by Daniel Silva
Late that afternoon she entered the Great North Wood adjacent to Hartley Hall. She knew from her guidebooks that the Hartley family had turned over the wood to the government thirty years ago. Now it was a nature preserve and campground. She walked along a sandy footpath, soft with pine needles and fallen sprigs of fir, and settled herself into a blind.
She pretended to be photographing a flock of migrating brent geese. Her real target was Hartley Hall, which stood just south of the wood, across a meadow dead with winter. The ambassador was scheduled to arrive at four o'clock. She reached the blind at three forty-five; she didn't want to linger too long needlessly. The sun dropped below the horizon, and the air turned bitterly cold. The western sky was streaked with watercolor hues of purple and orange. The sea wind came up and stirred the trees. She rubbed her face with her wool gloves for warmth.
At 4:05 P.M. she heard cars passing along the road through the wood. A moment later they emerged from the shadows and sped along Hartley's private access road. A man emerged from the grand porch as the small motorcade pulled into the drive. Rebecca Wells raised her field glasses to her eyes. She watched as Douglas Cannon climbed out of the back of the limousine and shook the other man's hand. For several minutes they toured the grounds of Hartley Hall. Rebecca Wells watched them carefully.
When they had completed their circuit of the house and vanished inside, she stood and packed away her camera and field glasses into a nylon rucksack. She followed the trail through the woods, back to the car park where she had left her hired Vaux-hall, and drove along the narrow coast road back to her caravan on the beach.
It was quite dark by now, the campground nearly empty, just a family of transient travelers and a group of Danish teenagers who were backpacking across Norfolk. The four members of her team were spread throughout other campgrounds along the coast. The tide was running out, and the air had the sharp tang of the mudflats and marshes. Rebecca let herself into the caravan and switched on the portable electric heater. She lit the propane stove, boiled water, and made a pot of Nescafe. She filled a thermos bottle with the coffee and poured the remainder into a ceramic mug. She drank the coffee as she walked along the beach.
It was odd, she thought, but for the first time in a very long while she felt a strange sense of peace. It was this place, she thought: this beautiful, mystical place. She thought how strange it was to pass through a village and see no signs of sectarian conflict: no Union Jacks and Tricolors, no warlike murals or political slogans scrawled on walls, no fortresslike police stations. Her entire life had been consumed by the conflict. Her father had been involved in the Protestant paramilitaries, and she had married a man from the UVF. She had been raised to hate and distrust Catholics. In Portadown, the conflict was everywhere; there was no escaping it. To be Protestant in Portadown had given her life a sense of purpose. She felt her place in history. The rituals of hatred, the cycles of killing and revenge, had provided a macabre sense of order to things.
She thought about what would happen after the assassination. Kyle Blake had provided her with money, a false passport, and a place to lie low in Paris. She knew she would have to remain in hiding for months, if not years. She might never be able to return to Portadown.
She finished the last of her coffee, watching the waves breaking over the beach, phosphorescent in the moonlight. I want to go someplace like this, she thought. I wish I could stay here forever.
She walked back to the caravan through the darkness, let herself inside, and switched on her laptop computer. Using a cellular modem, she connected to her Internet server and composed a brief E-mail message.
I'M HAVING A MARVELOUS TIME HERE IN NORFOLK. THE WEATHER IS COLD BUT QUITE BEAUTIFUL. TODAY, I SPOTTED SEVERAL RARE SPECIES OF BIRDS. I PLAN TO REMAIN HERE FOR A FEW MORE DAYS.
She sent the message and switched off the computer. She picked up the thermos of coffee and a packet of cigarettes. She had a very long drive ahead of her tonight. She let herself out of the caravan and climbed into the Vauxhall. A moment later she was speeding along the A148 toward King's Lynn, the first leg of her journey to the western coast of Scotland.
"His real name is Oliver Taylor," Graham Seymour said to Douglas. "But I'd like you to forget you ever heard it. He's a watcher by trade, aren't you, Oliver? One of the best, actually."
"The resemblance is remarkable," Douglas said, astonished.
"Oliver trains new recruits for the most part now, but we still put him out in the field now and again when we need a real pro. In fact, he spent a little time following the lovely Rebecca Wells, didn't you, Oliver?"
Taylor nodded.
"Come this way if you would, Ambassador Cannon," Graham said. "I'd like to show you a few things."
Graham led Douglas and Michael into a room filled with electronic equipment and video monitors. A pair of technicians acknowledged the presence of the three men and then carried on with their work.
"This is the electronic nerve center of the operation," Graham said. "The grounds have been littered with infrared surveillance cameras, motion detectors, and heat sensors. When the Ulster Freedom Brigade make their move, we'll know about it here first."
"How do you know they'll try it?" Douglas asked.
"Because Rebecca Wells is in Norfolk," Graham said. "She's been here for about three days. She's staying in a caravan out on the beach a couple of miles away. She was in the North Wood a few minutes ago when you arrived. She knows you're here."
"Actually, she's just left the campground, sir," one of the technicians said.
"Where's she headed?"
"West on the coast road."
"What about the caravan?" Michael asked.
"Still in the campground, sir."
Graham said, "These men are our scythes, Ambassador Cannon. Let me introduce you to our blunt instruments."
The Special Air Service is the elite unit of the British armed forces and one of the world's most respected military organizations. Based in Hereford, about 140 miles northwest of London, it has one active regiment, 22 SAS, and about 550 members. The SAS is an insertion force, designed to operate behind enemy lines. It is divided into four operational squadrons, each with a different specialty: airborne, amphibious, mountain, and assault vehicles. The unit demonstrated its antiterrorist prowess in May 1980, when it successfully ended the siege of the Iranian embassy in London before a worldwide television audience. SAS recruiters seek out soldiers of above-average intelligence who demonstrate the ability to improvise and to act alone. SAS soldiers are notorious for egotism, brashness, and sarcasm, and therefore the SAS is mistrusted by much of the British military establishment. The organization's motto is "Who dares, wins." True to form, SAS men deliberately mutilate their own creed, sacrilegiously proclaiming, "Who cares who wins."
The eight men in the large game room didn't look much like any soldiers Douglas had ever seen. They had shaggy hair or no hair at all and a few wore drooping mustaches. Two were playing billiards; two more were engaged in a noisy flailing game of table tennis. The rest lay around a wide-screen television, watching a video—The Double Life of Veronique—and occasionally pleading for quiet. The billiards game and the Ping-Pong match fell quiet as the SAS men noticed that Douglas was in the room.
"When the Ulster Freedom Brigade makes its move, these men will be waiting for them," Graham said. "I can assure you it will all be over very quickly. These gentlemen know what happened to their colleagues in County Tyrone the other night. The SAS is a small unit. As you might expect, they're anxious to make amends."
"I can understand that," Douglas said. "But if it is possible to avoid needless bloodshed—"
"They will do their very best to take the terrorists alive," Michael said. "It depends on how the Ulster Freedom Brigade reacts once they discover they're walking into a trap."
"Time to get you out of here, Ambassador Cannon," Graham said. "You've done your bit. I'm afraid the ride home isn't going to be quite as scenic as the journey here."
; Michael and Douglas parted in the great hall. As they shook hands, Douglas put an arm on his son-in-law's shoulder and said, "Take care of yourself, Michael."
Graham led Douglas through the house to a service entrance. A paneled van waited outside the door, engine idling. The name of a local catering service was stenciled on the side. Douglas climbed in and sat down in a special chair that had been anchored in the rear storage compartment. He winked. Graham closed the rear doors, and the van sped away.
Early the following morning, Rebecca Wells stood on the beach at Ardnacross Bay on the western coast of Scotland. It was misting, bitterly cold, and still quite dark, even though it was an hour after sunrise. She walked along the narrow rocky beach, smoking a cigarette, drinking the last of the Nescafe she had made more than twelve hours earlier. She was exhausted, running on nerves and adrenaline. The morning was windless, the water flat and calm. Beyond the bay lay Kilbrannan Sound. To the southwest, across the North Channel, was the Antrim coast of Northern Ireland.
Twenty more minutes passed. Rebecca was beginning to grow nervous about whether the boat would come. It would be a Zodiac, Kyle Blake had said, lowered from the side of a Protestant-owned freighter bound from Londonderry. On board would be a member of the Brigade with a duffel bag of guns for the assault on Hartley Hall.
Another ten minutes passed, while Rebecca considered whether she should abort. The sky had lightened, and the first morning traffic was moving on the road behind the beach. Only then did she hear the put-put of a small engine echoing across the flat water. A moment later, a tiny Zodiac broke through the fog on the bay.
As the boat drew closer to shore, Rebecca studied the man seated in the stern, tiller in hand. It was Gavin Spencer. He raised the propeller, and the Zodiac grounded itself on the beach. Rebecca rushed forward and pulled on the bowline.
"What in God's name are you doing here?" she asked.
"I wanted to be a part of it."
"Does Kyle know?"
"He'll know soon enough, won't he?" Spencer stepped out of the Zodiac and lifted the duffel from the prow. "Help me get this thing off the beach."
Together, they dragged the Zodiac off the beach and hid it in the gorse-covered dunes. Spencer walked back to the beach and shouldered the duffel bag. Rebecca led him to the Vauxhall.
He studied her face. "When's the last time you slept?"
"I can't remember."
"I'll drive."
She tossed Spencer the keys. He placed the duffel in the trunk, then climbed behind the wheel and started the engine; he was shuddering with the cold. He switched the heater on full, and a moment later the inside of the Vauxhall felt like a sauna. They stopped in the village of Ballochgair and bought tea and bacon sandwiches from a roadside cafe. Spencer devoured three of the sandwiches and slowly savored the tea.
"Tell me about it," he said, and for fifteen minutes Rebecca described the topography of the Norfolk Coast and the layout of Hartley Hall. She was exhausted. She spoke automatically, as if reciting from memory without conscious thought. It was silly for Gavin Spencer to be here—he was a strategist, not a gunman— but she was glad he had come.
Rebecca closed her eyes as he asked more questions. She did her best to answer, but she felt her voice growing weaker as the car sped through desolate moorland and the Carradale Forest. The stifling warmth from the heater sapped the last of her strength. She fell asleep—the deepest sleep she had had in a very long time—and didn't wake again until they were racing along the Norfolk Coast.
28
HARTLEY HALL, NORFOLK
BY ALL APPEARANCES IT WAS A TYPICAL WINTER'S DAY AT HARTLEY Hall. The weather was clear and bright, the air fresh with the scent of the sea. After lunch they drove to Cley in Douglas Cannon's official car and walked the sands of Blakeney Point, bundled in their overcoats and wool hats. The North Sea sparkled in the brilliant sunlight. The Special Branch bodyguards walked quietly behind them while Nicholas Hartley's retrievers terrorized the terns and brent geese. Rain moved over the Norfolk Coast at dusk. By the time the dinner guests began arriving, the storm had matured into a full-fledged North Sea winter gale.
It was just after 10 P.M. when Gavin Spencer slipped from the blind in the North Wood and hurried through the trees back to the beach. He opened the trunk of the Vauxhall and removed the canvas duffel. He carried the bag across the campsite and rapped on the door of the caravan.
Rebecca Wells parted the curtains in the window next to the door and peered out. She opened the door, and Spencer climbed into the caravan. The wind blew the door shut behind him. The tiny space was crowded with the members of his unit. Spencer had personally selected the team; and he knew each of the men well: James Fletcher, Alex Craig, Lennie West, and Edward Mills.
The air was thick with cigarette smoke and the smell of nervous men who had been sleeping in tents for two days. Fletcher and Craig sat at the small galley table, West and Mills on the edge of the bed, faces unshaven, hair disheveled. Rebecca was making tea.
Spencer placed the duffel on the floor and ripped open the zipper. He removed the Uzi submachine guns one by one and passed them to the men, followed by ammunition clips. A moment later the caravan was filled with the sound of metal on metal as the team shoved the clips into their Uzis and worked the sliders. Spencer took the last weapon and tossed the empty duffel onto the bed.
"Where's mine?" Rebecca said.
"What are you talking about?"
"My gun," she said. "Where is it?"
"You've no training for this sort of thing, Rebecca," Spencer said softly. "Your work is done."
She slammed the teapot onto the table. "You can make your own bloody tea then, can't you."
Spencer moved forward and put a hand on her shoulder. "Now's not the time for this," he said softly. "I put our chances of success at one in two at best. A couple of these lads might not make it home again. Don't you think you owe it to them to keep your head in the game?"
She nodded.
"All right, then. Let's get down to business, shall we?"
Rebecca opened the cabinet above the stove and took down a large folded piece of paper. She spread it on the table, revealing a detailed map of Hartley Hall and the surrounding grounds. Spencer let Rebecca handle the briefing.
"There are several entrances to the manor house," she said. "The main entrance, of course, is here"—she tapped the diagram with her fingertip—"at the south porch. There are also entrances here in the orangery, here and here on the east wing, and the main service entrance here. Each night I circled the house and took note of where lights were burning. The night of the ambassador's arrival, I noticed a light burning in a bedroom for the first time here, on the first floor. I suspect Cannon is sleeping there."
Spencer stepped forward and took over. "I want to overwhelm them. I want to create confusion. We approach separately and enter the house simultaneously at four A.M. I'll go in the front. James will enter through the orangery. Alex and Lennie will enter through the east wing, and Edward will go through the service entrance. Some of us will meet resistance. Some of us won't. As soon as you're inside, head straight upstairs to the guest bedroom. And the first one to arrive puts a bullet in the ambassador. Any questions?"
The dinner guests began leaving just after midnight, though they were not dinner guests at all but a collection of MI 5 watchers and desk officers, actors in the illusion of Operation Kettledrum. When the last had gone, the two Special Branch bodyguards went off duty and two new officers came on. One made a cursory tour of the grounds, dressed in foul-weather gear like a North Sea fisherman. The light burned in the Chinese bedroom until 1 A.M., when Michael slipped into the chamber and doused it.
The members of the SAS team had slowly filtered into position outside the house. One lay in wait in the walled garden, another in the deer park. A third lay in the parterre, and a fourth in the cemetery next to St. Margaret's Church. The rest took up positions throughout the ground floor of the house.
Each soldi
er wore infrared night-vision glasses and a miniature radio with an earpiece that would allow him to communicate with the nerve center inside the mansion. Each carried the standard-issue SAS compact submachine gun, the HK MP5, as well as a Herstal 5.7-millimeter handgun for backup. The Herstal is regarded as one of the world's most powerful handguns. It fires two-gram bullets at a muzzle speed of 650 meters per second and is capable of penetrating forty-eight layers of laminated Kevlar, the substance used in protective body armor, from two hundred meters away. Michael carried the CIA's standard-issue handgun, a high-powered Browning 9-millimeter with a fifteen-shot clip. Graham Seymour was unarmed.
The two men waited in the control room, upstairs in the first-floor guest bedroom. The weather was playing havoc with the electronic sensing equipment. The motion detectors were sounding constantly because of the twisting of the trees and shrubbery. The high-powered directional microphones were overwhelmed with the roar of the wind and the hammering of the rain. Only the infrared video cameras were functioning properly.
At 3:30 A.M., MI5 field agents stationed in the campgrounds around Hartley reported movement by the members of the assassination squad. The field agents did not follow the terrorists. Instead, they allowed them to proceed unhindered toward the estate.
At 3:55 A.M., camera operators on the top floor of Hartley briefly spotted two gunmen moving into position, one in the trees bordering the deer park, a second creeping across the ruins of the village toward St. Margaret's Church.
At precisely 3:58 A.M., James Fletcher rose from his hiding place in the parterre and moved quickly along a gravel footpath toward the orangery. Before joining the Brigade, Fletcher had been a member of the Ulster Defense Association, a violent Protestant paramilitary organization. Indeed, he had been one of the group's most prolific assassins, with a half-dozen confirmed kills of IRA gunmen. He had broken with the UDA when it agreed to a cease-fire during the peace negotiations. When Gavin Spencer approached him about joining a new group, the Ulster Freedom Brigade, he had accepted without hesitation. Fletcher was virulently anti-Catholic and believed Ulster should be a Protestant province for Protestant people. He also desperately wanted to be the one to murder the ambassador, so he went into action two minutes early, disobeying Spencer's order to wait until four o'clock.