MONOLITH (27 page)

Jess jumped back, her eyes wide and fixed on the door.

The knock had been light, almost apologetic.

She stood there in her narrow entryway shaking, the breath rasping in her throat.

There was another knock.

Jess reached forward and quickly turned the lock to its full extent.

Quite how that would save her now she had no idea but she moved closer to the spyhole again, noticing that the light in the stairwell had now come on. The two figures that stood outside her door were visible in the cold white glow. There were two men standing there, talking quietly, their voices barely louder than a whisper.

For a moment she thought about calling the police but then wondered just what the hell she was going to tell them. Two men were standing outside her door talking. It was hardly enough to get a dozen uniformed men hurtling round to rescue her was it?

Jess hesitated a moment longer then turned and hurried into the kitchen. She snatched the largest kitchen knife from the block on the worktop and held it before her, seeing her frightened reflection momentarily in the gleaming blade. Armed with the razor sharp steel she padded back towards the door.

She was within a few feet of it when it was knocked again.

The impact was louder this time. The strength of the blows stronger.

Jess swallowed hard and gripped the handle of the knife more tightly as she moved nearer to the spyhole once more.

Both of the men were still there and she saw one of them glance at his watch. The other was checking or sending a message on his mobile phone and when he’d finished he reached forward and again rapped on the door.

Jess stepped back slightly, one hand reaching for the door lock.

‘Who is it?’ she said, trying to hide the fact that her voice was shaking.

‘Miss Anderson?’ one of the men said. ‘Jessica Anderson?’

She heard the Eastern European accent and knew immediately where these men were from and who had sent them.

‘What do you want?’ she called, looking through the spyhole. ‘I was in bed.’

‘It is important that we speak with you,’ the first man said. ‘Will you open the door please?’

Jess was tempted to ask what might happen if she didn’t but she feared that might be tempting fate.

‘Wait a minute,’ she said, putting one hand behind her back to hide the knife. With her other hand she slowly unlocked the door, stepping back slightly in case either of the men tried to rush her. She glanced at the chain and prayed that it would be strong enough to hold if they did decide to rush her. She opened the door a fraction and peered through at the two men.

‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘You know it’s one o’clock in the morning. I don’t usually get visitors at this time.’

The attempt at levity was wasted.

‘You must come with us,’ the first man said. ‘We were sent here to pick you up.’

‘Sent here by who? Andrei Voronov?’

‘Mr Voronov wants to speak with you,’ the second man explained.

‘What if I don’t want to speak to him?’ Jess said.

‘It is important,’ the second man said. ‘Please come with us now.’ He glanced down at her bare feet. ‘Put on your shoes.’

She eyed each man in turn and thought she saw the faintest hint of a smile on the lips of the second man.

‘I have to make a phone call first,’ she said.

The two men stood motionless as Jess took a step backwards.

‘We wait here,’ the first man told her.

Jess hurried to her phone and hit Spike’s number. It rang. And rang. When it went to voice-mail Jess tried to keep her voice steady.

‘Listen, Spike, it’s Jess, this is important,’ she said. ‘Call me in two hours. Ring me on this number in two hours. If there’s no answer, call the police and tell them to go to the Crystal Tower because that’s where I’ll be. Two hours from now, Spike.’

She cut the call.

As she turned she saw the first man standing in the doorway of the room.

‘Time to go,’ he said, flatly.

The journey to the Crystal Tower took less than fifteen minutes.

At such an early hour of the morning the roads weren’t as choked with traffic as they would have been earlier and the black Audi moved effortlessly and silently along the capital’s thoroughfares.

The windows of the vehicle were tinted anyway but Jess didn’t feel much like looking out at the rest of the traffic or at passers-by. She was more concerned with the men inside the car. One had slid behind the steering wheel while the other had sat in the back seat next to her. He hadn’t said a word since they both settled themselves in the Audi, content with gazing blankly ahead. He and the driver had exchanged a few words in their own language which, obviously, had been indecipherable to Jess but she tried to content herself with the fact that their tone hadn’t seemed unduly urgent or harsh. She then shook her head realising how ridiculous her assumption had been. They could have been discussing how to rape and then murder her for all she knew. Just because they were doing it quietly didn’t make the possibility any less horrific.

Jess shifted uncomfortably in her seat and glanced at her watch. .

She swallowed hard and tried to convince herself that he had and that he was poised and ready.

You could be dead before then.

Jess ran a hand nervously through her hair.

‘How long have you worked for Voronov?’ she asked the man sitting next to her, wanting to break the silence just so she wasn’t turning over such disturbing thoughts in her mind.

He looked at her with an expression of bewilderment at first. As if she’d just asked him to explain Einstein’s Theory of Relativity or something similar but then his features seemed to soften a little.

‘I work for him for five years,’ he said.

‘Security?’ Jess asked. ‘You protect him?’

The man nodded.

‘Who does a man that powerful need protection from?’ Jess wanted to know.

‘Everyone,’ the man said, flatly.

‘Does he pay you well to look after him?’

The man merely looked at her for a moment then glanced out of a side window.

‘He’s had death threats, hasn’t he?’ Jess said. ‘In the past. I read somewhere that there’d been attempts on his life as well. Who tried to kill him?’

‘Enemies,’ the man told her.

‘And what happened to them?’

‘They don’t bother him any more,’ he told her, smiling thinly.

‘Does Mr Voronov think that I’m an enemy?’ she wanted to know. ‘Is that why he sent you get me?’

The man didn’t answer.

Jess felt her heart quicken its pace, noticing that they had finally reached their destination. The driver stopped the Audi outside the Crystal Tower and stepped out as did his companion. They stood close to the rear door as Jess joined them, walking swiftly across to the main doors and then on through into the foyer. One of the men pressed the Call button as they stood near the bank of lifts.

‘Maybe we should stick to the stairs,’ Jess said. ‘There’ve been problems with the lifts. I should know.’

‘You want to walk that far?’ the second man said, curtly. ‘Not time for stairs.’

The three of them rode the Executive Lift to the Penthouse floor.

As the doors slid open Jess walked out into the marble entryway, led by one of the men. He guided her towards one of the rooms and she thought she could hear talking coming from inside. That suspicion was confirmed a moment later when the door swung open to reveal what looked like a conference room.

Seated at one end of the polished table at its centre was Andrei Voronov. There were two more security men in the room as well as the woman Jess had seen that afternoon and the man with the goatee who had been introduced as an  interpreter.

Opposite them sat Alex Hadley.

Jess made no attempt to conceal her surprise and, if she was honest, there was a degree of relief to her reaction as well. At least now she knew Hadley was alive.

Voronov gestured towards the chair next to Hadley and Jess sat down.

‘I see you were invited too,’ Hadley said, flatly, taking a sip from the glass of sparkling water that was on a coaster before him.

‘How long have you been here?’ Jess wanted to know.

‘Since Mr Voronov’s men picked me up,’ Hadley said. ‘About half an hour.’

‘I felt I should speak to you both,’ Voronov said, quietly. ‘Would you like something to drink, Miss Anderson?’

‘I would say a large vodka but I don’t think that would be wise,’ Jess answered. She looked at the assembled faces in the room. ‘Would someone mind telling me what the hell is going on? Why are we here?’ She nodded in Hadley’s direction.

‘You had questions you wanted to ask me this afternoon during the Press conference,’ Voronov told her. ‘It wasn’t convenient then.’

‘So you got us back here for a little private chat?’ Jess said. ‘That’s not usually your style is it, Mr Voronov? I thought if people or things became an inconvenience you usually just got rid of them. Or is that what you’ve got planned for us?’

Voronov smiled and took a sip from his own glass.

Jess was aware of movement beside her and one of the security men placed a coaster and a tall crystal glass full of water close to her.

‘You seem to have a very strange idea about what kind of man I am,’ the billionaire said, quietly. ‘I’ve just been saying the same thing to Mr Hadley.’

‘So you got us both here tonight to talk privately about the things we asked you today in the Press Conference?’ Jess enquired. ‘Forgive me if I find that a little hard to believe.’

‘Do you think I brought you here to kill you, Miss Anderson?’ Voronov asked, smiling. The man with the goatee also chuckled softly. ‘What kind of man do you think I am?’

‘Or would you have taken care of us the way you took care of Brian Dunham?’ Jess challenged.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Voronov said as lightly as he could.

‘You know who Brian Dunham is, sorry, was? He was the man who refused you planning permission for your new hotel complex,’ Jess went on. ‘The man who resisted the building of this Crystal Tower.’

‘I know who he is,’ Voronov told her.

‘And you know how he died?’

‘People die, Miss Anderson. Would you blame me for every death in London?’

‘I’m not blaming you, Mr Voronov, I’m just saying that people who cross you tend to end up dead or missing and that you usually get what you want when those people are removed. That is how you got permission to build the Crystal Tower, isn’t it?’

‘Are those some of the rumours and lies you’ve heard?’

‘I heard that people, the right people, were threatened, bribed or intimidated until you got what you wanted and that you’ve done that in other cities too and that you’ll keep doing it as long you have the money and the power.’

‘And can you back up these claims, Miss Anderson? Where is your proof? I am a businessman, nothing more. I want to do business here in London just like thousands of other people. Why does that make me any worse than them?’

‘I heard you cut corners on the building regulations too, that’s one of the reasons there have been so many deaths during the construction of the Crystal Tower.’

‘You seem ready to blame me for everything other than the Great Fire of London,’ Voronov smiled.

‘Did you have ancestors in London then?’ Jess said, managing a grin. ‘Maybe I could blame you or them for that too.’

‘As you tried to put blame on my grandfather?’

The smile had slipped from Voronov’s face and there was an edge to his voice that Jess wasn’t slow to pick up. ‘Why did you mention him this afternoon?’

‘But what I said is true, isn’t it? The Crystal Tower is built on the site of the place where he lived and he fled London under mysterious circumstances back in the 1930s.’

‘He was driven out,’ Voronov said. ‘Subjected to the same kind of abuse, intimidation and bigotry that people like us had suffered for hundreds of years.’

‘Was it because he was Jewish?’ Jess enquired.

‘It was because he was an outsider,’ Voronov said, evenly. ‘He was different. He spoke differently, he lived differently, he believed in different things. People are afraid of things they can’t understand. When they are fearful that fear turns to hate and that hate to violence.’

‘Why didn’t he get help from the police?’ Jess wanted to know.

‘They were no better,’ Voronov announced.

‘So he decided to protect himself,’ Jess said. ‘Is that why he built a Golem?’

What Voronov did next Jess hadn’t been expecting.

No sooner had she finished speaking than he broke into fits of laughter.

She regarded him warily for a moment then looked at Hadley who seemed similarly perplexed by the millionaire’s reaction. The other people in the room were also smiling, amused it seemed by what Jess had said.

‘Did I say something funny?’ she asked.

‘A Golem?’ Voronov intoned. ‘And what do you know of such things, Miss Anderson? Do you know of what you speak?’

‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ Jess persisted. ‘Your grandfather built a Golem to protect himself from the people who were after him and it ran amok. That was why he had to get out of London so fast.’

‘I thought journalists dealt in the truth not in myths and legends,’ Voronov said, reproachfully. As he spoke he got to his feet. ‘Come with me,’ he urged, ushering them towards a door at the end of the room. ‘Both of you.’

Jess and Hadley got slowly to their feet, completely thrown by the billionaire’s attitude. They had expected anger and denial not this calm almost calculated reaction.

‘Where did you read about the Golem?’ Voronov wanted to know. ‘A book of fairy stories? Some cheap horror book?’

‘There have been instances throughout history of creatures like that being built and manipulated by men who had the power,’ Hadley said.

Voronov merely raised his eyebrows.

‘If that is what you want to believe,’ he said, standing near the door of the other room waiting.

‘What do you believe, Mr Voronov?’ Jess asked. ‘What did your grandfather believe?’

‘There are many strange beliefs in the part of the world where I come from,’ Voronov went on. ‘Many of the people who live in Eastern Europe are as ignorant now as they were hundreds of years ago. They believe in the same things they believed in hundreds of years ago. Many think that there are forces that can be controlled by those with the right knowledge, forces that can be used for good or for bad. I don’t even know what you would call them, you who think you are so civilised and so much better than the rest of us.’ He looked dismissively at Jess and Hadley.

‘Do you believe in those things, Mr Voronov?’ Jess wanted to know.

‘I believe in what I can see and what I can control,’ Voronov told her. ‘And if I tell you what I believe in it will be front page news tomorrow, is that what you think? Are you trying to trick me?’

He looked at each of them in turn, his gaze flat and unblinking.

‘You were the one who brought us here,’ Hadley offered. ‘We thought you might have something to tell us.’

‘About ancient creatures, witchcraft and superstition?’ Voronov said, shaking his head. ‘I don’t think so. And not in the middle of the night.’

‘So why are we here?’ Jess wanted to know.

‘I want to know why you broke into my apartment just days ago,’ Voronov told her. ‘What was it? Professional curiosity? Were you looking for a story? Or were you looking for something to link me to the deaths of these people you keep talking about?’

‘No one broke in,’ Jess said.

‘You were seen,’ Voronov told her, smiling.

‘Were you worried what we’d find?’ Jess said, defiantly.

‘And what did you find?’ Voronov challenged. ‘The answer to your questions?’ He pushed open the door he was standing next to. ‘Come.’ he beckoned them to join him as he stepped through into the room and slapped on the lights.

Jess and Hadley followed him and found that they were standing in a large room lit by bright spot lamps in the ceiling and a warmer glow given by several small table lamps placed strategically around the room.

‘Is this what you saw?’ Voronov said, motioning towards the statue that stood at the far end of the room. ‘Is this your Golem?’

Jess looked at the figure and recognised it instantly.

‘Who made it?’ Hadley wanted to know.

‘I don’t know the artist’s name,’ Voronov told him. ‘I have a team of experts who buy artwork for me to place in my homes around the world. One of them saw this and thought it had promise. I bought it and had it shipped here. I’m sure I can find out the artist’s name if you are so interested in his work.’

Neither Jess or Hadley spoke then Jess looked briefly at Hadley as if expecting him to say something. He didn’t.

‘Now, if there is nothing else,’ Voronov said, softly, ushering them back in the direction of the door.

‘You brought us here just for this?’ Jess said.

‘Why did you think I brought you here? To have you murdered?’ The billionaire smiled. ‘You seem to have taken an interest in myself and my family I just thought I would show that I am also interested in you.’

Jess and Hadley allowed themselves to be shepherded from the room. As they walked back into the other area of the Penthouse the eyes of those inside turned to focus on them.

‘My men will see you out,’ Voronov said. ‘They will ensure that you get back home safely.’

Hadley nodded almost imperceptibly. Jess merely headed for the door, the same two security men who had picked her up now walking behind her.

No one spoke as they rode the express lift to the ground floor.