172377.fb2 Dead Line - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 9

Dead Line - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 9

EIGHT

Sami Veshara sipped his demitasse of Lebanese coffee and gave a small appreciative belch. The lunch celebrating his friend Ben Aziz’s forty-fifth birthday was almost over, and it had been a feast worthy of the name.

Not surprising, thought Sami, since most of the ingredients had been supplied to this London restaurant by his own company, and he had made sure nothing but the best was used for this meal. The mezze had been first-rate, especially the babaganoush and the fatayer, pastries stuffed with minced duck and spinach. Then the main course, lamb shawarma, had been mouth-wateringly tender, after its two-day bath in a spicy marinade. Dessert eventually followed: muscat ice-cream and a sesame tart with berry-rose mousse. All of it washed down with mineral water, and vintage Chateau Musar from the hillside vineyards above the Bekaa Valley, north of Beirut.

Beirut – you would not have had a better meal even there, he thought with some satisfaction. He looked idly at the plate of Turkish delight on the table, and decided he should show some self-discipline. So he only took one.

He sat back and lit a small cheroot, chatting from time to time with the dozen or so other friends of Ben Aziz gathered here. They were all fellow Lebanese, and often congregated for lunch in this small restaurant on a side street off the Edgware Road, just a few streets up from Marble Arch. Once the neighbourhood had been full of Yanks, Little America they’d called it. But those days were long gone, thought Sami with satisfaction, and now Arabs outnumbered the Westerners.

He contemplated the afternoon ahead of him. Business had been very good during the last twelve months, both the food-importing side of things that he was known for, and other activities he preferred not to be publicly associated with. He had been to the Bayswater offices of his import company that morning for a meeting with the accountants, and had been pleased by their low estimates of the year’s tax liability. A lot of thought had gone into that. He felt an afternoon off was well deserved.

Outside, his chauffeur waited in the Mercedes saloon. Sami’s wife and children were in Beirut for a pre-Ramadan visit to family and friends, staying in the large villa he had built off the Corniche when the troubles had subsided in the 1990s.

Normally, Sami would have found distraction in the arms of his mistress, an Italian beauty whose modelling career he was happy to subsidise. But she was on a shoot in Paris for two days, so he would have to find some other way to pass the afternoon. He thought fleetingly of other possible distractions, but he remembered there was a phone call due about a shipment coming in. And later a private meeting, where he would need to have his wits about him. Better to go home, snooze a bit, and read Al Nabad until then.

Gradually the lunch party dispersed. Sami went outside and stretched his arms, his eyes blinking in the bright sun. His driver jumped out of the car, and ran around to hold the door open. Malouf was Egyptian, an obsequious man, eternally grateful to his benefactor. He was almost seventy years old and he had a heart condition. Sami’s wife Raya wanted her husband to get a younger driver, but Malouf had been with him for twenty-five years, and Sami valued his loyalty. He also knew that at least half of the salary he paid the man was sent back to relatives in the slums of Giza, not far from the pyramids. They would suffer if he let Malouf go.

Now Malouf asked, ‘Where to, Mr Veshara?’

‘Just home. Then you can have the rest of the day off.’ He would drive himself to his early evening meeting, since he trusted no one, not even Malouf, to accompany him there.

The call came on his mobile as Malouf turned the car around and headed north, towards the Vesharas’ twenty-room mansion on Bishops Avenue in the Highgate hinterland.

‘Yes,’ he said into the mobile.

‘The shipment arrives tonight.’ The voice was low, and respectful. ‘How many?’

‘Five.’

‘That’s one short.’

‘I know. There was an accident.’

‘Accident? Where?’

‘In Brussels.’

Not on his watch then. Sami was relieved: the last thing he wanted was Interpol sniffing around. He asked, ‘Is the ground transportation all arranged?’

‘It is. And we have a house in Birmingham.’

‘Let me know when the packages arrive there.’

‘Yes.’ And the line went dead.

Malouf was watching in the mirror. ‘Forgive me, sir, but there is a large car behind us, a limousine. It’s staying very close. Could it be one of your friends from lunch?’

Sami looked back over his shoulder. Sure enough, there was a black limo almost on their bumper, and as they went under the flyover and through the green light it momentarily flashed its lights. Who could it be? Not one of his lunch companions, he was sure of that. They were businessmen, but none of them could run to a stretch limousine. Yet he was not alarmed; London was full of idiots in cars. This wasn’t Baghdad, after all.

‘Relax, Malouf. It’s just some fool showing off.’

Suddenly a Range Rover pulled out sharply from the right, and cut in ahead of them on Edgware Road, forcing Malouf to brake. After its initial burst of speed, the Range Rover slowed, forcing them to cut their own speed even further.

‘I don’t like this, Mr Veshara.’

Neither did Sami. For the first time he sensed a threat; they were being boxed in. ‘Take the next right turn. But do not indicate.’ That should shake them off.

Malouf nodded. He angled slightly to make the turn but suddenly a large 4×4 appeared on their right side, drawing up alongside. When Malouf slowed, so did the 4×4. It hogged the middle of the road, and cars coming the other way were forced to move over, one blinking its lights furiously and its driver giving a vigorous two-finger salute.

Sami wondered who could be in these cars surrounding him. Had they mistaken him for someone else?

‘Turn left,’ he ordered. His throat felt dry, constricted.

But on that side, too, another car suddenly appeared, almost close enough to clip the Mercedes’ wing mirror. It was a white van, like the kind the police used to shuttle prisoners around, with smoked windows that screened its occupants from view.

The Mercedes was now effectively surrounded and Sami no longer had any doubt they were working together. Who were these people? The Russian mob had been making noises lately about his little sideline, the one that needed small boats running across the North Sea to the dock he’d rented near Harwich. Who else could it be? For a brief moment, he wondered if his deeper, darker secret might have been discovered. No, it was impossible. He had always been exceedingly careful. So maybe it was the Russians, after all. But what did they want? And for Allah’s sake, what did they intend to do? They couldn’t be trying to murder him in broad daylight, and a kidnapping seemed equally preposterous. They’re just trying to scare me, he thought, and if that was their aim they were doing a good job.

‘Hold on sir,’ said Malouf, and gripped the wheel tightly with both hands. On their left ahead, a man in a green shirt was getting out of a parked car. He seemed oblivious to the tense convoy approaching them, and though the white van honked its horn furiously in warning, made no effort to get out of the way.

The white van was forced to slow down, and it was then Malouf made his move, swinging the wheel sharply and steering the car fast into a side street, its wheels screeching like a B-movie car chase. Narrowly missing a trio of mothers crossing the road, buggies pushed before them, Malouf accelerated and sped on. When Sami looked back, only the white van was following, now a hundred yards behind.

When they reached the junction with a large avenue, the light was green, but inexplicably Malouf slowed down. ‘Go, go,’ shouted Sami. He noticed the older man was sweating.

But Malouf knew what he was doing. The van was closing behind them, and Sami was about to shout again, when Malouf floored the accelerator and joined the main road just as the light turned amber. The flow of traffic on the larger road meant there was no way the van could run the red light. It gave them at least a minute head start.

Sami leaned forward and spoke urgently. ‘Malouf, do not drive to the house. There may be others waiting for us there. Find a hiding place, but quickly.’ He noticed the Egyptian was now sweating even more profusely.

They drove through a bewildering maze of side streets. God knows where they were. Sami kept looking back, but they had lost the van. At last Malouf pulled into a small mews, and turned the car around so they could exit rapidly. He left the engine running while Sami thought what to do next.

He didn’t want to call the police. What could he tell them? ‘Officer, four cars surrounded me, and I am sure they wanted to…’ what? Kidnap him? Murder him? The police would think him paranoid – he could give them no evidence of what had happened. Besides, it was important to keep his profile as low as possible with the law enforcement authorities.

No, he needed security of a private sort, which wouldn’t ask for evidence, and wouldn’t pose difficult questions. Mahfuz came into his mind, a cousin who ran several nightclubs in the northern suburbs of London. He employed all sorts of ‘muscle’ to sort out trouble in his clubs. Once he had shown Sami a handgun he carried when he had large amounts of cash to transport.

‘I need to make a call, Malouf. Then I’ll tell you where to go next.’

There was no reply from the driver. Sami dialled Mahfuz’s home, but got his wife. He was doing an inventory at one of the clubs, in Finchley, she said. He thanked her and was about to ring there when he noticed that Malouf was still sitting upright in his driver’s seat.

Sami said sharply, ‘Malouf.’ The man didn’t move. Sami leaned forward and touched the old retainer gently on the shoulder, but there was no response. He could have been a statue.

‘Oh no,’ said Sami. The old man’s heart had given out. The excitement had killed him.