Counterpoint (41 page)

Teal went mad with rage when he heard
how the pair had got away. How five teams of very experienced
agents could fail, against an old man and young girl in a strange
city, was beyond him. They had even lost the forensic evidence in
the car. One car, making the six Carla spotted, belonged to
Gregor’s men.

“Right, the only thing we can do now is
concentrate on Gregor. The man and girl must know by now that
Gregor will not be charged for any crime, so I believe they will
try to get him some other way. We are already set up to track
Gregor so we must wait for them to make the next move.”

Carla woke first that morning and made
coffee.

"Well," said Max, “What have we planned
for today my love.”

“Our first priority is to get away from
here, fly to Mexico perhaps and then back home under our own
names.”

"Sounds fine by me, but I have not
heard any news reports about Gregor and his crowd, so I wonder how
things turned out in the end," said Max.

“Well, that’s not surprising” she
replied, “We have been out of circulation since the news broke and
it won’t be news any longer, I will speak to Sam about it, he will
know.”

She made her call and was shocked to
hear Gregor got away without any criminal charge or investigation.
She told Max the news. His face went white with fury. After all the
planning and trouble they had gone too, the risks they had taken,
all for nothing.

They spend the rest of the day
discussing how they could get Gregor on his own to do away with
him, once and for all.

His office was too public and would
have a high security presence. His home was far less public, but
better protected, and the long mountain road made ultimate escape
impractical. Between office and home, he was inaccessible in the
helicopter and neither could fly one, so pilot substitution was not
possible either.

Somehow, they had to get him when he
went away on business. For that, they needed to know in advance,
where and when he was going.

No doubt, the sensitive areas of the
office building were swept for bugs, regularly, so planting one was
unlikely to be worthwhile. Max had to find a way of getting the
necessary intelligence without being spotted.

“I think we need to look at the office
building again to see if there are any different ways to solve this
problem,” suggested Carla. Max agreed, and they prepared their
disguises in case the FBI was still snooping around.

As they thought, security at the office
was extremely tight, and access to Gregor was unlikely to be
achievable, without getting caught.

“I think we must figure out what other
places he goes to. For instance, we could look into his business
connections, subsidiaries and linked companies and perhaps get a
lead from that,” suggested Max.

“Public Records Office you mean?”
Queried Carla.

“Yes, that’s what I mean, though I
don’t know what they call it over here.”

"OK," said Carla, “I’ll deal with that
first thing tomorrow if you can keep an eye on Gregor’s flights and
possibly identify where the helicopter is based. We might be able
to fit a bug in it or even a tracker in case it goes somewhere
nearby in the city.”

Next morning they both went their
separate ways.

After noting the arrival time of the
helicopter and its markings, Max made inquiries to locate the base
it came from. He knew from experience, the craft had a good range,
but it had to be stationed nearby.

A few phone calls later and he found
it. The company was a small concern specialising in corporate hire
and had five craft of various types on the ground when Max got
there. Max told the taxi-driver not to wait; he would call if he
needed him.

Max strolled in and asked what the
rates of hire were, from the young man at the reception desk.

“What do you need the helicopter for
and how long?” He asked

“Just to see certain parts of the city
from the air and take photos,” replied Max. “The little white one
over there looks about right to me,” he continued.

“Oh! That one is on permanent standby
for one of our clients so that won’t be available I’m afraid,” the
lad replied.

“All the other machines are bigger and
much more expensive. Why don’t you try the people down the road,
they sell aerial photos, it would be much cheaper that way.”

"No," said Max sharply, hoping to sap
the lad’s confidence. It worked; he took a distinct disliking to
Max and suggested his boss try and help.

Dan Lewinsky ushered Max into his small
office. “I understand you want to hire our Raven helicopter for a
photo-shoot of the city.”

Max turned on his full charm and
replied, “I can fit in with any time you know the machine will be
free. In addition, if it is suddenly needed, I can come back
another day to complete. I’ll pay cash if it helps?!”

Dan thought for a minute and agreed.
The prospect of easy cash was most acceptable. Although the
helicopter was being paid for, flying or not, this was an
attractive bonus.

“If you can be here at 9:00am Monday,”
Dan said, “You can use it for the whole day. The client is off to
Florida then, so he won’t need it after that for several days.”

Max could have kissed the man; he never
expected to have such a key piece of intelligence handed to him on
a plate. He expected a complicated process of surveillance,
planting bugs and trackers before anything useful came his way. Max
paid Dan a substantial cash deposit and left.

That evening Max told Carla the good
news, and she responded with the full address and details of the
likely place in Florida Gregor would go to. Max phoned Dan Lewinsky
and put off the appointment, saying he had got food poisoning and
would be in touch, he could hang onto the deposit though.

Dan was not too disappointed because he
still had his cash and Max had him as insurance because he might
need him later.

The two of them packed and booked their
journey to Florida. They planned to sort out accommodation later
when they got there.

Late that evening Gregor strode briskly
along the deep-water dock followed closely by his two bodyguards.
He could have driven to the warehouse, but chose to take the
exercise. He privately enjoyed the smell of fuel oil and sea air,
the sounds of powerful machinery throbbing in the distance and
soothing lap of water close by. It reminded him of his childhood in
Murmansk. Although he came from a poor family, he was well cared
for and greatly loved by his parents. They scrimped and saved and
sacrifice their own pleasures to give him the best they could,
including a good education. Sadly, by the time he had enough money
of his own to start to repay them, they both were killed by the
KGB. He never did find out why, but he tracked down the men
responsible and killed their immediate families and then them. He
maintained that his Libra Star Sign demanded the scales of personal
justice be rebalanced.

Soon after he was approached by the
Mafia and recruited into their Organisation. He believed in the
uncompromising unity of the group. The clear goals and rigid code
everyone in it adhered to, fitted perfectly with his personality.
Great ability was repaid by greater rewards and power; the
incentives drove him onwards to his present peak of success.

The meeting he was just about to attend
coincided with the arrival of a large cargo ship from Murmansk. Yet
another stage of his master plan was being fulfilled, right under
the noses of the customs men.

Allowing for the time it would take
Gregor to arrive, Max and Carla staked out the entrance to the dock
in a hired car. To ease the boredom they took turns to wander
around nearby and try and form some plan of action. It was late
that evening before Gregor arrived, and they followed at a distance
as he and his bodyguards walked along the dockside.

Gregor and his men entered a large,
shabby looking warehouse and locked the door behind them.

Earlier that day, Max and Carla had
noted all the security cameras, and carefully made their way to the
building. Max’s sensitive Night Owl night vision scope picked up
the otherwise invisible beams of infrared light that swept the
area. Anything caught in the beams were illuminated as bright as
day, on the security monitors.

With the access doors locked, they had
to find some other way in and hear what Gregor was up to. Prowling
down one side of the building, they came across a stack of pallets
with a window above.

“Ah!” Whispered Max, “the stack of
pallets, and get in through the window ploy,”

Carla chuckled; Max could see her
bright eyes sparkling like black obsidian beads as they darted with
excitement in the starlight.

What a girl, he thought no wonder I
love her. She saw him looking at her and knew he was thinking about
her, by the look of love on his face.

“Are we going to this party or what?”
She exclaimed.

Max felt around the window frame to see
if it was loose, but it was fixed shut.

It would be unwise to force it, because
it was probably wired to an alarm, so he took out his pocket knife
and cut away the crumbling putty that held in the glass. One by
one, he eased out the glass panes and finally broke away the thin
glazing bars. Slipping in through the opening, he soundlessly
dropped to the floor. Carla’s lithe body dropped alongside him and
they peered through the gloom, listening for voices.

In the distance, a beam of light shone
through the glass panel of a door, and they carefully picked their
way past boxes of machinery and electronic parts, towards it. The
faint sound of voices speaking in Russian could be heard from the
other side. Listening for a few more minutes they could make out an
American’s voice; he was called John. As they listened, their
hearts nearly stopped beating with shock. John had tracked down
James, Max’s son in Dorset, and had arranged a computer expert to
shut down the Project Oracle system James had set up. As soon as
Gregor was sure it was shut down successfully, he would tell John
to instruct his man to kill James.

They were startled again by the deep
boom of a ship’s horn that sounded just outside on the dock. A
cargo ship from Murmansk had just arrived. Voices and movement
coming towards the solid front access door made Max and Carla look
for a hiding place, when suddenly all the warehouse lights came on
in banks. The contrast of darkness and bright lights blinded them
for a few precious seconds. Where could they hide?

Someone had reached the door and was
turning the key to unlock it.

Carla streaked across the floor like a
gazelle, took a leap up to the open window and like a gymnast over
a bar, slipped through. Max took cover under an empty crate, by
tipping it upside down, over him.

Men unlocked and pulled open the large
sliding doors facing the ship, and through joins in the crate, Max
could see the cargo ship lit up as its final docking procedures
were completed.

Forklift trucks revved and clanked out
onto the brightly lit dock ready to receive goods from the
ship.

Panic swept through Max as he realised
he was now trapped in the busy warehouse and somewhere in Dorset, a
man was about to kill his son. What could he do?

A docker walked up to the crate Max was
hiding under and turned it over. He was going to break it up and
use the space. When he saw Max crouching there, he opened his mouth
and gawked. Max leapt up, grabbed the man’s jacket lapels and
dragged him over the crate and smashed the man’s head on the floor.
Pulling off the man’s coat, Max put it on and picked up the man’s
greasy cap to complete the disguise. He rolled the man into the
crate and proceeded to drag it to the shadows further into the
building. Now he had to find Gregor and get him to stop James’s
execution.

Cap pulled low, Max opened the glazed
door and strode through. The room was a small office; nearly
everyone had walked out onto the dock to watch the unloading.
Gregor was out on the dock surrounded by his men, so Max could not
get to him and was also prevented from escaping.

Still the precious minutes ticked
by.

Max slipped away again into the shadows
away from the others and for the next hour, tried to look busy.
When Gregor walked back to the office on his own, Max saw his
chance. Picking up a Dockers hook Max calmly came up behind Gregor
and pulled the point of the hook into Gregor’s throat. Gregor went
rigid, unable to move with Max’s grip on his collar.

Max said in a low, firm voice. “One bad
move and you’re a dead man.”

Gregor started to say, “You’re the dead
man” but stopped in a gurgle of pain as the point of the hook drew
blood.

“I want you to call off your man who
has orders to kill my son James.”

“I don’t have his phone number” replied
Gregor “I need to get it from my colleague.”

“Call him over and tell him to let
James go.”

Gregor called out “John!” and beckoned
him. John saw at once that Gregor had a hook in his throat, but
walked closer until Max told him what he had to do. The man
disconcertingly smiled and slowly reached into his pocket. As his
hand withdrew, he flipped open a small phone and tapped its
buttons. After a few rings, someone at the other end answered.

“Nikolai, this is John. There has been
a change of plan.” He paused and Max waited expectantly for the
order to let James go.

“Kill the man now!” shouted John.

Max was shocked and unable to
comprehend what he had heard. John held the phone close to Max’s
face.

Two shots were fired at the other end,
and John took the phone way.