Elixir of Time

Keith Short

Description

Leon Dabrowski is a gifted nuclear scientist who has provided the world with a safe and clean form of energy. When his family is intimidated by a sinister criminal cartel, he has no option but to bow to their demands and take his immense intellectual prowess to the North Korean peninsula. There he is expected to work in a secret underground complex on the Republic's thermonuclear weapons programme. To make matters worse, the American CIA sees Leon's misfortune as the perfect opportunity to uncover what the North Koreans are up to. There are spanners to be thrown into the works, data to be smuggled . . . life and death decisions to be made. Whatever he does, Leon must steer a delicate route between placating a brutal and merciless regime, stemming the worldwide proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and securing his family's safety. But Leon is not only someone who can think his way around the most devious means of coercion they throw at him. His father is Russia's richest oligarch with the most powerful private security force on the planet; his wife is a brilliant and determined academic who isn't going to stand by and watch her family being threatened and abused by these people. The gloves are off . . .

Sujets

• North Korea
• Thriller
• Corée du Nord

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 13 juillet 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781838596576
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2020 Keith Short

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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ISBN 9781838596576

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Contents
PROLOGUE

PART 1: BLACK DIAMOND
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5

PART 2: NORTH KOREA
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17

PART 3: THE MOLE
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29

PART 4: THE MASTERMIND
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42

EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
‘This new wing of Full Sutton prison is state of the art and houses the highest security remand unit in the UK. We have a permanent dedicated guard, bulletproof glass partitions, and there’s not an external window in the place. You’ll be impressed.’
‘You’ve had a lot of right bad characters in this prison over the years. I take it you don’t let our boy mix with any of the Category A population. He’s obviously capable of defending himself but, if some nutter decided to have a go, you’d drown in the bloodbath that followed.’
The warden laughed. ‘He never leaves his cell. As you’re about to see, he’s in solitary confinement and the cell has integral showering and latrine facilities. Only two cells in this block and the other one is empty at the moment. Here we go.’ The warden opened the door with his card pass and the two men entered the reception area.
‘Morning, George.’
The guard jumped to attention and came from behind his desk to greet the warden and his visitor.
‘George, this is Tom Chalmers, the prisoner’s brief. I’d like to take him through and leave him for half an hour.’
‘Sir?’
‘I take it you have been informed? It should have been on the schedule you picked up at shift changeover.’
‘It’s not that, sir. It’s just that Mr Chalmers is already here. Been in there for . . . oh, let me see . . .’ He looked at his watch, tapped on its face then checked his prisoner’s log. ‘Strange. He’s been in there for fifty minutes.’
The warden and the lawyer looked at each other in bewilderment.
‘We’d better go through,’ the warden said, scanning his pass across the lock on the visiting area door.
‘What’s this? It’s open.’
The faint light from the guardroom was enough to reveal a glass-topped table with two plastic chairs to either side, set in the centre of an otherwise empty room. ‘You didn’t let him into the cell itself, did you?’
‘Of course not, sir. I don’t have the authority or means of opening it.’
The three men made their way down the passage at the back of the room and turned right into a short corridor. It was silent, peaceful. The tiny red LEDs of the two security cameras provided the only sources of light.
‘Did you put the lights out, George?’
‘I’m not allowed to do that either, sir.’
The warden edged along the cell front, past the voice transmission panel and the delivery hatch, stopping for a moment to peer through the six-inch–thick bulletproof glass. ‘Can’t see a damn thing in there.’ He continued to feel his way towards the end of the cell, hands sliding across the smooth surface, inky darkness in front of his face.
Then nothing.
His hand fell through the gap where the closed access door should have been. ‘The bloody cell’s open!’ he shouted. ‘Hoi, you in there!’
The lights came on.
‘Time delay operating, sir.’
The warden threw his hands to his temples.
‘My God, where’s he gone?’

‘You’re a free man, thanks to us.’
‘I’m grateful.’
‘Now you can return to your trade and make a fortune for yourself and others. However, first you’ll have to completely change your profile. Plastic surgery will be necessary but don’t worry, I’ve already arranged this. The surgeon is to be trusted and will act with discretion.’
‘You’re very generous. What can I do for you in return?’
‘Ha, I was coming to that. I understand your clients consider your skills to be exceptional. Only the best for those in the highest positions of power and wealth, as they say. You are the world’s most feared and, when you have a new identity, you’ll once again be the world’s most elusive. There’s no better marksman than you.’
‘I won’t let you down – you can rely on me. But I have no equipment and the best needs the best.’
‘That will be taken care of. Even you will be impressed, I promise you.’
‘Who’s the mark?’
‘You’ll be given your instructions in due course.’

PART 1: BLACK DIAMOND
CHAPTER 1
The fierce heat of the day had long subsided and a warm evening breeze wafted into Glasnost ’s stately ballroom. At the end of a tough day of videoconferencing with the German research facility and his London HQ, Leon Dabrowski could finally relax. Glass of ice-cold beer in his hand, he moved the lace curtains to one side, stepped out onto the main deck and nodded to the security guard.
‘A lovely evening, sir,’ the guard said with a smile.
‘It is,’ Leon replied, resting his free hand on the deck rail and peering out across Monaco’s Port Hercule harbour. He took a deep breath of fresh sea air, turned to face the guard and leaned back casually.
Security was tight on Glasnost . Most mornings, Leon worked out in the yacht’s gym with a personal training instructor who was also his minder for the day. No problem with that. The problem was with the sheer weight of numbers. Following the birth of Vasily, Leon’s father had doubled his cohort of bodyguards and insisted there would always be one of them within line of sight of his grandson, or at least outside the room he was in. It was excessive, but Leon could appreciate his father’s paranoia to some extent. After all, Leon himself had been the subject of an abduction as a baby and it wasn’t until he had reached his thirties that he became aware of his true heritage and was reunited with his biological father. He was the son of Vladimir Chekhov, Russia’s richest oligarch and one of the most powerful men in the world.
‘You sure you don’t want to come in for a drink?’
The guard laughed. ‘Not tonight, sir.’
Leon looked at his watch and drained his glass. ‘Some other time, maybe?’ He patted the guard on the shoulder, smiled and went back inside.
Security staff everywhere. With his muscular build and short spikey hair, his father’s head of security, Ivan Kuzmin, didn’t exactly look like the archetypal bartender. ‘Do you want one, Leon?’ he said, lifting the jug of fresh orange juice.
‘No thanks. I’ll have another beer later.’
Leon was accustomed to bodyguards, yet their constant presence was getting to Magda. At some stage, his wife would have to return to the Jagiellonian Institute in Poland to continue her mathematical research. And that meant he’d have to go with her, find somewhere more suitable than his luxury Krakow apartment, and relocate the family from his father’s super-yacht.
‘Penny for your thoughts, Leon,’ Magda said, ruffling his hair. ‘Or do we have to pay a more substantial consultancy fee for access to that computer inside your skull?’
He studied the direction of her gaze. Could she see any grey strands nestling in his black flaxy mop? ‘Oh, I was just thinking of the future, our future. I’m fine living here in the lap of luxury.’ He looked towards his father and offered a wry smile. ‘I can continue my work for Fusion and make regular visits to London and Greifswald. I have no issues with that. But we need a family home, somewhere normal to live while we bring up Vasily. And you need to get back to work.’
‘Now hold on a minute, young man.’ Chekhov smiled at him but there was a hint of concern beneath his father’s veneer. ‘As a formidable and successful organisation, we inevitably have enemies. As Fusion’s chief scientist, you possess vital information on the design of the world’s first commercial fusion reactor, and I don’t have to tell you what unscrupulous people would do to get hold of that. No, no, no! I’m not going to let my family wander off and live in some leafy Polish suburb. And Vasily is going nowhere without a bodyguard.’
As if responding to his grandfather, Vasily whimpered in his cot. Saying nothing, Magda slipped away from the discussion and crossed the room to tend to him.
Leon turned to Kuzmin. ‘There must be some way you can protect u