Part Eighteen of The Sensational Shrimpleton Saga: Vlad the Inhaler…

We now return to an extraordinarily expensive and State-Of-The-Art house in Buckinghamshire owned by a very successful drugs dealer. The intrepid James Churchill Proudfoot – a.k.a. Threefeet of the Yard – had blundered across this leading criminal there largely by sheer chance. And this criminal is an Irishman by the name of Joseph Aleksandrovitch Kelly – or `Joe-Boy’ to his friends and relations. Jim had also encountered one of Joe-Boy’s rather scary assistants, a man who looked like the archetypal member of the Gestapo but who was actually a Russian citizen in the pay of the Secret Service based in Moscow, the FSB.

Jim had excused himself at an opportune moment to make a private phone call to Lady Lynne Shrimpleton, who gave him precisely twenty-four hours to discover the location of the Khalistan Warriors – or forfeit the thirty-five grand she had promised him in cash for infiltrating them.

With a mind like his, James Churchill Proudfoot was totally confident it could it be done.

Which was precisely the same reason that anyone who actually knew Threefeet of the Yard would doubt it…

When the Private Investigator returned to the room where he had been boozing a few minutes earlier, it was to find Joseph Aleksandrovitch Kelly talking quietly with the intimidating man who had been introduced earlier as Vladimir.

They both looked up as Jim re-appeared.

“Ah – dere ye’ are!” said Joe. “I’m off to me bed now. Youse can sleep downstairs in the garage: you’ll foind some blankets in one of me motors. But foist, Vladimir here would loike to have a little word witch yez.”

The man with the dead, pale-blue eyes and the steel-rimmed glasses waited until his boss had left the room and then turned his steely, mercilessless stare on poor old Jim.

“Sit down, Mr Smellyfeet!” he said, pointing towards a hard chair he had pulled out from under a table in the corner of the room. It wasn’t really a request: it was an order.

The vodka Jim had imbibed earlier had given him a certain amount of Dutch Courage, though. He wasn’t going to spoken to like that!

“The name’s not Smellyfeet – it’s Smellyfoot!” he asserted boldly – and then realised that it wasn’t. “Er Proudfoot. No it isn’t… It was once but that was a long time ago. Now, it’s Threefeet – yes: Threefeet of the Yard! And…”

He was interrupted as Vladimir physically pushed him backwards and he first hit the chair behind him and then automatically sat down on it as his knees gave way.

Vladimir took another chair from under the table, turned it and sat on it the wrong way round in a way where his eyes were level with Jim’s own but far too close for comfort – at least as far as our private sleuth was concerned.

“When I ask you to do something, Mr Smellyfeet” Vlad repeated in a low heavily-accented Russian voice which was laden with menace. “You will do it. Immediately – if you know what is good for you!”

“You – you don’t in-in-in intimidate me!” lied Jim, about to add the word – `much’ but managing to stop himself just in time.

He knew he had to stand-up to people like these if he was ever going to get even a sniff of the thirty-five Grand Her Ladyship had offered him for finding the Khalistan Killers; Turban Terrors or whatever it was that the scary people he had been tasked to hunt-down called themselves.

He needed to take a leaf out of her book and do what she had done to him: scare this bloke in exactly the same way that she had scared him.

What had she said when he first met her? `Have you ever had your testicles crushed in a vice?’ – that was it!

So, gathering all his resolve, he looked Vladimir full in the face and said:

“Have you…”

He paused – and gulped. Those eyes were barely human! They seemed to be boring into him. And what was that white stuff on his top lip? Some sort of talcum powder? Or…

Jim told himself to get his act together and concentrate. So he started again:

“Have you got any vices?”

“Vices?” repeated his interrogator without even blinking. “Everyone has vices. It is part of the human condition: is it not?”

The steely gaze had, if anything, hardened,

“No – I mean vices as in things you can put other things in.”

“Put things in? Like what?”

“ Like – er – bits of wood: stuff that needs sawing!”

“Do I look like a Carpenter?”

“Not just bits of wood… Steel things as well. All sorts of stuff that needs sawing! Oh – and testicles!”

“Testicles?” asked Vladimir, looking suddenly puzzled. “You must forgive me – my English is not perfect. What is this `testicles’ – and why would you saw them?”

Jim was getting flustered. He was supposed to be scaring the guy, not giving him a language lesson.

“Never mind! What” he noticed that his voice was suddenly very high and attempted to modulate it with a passable impression of Richard Burton: “Er, what do you want to talk to me about?”

Vladimir had actually been put off his stride by Jim Proudfoot’s performance so far.

He had assumed that this man was a stooge trained by British Intelligence. How else could he have fooled the thermal imaging cameras earlier on?

Then there were the images on his phone – only someone with absolutely the right contacts could acquire gold-dust like them! He had copied the photographs of what be believed to be kosher Top Secret documents from Jim’s phone. But the fact that he had been able to do it so easily rang all sorts of alarm bells in Vladimir’s head. He would expect the files he had downloaded remotely to be at least encrypted – but they weren’t. So was this proof that this was a maverick? Or was it a cunning trick by M.I.6 to have him think precisely that?

Even as he continued to stare at Jim Proudfoot and seemingly turn him into a jelly, another thought occurred to Vladimir:

The FSB had taught him all the tell-tale signs to spot a British Secret Agent. It wasn’t difficult: they tended to follow a pattern which hadn’t changed in decades. But this man wasn’t like any spy he had ever met before in the employment of His Majesty King Charles III – or his Mother. Could this be a new ploy by the Brits? To send an apparent halfwit to do serious espionage work by taking advantage of the slip in their guard of normally professionally cynical agents such as himself that planting an apparent idiot like this one would cause? Maybe Smellyfeet wasn’t as stupid as he made out…

What he needed to do, Vladimir decided, was set-up this man with a sort of test to see if he gave his real identity away.

Having decided to do this, the Russian chose to adopt a totally different approach in his interrogation.

He stopped glaring at Jim and suddenly smiled at him instead. Because he had made a decision: no more intimidation; lots more friendliness. What he needed to do is gain this man’s trust by indulging him…

Unfortunately – from James Churchill Proudfoot’s perspective – this change in facial expression was, if anything, even more unsettling that what had preceded it. Vladimir’s was the smile of a really nasty child who enjoyed pulling the wings off butterflies or snapping frogs’ legs: the sort of psychopathic little horror who would tie fireworks to cats’ tails if he got the opportunity. The word `sinister’ barely did the look on this man’s skull-like face justice.

“James, I want us to be friends! I will do one nice thing for you if you will do one nice thing for me!”

Jim felt his buttocks clench. He didn’t like the sound of that. This guy didn’t seem to be Gay but…

“The nice thing I would like you to do for me is tell me where you got the documentation on your phone which I saw earlier.”

“And – and in return?” Jim was almost as amazed as the Russian was that these bold and challenging words came out of his mouth.

“Just name it!”

“Take me to the Khalistan Warriors!”

“Consider it done!”

“Tomorrow!”

“Ok. Tomorrow it is! I will personally take you to the pub known as the Bristol and point them out to you. It will give you a chance to say goodbye to them.”

“G-g-goodbye to them?”

“Oh – did I not say? My friend Grigor – who you have not met yet – and I are going to… dispose of them. Tomorrow. Nothing can go wrong – we have thought of everything! It is all prepared – just as it was when we did things like this countless times in Chechnya! But that was then – and this is now. So let’s talk about the documents, James – where did you get them?”

Jim felt he had no option other than to spill the beans. Vladimir scared the life out of him for one thing and he just knew there was no point lying to him in any case.

Having come clean with Vlad about the secret letters and where he had got them, Jim had abandoned all plans he might otherwise be hatching to sell them to foreign powers. No, now that he knew of Vladimir’s plans to dispose of the Khalli Scallies, his mind was well and truly elsewhere.

James Churchill Proudfoot may well have found himself lying under blankets in a big car in a huge house in Buckinghamshire a little later on but he was so worked-up that he couldn’t sleep. He was racking his drink-sodden brain to try and think of a way to convince Lady Lynne, first of all, that the assassination of the Sikh group had been his idea. Then he must insist on credit – and extra fees for the mass killing itself.

The only question in his febrile mind was: how…

—

James Proudfoot was rudely awoken the next morning as Joseph Aleksandrovitch Kelly roughly pulled the blankets he was snuggled under off him as he lay on the back seat of his black Range Rover.

“Roise and shine Jimbo!” said Joe, with intolerable jollity for the early hour as far as Jim – with his dry mouth and vodka-befuddled brain – was concerned. “Arra – we’ve got to get on! Getcha self into de kitchen and Agnes will feed yez! Den we’ve got work to do – lot and lots of it!”

By eleven, Jim had helped a hairy, squat bull of a man who was introduced to him as Grigor to load ten heavy bags of spuds into Joe-Boy’s big car. Jim was out of breath well before the end of this but Grigor was in his element, carrying two bags at a time, one under each arm, as if they were each as light as a feather.

Then Vladimir appeared, still in very scary Friendly Mode.

“You must wonder what we are doing!” he said to Jim in that terrifying way of his. “I will show you – in fact, you can help. Come with me!”

They went upstairs to the control room where the monitors and the masses of electronic equipment could be found. Jim found himself gaping, open-mouthed at all the gizmos they had up here.

”Blimey!” he thought to himself, “These people really mean business!”

Vladimir unlocked a metal cabinet and took ten shiny metal objects from within. He handed four of these to Jim and took the other six himself. Then he led the way back down to the kitchen. Threefeet of the Yard detected the presence of not just one but two fridges in there. In the back of the largest one were perhaps forty or fifty Tupperware-like boxes. Vladimir pulled one out and placed it on a worktop alongside the six metal objects he had brought from the control room.

“To you, this probably looks like Plasticine or perhaps putty.” He pulled the lid off a random box and shoved the brick-coloured material it contained right under Jim’s nose. “Smell it, though! No linseed oil! That’s because this isn’t putty! It has no smell at all! So what does that tell you?”

Jim’s puzzled expression told Vlad that it didn’t tell him anything.

“It tells you that this was manufactured before 1990. This is the legacy of Zasha Ivanovitch Smirnov! He, shall we say, acquired it from the Provisional IRA when he first settled in the Irish Republic.”

Vlad pulled a lump of the material out of the plastic box, rolled it into a ball and threw it with surprising force onto the worktop.

“Stable! Odourless! The manufacturers added the tagging agent DMDNB so that it could be detected by sniffer dogs after 1990 – jolly good cricketing of them – is that the expression? But I suspect that you already know what DMDNB is, don’t you, James? “

Jim’s alarmed expression indicated that he didn’t – but he was already trying to think of something even vaguely plausible to offer. He had no need to, though, as his lecture continued:

“DMDNB is Di Methyl Di Nitro Butane. No dog on earth could use its nose to detect this stuff here though. Which is why just twelve ounces of it brought down Pan-Am Flight 103 on Lockerbie during 1988. Which makes it absolutely perfect for us! Any idea what it is yet?”

Jim’s expression was unreadable. Puzzlement? Alarm? Simple brute stupidity? Vladimir wasn’t sure.

“You do right to look concerned. This is an example of perhaps the best batch of this particular material ever manufactured by the Czech company Explosia.”

He glanced at Jim as if expecting to see the sort of reaction that any British secret agent would surely be unable to hide as far as this stuff was concerned. And found none at all. So either Proudfoot was an even more convincing conmen than he had already realised – or he was a novice; and a very naive one at that. So he gave the potential member of MI6 a thin, unsettling smile and continued:

“Yes – Explosia. Ring any bells?”

Vlad stared as if into the very reaches of James Proudfoot’s soul at this point but there didn’t seem to be anything even vaguely tinkling – let alone clanging – anywhere, let alone in its depths.

“This is Semtex. Basically, it is a high performance plastic explosive containing a mixture of RDX and PETN bonded by plasticized SBR rubber – but a man of your experience probably already knows that.”

But Jim’s expression remained that of a poker player – or an absolute moron. Vladimir decided to continue anyway – even if he was wasting his breath:

“The presence of PETN in this PBX ensures – what does the handbook say? Ah: `its safe definite initiation by a relevant detonator’. A relevant detonator. That’s what you’ve got in your hands!”

This information gave Jim Threefeet such a shock that he almost dropped the four shiny metal objects he was still carrying.

Vlad took one off him and held it up to the light.

“I designed these myself!” he said with obvious pride: “A solid brass base with space for a timer and a battery. First used in a primary school in Moscow during 2002. Just one of them. It was strategically placed under a table in the kindergarten by one of my colleagues in the FSB masquerading as a schools’ inspector. Blew the walls out when it exploded without warning at eleven o’clock in the morning. Killed everyone within a twenty metre radius – fifty-three kids and staff. Tragic. Outrageous. Atrocious.”

But was that the glimmer of a self-satisfied smile on his skull-like face as Vlad obviously savoured these words?

“We blamed Chechen separatists of course – but you probably know that as well, don’t you Mr Smellyfeet? Anyway: the detonator is quite simple. There is a battery which is connected to a digital clock.”

Vladimir pointed towards these components in the detonator he had in his hand as he explained all this.

“It is also connected to two wires – a positive one and a negative one. Once we’ve set the timer – like this – to midnight; it’s good to go. Next…”

He put the detonator down and lifted another box of Semtex out of the fridge and removed the lid.

“Next, we push the wires deep into the plastic explosive – like so…”

He shoved first one wire and then the other deep into the brick-coloured plastic explosive.

“That creates what we call a spark point. At midnight, the timer will allow the battery to send a charge to this point, creating a spark which will trigger the Semtex to explode. But only if we have buried the detonator as well.”

He pushed the brass contrivance into the plastic explosive and then replaced the lid of the Tupperware box.

Giles the gardener entered the kitchen at this point with a tray of dirty dishes which he proceeded to wash in the sink, right next to them. Vlad completely ignored him but became very earnest as he said the Jim:

“I want you to help me with these now. We need to check each detonator. Make sure the wiring’s correct and that the spark point is properly aligned in the material. Then we must test the batteries and double-check the timer. If any of these things isn’t done properly, there’s a possibility that any one of these charges could go-off unexpectedly.”

 “Go-off unexpectedly?” repeated Jim, his voice perhaps an octave higher than usual.

“Yes: go-off unexpectedly – explode! And we don’t want that to happen, James – do we?”

Once they had made sure that each and every bomb was properly constructed and double-checked, Vlad and Jim carried them out to the Range Rover. Then, they lifted out all the heavy bags that had been lugged into it earlier and removed enough spuds from each to be able to place one of these lethal devices centrally in each and then cover them when the potatoes were replaced. Finally, they lifted each bag very carefully back into the car.

Vladimir checked his watch and then said to his less than willing assistant:

“We will be leaving in about an hour. Take a break!”

With that, he went back upstairs into the house, leaving Proudfoot of the Yard alone long enough to make a brief phone call.

Several thousand miles away in Jalandhar, an alarm sounded to alert several geeks wearing turbans and scanning computer monitors that this was happening. They avidly listened to what was said next but were little the wiser by the end of it.

Who was `Loveliness’, for instance?

They knew the call was about someone called the `Khalli Scallies’ – a term they had come to recognise – but what was all that stuff about going to Bristol tonight?

What was ` DMDNB’?

What was this stuff going to be used for in Bristol later on? Or was it?

Why was the man in the conversation so proud of his feet?

And this constant repetition of the word `fees’ – fees for what, exactly?

But the call between Lady Lynne and Threefeet of the Yard was abruptly ended by the appearance of Joseph Aleksandrovitch Kelly.

“Howayah?” he said to Jim. Then, looking around conspiratorially, he put his arm round Jim’s shoulder and asked, in a quiet voice:

“Was Vlad… all roight?”

Threefeet of the Yard looked at Joe uncomprehendingly. Was the utterly terrifying Vladimir ever all right?

“Wot Oi means is – he wasn’t too, er… wired, was he?”

“He did a lot of wiring if that’s what you…”

“No! Oi mean – were his eyes huge loike saucers?”

Jim thought about Vlad’s eyes – and shuddered. The steel-rimmed glasses always made his pupils look huge…

“Mebees a wee bit crazy? Bloodshot peepers?”

Jim nodded mutely.

“Wired as in a bit jumpy? Nervy? Shaky?”

“I was all three of those things!” admitted Threefeet of the Yard with commendable honesty. “I find your friend Vladimir rather intimidating to be perfectly frank.”

“Frank? ‘Tis Joe-Boy so it is! But looker here… Musha, but our Russian friend has a bit of a problem wid de old Coke. You’ve heard of Vlad the Impaler – dat Vampire fellah who loiked to stick spikes in his victim in places dey didn’t appreciate? Well, we call our man Vlad the Inhaler – but not to his face! De thing is – when he’s workin’, bein’ high is a problem. Like as in us all bein’ blown sky-high if he makes any mistakes. Have yer checked the boobies?”

Jim looked around for any random females.

“Boobies: Booby-traps: de bombs!”

“Yes!” said Jim. “But I wouldn’t call myself an expert on…”

“Dat’s fine, so! We’ll be settin’ off in a while. Get yerself somethin’ to eat! It’s going to be a long day!”

Oh dear! Looks like the next episode is going to go with a bang! Whatever you do – don’t miss it!