Spider Shepherd 10 - True Colours Read Online Free PDF Page B

if not, well, they were only whores after all, and he was a billionaire, an oligarch, one of the richest men on the planet. His money, his influence and, if necessary, his lawyers could make almost any problem go away.
    The sound of a fresh voice, as irritating to him as the whine of a mosquito, intruded on his thoughts. The ‘Hausfrau’, as he called her – the German Chancellor – had risen to her feet and was now bringing the proceedings to a close for the day but, to her visible frustration, the meeting was breaking up without having reached any significant agreement on a way forward.
    Buryakov listened with mounting irritation as the Hausfrau repeated her earlier demands for guaranteed power supplies to the West. Buryakov knew that by the West she mean Germany, as Germany had just pulled the plug on their nuclear power programme and needed to replace that power from somewhere. She ended her address with a call for further talks between the officials – ‘This evening, and all night if necessary,’ she said, rapping the edge of the podium with her knuckles for added emphasis – in order to conclude some form of compromise agreement that could then be announced to the waiting media before the conference broke up at noon the following day.
    Despite his irritation with her, Buryakov smiled to himself. The Hausfrau was desperate for something she could sell to her electorate as a success, but making the German voters happy with their Chancellor was neither in his own commercial interest, nor that of the Russian government. If she wanted an agreement, there would be a heavy price to pay for it.
    All through the Cold War, the West had lectured the Soviet Union on the merits of the capitalist system and they had treated the fall of the Berlin Wall as its ultimate triumph. They could hardly complain now, he thought, if their former adversary had learned the lesson so well that it was now using the capitalist system to its own considerable advantage. His smile broadened. He would let the Hausfrau and her allies fret and sweat into the small hours as they tried to find some common ground, while he enjoyed an untroubled night, and in the morning he would see what price he could make her pay for the piece of paper she would wave before the television cameras at the end of the conference.
    As the meeting broke up, he pushed back his chair and began making his slow way out of the conference room. As he emerged, his bodyguard team leader, who had been waiting outside the room with the other heads of security while their principals argued inside, took his place alongside him. They made their way through the crowds filling the cavernous foyer of the palace. The rest of his security team had been required to wait outside the building, stamping their feet in the cold for hours.
    There was semi-organised chaos inside and outside the palace, with everyone milling about in the foyer, waiting for word that their own limousines had reached the entrance before venturing outside, while the security personnel outside tried to bring some order to the logjam of vehicles. Inevitably the politicians whose vehicles were first in the queue would have paused on their way out for a final discussion with an ally or foe, and the other cars would be blocked, unable to move.
    The Cold War was long over, but the tensions between East and West were still there, and Buryakov’s lip curled as he stared out of the great windows at the queue of luxury cars and limousines. All of them – Mercedes, BMWs and even the Rolls-Royces – made by German companies. The thought of that flagship British brand being bought from under their arrogant noses only briefly lightened Buryakov’s mood and his frown deepened as he saw the Hausfrau standing in the doorway of the conference room, still arguing her case with another Russian oligarch. He was a close friend and ally of Buryakov’s and he knew that he shared Buryakov’s contempt for the German politician.
    The