FORTY-FIVE
Grisha Lebedev, one of the richest and most powerful oligarchs in Russia, stood on the balcony of his vast double suite in the Çirag? an Palace Hotel Kempinski in Istanbul. His gaze was directed across the beautiful flower gardens and the beach to the Bosphorus, and Jonathan Ainsley’s yacht Janus anchored there.
For the last few hours, on this beautiful Saturday morning in May, he had been cursing the Englishman under his breath, calling him every name he could think of in every language he knew.
Lebedev, a tall, good-looking man in his late forties, was smart enough to know that his investment with Ainsley, which had obviously gone missing, could never be recouped. Trouble was brewing for the Belvedere-Macau Private Bank, and his gut instinct told him the bank was going down. The owner of that bank, with whom he had invested a great deal of his oil money, had been criminally negligent. Lebedev removed the word ‘negligent’. Ainsley was a criminal, a cheap crook, and he, Grigori Lebedev, was going to have his revenge.
He swung around at the sound of the door opening, and a faint smile crossed his face as Galina came into the room. ‘Did you find what you wanted?’ he asked, and knew that she had by the huge smile on her face and the shopping bags in her hand. Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Escada and God knows what else she was carrying, but he didn’t care. She could have anything she wanted.
‘I did, Grisha, I did. I found a seductive dress.’
‘I want to see it on you,’ he murmured, walking across the room, taking hold of her, kissing her on the mouth, filling with desire for her. She dropped the bags and gave herself up to him, kissing him back, leading him to the bedroom and pulling him in the direction of the bed.
Letting go of her for only a moment, to close the blinds, Grisha pulled down the bedcover, and began to unbutton his shirt.
Galina, laughing delightedly, pulled off her tight-fitting Leonard dress, took off her bra and panties and walked towards him in her perilously high heels. ‘How do I look, darling?’
He was already stretched out on the bed, and he began to laugh with her, his sky-blue eyes sparkling. ‘Good enough to eat,’ he answered, and waved her forward.
It only took her a moment to join him on the bed, and as he rolled over and began to kiss her breasts, she murmured, ‘I never thought when I took this job that I’d have such a big bonus.’
Lifting his head, staring into her incredibly beautiful face, he asked in a tight voice, ‘What bonus?’
‘Oh, Grisha, don’t play silly with me,’ she answered, her eyes full of happiness. ‘You. You’re the big bonus. Being in bed with you all the time, making love, that’s the bonus. And I thought I was just going to be one of your bodyguards.’
‘Yes, that’s true, that’s your job. So guard my body.’ As he spoke he pulled her on top of him, and muttered, ‘Take it, do it, take my body, my little bodyguard.’
Galina kissed him, wanting to stop the chatter now, needing to get down to the business of conquering this powerful man through her beauty, her sexual techniques and her expertise. And within minutes she had done this, had him moaning with pleasure under her. Suddenly, he turned them both over, and began to seriously make love the way she liked, bringing them both to a climax swiftly.
As he fell against her, he said, ‘It’s never been so fast with anyone. Jesus, Galina, what do you do to me? The way you make me feel has never happened to me in my life before. You’re such a sensual woman, and I can’t get enough of you. You’re my woman, aren’t you?’
‘That’s right, I am. I will not let another woman have you. Ever. Say this is forever, Grisha, say it, tell me you love me, tell me you’re mine.’
‘I am,’ he said, ‘I’m yours and I love you. And this body is yours.’ As he was saying the words, merely wanting to please her, he suddenly realized he meant what he was saying. And what he was about to ask her to do was suddenly unpalatable to him. Unexpectedly, he lifted himself off her, and sat up against the pillows, surprising her. After a moment he said slowly, ‘When you came to work for me it was as one of my bodyguards, and you knew you might have to kill someone in order to save me, didn’t you?’
Startled by the change in his mood, the seriousness of his voice, she could only nod. Finally she said, ‘Yes, I did, Grisha, and I will protect you. With my gun, and if necessary with my body if I have to. I would stand in front of you and take the bullet.’
‘Good. Now listen carefully. Earlier I said I wanted you to go over and see Ainsley, and seduce him, get him going, so that you could extract information from him. But all that’s now changed.’
‘You don’t want me to go to his yali?’
‘Yes, I do want you to go to his villa. But I don’t want you to look too enticing, Galina. And I certainly don’t want you doing this with him, getting into his bed. You are mine, you belong to me, and I love you. And I am going to marry you. But you must do this one thing first.’
‘I will do anything, Grisha,’ she said, filled with ecstasy by his words, kneeling next to him. She touched his lean and handsome face, the face she had loved since she’d first seen him.
‘He’s stolen a lot of my money. Our money, Galina. I’ll never get it back from him, he’s a crook, and his bank is going down, within days. I discovered that this morning. And so I must have satisfaction.’
‘What do you want me to do, my sweetheart?’
He stared into her honey-coloured, almost golden eyes, reached out and touched the exquisite face, marvelling at this nineteen-year-old girl, who was so bowled over by him it took his breath away. And then he said in a low voice, ‘I want you to set him up and take him out.’
Jonathan Ainsley could not believe his luck.
When Galina had telephoned him at noon earlier that day, he had been taken completely by surprise. Though he had given her his mobile number the last time he had seen her before leaving St Petersburg, he had not really expected her to call him. She was under the thumb of Lebedev and with him all the time. Jonathan had also been taken aback when she said she was in Istanbul for the weekend with Grisha and wanted to see him. Alone.
The only thing that had troubled him was her insistence that they meet here at the villa. She had said it was better, because being on the yacht, where Angharad was ensconced, made her extremely nervous. She did not want to run into his wife, she had explained. He had eventually seen the sense of that, and had agreed to the rendezvous here at the yali, on the shores of the Bosphorus. But not in the villa itself. He had told her to come to the small side jetty, around the corner from the main house, and that she should take the path to the summerhouse near the rose gardens. She had agreed to this, had whispered a few suggestive things down the phone before saying she would see him at six.
Having extracted himself from Angharad, with some clever lies about meeting one of his partners from Hong Kong, he had come to the yali, where he had changed his clothes, put on a casual shirt and cotton trousers.
Now, as he stood in the living room of the summerhouse, staring out of the window that faced the sea, he saw Galina walking up through the garden. He smiled to himself. Finally he was going to take possession of this exquisite young woman. He wondered if she was thinking about him.
Galina was not. She was thinking about the man she loved with all her heart, the only man who had ever behaved decently towards her, treated her with deference and kindness, given her a sense of dignity. Grisha Lebedev. Physically abused at eight, sexually molested at ten, raped consistently at twelve, thirteen and fourteen, she had known only the brutality of men.
Because she was turning into the most beautiful woman and was therefore even more irresistible, her three elder sisters had found the money to have her trained in the arts of self-defence. She soon became a crack shot on the range; got a black belt in karate; was the best in her fencing class. She could run long distances with ease; leap in and out of moving vehicles, and she was so physically adept she had once toyed with the idea of being a stuntwoman and working on movies. But then she had seen Grigori Lebedev at a public function when she was seventeen, and fallen in love. At eighteen she had managed, finally, to get a job with him as one of his bodyguards. Being close to him, in his orbit, had given her life a purpose.
He had treated her with respect, and in a businesslike fashion. He had only slept with her because she seduced him. On a trip to London six months ago, Grisha had become morose and sad, had finally admitted to her that he was lonely, and that he still mourned his fiancée who had died in a car crash in Moscow three years earlier. Galina had used her wiles to entice him into her bed, and he had never left it, or her. And he was her world.
The idea of fraternizing with Jonathan Ainsley after a morning in bed with the man she adored, was enormously repulsive to her. But she must grit her teeth and go and flirt with him, and then do what she had been trained to do.
Ainsley opened the door as Galina reached the top of the path, a smile on his face. He glanced at his watch. ‘Just six p.m., you’re right on time, Galina.’
‘I’m always punctual,’ she responded, then said, ‘Good evening, Jonathan.’
‘Good evening, Galina,’ he responded politely, and opened the door wide, ushered her into the summerhouse.
She looked around the sitting room, decorated in white and cream, checking everything; she noted the silver bucket holding the bottle of champagne sitting on the coffee table, made a mental note of the land line, his mobile on the coffee table. Nothing unusual here. Through an open door she could see the bedroom.
Turning to him, Galina asked, ‘Is there a bathroom I could use, Jonny? I can call you Jonny, can’t I? It’s much more intimate.’
He beamed at her. ‘I like the idea of being intimate with you…we are going to be intimate tonight, aren’t we?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she breathed in her sexiest voice, went on, ‘Do you have some music? I love music, it’s so romantic. Why don’t you put something on, and open the champagne? There is a bathroom, isn’t there?’
‘Yes, my dear, it’s over there.’ He indicated a door on the left side of the living room.
‘I’ll only be a moment,’ she murmured and glided across the carpet. She turned and looked at the sofa and mentally measured the distance between it and the coffee table. Once inside the bathroom, Galina took the revolver out of her trouser pocket, clicked off the safety catch, and put it back in the pocket. She was careful not to touch anything as she peered in the mirror, wasting time, waiting until she heard the music. A moment after Celine Dion began to sing, Galina heard the clatter of the ice in the bucket.
Using a tissue, Galina opened the door carefully, wiped the knob on the outside, then stuffed the tissue in her other pocket and quietly left the bathroom. Creeping across the floor, she stationed herself near the white sofa, immediately behind Jonathan. He was fiddling with the metal top of the champagne bottle, and he had not heard her approach. Celine’s voice filled the room.
Taking out the gun, Galina aimed it at the back of his head and fired. She hit her target with accuracy.
There was a strangled cry, and Jonathan Ainsley slumped forward onto the coffee table. Galina walked over to him, stared down at him, and she knew he had died instantly. To be absolutely certain, she shot him again in the side of the head, pocketed the gun and left the yali on silent feet. Following her training, she again used the tissue when she opened the door and then closed it on the outside.
Without glancing back, she walked calmly down the path through the garden, went along the jetty and into the arms of Lebedev, who was waiting for her. Without a word, he helped her down into the speedboat. One of his other bodyguards took her hand as she stepped into the Chris-Craft.
Lebedev followed her, and nodded to Boris, who went back to the wheel, turned on the ignition and sped away down the Bosphorus, heading for the Çirag? an Palace Hotel Kempinski.
Lebedev had one arm around Galina, holding her close to him. Finally, he spoke. ‘You followed my instructions?’
‘I did. He’s dead. Two shots to the head.’
She gave it to him.
‘Do you have the tissues?’
‘Yes. Here they are.’
He wiped the gun clean of prints and then threw it overboard into the Bosphorus. Looking at her, realizing he hadn’t needed to wipe the gun, he gave her a wry smile, and shrugged. ‘Training,’ he muttered.
She nodded, reminding herself that, like Putin, he had been with the KGB for years before going into the oil business.
‘Everything is packed,’ he now said. ‘After we pick up the luggage we’re heading to the airport. My plane is waiting…the G-IV. We’re going back to Moscow tonight. I’ve arranged for us to be married tomorrow, and the next day, Monday, we leave for New York.’
Startled but happy, she gazed at him adoringly. ‘New York? Why New York?’ she asked.
‘You told me you wanted to go there on your honeymoon, Galina. You aimed to kill, I aim to please.’ Lebedev took her in his arms and kissed her. Against her cheek, he whispered, ‘You’re safe now. You’ll always be safe, you’re with me.’
On the other side of Istanbul, in a comfortable flat not far from the Grand Bazaar, Patrick Dalton, one of Jack Figg’s operatives at Figg International, was fast asleep. It was his wife, Fatima, who answered the ringing phone.
‘Hello,’ she whispered, not wanting to wake Patrick.
‘Ima, it’s me, Ismet,’ her brother said. ‘Put Patrick on the phone. It’s urgent.’
She knew better than to argue with her brother, and did as he said, shaking Patrick, then handing him the phone. ‘It’s Ismet. He says it’s urgent.’
Patrick took the phone, mumbled hello, then asked, ‘What’s up, Ismet?’
‘There’s been a murder. It’s that Englishman. The one you spoke to me about, yesterday.’
Sitting bolt upright, now wide awake, Patrick exclaimed, ‘Jonathan Ainsley? He’s dead?’ His surprise echoed down the phone.
‘He is. Shot in the head. You’d better come down to police headquarters. Immediately. I’ll give you the information. Foreign press are going to be on it before you can say…’ Ismet, an inspector with the Istanbul police, paused, then went on, ‘What’s that stupid English expression you’re always using?’
‘Before you can say Jack Robinson,’ Patrick answered with a dry laugh. ‘See you in half an hour.’ He clicked off the phone and, jumping out of bed, he said to Ima, ‘Go back to sleep, it’s only four o’clock in the morning. I’m going to headquarters. The man Jack was interested in, the one with that humongous yacht anchored on the Bosphorus, is dead. Apparently murdered.’
Ima simply gaped at him in astonishment.
Jack Figg always slept with half an ear listening, and when his phone began to ring on Sunday morning, he reached for it automatically, glancing at his electric clock. It was five in the morning. The time surprised him, and when he said, ‘Hello?’ he sounded snappish.
‘Jack, it’s Pat Dalton. Sorry to call this early but I’ve got some extraordinary news.’
‘It’d better be at this hour,’ Jack answered.
‘Jonathan Ainsley’s dead.’
‘What?‘ Jack was out of bed in an instant, moving across the room to the small desk, his mobile pressed to his ear. Sitting down at the desk, he said, ‘Are you absolutely sure about this, Pat? I was told that five years ago, only to discover it wasn’t true. Much to my disappointment and aggravation of late.’
‘You can believe it this time, I’ve seen the body. He was shot in the head twice. From behind and then from the side. His brains were blown out, not to mince words.’
‘And you have seen the body?’ Jack pressed. He was taut inside, anxious and also wary.
‘Yes. At the morgue in Istanbul. If you recall, my brother-in-law, Ismet, is an inspector with the Istanbul police. He phoned me at four o’clock in the morning to tell me. Oddly enough, I’d had lunch with him yesterday, and I asked him to let me know if he ever heard anything peculiar about Ainsley. Whatever it was, I needed to know. As I told you during this past week, Ainsley’s yacht suddenly showed up about a week ago, moored on the Bosphorus. Ismet was still on duty last night when the body was discovered—’
‘Where was that?’ Jack interrupted.
‘At his yali on the shores of the Bosphorus. Ismet immediately went out there with some of his officers. Ainsley’s body was slumped over the coffee table in the living room. Blood everywhere, apparently. The coroner said death was instant, and that it occurred around six fifteen last night.’
‘Who found the body?’
‘His wife, Angharad Ainsley. She became alarmed when he hadn’t returned for dinner by nine, so she went on one of the tenders over to the villa, looking for Ainsley, taking the chief steward with her.’
‘I presume your brother-in-law interviewed her?’
‘Extensively. Ismet said she’s not a suspect, since she was on the yacht all day and all evening, and obviously she was seen by the various staff members that entire time.’
‘It sounds to me like a contract killing. An assassination.’
‘I tend to agree, Jack,’ Patrick said. ‘No trace of evidence, no evidence at all, and no fingerprints. It was a professional job. A hit man, in my opinion.’
‘You’re right. And he’ll never be caught. What about staff at the villa? What did they know?’
‘Just a housekeeper there, and a gardener. Neither saw anything; in fact, they didn’t even know Ainsley was coming until the last minute. Apparently he went in to say hello to the housekeeper, he said he had a meeting in the summerhouse—that’s a small house on the property. He made it clear he didn’t want to be disturbed.’
‘Did the wife know why he had gone ashore?’
‘Yes, she said he went to meet one of his partners from Hong Kong. That’s all she knew. And that’s all I know.’
‘I see. Stay in close touch with me, Pat. I’ll be on my mobile all day. And thanks for calling me so promptly.’ There was a pause, and Jack finished, ‘He got what was coming to him.’