Roskov book 21, p.1
Roskov, Book 21, page 1
Ricky Roskov
Book 21
Copyright © Geoff Wolak
This book is a work of fiction, technically accurate in the detail of geographical locations, and the time period history. It is young adult romance, conspiracy and murder-mystery.
It’s not OK to get fat, unless you’re a woman
The twins explained to Julie that if a man gets fat that he’s “letting himself go”, but that if a woman gets fat that the man in her life must love her for “who she is”.
At least that’s what I thought they might have said because that’s what most female commentators over thirty said on TV chat shows, and what modern-day women’s magazines reported as being the right thing to say, and to think.
The twins, however, showed their arses and described which exercises worked best, which made me smile and feel all warm and glowing inside. And proud of my girls.
But my ladies and their firm arses were soon packing, a late flight from Birmingham Airport back to the glamourous world of modelling. Julie hugged the twins, I hugged the twins, and it was sad to see them go, my mind on a long stay in Corsica as soon as Parliament was in recess.
In the morning I packed a bag, made a few secret calls and confirmed a few secret things, and Bonza and myself - along with Emmanuelle, were soon on our way down to London to get a flight back up north and towards Londonderry in Northern Ireland.
The flight took longer to check-in than to get to Londonderry, and the plane badly buffeted by an Atlantic storm as we came into land. Safely down in a familiar small airport, a minibus was waiting, smiling chatty police on hand, and we headed to the same hotel near the airport but under a leaden grey sky.
Luggage dumped in a room that I would not be sleeping in, toilets used, and we set off again, the weather being OK, in that it was not pelting down with rain as usual over here.
Leaving the hotel with a chatty local minibus driver that was hard to understand, and bracketed by tall green hedges, we soon hit the event traffic and the crowds, over the old bridge and to the side of the estuary that had been a muddy building site just nine months ago.
As we crossed the bridge I could see a line of mostly white buildings that all appeared new, most being apartment blocks that were two or three stories high, balconies with shiny glass noticed.
Barriers kept back the crowds, and as I stepped down into a stiff breeze the people cheered, but I had no idea yet just who they were, which demographic – hostile or friendly.
So I started to shake hands and ask questions, such as: “What the hell you doing stood there in a cold wind when you could be in the pub?”
The crowd turned out to consist mostly of Catholic locals, but a few had travelled across from Belfast for the grand opening, some had come up from the south, even from Dublin. A minibus pulled up behind us, Armani stepping down with top aides, and I had made sure that everyone local knew about the Vatican investment here.
The final minibus brought us the men of President Clinton’s team, those minor officials soon stepping down and joining us, their flag pendants displayed on their jacket lapels of course.
As a group, we walked along whilst being snapped, soon to the town mayor and the senior council officials. And stood with them were the keen builders and architects, hands shaken, people introduced.
The council leader pointed out new buildings, gift shops and cafes, and he described what was where before we stepped to the river railings and peered down at a floating pontoon, small sailboats already moored against it, seagulls loudly calling out.
Reversing course, we had a look inside a new apartment block, new-carpet-smelling apartments and nice with it, one block having been commissioned by the Vatican. It had not made a huge profit, but the Vatican had more than doubled their money and would also now collet rent.
Back outside, I stepped to the group of TV cameras, no idea who they were.
‘Ricky, are you proud of what you built here?’ came in an Irish accent.
‘The ideas about what to build came from local people mostly, I just provided some of the money and the nudge. But it looks great now, great for tourists, and I understand that local house prices have risen, at least those close to the waterfront.
‘Some of the development money came from my people, some from the Vatican, some from President Clinton’s team, that team here with us today. The Americans also put money into the new nursing home in West Belfast, and now they’re investing in house regeneration here as well.
‘But the EU are also now getting up to speed, and they have regeneration money to spend that had been held back in previous years under Thatcher, so I hope to make a big splash with your houses this next year, a facelift and a touch-up.
‘How’s unemployment in Derry these days?’ I asked.
‘It’s way down, and half the men are enjoying themselves in Corsica.’
‘I have it on good authority that their wives like shopping, and time without their husbands around.’
The TV crews laughed.
A man cut in, ‘Ricky, any more investigations into Catholic priests?’
‘Yes, but done quietly. Have things settled down in Dublin?’
‘New government, lot of people left, or had to leave.’
‘And the mood of the people? Would I still get a beer down there?’
‘Ya’d get a beer alright, yous not to blame for what happened forty years ago.’
‘I’d like to visit more often but they keep me busy.’
The lady asked, ‘You’ll take more men to Corsica?’
‘To Spain and Crete, maybe another six hundred or more Catholics and the same number of Protestant men. Next year an additional thousand on top of that.
‘But it must be stressful for the men, sending money home and not knowing what their wives are doing with it.’
The TV crews laughed.
The lady asked, ‘More building work in Belfast?’
‘More tall towers going up in the docks, yes, as well as our new soft prison, and we’ll build a new housing estate each year then think about tearing down some of those god-awful concrete tower blocks.
‘But we’re now starting to get into second gear with house renovations around the province, hundreds of houses being done up and then rented out.’
‘Lenny Keane signed to Manchester United Juniors after you advised him to…’
‘He would have been a fool to turn them down, and he could make millions in a short career and then retire somewhere nice. Chances like that don’t come along more than once in a lifetime.’
‘The IRA have apologised for sending the seagull.’
I smiled widely. ‘Bad sportsmanship, but funny to watch.’
Back with the gang, I led them to a pub, and inside we all got drinks handed to us, mostly Guinness, the Vatican staff not opposed to a drink or two.
‘How are things?’ I asked Armani amidst the friendly background roar.
‘Things … are much better, the Mafia greatly diminished, attendance up, and our charity is doing very well.’
‘And the work ethic and mood in the Vatican?’
‘Much better than before, a feeling of … warmth not competition.’
I nodded at that. ‘If you suspect someone, let me know, I can reach them from anywhere I happen to be.’
He nodded back. ‘We are invested in the new nursing home valley in Sardinia, they have started to build.’
‘Nine months to the first nursing home opening, maybe less, my crews are faster these days. And we’ll open a warehouse there, because cheap supplies are essential. In the homes for your priests … will you need a bar or a disco?’
He shot me a look. ‘They’ll drink in their rooms,’ he whispered.
Back outside, we patrolled the line of spectators, we even found an American couple on holiday, and after thanking the dignitaries and the TV crews we were soon back to the hotel to collect our untouched luggage.
Toilets used, a quick cup of tea and a chat about progress here, and we were soon on a plane and heading back, things to do.
New York
After just one night back in the suites, a pleasant evening spent with Julie as she tried on the clothes she had bought with the twins, I was booked onto a flight to New York, a good offer of a million dollars from my usual chat show host.
Decker had flown in to London, and now he would turn around and fly back out, but he reported on the phone that he had slept well on the flight here but had also booked an airport hotel room for a daylight day, spending just six hours in that room, a shower and a nap followed by another shower.
So when I met him he reported that he was well fed, and well rested.
Yet again we would be flying in Business Class, not too expensive yet with more leg room, and we had secured extra leg room by being behind the wall for the galley of this 747.
The hostesses all smiled my way as we boarded and sat, a baby crying straight away. Faces turned towards me, as if it was my fault, so I sighed out. Baby lifted, and she calmed down straight away, seemingly fascinated with me. And in my mind I could hear Julie singing a song to the baby.
Sat, baby still with me, and that baby was soon asleep. So when the mother checked her previously loud offspring before take-off she just smiled at her now-sleeping offspring and cheekily left her with me, the rest of the passengers grateful it seemed.
Levelling off, I took the baby back, still asleep, and I handed it over as the mother whispered a quiet “thank you”.
I had no need to sleep and so read a magazin e about London Docklands Development, and it contained a photo of the patch of dirt that may someday be my Malaysian-style shopping mall with apartments.
Turning the page, it displayed my artist’s sketch of the proposed building, a good write up for me, and the article was bound to attract investor attention. I showed Decker what I was going to build and I detailed what would be in it.
He responded, ‘I stayed in a place like that in Asia, can’t remember where, big hotel with a pool up on the roof, and the ground floor was all shops, cafes, massage.
‘In the States, you drive to each place, but Rockerfeller had the same idea as you, and the Rockerfeller Tower in New York has shops and offices as well as residential apartments above them.’
I told him, ‘I’ll keep an apartment there for my team, and to rent it out to tourists. London Docklands I mean, not the Rockerfeller building.’
We landed roughly on time, and we landed roughly in a cross wind, but I had held the baby during the descent after she had started to cry. Handing the baby back, the chubby lump now smiling, I walked off the plane with Decker, and after collecting our luggage we met a four-man FBI detail.
Getting to the minibus, I asked, ‘What’s happening with Tigenheart these days?’ All finally aboard, we set off into to the late afternoon traffic.
The lead agent told me, ‘He’s done a lot of damage to the mob - we’ve made sixty arrests, many of them in the Forbes 500 list, so they got themselves a small cell and not a five star spa resort.
‘And we seized a shit load of money, hundreds of millions of dollars grabbed, the owners of that money unable to explain quite how they made it.’
I smiled. ‘Was it in cash in a shoe box?’
‘Ya joke, but one lady did have cash in shoe boxes, in her damn closet!’
The distinctive New York skyline appeared, 6pm here now but not dark yet, the sun low on the horizon, the tops of the skyscrapers sparkling some, the streets sat in shade. And the traffic was still manic.
But I got a shiver as I studied the impressive tall towers, a strange sense of foreboding.
I soon felt the tingle, and it grew quickly. A glance over my shoulder and we were being followed, four men in a car, and they did not look like tourists. My heart skipped a beat.
I faced forwards. Julie, the car behind, make it crash if the men mean me harm.
They mean to kill you, an ambush ahead, and they have a bomb.
I heard a screech a few seconds later and glanced back with my FBI minders, the car rolling into parked cars, soon a flash, our minibus jolted by the loud blast, my detail panicked. And I was none too calm either.
‘That was meant for us!’ I shouted. ‘Take a different route!’
Flashing blue lights turned on, and we sped around the traffic and cut through the lights, panicked calls made on mobile phones. The streets became a blur.
As we sped down those New York streets I knew that I had Julie to help me, and she had previously suggested that she would keep me alive, but being blown apart, burnt extra crispy and then put back together was not an appealing idea, not at all, not even a little bit.
I had to stop being overconfident; a bomb was a bomb and I was mortal.
Arriving at the hotel, two police cars met us there, and with my luggage grabbed we walked briskly inside. The tingle hit me straight away, two men sat on the right hand side. They stood.
‘Contact right!’ I shouted, and pointed, pistols drawn by the FBI as the two would-be assassins reached inside their jackets, both men hit twice each as the screams went up around the foyer, everyone diving down.
An angered breath heaved, and I walked as casually as I could muster towards reception in the melee. I leant over, the staff knelt behind the counter and hiding. ‘Hi, sorry to bother you, but can I have my room key? Name is Roskov, booked in as Rasmussen again.’
Terrified girls peered up at me, one standing and staring at the bloodied bodies as people fled. She tapped at the computer quickly and handed me a key, her hand shaking.
I asked her, ‘What time does the bar stay open till?’
She stared back at me as if I was mad before ducking.
Panicked FBI detail in tow, bodies left with the local police, we grabbed a lift and hit the button. The music started, “The Girl From Ipanema”, as my detail caught their breath, pistol magazines checked. Absent-mindedly, I sang along, my stressed detail glancing at me as if I was mad.
As we approached my floor I had them stand to the sides of the lift with me, weapons drawn, just in case. ‘They know I’m here,’ I pointed out to worried men.
The ping sounded out, the doors starting to slide open, and my heart stopped.
Lift doors fully opened, pistols exiting the lift first, and the FBI fired first, three shots each for two men reaching into jackets, the sound very loud in the lift. And my angered curse was loud as well.
With my luggage, and now very angered and very much pissed-off, I pushed past and left, found my room and opened the door with a quick glance back as two FBI man flanked me, two knelt over the bodies still.
Door open, and my two keen but panicked protectors rushed inside, pistols pointed at the furniture, and as I walked in they checked the room.
‘Clear!’
I got the tingle, cursed inwardly, walked to the window and peered out.
A man means you harm, he makes ready, sounded out in my mind.
‘Do you have men placed on the roof of that building over there? Those men with rifles?’ I loudly asked.
‘No! Get down!’ they screamed, and I ducked just before the glass loudly shattered and before the nice magnolia room, and its nice furniture, was very rudely raked with machinegun fire.
It would need a bit of a makeover, the watercolour on the wall now at an angle and shredded, the maids soon to be pissed off with me at all the glass on the carpets. Not to mention the deep holes in the nice magnolia walls.
I heard a distant scream, an elongated scream with a pronounced Doppler-Shift effect, then a thud, as if a body had fallen and hit a car.
I have killed the man. There is another, the room above us.
Deal with him please.
Hiding under the wall below the window, my two FBI men on their stomachs as frantic calls were made, and we all peered upwards as the dulled sounds of heavy machinegun fire registered.
The two additional men from the elevator appeared at the door on their hands and knees. ‘You OK in there?’
‘Yeah, but there’s heavy automatic fire in the room above us!’ the lead FBI agent shouted back.
I took in the glass on the carpets and the stiff breeze swishing the curtains. ‘I think I’ll need to change rooms.’
My two FBI minders stared at me, as if assessing my sanity, as the sounds of sirens registered in the street below.
The room lights were switched off, which meant that we could sit in chairs as we waited in a dim grey light – in a stiff breeze, police soon seen outside the room, more sirens heard below.
The lead FBI agent took a call, before he told me, ‘They’ll send a chopper to take you.’
‘Take me … where?’ I challenged.
‘Someplace safe.’
‘And where the fuck would that be, Fort Knox perhaps?’
He shot me a look in the dim light. ‘Someplace away from here.’
‘I have a chat show to do tomorrow, so take me some place central and safe, eh.’
He shot me another look.
A SWAT officer came in wearing body armour, a brazen glance out the window as the curtains blew about. In the grey light, the corridor still lit up, he told me, ‘Guy on the roof opposite had a 7.62mm FN machinegun, but he jumped, now he’s down on the street and looking like a jam sandwich.’
‘Hired gunmen don’t commit suicide,’ the grey outline of my lead FBI man noted. ‘Someone pushed him off.’
‘That’s what we figured, they’re looking now.’
‘Dead men don’t talk,’ I noted.
‘This about Tigenheart?’ the SWAT officer asked me.
‘What else?’ I countered with. ‘He upset the rich and powerful, and I turned him.’
A local police officer stepped in.‘Man in the room above, what’s left of him, hit twenty times at close range with a large calibre machinegun. No sign of the weapon, no brass, no nothing, windows intact and locked, door was locked.’
