Read Online Ghost Force by Patrick Robinson - Free Book Online

Reading Football Club and owner of the towering modern stadium on the borders of the M4 motorway.
    It was this love of soccer that hurled the two men together. In 2009, upstart little Reading had fought their way into the upper echelons of the English Premier League and ended up playing mighty Barcelona in front of 60,000 people in the European Champions League at the Noucamp Stadium in Spain’s second city.
    And who should emerge that day, almost shyly, as the great new power in the Barcelona club? The billionaire behind some of the biggest player transfer deals in the history of Spanish football—Jaan Valuev. Barcelona beat Reading 4–1, but the Siberian and the English tycoon became instant pals, and Jaan bought a house just a couple of miles from the imposing Madejski estate in Berkshire.
    By 2010, Jaan Valuev was Chairman of Barcelona FC, following in the footsteps of another Russian oil tycoon, Roman Abramovich, who famously bought and recharged the batteries of Chelsea Football Club, in West London, with close to half a billion dollars, which purchased some of the best players in the world.
    And tonight, Tuesday, September 28, Barcelona were in London, for their European Champions League game against England’s greatest football club, Arsenal, founded in 1883 and a byword for excellence and sportsmanship in a sometimes tarnished world game.
    Barcelona versus the Gunners, in the ultramodern new Emirates Stadium, in the heart of North London. Here was a game to be savored by aficionados all over the world. And 60,000 fans, 8,000 from Spain, were already making their way across London by taxi, bus, and train to watch this clash of titans, the Champions of the Spanish League against the Champions of England’s Premiership.
    Inside the marble halls of the Emirates Stadium, arrangements had been made for a sumptuous VIP dinner at 8:45 p.m., immediately after the game. The Arsenal Chairman would host it, and among his guests would be the Barcelona Chairman, and his buddy John Madejski, who was rumored to be preparing a sensational bid to buy Arsenal Football Club in partnership with Jaan Valuev.
    But these awesome financial shenanigans were all taken in goodheart, and the game was under way right on time, with the stadium packed and both teams free of injury. There was only one blight on the big game landscape: Jaan Valuev, whose body was currently lying burned in a mass grave deep in the icy wastes of the arctic tundra in northern Siberia, naturally had not turned up.
    The seat next to John Madejski was empty, and it was still empty when Barcelona scored, and still empty when the teams came in for halftime. The Barcelona Deputy Chairman, Andre di Stefano, was absolutely mystified.
    “I have an e-mail from his secretary, dated yesterday. He was flying in today directly from Yekaterinburg in a private jet owned by Emirates Airlines. I have the flight arrival time, but the airline guys say he never boarded the plane.”
    “Well, where the hell is he?” asked the Reading Chairman.
    “Tell you the truth, we thought you’d probably know.”
    “I haven’t spoken to him since Sunday, and he said he’d see me here for a glass of wine before the kickoff.”
    “So unlike him,” said Andre. “To have informed no one he wasn’t coming. Something must have happened.”
    “Well, it’s close to midnight in Russia,” replied John Madejski. “His office is shut, and I tried his mobile twenty minutes ago and it was switched off…so perhaps he had to fly somewhere else first, and will get here for the second half. That’s a huge business he runs.”
    “I still think it’s totally unlike him to vanish without informing anyone…but…maybe a girlfriend?” di Stefano chuckled.
    “What! Instead of watching the game against Arsenal? No chance,” replied Madejski.
    And the second half kicked off without Jaan Valuev. And Arsenal scored three times to thunderous roars that could have been heard in Piccadilly Circus six