by Chris Ryan
The lift creaked and clanked as they descended into the bowels of the building.
‘We’re on the lower basement,’ Mallet explained. ‘The range is on the floor above. The lads from SO19 know not to bother us. If we ever want to use the range, we make a call and it’s booked out.’
‘Who else knows we’re here?’
‘Just the top brass at Vauxhall and Thames House. One or two figures in the Foreign Office. The police chiefs. Nobody else. We’re the best kept secret in London.’
Bowman suddenly understood why the Cell had chosen this place as their headquarters. It was fully secure, anonymous and within easy distance of Whitehall, Scotland Yard, the City. No one would ever bother to find out what was going on inside the building, and if they did, the guards would take care of them. The Cell could go about its business in complete secrecy.
The doors scraped open, and then Mallet guided him down another short corridor. They came to a halt in front of a thick steel door secured with a biometric lock.
‘Access is via fingerprint recognition,’ Mallet said. ‘We’ll get your prints into the system as soon as the briefing is over. You’ll be given a security pass, too.’
He pressed his index finger against the sensor panel. The door unlocked with a cheerful beep. Mallet levered the door handle, took a step inside, then paused in the doorway.
‘This is it. Once you step inside this room, there’s no turning back.’
Bowman eased out a breath. ‘I’m ready,’ he said.
‘Good lad.’
He crossed the threshold and entered a cavernous, brightly lit space with ductwork on the ceiling and exposed brick walls. The room was huge. The size of half a football pitch. There was an armoury at one end of the space, secured behind a separate steel door. Nearby was a row of computer terminals, a stack of handheld radios and mobile phones on charge. In another corner he saw an open wardrobe. Suits and athleisure gear and dresses hung from a clothes rack, along with four sets of courier overalls: bright-blue shirts with orange trim, matching baseball caps and dark trousers. Next to the wardrobe was a make-up station with a vanity mirror surrounded by LED lights, a wig stand, a make-up case with powders and liners and brushes. Bowman saw shoe racks filled with high heels, trainers, walking boots, leather brogues. There was a kitchen countertop to one side of the entrance, with a microwave, kettle, drip coffee maker, toaster, sink. Further along, there was a breakout area with a flat-screen TV, two sofas, a few armchairs. Bowman saw a snooker table, a dartboard. Lockers. A row of bunk beds with bags scattered across the floor.
Across the room, two figures in plain civvies stood hunched over a map. One of the guys was very short. Five-four or maybe five. The man next to him was at least six inches taller and dark-skinned, with close-cropped hair, like a black leather skullcap. They paid no attention to Bowman. As he looked on, a slightly built woman hurried over to her two colleagues. She was dressed in a pair of tight black jeans, blouse and dark blazer. She had a plain face, short dark hair and lips the colour of strawberries.
‘The rest of the team,’ Mallet said. ‘You’ll be introduced to them in a few minutes. In there.’
He pointed to a large structure in the middle of the floor space. At first glance it looked like a steel container. Six metres long and three wide, with corrugated metal sides. The kind of thing you saw stacked up on transport ships or freight trains. A metal door had been fitted to one of the longer panels, Bowman noted.
‘We call it the Shed,’ Mallet added. ‘It’s fully soundproofed and screened for bugs. That’s where we have our briefings.’
Bowman looked round in amazement. ‘How long has all this stuff been down here?’
‘Nine years. Since we first created the Cell.’
‘How many guys on the team?’
‘Six, including myself,’ said Mallet. ‘You’re the seventh. Two of the lads are on another job right now. Overseas posting.’
Bowman barely heard him. He was buzzing with adrenaline. The tiredness he’d felt earlier that evening was a distant memory now. An hour ago, he had been sitting in his crappy hotel room, watching TV. Now he was being drafted in for an urgent mission with the Cell. Something big was about to go down, Bowman sensed. And he was going to be right in the thick of the action.
That’s exactly where I want to be.
Mallet said, ‘Drop your stuff off at the bunks. Then meet me in the Shed. I want to show you something.’
He started towards the Shed. Bowman beat a path across the room, dumped his holdall on one of the empty beds. Then he hurried over to the soundproofed room and stepped inside.
There was a boardroom table in the middle of the Shed, with eight chairs arranged around it and a conference speakerphone in the centre. Wires snaked through the square cut-out, leading to unseen plug sockets and modems beneath the table. The walls were covered in eggcrate-patterned foam tiles. Soundproofing. Bowman had seen it before, in MI6 safe houses elsewhere in the city.
Mallet was standing in front of a large display board against the back wall. The board was covered in postcard-sized photographs, linked to one another with lengths of red string. Bowman saw a picture of a palatial mansion overlooking a bay, an exterior shot of a gleaming apartment block. A photo of Ken Seguma, along with some other faces he vaguely recognised. Members of the president’s family.
In the middle of the board was a snap of David Lang.
Bowman drew up alongside Mallet and took a closer look at the photo. It appeared to have been taken at some sort of party. A private gathering. Lang sat at a table, between a couple of burly guys in dark suits, a bottle of wine in front of them. The two stocky guys were smiling as they posed for the camera. But not David Lang.
He looked almost identical to his twin brother. He was slimmer than Freddie, lean-hipped and slender, and his hair was sprinkled with grey. But he had the same arched eyebrows as Freddie. The same thin lips and cruel, cold eyes. He was smartly dressed in a linen jacket; the top two buttons on his shirt were popped, revealing a tuft of chest hair and a gold chain as thick as a hanging rope. On his left wrist he wore a chunky watch with a spider on the dial. Bowman had seen that model before. The Russian president owned the same one. He remembered reading about it somewhere. A limited-edition model, costing almost half a million quid.
He turned to Mallet and jabbed a finger at the pinboard. ‘Is that who we’re arresting? David Lang?’
There was a menacing glint in Mallet’s eyes. A smile cut like a machete across his lips. ‘I told you we’d be fighting mobsters, laddie. Lang’s the target, all right. We’ve had eyes on him for a while.’
‘What’s the plan?’
‘We’re going to head to Monte Carlo,’ Mallet said. ‘This morning. A few hours from now. Then we’re going to snatch Lang and make him an offer he can’t refuse.’
Ten
Silence hung heavy in the air for a beat. Bowman scrutinised the faces on the pinboard, his head spinning. His exhausted mind was struggling to process what was going on. He looked round at Mallet.
‘You knew about the meeting in Monaco? With the Russians?’
Mallet dipped a hand into his jacket pocket, took out a packet of nicotine gum. ‘No smoking in the basement,’ he said. ‘Health and safety.’
He pushed out a piece of gum from the foil pack, popped it into his mouth.
‘We knew some of the details,’ he continued. ‘The basic facts of the meeting. But we didn’t know about President Seguma’s involvement, or the trap the Russians have been planning. Now we do. Thanks to you.’
‘What’s Lang doing out there?’
Mallet chewed loudly as he indicated two other photos pinned to the fabric board. The guy on the left was puffy-faced and balding, with heavily lidded eyes and wispy beard. The pale face on the right had a pointed nose, eyes like bullet holes in a paper target.
‘Lang is due to meet two Russian nationals,’ Mallet explained. ‘Today. Eight hours from now. One of the attendees is Alexei B
ezuglov, the Russian ambassador to Monaco.’
He tapped a finger against the picture of the bald guy with the wispy beard.
‘The other is this man,’ he added. ‘Sergei Galkin.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘You wouldn’t. Galkin is one of the original oligarchs. Late nineties moneyman. Part of the president’s inner circle, back when he was mayor of St Petersburg. Keeps a low profile. He’s the Kremlin’s Mr Fix-It. When they need to make something happen, Galkin is the guy they bring in.’
‘Any idea what this meeting is about?’
‘Six has got a few ideas. They reckon Lang is fixing to make some sort of deal with the Kremlin behind our backs.’
‘What kind of deal?’ asked Bowman.
‘Pressuring him into changing allegiance, maybe. But we don’t know for sure. That’s why we’re going in. To find out what the bastard is up to.’
‘Lang is playing in the big boys’ league now, isn’t he?’
Mallet laughed. ‘He’s come a long way from breaking legs in dodgy East End boozers. That’s for sure.’
‘Where’s the meeting?’
‘At Galkin’s mansion, down the coast in Antibes. Lang is due to meet the Russians at midday local time. We’ve been planning the operation to arrest him for the past week. Now we’re being green-lit.’
Bowman nodded. He’d worked on plenty of similar ops in the past. He could imagine how the planning would have taken shape. First the Cell would have devised an immediate response. A crude plan, simple but effective. Like a guy walking into a bar and punching someone in the face. The plan would have been adapted and honed each day as new information came to light, allowing the team to put together a planned response. Which would be more sophisticated than the emergency plan. They would keep on working on it each day, fine-tuning the details until the team got the go-ahead.
His eyes focused on another photo on the board, next to Seguma’s family members and advisers. A sun-bleached face, long and lean, with long dark hair and a bushy beard. He wore a short-sleeved khaki shirt and stood next to a couple of soldiers in combat fatigues.
‘I know that face,’ Bowman said. ‘That’s Mike Gregory. He was my old OC in B Squadron. I served under him in Iraq.’
‘He had less facial hair back then,’ Mallet said with a grin. ‘He’s hairier than Bigfoot these days.’
‘What’s he doing mixed up in all of this?’
‘Mike is the chief security adviser to the president. He’s been in the job for the past three years. I assumed you knew.’
Bowman shook his head. ‘I’d heard he was operational in Karatandu, doing jobs on the Circuit. But I didn’t know he was working directly for the president.’
‘Mike had a contract to protect one of the big mines. When the job ended, Seguma kept him on. He’s one of a handful of confidantes the president trusts. Maybe the only one, outside his immediate family. Seguma doesn’t take a dump without consulting him first.’
‘He’s done well for himself. Good for him.’
‘You’re a fan of his?’
‘Mike’s one of the good guys. Best officer I ever had. Saved my arse on Selection.’
Mallet knitted his brow. ‘How’s that?’
‘He was with Training Wing at the time. I got into a fight one night in a pub in Hereford. It wasn’t my fault, I was minding my own business, but some drunken idiot wanted to have a go. One thing led to another and the police showed up and arrested me. I could have been RTU’d for that, but Mike stepped in and defended me.’ Bowman frowned. ‘He’s not in any trouble, is he?’
‘We don’t think so. Mike is on the fringes of this thing. He’s holding the fort while his boss is in Monte Carlo.’
‘How did you find out about the meeting in Antibes?’
‘We’ve had Davey Boy under surveillance for months. The guys at Six have infiltrated every corner of his business empire. They’ve hacked his computer, his phones. His properties have been rigged up with mics. They’ve flipped his accountant, his PA, even his cleaner.’
Bowman kept his face composed but felt a twitch of anxiety. For a moment he wondered if Six had discovered the truth about his addiction when they’d ripped Lang’s life apart. But he immediately dismissed the fear. No. There was no way Mallet would have invited him to join the Cell if he knew about his opioid dependency.
At least there was no chance of David Lang recognising his face, Bowman reassured himself. Unlike his twin brother, David had always maintained his distance from street-level crime and violence. He didn’t associate with thugs or drug dealers, he ran legitimate businesses. He didn’t hang out at the club in Romford.
My secret is safe. For now.
He said, ‘Where’s Lang now?’
‘His apartment,’ Mallet replied. ‘Overlooking the beach in Monte Carlo. That’s where we’ll make the arrest. Then we’ll give him a choice. He can come back with us and go into protective custody, or he can come back to something a lot less pleasant. But either way, that scumbag is coming back to the UK.’
‘What if he refuses?’
‘He won’t. Trust me.’
Bowman returned his gaze to the pinboard and sucked air between his teeth. ‘It’s not gonna be easy to isolate him. The principality will be crawling with police and cameras.’
‘We’ve got a way inside,’ Mallet said.
‘How?’
Mallet frowned at his Breitling. ‘There’s no time to go into the details right now. The other guys will bring you up to speed later. Fill in any blanks.’
‘But why bring me on now? You’ve been planning this thing for days.’
‘We had two other guys due to take part in the operation. An advance party from the Special Reconnaissance Regiment. They were brought in specifically for this mission. We’ve had them on the ground in Monte Carlo for the past forty-eight hours, keeping an eye on Lang. They’re out of the picture.’
‘What happened?’
‘They were arrested late this evening in Monte Carlo. A car accident. That leaves us two short, and we can’t do the mission with three guys. It’s not enough. We need someone to make up the numbers. That’s you.’
Bowman nodded guardedly. It wasn’t unheard of for a Regiment man to be recruited for a mission at the eleventh hour. A guy on a team might suffer a freak injury during training, and someone else would be brought in as a last-minute replacement. Accidents happened. But it wasn’t ideal. There wouldn’t be much time to go through everything: the plan, his job, the SOPs.
‘When do we leave?’ he asked.
‘Straight after the briefing. Our contact at Six will explain more.’
Mallet straightened his back and marched over to the door.
‘Everyone inside the Shed!’ he ordered. ‘Team briefing in five.’
From outside, Bowman heard the scraping of metal against concrete, the shuffling of papers, the clicking shut of laptop screens. Mallet circled round the table, took a place close to the speakerphone and waved a hand at the empty chair next to him.
‘Sit down, Josh. You’ve got questions. That’s understandable. Everything will be clear soon.’
Bowman sat and stared at the board, questions cycling through his head. He thought about the meeting in Monaco. He thought about David Lang’s involvement with Galkin and Bezuglov and President Seguma. He wondered what the fuck was going on in Monte Carlo.
Then there was no time to think, because the three other members of the Cell filed into the Shed. First came the woman with the strawberry lips, then the black guy with the cropped hair. The short guy entered the room last. As he shut the door a red light glowed above, signalling that the Shed was fully secure. He took a seat next to his colleagues.
‘Everyone, this is Josh Bowman,’ Mallet said. ‘He’ll be joining us for this operation. He’s coming on board as a replacement for those two other idiots. One or two of you might have worked with him before. For those of you who haven’t, Josh is a Regiment lad. From B Squadro
n. My old crew.’
Mallet gestured towards the short guy. Keith ‘Tiny’ Loader was the smallest man in 22 SAS, but also one of the toughest. A widow’s peak sat atop his craggy face; his hands were criss-crossed with scars. But the smile was warm, and there was a kindness to his large round eyes.
‘I’m sure you know Tiny from your time at Hereford,’ said Mallet.
Bowman nodded. ‘We did Selection together. He beat me on the Long Drag.’
Loader grinned, revealing a graveyard of stained brown teeth. ‘You were a cocky bugger back then, boyo.’ He spoke in a sing-song Welsh accent, redolent of the valleys.
‘Typical bloody Para. Always wanting to kick the front door in and kill everyone in sight.’
‘Engineers,’ Bowman quipped. ‘Always think you know best.’
‘That’s because we do, mate. We sneak through the back door while you idiots are going through the front.’
Bowman laughed.
‘How’s the madhouse these days?’
‘Fine,’ Bowman said. ‘The lads are all fine.’
‘Is Sally Stevens working the bar at the Green Dragon?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘She’s a good woman, that one. Gorgeous. If I was still down there, I would have been giving her the old Loader vaccine by now.’ He winked. ‘A seven-inch injection, if you know what I mean.’
‘If you did,’ said Mallet, ‘it would be the first time you’d pulled anything in a pub other than a pint, Tiny.’
Bowman and Mallet shared an easy laugh. Although the other guys in the Regiment often teased Loader, everyone respected his abilities as a soldier. He had a smart, thoughtful attitude, like many of the recruits from the Corps of Engineers. He was also loyal to a fault. In public he fancied himself as a ladies’ man, but everyone knew that he secretly adored his childhood sweetheart Mary and their eight kids. One of the bullying sergeants had nicknamed him Tiny after he’d passed Selection, but Loader wore the name like a badge of honour. The piss-taking had only motivated him to work harder, to prove himself the equal of every other guy in the Regiment. Bowman was genuinely glad to see him on the team.