The Samurai Inheritance (26 page)

‘No, you are, but first you’re going to find me a safety pin from that bag of yours.’

She looked mystified, but did as she was ordered, rummaging in the leather bag until she found something that suited. ‘Will this do?’ She held up a small paper clip.

‘Let’s hope so.’ Jamie took it from her and walked to the window. ‘Go to the door and pretend to call Devlin. We’ve traced the head, made the offer, but our principle won’t proceed without knowing who the buyer is. Devlin’s wary, he wants to talk about it in detail. Got that?’

‘Sure.’ She frowned. ‘But what will you be doing?’

‘Me?’ Jamie grinned, crouching by the narrow gap in the sliding window. ‘I’ll be keeping our options open.’

He’d just completed what he’d planned when the door reopened and Madam Nishimura entered the room four minutes ahead of schedule, with the thin guard at her back.

‘Well?’ she demanded.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jamie said evenly, ‘but my client needs more time to think about your request. He’s not certain it’s in his best interests to be identified at this time.’

Her expression hardened. ‘When you talk to him again you will tell him it is a demand, not a request; a prerequisite for any further negotiation. And I will wish to know the true reason for his interest in the head. I am trusting by nature,’ Jamie smiled at the blatant lie, ‘but I do not believe in fairy stories. It may be that once I am aware of all the facts we can come to some sort of agreement. Perhaps not a sale, but an agreement that would suit both parties nonetheless. You will tell your client this?’

‘Of course.’ Jamie bowed his head. ‘I will also assure him of your good faith and let him know of the warm welcome we received.’

Madam Nishimura snorted. ‘Be careful, Mr Saintclair. One day that sense of humour will get you into serious trouble.’ She walked back to the desk and pressed a hidden button that opened the door behind them. She waved a hand towards the entrance in a way that made the invitation to leave more of an order. ‘I sense your client’s interest in my collection goes beyond philanthropy. We will meet again, Mr Saintclair.’

‘What did you think?’ he asked Magda as the buggy carried them silently back through the woods.

She glanced over her shoulder to where the grey concrete block was disappearing among the trees. ‘I think the Dragon Lady is the most loathsome woman I’ve ever met.’

‘I noticed you wanted to claw her eyes out, but I doubt that would have helped the negotiations. I meant about our situation.’

‘It was always a long shot. Now I think it’s insane. Whatever the Dragon Lady says and whatever your Mr Devlin decides, you cannot negotiate with these people. They’re gangsters, Jamie, and when things don’t go their way they’ll clean up the mess the way they always do. Jamie Saintclair will end up in the foundations of Madam Nishimura’s next bijou residence or going for a swim in Tokyo Bay with a concrete block tied to his leg. If you’ve got any sense you’ll call Keith Devlin, tell him where the Bougainville head is and get on the next plane home.’

Jamie nodded slowly, accepting the logic of the argument if not the suggestion itself. ‘Did you think there was anything strange about the heads?’

‘You’ve been doing this too long, Jamie.’ She stared at him in disbelief. ‘What isn’t strange about a shrunken head?’

‘It’s just that I got the feeling that the Bougainville head was the odd one out,’ he tried to put his suspicions into words, ‘at least apart from the blond one. I suppose that could be explained by a liaison between some traveller and a native girl way back when. The others were all similar to each other, but not to it, if you see what I mean. They had different complexions, their hair was different, and, unless I miss my guess, they’d been preserved by a different, and not quite so skilled, technique.’

Magda stared stolidly ahead. ‘There’s no single standard for shrunken heads.’ He was a little hurt that her tone seemed to infer that only an idiot could think there would be. ‘They don’t come off a conveyor belt. Generally, across cultures, the head will have been preserved by the warrior who won it; or should I say the warrior who killed its owner and cut it off. How it comes out would depend on the individual’s skill and the materials he had to work with. The Bougainville head is Melanesian, but there are different decorative styles and fashions across the region. They differ from those of Micronesia and Polynesia, where the practice was implemented to a lesser extent. It also differs greatly from the
tsantsas
of the Shuar, Achuar, Huambisa and Aguaruna, Jivaroan peoples of Ecuador and Peru, which are much more easily obtained and probably make up the bulk of the collection.’

Jamie had smothered enough awkward clients in an avalanche of detail to know that his companion was using her argument to distract him from pursuing his hypotheses, which he found interesting. But not quite as interesting as the fact she’d never once questioned his nefarious use of a paper clip back at the Dragon Lady’s concrete mansion. Or that when she’d urged him to get the first flight home she hadn’t mentioned taking one herself.

That was something that would bear thinking about.

XXX

Arkady Berzarin smiled as he settled into the back of the armoured Mercedes S-Class, one of a fleet of six from which to choose at random whenever he needed to travel. He’d decided on the big V12 because it was the preferred method of transport of various Middle East potentates who had tested its bomb- and bullet-proof qualities to the very limit. A second identical car started up behind them, and a third was already waiting at the gate to act as the point vehicle. He pressed the intercom linking him to the driver’s compartment.

‘Is everything arranged, Lev?’ He already knew the answer, but he’d learned over the years that it never did any harm to ask.

‘Sure, chief.’ The driver grinned. Lev had been with Berzarin for ten years and knew his boss’s habits better than any man on the protection detail. ‘We’ll have a motorcycle escort from the outskirts of Kras, but they’ll stop at the airport gates. Security know to let us through to the apron to wait for the plane to land. Andrei will walk down the steps and straight into the car.’

‘Good. Good.’ The billionaire nodded. He hadn’t seen his son for more than three months apart from the odd video conference, and he was frightened the boy was growing apart from him. The school in England looked after him well enough and he was doing well, but … Berzarin worried about the influence of that bitch of a second wife, though he’d never mention it to Andrei. They had three weeks together and he intended to spend every possible moment with his son and to hell with the aluminium industry for once. ‘Who’s in the lead car today?’

The driver frowned, ticking off the security detail in his head. ‘Mikhail and the Bulgarian, Serov.’

‘Good,’ Berzarin repeated. ‘They know their business. Okay, let’s go.’

They drove out of the underground garage into the sunlight, a low Siberian sunlight that could scorch your eyeballs if you weren’t careful. Lev plucked a pair of Ray-Bans from the dash, flipped the arms open and placed them expertly with one hand.

‘You want the sun visors down, boss?’

‘Since when could I get too much sun?’ Berzarin chuckled and the driver smiled. It was unusual to see the boss in such a cheerful mood these days. The boy would be good for him.

The road wound across the tundra in tight loops, narrowing where it was flanked by concrete pillars that would slow any intruder who managed to get his car or truck beyond the gate. It was designed to give the house guards time to reach their defensive positions long before an attacker could get there. Lev had driven it a thousand times and took the corners smoothly. It was two miles from the house to the gate and he called ahead to make sure the guards were ready for them.

In the back of the car Berzarin tried to study share movements in the metal and minerals industry on his personalized iPad, but found he couldn’t concentrate. He flicked to a weather website. It was a little late in the year, but maybe he could organize a fishing trip with Andrei up one of the tributaries of the Yenisei. Catching his first
taimen
with his old man would give them something to remember for a long time. One of the guiding companies had just started to use mini-hovercraft to get up into the headwaters, which would be something new for the boy. Yes, that’s what he would do. Of course he’d run it past Andrei first. You couldn’t dictate to a fourteen-year-old.

His mind drifted back to the strange visit from the Englishman and his girlfriend. When he’d had time to consider, it seemed to him that fate had brought them to his house. They’d provided him with an opportunity that was unlikely to occur again and he had put things in motion to take advantage of it. He wondered if Andrei’s impending visit had influenced his decision, and decided it probably had.

As they approached the gate Lev saw one of the security SUVs speed off down the road. He glanced in his mirror to check if the boss had noticed, but Berzarin was engrossed in his computer. With a mental shrug he decided they’d find out if there was some sort of problem soon enough.

Up ahead, the guards watched the big black car approach. They held their machine pistols casually, the way a workman holds the tools he has wielded for half a lifetime, and their eyes were hidden behind the ubiquitous mirrored sunglasses. One of them, Yuri, the big ex Spetsnaz from Omsk, waved the car down and Lev lowered his window.

‘What’s up?’ the driver demanded. ‘The boss won’t want to be late for the kid.’

‘We had word of two men by the roadside a mile south of here. Probably just hikers, but Ivan and Vitaly are checking it out. It should only take a minute.’

Lev scowled, but put the automatic to park and waited for the inevitable reaction. Arkady Berzarin heard the click and looked up from the fishing website he’d been studying. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Nothing, boss. Just security starting at shadows, but that’s their job, eh?’

Berzarin grunted and sat back in his seat. ‘We’ll be late for Andrei,’ he growled after a few minutes passed. ‘Fuck shadows. Let’s go.’

Lev looked up at the security man and shrugged, but Yuri shook his head. ‘It’s not worth taking a chance,’ he said quietly. ‘You can make up the time.’

‘Security says no, boss. Better to be safe—’

‘Who pays their fucking wages?’ Berzarin exploded. ‘I say when it’s fucking safe and when it’s not.’ He reached for the switch that lowered the window separating him from Yuri. The guard watched emotionlessly as the mirrored glass began to slide downwards, anticipating the blast from within.

Lev frowned. ‘Boss, I …’

Berzarin ignored his driver and glared at the guard. ‘Did you hear—’

Yuri stood with his legs slightly apart and in a crouch so he could see into the rear compartment of the Mercedes. He held the AK-9 machine pistol at a thirty-degree angle, barrel downwards and with his right hand on the butt, and his left gripping the black plastic stock just behind the barrel. It was the work of a millisecond to twitch the barrel upwards and bring his finger to the trigger in the same movement. Berzarin saw the muzzle come up and fell backwards with a cry of terror, raising his hands in a futile attempt to fend off the stream of bullets that was about to erupt from the black tunnel. Yuri had loaded the AK-9 with armour-piercing rounds and they shredded the Kevlar vest Berzarin put so much faith in with the same efficiency they shredded the raised hands. By the time he took the pressure from the trigger Berzarin was already dead, but Yuri was nothing if not professional and he fired the last four rounds into the former oligarch’s head even as the bullets of his comrades smashed him sideways away from the car window.

As he lay on the ground the cries of the guards faded and all he could hear was the tick-tick-tick of a cooling engine and what his dying mind believed was the soft murmur of the Siberian wind, but in reality was the sound of his last breath.

XXXI

‘So, in a nutshell, she has the head and I don’t think she’ll willingly part with it,’ Jamie explained warily.

‘But she wanted to know your client’s identity?’ Keith Devlin sounded outraged.

‘That’s right.’

‘I hope you bloody well didn’t tell her.’

‘Of course I didn’t.’

‘And you’re certain she’s Yakuza? From what I hear they don’t go in much for women bosses.’

Jamie shrugged. ‘She as good as admitted it. I got the feeling she was proud of the fact.’

There was a long silence at the end of the phone and Jamie had a feeling he’d been put on hold while the other man discussed the situation with a third party. Eventually, Devlin came back on the line.

‘All right, son. This is where we’re at. Time’s getting short due to some factors of which you’re not aware. We need the head now, and you’re gonna get it. It’s time to go the extra mile.’ Jamie felt the breath catch in his chest and he couldn’t have spoken even if he’d known what to say. ‘So you’re going to go right back in there and fetch that little treasure back for your Uncle Keith.’

‘And get myself killed?’

‘C’mon, Jamie mate,’ Devlin sounded positively jovial, ‘you’re a player. You’ve done this kind of stuff before. You can do it now. Besides, son, you’ve never had a better incentive.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Well, those girls of yours, they’re gonna be rooting for you for a start.’

An image of Fiona and Lizzie locked in a cell at some remote mining complex in the Australian bush filled Jamie’s head and he felt a thrill of panic. ‘What have you done to them?’

‘Nothing at all, son,’ Devlin assured him, but the words
not yet
were there by implication. ‘They’re being well looked after. We’re on a little exotic holiday just like we planned from the start.’

Jamie heard a muffled squeal in the background and thought he recognized Fiona’s voice.

‘Let me talk to them.’

‘Tell me you’ll think about it first.’

‘All right, I’ll think about it. Just let me talk to Fiona.’

‘Jamie?’

‘Yes, darling, it’s me. Are you and Lizzie okay?’