City Under Siege Read online

  “Straight to the point, just like your father. I like that. And not one for flattery either. I see I will need to work harder to fall into your good graces,” he said, leering at me as though “good graces” was code for bed.

  “You sound as though you shared a close association with my father. Do you mind if I ask the nature of your relationship?” I asked, taking a seat behind Dad’s desk. For weeks I’d sat bowed over the aged, worn oak, trying to connect with a man I barely knew. He was gone and never coming back, but regardless, the furnishings around me all felt like his. Perhaps the time would come to make the office a little more my own, but I doubted it.

  He steepled his fingers and stared at me for longer than was comfortable. Trying to conceal my anxiety, I looked him in the eyes with as much steel as I could muster and waited for his response. His appearance lent him an air of civility, but it was a paper-thin veneer that did little to conceal his contempt. Given his behaviour so far, I imagined his distain was less of a personal loathing and more a dislike of women in general.

  “You have found yourself at the helm of one of your country’s oldest family-owned shipping companies, but how much do you really know about it?” he asked, finally.

  “If you’re looking for some history as to the background of the company, our website is a wealth of information. My family has been dedicated to the business of shipping for generations. It’s what draws new clients and investors to the company every year, and it’s our impeccable levels of service that keep them,” I replied, having memorised the shit from a pamphlet in an attempt to navigate my way through trade meetings and negotiations with potential new clients.

  “You know next to nothing about this company, because that is the way your father intended it. The truth is that Tatem Shipping is a failing enterprise and has been since your country joined the European Union.”

  “I’m sorry to have to contradict you, Mr Agheenco, but the quarterly accounts tell a very different story. Our profits last year are a matter of public record, as are the many years before that, and I’m reassured that they all say the same thing. Joining the European Union opened up a number of opportunities for trade partnerships, and inevitably, those partnerships expanded into shipping. Joining the Union was a turning point for the growth of our business,” I disputed. The truth was that I was woefully out of my depth already. The bullshit I was feeding him, whilst true, was part of the crash course in Tatem Shipping I’d been given by advisors to the board in a vain attempt to bring me up to speed.

  “To a degree, that is true. But before that occurred, your firm found itself mired in European shipping laws and red tape, the likes of which it had never seen. After four generations and two world wars, your father, the great Charles Tatem, was on the verge of allowing his family’s legacy to crumble. With a pretty wife and two young children, his heart was not in it as you say, but his pride would not see the company destroyed, so when my organisation approached him about an arrangement mutually beneficial to both parties, he was very amenable to the idea,” he explained, as he continue to peruse me, somewhat condescendingly.

  “So that is how you knew my father. You were a client of his?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” he said, cryptically. “The relaxation of the borders in Europe meant the opening of a whole new market for my import business. But, given that my companies are all Russian, our shipments were still heavily targeted by customs officers and Border Force. To overcome this problem, our merchandise was concealed within legitimate shipping containers, all of which had the correct paperwork, and was extracted at the other end.”

  “So you’re a smuggler?” I asked, rather naively, making him chuckle.

  “If you want to romanticise the arrangement, I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”

  “And what exactly is your merchandise?”

  He narrowed his beady eyes and stared at me calculatedly. “You should think very carefully before you ask questions like that. For many years, your father was happy in his ignorance. He had a good life with your mother, and I was making him very rich. You too could have the same life, but now you are asking to open Pandora’s box, which you will never be able to close. If you choose to know, I will tell you, but make no mistake, you will have to live with the consequences.”

  “Thank you for your concern, Mr Agheenco, but I’m quite sure that I want to know.”

  “Very well, Miss Tatem,” he said, with a smirk. “But please remember that it was your choice to sour what could have been an amicable relationship for us both. You wanted details and particulars, so here we are. For nearly ten years, Tatum Shipping has successfully transported a great many things from my country. In the early days, it was tobacco and alcohol. When the market demanded it, the nature of our shipments changed, and we found it much more profitable to bring stockpiles of weapons from the former Soviet Union into Eastern Europe,” he explained, casually picking invisible lint off his suit as though he wasn’t making the bottom fall out of my world. “While this is still our main source of income, we also move drugs, human cargo, endangered animals, and anything else that will bring a profit.”

  “Human cargo? You mean to tell me that my family has been helping you traffic women and children?” I whispered, barely able to contain the bile from creeping up my throat.

  “You Westerners are so narrow-minded,” he replied, with a smile, obviously amused by my horror. “You breed cattle your entire lives, horses, cows, pigs, sheep. They are born purely for the purpose of their use. You raise them, crammed together in tiny pens, then slaughter them when you need to. But when the cattle walk on two legs instead of four, your sensibilities are offended. You complain when you hear that these people are being used for forced labour, but you will happily buy goods at the lowest price on the market. These days everyone wants cheap, and they don’t care about the human cost as long as they don’t have to hear about it. Our transit links supply surrogate mothers, arranged marriages, organ donation, cheap labour, and yes, sexual labour as well. You may want to vilify my organisation, but what we do is simply supply and demand.”

  “You can’t seriously expect me to believe that my dad and brother turned a blind eye to this? That nobody else on the board knows about this!” I protested.

  “Why would they know? Shipments are made through legitimate shell companies, and the cargo manifests are all in order,” he responded, smoothly.

  “What about customs officials? Surely these containers are searched. It really can’t be that easy to do what you’re suggesting.”

  “Containers are randomly checked, but in the event that we can’t conceal the freight, an official can always be bribed or intimidated. We do own the ports after all. But you are right in a sense. It isn’t nearly as easy or straightforward as I’m suggesting. A venture of the size at which we operate takes planning and cooperation. It’s an undertaking that’s been mutually beneficial to my associates and the Tatem family for quite some time.”

  “I’d like you to leave,” I said, shaking as I stood. “If Tatem Shipping has somehow been involved with this, there is no way Dad or John knew about this. Your association with my family is over. Please don’t come here again.”

  He sighed as though I were a petulant child who needed scolding as he fastened the buttons on his suit jacket.

  “Miss Tatem, without my business, there simply is no Tatem Shipping.”

  “If that’s true, then so be it. I’m not prepared to give up years of my life to saving a company that traffics in human misery. I’d rather see it go under,” I sneered. Moving to walk past him, I hoped to show him the door. Too late I realised that turning my back on him was a mistake. Before I could even register what was happening, he grabbed hold of my throat and slammed me hard against the wall. The force of the blow to the back of my head had me seeing stars, but worse still, he squeezed so hard that I couldn’t breathe.

  “You seem to be under the misapprehension that I am asking you to continue our arrangemen
t. There is no choice for you to make here. There is no doing the right thing. Quite simply all I ask is that you continue to play the part of the dutiful heiress. You will be the figurehead for the company, keeping those stockholders happy and the share prices stable. I will be sending in some of my own employees to work alongside your executives, making sure that business continues as usual, and you will sign anything that they put in front of you. In return, you’ll lead a life of wealth and privilege,” he said.

  I clawed at his hand, gasping for any breath of oxygen that would keep me conscious.

  “Do yourself a favour, Sarah. Don’t make the same mistake your father did. He started listening to your brother and grew himself a conscience. Now he is no longer a problem, and if you defy me, you won’t be either,” he warned. Pulling me forward slightly, he slammed my head against the wall once more before dropping me to the floor. I coughed and spluttered between filling my lungs with air.

  “Now, why don’t you take a few days to think over what I’ve said. Speak with your accountants and get a picture of how deeply ingrained my business is to your company. Mention the name Kornax Limited to him. Once you’ve had some time to think about it, you’ll realise how people rely on your cooperation to pay their mortgages and feed their families. In time, any guilt you might feel will pass, I’m sure. But one last word of warning. Should you feel a burning need to pass on the details of our relationship, to say the board members, a best friend, even your fucking priest, don’t. There are so many ways to feel pain that are worse than death, and I will introduce you to them all.”

  He crouched beside me and ran the back of his fingers gently over my cheek.

  “You are so beautiful. The lesson will be my pleasure. Now, I have some business in the capital, but I will be back soon enough. As long as you’ve been discrete, I don’t see why our next visit should be anything less than cordial.” He stood over me and, like the monster he was, relished the sight of my pain at his feet.

  His head turned as a quick knock sounded at the door and it flew open. A nervous looking Victoria clutched at the handle.

  “I apologise for interrupting you,” she said.

  “Not at all. Miss Tatem appears to have choked on something. Perhaps you’d be so kind as to get her a glass of water,” he said.

  Victoria looked nervously towards me where I was still struggling to breathe normally. “Miss Tatem?” she asked.

  “It’s all right, Victoria,” I reassured her, my voice scratchy and coarse. “Water would help.” She nodded and disappeared, knowing then that I was sending her on the same kind of mundane errand that my father did.

  “Until next time, Sarah,” he said, and strode nonchalantly out of the door, closing it gently behind him.

  Using what little strength I had left, I crawled towards the waste bin and vomited until there was nothing left.

  Sarah

  More than once that day, I’d questioned the sanity of my decision, but as the taxi pulled up next to me, I knew it was too late for regrets. When the Ministry of Defence said they were sending a car, I somehow expected something a little more clandestine. Perhaps a black four-wheel drive with tinted windows. My choice had been a little easier when I imagined myself protected by James Bond and his secret service associates. In reality, these people were still part of the same government of civil servants who took five months to rectify the misspelling of my name on a tax form. Perhaps I was setting unrealistic expectations.

  “Taxi for Miss Tatem?” the driver said. I nodded and climbed inside. He whistled along to the radio but didn’t try to make idle chat, and for that I was grateful. My stomach was in knots as it was, and I didn’t think making small talk would help. Most of our journey was spent sitting in traffic, an inevitability in central London at any time of day.

  “Here we go, love,” he said, pulling up in front of chrome and glass monolith that stretched high above us.

  “How much do I owe you?” I asked, reaching for my purse.

  “That’ll be a fiver please,” he replied. There’s no way that the fare would be that cheap, so I figured that paying him must be for appearances sake. My hand shook as I passed him a note, and I’d barely closed the door behind me before he shot off, leaving me behind to stare up at the building. A chill ran down my spine as I imagined who might be staring down at me through the glass. Plucking up my courage, I pushed my way through the large door and walked up to the reception desk, feigning a confidence I didn’t feel.

  “Hello,” the receptionist said, smiling warmly. “How may I help you?”

  “Hi. My name is Sarah Tatem. I’m here for an appointment,” I replied, with as much of a returning smile as I could muster.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Tatem. I believe that you’re expected on the eighteenth floor.” She indicated to the bank of elevators behind me.

  “Thank you,” I replied, with a nod of acknowledgement. My body on autopilot, I followed her directions, and all too quickly, I was delivered to a meeting I was nowhere near ready for. The smell of fresh paint struck me, before I realised that all the chairs stacked along the corridor were in protective wrap. Opening up the main door to the floor, I could see that the whole place was an open-plan office space, newly furbished and almost ready for occupation.

  “Ah! Sarah! You made it. It’s a pleasure to see you.” Simon Masterson was my government liaison, and while he didn’t exactly give me the warm and fuzzies, from our telephone conversation, he certainly seemed to know what he was talking about.

  Three days ago, after I stopped vomiting and reassuring Victoria I was fine, I visited our accounts department like Vasili had suggested. Without telling them why I wanted the information, they confirmed that contracts with Kornax Limited were the cornerstone of our business. He’d been right. Without him, Tatum Shipping would cease to exist. It took me all of ten minutes to decide what to do, and that ten minutes had been spent vacillating between ways to try and salvage the livelihoods of our employees and wondering how it was that my dad and brother could ever live with themselves for what they’d done. Fear and shame drove my decision, but having made it, knowing who to trust was a minefield. Reporting what I’d learned was the only decision I could live with, but even I, in my naivety, knew that organised crime gangs had corrupt police officers on the payroll. Eventually, I settled on the London Metropolitan Counter Terrorism Hotline. Vasili had mentioned arms sales, among other things, so I figured that counted as terrorist activity. Apparently, the government agreed. Within thirty minutes of leaving my name and details, I was contacted by an officer who connected me with Simon. We had spoken a couple of times since then on the telephone, though today was the first time we’d met in person.

  Striding energetically towards me, and seeming significantly more enthusiastic about the meeting than I was, he held out his hand. As I shook it, he laid a second hand on top of mine like we were old friends. The gleeful gleam in his eye was no doubt caused by the valuable connection to Russian gang members operating in the country that I presented. While I appreciated his experience in these matters, I didn’t appreciate the pretence. I gave him something he needed, and in return did my best to sail my father’s legacy out of the shadow of malady and corruption it had been mired in while he’d be at the helm.

  “Hello, Mr Masterson. I’m happy to be here,” I lied. “I must confess, I’m not sure how it is I can help any further. I’ve told you absolutely everything I can think of I’m afraid. At the very least, I’m sure I’ve given you enough financial information to arrest Vasili Agheenco, and I’ve already agreed to testify against him.”

  “You have certainly been most helpful, and of course we are very grateful to you for coming forward, but there are ways that you could help us further. Before we get into that though, there is someone that I’d like you to meet.” He pushed his glasses further up his nose, something he had a habit of doing every few minutes like a nervous tick. I dreaded the thought of hashing out my dirty secret once more, but followed h
im resignedly to a meeting room, partitioned from the main office by floor-to-ceiling opaque glass.

  “May I offer you some tea or coffee?” Mr Masterson asked, as he pulled out a chair for me to sit.

  “Tea would be nice, thank you,” I replied, wanting the warmth of the cup around my icy-cold hands, rather than the drink itself. He smiled in reply and busied himself preparing my beverage. A small silver urn sat next to a wooden box of tea and bone china cups on a long mahogany end table at the top of the room. It matched the large oval boardroom table at which I sat, surrounded by luxurious leather chairs, the only bits of furniture that appeared to have been unwrapped.

  It took me a moment to realise we weren’t alone. From across the room, I was being watched. My observer perched casually against the windowsill, his strong, tanned forearms crossed over his chest. Until that point, I didn’t know it was possible to be both attracted to a person and simultaneously scared shitless of them. He was the complete antithesis of every male I’d ever known. Dad had been a soft man. Soft hands, soft belly, and a soft backbone as it turned out. There wasn’t a thing about this soldier that wasn’t hard as nails. I was almost positive that was what he was. He practically screamed military.

  Shaved short on the sides, but longer on top, his thick black hair fell naturally into artfully dishevelled spikes that begged to have hands running through them. He was too far away for me to tell the colour of his eyes, but they were dark.

  Piercing.

  Assessing.

  Sharp.

  Eyes that missed nothing and took in everything. His strong jaw was clean shaven but as granite hard and sharp as his cheekbones. Everything about him, from his size to his demeanour, called to the primal core of me. The one governed by millions of years of predetermination to choose the most dominant, the most alpha male in the pack. Some might say it was the need to feel protected that attracted me to him. I’d concede that in a world that left me feeling alone and vulnerable, inside of his strong arms seemed like a pretty tempting place to be. But what I felt at that moment was pure, unadulterated lust, tinged with the smallest amount of fear that even imagining a fantasy of myself with a guy like that was a bad idea. My gaze fell to his plump, full lips, and seeming to sense the direction of my thoughts, the side of his mouth lifted in a slight smirk.