Roskov Book 1

  Ricky Roskov

  Book 1

  Copyright © Geoff Wolak

  Written in April, 2021, from an idea first formed in 2006.

  This book is a work of fiction based in fact, technically accurate in the detail of geographical locations.

  Email the author: gwresearchb@aol.com

  www.geoffwolakwriting.com

  End of June, 2000

  With a cooling breeze felt on my face, I took in the tranquil lake, and despite the picturesque summer scene set out before me I heaved a giant stress-related sigh, my heart pushing against my chest, and I felt as if I might collapse at any minute, the weight of an elephant pushing down on my shoulders.

  I felt a migraine coming on, which was rare - yet not unexpected given the situation, and my nose felt odd, as if I had been punched, a cold sensation felt in my sinuses despite the pleasant summer weather here in Sweden.

  The picture-postcard scene was broken by a small Swedish Naval patrol boat speeding past, armed men seen in the back, those armed men here to protect me, and to protect me willingly - if not keenly. To protect a young British politician oddly enough, a very young British politician.

  Above the distant trees, an army helicopter buzzed past and headed off down the lake towards urban Stockholm, this lake being a slightly saline fresh water lake that fed into the nearby Baltic Sea.

  I turned back, back to Rolf and the Swedish Interior Minister, behind him a dozen armed men seen patrolling around the house and offices. Rolf and the minister waited expectantly, three steps away, the soldiers and police far enough away not to hear what was being said.

  Worried now, gravely worried, and intensely annoyed, I took in their faces and held up my mobile phone. ‘If … if I make a call, or not make a call, Britain suffers, the victims suffer, everyone suffers, and … no fucking good can come of this whichever way it goes.

  ‘If I release the evidence … then Britain is screwed, soldiers on the streets of London keeping the peace, Britain’s reputation abroad ruined. I think it’s fair to say that tourism to London will be down some,’ I sarcastically told them.

  ‘And the evidence we have, that’s a fucking copy, the original is still out there, and the dirtbag that has it could release it. We, us three, we know about it, and if we do nothing and he releases that fact to the media then we all go to prison.’

  The Interior Minister, dressed now in casual clothes but with a practical green raincoat held, began, ‘You were sent the evidence for a reason, as before. They trust you, they like you, they believe in you – unusual for a politician, even here in quiet Sweden.

  ‘You were tipped off all along, from day one, and this man – whoever he is – he trusts you as well, and he wants you to do something with the evidence.’

  ‘Release it?’ I barked. ‘And what the fuck does that do to Britain?’

  Rolf, calm as ever, asked, ‘What is your gut feeling, as to what to do with it?’

  I took in their faces. ‘My gut feeling is … to deal with it quietly, even if that breaks a few laws. If it’s my career, my life lost, then that’s a price I’ll pay to save this getting out.’

  ‘And there lies the reason why they tip you off – you always do the right thing,’ the Interior Minister pointed out.

  ‘Can it … be dealt with quietly?’ Rolf posed.

  ‘If the Prime Minister cooperates, then yes, I know that other matters were dealt with quietly by our intelligence services. But if the Prime Minister becomes aware of it, then he … may be duty-bound to do the right thing.’

  ‘Not after he sees those fucking videos,’ the Interior Minister scoffed. ‘After he stops being sick he will want it dealt with quietly as well.’

  Rolf put in, ‘The European news is going crazy nuts, they know the Army is here protecting you, two hundred soldiers, sixty police. You can’t hold off giving them a story, it’s on the news all around Europe and the world.’

  ‘I don’t dare hint at this, not yet,’ I told him as I took in the soldiers patrolling the estate, the pressure in my chest increasing.

  My phone trilled, and I glanced at it. ‘The Prime Minister,’ I informed them.

  ‘Best you invite him here … for an unpleasant chat,’ the Interior Minister suggested. ‘It’s your summer recess, so … he can put it down as a holiday here.’

  After a few seconds staring at the phone as it quietly trilled, I hit the green button and raised it to my ear. ‘Roskov.’

  ‘What the hell is going on over there? Why the protection?’

  ‘I … took delivery of some evidence, it was delivered here in Sweden for privacy, and … I can’t risk travelling with it or … risk going back to London yet.’

  After a long pause came, ‘Enough for a court case?’

  ‘Ten times more than is needed.’

  ‘And … it’s what you thought it was?’ he nudged.

  ‘Worse, much … much worse, all caught on high quality video tape.’

  ‘They taped themselves!’ he burst out.

  ‘Can you fly here tomorrow? While you still have a country to run.’

  ‘Oh Christ.’ After a long pause came, ‘I’ll be there, tell them to expect me - and not to shoot me.’

  ‘Just you, or a small team, no mention to anyone yet, if this gets out … it’s all over. But … I … had an idea.’

  ‘An … idea?’

  ‘Can you get me the phone number for the Deputy Head of the Freemasons, Rawlings? And when you come, bring … the head of Mi5, Mi6, CGHQ, and the Met’s Commissioner, Baker.’

  ‘What the hell for?’

  ‘For dealing with this quietly, not in the tabloids.’

  After another long pause came, ‘I’m surprised that you of all people would suggest that, given all that they’ve done to you…’

  ‘You want this in fucking the tabloids? The Met Police shut down, soldiers on the streets, you forced out of office in disgrace and hounded for the rest of your life?’

  After another long pause came, ‘I’ll get you that phone number and … summon the others. But quietly.’

  Call ended, I stared at it for a moment and then took in their expectant looks. ‘Did I just become as bad as they are?’

  The Interior Minister responded, ‘The ends justifies the means, and if you sell your soul to save a nation … so be it. I would in your place, I would sacrifice my life to save Sweden.’

  ‘I’ll … need to brief your Prime Minister, he has a right to know, he’s paying for all this protection.’

  ‘Ha, these soldiers have nothing to do anyhow, let them have a big exercise here and earn their damn pay, eh.’

  1995

  It was the first day after I had finished my “A” Level exams, the first Monday, and it felt odd – no school any more. It was … oddly quiet, and my regular routine had not just been broken - but smashed to pieces and swept away. I felt … adrift.

  The end of my school days came as a regret, since I had loved studying, I had loved playing football even more, and I had enjoyed my schooldays greatly.

  As captain of the football team, since I was ten years old, I had been popular, and I had loved playing football every chance I got, evenings and weekends, as well as in the school lunch breaks.

  But as my parents had noticed, my studies had not suffered as a result and I had always produced good grades. My first passion was football, my second passion was reading, so I had not been a difficult son to raise, not even as an only son.

  My father had worked his entire life as a draughtsman in a local Leicester office, and he was a quiet man that also loved to read, my mother someone who had her small circle of friends and was content.

  I could not say that she was happy, she was not that kind of person, and I could definitely not
say that my father was happy. He had once won a few grand on the lottery, and had not even lifted an eyebrow. ‘Oh,’ was all he had said at the time.

  As a teenager, I had been out of the family home most of the time, or reading the rest of the time, and my parents were … in attendance when I needed them, and when I had been injured playing football they were there and ready to help.

  They were not the hugs and kisses type, but they were available, and never once had I heard them shouting at each other; it had been a quiet house of an evening.

  On occasion I had asked my father about historical topics, and he was a readily-available amateur expert on many of those historical topics. He liked to read history as much as I did, and it was only last year that I had found out that his father, my grandfather – who I had never met, had been part Jewish.

  I was not sure how that made me feel since I had been raised Christian, and my father never once indulged in anything remotely Jewish. When I asked him what that genetic heritage had made us, his reply had been, ‘No one is born Jewish, it’s a religion not a genetic condition.’

  At most, I was maybe 25% Jewish by bloodline, but as my father had said: no one was born Jewish, it was a religion and a way of life that had to be adopted, practised and maintained.

  Not long after the revelation I had spoken to a kid in school who was known for being Jewish, Mark Cohen, and I had confided in him about my grandfather.

  ‘I’m proudly Jewish,’ he told me.

  ‘Do you go to Temple?’

  ‘Nope, did when I was young, hated it.’

  ‘Eat pork?’

  ‘Always, love it.’

  ‘Study the … Old Testament?’

  ‘Fuck no.’

  ‘So … why are you proudly Jewish?’ I had puzzled.

  He had shrugged. ‘Just am. We’re Jews. Do you … feel Jewish?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Then you’re not Jewish, not a proper Jew.’

  That day, I had the feeling that he was not a proper Jew either, but I had held my tongue.

  Afterwards, I had discussed him with my father, who had responded, ‘In America, like Britain, fifty percent of Jews marry Christians and don’t practice, they don’t go to Temple and they know very little about the history.

  ‘I’m not Jewish, but I know the history very well, and it seems very odd that someone can label themselves as Jewish and yet never observe the practices. Their tribe is defined by their religion, like Islam. Can a man call himself Islamic when he never prays, just because he was born to an Islamic family?’

  ‘Well … I’d say no. Could I label myself a Mormon?’

  ‘Do you have three wives?’ he posed.

  I smiled. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Then you’re not a Mormon, but you could adopt it. Do you … feel anything for the Jews?’

  ‘I read the history, feel sorry for them, but I feel sorry for the historical underdog always.’

  ‘My father, he was taken in 1943 as a five year old boy, from a train wagon heading to the death camps, kept by a German officer and his wife in Denmark, but in the same year – 1943 - they escaped to Britain and were interned.’

  My eyes widened. ‘Shit … what a great story.’

  ‘I … have the original papers, ID cards, you can study them if you want.’

  ‘Definitely. But I’m still leaning towards Mormon.’

  He had smiled, which was rare. ‘Wait until you have just the one wife, then you’ll change your mind about three. And your grandfather, he made my mother pregnant at seventeen years old, and out of wedlock. She was fifteen at the time.’

  ‘What a rascal. But I think the rascal gene skipped a generation.’

  ‘It did,’ he emphasised, shooting me a look.

  Now, early on a Monday morning and dressed smart-casual in a dark grey suit I had bought for myself - no tie over my grey shirt, I walked a few blocks to my uncle’s factory. The rain was holding off, and it was a warm June day.

  As I walked I passed a few other kids from my school, waves and smiles exchanged, and as a former school pupil president and local student political activist I was well known. I had also coached the junior football teams, so the younger kids and their parents all knew me.

  I passed two giggling girls from my school, and I smiled politely and nodded at them, but I was not interested in them sexually, not least because I was known locally as the “Football Virgin”, no intercourse for me yet.

  My current part-time girlfriend, who labelled herself as a “soccer widow”, had tossed me off many times, I had even enjoyed a blowjob, and we had recently started the 69 position, but I was not about to risk a teenage pregnancy.

  I had, however, promised her that we would have sex with a condom before the summer was over, and that we might have a holiday away together.

  A glance up at the familiar facia, and I entered my uncle’s glass factory. But he did not actually make the glass, he bought it and made the frames, and he made custom security windows for businesses here in Leicester.

  I walked up grubby wooden steps that creaked, and into the main office.

  ‘Oh my god, here comes handsome,’ came from the office manager, Julie, a good looking and curvy thirty-two-year-old. Since I had worked here a few weeks last summer I was known to the staff, and to the sex-mad creature that was Julie.

  A cute girl turned towards me from her computer screen, all cleavage, and she was perhaps twenty-one. ‘The famous Roskov. Remember me?’

  ‘Err … nope.’

  ‘I was three years ahead of you in school.’

  ‘That’s why then. Developed some curves since school haven’t you.’

  ‘Thanks for noticing,’ she purred, her chest out.

  A bald man in his forties lifted his head from behind a computer. ‘Do you lot have any work to do?’

  ‘We’re on a break,’ Julie told him. ‘Admiring the new employee. He’s not old, fat and bald, he’s a hunk.’

  ‘Thanks for that,’ the man said as he lowered his head and attended his computer.

  ‘How tall are you now?’ Julie asked.

  ‘Six one, just about.’

  ‘And well hung?’ she teased.

  ‘I never use it, I just play football,’ I quipped.

  ‘Best way,’ the man said without looking up. ‘Save some money.’

  ‘How old are you now?’ Julie puzzled.

  ‘Eighteen. And a half.’

  ‘You look more like thirty.’

  ‘I get that a lot, yes.’

  ‘And you look Italian, olive skin, black hair. God sent us a real gift,’ she teased.

  Embarrassed, I lowered my head, but I saw my uncle put down the phone and so walked into his office, the man a carbon copy of my dad and just as sedate; he was not someone who smiled much. ‘Ricky Roskov, reporting for duty, boss.’

  ‘If only all the staff were as punctual as you, and as polite,’ he complained, a glance through the partition glass.

  ‘So what you got for me?’ I asked as I sat.

  ‘How long do you intended on staying?’ It sounded like a complaint.

  I held my hands wide. ‘I … have no plans, but I want to make enough money for university. So at least a year.’

  ‘You had an offer, from Leicester City Football Club, good money?’

  ‘I did, and Watford, and a try-out for Man Utd, but … I want to go into politics someday.’

  He nodded as he considered that. ‘You can study all of the products we sell, then work in sales. We’ll send you to the female customers for sure,’ he quipped

  I smiled. ‘I have no idea what you mean.’

  ‘Don’t be in a hurry to grow up and get old, enjoy it while you can,’ he told me, and I could see the sadness behind his eyes; I knew he had lost a daughter to a car crash.

  I had been young at the time, too young to have been bothered by it, and they had not been regular visitors to the house anyhow.

  ‘I’ll make a start then, and do some readi
ng.’

  ‘Core prices plus mark-up, labour, travel, and always allow for more time to fit them than we estimate, something always goes wrong. Have a look at the job-costing system on the computer, get a feel for it.’

  ‘Right, Boss.’

  ‘If only the other staff were that polite,’ he sighed out as I left him.

  Jacket off, computer adopted, and I started on the products whilst trying hard to ignore the cleavage on display and the sexual tension in the room. But the girls did make me tea and coffee regularly.

  By the end of the first week I had the products in my head, the mark-up and the labour costs, and I now knew what an “hourly overhead recovery rate” was. I now knew basic glass, tempered glass, safety glass, security glass and Perspex, I even knew what a square metre of each weighed.

  But by using the computer I had spotted a few mistakes, I had corrected a few rates, I had recalculated the recovery rates, and I had found a technician fiddling his expenses, the man fired.

  That man returned the next day, and drunk, wanting at my uncle, so I had placed myself in the way, only to get punched. In reality I had allowed myself to get punched, because after years of playing football I knew all about ducking the punches and hitting back.

  With the punch at me witnessed by many, I floored the forty-year-old man with three good punches, and he was out for the count, police and ambulance called, normal office work disrupted with some gossip-creating excitement.

  When the police arrived, they smiled as they recognised me. ‘Roskov, why did you turn down Man Utd, you dope!’

  ‘Well … I’m hoping to make enough money here to go to university. And a football career can be cut short by one twisted ankle.’

  ‘I hear ya, mate,’ the officer had agreed. ‘It can end quick. And then what are you qualified for, eh?’

  They handcuffed the man as he recovered and groaned, statements made and notes taken, but it was all very black and white.

  My uncle was concerned for my face and cut lip.