The International Assassin A Sexy Times Crime Thriller (28 page)

I declined to share the information with Roy that the Russians were expecting me in Geneva. He was clearly planning to dispose of me and make good his escape with Charlotte. At the very least I reckoned the Russians would bring some much-needed chaos to upset his plan and allow me some leverage to get out of this situation.

With my nose and face throbbing with pain after the beating the vile Roy had inflicted on me I tried to find a comfortable spot in the back of the car - furious at myself for allowing him to get away in Zurich and putting me in this position. 

We arrived back at the house in the early hours of the morning. Roy opened the door and roughly dragged me out of the car and into the house where Charlotte was waiting.

“Hello Charlotte,” I reluctantly greeted her.

The shock on her face confirmed the fact my beaten face looked as bad as it felt.

“What the hell happened to you?” she said.

“Your boyfriend, he’s not exactly a gentleman. Are you Roy?”

“Shut it you slag! Get in the house the pair of you.”

“What the hell have you done to her?” protested Charlotte. “You said you wouldn’t hurt her!”

“Pipe down bitch or you’ll get a taste of the same.”

“Go to hell!” Charlotte replied angrily but was met with a silencing backhand slap from Roy.

“I said
shut it
. I don’t want any more lip out of either of you. You bitches is proper doing my head in. now get in the fucking house!”

“He’s a real charmer isn’t he?” I said to Charlotte who was ashen-faced at Roy’s sudden reversion to his thuggish ill-educated and ill-mannered real self.

“Right you, I’m going to give you until lunchtime to reconsider your position. If you aren’t forthcoming with the cash before the banks close I’m going to cut you up,” he said.

“Go fuck yourself Roy,” I replied refusing to be intimidated by a manual labourer from a North London factory town.

Roy slapped me again.

“Stop it!” Charlotte protested and he hit her to the ground. 

“Leave her alone Roy!” I told him.

“Are you going to give up the money?”

“No I’m not.”

“Then keep it zipped. I’ve nothing more to say to you.”

Roy dragged me up to the master bedroom and onto the bed. I struggled as he tied me to the bedstead railings fearful he would force himself on me.

“Don’t worry love,” he sneered. “You don’t do anything for me. Not with a face like that.”

I spat at him. He wiped it off his face with a smirk and left locking the bedroom door. 

I did my best to get loose but Roy had bound my hands too tightly. There was nothing else I could do but wait for the Russians to arrive and hope they dispatched Roy before he could get to me or get away with the money.

Several hours past and with my whole body aching with pain I dozed off into a light nap. I had already formulated my last stand plan if Roy returned at noon. I wasn’t going to hand over the money under any circumstances so if I was going to die today I was certainly going to take the bastard with me.

I was surprised to be woken just before lunch not by Roy but by Charlotte untying my hands.

“The Russians are here,” she told me nervously. “I’m sorry, I should have listened to you,” she sobbed.

“I did try and warn you. Where’s Roy?”

“Who?”

“Johnny. His name is Roy. I’ve told you that more than three times Charlotte. Christ on a bike stop being so blonde and get with the program!”

“Oh! He is downstairs. What are we going to do?” she asked me.

I untied my bound feet and got up and went across to the window that overlooked the front of the house. Out front were four GL’s parked up with a whole army of Russian suited gangsters. Anatoly had clearly learnt his lesson from our previous encounters and sent the bloody lot.

“Lock the door,” I told Charlotte.

“Shouldn’t we try and get out of here?”

“There’s too many of them,” I told her. 

Charlotte ran over and locked the bedroom door.

“That will slow them down but how are we going to get out?”

I walked across to the bed and checked the C4 was still in place I had planted on our first visit. Thankful it still was I picked up the cordless phone handset from next to the bed.

There was a hammering at the front door. Roy clearly was refusing to answer so I went back to the window and watched as the Russians produced a battering ram and proceeded to knock it down. There was a sudden knocking on the bedroom door. 

“Open the door!” said a panic stricken Roy. “Charlotte! Stop messing about! The Russians are here, open the fucking door!” he said, his voice trembling with fear.

Roy started barging at the door.

“Bugger off Johnny! Or Roy or whoever the fuck you are!” Charlotte shouted at him.

“Charlotte open the bloody door! I’ll split the money with you!”

“Go to hell! Better still go back to Luton where you belong you bloody chav scum!” she responded.

Roy battered the door harder.

“If you don’t open the door I’m going to kick it in and kill the pair of you!”

“Get in the bathroom quickly,” I told Charlotte. 

She ran into the en-suite and I followed her in and locked the door behind us.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Get in the bathtub,” I replied.

“Why?” she asked with a frown.

“Just get in the bathtub. It’s cast iron. It will protect us from the blast.”

“What blast?”

“Charlotte just get in the bloody bathtub! I don’t have time to explain!”

Reluctantly Charlotte got in the bathtub. I heard the door give way. Roy started hammering on the bathroom door.

“Open the bloody door!”

“Piss off Roy!”

“You bloody called the Russians didn’t you!”

“Yes sorry about that. Must have slipped my memory while you were beating the shit out of me. Do give them my regards,” I replied politely.

“You bitch!”

Roy went quiet then the shooting started followed by the sound of broken glass that I could only guess was Roy jumping out of the first floor bedroom window in his desperation to escape. There was some shouting in Russian then it went quiet again. Footsteps approached the bathroom door. The doorknob turned but the locked door didn’t open. There was a banging on the door.

“Open the door,” came the request in thick Russian accented English.

“I’m in the bath. Can you come back in a hour?” I replied.

“I give you ten seconds to open the door then we break it down. Put on clothes. Or not. It is your choice.”

I went and got in the bath with Charlotte. The ten seconds passed.

“Time is finished. You going to open door?”

“Still in the bath,” I told him.

“We not have time for games. You going to get out of the bath?”

“It’s a nice bath. I’m enjoying it. It really would be better if you came back later. Did you make an appointment?”

“Appointment?”

“It does say on the front gate. No callers without an appointment.”

“Your husband let us in.”

“He’s not my husband.”

“Who he is?”

“Oh that’s Roy. He’s an electrician from Luton.”

“Where is Luton?”

“It’s a shitty little place outside of London.”

“Like airport? He live at airport? No more this nonsense! I not care who Roy is.”

“You should care. You work for Anatoly?”

“Da. We work for Anatoly.”

“So you came for the money?”

“Da. we have come for money.”

“Do you have Nick with you?”

“Who Nick is?”

“English guy. Very handsome.”

“No. We have no English handsome Nick here. We just come for money.”

“If you don’t have Nick you aren’t getting the money. I suggest you come back when you have him. That was the deal.”

“I know nothing of English handsome Nick deals. I want only money.”

“You really should go after Roy. Anatoly wants him dead.”

“I not go after Roy from Luton Airport. I not have English Handsome Nick. I want only money. Now open door.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s much safer in the bath.”

“From what is safer in bath?”

“You’ll see…”

I dialled the number on the phone and pressed the hashtag to detonate the explosives. The noise was deafening as the entire house shook to its foundations. The bathroom door blew inwards across the room filling the entire bathroom with smoke and debris, plaster showered from the ceiling on top of us as the C4 blew the entire bedroom to dust and all of its occupants.

Chapter 23

I COUGHED
and spluttered as the smoke started to clear from the room then got up and shook the plaster dust and debris off me. I pulled a shocked and confused Charlotte out of the bathtub.

“What the hell did you do?” she asked in a dazed state of confusion.

“I blew the bedroom up,” I replied casually.

“With what?”

“A block of C4 explosives I put under the bed.”

“Why do you have explosives under your bed?”

“They were meant for you and Roy.” I shrugged my shoulders. “Sorry.”

“Why were you going to blow me up?”

“I was quite vexed with you at the time. But since you probably just saved my life I guess that makes us even.”

“Jesus you can be such a bitch sometimes,” she said with a disgusted look.

“Maybe you should have better taste in men in future.”

I stepped over the debris and into what remained of the bedroom. 

The entire front wall had collapsed. The ceiling was missing and there were dead Russians strewn across the floor. I say dead Russians but to be exact parts of dead Russians. Arms, legs and torso’s were strewn about the place like disassembled mannequins. Charlotte emerged and took one look at the slaughterhouse remnants of my bedroom and threw up on the charred Axminster. Eventually she composed herself.

“Who are these guys?” she asked pointing at the human detritus without looking.

“They are the Russians. Anatoly’s men. What’s left of them at least.”

“They’re all dead!”

“Don’t worry. I’m sure they have more of them. They must be getting them from a discount warehouse somewhere because they always seem to come in packs of twelve.”

Somewhere amidst the chaos a mobile phone rang. I located the source to the torso nearest the bathroom door. The owner I presumed was the gentleman who had requested us to open the door. I gingerly picked through his bloodstained remnants and found a Blackberry in his inside pocket and prodded the blood-soaked keyboard with a finger.

“
Allo
. Ivan?” Anatoly asked.

“No. I’m sorry, Ivan can’t take your call right now. He’s fallen apart on the job.”

There was an annoyed sharp exhale of breath on the other side.

“We had an agreement…”

“Yes and that agreement included you bringing Nick in return for the money. Your man didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. It’s most disappointing.”

“These things happen. Mistakes are made,” replied Anatoly.

“And you missed Roy. Sorry Johnny.”

“He is with you?”

“He was here. Your man let him get away.”

“Put him on the phone.”

“That will be difficult. His ears are no longer attached to his head.”

“Did you do this thing?”

“It was Roy’s fault. He tried to steal the money.”

“You still have the money?”

“One minute.”

I picked my way through the debris to the front of the house. My beloved G-Wagen was still parked in the front drive. In his bid to get away Roy had clearly made his escape on foot. I found the duffel back of cash in the boot.

“Yes I still have it,” I told Anatoly.

“Then we need to make a new agreement.”

“I’m not compensating you for these guys. This was your fault. Breach of contract. In fact I should get a discount to cover the damage to my bedroom.”

“Not going to happen.”

“I thought you would say that. Never mind, technically I no longer own the place so it’s not my problem.”

“We make new meeting?”

“This time you come. Don’t send any more of your renta-goons. I’m getting bored of killing your hired help. They are so incompetent there is simply no sport to be had in it.”

“I do not take such meeting.”

“For eight million Euros you will take this meeting. You come or I come and find you.”

“Very well,” Anatoly sighed reluctantly.

“Monte Carlo. Tomorrow. The Casino. One p.m. leave your army behind, no funny business. I won’t have the money with me. If you try anything you will never see a single Euro. We meet, we arrange a time and a place for the handover.”

“
Da..Da
. Casino tomorrow at one p.m.”

The line went dead. Russian’s really have no manners. I returned to the bedroom to collect Charlotte.

I dropped the phone and found something that wasn’t covered in blood and human tissue to wipe my hands on.

“Come on. We should get out of here. We could probably tell the police it was a gas explosion but the twelve dead Russian gangsters are kind of hard to explain,” I said to Charlotte.

I led Charlotte down what was left of the staircase and out to the G-Wagen.

“Where are we going?” asked Charlotte.

“Monaco. If you are lucky we can find you a rich Arab to marry.”

I pulled out the drive and headed south down towards Monte Carlo.

As we headed down the autoroute I did my best to clean up and patch my badly damaged nose and face using the first-aid kit from the G-Wagen’s boot.

“Why are you involved in all of this?” Charlotte asked me as we drove south. I shrugged my shoulders.

“Bad luck I guess.”

“And Roy? Who is he really if he is not Johnny?”

“Roy Jones. He’s an electrician from Luton.”

“So who the hell is Johnny?” asked Charlotte clearly confused.

“Johnny was a hired assassin, ex-SAS by all accounts working in Iraq where Roy was working as a contractor. He killed Johnny and took his place.”

“I can’t believe I slept with someone from
Luton
.” she said with a disgusted look.

“I would have thought that was a step up from your Hackney liaison.”