‘Very good of him,’ said Shepherd. ‘It’ll give me time to do a walk-around outside. Now, what’s happening with the guy who was shot? Ulyashin?’
‘Mikhail’s coming back tomorrow,’ said Popov. ‘He’s using crutches but we can put him in here, he’ll be fine.’
‘If it’s OK with you I’d like to take a run out to where the shooting happened. You can talk me through it.’
‘No problem,’ said Popov. ‘Mr Grechko is here all day tomorrow.’
‘Can you fix it so that everything is pretty much the same as when you were shot at? Same guys, same car.’
‘We can do that,’ said Popov. ‘But why?’
‘I want to get a feel for what happened,’ said Shepherd. ‘It’ll give me an idea of what we’re up against.’
Shepherd and Popov walked around the outside of the house and then around the extensive grounds, which included an orchard, a large terrace and barbecue pit, a basketball court and a kennels where three large Dobermans watched Shepherd with suspicion through a chain-link fence. ‘We let the dogs out at night,’ said Popov. ‘Be careful when they are around, their bites are much worse than their bark.’ One of the dogs bared its teeth at Shepherd as if to prove his point. ‘They are trained in German,’ said Popov, ‘but they won’t obey strangers.’
‘No problem,’ said Shepherd. ‘I have my gun.’
Popov turned to look at him and then he smiled when he realised that Shepherd was joking. ‘English humour,’ said the Russian.
‘I hope so,’ said Shepherd. He had a Bluetooth earpiece in his left ear and a transceiver clipped to his belt in the small of his back. Popov had also scanned the thumb of his right hand and had him set up his own four-digit security code for the keypads.
Popov showed Shepherd several sensors in the ground that picked up vibrations and sound. ‘We had these installed after the sniping incident,’ Popov explained. ‘They are fed to a console in the security centre but at the moment they’re oversensitive and of course the dogs keep setting them off.’
‘You’d be better off with movement-activated security lights,’ said Shepherd. ‘Though again the dogs will set them off. What about your people? Do they patrol?’
Popov nodded. ‘We make that random,’ he said. ‘But there’s always at least one of us somewhere in the grounds. Day and night.’ He looked at his watch, a rugged stainless-steel Omega. ‘Mr Grechko will be ready for you now.’ He took Shepherd in through one of the back entrances. Again it took a thumbprint and a four-digit code for them to gain access before they headed along a hallway to the library. Grechko was already sitting behind a large desk. He stood up and walked towards Shepherd, his arm outstretched. He was a big man with hair so black that it could only have been dyed, with a square chin, a snub nose and thick eyebrows that had grown together so that they formed a single line across his forehead. ‘Welcome to my home,’ he said, offering a big hand with manicured nails, a diamond-encrusted Chopard watch on his wrist. He was wearing black trousers and a white silk shirt open to reveal a thick gold chain around his neck and greying chest hair that seemed to confirm that the hair on his head was indeed dyed.
There were two sofas at the far end of the library and he headed for them. As they sat down facing each other across a coffee table piled high with glossy books about antiques, Dmitry slipped out, pulling the double doors closed behind him. The walls were lined with books, thousands of them pristine and, by the look of it, unopened. There were stepladders on rails that ran the length of the walls, allowing access to the top shelves, and there were leather-bound books in display cases that were probably first editions. Grechko didn’t look like a reader, though. He sat with his arms outstretched along the back of the sofa and crossed his legs. The soles of his shoes were totally unmarked, as if he only ever wore them indoors. ‘So what do you think of my security?’ asked the Russian.
Shepherd wasn’t sure whether he meant the people on his team or the physical security arrangements, but either way he had no intention of badmouthing Popov to his boss. ‘Everything’s professional,’ he said.
‘Do I need more people?’ asked Grechko. ‘I can bring in extra staff if necessary.’
‘I think manpower-wise you’re probably OK,’ Shepherd said. ‘And you’ve done everything that needs to be done here. But I’d like to make some changes to the way you move around away from the house.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The fact that a sniper was able to get you in his sights shows that you are predictable,’ said Shepherd. ‘Getting a sniper into position takes a lot of planning. You have to know where the target will be at a particular time, and that can only happen if the target is following a set timetable. You should never use the same route consecutively, you should vary entrances and exits when you visit a location, and you shouldn’t have any regular meetings. For instance, Dmitry tells me that on the first Friday of every month you go to The Ivy.’
Grechko nodded. ‘There are six of us. Good friends. If we are in London, we meet. Is that a problem?’
‘The problem is that if you are predictable, you are vulnerable. I bet you have the same table each time, right?’
‘Of course. They know us there.’
‘Exactly. You’re known. So suppose I book the same table the day before the first Friday of the month. And suppose I take with me an explosive device. Nothing special, just a few ounces of C4 and some nuts and bolts for shrapnel. And a simple timer, set for twenty-four hours. And I fix the device to the underside of the table.’ He smiled at Grechko. ‘Bang!’ He mimed the explosion with his hands.
Grechko flashed him a tight smile. ‘You realise that every time I go to The Ivy I’m now going to be looking under the table?’
‘If you continue being predictable, that wouldn’t be a bad thing to do,’ said Shepherd. ‘Same goes for your route. When you drive from here to The Ivy, do you go the same way each time?’
Grechko nodded.
‘So I get a car and fill it full of explosives made from ammonium nitrate and fuel oil and I park it on the route. Detonated via a mobile phone. I wait until your car drives by and …’ He mimed an explosion again. ‘Bang!’
‘I understand,’ said Grechko.
‘But it doesn’t have to be as dramatic as that,’ said Shepherd. ‘Do you eat the same food? Drink the same wine?’
‘I am a big fan of their steak. And they have a Château Neuf du Pape that is out of this world.’
‘So I get a job in the kitchen and on the day you’re in I poison the steaks or the wine. It’s not an easy thing to do, but it’s happened in the past. The CIA and Mossad are especially good with poisons.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m not saying that you have to be paranoid, but you have to be careful. The only way that a sniper can take a shot at you is if you are predictable. Instead of meeting at the same restaurant, vary it. And leave it until the day before you decide where to go. I’ll talk to Dmitry about varying your routes. But a lot of it you can do yourself. If you have to meet your lawyer, meet him in a hotel rather than his office. Or have him come to you. If you’re out socialising, vary the location and, if you can, vary your entry and exit.’
‘You talk a lot of sense, Tony.’
‘It’s my job, Mr Grechko.’ Shepherd nodded at a large framed photograph of the Russian with his wife and sons. ‘Do you mind me asking about the security arrangements you have in place for your family while they’re away?’
‘My family?’