Gray Salvation (2 page)

Chapter 2

18 January 2016

Harvey was adding to his growing list of notes when his mobile phone tore him away from Nikolai Sereyev’s file. He checked the caller ID and smiled as he answered.

‘Hi, honey. How did it go?’

‘Looks like I’ll be moving office,’ Sarah said.

‘Excellent! Do you know when?’

‘I haven’t got a clear date. Martin wants me to hand over all of my assignments first, so it won’t be before the end of February. He isn’t happy about it, though.’

‘His loss is my gain.’ Harvey leaned back in his chair. ‘Thankfully he saw sense.’

‘Only after I threatened to resign if he blocked the move,’ she said.

An email from the Russia desk interrupted him. ‘You’ll have to tell me about it when I get back to the flat,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to pop down and see someone about a new case I’ve been assigned to. If you can throw something together, I’ll get a bottle of wine on the way home.’

The evening’s plans made, he said his goodbyes and walked downstairs to see Gayle Cooper, head of the Russia section.

‘I’m so sorry to hear about Jason,’ Harvey said as he walked into Cooper’s office. He could tell she’d been crying, and she suddenly looked a lot older than her forty years.

‘It’s knocked us for six,’ Cooper admitted. ‘Veronica says you’re going to be leading this up, so I wanted to give you everything we have on Bessonov.’

Cooper had a laptop mirrored on a wall-mounted TV, where the Russian mobster’s face already filled the screen. She clearly wasn’t in the mood for conversation, so Harvey let her launch into the presentation.

‘Alexi Bessonov, born in Moscow on 30 May 1962. His mother was a seamstress, his father a machine operator in a munitions factory. He became delinquent at thirteen and was arrested four times before dropping out of school at fifteen. He took up with a local black marketeer, where he earned a reputation as an enforcer. Bessonov reportedly killed his first man at age sixteen, and a dozen other deaths in Russia have been attributed to him.

‘At twenty he was sent to London to help out in a power struggle between two Russian gangs. Thirteen people died in less than a week, including the head of the rival mob, and Bessonov became one of the personal bodyguards of the victor, Yuri Adaksin. It was a position he held for eight years until Adaksin’s death in 1990.’

‘How did his boss die?’ Harvey interrupted, and the look he got from Cooper made him wish he hadn’t.

‘A car accident,’ she said evenly. ‘His SUV was hit by a rubbish truck and he died at the scene. Bessonov suffered a broken arm in the incident.’

Harvey was reluctant to interrupt her again, but wanted to get an idea of the circumstances.

‘What about the truck driver?’

‘Fled the scene,’ Cooper said, ‘and the truck turned out to be stolen.’

‘A rival gang?’

‘So it seems. It was never established who ordered the hit, but Adaksin’s death created a vacuum, and several smaller gangs made plays to grab power. None were successful, and it soon turned into all-out war. Adaksin’s lieutenants were taken out one by one, until Bessonov was fit enough to rejoin the fight. Reports suggest he personally took out two rival bosses before the others got the message, though there was never enough evidence to secure a conviction.’

‘So Bessonov took over running of the firm at that point?’

Cooper switched images on the screen to show a much younger version of the mobster standing outside a diner. ‘He’s been the
Pakhan
– or Godfather – for the last twenty-six years, during which time the group has diversified into prostitution and human trafficking. That’s on top of their drugs and protection businesses. The money is laundered through a series of legitimate companies, including that restaurant. It has six tables and we’ve never seen more than two dozen people walk through the door, but last year’s accounts showed a profit of over a million on three million turnover.’

‘That’s some expensive borscht,’ Harvey noted. ‘Is there any particular reason why we haven’t been able to take him down?’

Cooper moved on to the next image, a man in his sixties with heavy jowls and thinning grey hair. ‘This is Grigory Polushin, senior counsellor at the Russian embassy and the ambassador’s number two. He visits the restaurant twice a week, and I believe it is his political influence that keeps Bessonov out of our reach. We haven’t been able to ascertain what happens at these meetings, but the assumption is that Polushin carries away significant amounts of cash. Often he’s been seen leaving with a large holdall. We suspect that’s how Bessonov’s illegal gains are being shipped back to Moscow through diplomatic channels. The police have pulled Bessonov in twice, but both times he had alibis provided by high-ranking Russian officials. We believe Polushin arranged them for him, and it’s difficult for the CPS to push ahead with a prosecution without calling them liars.’

It was a familiar story to Harvey: known criminals operating with impunity in order to prevent political shitstorms. It wasn’t just the Russians, either. Several Chinese gangs had close ties with senior diplomats, and while those who lived in their community knew what was going on, the Triad bosses never seemed to be held accountable.

This wasn’t about an illegal brothel or gambling den, though. Bessonov had taken out an MI5 operative.

‘You say you don’t know what goes on at their regular meetings,’ he said. ‘Have you tried bugging the place?’

‘Impossible,’ Cooper said. ‘It’s open and staffed twenty-four hours a day, so there’s no opportunity to break in and plant anything. We once tried sending a transmitter in with a newspaper delivery, sewing it into the spine of a magazine, but they sweep the place before each meeting and our device was found before it could do any good.’

‘I suppose his home is out of the question, too.’

‘All three of them,’ Cooper confirmed. ‘The closest we could get to Bessonov was through Nikolai Sereyev . . .’

Her words tailed off, the memory of Willard’s death filling the empty space.

‘I read Willard’s notes,’ Harvey said, after a respectful pause. ‘He mentioned that Sereyev knew of something big on the horizon. Did he ever elaborate?’

‘I don’t know anything beyond what you’ve read,’ Cooper said, ‘though the timing worries me.’

Harvey perked up. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I take it you’ve heard of the recent troubles in Tagrilistan,’ she said, soliciting a nod from Harvey.

The sanctions imposed on Russia following their annexing of Crimea had hit the country’s economy hard, and its reliance on energy exports added to their woes with the slump in oil prices. The rouble had lost more than sixty per cent of its value against the dollar in one year, and foreign investment had all but dried up.

Far from learning their lesson, though, the Russians had turned their attention to Tagrilistan, one of many former Soviet republics bordering Russia to the south. As with Ukraine, a pro-Russian government had once led Tagrilistan, but their recent defeat in the elections had caused serious unrest. Russia seized the opportunity to stoke up further resentment and had sent in troops and equipment, though they denied having anything to do with the civil war ravaging the country. Those sent to fight wore no insignia and carried no identification, and the weapons they used were available in many countries in the region, though no-one was under any illusion as to their real origin.

‘I was as surprised as anyone when Demidov sent his troops there,’ he said. ‘It didn’t work out too well in Ukraine.’

‘It’s all about securing his own future,’ Cooper said. ‘With Ukraine, he was still reeling from accusations of vote rigging in the 2012 elections, and he saw it as the perfect chance to unite the nation and increase his approval rating. It worked for a while, but once their economy took a nosedive, so did his popularity. Focusing on a new enemy in Tagrilistan allowed him to bounce back a little, but he doesn’t seem to have a clear strategy, and that makes him unpredictable.’

‘So what does this have to do with the big thing that Sereyev told Willard was on the horizon?’

‘Viktor Milenko is Tagrilistan’s new president, and he’ll be visiting London at the end of next week,’ Cooper said. ‘He’s looking to sign a trade deal with us and the rest of Europe, and the Russians aren’t happy about it. Tagrilistan is sitting on a large oil deposit, and Milenko is offering it to us at five dollars a barrel below Moscow prices. If this deal goes ahead, it will push Russia further into recession.’

‘You think they’ll try to hit Milenko while he’s over here?’

‘In the absence of any other information, I have to assume the worst. I’m preparing a report for Veronica detailing my concerns, but this is one time I’d be glad to be mistaken.’

Harvey agreed. If Milenko were assassinated in London, it would send out the message that dealing with Britain came at a hefty price.

‘If you could copy me into that report, I’d appreciate it,’ he said. ‘In the meantime, I’ll try to find out what Bessonov is really up to.’

Chapter 3

18 January 2016

Stanislav Yerzov pulled up at the front of the Novotel nestled in the centre of the Tagrilistani capital and handed the valet the keys to his two-year-old Toyota RAV4 before heading inside the hotel. Normally he would have had a driver take him everywhere in his armour-plated BMW, as befit Tagrilistan’s vice president, but this wasn’t a typical social meeting.

He made straight for the restaurant and walked past several foreign businessmen before taking a seat at the table he’d reserved. His two dinner guests arrived just as he gave the waiter his order from the wine list, and he greeted them nervously.

‘I’m not happy at the thought of being seen with you,’ he whispered. ‘Is it really necessary?’

‘This isn’t something we could have done over the phone,’ the first Russian said. He was almost as large as Yerzov, but carried muscle rather than flab. His companion was a complete contrast, his grey suit almost falling off his short, wiry frame. Both were in their mid-forties, with the larger one, Sergei, doing all the talking.

‘What is so important that it risks revealing our relationship?’

‘We had an incident in London,’ Sergei said. ‘It seems the British are taking an unhealthy interest in our people over there.’

‘What do you mean?’ Yerzov wiped his brow with a napkin. He’d been apprehensive about the meeting with the Russians, but now he was close to full-blown panic.

The waiter returned and asked for their order. Sergei and his companion waved him away, but Yerzov requested the salmon.

‘The security services tried to infiltrate our organisation, but we dealt with it,’ Sergei said, once they were alone again. ‘We interrogated the mole for some time, but it seems he didn’t have a chance to pass on any damaging information. The question is, who pointed MI5 in our direction?’

Yerzov looked at both of the men in turn, their blank faces giving nothing away. It took him a full minute to realise what they were suggesting.

‘You . . . you think I had something to do with it?’

‘Not at all,’ Sergei assured him, trying to smile but only managing to look menacing. ‘You have too much to lose, we both know that. Did you mention our plan to anyone else?’

‘Not even my wife, I swear.’

‘Good,’ Sergei said, seemingly satisfied. He pulled a manila envelope from inside his jacket and handed it to Yerzov, who opened it and read the one-page message.

‘That’s the press release we want you to put out once his assassination reaches the news wires. You will follow up shortly afterwards with the announcement that you think Britain was complicit in his death, that they cannot be trusted and that you will therefore be forging ties with Moscow instead.’

‘Understood,’ Yerzov told him, though his only concern was the two million dollars that would hit his Cayman bank account once his deal with the Russians was ratified. He was born a Muscovite and had moved with his parents to Tagrilistan when he was seven years of age. But it was simple security that motivated him, not some misguided notion of patriotism.

‘That’s good,’ Sergei said. ‘We don’t want you changing allegiance at the last moment.’

The threat hung in the air, but Yerzov needed no warning. He was under no illusions as to his future if he didn’t deliver, and a long life with plenty of cash was far preferable to no life at all.

‘Are plans in place to pull the troops back to the border?’ Yerzov knew that Moscow wasn’t happy with the idea of being seen to capitulate, but he could hardly enter into trade negotiations while Russian soldiers held a large swath of what would soon be his country. Battles had been fought in several cities near the border, with a death toll of almost five hundred in the last three months alone.

‘A phased withdrawal has already been implemented,’ Sergei said. ‘There will be no troops in Tagrilistan by Wednesday, and the local Russian population have been ordered to abandon their posts on the twenty-ninth.’

The day Milenko was due to relinquish his position, though he didn’t yet know it.

The waiter arrived with Yerzov’s meal, and Sergei took it as his cue to leave.

‘We’ll be back in a couple of weeks when we escort the president to the talks,’ Sergei said as he rose. ‘Make sure everything’s ready for his visit.’

Andrew Harvey stuck his head into Gerald Small’s office and saw the technician tinkering with a toy helicopter.

‘Busy as always, I see.’

Small smiled and held the chopper out for Harvey to take. ‘This is my latest surveillance drone.’

‘It looks like the one I bought my nephew for Christmas,’ Harvey said, giving it a once-over. The toy was six inches long and weighed only a couple of ounces. ‘It feels a bit heavier than his, though. What have you done to it?’

Small took the craft back and turned it over. ‘This is a directional microphone,’ he said. ‘The bird can hover at a hundred feet, and this baby will pick up an ant farting on the ground.’

‘Really? That good?’

‘Well, maybe not an ant,’ Small conceded, ‘but it could certainly pick up a conversation as if it were happening a few feet away.’

‘It might be just what I need,’ Harvey said, and explained the problem he faced in getting a recording device into Bessonov’s restaurant.

‘That wouldn’t do you any good,’ Small said. ‘It relies on line of sight and isn’t that effective through walls. I have something here that might be useful, though.’

Small delved into a drawer and brought out a transparent circle of film.

‘We want to hear what Bessonov says, not help him to quit smoking.’

‘Look closer,’ Small said.

Harvey held the disc up to the light and saw that far from being just plastic, it had dozens of tiny filaments running through it, each thinner than a human hair.

‘It’s one of the latest passive recording devices,’ Small said. He held out his hand and showed Harvey another circle, this one a little thicker and backed with paper.

‘And that’s just the battery. This is the same thing paired with the transmitter. Once you peel off the backing, it will stick to any surface and is almost impossible to remove without the accompanying solvent. In your case, we could design it to look like a table manufacturer’s logo. You could stick it under a table in Bessonov’s restaurant, and it would stand up to the closest scrutiny.’

‘They sweep for bugs every day,’ Harvey reminded him.

‘Not a problem. This thing stores the information it records and only transmits to us when it senses no electrical signal nearby. Even if someone has a scanning device right next to it when the conversation starts, it won’t be detected.’

It seemed the ideal way to find out what Bessonov was up to, but as with all things technical, there had to be a flaw.

‘So what’s the down side?’

‘In order to pick up its transmission, you need to be quite close. Within fifty yards, to be exact.’

That meant parking virtually outside the shop, which wasn’t something Harvey was comfortable with.

‘Can’t you boost the signal somehow?’

‘Not mine to do.’ Small shrugged. ‘I got this from an American friend. It’s ten years ahead of anything we’ve got, and if it came to modifications I wouldn’t know where to begin.’

‘In that case, does someone have to be on the other end, or can we just set up a receiver somewhere and pick it up later?’

‘Sure.’ Small picked up a metal briefcase and placed it on the desk. ‘This is all you’ll need.’ He opened it and flicked a couple of switches to demonstrate how it should be operated.

‘Could I leave that in the boot of my car and come back for it after the meeting?’

‘Yes, but the battery life is something like five hours, so don’t leave it too long.’

Harvey thanked Small and asked him to make sure the receiver was fully charged, then headed back to his desk and checked Bessonov’s file to see when Polushin usually visited the restaurant. According to the surveillance logs, they met every Tuesday and Friday, always around two in the afternoon.

That gave him twenty-four hours to come up with a way to plant the bug and learn what secret was big enough to kill for.