Hard Cover Read online

  Holding the silencer in place I shot him twice. The gunshots were muffled, no more than a snapping sound. But his body tipping over the arm of the chair wasn’t. He hit the floor hard, his gun skidding out of his hand and bouncing across the boards like a drum roll.

  Instantly I heard a volley of shouts from downstairs demanding to know what was going on and what Carlos was doing.

  The girl turned when she heard the shouting and looked to see what had happened, her eyes growing wider as she saw the dead guard with his head covered in blood. I bent and hauled her off the bed and tucked her behind the door where she would be most protected. Then I cut the ropes around her wrists and signalled to her not to move and to put her fingers in her ears. A split second later a volley of wild shots were fired through the ceiling downstairs, ripping up through the planks and filling the air with splinters and making Carlos’s body jump.

  Showed how much these guys cared about their colleagues. He should have joined a friendlier gang.

  I fired back, spacing out my shots across the floor with a concentration around the door. I heard a scream which told me I’d been lucky, but no more shots.

  They were on their way up.

  I reloaded and grabbed the table, hurling it through the doorway onto the landing. I was counting on the element of shock and surprise as it hit the wall of the stairwell and crashed down the stairs. Somebody got the message and began yelling and firing like it was the fourth of July, and I heard the vicious spit and whine of shells taking pieces out of the walls and ceiling, and the clatter of brick and plaster rubble falling into the well. I waited for the shooting to stop, then stepped out and fired back, using the walls to bounce shells around the small lobby like shrapnel. There was more shouting, and I recognized the boss man’s voice telling somebody to call for backup.

  I had to get down there before that could happen, and there was only one way to do it. I ran down the first set of six stairs, my feet skidding in the dirt, and rounded the corner to face the door where the men had been talking. As I did so a chunk of plaster and brick dust exploded near my head and I saw a man in grubby jeans and shirt lying in the corner of the lobby, firing up the stairs. He had blood on his shoulder and was screaming something I didn’t understand.

  I shot him once and scooped up his gun as I ran past, and hit the door running, rolling across the concrete floor into what had once been the workshop. One man was lying on the floor, eyes wide open, my lucky shot from upstairs. Another was frantically stabbing a cell phone with his thumb while juggling a pistol with his other hand and trying to bring it to bear on me.

  I pointed my gun at him and shook my head. He didn’t look like a pro, more a talker than a fighter. But even talkers can be dangerous.

  He dropped the phone and bent to put the gun on the floor, shaking his head at me and imploring me not to shoot, his jowls quivering like jello. He was quite a surprise. He was dressed in a smart suit and white shirt, with flashy-looking brown loafers polished to a high shine. All in it would probably have cost him a couple of thousand dollars. He was short and fat and had more of the sleek look of a businessman or politician than a kidnapper.

  Maybe the local grab-and-ransom business was moving upmarket.

  As I got to my feet I heard a noise behind me.

  I spun round, finger tightening on the trigger.

  It was Katarina. She’d followed me downstairs and was holding onto the door frame and doing her best not to fall over. She looked ghostly pale and ready to throw up, but had clearly got the guts to drag herself down here, ready to face whatever was waiting. But the look on her face wasn’t just the expression of a traumatized kidnap victim; she looked genuinely appalled and was staring past me at the fat man as if she couldn’t believe her eyes.

  ‘Tio?’ She whispered. Uncle. Then she held out her hand and screamed, ‘Non!’

  I turned in time to see the fat man going for his gun. In his haste he fumbled it, juggling with both hands to turn it the right way and pull the trigger. He looked terrified and I realized why: for whatever insane reason – undoubtedly money – he’d arranged via this group of misfits for the kidnap of his own niece. It wouldn’t be the first time family had turned on family for profit. It also explained why the goons he’d used were low-level quality and not cartel guns. But one thing was certain: he might have stayed in the background so far, only now the game was truly up.

  He lifted his gun towards the girl with a scream of rage as if I wasn’t there, clearly intent on killing her to wipe out any evidence of his involvement.

  The silencer on my gun had dropped out of alignment and was likely to deflect a bullet if I fired, so I snapped it off the end and squeezed the trigger three times. The reports were deafening in the room and made my ears hurt, and the smoke residue clouded the air between us.

  But not enough to hide the fat man’s expensive jacket and shirt jumping with the impact of each shot, or the way he flipped over backwards and dropped the gun.

  I turned to the girl and grabbed her round the waist. We hadn’t got a lot of time before somebody came to investigate the noise, and we had a long way to go.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, hustling her out of the door. ‘Let’s get you home.’

  THREE

  I’m a close protection specialist. I run security, evaluate risks in hostile situations and, where needed, provide hard cover. To do my job I have to look ahead of where a principal is going to be at any one time, checking details, terrain, routes in and out – most especially out – and providing the best possible solution for a happy outcome. If it works the principal won’t even know I’m there and will go home happy. If it doesn’t, I get involved.

  And that’s where the hard cover comes in; it means I have to take a more direct course of action and fight back.

  Two days later, after returning Katarina safely to her family, I had my feet up in my New York apartment evaluating a couple of jobs I’d been offered on the security contractor network, when I received a call.

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Well, at least I now know you’re home.’ The voice was unmistakably British and I recognized it immediately. It belonged to a man named Tom Vale, a senior officer with the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service or MI6. I’d worked with him once before and we’d got on fine, mainly because he didn’t try dictating my every move once I was in the field. I wasn’t sure what his current role was, only that he was a former field officer of some note and now close to retirement, and had been retained after a more senior colleague had been forced to stand down.

  ‘I’m on a break,’ I replied, although I knew that was going to be short-lived. Tom Vale didn’t call freelancers like me unless he had a job that needed doing. I could refuse if I didn’t like the sound of it, but we both knew that was unlikely.

  ‘Glad to hear it. You know where the local CIA office is.’ It wasn’t a question. ‘Can you be there in one hour?’

  He could only be talking about New York. I’d been to the NY office before, which was located in Manhattan, where I’d picked up a previous job, so I guessed he’d been briefed on that.

  ‘Will you be there?’

  ‘Of course. I hope you can make it. There’s a bit of a rush job on.’

  He disconnected and left me wondering why an MI6 officer would be calling me in to a CIA front office. He’d either been given the task of contacting me because I was known to be a little sceptical of CIA procedures after my last assignment with them, or his star had risen in the intelligence world and he was now a major player with a foot in both camps. Knowing the rivalries that existed in their world, I was betting on the former.

  A bit of a rush job. It was very British and Vale-speak for a major assignment.

  I got there within the hour and was escorted through the security screen and up to a small office on the fifteenth floor. It could have been any government office in the country, with the same lack of design features, minimal furniture and an atmosphere of apparent calm overlaid by the hum of
air-conditioning. But I knew there would be a hustle going on behind the doors and partitioning, and the building would be alive with electronic activity from all the terminals and computer screens being fed a torrent of information and raw data.

  The office had three people present, all drinking coffee. Two men and one woman. Vale stepped across to shake hands and handed me a takeaway mug from down the street. He may have been a visitor here and British, but he was the type to make it his business to know a man’s preferences. He stepped back and introduced the other two.

  ‘This is senior CIA Assistant Director, Jason Sewell.’ He indicated a comfortable-looking man in his mid-fifties, with a genial smile and watchful eyes. Sewell lifted himself off the chair and shook hands, and I moved the likely importance of this assignment several notches up the scale. For a man of his rank to be here in person, instead of on the other end of a video-conference line, this had to be a real zinger.

  ‘And this is Angela Thornbury. She’s a senior political analyst from the State Department, currently on attachment as an advisor to the White House. Ms Thornbury – Watchman.’

  He hadn’t used my real name and I guessed that was because he didn’t think Thornbury needed to know it. Sewell probably did, but he didn’t seem about to give the game away.

  Thornbury was short, neat and serious-looking, in a grey suit and white blouse. She hesitated before reaching out a tentative hand, but stayed where she was so I had to reach across the table. She had a loose grip which lingered about as briefly as her smile, as if she wasn’t quite comfortable being here. I didn’t blame her; the environs of the White House were probably a lot more genial than the front office of one of the nation’s foremost spy agencies, and outsiders like me were probably treated over there as on a par with pit bulls.

  Introductions over, we all sat down. This time it was Sewell who did the talking and he didn’t waste words. He took a photograph out of a folder in front of him and slid it across the table towards me. I noticed Vale and Thornbury had similar folders and photos.

  ‘This is Leonid Tzorekov. He’s a former KGB officer who met Vladimir Putin in the nineties before moving into a senior intelligence planning role. He resigned eight years ago and took on a senior post with Russia Bank and moved to London, where he set up ActInvest, a finance and securities operation. He’s done very well for himself and now spends much of his time between London and New York, where ActInvest has a small office.’

  Tzorekov looked to be in his late sixties, maybe older. He was lean and fit, with the air of an ageing athlete, and had the steady look of a man who has achieved much in his life and is not about to retire and take up gardening.

  ‘He’s seventy-four and extremely active,’ Sewell continued, reading my mind. ‘For some years since leaving Russia Tzorekov hasn’t figured on anybody’s radar. He appears to have distanced himself from the activities of other bankers with open and obvious ties to Moscow, and there’s been nothing to suggest he is even remotely connected still with the KGB or any intelligence-gathering activities.’

  He hesitated just long enough to suggest that there was a ‘but’ lurking in there somewhere, so I gave him an opening. ‘However?’

  He ghosted an appreciative smile. ‘He was already a senior instructor in the organization when Putin was recruited, and helped train Putin’s intake. The two became friends. It’s thought Tzorekov saw Putin as a younger version of himself and took him under his wing, mentoring him through the critical stages of his career and preparing him for the future. That meant providing political protection when it was needed and pointing him in the right direction to move up the KGB ladder, which he did.’

  ‘Things changed for Tzorekov just recently,’ said Vale, taking over, ‘with rumours of two attempts on his life. Both were passed off as accidents – one in London and one here in New York. The first was a mugging near Grand Central Station. He was attacked by two men. He was lucky, as he had this man with him.’ Sewell was already sliding another photo across the table. The photo showed a younger man with a receding hairline and the slight build and pallid cheekbones of a ballet dancer. ‘His name is Arkady Gurov. He’s also ex-KGB, forty-two years old and listed as a security and IT manager for ActInvest. We’re ninety-nine per cent sure he’s Tzorekov’s bodyguard.’

  ‘And the other incident?’

  ‘That was near Canon Street underground in London. A cab mounted the pavement as Tzorekov was walking to the station. It killed a news vendor and seriously injured two other members of the public. Gurov hustled Tzorekov away and the cab driver disappeared in the melee. The cab was found to have been stolen just an hour before from a garage in Southwark. It looked like a straightforward theft and joyride until the police found no fingerprints.’

  ‘None?’

  He shook his head. ‘In view of who Tzorekov is, and the severity of the incident, the Metropolitan Police went over the vehicle three times and even tracked its progress on cameras from the accident back to the time it was stolen. There were no clear shots of the driver, which in itself seemed too unlikely to be a random car-jacking, and the fact that keys were involved suggest the vehicle had been stolen to order from the garage where it was being serviced. They discovered fresh traces of a cleaning agent on the door handle and steering wheel – nothing to do with the garage, as it happens – and concluded that the driver cleaned it after stealing the vehicle as a precaution, then wore gloves to drive to the area and make the hit.’

  ‘Sounds organized. What did you mean “who Tzorekov is”?’

  He shrugged. ‘He’s one of a large number of Russians working and living in London. We’re aware of his KGB history, which Jason has outlined, although that doesn’t seem to have prevented him voicing the occasional disagreement with his country’s activities. He has family connections in Ukraine, for example. Because of that and following the murder of Litvinenko, his name was automatically placed on a watch list of prominent Russians in the capital. He’s very rich and although he doesn’t always speak highly of his mother country or of their politics, it could be a clever cover. But that doesn’t explain the attempts on his life. There could have been other attempts, of course, that we don’t know about.’

  I had an inkling of where this was going, so asked, ‘Are you saying they’re still in touch?’

  ‘Interesting question,’ said Vale. ‘We believe they never actually broke off contact altogether, but Tzorekov’s move to the UK would have made it difficult for Putin to maintain open relations with a man generally seen as no longer accepted – an outsider, a dissident, even.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘We know messages have been passed to and from Tzorekov over the years, with a connection in Moscow. It probably isn’t Putin himself tapping away on a keyboard, and although it’s infrequent, it’s enough to suggest that he is still talking to somebody over there.’

  ‘What makes you think it’s Putin and not a family member?’

  ‘Because the messages are delivered in person, not by phone or email – a measure of the precautions being taken by both sides not to be seen talking to each other. We believe they’re carried by a man named Valentin Roykovski. Roykovski has been to the UK on several occasions, and was once recorded visiting ActInvest’s office in London. That by itself wasn’t unusual, because many Russians in London bank with them. But shortly afterwards, Roykovski was spotted in a restaurant in Mayfair. Tzorekov was sitting at the next table but they ignored each other.’

  It was an old-school method but still worked well if done correctly. A brush contact allows two people to exchange information or objects such as documents or a USB stick without actually being seen to meet. It’s best done on the move, such as in a busy subway station or airport, but sitting at adjacent tables somewhere quiet is just as good.

  ‘So Roykovski’s a conduit.’

  ‘We think so. The interesting thing is, Roykovski never goes anywhere near the Russian Embassy. He flies in, does what he has to, and flies out again. Like a ba
g man.’

  ‘Is that significant?’

  ‘It is,’ Sewell put in, ‘when you consider that Valentin Roykovski used to be Putin’s driver back in the KGB days, and almost certainly knew Tzorekov pretty well, too. He’s long retired now but he’s been seen close to Putin’s home at odd times and the general consensus is that he’s almost certainly on a retainer of some kind. We’re keeping a watch on him to see what he does over the next few days. If he moves, ten to one it’s because he’s acting on instructions from Putin. He’ll be our marker.’

  ‘So what is it you want me to do?’

  ‘Personally, I don’t. No offence. But others do.’ He looked at Angela Thornbury with raised eyebrows.

  She cleared her throat and asked, ‘Have you ever heard of a group called the siloviki, Mr … Watchman?’

  I ignored the obvious tone of condescension and doubt in her voice. She also sounded pissed by the obvious use of a code name. ‘Well, I’m guessing they’re not a group of travelling musicians. Could you enlighten me?’

  Actually, I had heard of them, but I saw no reason to make this a spitting contest with a member of the State Department. The siloviki were rumoured to be mostly intelligence or military officers close to Putin, and considered to be part of his inner circle. If he needed advice, the senior members were the ones he went to, and usually held posts that decided policy at the very top of the government tree. They were also regarded as hawks and not friendly to the US or the European Union.

  Which was pretty much what Thornbury went on to tell me at much greater length and detail, until Sewell jumped in to halt the flow.

  ‘We don’t know for sure,’ he said, ‘whether Leonid Tzorekov was, or is, part of this inner circle – a silovik. All the evidence says he isn’t, although he must know some of the current members pretty well. But even though he’s now gone to the outside, he evidently feels he may still be in a position of some influence. He recently approached the authorities in London and offered his services in talking to Putin and trying to counter the hawks who seem intent on driving a hard wedge between Moscow and the West. As we all know, they’re doing a great job of talking up threats against Russia after the problems in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea, mostly as a smokescreen. We know the sanctions are hurting them economically and, for some of the hierarchy running the state apparatus and big business, personally. Tom, here, got involved and brought us in so we could work together to find a way to use this opportunity.’