Chapter Two
Kalina Moon breathlessly kicked open the air vent, wincing as the metal grille crashed to the concrete floor of the underground garage. She slid to the floor and crouched, surveying the choice of cars. Peter Klunt had been an enthusiastic collector. She chose a sleek Jaguar in the shadow of a pillar and ran over to it, taking just a few minutes to get in and disable the alarm.
Her heart was pounding from the adrenalin rush, and she took a deep breath to calm herself as she started the engine. Her shoulder throbbed where she'd scraped it on the inside of the vent falling down a drop from the ground floor to the basement. Her blonde hair was wet, and her damp dress was clinging uncomfortably to her skin. The fake tan she'd liberally applied earlier that day had started to run because of the water, and Kalina knew wherever she stopped, she'd have to clean up considerably before moving on.
First, she had to get out.
Gently gunning the engine, she rolled the car across the floor towards the exit. The door was up, and since no-one had run into the garage to kill her, she decided the alarm hadn't been raised.
Not yet, anyway.
Thinking Klunt's room was probably bugged, the best place to kill him was the bathroom. She'd suggested taking a bath so that she could wash off the blood afterwards. And the shower had been a brilliant stroke by Klunt; it covered any noise of a struggle. Kalina saw her grim smile in the rear-view mirror. Tonight had gone exceptionally well. Never in a million years had she thought she could sneak a job beneath the nose of Yassen Gregorovich.
She'd never before met the man, but every assassin the world over had heard of him. He was the best.
I'm just lucky Kalina reflected, he wasn't out to kill me.
As she slowly manoeuvred the car out of the driveway and onto the mountain road, she looked back at the mansion. All was still quiet. A figure ran across the porch, followed by a guard with arms outstretched placatingly.
Now it begins… Kalina thought, and put her foot down.
Her bosses had wanted the information on the disc. Klunt had even agreed to sell it to them, only they couldn't afford the price. Or didn't want to pay. Kalina had no idea who they were, only that they were paying her well to recover the disc. Klunt had told her employers that he was selling to Gregorovich and Jones, but that he would give them a dummy disc, encrypted so that they wouldn't realise it wasn't the real thing until it was too late. The information, he said, was kept as close to him as possible.
It didn't take a great leap of the imagination to rule out certain hiding places. There was only one truly safe place to keep something that valuable. Most people would hide it on their person, only Peter Klunt didn't have pockets.
Kalina shuddered as she remembered him touching her. She glanced down at herself in disgust. She hadn't felt comfortable acting the whore; it wasn't in her nature to wear such clothes and act in such a way, but it had been necessary. And it had worked. Cutting Klunt open and recovering the disc had almost made her sick.
Now Clara the prostitute needed to disappear. There was a motel nearby where Kalina already had a room. She would dump the car, pick up another and go to the motel. After a shower, some hair dye and different clothes, she'd be unrecognisable. In two days' time she would meet with her employers and hand over the disc.
On reaching the bottom of the winding road, Kalina drove away from town. Hiding a car just inside the woods a few days earlier had been simple, if it was still there. With her headlights off it was difficult to see, but when she reached the approximate place she pulled into the trees and turned off the engine of the Jaguar, getting out to search.
Just when she was thinking she should have left an obvious marker, a glint of moonlight on glass caught her eye and she removed the pile of brush from the small European car. In the boot was a bag of clothes, which she quickly donned, shivering against the cold night air. A high-necked sweatshirt, jeans and a cap covered her tan-streaked skin, and she pulled her hair into a rough ponytail, then got into the car, slowly made the road, put the lights on full and headed back towards town and the motel.
A search of the mansion proving fruitless, Yassen realised the girl must have left before the exits could be covered. That meant she could be miles away.
He thumped a pillar in anger. How could I let this happen? She was a prostitute! She was 16!
Thinking about it, both those things may not have been true.
"Parker!" he shouted, and a young man of his retinue, who acted as his helicopter pilot, hurried over.
"Yes sir?"
"Which brothel did you find her at?"
"The Red Lion House sir" Parker replied, looking suitably meek.
"Take Jones there. See if they know anything. You!"
One of Klunt's guards stopped mid-stride.
"Get me the video of Klunt's bedroom. I want to see that girl"
Five minutes later he had a printout of the girl from the grainy video feed. She was facing towards the camera… towards Klunt as he spoke to her. She was smiling guilelessly. It made Yassen sick to think he was looking at the face of someone who had foiled him. A girl who had foiled him, who only an hour before he had felt sorry for as he handed her over to Klunt. It struck him that perhaps there was some justice in what had happened.
He would have to tell his superiors, and they would not be pleased.
"No matter…" he whispered to himself. "I shall find her"
She will regret crossing me…
In the grimy motel bedroom Kalina, after checking that the door was locked and doing a sweep of the room for bugs, out of habit, not because she thought there were any, stripped and stepped under a steaming shower.
Fake tan swirled brownly down the plughole. She had bleached her hair, eyebrows, even her eyelashes, and now painstakingly dyed them back to their natural dark colour, sitting on the toilet lid for the twenty minutes the dye took to adhere. Finally, after a long scrub to erase the memory of chubby fingers, she removed to the bedroom and placed a phonecall.
"Hello?" The voice on the other end was pleasant.
"Hello. I caught the rabbit" she said simply.
"Ah, good. I shall make the necessary arrangements. The fox?"
"Taken care of"
"Very well. Await another call"
The line went dead.
Now all Kalina had to do was wait for instructions on the time and place of the drop. She thought back over the events of that evening, searching for anything which could lead to herself. The car, left in the woods in the opposite direction, no witnesses to the changeover of vehicle, no-one who had seen her both dark-haired and blonde. The motel manager had handed her the key the day before and she hadn't seen him since. Everything had gone according to plan.
Something still niggled though. She knew what it was; Yassen Gregorovich. She'd finally seen the man face to face, although it could hardly be called a meeting since she'd been a whore and he'd practically ignored her. He was the assassin others tried to live up to, and although Kalina grinned at the thought of getting one over on him, there was a nasty thought that just wouldn't go away:
No-one ever gets one over on Yassen Gregorovich.
Even when she'd been offered the mission, she'd been reluctant.
"Gregorovich? Are you sure?" she had said.
"You'll have no contact with him. He just happens to be there" came the reply.
It seemed like a foolproof plan, and the money had pushed her into it, but still…
Yassen Gregorovich…her mind kept saying. He won't be happy…
That night, Kalina was very much unable to sleep.
It was just after midnight. Mr. Jones had returned from the Red Lion House and was waiting to speak with Yassen. Yassen, still seething inside but calmly planning, was coming from the security office of the mansion, where he had just seen CCTV footage of the girl Clara stealing a car from the underground garage. He entered the hallway of the mansion and saw Mr. Jones.
"Find anything?" he said. Jones shook his head.
"No. Well, there was a prostitute tied up and locked in a cupboard, but that was all"
"What do you mean?"
Yassen motioned him out the door and the two men began to cross the driveway towards a helicopter landing pad on which Gregorovich's black chopper stood, pilot getting ready inside.
"Well, it seems the girl the Madame sent here wasn't the one that made it here. Clara ambushed her, tied her up and took her place. The Madame found her only a short while ago, she was very distressed"
"I see" Yassen said. "Did anyone see the girl?"
"No. Where are we going?"
"She stole a Jaguar" Yassen explained. "We are going to find it"
They climbed into the chopper and lifted off. Jones struggled into his headset.
"She'll be miles away by now"
"No" Yassen said. "She will know we are looking for her. She will dump the car"
Jones made an "ahhh" sound.
"Oh, I took the liberty of calling our bosses" he said. Yassen looked at him expectantly. Jones smiled.
"They aren't too happy, as you can imagine. Klunt was far too useful to be killed just now. They say you're to get the disc, no matter the cost."
"What about you?" Yassen asked.
Jones shrugged, then grabbed the door handle as the chopper banked sharply.
"I'm not really needed any more old man"
It crossed Yassen's mind to push him out of the helicopter. Jones must have seen the glint in his eye.
"Don't go getting ideas now" he said quickly. "You can just drop me off…I mean, set me down, when we get back. If we're going back that is… Hum…"
Yassen was already ignoring him, keen eyes scanning the dark forest below. He turned on the infra-red sight and used it to see the ground. They hadn't gone more than five miles when he spotted an abandoned car.
"There" he pointed for the benefit of the pilot. "Land"
The car was cold. That meant nothing, it had only been driven a few miles, and that was almost two hours ago. The interesting things were the tyre tracks that didn't belong to it. They led from a shallow ditch to the road, and angled back towards town. Unless Clara had taken the trouble to lay those tracks and then perform a u-turn, town was where she was headed.
Unfortunately, there was no way of knowing what kind of car she was driving.
"Bit of a bugger this" the Englishmen broke the quiet of the night air. It was chilly, and he rubbed his arms to warm himself. Yassen was also cold, but controlled the urge to shiver.
"We have her picture. I will send it to our employers, they can afford us men to watch for her"
"Is that it?" Jones said.
"We can do no more" Yassen said. He sighed almost imperceptibly. There were very few times in his career when he'd been at such a loss. Normally he knew exactly what to do, and did it. Assassinations were simple affairs; you learnt someone's movements, the layout of their house perhaps, and you killed them. Of course, sometimes someone walked in halfway through, or there were surveillance cameras to take care of, or an exit was locked when it should have been open, but never had Yassen completely lost his grasp of a mission.
The trail had gone cold.
"We will return to the house" he decided out loud. "And send the picture. Come"
Jones followed him back to the chopper, and a few minutes later they were landing back outside the ill-fated mansion.
Even as he stepped down onto the landing pad, Yassen knew that something was wrong. It was too quiet, too still. He'd been around enough dead-zones to know what one felt like. Shouldering a machine gun from the chopper and motioning the others to stay where they were, he advanced across the driveway. If the enemy were still there, he'd be dead by now. No-one could have missed a helicopter landing. Yassen had no doubts whatsoever that there was an enemy, but he couldn't think who.
The girl wouldn't have come back and killed everyone. Not a dozen armed men.
Signs of a fire-fight were visible on the porch. Bullet holes in the wall. A picture window next to the door was shattered. Inside, there was blood everywhere. Bodies. Furniture had been upturned. Not a living soul breathed.
Yassen turned over a body with his foot. It wasn't one of Klunt's. The man wore a navy uniform of some sort. He looked Arabic.
Someone else then… Yassen thought.
Could it be possible that someone else wanted the disc? What else did Klunt have that would get his home rifled like this and his men killed? Someone must have known about the deal tonight… but who? Who would come to kill me for it?
If someone knew about the deal, they must have known that Gregorovich was taking part. Something terrible dawned on him, and he ran back out to the helicopter.
"Jones!"
He dragged the Englishman from the chopper and grabbed the shorter man's arm before he had a chance to pull his gun.
"You know of this. Tell me!"
"Know what? What's going on? Please…"
Yassen forced the man to his knees and pressed a gun to the side of his head.
"Do not lie"
Jones shut his eyes and his eyeballs flickered beneath the lids. He was processing his options.
"Let me live and I'll tell you" he said at length. Yassen nodded. Information was more important than killing the man out of anger, and the Russian was a man of his word.
"Patel" Jones said. "He's a ganglord…he wants the disc too. He was going to take it tonight but…"
"The girl" Yassen finished. "The call you made earlier…"
"To Patel"
So Jones hadn't called their employers. They didn't know everything had gone wrong.
"Patel would defy me?" Yassen asked, a note of disbelief in his voice. Jones nodded tentatively, flinching at the cool metal pressing into his temple.
"You haven't met him" he explained. "That's why I had to tell him it was tonight… the man is a monster"
"I am a monster" Yassen said coldly. Jones shivered.
"Not like him. Old chap… you don't want to cross him. Just stay out of this. It's not worth it…" Seeing Yassen's look he continued. "I'm not just saying this Gregorovich. We've been through some things together, you and I… believe me, leave this one be. Let Patel find the girl…"
Yassen recoiled in realisation. Patel would know about the girl. He might even have seen the same footage of her from the CCTV that Yassen had. Patel would know what she looked like.
"Shit!" he swore. "But… he will not know where she is…"
Jones shrugged. "He'll be looking"
Then I must look too Yassen thought.
He pistol-whipped Jones before the man could say anything else, and left him lying unconscious on the landing pad. Instructing his pilot to take them to a safe-house he kept outside the city, Yassen thought as hard as he ever had what the hell to do next.
A/N: I know there are hardly any Yassen fics, and from the number of hits i've been getting i assume they're not very popular, so please review if you're one of the few people tempted enough by Gregorovich to have got this far!