The Abigail Affair (28 page)

The reception area was empty, except for the cop on duty behind the glass, who was fast asleep, his head in his arms on the counter.

The main door of the police station stood open, propped in place by a fire extinguisher. Outside it was extraordinarily bright, like an overexposed photo.

Wake the duty cop and ask for water? Or just walk out?

He crossed to the door and squinted into the sunlit street. The police station was on the quayside, and across the road was the fishing harbour.

Where were the bloody Brits? They’d had hours to come to collect him. Maybe the GPS tracker wasn’t working. Maybe he hadn’t activated it properly, though he was sure he had.

Maybe the device didn’t work indoors. Would it have to “see” the GPS satellite constellation to get a fix—or was it like a mobile phone? Toby couldn’t remember and wished he had paid more attention during Jock’s lectures back at the Sea School.

He could see no reason not to walk out, find a shady spot of concealment and wait for his rescuers. Even better, he could find another phone and call them.

Still, something made him hesitate. It was almost too easy. Why would the St Helen’s police arrest him, bring him here and forget about him? The doziest force on earth would not leave a suspect unguarded in an interview room. Perhaps they relied on the duty officer to keep an eye on him. Big mistake, if so.

A faint noise came from the sleeping cop as he shifted his position slightly on the counter. The man exhaled with a sigh. He was stirring and could awake at any moment.

It was now or never. Toby took a deep breath, and walked out into the blazing sunshine.

After no more than three paces, he froze. There, parked at the kerb not twenty yards away, was the black Mercedes people carrier.

It had to be the same one.

This was a trap.

He turned on his heels, darted back into the police station, hurried past the still-sleeping cop in Reception and back to the safety of the interview room.

Everything there was as he had left it—not that there was much to disturb. Carmen Miranda gazed down fruitily from the poster on the wall.

Krigov’s men were waiting for Toby to be released so they could pick him up again.

Well, they would not capture him a second time. Toby had no illusions about his fate if they did. His head pounded as the headache took hold big time.

Now what?

He had to persuade the authorities to keep him in custody pending the arrival of his British sponsors.

No problem at present, because everyone seemed to be taking a siesta and he was the forgotten man.

He had no more time to think about it, because he now heard footsteps in the corridor, swiftly followed by the entry of the taller cop.

“You can go,” he announced without preamble.

“What about the offences—Immigration or whatever? Why were you after me like a criminal?” Toby demanded.

“I don’t know. I’m just here to sign you out. Don’t you want to go?”

“Yes—but—I mean, don’t you want to know who I am—or see my passport—or anything?” Toby said, playing for time.

“No, man. Instructions from the Commissioner. Set you free. Come on, there’s someone here to take you.”

“I have diplomatic immunity!” Toby remembered the phrase from a
Lethal Weapon
movie
.
“I need protection.”

“Well, go and join your friends, and they will protect you, I’m sure. Come on.” The officer was getting impatient.

“No. Don’t you see? They are going to kidnap me. When you picked me up in the warehouse they were interrogating me at gunpoint.”

The officer screwed up his face. “You not making sense, boy.”

“Those men in the Mercedes outside are staking me out.”

“What men?”

“Black people carrier with three ugly brutes inside. One local with dark colouring, one Indian-looking, one white. Plus possibly a girl—your tip-off woman—short and attractive. You should bring them all in.”

“You babbling, boy. I never knew anyone so keen to stay in this place.”

“Will you take me to the airport, then? I need to get a plane out of here.” As he said this, Toby wondered how he would actually achieve it, with no passport in his possession.

“No, I’m to turn you over to the fellow in Reception. British guy. Short.”

The door of the interview room swung open suddenly and Lieutenant Commander Smithers strode in. “What’s the hold-up? Toby, we need to go.”

Chapter 28

Relief flooded through Toby. “I thought you were the bad guys,” he said. “They’re outside. They lifted me from the hotel.”

“I’ll take him,” Smithers said to the cop. He beckoned Toby to follow him. They trotted out down the corridor, past the duty officer (now awake and sitting up straight), into the sunshine and to a waiting car—not a Honda, but an anonymous white Korean hatchback.

Toby looked up and down the highway. The black Mercedes had gone.

Toby didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “What took you so long?” he said. “I turned the alarm on back in the warehouse hours ago. Fat lot of good you people are.”

“Whoa, Robinson, calm down,” Smithers said. He engaged the manual gears and pulled away from the kerb into the quayside traffic.

They passed a fishing boat unloading its catch into plastic crates. A flock of seagulls hovered overhead and screeched.

“I’ll tell you all I know when we get you to a secure site,” Smithers said. “And you tell me everything in return. Deal?” He turned his head briefly. “Admit it, you were pleased to see me back there, weren’t you?”

“I was shitting myself that those goons were waiting to collect me.”

“They left some time ago. They wouldn’t have got far with you a second time. Sorry about the hotel.”

“Tell me now what’s going on. You’ve been jerking me around for days. You’ve known more than me all along. Come to that, who are you? You’re not a naval officer, are you?” Toby felt anger rising within him.

It was true.

He had been messed around with.

By Scott, Krigov and Co., the Navy, the thugs here in St Helen’s, by Julia ...

“Is Julia Simons on our side?” he asked. “ At least tell me that.”

“We’re nearly there,” Smithers said. “Do you need a doctor for that hand?”

“Yes,” Toby said simply.

The car turned off the main drag and up a steep side road. They passed a very elderly, wizened little man who pushed a bicycle. They were heading towards a residential area.

Toby seethed. No more Mr Nice Guy, he decided. No more meek compliance with hare-brained schemes that he didn’t understand. He wanted safely and quickly out, and with explanations, and pay.

Smithers turned off the steep road on to a concrete track. This led to a pair of black iron gates which formed the entrance to a walled estate. The gates rolled back as the car approached. Toby spotted a video camera on a tall pole. Its lens glinted suddenly in the afternoon sun as the device swivelled to follow their progress.

Safe at last
, Toby thought.

They pulled up in front of the white-painted building, which looked like any of the other smart residences on the island, with a pillared veranda and steps leading up to an impressive main entrance and double doors guarded by a pair of bottle-shaped palms in giant pots.

Most reassuring of all was the big, new-looking British Union Jack. It flew proudly from a flagpole projecting at forty-five degrees from above the porch.

The British Consulate. He was technically on British soil.

Home.

Inside everything was cool and orderly. Smithers led Toby to a small room with “First Aid” on the door and a couch with a plastic cover.

“Quack is on his way. Would you like a drink?”

“Coke,” Toby said. “With ice. Large.”

“Right you are. There’s a toilet and washroom through there. Have a little rest and when the medic has sorted you out, we’ll debrief.”

Toby lay on the couch and had his little rest. He was OK. The Coke arrived and he glugged it down thirstily. His main worry now was Julia. He continued to think about her while the local doctor removed the glass splinters from his hand, inserted a couple of plastic stitches and gave him a tetanus jab. Half an hour later, Smithers returned and the debriefing began there and then, with Toby lying on the couch like a patient in a shrink’s consulting room. But Toby didn’t care. He told the man about the hidden cargo bay on the
Amelia
, the heavy crates and their metallic contents. He handed over the watch device. Amazingly, he almost forgot about the nametag, but remembered it just in time and handed that over too.

After another half an hour, Smithers had run out of questions and Toby posed one of his own. “Who is Julia Simons? You said you would tell me.”

Smithers smoothed back his hair with both hands. “Julia isn’t her real name, but you know her as Julia, so let’s stick with that,” he replied. He paused a moment, as if considering how much to tell Toby. “I guess it won’t hurt. She is an American federal agent working undercover for the DEA, which I expect you know is short for Drug Enforcement Administration.

“Krigov has been on the Americans’ radar for several years. As I told you back on the ship, his assets are disproportionate to his legitimate business interests, large though those are. When Putin put the heat on the oligarchs and big names like Boris Berezovksy and Mikhail Khodorkovsky began to come unstuck, Krigov decamped to Tsazakhstan with what was left of his cash. That country provided the ideal cover for Krigov to invest in more businesses, both legitimate and criminal. The problem for us with Tsazakhstan is that it borders Afghanistan and is the primary route out of that country for heroin. Once the heroin is in Russia proper, it is completely out of our control.

“Recently Krigov bought a chemical plant in Shynkent, south-central Tsazakhstan, and we’ve a fair idea he is producing acetic anhydride there in large volumes.”

“You’ve lost me,” Toby said. “What is acetic ... whatever?”

“It’s a precursor chemical essential in the processing of heroin from raw state to usable drug. The DEA has had great success targeting this substance in Mexico. The CIA burnt down a plant there recently. They made it look like an industrial accident.”

“So, Krigov has access to both the raw heroin and the chemicals needed to process it?”

“Worse than that, we think he virtually controls the market in Russian heroin.”

“I thought cocaine was your big worry.”

“Not really. We’ve lost that war, Toby. Cocaine is a commodity as easy to buy as cannabis or indeed, tobacco, in many countries. And cocaine is not such a health problem as heroin. They say Hollywood runs largely on the stuff. They put it out in Reception in some of the smarter film studios. No, it’s heroin we are after—because of the Afghan angle, because it funds political terrorism, and because it is a drug that kills the user and can wreck the economy of a whole city—or country.”

“So Julia is a DEA agent?”

“Yes. She was recruited because she is a fluent Russian speaker and her family background is nautical—her father is in the US Navy, and she has been on and around the water all her life. The Americans trained her up, concocted a whole past life for her, got her a job on the
Amelia V
nine months or so ago, and told her to watch and listen without getting caught. Obviously. And then you came along.”

“So what is Krigov up to out there? It’s not drugs on the ship.”

By way of answer, Smithers held up the plastic nametag. “I think you may have given us the answer to that. Tsazakhstan is also the world’s leading producer of uranium.”

That made Toby sit up. “Uranium—as in nuclear weapons?”

“Yes. Enriched uranium is the raw material for the older, smaller, cruder style of nuclear bomb.”

“And you think Krigov is transporting it—on his yachts? That would explain the heavy boxes. Do you think Julia knows?”

“That’s what I’m starting to wonder. Uranium in its original state is not very useful and not even very dangerous. You need to enrich it by separating one of the isotopes—Uranium 235. Unfortunately for rogue regimes, that is very difficult to accomplish. You can do it two ways—either ‘breed’ it in a conventional nuclear reactor, such as you find in a legitimate power station. Or you can separate the isotopes in a gaseous state, using centrifuges. You see, the uranium isotopes have the same chemical composition, so you can’t separate them using a chemical reaction. You have to do it mechanically, and rely on the fact that the isotope you want is of slightly different mass to the one you don’t want. Am I losing you?”

“Not at all,” Toby said, although if he was truthful, all of this was new to him. His experience of chemistry had ended with an attempt to blow up Rodney’s father’s garden shed at the age of eight, using only the contents of Rodney’s older brother’s chemistry set. But the principles, as Smithers laid them out, were easy enough to understand.

“Does this mean the
Amelia
is radioactive? Have we—me and Julia—been exposed to radiation?”

“Most unlikely. The man would hardly risk his own neck on his own mega yacht. But I need to get this device analysed. As you had it on your person all the time you were in the chamber, it will tell us for sure.”

“Why—what is it?”

“It’s a dosimeter—a device that measures an individual’s exposure to radiation over time. Worn as a safety alert by medical staff in radiology departments, workers in nuclear power plants and so on.”

“Yikes. So someone called Yulia—presumably my Julia—lost it on the
Amelia,
indicating that what I found was definitely some sort of nuclear material and not gold.”

Smithers pursed his lips. “Looks that way. But from the quantity of material you describe, it seems unlikely to be highly enriched uranium. I’ll let you know once this device has been analysed. But that will take a day or two—they can’t do it here on St Helen’s. Are you feeling OK?”