‘Is this where the
SVR
come in?’
‘Sergei Yermilov, the boy’s father, is, to put it bluntly, ex-mafia. I say ex, but I don’t think you ever leave the Russian mafia. I think your role is just redefined. He works very closely with Anatoly Zykov, who is the A to Z of the president’s personal finances. So we’re talking about someone who is well plugged in to the Kremlin and is a member of one of the largest and most brutal mafia groups, called Solntsevskaya. He started off working in Prague as a
krysha
, some kind of enforcer, and gradually worked his way up to brigadier, eventually becoming the
sovietnik
or adviser to the boss. The precise nature of his current activities is not well known. Research is going to have to be done, or we’re going to have to rely on information from the
SVR
.’
‘Have they nominated someone like Ryder Forsyth to run this kidnap?’
‘Not yet. I think they’re waiting to see what we’ll put in place, and because we haven’t got to the half of it yet, we’re still in the planning stage.’
‘So what’s going to be my role in all this?’
‘I want you to run and co-ordinate the special investigations teams for all the kidnaps and make sure that the relevant information is fed to the consultants handling the negotiations,’ said Hines. ‘We’re going to Thames House now. Apart from the Home Office, the Joint Intelligence Committee, MI5 and MI6, there will also be Peter Makepeace of the
OCC
and various bods from the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre.’
‘What about the kidnap consultants?’
‘I will be co-ordinating them,’ said Hines, handing her a sheet of paper. ‘Here is your contact list. You know all our consultants, but I would suggest you and
DS
Papadopoulos introduce yourselves to Colonel Forsyth and let him know how you’re going to proceed with the investigation into the Kinderman girl. He’ll want to know.’
‘Does that mean you want me to run that investigation personally as well as co-ordinating the rest?’
‘With
DS
George Papadopoulos, yes. You will have a team collating all the intelligence from the other investigations and feeding it out,’ said Hines.
‘Do I have to take orders from Forsyth?’
‘You have to … accommodate him and report to both of us,’ said Hines. ‘You know how it is with the Americans when it’s one of theirs. I’ve managed to retain my position as director of operations overall, but I’m under no illusions as to when I might get carved out of the Kinderman process.’
Silence while Mercy’s mind writhed.
‘Anything else, DI Danquah?’
This was the moment to come clean. Now was the last possible time. Tell him and walk away from the biggest investigation of her career. No contest.
‘Only that
DCS
Makepeace always called me Mercy, sir.’
It was a short walk from Tanya Birch’s flat to the Special Forces Club where Boxer had arranged to meet his old friend from MI6, Simon Deacon. He left his coat in the cloakroom, went upstairs to the bar, saw Deacon waiting for him by the window looking out into the street. The grey light glanced off his hard, lean, scraped face and prominent cheekbones. He turned, held up a hand. The small nick of a scar under his left eye was his only blemish apart from the two deep lines above the bridge of his nose, which gave him a permanent frown. It made him look perplexed at what was going through his own mind, while being curious about what was going through yours.
‘Been a while,’ said Deacon, standing, giving his old friend a hug. ‘Can’t stay for long, there’s a big pow-wow due at Thames House. How’s my god-daughter getting along? Haven’t seen her since last summer. Still on the straight and narrow?’
‘I’m not sure the straight and narrow is a path that Amy’s ever going to successfully tread,’ said Boxer. ‘You know she chucked in her course at Bristol University? Couldn’t justify the debt. But she’s happy working for me now at the
LOST
Foundation.’
‘She told me, and likes the work too. I can understand her not wanting to start life forty grand down and she’s a kid who likes to get her hands dirty. She said it’s not just finding the missing persons that she likes but persuading them to go back to their families. So things must be working out well between Mercy, you and her.’
‘Yes, they are. Not easy, but we’re in a new era where we actually talk and everything seems possible.’
‘And Isabel?’
‘Great,’ said Boxer, swerving away from revealing the pregnancy, wanting to give Amy and Mercy the news first face to face with nothing else on their minds.
‘A man in love, I’d say.’
‘You could be right,’ said Boxer. ‘No, you
are
right … why be cagey about it? I’m crazy about her.’
They looked at each other. Deacon smiled.
‘Good to see you happy, my friend,’ he said. ‘Coffee?’
Boxer nodded, sat back and asked after Deacon’s wife and children. The barman brought the coffee, left them in peace. They were alone in the long, dimly lit room lined with special ops team photographs. Boxer gave Deacon the Conrad Jensen story. The only reaction he got was a repetition of that extraordinary American name.
‘Walden Garfinkle?’
‘Mean anything to you?’
‘He’s a
CIA
troubleshooter. He doesn’t specialise in any particular geographical area so you’re as likely to see him in South Korea as you are in Argentina. He deals with personnel problems. Agents gone rogue, suspected doubles, people with mental problems: full breakdown, inability to differentiate their front from reality, total betrayal. That kind of stuff.’
‘And why would he go and see Conrad Jensen, who as far as I know is a contractor not an agent?’ said Boxer. ‘Then again, his girlfriend told me he was very active around the Edward Snowden debacle. Could he be operating on both sides of the fence?’
‘Conrad Jensen? That name
does
ring a bell somewhere. I know I’ve seen it before, or heard it, just can’t think where,’ said Deacon, tilting his head back, searching his mind. ‘Got it. Not surprised it didn’t jump out at me. One of those career episodes I’d rather forget. For your ears only, Charlie. He was on the list of interrogators in one of the black sites they used for extraordinary rendition.’
‘Sounds ugly.’
‘It’s not something I’m proud of. I had to go to the Temara interrogation centre, in a forest outside Rabat, after the London bombings in 2005 to oversee an interview with a terror suspect. We wanted the opportunity to put some questions to him and I was sent with a colleague from MI5.’
‘Not one of our finest moments,’ said Boxer.
‘When you’re interviewed for MI6, they ask you how you feel about interrogation techniques and in theory you find yourself able to accept that sort of thing for Queen and country, but the reality is very … sullying. When I flew back to London I bought a new set of clothes, dumped the old ones, didn’t want even the smell of that place in my own home.’
‘And Temara was where you met Conrad Jensen. Was he an interrogator?’
‘Yes, he was an active member of the interrogation team. We watched the process through an observation panel, wrote down our questions, which were handed to the guys doing the work, and listened to the answers they … extracted. Our
CIA
counterpart told us afterwards that the team we’d seen were not
CIA
. They’d been contracted to do the job, as if that might make us feel better about what we were doing.’
‘What did Jensen look like then?’
‘I didn’t see that much of him. He wore a surgical mask during the interrogation and only flipped it off when he came out for a breather,’ said Deacon, looking into his head, trying to recall. ‘He was in his sixties, but didn’t look it. Hair dyed dark. A good-looking man with a strong face, one that you would trust. His eyes … we both remarked on his eyes on the flight back because it was the only part of his face we saw properly in the harsh light of the interrogation room. They were intense, because they were so blue, but somehow not cruel; in fact rather sad, as if this ugly business was painful to him, but had to be done. The
CIA
guy told me he’d been working with him since the War on Terror kicked off in 2001. He spoke fluent Arabic.’
‘Had they known him before?’
‘
He
hadn’t, but the agency had. He didn’t say in what capacity.’
‘His daughter says he makes a lot of money from these military contracts. When I said tens of millions, she replied: “More.” It seemed like a lot for a guy working as a lone operator. No office, no partners. She also said he was doing illegal stuff, or rather, work that the US military wanted done below the radar.’
‘Don’t get involved, Charlie,’ said Deacon. ‘Call the police. Let them sort it.’
‘You know me. I find it difficult to walk away from this kind of thing.’
‘Just when you’ve reached a point of real happiness for the first time in your life?’ said Deacon. ‘I can see it. It’s written all over you. Why fuck it up?’
‘It’s in my nature. I mean … not to fuck it up, but to want to help people in distress.’
‘I’d agree if I was sure you were in touch with the truth, but you’re not,’ said Deacon. ‘There
are
private security companies with contracts worth hundreds of millions, but they’re big security operations with, for example, the US Embassy in Kabul, or creating massive IT systems for tracking terrorist networks. But that kind of money doesn’t get spread around to one-man bands for anything illegal or covert. Too difficult to hide.’
‘Unless he was subcontracted via a larger private security company,’ said Boxer. ‘Any ideas how I could get in touch with Walden Garfinkle?’
‘If you think you’re going to get any more truth from him than from this Siobhan character, think again. He’s a player. You’re not equipped to deal with the likes of Garfinkle.’
‘Who said I had to deal with him? I just want to talk.’
‘There’s no such thing as talking with these guys. Everything is a negotiation. It’s their currency.’
‘He’s the only other lead I’ve got who’s actually seen Jensen this year. You’re next, but nine years adrift,’ said Boxer. ‘Then, of course, there’s always Martin Fox.’
‘I thought you’d finished with him,’ said Deacon. ‘
He
thinks you’ve finished with him.’
‘I don’t want to work with him any more,’ said Boxer. ‘That job two years ago, he got too close to me, Mercy and Amy. He knows you too. I don’t like that mixture of private life and work.’
‘But you’ll tap me for intelligence.’
‘You’re my brother and not just in arms.’
Boxer could see how pleased Deacon was to hear that.
‘I thought Martin Fox might have been behind this,’ said Boxer. ‘Thought he might be trying indirectly to tempt me back into the fold. So I saw him last night.’
‘Why did you think he’d have a hand in it?’
‘Instinct,’ said Boxer, quickly. ‘I don’t think it’s totally out of the question that someone like Conrad Jensen could have been working for the US military through Pavis, do you?’
‘But not below the radar,’ said Deacon. ‘That’s not Martin Fox’s modus operandi. He’s always been totally above board.’
Silence. Boxer looked out of the window.
‘So how did it go with Fox?’ asked Deacon.
‘I didn’t change my mind about working for him, if that’s what you mean,’ said Boxer. ‘I’ve heard you’re very pally with him these days … he said.’
‘I’ve known him a long time and not just through you,’ said Deacon. ‘He’s always been a reliable source of quality information. I’ve put him forward for security jobs in Afghanistan by way of reward and he’s always performed better than expected. My relationship with him is as good now as it was fifteen years ago, which is why I’m surprised not only that you don’t trust him, but also that you could think him capable of, what shall we call them, dark acts?’
‘You’re right,’ said Boxer. ‘Maybe I’ve let something get out of control in my own mind.’
‘But what? You must have had good reason to doubt him or to intuit his involvement. Did Siobhan say something that pointed you towards Martin?’
‘Yes, you’re right, the truth gets messy in Siobhan’s mind,’ said Boxer. ‘I shouldn’t have paid so much attention to her. Forget it.’
‘You’re holding something back,’ said Deacon. His phone rang, he checked the screen. ‘I’ve got to go now.’
‘Don’t forget about Garfinkle.’
‘I won’t,’ said Deacon. ‘Remember who your friends are, Charlie.’
09.10, 16 January 2014
Thames House, Millbank, London SW1
T
he seriousness of the situation was immediately apparent, not only from the number of people in the boardroom but also the quality of the personnel. For a start, the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice was present, flanked by two civil servants. Mercy was relieved to see some faces she knew. Simon Deacon immediately came over to say hello.
‘Just had a coffee with Charlie,’ he said, kissing her.
‘What are you and Charlie cooking up?’
‘Just the usual info exchange. He wants me to track down some
CIA
guy for him,’ said Deacon, surveying the room. ‘Looks like I’m in the right place.’
‘Are you the only rep from MI6?’
‘They’re not going to send five regional heads,’ he said, nodding. ‘I’ve got to go back and brief them all.’
‘Does anybody know what we’re talking about yet?’
‘No interest has been declared by the kidnappers. MI5 haven’t picked up anything. Must be a tight ship to get past them. So we wait and see,’ said Deacon.
Peter Makepeace came over and they were interrupted by a call to the table. Mercy and Makepeace sat with Hines, while Deacon went over to the intelligence side. A senior officer from MI5, Mike Stanfield, chaired the meeting.
‘I think you’ve all had preliminary briefings about these five kidnaps, which were conducted over an estimated period of thirty-two hours between around midnight on the fifteenth to about 8.30 a.m. on the sixteenth of January. We’ve concluded from the time frame and the nature of the ransom demand – or should I say “expenses” demand – that all these kidnappings are connected. One of the reasons we have gathered this extraordinary meeting is that in every case the victim’s parents are in some way connected to the government of the country from which they come.
‘Rakesh Sarkar’s uncle is the Minister for Commerce and Industry in the Indian government. Hans Pfeiffer’s sister is married to the German finance minister. Wú Dao-ming’s brother is one of the eighteen members of the Chinese politburo as vice chairman and secretary general of the National People’s Congress. Anastasia Casey has just bought into one of Australia’s largest media organisations, is on first-name terms with the prime minister and her grandfather was governor general. Ken Bass is a close personal friend not only of the vice president of the United States, but also of the prime minister of the
UAE
. His ex-wife is an old school friend of our prime minister’s wife. And finally Sergei Yermilov is intimately connected to the Russian president through his links to the president’s banker.
‘The only other thing that connects the parents in these kidnaps is that they are all billionaires – it has to be said that estimating Yermilov’s personal wealth wasn’t easy, although he did buy a luxury apartment in the Shard last year for fifty million, which must somehow qualify him.
‘We have, as yet, not found any clear, all-embracing reason why a terrorist organisation would target these individuals. While Kinderman is an obvious candidate for Islamic terrorism because of its work for the US government in Iraq and Afghanistan, Yermilov’s connection to the Kremlin might be of interest to a Chechen or Georgian organisation, Wú Dao-ming’s reach into the politburo might be of interest to rebel communities in Xinjiang, Anastasia Casey’s mining operations could antagonise conservationists and Aboriginal tribes, Hans Pfeiffer’s connection might excite rebellious elements in southern European nations who’ve grown to dislike the Germans, and the Sarkar family could be vulnerable to Pakistani terrorism just by being Indian. There is nothing they have in common that could make them the target of a single terrorist entity. And we at MI5 and
GCHQ
have not picked up on any new organisation that’s specifically targeting billionaires.
‘So in the absence of any obvious terrorist motive, until perhaps a more subtle one is revealed to us by the kidnappers, our first task is to try to establish the nature of the group who’ve planned and carried out these abductions. What we do know is that they have pulled off a series of expensively arranged and very well-executed kidnaps.
‘We have no idea how Rakesh Sarkar was taken. His car was eventually traced to a street off Ladbroke Grove with no
CCTV
cameras, so there is no record of how it got there or how he was removed from it. He was last seen by his girlfriend in Shoreditch at around 11.30 on the fifteenth of January. Hans Pfeiffer’s chauffeur, Klaus Weber, woke up dazed and confused at seven in the morning of the fifteenth in his Mercedes, which had been parked in a street in Plaistow. He has a recollection of going for a coffee with a fellow chauffeur, whose name was Jack, and who was waiting with him in a street near the Chinawhite nightclub, supposedly for Scarlett Johansson, but while we’ve been able to establish that she was in London, we know she was not in the club that night. Siena Casey’s friend Jerry Hunt says she disappeared from a party with a guy who’d given them some top-quality cocaine, but he was unable to come up with any name other than “Joe” and gave a sketchy description of the man he assumes she left with as “long blonde hair, goatee, very fit”. We might get more intelligence from the Sophie Railton-Bass kidnap once the special investigations unit gets to work on it. At least it happened in daylight, although it was in a mews and occurred under cover of a scaffolding sheet. Only in the first daytime kidnap, when the Yermilov boy was taken, are there possible breaks. Two police cars were spotted leaving the scene. The traffic on the Byfleet Road was stopped by two trucks and we have a description, but not of the drivers and no registrations. We are hoping for some clues from the ballistics.
‘What this particular kidnap shows is the organisation and confidence of the team carrying it out. The traffic was stopped for less than five minutes while the operation was in progress. In that time drastic decisions were taken to kill the driver and bodyguard, possibly because they would be able to identify their assailants, but also because, as mafia henchmen, they were probably prepared to take them on. Their Russian-made weapons were found at the scene.’
‘You seem to be implying that the level of planning and preparedness to take action would mean that these people are professionally trained,’ said the minister. ‘Possibly army or special forces?’
‘As you know, Minister, there are now thousands of private security companies in the world. Most of their personnel
are
professionally trained. Some of the top security companies can attract people from special forces, for instance Anchorlight, who are the
PSC
under the umbrella of the Kinderman Corporation, have ex-Navy
SEAL
s, Rangers and special ops people on their books. Many London-based
PSC
s have ex-
SAS
and
SBS
personnel on their staff. It’s also well known that the US military are making more use of private contractors than ever before, some of whom they train or retrain to perform the tasks they want them to do. There are over a hundred thousand of them in Afghanistan alone at the moment.’
‘So someone with an idea could easily recruit the personnel to carry it out?’ said the minister.
‘May I?’ said an American opposite Mercy.
‘Clifford Chase, London station chief of the
CIA
, please go ahead.’
Chase had straight blond hair, which flopped over his forehead so that he had to constantly brush it back. He had blue eyes under eyebrows that disappeared into his face and a mouth with no lips which made a fierce dark line below his nose. He was the epitome of the clean-cut American with the stamp of Ivy League on him.
‘I’d like to introduce Ray Sutherland, the head of counter intelligence for Europe and Russia, in the UK,’ said Chase.
Sutherland leaned forward, straightened his back. He was wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt, red tie. His hair was side-parted and dyed black. The only remarkable thing about his face was that his right eye winced permanently, as if he’d spent too much of his life looking through keyholes. Behind Chase and Sutherland were two men in identical dark blue suits, one with a red tie, the other with a blue tie. The red-tied man was shaven-headed and built like a US Marine; the blue-tied man was slim, with limp brown hair and green eyes. Mercy thought that all four men looked impervious to humour and incapable of charm.
‘It’s true that there are a lot of highly trained personnel out there,’ said Sutherland. ‘It’s also true that they go in and out of employment on contracts. So they could have done six months in Iraq, six in Afghanistan, a few months in Africa, South America. Not many PSCs have permanent staff other than administrative. But what we do know about this community supplying the
PSC
s is that it’s tight. All these guys talk to each other about what they’re doing. It would be difficult to set up a series of kidnaps like this without people hearing about what’s going down. Especially as most of these guys are motivated by money, and as I understand it, the “expenses” demands stand at one hundred and fifty million pounds, which sounds like a profit-motivated enterprise. So we at the
CIA
have put in motion within the US a deep investigation amongst all private contractors to the US military. I would suggest the same could be done here in the UK.’
Mike Stanfield nodded as if this had already been thought about, discussed, and agents were taking action.
‘Has anybody thought to calculate approximately how many people might be involved in a series of kidnapping like this?’ asked the minister.
‘It’s difficult to say with the night-time abductions,’ said Stanfield. ‘But the daytime ones we reckon would have required at least ten people to accomplish. We assume that because they happened on different days, the same team carried out both kidnaps. We’re not sure what happened with Sarkar, but his car was involved and the only way to get it to stop would have been by the police. We know they had access to police vehicles and uniforms. Klaus Weber has mentioned this other chauffeur, Jack, who would probably have had an accomplice to overwhelm Weber. We think it happened at about the same time as the Sarkar kidnap, meaning separate teams. The Siena Casey kidnap was performed by a lone male, maybe with backup. So that’s, say, three for the Sarkar kidnap, the same for the Pfeiffer and maybe just two for Siena Casey, plus ten for the two daytime ones and a further seven to ten perhaps involved in sourcing cars, trucks, spray-painting, co-ordinating and intelligence gathering. So maximum thirty people.’
‘And have the lines of communication already been agreed between, say, MI5 and MI6 and the
CIA
?’ asked the minister. ‘Has anybody heard from the
SVR
yet?’
‘Nothing from the
SVR
so far,’ said Stanfield. ‘And we already have good lines of communication with our allies in the intelligence field.’
That drew a weighted silence from the community around the table, which was broken once more by the minister.
‘And what’s happening with all these families who’ve lost their children?’ he asked.
‘I think
DCS
Oscar Hines can help with that,’ said Stirling.
‘In the case of Hans Pfeiffer and Wú Dao-ming, who are in the UK, we’ve sent two kidnap consultants to the Pfeiffers’ house in Chelsea, one of whom is Chinese-speaking. They are in the process of setting up crisis management committees for both parents. Rakesh Sarkar’s mother is on her way over from Mumbai and the father will follow. Anastasia Casey will arrive tomorrow. I believe she has her executive director and an Australian consultant standing by. I have a Russian-speaking team at the St George’s Hill Estate advising the Yermilovs; they have told me that Sergei Yermilov has ignored them and spent every moment on the phone since his return from Moscow, pulling together all the resources of the mafia and the
SVR
, with permission from the president himself. I understand that the Kinderman Corporation have appointed their own kidnap consultant to run the negotiations for Emma Railton.
‘I will be director of operations and I have appointed DI Mercy Danquah as the co-ordinator of the special investigations teams. She will also take personal charge of the Sophie Railton-Bass case. I have given orders to four other special investigation teams, who will be looking into the other kidnaps. We also have a communications team setting up in our Vauxhall offices who will co-ordinate all the information gathered by the special investigation teams and disseminate it to all the consultants. I have a contact list here that I would like everybody to have, and for them to open lines of communication with the relevant personnel.’
One of the civil servants leaned in to the minister and whispered something.
‘Are we agreed on a media blackout for the moment?’ said the minister.
Everybody nodded. The minister stood and left the table with his small entourage. The discussion carried on for a further twenty minutes as contacts were established, and then the meeting dispersed. Deacon was talking to the
CIA
men when Mercy came over to say hello to Ray Sutherland, who in turn introduced the red-tied bull of a man as Hank Mitchell and the blue-tied blond as Troy Novak. She instantly intuited from their handshakes and eye contact that none of them were comfortable with two unalterable facts: that she was black and a woman.
‘As you’ve just heard, I’ll be running the special investigation units on the ground,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to let you know that if you have any questions about London or need any local knowledge, please don’t hesitate to call.’
They all nodded, but she knew she wasn’t going to hear from any of them, nor would they be a source of help for her teams. The three men said their goodbyes and moved away.
‘Genial trio,’ said Mercy.