1991 he had travelled to the best resort and gaming hotels in the world. This hotel would not be Nice’s Hotel Negresco; it would not be Las Vegas’s Caesar’s Palace, New York’s Four Seasons, the Sandy Lane of Barbados, London’s Ritz or Dubai’s Burgh Al Arab. This would be the Hotel Noblesse, and it would be his.
Meetings had been arranged with venture capitalists in London, New York, Zurich and Vienna. He had brought, at his own cost, potential partners to Ukraine. The diving would rival Egypt (they would make a fake reef), the service would be seven-star. This would be the new principality of the twenty-first century and he would be the new prince!
Although he had a tear in his eye and the vodka bottle was empty, he was not a dreamer. Valeriy Varchenko stood, patted the roof of his hotel, and retired for the evening.
Odessa, Southern Ukraine
Sergey Gorodetski threw the grappling hook over the ledge of the warehouse, making sure it was fast before carefully hauling himself up the wall and onto the roof. He paused, counted to a hundred and, when he heard no sounds of alarm or noises from below, worked his way forward on the gravelled roof, all the while making sure to keep his body below the skyline. On reaching the edge of the roof, he leaned against the parapet and removed his rifle from its canvas carry case. He inspected it for dirt before looking down the sight to check for misalignment. Making the necessary adjustment, he carefully chambered the first round. It was two-forty-five and he had exactly five hours to wait for his prey, who was, by his very nature, a creature of habit.
Jas Malik pulled his trench coat around his body and stepped into the back of the Lexus. Ruslan had kept him waiting. Today’s excuse: the local militia refused to let him turn right… or something. Jas didn’t care why he was late, just that he was. Jas did not like this. His father had taught him the value of punctuality at an early age in Islamabad when he’d whipped him for having the audacity to be late for the family stall. Casting Ruslan a stern look, he urged him to ‘bloody hurry up and get him to the factory’.
‘Yes, sir,’ replied the bemused Ukrainian.
‘I have to open the factory at seven-forty-five, no later,’ he ordered, shooting Ruslan a glare before transferring his attention to the heavy lifting cranes of the Odessa docks.
Ruslan slumped over the wheel and made faces in the mirror only he could see. A veteran of Afghanistan, he didn’t suffer fools, such as Jas, gladly, but the fool paid his boss well. Besides, he got to drive this big Lexus and the women loved it.
Seven-twenty. Sergey took up his trigger position on the factory car park. He was invisible to those below unless they made the fatal mistake of staring directly up. Experience and training had taught him patience. What was that English saying his training instructor had told him? Ah, yes: ‘Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey.’ Never before had the saying made so much sense. His eyes started to water and blur his vision. He squeezed them shut and opened them again, blinking, fighting the urge to rub. He would not take his eyes off the trigger position, not now, not after what felt like years of waiting. He would do this now, and he would do it perfectly.
Jas liked the journey to the factory. Speeding past the mainly Soviet-era traffic, made up of Ladas, Volgas, Kamaz trucks and the odd Jigoli, he felt he had really arrived. He allowed himself to smile as he recalled the look he had seen on the faces of the so-called ‘old men’ of the business when he announced his successful bids for hitherto secretive state tenders in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Let the corporate Germans in Erlangen call him a tin-pot Paki now!
A car engine approached and Sergey made his final adjustments. The dark-blue Lexus rounded the corner of the warehouse and drew to a halt in front of the main entrance. Sweat formed on his brow despite the unseasonably chilly morning as he concentrated on the crosshairs of the Dragunov’s sight. The door opened and the target started to rise. Let him get out, don’t rush… apply second pressure to the trigger. The single shot flew along the barrel and covered the short distance to the target. There was a crack and suddenly a cloud of blood. The target was propelled backwards, striking the rear panel of the limousine before hitting the ground. The driver momentarily froze before throwing himself to the floor and scrabbling behind the car for cover.
British Embassy, Kyiv, Ukraine
Vickers frowned as Macintosh passed him the report, ashen-faced. ‘It happened this morning Alistair. The driver was unharmed. Mr Malik died instantly. The militia think it was a professional hit.’
Scanning the two A4 sides of Cyrillic print, Vickers’s brow furrowed even deeper than normal. ‘Anyone would think this was sodding Moscow. I don’t suppose the local militia have anything to go on?’
The ambassador shook his head. In his time at the British Embassy he had heard of two other assassinations; both had been foreign investors and both had been unsolved. ‘The first Brit to open a manufacturing plant in Ukraine becomes the first Brit to be murdered in Ukraine. The EU isn’t going to like it one little bit.’ Vickers massaged his temples. ‘I’ll liaise with the SBU. We’ll have to put out a press statement eventually. We don’t want to undo what little commercial progress we’ve made thus far.’
‘And his family?’ the ambassador asked with a concerned voice.
Vickers, still scanning the report, looked up. ‘Oh, yes, we should inform them.’ He read on, suddenly arching his eyebrows. ‘Surprisingly, the body will be on its way back to Kyiv tomorrow. Apparently the SBU don’t trust the local coroner to carry out the postmortem. Once that’s been completed I’ll have consulate arrange passage to the UK.’
Macintosh nodded, looking decidedly pale. Vickers left the ambassador’s office and asked his secretary to send him in a tea. Macintosh was a career diplomat and skilled at cocktail parties, but when the real world encroached on his delicate sensibilities, he really struggled. That’s why I’m here, mused Vickers.
Nearing his own office, he remembered the email in his in tray from the CCCI mission manager in London. Bugger, that was his other hat calling. Alistair Vickers’s official post was that of commercial attaché at the British Embassy, Kyiv. He wore another, albeit invisible hat, however – that of SIS man in Ukraine. Kyiv had been Vickers’s second-choice posting after Moscow.
Sitting back at his own desk, he picked up a custard cream and crunched it between his teeth before sipping his now-cold tea, white Earl Grey with two sugars. A purist would never add milk but he liked it that way. He replaced the cup and saucer on his desk and leant back to concentrate on the report. He had, of course, met Jas on many occasions. The man wasn’t afraid of self-advertising and had managed to get into most of the national newspapers as well as joining expatriate business groups such as the American Chamber of Commerce. In fact, he was probably one of the most well-known ‘Brits’ in Ukraine, which made his murder all the more curious.
Vickers liked to think he knew the feel of the place and he spoke regularly with his contacts in the SBU, the Ukrainian security service. He had been of the opinion that Jas had had a good ‘Krisha’, a ‘roof’ in other words; his local partner had protected him from any unsavoury interest from other businessmen, Mafia. Big business was, to some extent, still governed by the Mafia in Ukraine, and the more noise you made, the more likely it was you would encounter them. Jas’s partner was ideally placed to protect him. The man was a former KGB general and Hero of the Soviet Union who had now amassed a fortune as a businessman. If anyone called the shots, it was this man, General Valeriy Varchenko. As close to an oligarch as you could get in Ukraine, Varchenko had his base in Odessa, Ukraine’s pretty port city. Vickers crunched on another biscuit. Why would anyone pick a fight with Varchenko, for killing his business partner was surely an act of war?
Central Kyiv
