Betrayed: (A Financial and Conspiracies Thriller – Book 1 in the Legacy Thriller Series) (29 page)

Angus realised that Komarov and his whereabouts would now need to be left till later and he turned to face the three remaining intruders. They sat there, shock and bewilderment on their faces.

‘Before calling the Police and handing you over to them,’ he said, ‘you have just five minutes to explain what this is all about. If you think that all you have to fear is what the Police can do to you, think again. For starters, ballistics will soon establish which of you is up for murder – the other two will be accessories to murder – take your pick.’

The eldest-looking of the three raised his hands a bit off his lap, as though to raise a hand in class.

‘I’m Alfredo Favero,’ he said. ‘Mr Lupo who’s lying over there dead, next to my father, rang us only today. His family used to be friends with ours. As he was over staying at the Dorchester Hotel, he said he would like to meet some old family friends. Our father and the two of us went over to the Dorchester to represent the rest of the family and as an act of British hospitality. When we got there Mr Lupo quickly persuaded my father that, we were honour-bound to join him in something he was involved in. He said it was an old association, but still very much alive. We know how important our family’s word used to be so we went along with him. We had no idea it would involve any of…er…this.’

He paused and looked pleadingly from Angus to Boreyev and back again. Then he went on. ‘Mr Lupo gave us guns but said he was being persecuted by some Russian and that they were only for protection – he said there would be no violence. Beyond that we know nothing of what he was involved in.’

Angus smiled back at him. ‘Though there may be a few elements of truth in some of that,’ he said, ‘I think we’ll just let the police deal with you – though I will be giving my views on this matter to them – especially after we’ve delved a little further into your family friend, Mr Lupo.’

He turned, nodded for Boreyev to continue watching over the three, and went back to the computer room to ring for the Police. There he found Kim had brought back a tray of tea and was handing some of it to Boreyev’s two men.

‘You all right now?’ said Angus putting a hand on her shoulder.

‘Fine,’ she said, ‘just fine now’, she replied.

Angus rang the police, gave a basic run down of the scene and happenings at the centre and then went to one of the laptops. On it he dialled up Perry on Skype, and when Perry answered, told him what had happened at the centre and asked if all was well at Craithe.

‘Everything’s fine here,’ replied Perry, ‘in fact as quiet as a graveyard.’

Whilst waiting for the police to arrive and deal with Izolda’s, Lupo’s and Favero’s bodies and take away the remaining three intruders, he got Perry to find Tatiana up in the Castle so that he could have a talk with her on Skype.

Just as he finished this his mobile phone, buzzed and vibrated in his pocket. He took it out and scrolled through to new messages where one, just arrived, was flashing. He opened it and read it and then read it again.

‘I am most unhappy at the way you, single-handedly, destroyed my name, my credibility and my long-held position and favour with the President. You have not heard the end of this nor of me’. It was signed Komarov.

The Police and forensics arrived, took away the three bound intruders and the bodies of Lupo, Favero and Izolda. DI Morgan, in charge of the investigating team spent some time with Angus, Boreyev and Kim getting their stories and took statements from Boreyev’s two men as well.

As a result of Angus’s persistent pleading, Morgan promised to let Angus know of any developments still not obvious right now – well, at least developments that did not break the ‘ongoing investigation’ rules of confidentiality.

Angus, got on with tidying up from the fall-out of the Easter weekend’s quite extraordinary happenings and Kim helped him with all of it, learning the full story as well.

‘Well, I must say Boss,’ she said at one point, ‘I have to take my hat off to you as they say,’

‘What on earth for?’

‘The sheer cunning of your ploy with Komarov,’ she replied, ‘that was far more the pirate’s blood in you than the royal name of Stuart that you also carry.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Angus.

‘Remember when we had all just arrived in Craithe and you showed me the big book and the family tree, Bonnie Prince Charlie and the pirate chap?’

‘Oh, yes, of course, yes bad Jack Black’ said Angus smiling, ‘fancy you thinking of that, maybe you’re right.’

Although Boreyev’s men returned to Moscow after a short holiday sightseeing in London, Boreyev stayed on to help Angus find a suitable new, secret home for Athena in London – and were successful in finding just such a spot above a busy Italian restaurant in the West End where comings and goings of people connected with the further development of Athena would go unnoticed amongst the busy restaurant’s human traffic.

Though the team had been happy in the wilds of Scotland these past couple of years, Angus persuaded them all to move to London as soon as the new centre could be made ready and, with the help of the conglomerate’s deep pockets, also helped very generously with relocation and expensive London housing costs for all of the team.

It was some two weeks after the shoot-out at the Newby Centre that DI Morgan telephoned Angus.

‘I thought you might be interested,’ he said, ‘a completely unexpected finding from one of the bodies from the Newby Centre shooting,’

‘Unexpected,’ repeated Angus, ‘in what way?’

‘The unexpected bit is to do with the shootings of Mr Lupo and Mr Favero,’ said Morgan, ‘we found that both had been wounded by shots from Izolda Valik’s gun but what killed them both were shots fired from a gun not even found at the Centre.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Angus, ‘how’s that possible?’

‘Must have been fired by someone who was with the group before you clobbered them with the sticky stuff,’ said Morgan, ‘someone who fired the shots that killed both Lupo and Favero, but left
before
the gunge was fired. Oh, and another strange thing, in both of them the shots that actually killed them were shots in their backs. We’ve managed to trace the gun to who it’s registered to – an Alessandro Scaalay, originally of Sicilian origin, was involved in a mugging a couple of years back but was stolen from a police lock-up. Does that name, Scaalay mean anything to you?’

‘Scaalay? No I don’t think so,’ said Angus, How’s it spelt?’

‘S-c-a-l-e,’ repeated Morgan, ‘as I said, Sicilian, Italian in origin.’

‘And his Christian name?’ asked Angus.

‘Alessandro, as in Alexander,’ said Morgan.

Angus suddenly noticed his heart-beat in his chest, but did not immediately mention a number of quite extraordinary things that had suddenly stormed into his mind.
Need to think about this a bit more,
he thought.

‘Sorry, nothing at the moment,’ said Angus, biting his lower lip,

‘Well, we’ll carry on following that up, especially the Sicilian connection as both the Lupo and Favero families were not only originally from near Palermo in Sicily, they were also Mafia,’ said Morgan, ‘but if anything occurs to you, give us a bell, will you?’

‘Of course,’ said Angus and they rang off.

‘Good, God, ’thought Angus, ‘Alessandro Scaalay, Italian pronunciation, could that be the same as Sandy Scale, head of the City of London cyber police?’

Wondering if he was allowing his imagination run away with him, he took a deep breath.
Still, there was a possibility of that being right was there not?
His thoughts raced on.
Scale was in on the whole saga from the moment he was told of the Manila bank attacks. He kept popping up at odd moments, the conference in particular. And what was there to prevent him being head of the City of London’s Cyber Crime Unit as a cover for what might be called ‘the family business?’

Angus needed to find if there was a logical way in which this could be tackled – check out a Scale connection to the Mafia, rule out a connection between Sandy Scale and Alessandro Scale. But where to start?

In sudden inspiration, he picked up his iPad, went to the ‘maps app’. He typed in
‘Palermo, Sicily’
, enlarged the map that came up and began his search.

Suddenly, he felt that heart-beat in his chest again, stronger than before, because there it was on the Google map, on the outskirts of Palermo, to the south-west, the village of Scale. He enlarged the map further. And there, east and slightly south of Scale, past Rigolizia, was the village of Fontana Lupo – the wolf’s fountain. This was absolutely
not
evidence; it was what the police would call mere conjecture – still what a hell of a coincidence.

He rang Morgan, and after exchanging brief pleasantries, Angus said to him, ‘I was thinking about the question of Scale, the Mafia, Palermo and all that, and I looked the names up on the map and found Scale and Lupo near each other just outside Palermo. I know that Lupo means wolf so is common enough for that to be purely coincidental. The only Scale I know, pronounces his name the English way to rhyme with
pale
and he’s the highly respectable Sandy Scale head of the City of London Cyber Police – so what you might call a dead end. But he would know everything about Athena and is probably very computer savvy, it would clear my conscience if you could do the kind of checks you usually do in such circumstances and rule him out of this for me.’

‘Thank you for that,’ said Morgan, ‘every little snippet of information helps. I’ll let you know if that comes to anything – come to think of it, I’ll ring you even if your connection Sandy Scale does turn out to be nothing to do with all of this.’

‘Many thanks, Detective Inspector Morgan,’ said Angus and rang off.

It was a shock therefore, two weeks later, when Morgan rang back to say that they had arrested Sandy Scale for the murder of both Guiseppe Lupo and Guido Favero. It appeared that Scale had been in on the hunt for Athena from the start and had soon found that cousinly Mafia from New York, the Lupos, were coming at Athena from a different starting point and were going to ruin his own plans by bringing in the Faveros. Scale’s operation included a cousin of the American lot who he used to keep tabs on them – her name is Mina – short for Giacomina and her surname – Falcone.

‘Scale was going to allow them to do his dirty work for him’ said Morgan, ‘and was planning to take over the theft of Athena from Komarov with his own team waiting nearby. Your people put an end to that, however, with your quite extraordinary weapon in those canisters. Scale has confessed to all of it. As soon he saw that a simple theft of Athena from Komarov was not going to happen, he wanted to erase any connections with the whole thing; he couldn’t risk anyone knowing of his involvement and so disposed of the only two people who knew of it, namely Lupo and Favero. Incidentally we’d like to know more about that sticky stuff in the canisters.’

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible, the canisters were supplied from Moscow I believe and have gone back there with the security people I hired briefly. Still, that was quite an investigation of yours – my congratulations,’ said Angus, ‘and it sets my mind at ease so thanks for ringing,’

‘Let’s hope that’s an end to it all, then,’ said Morgan, and, with that, was gone.

An end to it all? wondered Angus. Well, yes, apart from a very rich and vengeful Komarov still on the loose.

End

Author’s Note

Naturally, I hope that you have enjoyed this story. I suspect that few people have the time or inclination to stop and think of how our lives have become so dependent on computers as most of us have other things to worry about life without them. But I hope that this tale has given you a moment’s thought about what would happen if Athena did exist and the wrong kind of people got a hold of it.

The story is intended of course to entertain you for the hours it has taken you to read it but I hope it may tempt you to find out more about my other two books in the Legacy Series. These recount the lengths the Russians and others will go to get Athena for the enormous power and wealth it could bring them.

‘The President’s Fixer’ is a prequel to the Legacy Series and tells of the manoeuvrings to find Athena in order to steal it. And ‘End Game’, second book in the series, tells what happens when one of Russia’s richest oligarch’s manages to clone enough of Athena to be capable of shutting down the likes of power supplies, but has some failings which still make it vulnerable to Athena itself.

It will do fine for the oligarch’s purposes, however, and he uses it secretly to close down a power grid in rural England; he then immediately comes to its rescue – all to just to appear the saving hero and thereby be given a foothold in the UK power marketplace for a power-supply company which he secretly owns. When this devious plan is seen through and thwarted by the Craithe team, he takes to revenge – using his weapon to make a killing on the financial markets whilst fomenting war between Russia and the West.

The end game is like a game of chess between Russia and the West but with him in the middle moving the pieces. But the real question is, can he be stopped before world war three ensues?

To find out more about these books, why not visit my website
williamwield.com
.

And one last request, if I may. If you enjoyed this book, perhaps you would be generous with a few minutes of your time by posting a review on Amazon or Smashwords to tell other potential readers about it – many thanks to you if you do that.