The Paper Factory (Michael Berg Book 1) (21 page)

Chapter 66

  Friday morning. Elisabeth shut the door on the townhouse she inhabited in a quiet street off Glover Park. Her cell phone rang. She answered immediately, knew it wasn’t Ralph even before she heard the voice on the other end.
  “They know you’re being blackmailed. Bilderberg will try to have you suspended. They’re going to set you up for insider dealing. Or worse. Today. If you’re suspended or dead, you can’t help your son. Believe me, he needs your help.”

  “
How can you possibly know this? This is just part of the sick game that you’re playing. Even if it was true, what the hell could I do about it? I make the decision on Beirsdorf Klein on Monday afternoon. They can’t do anything to get me out before then.”

  “
Elisabeth, Elisabeth, you really have no idea what you’re talking about, do you? These people aren’t a bunch of Fortune 500 CEOs trying to ingratiate themselves with has-been politicians. These people have had a major impact on just about every key decision governing world affairs since the Second World War. Ralph still has nine fingers left. You’re not in a position to be making assumptions. Fix it or your son’s worst nightmare is about to begin.”

 
Elisabeth lowered herself onto the first of the red brick steps that led to the pavement below. She let the phone roll to the ground. She could have sat there, easily, for the rest of the day. Frozen, helpless, lost. But the only time Elisabeth Kennedy remembered feeling sorry for herself, she was ten years old and her father had berated her so strongly for being selfish and petty minded that it was a habit she had never formed.

She lifted the phone off the ground, stood, brushed off the back of her skirt, walked back into the house and
called an old friend.

Chapter 67

  The bolt made a dull metallic thud as it was drawn. She assumed it would be the same man as before. It wasn’t. When the door swung open, she recognized the thug who had almost killed her and Michael at Visegrad. Tereza’s gut response was to shrink back onto the bed and curl up. She stopped herself. A show of fear was what a man like this lived for and expected.

  She took in
his steel blue, lethally intelligent eyes, flat uneven features and the sheer mass of his shoulders and chest. The piercing eyes seemed completely out of place in such a ludicrous face. His resemblance was as close to a living breathing giant as she believed she would ever see.
  “Follow me.” His mouth moved imperceptibly, his face not at all.

 
The giant stood at the door until Tereza was able to stand without clutching onto the bed for support. She’d eaten once in three days and had not been upright since they had taken her off the street in London.

 
She followed him from the barren, brightly lit room into an ornately decorated corridor. Expensive-looking wallpaper hung from the walls which were dotted at intervals with lantern candelabras. She glanced to the right. One door stood on the same side of the corridor as her own. From there had come the blood curdling scream that had petrified her the day before.

 
She turned to the left and followed him. There had been no windows in her room. There was no natural lighting in the corridor. The reason for this became clear. They passed two doors and ascended a narrow flight of stone covered steps to the corner of a spacious, sunlit vestibule. She’d been kept in the cellar.

 
Tereza followed the man across the high-ceilinged hallway, a sweeping staircase descending the rear wall to her left and a formidable looking doorway, presumably leading outside, to her right. Where was outside, she thought. To Tereza, the echo of the heels of her shoes clattering against the mosaic tiling only added to the sensation that she was the headline act in someone else’s nightmare.

 
The giant, rather cautiously, pushed on one of the double doors and peered inside the room. A moment later, he flung both doors inwards, with seeming disdain, and stood to the side.

  “
Wait in here,” he said. “Security is everywhere. You will not live through any attempt to escape.” As Tereza passed by, he exited the room, pulling both doors noisily shut as he did so.

 
The room itself was spacious and grandly decorated, the sweeping bay windows that stood directly facing her drew Tereza’s immediate attention. Without hesitation, she crossed the room and stood marveling at the contrast between the untamed scenery before her and the warm comfortable luxury within which she stood. The water glowed in the embrace of the setting sun, the color of the dying embers of a fire. Islands drifted in an early evening mist.

 
She stood stock still, absorbing the peacefulness of the scene, struck by a tranquility and calmness that she hadn’t known for a long time. She had forgotten what it was to feel this way. The splendor of the moment was interrupted. At first she did not know by what. Tereza turned, drew her dark hair behind her ear, and listened.

 
Voices were raised in whispered argument. She walked towards the sound of the lowered, yet angry voices, drifting through the wall to her left. No, not a wall. A doorway. Difficult to make out given that it was hung with the same wallpaper as the rest of the room. Not having taken the time earlier to get her bearings, she narrowly avoided walking into a wooden desk, so oversized she was surprised that she hadn’t noticed it before.  

 
About to resume her journey toward the voices, she hesitated. Something caught her eye. The desk was not cluttered. A silver pen sitting atop a black leather writing pad. A laptop computer, closed, to the left-hand side. An amber handled paper knife positioned parallel to the writing pad.
  The photograph. Enclosed within a plain, silver Tiffany frame. The same frame that had held it for more than twenty-five years, perched on a handmade cedar wood coffee table in a corner of her parents’ bedroom. Her father stood in the background, one hand on her brother’s shoulder, the other poised on her mother’s upper arm. Her mother, face slightly upturned, smiling, sat on a plain wooden chair holding a four-year-old Tereza in her arms.

 
Her heartbeat and her breathing quickened. The blood drained from her face as shivers ran along her arms and down her back. She could not move as her mind forlornly scrabbled to undertake the task of making sense of what her intuition was screaming at her.

 
The hidden door, not two meters from where she stood, was thrust open and for the first time in more than thirty years Tereza Vass came face to face with her brother.

Chapter 68

  Elisabeth only once before had occasion to visit Nine Six Five Pennsylvania Avenue. Three years previously, the Federal Reserve had been assisting the FBI with a multi-jurisdictional investor fraud. On this occasion, as soon as Elisabeth had passed through security, she was escorted, not to the fourth, but to the tenth floor.

 
She sat in a spacious, but sparse, inwardly facing corner office in front of the desk of Grant Edward Douglas, for five years now the bureau’s notoriously shy, yet pragmatic, director.

 
The door clicked open behind her. Elisabeth placed her coffee onto the coaster on the desk. She stood and turned to appraise her old friend.

  “
Elisabeth, Elisabeth, it’s so good to see you. As usual, it’s been far too long.” Grant took two steps forward on the plain blue carpet, took her arm and kissed her once on the cheek, a smile beaming from a broad mouth set in a rounded face dappled with red blotches. Elisabeth smiled warmly to herself, fondly remembering Grant’s instantaneous reaction to exchanging even a peck on the cheek with a woman.

 
Without giving her an opportunity to answer, he guided her back to the chair.
  “Sit, sit, please make yourself comfortable. I was delighted to hear of your recent promotion. America’s money couldn’t be in safer hands. Now tell me, your call this morning sounded urgent. What can I do?”

 
Grant and Elisabeth had been at Georgetown together. They’d been firm friends, although in different faculties, she in finance and he in law. Although many friendships struck in the surreal world of university life fade quickly soon after graduation, Elisabeth and Grant had stayed in touch and met at least once every year or so to catch up on each other’s lives and to reminisce over a shared history.

 
Elisabeth tried to respond. Before she could emit a sound, she could feel her teeth grind down on each other and her lips clamp shut. She had never experienced such a sensation before and realized that she couldn’t utter a word because she had no idea what to say. She’d held everything in for so long. No one to talk to, no one to turn to. This was her only chance to fix the mess she was in. Elisabeth suddenly felt herself opening up, her jaw unclenched.
  “Grant,” her voice was shaking, she couldn’t control it, “I’m in terrible trouble. I … I just don’t know what to do.” Tears rolled down her cheeks as she bowed her head forward and cupped it in her hands.

 
The sound of sobbing seemed to be coming from someone else, but when she recognized it as her own, it struck her that she no longer cared. Grant, without saying a word, came around the side of his desk and pulled the second chair close to her own. He put his hand over her shoulder and waited for whatever pain she was feeling to drain away.

 
A few minutes later, Elisabeth lifted her head and dried her eyes with a tissue retrieved from her handbag.
  “Grant, I’m sorry, I can’t believe I did that. I never cry and to come in here and put you through that. I’m so, so sorry.” She rose unsteadily. Grant held onto her wrist and pulled her back down into the seat.
  “You must be crazy if you think I’m going to let you walk out of that door. I know you better than most, Elisabeth, and whatever it is that’s on your mind, it’s something big. Just tell it to me as it comes.”

---

  Two hours later Elisabeth crossed the lobby of Nine Six Five Pennsylvania. Until now she hadn’t realized how low she had fallen. She’d been carrying a monumental burden on her own shoulders and it had almost broken her. She’d told him everything. He was the only person in the world in whom she could trust. He’d promised to help her. Elisabeth hailed a cab. She didn’t want Joseph, her driver, starting any gossip. On a brighter day, she’d have happily made the twenty-five minute walk to her office.

 
As the cab drifted along Constitution Avenue, edging in and out of lunchtime traffic, Elisabeth gently, but politely, nodded at the remonstrations of the Jamaican driver who seemed to have had a bad day so far. She was pleased that she’d called Grant. He said he’d make sure his people kept an eye on her. He would go straight to the president that afternoon. She stretched back into the faux leather seat, meshing her fingers together and stretching her arms.

 
As they passed Canal Lock House, opposite the corner of Seventeenth, she reflexively glanced ahead and to the right, wanting to catch a glimpse of her favorite place in the city, Constitution Garden Ponds. The driver’s head began to droop over to one side. She was about to yell at him, tell him to wake up. That was when the windscreen exploded as additional bullets sprayed the side of the car, the rear door to her right was pushed into the cabin as another vehicle collided with them and Elisabeth gasped for breath as her seatbelt drew tightly across her neck. The force of the still moving vehicle provided enough momentum for the cab to flip over when the wheels impacted against the sidewalk. Elisabeth experienced the first of two three-hundred-sixty-degree rolls before she mercifully passed out, still strapped-in, now upside down, to the rear seat.

Chapter 69

  It was one o’clock. The lunch had been light, the mussels excellent. He was a picturesque ten-minute walk from the hotel. Michael had never felt fitter. He ate less, but healthier food, than in his old life when constantly attending business lunches, dinners, or sitting behind his desk chewing on cholesterol filled sandwiches and other assorted junk food. Without a driver whisking him around the place, he was forced to take public transport and quite often walk. Six months before, he’d never have considered walking more than a couple of hundred meters.

 
As Michael mulled these thoughts, he turned into a narrow side-street. One hundred fifty meters before the turn-off to the hotel, Michael noticed two men in black coats rounding the corner from the right. He became wary, considered doing an about turn, but decided it would look too suspicious. He continued without breaking stride. When the men were at one hundred meters, he thought about crossing the road. If they also started to cross, he would have time to make a break for it. A few moments later, one of the men yanked his hands out of his pockets and threw them up in the air. Michael was more bemused than anything else, particularly when the man simultaneously began shouting at him in Russian.

 
The other stood perfectly still, frozen to the spot. They weren’t staring at him, but behind him. He looked back.
The nose of the black sedan was two paces away and about to slam him into the wall of the house. Michael instinctively did the only thing he could. He jumped. Straight up. He fell flat against the bonnet which absorbed only some of the impact. It hurt like hell. Struggling to lift his head, through the windscreen he looked into the eyes of two men glaring at him in some consternation.

 
The engine revved and the car flew backwards. Michael rolled off the car, hit the road hard, put his hands up to shield his face and head with his hands, before slamming into the ground. He gagged for breath, the impact knocking the air from his lungs. The engine screamed, the car shot forward to crush him into asphalt. Michael took a gulp of air and swung his legs in behind his body just as the car’s chassis roared over his head. The nose crunched into the wall of the building behind him.
  He lay still. The engine, having stalled, roared back into life, the car speeding backwards.
This
is it, someone will put a bullet through my head
. He didn’t move a muscle, hoping the car’s occupants would think him dead. The car vaulted forward, tires screeching, heading down the street, past the two black-coated men who, familiar with the sometimes very public activities of the Saint Petersburg mafia, were cowering in the doorway of a shop front.

 
Michael leapt up and ran to the end of the street. Tourists abounded in this area and taxis were everywhere. As he rounded the corner, he spotted a black Audi with a yellow Taksi sign on the roof. He could see the black Volga turning right into the road by the canal. He jumped into the taxi. The driver glanced in the mirror. Michael gesticulated wildly. First pointing straight ahead and then urgently swinging his hand to the right repetitively to make sure he got the message across.

 
The driver nodded, engine already running, he pulled out sedately.
  “Let’s go. Now,” Michael shouted, as he reached into his pocket.
  “I said, let’s go,” thrusting the euros under the driver’s nose.

  “
Mister, you don’t need to shout and if you keep waving your arm around like that I’ll be tempted to break it. Where do you need to go?” the driver said as they turned the corner onto the canal road.

 
Michael caught the man’s gaze in the mirror. He was young, maybe thirty, speaking clipped English. He was smartly dressed, wearing a dark suit and tie. The car was immaculate inside. The driver obviously plied the well-heeled tourist trade.

“Follow the black Volga. Five hundred meters ahead of us.”

The driver shrugged.

“Mister, I don’t know how long you’ve been here, but this isn’t Hollywood. Following people around in this place can get you killed. It’ll cost.”

  “
Look,” said Michael, “if you follow that car and don’t get seen, I’ll make sure you’re happy. All right?”

  “
Okay. I can’t see the car. I’ll speed up. Tell me when you see it.”

             
                        ---

 
The brick-like, black Volga sedan was a kilometer ahead. They were forty minutes out of the city. There was barely another car on the road and so Sergey, as the driver’s name turned out to be, had kept his distance.
  “We’re near the lake,” he told Michael, just as they swept into a long curve where the trees broke and Michael glimpsed a mass of water that stretched to the horizon.

  “
You sure this isn’t the Baltic Sea?”

  “Biggest lake in Western Russia
.”

  “
Good place to hide a body then?” the irony fell flat. “Just keep well back.” He had not seen another car for some time.  

 
They followed the Volga for another hour, staying at least one kilometer behind it, sometimes more when the thick pine forest opened out onto gorse or scrub and all round visibility increased ten-fold. Michael had no doubt that they had been observed, but hoped that they would be taken for fellow travelers on a road where there were very few alternatives but to keep driving.

 
He’d lost them. They’d just passed through a village, Morazova, and had just come out the other side, entering yet another large expanse of woodland. The Volga had been ahead them, no more than five hundred meters, as both cars had been required to slow down going through the village. Michael had lost sight of the other car briefly on a gentle curve in the road. As they pulled out onto the straight, the Volga was nowhere to be seen.
  “Keep driving,” said Michael, “don’t slow down for at least the next five minutes.”

 
Michael mentally noted the location of the corner where the Volga had vanished. They kept going. He hadn’t noticed any openings on the side of the road, although at that point he’d been trying to keep the car in his sights. He had to assume that the driver of the other car might have waited, curious to learn if the Audi would deviate from its course or carry on along the lake road.

 
Rounding the same bend in the road fifteen minutes later, but from the other direction, Michael had no problem spotting the turn the other car had made. A narrow track had been cut through the tall pine trees.

  “
Here,” said Michael, but Sergey, having already seen it, was making the turn. He pulled in off the main road and stopped, facing the direction of the dirt track that stretched for a considerable distance in front of them between the tall pines.

  “
How far is the water from here?”

  “
I don’t know exactly,” said Sergey, “four, maybe five kilometers. You want to go on?”

  “
Yes, but slowly.”

  “
Who are we following?”

  “
A man who stole from me.”

  “
A man who stole from you. What will you do when you find him?”

  “
Not sure. He kidnapped a friend of mine. I think she’s at the end of that road.”

 
Sergey turned to face Michael in the rear of the car, his face was serious.

  “
I don’t like this. I have a wife, a little boy. I’ll not die here and leave them with nothing. We must turn back.”

  “
I can’t do that,” said Michael, “I’ll go on alone if I need to.”

  “
You need to,” the driver’s hand tapping on the gear stick. Nervous.
  “How old’s your car?” Michael asked.

  “
I don’t know. I’m going.”

  “
How old?”

  “
Five years. I bought it three years ago.”

  “
I’ll give you fifteen thousand euros for it, now, in cash. You can be back in Mozarova, or whatever it’s called, in half an hour. Call someone to come and pick you up.”

 
Sergey’s face brightened.

  “
It’s a good car, fifty thousand new. Fifteen not enough.”

 
Michael subdued his desire to bargain. He didn’t have time to waste.

  “
Okay, twenty, but that’s it or I’m walking.”

 
Sergey smiled. “You Americans are crazy, but okay, you have a deal.”

 
Michael didn’t bother to correct him and instead opened his backpack and counted out twenty thousand euros, for the first time glad that he’d wired money in from Switzerland.

He handed the thick bundle of notes to Sergey who quickly counted the cash.
  Sergey took the key from the ignition. With his other hand he rummaged around under the driver’s seat. Bloody hell, thought Michael, another vodka swilling, Eastern European taxi driver. Sergey emerged, his hand cupping a dark grey handgun. The Russian’s arm swung round and Michael felt his stomach lurch.

  Sergey grunted. “
Don’t worry, American, it comes with the car. I live in a dangerous city, but I think you’re going to need this more than I will.”

 
He held the gun flat against his palm, the barrel under his thumb and the handle facing Michael.

  “
This is the safety,” he gestured with the index finger of his other hand to a small lever above the magazine. “Flip this, point and shoot. It’s a Stechkin 9mm, twenty rounds.”

 
Michael looked into the Russian’s eyes, amused. He hesitated, but only for a moment, before taking the gun and stashing it in his backpack.

  “
Thank you,” said Michael. The other man handed him the keys.

Sergey opened the door and got out of the car. Michael did the same. Instead of walking away
, he surprised Michael by coming around to the rear of the car, wrapping his arms around him and slapping Michael on the back vigorously. He abruptly stepped away.
  “Good luck, American, I hope you won’t need it.” He nodded at Michael and began walking the fifty meters or so up to the main road.

 
Michael absentmindedly watched him leave, most of his attention focused on what he was going to do next. An explosion. Sergey stumbled. The Russian pitched forward headfirst, onto the cold, hard ground. He didn’t get up. Too late Michael realized the track’s entrance was probably monitored by cameras. Him next if he didn’t move it. He yanked open the door, dived across into the driver’s seat, swearing in frustration as he dragged his legs across the center console. He turned the key, slammed into first and hit the accelerator. Shots shattered the rear windscreen. He ducked. Michael risked looking in the car’s rearview mirror and caught the reflection of a black Range Rover, headlights blazing, bearing down on him at great speed.

 
There was nothing else he could do but try and outrun them. He shifted into third, then fourth, tearing along the track with tree branches and bushes slapping against the side of the car. The Range Rover had cut its speed, pulled back. Michael glanced over to check the position of the backpack on the seat beside him. He kept his foot to the floor. It could only mean one thing. A dead end.

 
Something moving in the distance. Another car, closing on him rapidly. Both cars must have had a combined speed of two hundred kilometers per hour, or more. He glanced in the rearview mirror. The Range Rover had speeded up again and was powering towards him. The other car was closing in. He had a few seconds to make a decision. Skid to a stop and run for it, or keep going and hope that he had bigger balls than they did.

 
He could make out the emblem on the dented black sedan in front of him and knew that in a few moments there would be no decision to make. Michael grabbed the strap of the backpack with his right hand and then used the same hand to hold the wheel steady while opening the door with his left. He waited until the last moment before hitting the brake, enough to slow the car, but not stop it, and threw himself from the car into the undergrowth at the side of the track.
  The Volga didn’t brake in time. As he felt his face and arms being scratched and torn by dozens of small branches, he heard the sound of metal tearing against metal, glass shattering and showering into the air. As he hit the ground, dirt and leaves forced themselves into his mouth and nostrils, he heard a human scream that died almost as soon as it had arisen.

 
Despite doing his best to shield his head, Michael was stunned from the impact of hitting the hard-packed earth. If he didn’t move he’d die. Michael pushed himself up and broke through the undergrowth lining the track and onto the leaf strewn forest floor. The Range Rover’s doors thudded shut and he knew his pursuers were close behind.

  T
he safest place to run was directly away from the track. Fleetingly it had crossed his mind that he had the pistol in his backpack and could try and surprise the men following him, hide in the undergrowth and take them out as they ran towards him. He had second thoughts. They were trained killers. The last time, the only time, Michael had fired a gun was on a grouse moor in Scotland, at least five years before.