Back in the Russia of Yeltsin, Vinogradov had been a fully paid-up member of the gangster underworld, racking up convictions for protection, racketeering, rape, murder and armed robbery. He had served time in Lefortovo prison in Moscow. When the theft of Russia’s natural assets began, he was at freedom and raised several million dollars. With the help of corrupt bureaucrats, he was able to buy a small Siberian oil field at a peppercorn price. This made him a billionaire. Then he threw in his lot with the rising Vodzh. Mysteriously, his entire criminal record was voided, stricken from the record. Newly respectable, he emigrated to London and became a lavish host.
Even though Vinogradov thought the line was secure, he was circumspect in what he said. The call was to a notorious Albanian gangster who ran his mob in south London, where the Richardson gang, rival of the Krays, once ruled the roost. Bujar Zogu had worked for him before. Always contract work and always involving violence. Sir Adrian had a transcript of what they said within an hour of the call.
Vinogradov was giving the orders, and they were simple. The operation is over, finished, cancelled. Get a message to your friends. Do not use any means of telecommunication. Drive personally to their location. Get rid of all the evidence – I mean, all of it – leave no trace and return home.
Clearly, time was of the essence. Once Zogu reached the place his thugs were holding the girl, she would be killed.
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency in Swansea had Zogu’s car details in seconds. A modest dark blue Volvo saloon, registration number such-and-such. Weston’s next call was to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Lucinda Berry.
‘Lucy, can you help me?’
‘If it is legal and possible. What is it?’
‘There is an Albanian gangster motoring out of his south London base. Destination unknown.’ He dictated the car details. ‘I have reason to believe that when he reaches his destination a child will be murdered. Can we intercept him?’
‘Good God, we must.’
London is ringed by the 117-mile-long M25 orbital motorway. It is constantly cruised by patrol cars but most of all it is surveyed by thousands of HADECS-3 speed-control cameras, centrally linked and computer-obedient. One of them got the Volvo on the southern arc of the motorway, heading for the Dartford Tunnel under the Thames.
There are toll booths there and cameras. The passage of the Volvo through the tunnel and on to the northern arc was noted. Ten miles later a patrol car slid out of Junction 29 to take up the tail. It was warned to pull off at the next intersection.
Bujar Zogu noted the police car in his rear-view mirror but he also noted that it pulled off at Junction 28. By then a police helicopter had found the blue car beneath it. The chopper held station until the Volvo left Essex county, still orbiting London on the motorway.
An unmarked police car had the tail until Junction 16, when the Albanian pulled on to the M40 motorway heading north-west towards the Midlands and Wales. Thames Valley Police took over, then another police helicopter.
After two hours’ driving it was plain the Albanian was heading into Wales, specifically north Wales, one of the most sparsely occupied portions of the UK mainland.
The easy way would have been to intercept Zogu and flag him down. But Scotland Yard had drawn down their file on him. This said he was smart and cunning. He would know, having stuck to the speed limit all the way, that there was no reason to flag him down. And the authorities still did not know where he was going, in what isolated place he and his team had hidden their prisoner. He might have it on his satnav screen, but he could wipe that even as the officers were walking towards him. Months of interrogation would never drag it out of him.
Sir Adrian did not have months. The only good news was that Zogu had abided by his orders. He had made no attempt to use his mobile phone to warn his team that he was coming, or why. But he still had to be stopped before he got there. At that point, there might be only seconds to spare. That was when Sir Adrian called on help from the Special Reconnaissance Regiment at Credenhill.
By late afternoon the roads the Albanian was following were becoming narrower and more isolated. He was on the A5, heading for Bangor. He was just turning off, following the guidance of his satnav, towards Denbigh Moors, when the SRR helicopter came up behind him. It was high and in his blind spot. He did not see it, but the six troopers on board saw him.
The troopers had been told only that a kidnapped child was being held against her will and if the man in the blue Volvo beneath them reached the hideout she would be murdered. That was enough. Soldiers become really angry about people threatening children.
The Denbigh Moors are a wilderness of heath and scattered farmsteads. The Volvo pulled off on to a narrow track that led to such a farm two miles ahead. There was no other building on that lane.
From his vantage at a thousand feet, the pilot of the Dauphin drawn from the Joint Special Forces Aviation Wing could see that the track ended just beyond the farm and went nowhere. The farm appeared abandoned, a single van in the yard. A working farm would have more than that.
From behind his windscreen Bujar Zogu saw an unmarked helicopter sweep overhead in the same direction as himself then drop out of sight behind high ground that rose ahead of him. What he did not see was the chopper descending into the valley, or the two men in camouflage uniform with machine pistols leaping out.
Until he crested the rise. The helicopter was gone – off down the valley and out of sight. The two soldiers were in the road. He did not notice that their MP5s were silenced. He could not fail to notice that they were waving him down. He slowed and stopped. The men approached his car, one on each side. Beside him was his folded jacket. Under it was his handgun.
He really should not have reached for it. It was a silly mistake. And it was his last. It fulfilled the ‘self-defence’ condition. His colleagues in the farmhouse would never receive the Russian message.
One of the soldiers by the riddled car spoke briefly to the four further down the valley.
They were also now on foot, trekking back towards the farm. Before it came in sight they disappeared into the waist-high heather.
One of the skill sets of the SRR is known as CTR, or close-target recce. It means drawing up close to a building so stealthily that the occupants never spot you outside. Using the cover of the barns and outbuildings, the six men, with darkness now closing in, reached windowsill level still unspotted.
One of the windows was broken but boarded up. There were cracks between the boards. An eye was applied.
‘Three inhabitants,’ murmured a voice into a lapel-mic. It was heard by the other five on earpieces. ‘Ground floor. Living room cum kitchen. Eating. All armed.’
Another skill is MOE, or method of entry. There was not much point in further stealth. There was going to be a firefight. One of the troopers slipped to the front door and gave an imperious knock. Then stepped aside.
The three eaters jumped to their feet with cries in Albanian. Seconds later four bullets tore through the front door from the inside. After that it was open season. Hitherto invisible troopers appeared at each glassed window. The two kidnappers still standing by the table never had a chance to fire or surrender. They were holding guns, and that was enough. At the front, the door came down and the third Albanian died in the hall.
It took seconds to clear the ground floor, which had only four small rooms. These contained a few sticks of furniture and, now, three smelly bodies leaking red stuff. The team leader raced upstairs. Two rooms, neither a bathroom. He threw open the door of one. More stink of unwashed bodies. Three smelly bedrolls. The trooper did not know for sure how many Albanians might be mounting guard over the hostage. There might be a fourth with a gun to the girl’s head. He eased open the door across the landing, MP5 at the ready.
Chapter Eleven
SHE WAS ALONE, in a chair at the far corner. The room was small and dark. A single low-wattage bulb with no shade hung on a flex from the ceiling.
Ther
e was a thin bedroll and a stinking bucket for a toilet. A food-encrusted bowl and a bottle of water from the yard. And one chair.
The single window had once looked out on rolling fields but planks had been nailed across it so that only tiny slivers of light came through the cracks between the boards. The overpowering impression for the soldier was the stench. Clearly, it had never been an elegant room, but it had become a hellhole.
Big black flies buzzed round the feeble bulb. Others crawled on the rim of the latrine bucket, gorged by its contents. The child had been forced to eat from the bowl and to lie on the stinking palliasse on the floor. Or to sit on the single chair, where she now was, still in her school uniform, unwashed, with matted hair, accustomed to the smell of the room. Her arms were clasped around her, the eyes huge saucers of trauma and fear. She said nothing.
The SRR man slowly laid down his gun and removed his black ski-mask. His sudden appearance could only have frightened her. She had had enough of that. He did not attempt to approach. Instead he slid to the floor, back against the wall. Then he said: ‘Hello.’ And he smiled.
There was no reply. She just stared.
‘I wonder if you can help me. I’m looking for a girl called Jessica. Her daddy has asked me to bring her home.’
Her lips moved. There was a small squeak.
‘It’s me.’
He affected pleased surprise.
‘Really? Oh, that’s wonderful. I’ve found you. Your daddy is missing you. He asked me to fetch you home. Would you like that?’
She nodded. He looked around.
‘This is a horrid place. I bet your room back in London is nicer.’
She began to cry. Tears welled out of the frightened, exhausted eyes and rolled down her grimy cheeks.
‘I want to go home. I want to see Daddy.’
‘Well, that’s marvellous, Jessica. I’d like that too. I’ve got some friends downstairs and we have a helicopter. Have you ever been in one?’
She shook her head. He rose slowly and carefully and crossed the room. He held out one hand. She took it and he eased her out of the chair. She began to urinate and cried even more, in shame. The effects of profound trauma are several and none of them are pretty. He turned away and went to the door.
‘Coming down!’ he called. ‘Clear the hall.’
No need for her to see what lay there, or in the kitchen. Outside, he saw the downlights of the Dauphin and heard the growl of its twin engines. It settled in the heather beyond the barns, where there was space.
The other men were waiting below. They had dragged the bodies into the kitchen and closed the door. They saw the girl holding their colleague’s hand as she came tentatively down the stairs, taking them one by one. They looked up at her, and one said: ‘Jesus.’ If there had been any feeling for the men they had killed, it vaporized.
The team leader helped Jessica Thompson into the Dauphin for the flight back to Credenhill.
He tried to use his mobile phone, only to discover that the dead Zogu could not have contacted his men even if he had tried. That part of the Denbigh Moors has no reception. He climbed in beside the girl and nodded at the pilot.
The other men would stay behind to be collected later. In the meantime, they had some clearing up to do. Down on the road, they had not shot up the engine of the Volvo and it still worked. One of them set off to collect it. There would be five troopers to pick up and four dead gangsters in body bags. The helpful but no doubt puzzled police of Conwy County would be asked to crush the ruined Volvo into a block of scrap.
At Credenhill they delivered Jessica straight to the medical unit. Two female troopers took over, fussing as the girl bathed and shampooed her hair. One of them emerged to tell the commanding officer:
‘They didn’t touch her, you know. They threatened to, and leered at her every time they brought food. So just in time. She’s a clever girl. Head on her shoulders. She’ll need counselling, but she’ll recover.’
The CO rang Sir Adrian, and he told Robert Thompson, who was very much still alive. Sir Adrian had a car with a driver and despatched both on the long drive through the dawn to Hereford for the reunion.
When they arrived back in London Sir Adrian visited Thompson again at his Battersea flat.
‘I doubt you can continue in the civil service after this. Or whether you would want to. Perhaps a change of scene. And guaranteed security for you both.
‘I know a place that is very beautiful. Warm climate, sparkling blue sea. Wellington, New Zealand. Good schools, welcoming people. I think I could arrange something, if you’d like. I know their High Commissioner in London.
‘A good job with the Kiwi government. Nice house. Easy commute – it’s not a big place. New life, perhaps. I think it might be arranged. Let me know.’
A month later Robert Thompson and Jessica left for that new life by the waters of the Cook Strait.
Adrian Weston was a humane man, and he was concerned to find out the true identity of the man whose charred remains had been in the remote-controlled speeding car.
Back in 1943 the Western Allies had been preparing the invasion of southern Europe. It was of concern to try to dupe the Nazi high command, to convince them that the invasion was coming where it was not coming. The British took the body of an unidentified down-and-out, dressed it in the uniform of a major in the Royal Marines and cast it adrift off the shore of southern Spain.
Attached to one wrist by a chain was a briefcase containing documents, apparently top secret, indicating that the invasion would be via Greece. The body drifted inshore, was found on a beach and handed to the Guardia Civil. Franco’s Spain, technically neutral, was actually pro-Axis. The papers were passed to German intelligence and thence back to Berlin.
Greece was massively reinforced. The Allies under Patton and Montgomery invaded via Sicily and Italy. Thousands of lives were saved. Later, a book was written and a film made, both titled The Man Who Never Was. That was where Sir Adrian had got the idea.
The body in the speeding car was also that of a down-and-out, a dweller on the streets and alleys, and also unidentifiable. He had been destined for a pauper’s burial in an unmarked grave. The autopsy revealed that the man had died of pneumonia, probably caught from sleeping out in the rain. Tests showed he had been an irrecoverable alcoholic with an already badly damaged constitution. The only thing left on him that he had not pawned to buy booze was a signet ring.
But once, reasoned Sir Adrian, he had been a man, perhaps one who loved and had been loved, one who had a job, a family, a life. How had he ended up a wreck, dying in a gutter? He decided at least to try to find out.
He put a ‘hold’ on the pauper’s grave. He called in favours, kicked backsides, rattled cages. A DNA sample was eventually retrieved. The national DNA database was consulted. But there was nothing. If the dead man had a criminal record, his sample should have been listed. There was no listing.
Weston was about to let officialdom take its course when a scientist working at the DNA database called him.
‘There might be a sibling match,’ he said.
The possible match on the database had been in a bar brawl years before and had been charged with assault causing actual bodily harm, or ABH, and had been convicted. And he had a name. Drake. Philip Drake. It took a bit of police time to find him through three address moves. But he was found. He was shown the signet ring and confirmed it had belonged to his brother Benjamin, known as Benny.
He had not seen his brother for twenty years, not since the older sibling, ravaged by post-traumatic stress disorder, had slipped through the welfare net and society’s various charities into alcoholism and a life on the streets. But he recalled that Benny’s problems had derived from combat in Afghanistan wearing his country’s uniform.
He had been a Mercian, one of a regiment drawn from the East Midlands, headquartered at Lichfield. Weston rang the commanding officer and told him. And the CO decided that, low as he had fallen, Corporal Benny Drake should have
his soldier’s funeral. He delved into the regimental reserve and found the funds.
A week later the funeral column came out of Main Gate Whittington Barracks and turned into the streets of Lichfield. A hearse topped by the Union Jack carried the coffin, and behind it came a limousine bearing both parents. The people of the city took off their hats and turned to face the road as it went by. The bearer party and a warrant officer brought up the rear. All moved at the slow march.
At Whittington village cemetery the column turned in and was directed to the prepared burial plot. The bearer party took over, six soldiers carrying the coffin the rest of the way, past St Giles’s Church, to the grave. The regimental chaplain conducted the service. When it was over, the flag was removed from the coffin, folded and handed to the parents.
As the coffin was lowered into the ground the firing party stepped forward with the regimental bugler. The sextons waited with their shovels. The riflemen discharged three volleys over the grave and the bugler sounded the ‘Last Post’. Mr and Mrs Drake stood very straight and very proud as their son Corporal Benny Drake was sent to rest. He may have died in a gutter, but he was laid down with fellow soldiers.
As the final note of the ‘Last Post’ drifted away, at the far end of the cemetery a single figure put away his field glasses. Sir Adrian climbed into his car and was driven back to London. There was a score to settle.
The following morning, his bank accounts frozen, Mr Vladimir Vinogradov was requested to leave the country. The formal explanation, which had no justification because, under law, it needed none, simply declared that, in the view of the British government, his continued presence was ‘not conducive to the public good’.