know I’m sometimes in a hurry to get into or out of a country. They also know I pay promptly.

  There was a low cloud base over Europe so not much to see, but there’s something very soothing about clouds and the pictures they make. Gold hates them; says she sees the faces of dead colleagues in them. I told her to let me know if she ever sees me. My soothing period was brought to an abrupt end by Clancy on my mobile. I’d only had it turned on for three minutes and there he was.

  ‘What the Hell went on at the Bucharest Club, Nevis? You re-enacting the Gunfight at the OK Corral? The shit has really hit the fan now!’ He was really angry.

  ‘I had a disagreement with Bogdan.’

  ‘I told you we had a team watching him.’

  ‘Well, nobody to watch now.’

  ‘The Commissioner’s gone up the bloody wall and the Home Secretary is after blood!’

  ‘Should be some on the floor in Bogdan’s office.’

  ‘And you are all over the CCTV. Your office has been watched all night and the only thing stopping an international
arrest warrant going out on you is me. Where are you?’

  ‘On a plane going to get the missing girl back – she’s in Romania. Bogdan took her because Randall owes him the money back for the Essex job. He paid upfront for the drugs and didn’t get them, he wants his money back and he thinks Marcia Johnson has it. He didn’t know they had separated twenty years ago.’

  That set Clancy back on his heels for a few seconds. ‘Nor did I.’

  ‘The money’s gone – I don’t know where, but Bogdan wasn’t going to get it back and he’d take a lot of convincing. Next thing Marcia Johnson would get would probably have been one of Janie’s fingers. That wasn’t going to happen on my watch.’

  ‘Right, now listen to me and listen carefully, okay?’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘I have made this missing girl an official enquiry. It’s been shifted over to my office, seeing that Organised Crime and Bogdan was involved.’

  ‘So you want me to pull out?’ No way would I do that.

  ‘No, no, I don’t want you to pull out. I said listen, so just listen.’

  ‘Okay.’ Yes sir.

  ‘Remember I told you I’d take an unofficial look at the Essex job, and I have. There were three AROs involved – their reports of the sting says the plane didn’t drop anything, but veered off at the last moment. The pilot must have seen something, probably them or their vehicles, and no money or drugs were found at the scene. Randall must have got a message from the pilot as he was out of the vehicle and started shooting wildly into the thicket – one of the AROs took a bullet to the arm and that’s when the others shot back and hit Randall. His driver sped off and got away.’

  ‘Nothing in the news reports of the time about a driver?’

  ‘No, there’s not.’

  ‘Is that where the money is?’

  ‘With the driver?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No, there wouldn’t have been any money at the scene, why would there be? The pilot’s not going to open a window, put out his hand and collect it as he flies past, is he? Randall would have had the money from the buyer before the delivery and either sorted it away into an offshore account ready to send to the drug cartel after he received the package, or he’d sent it already. Most drug deals are delivery then payment.’