Tango One (11 page)

“Sleep well, Robbie,” she whispered.

As she straightened up, the phone rang. There was an extension in the master bedroom, but Laura headed downstairs, knowing that Mark would pick it up. As she walked into the sitting room, he had the receiver to his ear.

“Is it Den?” she mouthed.

Mark shook his head.

“You'd better speak to Laura,” he said into the receiver, then held it out to her.

"It's Vicky, he said.

Laura took the phone.

“You've got a damn cheek, calling here,” she said coldly.

“Is Robbie there, Laura? I've been trying his mobile but it's switched off.”

“He's asleep.”

“For Christ's sake, Laura, I just want to talk to him.”

“I don't think that's a good idea.”

“I'm his mother, for God's sake!”

“He's had a bad day. He needs to sleep. He's in a state, Victoria. I don't think you talking to him is going to help. Where are you anyway?”

There was a brief pause.

“I can't tell you. I'm sorry.”

“You're in London, right? I went around to the house but you weren't there.”

“What were you doing at my house?” Vicky asked quickly.

“First of all it's Den's house. Second of all, it's none of your business. Whatever rights you had you forfeited when you screwed Sharkey in Den's bed.”

“Will you stop saying that!” shouted Vicky.

“You make it sound so bloody sordid.”

“Victoria, it was sordid. Sordid and stupid.”

“You've spoken to Den, haven't you?”

“What if I have?”

“What did he say?”

“What do you think he said?” asked Laura.

“He's coming back, isn't he?”

“No, Victoria, he's going to stay out in Anguilla for a few months. Of course he's coming back. Like a bat out of hell.”

“What am I going to do? This is a nightmare.”

“Why did you empty the safe?” asked Laura.

“I didn't steal anything. The money was for me, for running the house.”

“And Robbie's passport? Why did you take that?”

“What the hell's going on, Laura?” shouted Vicky.

“Why were you in my house?”

“Den wanted Robbie's passport. And the money. He knows you cleared the safe, and he told me to change the locks. He doesn't want you back in the house, Victoria.”

“He's planning to take Robbie back with him to Anguilla, isn't he?”

“I'm going to hang up now,” said Laura. Mark stood in front of her, trying to listen in, but Laura twisted away from him. She hated her sister-in-law for what she'd done, but she didn't want Mark to hear how upset she was.

“Please, Laura, let me speak to him. I just want him to know that I love him.”

“No. Not tonight. Call again tomorrow.”

“Laura .. .” sobbed Vicky.

Laura replaced the receiver. Her hand was shaking and her knuckles had gone white. She hadn't realised how tightly she'd been gripping the phone. Mark put a comforting arm around her shoulder.

“I'm sorry, love,” he said.

She rubbed her head against his.

“If I ever catch you in bed with your accountant, I'll disembowel you with my bare hands,” she whispered.

“And that's a promise.”

Donovan chartered a small twin-engined plane to fly him and Doyle back to Anguilla. Donovan went into the charter firm's offices and made arrangements for another flight later that day. He booked a private jet and left a deposit in cash and then walked over to the terminal building where he made three calls from a payphone while Doyle went to pick up the car.

The first call was to a German who had access to passports and travel documents from around the world. Not forgeries or copies, but the genuine article. He wasn't cheap but the goods he supplied were faultless. The German gave Donovan a name and Donovan repeated it to himself several times to make sure he'd memorised it. The second call was to the agent who made most of Donovan's travel arrangements. He was far from the cheapest on Anguilla, but he was the most secure. Donovan explained what he wanted and gave him the name that he'd memorised. The third call was to Spain, but it wasn't answered. An answer machine kicked in and Donovan said just ten words in Spanish and hung up.

Doyle arrived in the Mercedes, and Donovan climbed in the back and sat in silence during the drive to his villa. It wasn't just that he had a lot on his mind. The DEA and British Customs, and whatever other agencies were operating in the millionaires' paradise, weren't above planting any manner of surveillance device in the vehicle while it had been parked at the airport. Until it had been swept, the Mercedes was as insecure as a mobile phone conversation.

Doyle stayed in the car while Donovan went into the villa and packed a Samsonite suitcase and a black leather holdall. He wasn't over-concerned with what went into the luggage: it was merely part of the camouflage. A man in his thirties flying alone into the UK from the Caribbean without any luggage would be guaranteed a pull by Customs. From the wall safe in the study of the villa, Donovan took a bundle of US dollar bills and stuffed them into the holdall. On the way out he picked up a Panama hat and shoved it into the holdall.

He threw the bags into the back of the car, then got into the front with Doyle.

“I'd better see the Russians first,” he said.

“Then we'll go and see the German.”

Doyle drove to a five-star hotel about a mile from Donovan's villa. They found the Russians sitting by the pool. Gregov was the bigger of the two, broad shouldered and well muscled with a tattoo of a leaping panther on one forearm and the Virgin Mary on the other. His grey hair was close cropped, thick and dry, and his weathered face was flecked with broken blood vessels. He looked in his early fifties, but Donovan knew that he was only thirty-five.

Gregov stood up and pumped Donovan's hand.

“Champagne, huh?” he asked, gesturing at a bottle of Dom Perignon in a chrome ice bucket beaded with droplets of water. The two Russians had been on the island for five days and Donovan had never seen them without an opened bottle of champagne within arm's length.

“No can do,” said Donovan.

“I've got to get back to the UK.”

“Who are we going to party with?” said Gregov's partner, Peter, who stayed sprawled on his lounger. Peter was the younger of the two men, a six-footer with a wiry frame. Like Gregov, his hair was cut close to his skull, but his was a fiery red and there was a sprinkle of freckles across his snub nose. His face was red-from sunburn and his legs and arms tanned, but his chest remained a pasty white. Below his left nipple two bullet wounds were visible, star-shaped rips in his chest that had healed badly leaving uneven ridges of scar tissue.

“From what I've seen, you don't need me to help you two party,” laughed Donovan.

“You really have to go?” asked Gregov.

“I'm afraid so.”

“But we can do business, yes?” asked Peter, swinging his legs off the lounger and putting his bare feet on to the tiles.

“Definitely,” said Donovan.

“Because we can go elsewhere,” said Peter.

“Not that we want to,” said Gregov, flashing his partner a warning look.

“Den, we want to do business with you.”

“And I with you, Gregov. I've got a personal matter to take care of back in London, but then I'll get back to you and we'll do a deal.”

“This personal matter. Can we help? We have connections in London.”

Donovan shook his head.

“Nah, that's okay. I'm on top of it.” He clapped Gregov on the back.

“Look, your bill's taken care of. Anything you want, it's on me. I've got your UK office number and the number of your office in Belgrade. They'll be able to get in touch with you?”

Gregov nodded.

“We are backwards and forwards between the UK and Turkey three times a week but we check in every day. The earthquake relief charities are paying us thirty thousand dollars a flight to take in their people and equipment. Good money, huh? Famine and earthquakes are good money makers for us, Den. Not quite as profitable as your business, but a good living, yes.”

“You've done well, you and Peter. The Russian Army's loss, yeah?”

Gregov nodded enthusiastically.

“Yes, their loss, our gain. Fuck Communism, yes?”

“Definitely,” said Donovan. He made a clenched fist and pumped it in the air.

“Capitalism rules.”

The two Russians laughed then took it in turns to hug Donovan and Doyle.

After they'd said their goodbyes to the Russians, Doyle drove Donovan to the far east of the island, where the German lived in a villa three times the size of Donovan's. It was surrounded by a twelve-foot-high wall topped with razor-sharp anti-personnel wire first developed for the Russian gulags. The two men were checked out by closed-circuit television cameras and then the twin metal gates clunked open. Doyle edged the Mercedes slowly up the curving gravel led driveway. They passed two more cameras before pulling up in front of the German's palatial villa. Doyle waited in the car while Donovan got out and went to find the German.

Helmut Zimmerman greeted Donovan at the front door, grasping him in a brutal bear hug and then slapping him on the back.

“Next time I could do with more notice, Dennis,” he said. He was a big man, almost six inches taller than Donovan's six feet, with broad shoulders that strained at his beach shirt and muscular thighs that were almost as wide as Donovan's waist. Everything was in proportion except for Zimmerman's hands, which were as small and delicate as a young girl's, almost as if they'd stopped developing at puberty.

“This isn't by choice, Helmut.”

“You have time for a drink?”

“I haven't even had time to take a piss,” laughed Donovan.

“I've got to be back at the airport by six.”

Zimmerman took Donovan along a marble-floored hallway, either side of which stood alabaster statues of Greek warriors. Above their heads electric candles flickered in a line of ornate crystal chandeliers.

At the far end of the hallway hung a massive gilded mirror, twice the height of a man. Donovan grinned at their reflection.

“Helmut, you live like a Roman fucking emperor,” he said.

“You like it, huh? I'll send my interior designer around to see you. Your place is so ... stark. Is that the word? Stark?”

“Yeah, stark's how I like it.”

To the left of the mirror was a white door with a gilt handle. Zimmerman opened it with a child-like hand and led them down another corridor to a windowless room with white walls, a huge Louis XIV desk and decorative chairs. A tapestry of a goat herder playing pipes to his flock hung on one of the walls, and a collection of antique urns was displayed on glass shelves on another. Behind the desk a bank of colour monitors was linked to CCTV cameras inside and outside the villa. On one of the monitors Donovan could see Doyle sitting in the Mercedes, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.

“He is not going with you?” asked Zimmerman, sitting down at the desk. It was at least ten feet wide but the German's bulk dwarfed it.

“Not this trip,” said Donovan.

Zimmerman pulled open one of the desk drawers and took out three passports. All were European Union burgundy. He handed them to Donovan one at a time.

“One United Kingdom, one Irish and one Spanish. As requested.”

Donovan checked all three carefully, even though he knew Zimmerman never made a mistake. Donovan's picture was in all three passports, though each had a different name and date of birth. The passports were genuine and would pass any border checks. Zimmerman had a network of aides across Europe who made a living approaching homeless people and paying for them to apply for passports they'd never use. The passports were then sent to Anguilla, where Zimmerman replaced the photographs with pictures of his paying customers.

“Excellent, Helmut, as always.” Donovan took an envelope from his jacket pocket and slid it across the desk. Thirty-six thousand dollars.

Zimmerman put the envelope, unopened, into the drawer and shut it. Donovan smiled at the open demonstration of trust, well aware, however, that if he ever tried to cheat the German, it would take just one phone call to Europol to render the passports useless.

“So,” said Zimmerman, placing his hands flat on the desk and pushing himself up, 'until next time, Dennis."

Donovan put the passports into his jacket pocket, and the two men shook hands before Zimmerman showed Donovan out of the villa.

Doyle already had the door of the Mercedes open. They drove in silence to the airport. Doyle parked in the short-term car park and they walked together to the terminal.

“I should come with you, boss.”

“Double the chance of us being flagged, Barry. Better you take care of business here.”

They walked into the terminal building, the air conditioning hitting them like a cold shower. A brown envelope was waiting for Donovan at the information desk. Inside was the return segment of a charter flight ticket from Jamaica to Stansted Airport in the name he'd given the travel agent, the name that was in the UK passport, and a Ryanair ticket from Stansted to Dublin, Ireland. It too was in the UK passport name.

As they walked back to the general aviation terminal, Donovan ran through a mental checklist of everything that needed to be done. He didn't appear to have forgotten anything, but he knew that the devil was always in the details.

“Okay, boss?” asked Doyle.

“Sure,” said Donovan.

“You know how I hate small planes.” It wasn't flying that was worrying Donovan, it was what Carlos Rodriguez would do when he discovered that his money hadn't been paid into his account. Doyle would bear the brunt of Rodriguez's fury, but if Donovan told Doyle to make himself scarce it would be a sure sign of guilt. Doyle would have to stay and face the music.

The pilot and co-pilot were already warming up the engines by the time they reached the sleek white Cessna Citation. Doyle took Donovan's luggage from the boot of the Mercedes and the owner of the charter company came out to help load it into the plane. Donovan shook hands with Doyle, then hugged the man and patted him on the back.

“You take care, you hear,” said Donovan.