Code Shield (13 page)

With her free hand, the
madam
reached for the pendant and looked into Kashin's eyes. “I remember how heavy you are.” Then, without losing her smile, she continued, “Darling, if you insist.” She turned her attention to Donovich. “I also take the girl to polish their knobs.”

Donovich tightened his grip on the woman's arm, bringing her down beside him. “Okay but for her I want a refundable deposit, thirty thousand.”

“Ten thousand,” countered the tall woman, long thick lashes fringed her eyes, like the legs of a tarantula.

“Ten thousand plus you and me,” rasped Donovich, the tip of his tongue touching her ear. She let out a small laugh.

“Give me thirty minutes to organise the girls, and then meet me in my room my darling,” she said and twisted free from his grip, got up and straightened her tight skirt.

Donovich reached up and again grabbed her arm, staring at her. She had the excess fat that comes with age. Contrary to what
Pin Up Girl
says, he, like most men, preferred their women voluptuous.

The
madam
smiled knowingly, “You know where my room is, my darling.” She leaned forward, kissed him slowly on his lips and stood upright. She glided away with exaggerated hip movements.

Donovich sat transfixed and watched her. Snapping back, he addressed Kashin, “Keep an eye on the girls. Let me know which hotel and we'll pick you all up tomorrow.”

Kashin smiled and rose, pulling Annette and Ying up by their arms. He herded them before him, down the narrow corridor to the room where he had earlier locked the two Filipinas.

He pushed open the door to the tiny room and crooked a finger at the Filipinas, “Follow me.”

They found the
madam
waiting at the far end of the corridor, outside a door that led to the fire escape. She unlocked the door and they exited down the rickety metal staircase that led to the ground floor parking lot.

Karpov was waiting for Kashin and the four women at the foot of the staircase. He grabbed the two Filipinas, one in each hand and headed towards his blue mini bus.

Annette and Ying squeezed into the back seat of Kashin's Porsche. They saw the blue minibus bounce over the low kerb onto the street and head away with grey smoke twirling from its exhaust pipe.

They never saw the two Filipinas again.

Back in the nightclub, Donovich scrutinised the dance floor. The place was a fog of coloured lights and smoke. He looked towards the long bar counter, searching for the man in the riverboat captain's cap. Karpov was not on his barstool. Strange he thought, but was distracted by visitors.

Two men had appeared and stood before Donovich. He recognised one of them, Police Colonel Vladimir Plustarch.

“
Zdravstvujte
(Hello),” said the tall policeman, towering six feet four.

“
Davno ne videlis
' (Long time no see),” replied Donovich. He stood up and offered his hand to Plustarch, “
Kak dela
? (How are you)?”

“
Spasiba, horoso
(I'm fine, thanks).” Turning to his companion, Plustarch introduced the man, “Yuri Kudrin, please meet Alexis Donovich.”

“Hello, how do you do?” Donovich invited the men to sit. “I'm having vodka with caviar and cranberries. There's also whiskey or we get something else if you like, wine perhaps.”

“Vodka with lemon is fine, thank you,” said Kudrin, his dark rimmed eyes piscine.

“I need to take a leak,” said Plustarch and turned towards the washrooms at the far end of the narrow corridor, calling back, “and fix me a whiskey on the rocks.”

Donovich poured Kudrin a glass of vodka, added a dash of lime and handed the drink to his guest. He surveyed Kudrin speculatively,

“So, Plustarch tells me that you work for Sobyanin. How is the godfather?”

“He is fine and sends you a proposal regarding your request,” said Kudrin, his visage cold and scary. He took a sip of his drink, licked his lips and nodded satisfaction.

Donovich filled a crystal tumbler with whiskey and dropped a few cubes of ice into it. He leaned back with his drink, crossed his legs, dragged deep on his cigarette and asked, “What proposal?”

“I have it here.” Kudrin reached into his suit and pulled out a Glock that had a silencer attached to its nozzle.

Donovich stared at the eyeless socket of the automatic, the colour draining from his face and the cigarette slipping out of his lips.

A shot spurted out – the bullet crashing into Donovich's forehead. The big man lurched back, as blood and bristle sprayed from the back of his head. His body arched out, remained rigid for a second and collapsed.

There was a scream, crashing of a metal tray and the shattering of broken glass. A cocktail waitress had come upon the killing and turned hysterical.

Kudrin stood up instinctively, the Glock still in his hand. There were more screams and shouts from the neighbouring tables. Men and women stumbled away or stood transfixed.

Two bouncers in leather jackets and nightsticks rushed up. But they hesitated when they saw the gun in Kudrin's hand.

Plustarch bulled through the crash of people who had formed a semi-circle around the killer.

When Kudrin saw him, his features relaxed and he lowered his gun hand.

Plustarch stepped forward, his service pistol in his hand. Without a word, he raised his Grach and fired two shots.

The heavy bullets smashed into Kudrin's face, sending the man flying back several metres.

Chapter 20

The telephone rang sharp and piercing. Benjamin woke with a start and groaned. His head felt heavy. He fumbled for the bedside clock, wondered why Tara had roused him an hour earlier than scheduled.

“Yes,” laboured Benjamin, a dozen heavy-metal bands pounding in his head.

“Something has happened. Meet me downstairs now. I'm on my way to your apartment,” Tara's voice crisp but unhurried.

Benjamin rushed to the ground floor of his apartment block, which was only a kilometre away from the embassy. He was still pulling and tugging his coat around him when the BMW swooped to a halt and the door swung open in one fluid movement.

Benjamin slipped in. His mouth tasted bitter. He reached for one of the two thermos flasks, which were always topped up with either coffee or warm water for such eventualities. There was also a pewter flask of brandy in the glove compartment.

The heavy car charged to the end of Kamennaya Sloboda Lane and swerved right, fishtailing onto Sadovoye Kolco Ring road. The BMW cut into traffic, forcing the driver of an oncoming car to blast his horn in panic and swerve abruptly.

Benjamin popped a couple of aspirins into his mouth. Taking a swig of warm water, he gulped hard, turned and asked,

“What's happening?”

“It's all messed up.” Tara floored the accelerator and the BMW weaved smoothly between lanes. “Apparently the venue for the rendezvous changed from the Nirvana to the Coral Reef.”

“Great!”

Unlike the Nirvana, which accorded many spots for observing without being seen, the Coral Reef occupied a standalone former tank factory and stood in a rough neighbourhood, where over the last few years, disused warehouses and factories had come alive, offering anything from drugs to bestiality.

“It gets even better,” said Tara, her eyes darting from the front to her side mirrors as she slipped the BMW into tight gaps between vehicles and got to the head of the pack.

“The meeting had been brought forward to ten instead of eleven.”

“Ten?” Benjamin looked at the luminous face of his wristwatch, “In this traffic, it'll be touch and go.”

They drove for about half an hour more before turning into a quieter road. Tara floored the pedal, not letting up, and the heavy car tore through the streets.

There was a sharp tweet, as if a birdcall and she speed-read the cryptic message in her cell phone.

“That's nice!” she said without emotion.

“One of your contacts?”

“Yes.” Tara eased her foot off the accelerator and the car decelerated. “No need to rush anymore.”

“What's happened?”

“Simonov doing some housekeeping.”

They continued the rest of the journey in a more leisurely glide. The car turned into a labyrinth of side streets. Traffic was less dense and the darkness swallowed the headlights that flew out of the car.

Silent, gloomy buildings lined the streets. There was plenty of graffiti on the walls. The streets pot holed and rubbish strewn all over. Small open fires burned in many places. Around each fire, a small group of figures huddled, warming themselves. Baleful eyes turned towards the gleaming car and followed the BMW's progress.

Tara shook out some mint and offered it to Benjamin who took it gratefully. He took a sip of water with the mint, his mouth feeling fresh and cool.

“Thanks, I'm feeling a lot better,” he rubbed his shoulder.

“The old injury playing up again?” observed Tara.

“Yes,” Benjamin grimaced. “Must have twisted it when I pulled up the overcoat…the cold doesn't help either.”

They turned into another street, filled with rows of nightclubs and discotheques. The cheap neon lights gave an illusion of comfort compared to the neighbourhood they had just left. Cars lined both sides of the street and they even caught glimpses of couples on the sidewalk.

The BMW glided fluidly up a slope and they saw a long angry line of red rear light, cars backed up in the narrow street. A short distance ahead, they caught snatches of blue and red strobe lights. Police!

Tara pulled up her collar and followed the slow moving line of cars. As they reached the bottleneck, they saw policemen in glistening black trench coats waving flashlights about, ordering the cars to keep moving. Drivers, who hesitated or rubbernecked, received sharp kicks to the doors of their cars.

A red and white ambulance and several silver and blue police cars with flashing lights had parked haphazardly outside a two-storey building. Yellow police tapes ran out of the building to lampposts and trees surrounding the nightclub. A crowd had gathered outside the tapes.

A stout broad framed man, a sheepskin
ushanka
with police insignia on his head, blocked Tara's view. He leaned down to quickly peer into the car, then straightened and rapped sharply on the window with his nightstick and growled, “Move along.”

“I'm Captain Nikita,” snapped Tara in Muscovite accent, flashing a police badge. “Who's in charge?”

“Colonel Plustarch, over there,” the man forced a stiff smile and went to harass the next car.

Pulling up along the walkway, Tara suggested that Benjamin wait in the car. She went looking for Plustarch.

In one of his more expansive moments, and perhaps to trade information on each other, Plustarch had related his family history to Tara.

Vladimir Plustarch was a scion of landed gentry. During the October Revolution, the local party commissar had broken into his grandparents' home and shot the couple. His father, then fifteen years old, had rushed in, wrestled the handgun away and killed the commissar. Before he could do more, the other attackers had barged in. They saw the teenager with the smoking gun and his grandfather, leaning against the wall. The old man, hugging his stomach, slipped slowly and painfully to the floor.

By a freak of circumstances that sometimes saves or sinks a person, the attackers saw in the boy someone who had turned against his own bourgeois parents – the ultimate mark of loyalty to the Party. They hailed and carried the boy on their shoulders and word spread about another hero of the Revolution.

The winter of 1917 catapulted the teenager to adulthood. In the following months, he ingratiated himself with the new order and wove into the Party fabric. In the nineteen thirties when Stalin unleashed his purges, the young man and now regional party functionary had his name changed to Plustarch and literally rewrote his family history.

On his deathbed, old man Plustarch had relayed the family secrets to his son, Vladimir.

It amused Vladimir Plustarch no end that while he strove to hide his family lineage, others in the new
nomenklatura
did everything possible to re-join threads to long forgotten nobility, never mind that there were no yarns to begin with.

Chapter 21

It was ten o'clock in the morning in Singapore and Reginald Lee convened the meeting with Zain and the three deputy directors – the fresh faced man and woman, and Uncle Smiley. They had seen the first flash report from Moscow. Their faces were grim and jaws set hard as they waited for Lowe to come on-line.

After a brief preamble, Lowe made his report. With him were Tara and Benjamin.

“Gentlemen, contrary to the report filed by Ms Banks,” Lowe studiously avoided Tara's gaze, “the operation was a resounding success. It's true both Yuri Kudrin and Alexis Donovich died in the shootout last night but the fact is we have taken out a major buyer and choked the supply lines into Western Europe. Wasn't that our plan, follow the bread crumbs as the minister put it, locate and neutralise the buyer?”

They heard someone clear his throat. It was Zain speaking, “The Americans don't see Kudrin as a major player and in fact they reckon he's a mere muscle man working in the fringe. If that's true your police friends have shown their hand too early.”

“Police Lieutenant General Boris Simonov,” Lowe placed emphasis on the rank as he expostulated, “says otherwise. You have to decide whether the American characters know better than the Russian Police Chief.”

“Does this Police Lieutenant General have any ideas about what happened?” Zain's voice sounded nasal over the speaker.

“Details are sketchy and investigations on-going. Apparently, these Donovich and Kudrin characters quarrelled and exchanged shots. A police officer on undercover duty witnessed it all.” Lowe puffed up as he spoke, “Boris expects a civil war within the Kudrin Family –”