Twisted Maze

By Chris Black

For 60 years, the "Founders" have been secretly infiltrating every aspect of the American government, law enforcement, military and judiciary, influencing government policy and biding their time for the day they can seize power, in the chaos that has followed the Covid Pandemic, the Founders believe that day has come to strike at the very heart of American Democracy...
A titanic power struggle is taking place between the western democracies; China and Russia in a new Cold War with hotspots of proxy-wars, such as the American led Anglo-American-French coalition in Iran, where British SAS Colonel Elizabeth Brooks commands an elite unit of Anglo-American Special Forces. Following a mission behind enemy lines, Elizabeth's brother-in-law, John Crane of "Crane Technologies" shows up in Iran. Crane Tech has developed a cloaking device, but the secret's out, the Founders know about it and they want it desperately to carry out their attack on Washington, and will stop at nothing to get it. Fearing he will be murdered, John needs a contingency plan. Elizabeth and her team are that plan…
FBI Special Agent Dexter Quills is in Virginia hunting a vicious serial killer, the "Three-Sixty Strangler" when he receives a call that will change his life forever when he's ordered to the Crane Mansion, where the entire family with the exception of John's youngest son Adam (Elizabeth Brooks's biological son) have been murdered by Founder terrorists who want the "Perseus II" cloaking device in order to detonate a nuclear weapon over Washington DC to wipe out the Government during the President's state of the union address.
Fate brings Elizabeth and Dexter together and the fate of millions of Americans and the free world itself is in their hands, in a violent race against time to prevent the greatest tragedy in American history…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Remus & Black
• Release date: Nov 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9798223887195

Chris Black

I have two great passions in my life, the study of history and writing, which is an irony, considering that I’m also dyslexic, and I ask you that you don’t let that put you off, dyslexia has nothing to do with how or what I write, or my undiminishing passion for writing. I was educated at an Inner London state high school and graduated with above average grades in English, English Lit and History. I grew up in a working-class neighborhood in South East London, UK, the son of a truck driver and a bookkeeper. I lived for four years in France and travelled extensively throughout Europe working as a photographer and videographer. But following a spinal injury, I had to give up photography. But as one door closes a window of opportunity sometimes opens, and now I dedicate all my time to writing, which has always been my passion from my childhood. I’ve been in a long-term relationship with my partner Terry, and our home is just outside of London in Rochester, Kent, UK, where we live with our rescue dog Tom. During my career as a photographer, I worked in police forensics, the entertainment and fashion industry and general commercial and industrial projects.  

Book preview

PART ONE

Fifth Column

ONE

How to Buy a Nuke

London, England, June 10, 2014

Raymond Galois was sitting on the couch with his legs crossed, nursing a dainty cup and saucer in his lap, sipping Earl Grey. How he enjoyed his petty bourgeois indulgencies. It reminded him of Lara Rose and those fine ol’ summer afternoons on the porch in the shade, his mother sipping fine English breakfast tea from fine English bone chinar. "Manners maketh the man, Daddy always said, Godliness maketh his soul. And money maketh the world go around and around and around..." He smiled to himself. How right Daddy was, he thought as he nonchalantly watched Gascoigne and Denbigh, nervous tension oozing from them like sweat off a spit-roast. He could understand it in Denbigh; he was more used to kissing asses in DC than having clandestine meetings with the Russian mob. But Gascoigne on the other hand – He was an old hand at this sort of thing. A kick-ass professional; but they were both jittery. ‘Y’all look as jumpy as a sack o’ frogs,’ he said in his flowing Mississippi brogue. ‘Ain’t nuddin but a day at the office.’

Sonny looked at his watch. The Russians were late. That’s what was making him uneasy. He paced about in front of the window like a caged animal looking for a way out, his hands shoved tightly in his pants pockets, his fists clenched tight as vices. He looked out the window, where the views of London and the Thames were impressive. But views were the last thing on his mind. He was in too deep now, there was no going back, nobody backed out of something like this – only in a body bag, and he was under no illusion that his chance to get out had come and gone two years ago, when they’d first discussed this crazy idea. And as crazy ideas went, this one was the craziest idea in the history of crazy ideas. It was so crazy in fact, he thought it would never happen; but here he was and it was happening, and he was scared shitless. He didn’t mind admitting it. Not scared of the deal, but scared of what terrible things lay ahead, not just for his country, but for mankind itself, because what they planned to do would change everything forever.

Kevin Denbigh was wringing his hands. The Senator had sent him to oversee the transaction. To make sure everything went smoothly. He had the account passes. If he didn’t like the way it was going, then it was no deal.

‘They’re over half an hour late,’ said Sonny, looking at his watch again. He looked at Slaski standing by the door in his drab gray suit, looking as out of place as a monkey at a royal banquet.

‘They’ll be here,’ said Raymond. ‘They got sixty million reasons to show up. Have some tea, it’s dang tootin.’

Kevin Denbigh turned into the room.

‘Tea? Jesus Christ,’ Sonny huffed.

‘Please y’self, but stop clod-hoppin’ around, you’re wearing a hole in the rug.’ He picked his cup up daintily, his pinkie extended as he raised it delicately to his mouth and sipped. If sophistication had a flavor, it was Earl Grey tea, he thought.

Knuckles rapped at the door.

‘There now,’ Raymond gestured to Slaski to open the door.

Slaski turned to the door and opened it...

‘This is it.’ Denbigh moved centrally into the room. He looked at the laptop on the desk, booted up and online, ready to make the deposit transfers once the deal was agreed. Suddenly, he was so nervous he thought he had forgotten the account numbers and encryptions. There’d be hell to pay if he had. He felt the rise of panic inside, his heart beating fast in his throat as he struggled to recall those damn numbers...

Raymond knew the big broad Russian. Vladimir Gorokhov. Formerly a major in the GRU. Now he was an oligarch with his corrupt fingers in many pies, well connected in Moscow and beyond.

The short, fat man with the small, squashed nose and thick bovine lips along with arching Neanderthal brows, standing slope shouldered on Vladimir’s right, was Ivan Mirov. Ivan the Terrible to some. He looked more like a dockside thug than a former high-ranking Russian Air Force officer. He was a big name in Siberian oil these days, but fifteen years ago, he was a braded General. He had made millions of dollars selling misappropriated Russian weapons after the collapse of the Soviet Union back in the Eighties and Nineties, when the Russian arsenal became every despot’s thrift store for some of his best clients were some of the world’s bloodiest terrorists and tyrants; the Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIS, South American drug cartels, Mexican kingpins, African revolutionaries. He had sold weapons to just about everyone in the who’s who of dirt-bags. If one needed a couple of MIGS or missiles, or a few tanks or helicopter gunships, or just a few thousand AK’s. In the good old days of new free enterprise Russian style, Ivan Mirov was the go-to man.

The third man in this crooked trio of amoral scumbags, standing on Vladimir’s left, was taller, leaner and much younger than Mirov and Gorokhov, barely thirty-five, suave and handsome in a square cut sort of way. He was Major Ilyich Usoyev, a serving officer in the Fourth Air Defense Forces Command, Southern Military District.

Raymond greeted them with warm insincere smiles and handshakes.

The Russians looked suspiciously around the suite, regarding the Americans with deep mistrust, the sort of mistrust which came from old enemies when they came together, wading through generational enmity. Probing and looking for lies and tricks. Was it a trick? Was this a CIA sting? 

The three Russians sat down.

‘Can Ah get you some tea? Coffee? Or something stronger?’ asked Raymond.

‘Whisky with ice,’ said Vladimir.

‘Wodka,’ said Ivan Mirov, his voice deep and slightly nasally.

‘Whisky,’ said Ilyich Usoyev.

Raymond looked round at Slaski, and he went to the cocktail bar to start preparing their drinks.

Kevin Denbigh and Sonny Gascoigne sat in their armchairs, as tense as coiled springs, trying to look relaxed and doing a bad job of it.

‘Well, ain’t this nice?’ Raymond smiled like a cat. ‘Just like détente.’

Vladimir put his attaché case down on the floor beside his chair. ‘Raymond, this is nothing like détente,’ he said in word perfect English with barely a trace of an accent.

‘You have money,’ asked Ivan Mirov in broken English.

Raymond chuckled. ‘Well it’s not in mah luggage if that’s what you mean. But iffin y’all have the item we want, then hell yeah, we have money and it can be in your accounts in a shake of an alligator’s tail.’ He smiled.

It was clear from their faces that Mirov and Usoyev hardly understood a word of what Raymond had said. But they understood we have money clear enough, and that was all they were interested in.

Slaski brought their drinks and set them down on the table in the correct order, placing the vodka nearest to Ivan Mirov.

‘Yes, yes. Warhead,’ said Ilyich Usoyev as he sipped his whisky. ‘You get warhead, in lead lin-ed tankeer of ferti-lizer for Señor Javier DaSilva, Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Is as agree-ed in St. Petersburg. Everything ready as you ask-ed. You pay half. In thirty hours, shipment loads on ship. You pay today, thirty million American. When you collect in Mexico, you pay thirty million more. We give arming code.’

‘Do the transfer,’ Raymond ordered looking at Denbigh.

Suddenly the numbers were there in Denbigh’s head, relief flooding through him. He looked at the Russians. ‘I’ll need the recipient accounts. Thirty million divided over three accounts, right?’ Denbigh looked at the Russians. ‘But first I need proof you actually have the merchandise?’

‘Proof? What is you want for proof?’ Usoyev said incredulously. ‘You want us bring in luggage?’ he said, throwing Raymond’s sarcasm back in his face. ‘You saw in St. Petersburg. That is proof.’

‘Just do the goddam transfers,’ Sonny said with an impatient snap in his voice. He wanted to get this over with so they could get the hell out of there,

Vladimir Gorokhov handed him another sheet of paper from his case. ‘Send the money to these accounts. Ten million into each account.’

Denbigh took the slip of paper and inputted the information.

Sonny sipped his drink, watching the Russians like a hawk.

‘Done,’ said Denbigh, turning back to them.

Ivan Mirov nodded, spoke again to the moneyman on the phone and then disconnected the call without saying another word. He nodded to Vladimir.

Ilyich Usoyev now took his phone out of his pocket and made a call. ‘Da,’ he said, then disconnected the call and looked at Raymond. ‘R-9 on way.’ He took his cellphone apart, removed the chip and threw the battery into a trash can beside the writing table behind him and bent the chip several times until it snapped in half. He slipped the two halves into his pocket with the phone to dispose of elsewhere.

After the Russians left, asked Denbigh: ‘Can we trust them?’

Raymond looked at him. ‘Would you trust a viper with you mamma, Kevin? But if you asking will they deliver the merchandise? They will.’ He looked intently into Denbigh’s eyes, beaming like a 4th July Parade. ‘But y’all don’t need ta go a-worrying y’self bout that. They’ll deliver.’ He went to the bar, where Slaski was pouring fresh drinks into clean glasses.

‘Is that it? Did we just buy ourselves a nuke in less time than it takes to buy a Big Mac in the drive-thru?’

‘Ah believe we did, Sonny. Ah believe we did.’ Raymond’s eyes lit up again.

Denbigh’s hand trembled as he raised his glass to his mouth. ‘Now all we have to do is get the goddam thing into the States from Mexico.’ He looked steadily at Raymond. ‘Any ideas how we can pull that rabbit out of the hat?’

Raymond calmly sipped his drink, ice clinked in his glass. Sonny thought he had ice in his veins too; the man hardly broke a sweat about anything. ‘Y’all let me worry bout that.’

TWO

The Game of Spies

It was all stage managed – quite remarkable really, seeing as it was all off the cuff, but these things often are and one needed to be ready for all potential scenarios at any time. As the Yanks said, that was Espionage 101. You didn’t get rehearsals in the game of spies; you got it right the first time or you got your bollocks squeezed in a vice if it went tits up.

They had been onto the Russians from the moment they’d entered the country, through Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester. There was a team of fifty MI6 and MI5 agents divided into three teams watching their every move. This morning was the first time the Russians had met up and they’d followed them across London to the Waldorf, where they went to a penthouse suite to meet with four unknown Americans. CIA possibly, and if they were, someone was in for a rocket up their arse over in the American Embassy for conducting covert ops with the Russian mafia in the UK without the usual courtesies.

The Strand wasn’t the best place to set up a quick obbo* point. So, they used the ambulance routine again – it usually worked. A collapsed pedestrian on the pavement, an ambulance with blacked out windows, two agents dressed as EMS attending said pedestrian, while in the ambulance, fully kitted out with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, they got close up on the subjects.

Dreyworthy was running the team and right now, he wished he had a fly on the wall in that bloody penthouse. It was the only place they hadn’t covered and it was difficult getting a laser mike up there.

Susie was monitoring the video camera at the one-way window, filming everything and everyone going in and out of the hotel. Dreyworthy had people covering all the exits and a couple of agents in the hotel lobby.

Word filtered through from the lobby into his earpiece. The Russians were on the move and their carefully improvised pop-up surveillance operation picked up a pace with agents suddenly taking up positions, not that one would have noticed – they were in the mix, indistinguishable from anyone else, just faces in the crowd. The granny standing at the doorway looking confused? The rough sleeper wandering by with his rucksack? You’d never know.

Dreyworthy watched the main doors of the hotel on the monitor, his earpiece constantly buzzing with radio traffic from his agents. He had twenty officers strategically placed around the Strand, in the hotel, on the street and six mobile units, which included a taxi at the main entrance of the hotel with his light off, pretending to be making a phone call from the front of the rank, allowing the taxis behind him to take his turn picking up passengers.

The ambulance was parked on the Strand opposite the hotel. Skinner was outside with Alan Price, both were wearing paramedic gear, where Badger was faking a heart attack on the pavement. It was all ad hoc, but went as smooth as a well-oiled machine.

‘He deserves a bloody Oscar, that boy, Boss,’ said Susie.

‘They’re on their way out, Guv,’ came a female voice filtering through his earpiece.

Susie watched through the eyecup of the camera and zoomed in for a clearer shot of the Russians as they came out.

‘Tony, standby,’ said Dreyworthy.

‘Targets ten meters from the exit,’ the woman informed.

‘Yeah, I’ve got eyeball now,’ said Tony and the vacant light came on in the taxi just as the Russians appeared.

Dreyworthy watched through the window. ‘All assets standby. Who’s watching the Yanks?’

‘Me, Guv.’ It was another woman’s voice.

‘I want eyeballs on that penthouse. Ben, get the CCTV footage from the hotel and find out who those Yanks are. Get some more bodies over here if you need to.’

‘On it, Guv.’

Gorokhov and his companions moved towards the taxi.

‘Looks like Tony’s got ‘em,’ a female voice filtered through.

‘Thanks, June. Stay in position.’

Gorokhov looked at the ambulance parked on the other side of the street and the paramedics working frantically on the man lying on a collapsible gurney, an oxygen mask over his face.

‘That’s it, give us a nice big smile,’ said Susie zooming in on Gorokhov. Gorokhov turned to his companions, shook their hands and exchanged a few words with them before Mirov and Usoyev got into the taxi.

‘Looks like Target One’s not going with ‘em,’ filtered into Dreyworthy’s ear. ‘Targets Two and Three are in the box.’

‘What’s your location, Brad?’

‘Milford Lane, Guv.’

‘Tony’s coming your way. Get in behind them,’ Dreyworthy ordered.

‘Copy.’

‘All assets stand by,’ Dreyworthy instructed. ‘June, follow Target One. Vincent, move in and standby for a location to pick Target One up from June.’

‘Roger.’ The young homeless man hurried his pace to put distance between himself and Gorokhov.

‘They’re going back to Kensington Gardens, Boss,’ said Susie, monitoring the bugs in Tony’s cab, translating their Russian. ‘They’re talking about a deal.’

‘Any idea what deal?’

‘No, Boss.’

Dreyworthy looked up at the locker, which was fitted with a bank of digital surveillance equipment and several small flatscreen monitors that were linked into the metropolitan traffic and CCTV networks – one was linked into the back of Tony’s taxi, and the ultra-wide-angle micro-camera was disguised as a rivet in the divide between the passenger compartment and the driver. 

‘Vincent, move to position H and pick Target One up there. Danny, move to position E and stand by.’

‘Roger.’

‘Mobile One, come west into Kensington Gardens.’

‘Copy.’

Sweat teared down Dreyworthy’s face from his temples. He turned to Susie. ‘When we get back to the office, I want to know who those Yanks are. Set up a meeting with Arthur Mackenzie. If the American security services are playing silly buggers with the Russians on my patch, I want to know why I didn’t know about it.’

Susie nodded her head. ‘Boss.’

Arthur Mackenzie was a tall man, six feet three inches, though on account that he was sitting down, it was not immediately apparent. His hairline had started to retreat, but it wasn’t too noticeable – yet.

He stood up when Dreyworthy was shown into his plush comfortable office with all the refinements and furnishings expected from an employee of Uncle Sam. The ten grand hammer had nothing on the million dollar view. Good to see American tax dollars hard at work, he thought.

‘Thank you for seeing me so promptly, Arthur.’

Mackenzie smiled like a used car salesman and gestured to one of the cozy armchairs. ‘Not at all, Philip. I’ve always got time for Six.’ He looked at his secretary. ‘Bring us some coffee please, Belinda. Or would you rather tea?’

‘Coffee’s fine, thank you,’ he said flatly as he sat down.

‘So, what’s going on, Philip?’ asked Mackenzie as he sat down underneath a photograph which showed him shaking hands with President Trump when he was in office.

‘I think that’s my line.’ Dreyworthy took a plain, unmarked vanilla file from his attaché case and handed it to Mackenzie. ‘Why have you got a black ops commander and a CIA agent talking to the Russian mob at the Waldorf, Arthur?’ he asked as Mackenzie opened the file and looked at the 8 x 10 digital pictures of Galois, Gascoigne and Denbigh taken from the Waldorf’s CCTV cameras in the lobby, and in coming out of the elevator where their penthouse suite was located. There were pictures of the Russians too. ‘Political secretary, Kevin Denbigh, CIA Agent Sonny Gascoigne, and the other arsehole’s a Major-’

‘Raymond Galois,’ said Mackenzie as he closed the folder. ‘May I keep these?’

‘Yeah, why not. I’ve got others. Why are they talking to the Russians?’

The secretary returned with the coffee and set the tray down onto the low table between the armchairs.

‘Cancel my four o’clock, please Belinda, and see that we’re not disturbed.’

‘Yes, sir.’ She left the office.

Dreyworthy watched him. ‘Honestly. I don’t know. They’re under the radar, Philip. Galois was forced to resign his commission after an incident in Iran when we took Bandar Beheshti, when he and others in his team tortured and executed five officers from the Revolutionary Guard. Sonny Gascoigne was the CIA’s head of communications in Kuwait. He helped to cover it up. Galois’ entire company was disbanded and quietly discharged with full honors and entitlements to save the embarrassment.’

‘So it was covered up?’

‘In the interests of national security. You know how it is, Philip. All that business with a certain British Royal was a few years ago. Damn, I never saw anything so clean. My hat’s off to you, Philip.’ He stood up, taking the file to his safe and sliding it inside before he locked it.

Dreyworthy watched him. If they were going into the safe, they had to have VIP status. So, what was Mackenzie keeping from him?

Mackenzie grabbed his jacket. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’

He clearly didn’t trust talking in his office, or anywhere inside the US Embassy. That was Dreyworthy’s second hint that this was a little more serious than he’d initially thought.

Outside, they got a taxi to Hampstead Heath. In the taxi on the journey, Mackenzie stuck strictly to small-talk. How are the wife and kids? Sorry I couldn’t make it to the birthday party.

On the heath, they walked up to Parliament Hill Fields, with its vista of London and strong wind and remoteness making it difficult to be watched or overheard.

Mackenzie took a ridiculous looking fishing cap with a brim out of his pocket and put it onto his head. ‘You should invest in hat companies, Philip. These days they can read your lips from out of space. Once that catches on, every sonofabitch with something to hide will be buying hats.’

Dreyworthy raised a brow.

‘Covid has made the world a far more dangerous place. More volatile to the extremists and nationalists who are seeking to divide and topple the western democracies.’

‘Hm. Tell me something I don’t know.’

‘Okay. Try this: There’s a conspiracy inside the American government to overthrow the presidency and install a dictator in the White House and presents a clear and real threat to our democracy. They want a war with China...’

Dreyworthy started to say something, but before he could articulate a single word, Mackenzie jumped in:

‘Don’t say anything. Just listen. I’m going to tell you something, Philip. Something that has to stay just between us until certain wheels that are turning in Whitehall and the Pentagon have locked into place...’ He stopped and turned to Dreyworthy, his gray eyes staring intently at him with uncomfortable intensity. ‘And the security of the free world depends upon it staying that way.’

Dreyworthy was starting to look worried. He had known Mackenzie for almost twenty years, but he had never seen him look worried until now. Mackenzie was nothing if not a pragmatist; he wasn’t the sort of man to exaggerate a point. He just got on with whatever needed doing and delegating his assets to where they should be, doing what they should be doing.

‘Galois, Gascoigne and Denbigh are not running a sanctioned operation,’ Mackenzie continued. ‘Denbigh’s an assistant to Senator Edgar Bourke of the Republicans, who’s the chairperson of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and the author of the new Anti-American Activities Bill, which is basically a charter to ignore the Constitution and suspend individual citizens’ rights. Galois and Gascoigne fell off the radar after they were canned. Their tax records show Gascoigne being on the payroll of a veterans’ charity, the Founder Society, as a security adviser. Galois has his own private security company, employing his old team and a few new faces. Veterans, recommended by the Founder’s Society. The Founder’s Society is also a political lobby group ... right wing neo-Nazi white supremacist crap. They’re suspected of being behind at least six assassinations in the past year alone. The bomb under Congresswoman Baum’s car in Ohio six months ago.’

Dreyworthy remembered seeing the news broadcasts. Congresswoman Baum and her twenty-year-old daughter and husband were killed. It was believed to be an anti-Semitic attack.

‘Others too. Killings dressed up to look like accidents or natural causes. Federal Judge Jurich, an outspoken opponent of Senator Bourke, who blocked his Anti-American Activities bill. His death was declared an accidental overdose. He was a diabetic and he had five times the normal dose of insulin in his body. Senator Larry Pitch was hit by a hit and run outside his home in Chicago. When the cops traced the driver, they found the driver dead, knifed in the back between the ribs, the way they train Special Forces to stab. Every effort we’ve made to infiltrate the Founders, our agents have turned up dead. But that’s not the worst of it, Philip. The Founders have infiltrated just about every echelon of the US government, federal and state over the past fifty years. They’ve got sleeper agents in the CIA, NSA, FBI, Homeland Security, just about every goddam place you can think of. They inform the Founders of everything. We don’t know who to trust anymore. Whatever reason Galois and Gascoigne were here meeting those Russians for, we sure as hell need to find out.’

*British police/security service slang for an observation/surveillance point.

THREE

The Tanker

Port of Arkhangelsk (Archangel), Russia

At 05:52, the forty-foot tanker with the warhead was safely loaded aboard the feeder ship Anna Pavlova, bound for Veracruz, Mexico. It was listed on the ship’s manifest as 30,000 liters of potassic agricultural fertilizer. Captain Aleksey Ryabkin had no reason to think it was anything other than 30,000 liters of potassic agricultural fertilizer. It was a common export from Russia. The paperwork was all in order, in fact, it had received VIP treatment; customs had inspected it inside and out according to the paperwork. And yet there was something about that shiny silver road haulage tanker that bothered him, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on what that was. It was no different from any other road haulage tanker, except there was no livery painted on it, but even that wasn’t unheard of.

He stood on the bridge gantry smoking a gold filtered black Sobranie, feeling the pulse of his ship vibrating at his feet and the low constant rumble of its idling engines like a concerto. He knew every sound, every pitch and every beat it made. He knew it so well he could tell when something was a little off. The smell of Anna Pavlova’s sweet diesel oil breath brought him nothing but joy. Like a good woman, he thought as he looked over the tops of the containers stacked three, four and five containers high on the deck, like a child’s building blocks with evenly distributed weight in accordance to maritime guidelines. He was a stickler for the rules. Safety at sea was a priority on the Anna Pavlova.

Captain Aleksey Ryabkin gave the order to his second mate to make ready to sail and the younger man spoke into the PA, announcing: ‘All stations make ready to sail! All hands to stations!’ His voice travelled godlike through the ship and the crew responded industriously to it.

At 06:45, the Anna Pavlova finally cast off and eased out of her berth on the first leg of her long transatlantic voyage, out of the estuary of the Dvina River into the unforgiving White Sea.

Aleksey looked round at a youth of about sixteen, who came up onto the bridge from below. ‘Bring me some tea, Nikita.’

The youngster turned about and went back downstairs, heading for the galley.

‘You have control, Uri. Keep our course steady, and our speed at four knots until we’re in open water.’

Uri stepped to the wheel.

‘I just need to go and check something.’ Aleksey took a flashlight and went out onto the bridge gantry, descending the steel steps down onto the deck. He worked his way forward, sidling between the stacked containers towards the prow – towards the tanker.

Down on the deck, Aleksey crawled about underneath the tanker, shining his flashlight around the wheels and along the underside of the chassis, without knowing what he was looking for. There was something not right. He could feel it in his bones, and his bones were never wrong. The special treatment through customs, the last-minute request to carry it over to Mexico. That in itself wasn’t especially suspicious, that happened all the time in the world of shipping. So, what was it about this tanker-trailer that bothered him so much? The paperwork, he thought. It was just a little bit too perfect.

Eventually, he returned to the bridge, looking pensive. ‘Eh, Uri. Fetch me the itinerary and customs paperwork on that silver tanker.’ He lit another Sobranie.

Nikita came onto the bridge with his tea, steaming from a long glass in a silver holder.

Aleksey took the tea from him and sipped. ‘That’s good tea, boy.’

Nikita blushed.

‘Report to Jaroslav for general duties. That usually starts with a mop and a bucket. You know how to use a mop and a bucket don’t you, kid?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Aleksey winked at him. ‘Get to it then, son.’

Uri returned with the paperwork, almost bumping into the kid as he skittered hurriedly across the bridge to the gantry hatch. ‘Easy, young’un.’

‘He might work out,’ said Aleksey, watching Nikita descend below into the ship. ‘What’re you think, Uri?’ He took the paperwork from him.

‘Too soon to say. Seems keen enough.’

‘Good manners,’ said Aleksey. ‘I like that. Good manners and respect for his elders.’ He started looking through the manifest and Nikita slipped from his mind as he read the customs inspection forms. Every box ticked, the paperwork stamped and signed off as personally inspected by the chief inspector of Federal Customs Piotr Tokarev. That was it. That was what was bugging him. In the twenty-five years Aleksey had been putting into Arkhangelsk, he had never known anything to be personally inspected and signed off by Tokarev. In fact, the man rarely ventured out of his office, from where he barked orders at his minions and drank tea laced with cheap vodka all day long. By noon, he was usually as drunk as a bishop. By two in the afternoon, he was usually sleeping it off.

There was a note on the manifest that the tanker was being collected from the port by Mr. Jacobs and Señor Javier DaSilva of Nuevo Laredo, la Horticultura.

There was a lot of smuggling going on. Not that Aleksey Ryabkin was too bothered by it, so long as he got his cut, and the simple truth was, if that tanker had something other than fertilizer in it (30,000 liters of premium vodka for example) without being given his cut, well that just wasn’t on. That was just damn bad manners, and if there was one thing he hated, it was bad manners.

‘Fetch the inspection scope and a couple of submersible flashlights,’ Aleksey ordered as he handed the documents back to Uri. ‘Bring them to the tanker. I want to take a look inside.’

Uri gave him an odd look and the third mate looked up from the charts, cocking his brows curiously at Uri.

Back down on the deck, Aleksey and a crewman, both wearing protective gas masks and thick rubber gloves, climbed up on top of the tanker. The crewman cut the Russian customs seal and opened the middle hatch.

Uri arrived with the scope on a long adjustable arm with a cellphone plugged into a