*
Nastiya and Nella Vosloo made the journey to Bangkok on separate airlines. Nastiya was the first to arrive and Nella followed eight hours later on a flight from Nairobi in Kenya. They met in Nastiya’s suite in the Authors’ Wing of the Mandarin Oriental hotel overlooking the Chao Phraya river. They had both changed into their best cocktail gowns, and after they had embraced they stepped apart still holding hands and examined each other with affectionate interest.
‘You are looking so good, Nella. It seems like yesterday I last saw you,’ Nastiya told her.
‘And so are you! I love that dress. The colour suits you so well. Is it Prada?’
‘Yes, it’s Prada.’ Nastiya hugged her again. ‘Shall we have a nice-to-see-you drink? I found a bottle of good vodka in the minibar.’ She poured two measures, filled them with ice cubes and they saluted each other with the frosted glasses, then Nastiya took Nella’s arm and led her out onto the balcony.
‘I have checked the room.’ Nastiya dropped her voice. ‘I think that it’s clean. But it’s best we take no chances, and we talk out here. Do you know what we have to do?’
‘Yes, Hector has told me everything. He said you would have photographs of these other people we are taking over from.’ Nella worded it diplomatically.
Nastiya left her for a moment to fetch her bag from the sitting room and she closed the door behind her as she returned. They studied the photographs together.
‘This one is the captain,’ Nastiya explained. ‘His name is Yuri Volkov. In Russian Volkov means wolf. With a name like that his ancestors must have been aristocrats, before the revolution. When he was younger he flew MiG-29 Fulcrums for the USSR.’
‘That’s their top fighter. Only the hot-shot Russian pilots get to fly them.’
‘Da,’ Nastiya agreed. ‘But now age and liquor have caught up with him, and he is no longer hot shot. His co-pilot is Roman Spartak. He also is old, but not as old as Yuri.’
Nella decided not to ask Nastiya for her definition of old. She had an uneasy suspicion that she might fall into that category. Instead she said, ‘When are we going to meet them?’
‘They checked into the hotel this morning. I spoke on the telephone to Yuri Volkov this afternoon just after you checked in. He has received the briefing that he believes was sent to him by Carl Bannock, and he is expecting our arrival. He and his second pilot are staying here in the hotel. I arranged with Yuri that we should meet them for a drink in the Bamboo Bar at seven thirty. That means we have an hour to go over our plans, to make certain we don’t make any mistakes,’ Nastiya told her.
At the arranged time the two women took the lift down to the Bamboo Bar.
‘Remember that we mustn’t recognize them,’ Nastiya warned Nella as they walked into the room that throbbed with the rhythm of a Thai jazz band. The two Russians were sitting on the imitation tiger-skin high stools at the long bar and both of them were watching the door. They reacted immediately as the pair appeared in the entrance to the bar.
‘They have spotted us.’ Nastiya spoke without moving her lips. ‘Emma Purdom sent them copies of our passports when she hacked into their comms. Here comes Yuri. He must have been a real hottie when he was younger.’
‘I am Yuri Volkov.’ The Russian bowed to the two women, then his eyes returned to Nastiya’s face. ‘You must be the one named Nastiya O’Brien,’ he greeted her in English. ‘That is a strange first name for an Irish girl.’ He held out his hand and Nastiya took it.
‘I was once Nastiya Voronova,’ she replied in Russian. ‘But I went and married an Irishman.’
‘Ah so! It is good to meet such a lovely lady from home!’ Yuri switched into their mother tongue.
‘You can call me Nastiya,’ she said, and then she reverted to English for the benefit of Nella. ‘This is my friend Nella Vosloo. She is a South African business lady.’
Yuri turned to Nella and shook her hand. ‘I hope you will forgive my English very bad.’
‘Your English is very good,’ Nella replied as she examined his once-handsome but now drink-raddled features.
‘Thank you, but is not true.’ Yuri turned back to Nastiya. ‘I have instructions from my owner to fly you to Kazundu to meet him.’
‘That is correct. We have special business with His Majesty King John,’ Nastiya agreed.
‘With your permission I present to you my colleague and co-pilot, Roman Spartak.’
Yuri introduced them and ordered vodka all round. They toasted each other and Yuri asked apologetically if he might be allowed to view the women’s documents so that he could compare them to the copies he had been sent by his employer. After he had matched their passports to the scans Yuri relaxed further and ordered more vodka. An hour later Nastiya asked the men to excuse them and she took Nella to the ladies’ room. As they repaired their make-up in the big mirror she asked tactfully, ‘Do you have any personal interest in either of our new friends, Nella?’
‘No thank you. Yuri is quite sweet. But I am happily married to a good man. I gave up playing those side games long ago.’
‘The same goes with me. Besides which we have a busy day tomorrow.’
They said goodnight to the pilots and they agreed to meet them again in the hotel lobby after breakfast the following morning.
When they came down to the lobby, Yuri had two of the hotel courtesy cars waiting at the entrance and they drove out to the Don Muang private jet terminal in convoy. There were fourteen other passengers waiting in the private lounge to board the Condor. They were all startlingly good-looking Thai girls. They were in high spirits, chattering and giggling, excited to be embarking on this adventure to Africa.
‘I don’t think they are all girls.’ Nastiya gave her opinion. ‘Carl must be giving full run to his peculiar tastes. But keep your voice down, and try to wipe that frown off your face.’
Yuri gathered up all his passengers and shepherded them through immigration and airport security, after which they were allowed to board the minibus that took them all out to the gigantic four-engined Antonov aircraft waiting on the hardstanding. They boarded her through the ramp at the rear of the fuselage.
A single African air hostess met them and led all the passengers forward through the empty cargo hold to the pressurized passenger compartment behind the galley and the flight deck. When all the passengers were seated in the cavernous compartment and strapped in, the hostess locked the airtight doors and demonstrated the emergency procedures. Meanwhile the pilots started the main engines and began to taxi to the head of the runway.
The Condor took off and climbed to cruising altitude and settled on course for Kazundu. Within a very short time the passengers lapsed into the torpor of long-distance flight as the Condor droned westwards at a little under five-hundred miles per hour.
An hour after take-off the hostess came back to where the two women were seated.
‘The captain invites you up to the cockpit to see how the plane is flown.’
Nastiya glanced at Nella, who nodded acquiescence. They left their seats and followed the hostess back up the aisle. Without making it obvious, both of them took full advantage of this opportunity to study the layout of the forward area of the fuselage and the cockpit. They spent a pleasant enough half-hour with the two Russians. Yuri tried his best to impress them with the specifications of the Condor. He even allowed Nella to sit in the command seat and to hold the controls. She giggled with feigned excitement, and Yuri was so encouraged that he placed his hand on her knee. She removed it firmly, and the two women returned to their seats in the passenger compartment.
‘You should be able to fly it now, after Yuri’s instructions,’ Nastiya teased her.
‘I think he wanted to give me the full course.’ Nella grinned, and reached into her bag for a paperback Stephen King novel.
Five hours later Nastiya surreptitiously switched on her hand-held GPS and confirmed that the position of the Condor was one hundred and fifty-two miles east of Male, the capital of the
Maldives Republic in the Indian Ocean. She composed a single-code-word message and sent it to a one-off Hotmail address. This brief transmission was to alert Cross Bow Central that they were about to go operational.
Four minutes later she received the response and the order to proceed. This read simply ‘KYBO’. She smiled at another example of Hector’s boyish sense of humour. The acronym stood for ‘Keep Your Bowels Open’.
Nastiya leaned across the aisle and touch Nella’s arm. Nella opened her eyes, sat up straight and nodded at her. Nastiya unbuckled her safety belt, stood up and took her valise down from the overhead locker. Then she went up the aisle to the toilet between the galley and the flight deck. Behind the curtains that screened the forward area from the passenger cabin, the hostess was sitting in her jump seat in the galley reading a magazine. The door to the flight deck was hooked open, and through it Nastiya could see the backs of the pilots’ heads as they sat at the controls of the Condor. Nastiya grimaced when for the first time she noticed that Yuri had a pronounced bald patch on the back of his scalp over which he had slicked down a few wispy grey locks.
All three members of the Condor crew were relaxed; bored and off-guard. They had obviously flown hundreds of hours together on this route, and their security precautions were minimal to nonexistent.
The black hostess looked up and smiled at Nastiya. She returned the smile and went into the toilet. She locked the door and set her valise down on the floor. Then she unzipped and dropped her jeans and her panties around her ankles and lowered herself onto the seat. As Hector had reminded her with his coded text message, it was always a wise precaution to evacuate the bladder and bowels before going into action.
Still sitting, she leaned forward, placed her valise between her feet and opened it. From the bottom of the bag she took out a box of tampons. Carefully she removed four of the white cardboard applicator tubes from the box. In place of the advertised contents each tube contained one of the Hypnos knock-down hypodermic syringes that Dave Imbiss had provided for her. Nastiya had modified the inner pocket of her denim jacket by hand-sewing four slots into it. One of the Hypnos hypodermics fitted snugly into each slot, instantly ready to hand.
Nastiya packed away the tampon box and zipped her valise closed. Then she completed her ablutions and readjusted her clothing. She checked her make-up and her appearance in the mirror above the basin. She frowned at herself, and made a mental note to make an appointment to see her dermatologist for another course of Botox injections, just as soon as she returned to London. She liked to look her best even when she was going into combat. She flushed the toilet and opened the door.
The hostess looked up and smiled at her again. ‘There are some snacks, if you are hungry.’ She indicated the array of plates on the galley table.
‘Thank you so much.’ Nastiya set down her valise to free both her hands. She selected a single ripe grape from the display, slipped it into her mouth and with her tongue popped it against the roof of her mouth. She savoured the sweetness as she waited for the hostess to switch her attention back to her magazine. Then she took one of the Hypnos tubes from her inner pocket, flipped back the cover to expose the needle and turned back to the seated girl.
The hostess wore a short-sleeved blue uniform shirt. Her back was turned half away from Nastiya.
‘Please excuse me, miss.’ Nastiya spoke in a soothing and placating tone, as she gripped the girl’s shoulder lightly with her left hand. The hostess looked up in mild surprise as Nastiya slid the tip of the needle into her glossy black triceps. The needle was so sharp that its entry was painless. Nastiya squeezed the soft PVC tube and smiled into the girl’s eyes. She returned Nastiya’s smile, then her eyes glazed and her entire body melted into unconsciousness. Nastiya held her upright with one arm around her shoulders, and with the other hand she fastened the buckle of the girl’s shoulder straps to keep her from falling out of her seat and injuring herself.
Nastiya took a pace forward until she was able to see through the doorway into the flight deck. Both pilots were still in their seats. They were wearing bulky radio headphones and tropical short-sleeved cotton shirts. Roman, the co-pilot, was speaking into the hand-held radio mike. Nastiya heard him reporting the present position of the Condor to Male control in the Maldives, which now lay only fifty miles off the port wing.
Nastiya leaned forward to peer over Yuri’s head and to check the green light on the control panel which indicated that the Condor was flying on automatic pilot. The bulb was blinking reassuringly green. She waited for Roman to finish his radio transmission and cradle his hand-held mike.
Behind her back Nastiya held one of the Hypnos syringes in each hand. She flicked open the protective covers and exposed the needles. She stepped quietly through the door into the cockpit. The two Russians were oblivious to her presence. She came up behind them and simultaneously slapped a hand on each of their shoulders. The tiny needles slipped through cloth and skin without a check, and she shot the anaesthetic into them.
Both of the men had time to look around and recognize her. Yuri opened his mouth to speak, but before he could do so he sagged forward onto his shoulder straps. Roman followed him into oblivion a few seconds later. Quickly Nastiya checked to make certain that they were safely restrained, with no impediment to their breathing. Then she leaned over Roman’s shoulder to reach the controls of the radio and she switched it off. Satisfied at last, she went back to the entrance of the passenger compartment and peered through the slit in the curtains. All the Thai passengers were asleep. However, Nella Vosloo was sitting forward in her seat, alert for her summons. Nastiya beckoned her with a jerk of the head, and Nella stood up and came up the aisle to join her.
In the cockpit Nella helped Nastiya to lift the two pilots out of their seats and lay them on the deck. From her valise Nastiya brought out a pack of heavy-duty PVC cable ties. With these they pinioned the pilots’ arms and legs. Then they dragged them one at a time back into the galley.
‘How long will the effects of the drug take to wear off?’ Nella asked quietly.
‘According to Dave Imbiss, they should be out for about three or four hours, depending on their individual resistance to the drug. But if we need them awake before then Dave has given me an antidote that will wake them up at once,’ Nastiya told her and then went on briskly, ‘We must separate the pilots. If we leave them together, when they wake up they will certainly try to plot some way to make trouble for us.’
They dragged Yuri into the small storage compartment between the toilet and the galley. They propped him in a sitting position on the deck, with his back against the storage racks. They used more cable ties to fasten him securely to the steel framework of the racks. Then they fixed a strip of duct tape over his mouth as a gag. They locked the door when they left him.
Next, they went back and dragged Roman into the toilet. They sat him on the floor and fastened his wrists to the grab-handles on the wall above his head. Then they gagged him as they had done with Yuri. Nella found the toilet key in the pocket of the hostess’s apron. She locked the door and posted an ‘Out of Order’ sign on it.
They left the hostess still strapped to her jump seat, but they gagged her also, and used more cable ties to secure her hands behind her back so that she would be unable reach the release buckle of her safety belt. Then they drew the curtain over her alcove so that none of the Thai passengers might find her and raise a commotion.
Once all three crew members were immobilized Nastiya left Nella to take command of the aircraft while she returned to her seat in the passenger cabin from where she could cast a motherly eye over the other passengers to make certain that none of them wandered up the aisle into the forward area of the aircraft to use the toilet in which Roman was sleeping.
Nella went forward and locked herself into the flight deck. Then she took her place in Yuri’s command seat. She punched into the satnav the coordinates of the airstrip at the Bannock Oil drilling installation on the Zara No. 13 concession.
Then she disengaged the autopilot and assumed manual control of the Condor. She eased her onto a new heading of 325 degrees magnetic. The change of course was so gentle that it would not alarm any of the dozing passengers in the cabin.
Much later, with only an hour still to run before they reached their destination, Yuri Volkov regained consciousness. He began kicking the bulkhead with both feet still cabled together, and bellowing into his gag like a buffalo bull bogged down in a swamp. Nastiya hurried forward to the tiny luggage compartment and squatted in front of him.
‘Please behave yourself and keep quiet, Yuri.’ She spoke to him reasonably in Russian. ‘You are disturbing the other passengers.’ She showed him another of the Hypnos syringes. ‘You seem to be a very nice and sensible man and I don’t want to be forced to stick one more of these needles into you.’ Yuri stopped shouting. ‘Thank you.’ Nastiya gave him a warm smile. ‘I assure you that we have no quarrel with you. I have been told by my boss that if you cooperate you will very soon be released unharmed. In addition you will be paid one year’s salary as a compensation for the inconvenience you have suffered, and another year’s salary for the loss of your present employment. This goes equally for both Roman and your air hostess. You can tell them that when you have the opportunity.’ She paused to let him consider what she had said, and then she continued, ‘If you promise not to make any more trouble I will remove your gag so we can talk. But you know what will happen if you start shouting again. Nod your head if you understand and agree.’
Yuri nodded vigorously. When she ripped away the tape, Yuri opened and wriggled his jaws to ease them and restore the circulation. As the same time he was studying Nastiya’s face. ‘Ah so!’ he burst out at last in Russian. ‘Now I understand what you are up to. You are going after those two pieces of shit in Kazundu, aren’t you?’ He used the noun gavno, which is a particularly offensive Russian word for excrement.
‘Didn’t your mother warn you not to talk like that in front of a lady?’ Nastiya reprimanded him primly. ‘Anyway, I have no idea who you are referring to in such derogatory terms.’