Stephen Leather - True Colours

It was important that some of the circuits remained live — Monotok needed the thumb sensors to be working so that he could move around, and they needed the gate to be working so that they could make their escape. But they had to cut the power to the CCTV cameras, the lights and the lifts.

She looked at the photograph, then began to cut the wires.

The lights went out, plunging the car park into darkness. Monotok smiled to himself. He switched on the night vision goggles and slid the strap around his head and adjusted the fit. He could see everything clearly, albeit with a greenish tinge. He opened the car door and got out and headed for the security centre. The door to the driver’s room opened and one of the drivers, Yulian Chayka, stood in the doorway. ‘What happened to the lights?’ he shouted into the darkness in Russian. ‘Is anybody there? What the hell’s going on?’ He was waving his hand in front of his face. The darkness was absolute and Monotok knew that Chayka could see nothing.

The keypad to the side of the security centre door was still glowing. The power had to be on for the doors to open so he had been very specific what fuses Podolski had to pull and which she had to leave in place.

As he reached the door, he slid the gun into the pocket of his jacket and took out a small plastic bag containing Barsky’s bloody thumb. He pressed the thumb against the sensor and tapped in the four-digit code that Podolski had given him. The door clicked open and he put the thumb back into the bag and into his pocket.

He pushed the door open and stepped into the room. She was sitting in one of the high-backed chairs, facing him. Molchanov was slumped in his chair, unconscious.

She smiled, even though he knew she couldn’t see him. ‘It worked,’ she said. ‘It worked perfectly.’ She stood up and held out her arms. ‘Say something, it’s spooky in the dark.’

‘I’m here,’ said Monotok.

She smiled, moving her head from side to side as if that would help her see. Monotok looked to the left. All the monitors were blank.

‘What about Volkov?’

‘In the other room. Out for the count.’

‘And Grechko’s still in the pool?’

‘That’s where he was when the lights went out.’

‘And Popov?’

‘In the gym with Leo. The only man down on Basement Three with Grechko is Ivan.’ She waggled her hands. ‘Give me a hug, I want to feel you.’

Monotok smiled and walked towards her. He avoided her hands and walked slowly around her. She continued to waggle her hands in the direction of where she thought he was.

She took a step forward and he moved behind her.

‘Kirill, come on, stop messing me about.’

Monotok put his hands on her hips and she stiffened, then relaxed. She ground her hips back, pressing herself against him. He ran his hands up her sides and caressed her breasts. She reached behind her with her right hand and rubbed his groin.

‘Why don’t you hammer me in the dark?’ she said, as she felt him grow hard. ‘How sexy would that be?’ She ground against him again, harder this time.

Monotok chuckled and slid his gloved hands up to her shoulders. ‘You’re crazy,’ he said.

‘Crazy for you,’ she said. ‘Come on, baby, hammer me. Hammer me good.’

He put his hands either side of her head as she pressed herself against him. He slid his left hand up on to her head, his right hand under her chin, then he pulled hard, twisting her head to the right, hearing a loud crack and feeling the vertebra snap away from her skull. He felt her turn into a dead weight and he stepped back as she slumped to the floor.

He bent down and pulled the Bluetooth earpiece from her ear then lifted up her jacket and pulled the transceiver off her belt. ‘Consider yourself hammered,’ he whispered.

Harper tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, then looked at his watch. ‘This is not good, guys,’ he said. ‘We can’t sit here all night. We have to make a decision.’

‘He could be tied up in the house,’ said McIntyre. He stretched out his legs and they banged against the two shovels in the back of the van. ‘He’s organising lie detector tests for the staff.’

‘He could have changed his mind,’ said Harper.

‘Bollocks,’ said Shortt. ‘He wouldn’t and even if he did he’d have let us know. Something’s happened, he’ll get in touch.’

‘Yeah, but that leaves us sitting here with four guns and our thumbs up our arses,’ said Harper. He banged the steering wheel with the flat of his right hand. ‘Guys, it’s time to shit or get off the pot.’

‘Do it without him, you mean?’ asked McIntyre.

‘I don’t see that we’ve got any choice, do you? If we get caught with those guns we go down for ten years.’

‘He’ll be coming,’ said Shortt.

‘Then he’ll be too late,’ said Harper. He tapped his watch with his finger. ‘We’ve got just enough time to get to Shepherd’s Bush and pick him up. If we leave it any later we’ll miss him.’

‘Then we’ll do it tomorrow,’ Shortt said.

‘Jimbo, the hole’s dug. We’re all geared up for doing this now. Every day we leave it is another day we can get caught. Do you want your wife and kids visiting you in prison?’

Shortt sighed and looked at his own watch as if he hoped it would show a different time to Harper’s. ‘Screw it,’ he said. ‘Try his phone again.’

Harper took his Nokia out of his pocket and switched it on.

‘Why do you do that?’ asked Shortt as Harper waited for the phone to power up.

‘It’s counter-surveillance 101,’ said Harper. ‘Whenever your phone is on you’re vulnerable. They can track you and they can listen in.’

‘Who can?’

Harper tapped the side of his nose with his finger. ‘Dark forces, mate,’ he said. He tapped out Shepherd’s number and once again it went straight through to voicemail. ‘It’s still off,’ he said. ‘Look, I say we go ahead. The three of us.’

‘I’m up for it,’ said McIntyre.

‘Jimbo?’ said Harper. ‘This has to be unanimous. The three musketeers and all that. We’re primed, we’re ready to go. Just say the word.’

Shortt sighed and then slowly nodded. ‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’

Shepherd stood by the window, looking out over the grounds as Lee continued to ask questions of Serov. Serov was the twelfth member of staff to be questioned, the fifth bodyguard, and Shepherd had sat in on all the sessions. Lee switched easily between English and Russian, and while Shepherd couldn’t understand the Russian bits he could tell that Lee spoke the language with a strong Newcastle accent. Shepherd had spotted Lee’s technique early on. There were basically three types of questions. There were irrelevant questions which were used solely to establish a baseline and they usually involved the examiner asking something like ‘the sky is blue, true or false’ or ‘when water freezes it turns into ice, true or false’. They were simple questions to which everyone knew the answers so lying was out of the question.

The second type of question wasn’t related to the investigation into the missing watch and was designed to get the subject to lie. Lee would ask a baseline question and then follow it with something like ‘I have fantasised about having sex with Mrs Grechko’, knowing that the subject would say no but knowing that it was almost certainly a lie. Mrs Grechko, the new Mrs Grechko, was a very sexy woman and the bodyguards — with the exception of Alina Podolski — were red-blooded males.

Once Lee had established the baseline and knew how the subject would react when lying, it was time to ask the relevant questions. In a normal investigation that would be about the missing watch but in this case Lee had to ask about the watch but also ask less specific questions relating to their relationship with Grechko. ‘Would you ever do anything to hurt Mr Grechko?’ was one. ‘Have you ever given information about Mr Grechko’s movements to a third party?’ was another.