The Predator

by Denis Pitts

  *

  In the British Broadcasting Corporation’s main television center in Wood Green, in the west of London, the only activity at that time of night was to be found in the central control room and the videotape department. The late-night chat show was drawing to its conclusion. It had been recorded earlier; the audience and performers had long since left the building.

  Seven years before, when a bomb was discovered under a studio desk that was to be used by the Prime Minister, the BBC had decided with reluctance to retire their corps of commissionaires and to employ younger, highly trained guards.

  The elderly BBC commissionaires, most of them bemedaled ex-servicemen, were replaced by members of the Standfast organization.

  Fifty guards were on duty in the television center that night. Similar numbers of men stayed on duty at BBC installations and studios in Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow.

  Standfast was also responsible for the security of the General Post Office land lines that carried BBC programs from the studios to transmitters throughout Britain. It patrolled the barbed-wire fencing that contained these transmitters.

  As the BBC and most of the independent commercial channels fell with such ease into the hands of their guards that night, just two other crucial targets needed to be secured to ensure complete control of the entire public telecommunications network of the British Isles.

  The junctions from which all coaxial land lines led to the regional studios and transmitters were situated in a four-hundred-foot-deep cavern in London’s Goodge Street. This labyrinth of electronic hardware had once been an air-raid shelter that housed newly arrived American troops during the Second World War.

  The second line of visual communications in Britain was housed a few hundred yards from Goodge Street, in the Post Office Tower, the highest building in London. From this black, fragile-looking cylinder on the skyline, microwave circuits carried Telex signals, domestic telephone calls and more television pictures.

  The General Post Office had once patrolled these two critical installations with its own security division. But, as losses grew and bomb threats became real, a private company supplanted the security arm.

  Both the Goodge Street underground center and the Post Office Tower were guarded now by Standfast.

  In Paris, the offices of ORTF, the government station, and its suburban studios were constantly patrolled by Vigilance de France. The entire West German television chain was similarly placed under the care of the Baroness von Thurberg’s organization. And in Italy, Cittadella had been selected for RAI after highly competitive bids from similar organizations.

  In London, the duty controller had one last task. With two minutes to go before the end of the talk show, he called into a microphone.

  “VTR, will you preview the national anthem, please?” He watched the face of the young King appear on one of the monitors.

  “Thank you, VTR.”

  The talk show ended. The controller switched to the presentation studio, where an announcer, talking over a BBC indent signal, talked briefly about programs for the following day. The controller allowed fifteen seconds for the weather chart, showing that the rain of today would be followed by brighter, sunny weather, and then ran the tape of the King with Windsor Castle in the background.

  It took the controller another five minutes to make sure all the circuits in the control room had been switched off. Then he headed for the television center’s parking lot.

  The BBC was now entirely at the disposal of a man who sipped coffee at fifty thousand feet over an island nine hundred miles to the south.

  HEATHROW AIRPORT, LONDON, 1000

  The aircraft landed on the main runway of Heathrow Airport and taxied through the flickering confusion of lights to the Airbec Ltd. office and hangar complex on the western perimeter.

  The general was waiting on the apron as the engines were cut and moaned to silence. The door opened and the steps emerged automatically. Two men shook hands by the light of the blue navigation beacon on the Petite Concorde’s underbelly.

  “It looks as though we have won,” said General Appleyard.

  Becker smiled. “I don’t envy you the task of telling the King.”

  “He’s adaptable. Won’t like it, of course. But he’ll get over it.”

  “The Home Secretary?”

  “Waiting for you in the office. He has agreed to maintain normal police operations until he has talked to his colleagues.”

  “Much trouble?”

  “What do you think? He danced a little and roared a little and then I calmed him down. He’s an intelligent man. He found the news about the Prime Minister a little shattering at first. But I honestly think he’s beginning to see the funny side of it.”

  “Communications?”

  They were walking toward the office. It was chilly, and Becker thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his suede jacket.

  “They’re checking the satellite link now. The announcement should have an audience of three hundred and forty million. It will be repeated on the Eurovision link every hour on the hour and interspersed with the prepared tapes.”

  As they reached the door of the office, Becker turned to the general.

  “Do you know, Appleyard, as far as every report has shown, not a drop of blood has been spilled in this operation. Not a shot has been fired. Who would have thought that this continent, the Europe of Caesar, William of Normandy, of Napoleon and Wellington, of Frederick the Great, of Churchill and Hitler ... who would have thought that it was so vulnerable?”

  “You did.”

  Becker slowed his step.

  “There will be fighting today, especially in France. The students will be out and the CRS are still the biggest danger. Colonel Montcalm will be talking to the Paras at first light. He’s a great hero with them. He’ll win them over. Germany will acquiesce. So will Italy. What about this country?”

  The general sucked on an empty pipe.

  “They’ve been crying out for leadership for long enough. Let’s see what happens now that they’ve got it.”

  “I’ll talk to the Home Secretary. Then I’ll fly off as soon as possible to Orly to thank Montcalm. I shall give the baroness a big kiss of congratulations and I shall have breakfast with the admiral at the Excelsior.”

  “And then?”

  “I think I shall go back to Elba.”

  They began to walk up the steps to the office.

  “You realize, of course, that they will be comparing you with Napoleon.”

  “Yes. I used to find the comparison invidious. There is one difference. A big difference. You do know that Eurovision headquarters are built on the site of the battle of Waterloo? But Napoleon lost; and more than fifty thousand troops were killed. We won — and not a single life was wasted in gaining the most important weapon of all.”

  He opened the door and walked into the office.

  If you enjoyed reading The Predator you might be interested in Rogue Hercules by Denis Pitts, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from Rogue Hercules by Denis Pitts

  By the time he had reached his thirty-sixth birthday, Martin Gore could no longer be described as handsome. He had been handsome, certainly; indeed even now in the harsh strip lighting of that airport cafeteria it was possible to see why a former girlfriend had called him Byronic. His hair had been long and blond then, but now it had greyed in curious streaks. His nose, which had been long and aquiline, had been pushed out of true in two flying accidents. There was a thin scar two inches long along his chin, the result of a serious car crash. It was a strong, determined face but there was a hardness about it which seemed somehow artificial. It was a face which had known pain and fear, certainly, and yet the eyes were intensely alive and filled with humour. They were large eyes, brown and intelligent, constantly alert in that airport setting.

  The tenseness was accelerated now by fatigue and the archness of the neon. He sat, wearing a faded tan bush shirt, and scowled at the sournes
s of airport coffee which had clearly been reheated ten times or more that night. He had flown that questionable aircraft which stood now in the hangar for three days, and he had not slept properly at any of the planned rest points along the route. He was too aware of the volatile nature of the cargo, of the illegality of this flight which placed his whole flying career in jeopardy.

  It had not been an easy haul from Taiwan. The Chinese Criminal Investigation Department had sniffed too industriously and had forced them to fly before they were really ready; the French wireless operator, picked up at the last minute, had defected to a Bangkok bawdy-house with his first cash advance; and the flight over the Pamirs had been a savage mixture of updraughts and downdraughts which had meant long stretches at the controls and mind-rending concentration.

  Fatigue brought on layer after layer of irritation which he fought to keep back as he listened to his co-pilot and flight engineer.

  ‘Unsafe? I will personally attest to that fact. She is altogether unsafe.’

  The flight engineer was a small man with a heavy growth of black beard. His name was George Sroka but he had been known for most of his adult life simply as “Stubbles”.

  ‘How unsafe?’ asked the co-pilot, a squat and yet powerfully built black man called Harry Black.

  ‘Unsafe like the booster hydraulic system reservoir is bleeding like it was mugged, the aileron linkage is corroded and creaks like a haunted house in the movies, and you’ve heard the way she screams on take-off. Like with agony and perturbation.’

  As a child in the Bronx, Stubbles had been taught by his father, a Polish-born barman, that it was important that he should learn a new word every day. He had done this all his life but he had never quite succeeded in fitting his new words correctly into sentences. But he knew every bolt, washer, bulb and the bearing of an Allison engine, and every duct and spar and wire of the Hercules airframe. He was a brilliant engineer.

  ‘Are you saying that we shouldn’t fly any further?’ asked Martin.

  ‘If you will recount several conversations which we had in Taiwan, Captain, you will know too goddamn well that we shouldn’t have flown at all,’ said the engineer. ‘You gave me five days and a parsimonious allowance of dollars with which to get that aged bucket into an airworthy state. I gave you as far as Karachi. Now the guarantee has expired.’

  The captain looked directly into Stubbles’ eyes and saw genuine worry. Flight engineers are a cautious race, often given to over-exaggeration for the sake of safety. He knew Stubbles. The little man was not being overcautious now.

  Martin turned to Harry who merely shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘All the instruments are registering properly,’ declared Martin almost defensively.

  ‘Captain, I hear things in those engines that you don’t hear either of you.’ Stubbles voice was normally high-pitched. Now it squeaked.

  Martin thumbed through the flight documents on the table in front of him.

  ‘Will we make Cyprus?’ he demanded sharply.

  Stubbles sighed heavily.

  ‘I guess we can,’ he murmured. ‘But I have to tell you the truth, don’t I?’

  Martin sat very still and placed his two index fingers on either side of his nose. The other two watched him intently. They could see that he was struggling in his mind against the natural airman’s reserve which normally dictated their flying.

  They were a strange combination, this crew. Martin was English and patrician, Harry was languid, a Texan, and Stubbles was ever alert and querulous like a sparrow. They neither appeared to fit easily together nor, as a crew, did they have any recognisable place among their easily categorised flying brethren.

  They were part of the demimonde of the air, contract men, freelancers, mercenaries indeed, respected by scheduled flyers for their ability to fly, but shunned on the ground because they seemed to earn too much money and spend it freely.

  They in turn had an equally contemptuous distaste for the flyers with gold bands on their arms who flew to rigid rules, who drank ostentatious orange juices in front of passengers and who demanded precedence at meteorological counters and the other airport offices.

  Martin had closed his eyes while he thought. For a few moments the other two watched him closely and wondered if he had fallen asleep.

  Then he looked directly at Stubbles.

  ‘We’re going to Cyprus,’ he said in clipped tones. ‘There’s money waiting for us in Cyprus. Are you coming?’

  ‘You bet, Captain,’ said Stubbles looking around the cafeteria. ‘I’d hate for to be left in this mausoleum.’

  They were about to order more coffee when Martin looked up and saw the girl coming towards them.

  *

  She walked across the airport concourse with an easy, athletic stride, a slender girl of mid height with a healthy tan and no make-up, her blonde hair clipped short, her wide, blue eyes alert and intelligent. She showed no sign that she had been travelling since noon the previous day in a complicated series of changes between Brussels and Pakistan.

  This was the only time that the normally hectic Karachi airport was quiet during the twenty-four hour cycle. An old Pakistani dozed fitfully behind the giant silver coffee stall; two women, match-thin in their drab grey saris, dragged wet cloths over the cigarette strewn marble floor; even the gaudy souvenir shops were closed. Soon the building would wake again, however, for dawn arrives early in Pakistan and pilots prefer dawn for take-off in those hotter latitudes.

  Already there were two or three slip-crews gathering. They sat, paper pale and yawning in the restaurant area, some coughing on their first cigarettes of the day, some wincing, like Martin, at the reheated coffee.

  Years of experience could not accustom them to this time of waiting. They talked little. Some read gaudy-covered paperbacks. Others glanced idly at the stewardesses’ legs and wrestled with unformed fantasies of fast-fading memories.

  Most of the men, however, preferred to follow the blonde girl appreciatively with their eyes as she crossed the hall. The stewardesses, trained to walk with clip-clop uniformity, envied the ease of her movements and the simplicity of her blue bush shirt and slacks. A bright red kerchief was tucked into her shirt.

  She carried an airline overnight bag which was slung casually over her shoulder. There was a slim document case under her arm.

  The name of this girl was Sorrel Francis. She was twenty-four years old, the youngest daughter of a Barberton, Ohio mining family. At the age of sixteen she had been a beauty queen, and when she was eighteen she had worked her way through university in New York as a part-time call girl. Now she was the secretary and the mistress of the man responsible for the arms that were being shipped in Juliet Mike Oscar.

  ‘There’s been a change of plans,’ she said directly. ‘I’m glad I got here in time or you would have had a two-thousand-mile unnecessary journey.’

  ‘You knew we weren’t due to leave until the morning,’ said Martin. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘These arms are not going to Cyprus,’ she said. ‘We don’t think they can pay for them.’

  ‘Great,’ said Harry. ‘What the hell sort of organisation are we working for? An out-of-date chicken coup of an aircraft which scares me rigid on every take-off — and now a change of plan. Where do we go now, back to China?’

  ‘Rhodesia.’

  Harry blinked several times.

  ‘You’re kidding,’ he said softly.

  ‘We have a buyer in Rhodesia,’ said Sorrel. ‘The goodies in the back of your aeroplane are exactly what he wants.’

  ‘That’s sort of illegal,’ said Harry. ‘There’s an international embargo on selling knickers to Rhodesia, let alone missiles and mortars.’

  Martin said nothing. He looked at the girl evenly. She continued.

  ‘Your bonus if this load had got to Cyprus would have been fifty thousand dollars. If you can get it to Salisbury, Rhodesia, within the next forty-eight hours, your bonus will be one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.’
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  The girl looked at the men, awaiting a reaction. It came from Martin.

  ‘Just a few observations,’ he said. ‘Firstly, Rhodesia is a long, long way away. We need to consider whether we can make Rhodesia in this aeroplane. Secondly, like Harry says, the world doesn’t like Rhodesia which means that we cannot stop over on the way should we need to repair any one of twelve thousand component parts which might go wrong, and probably will, along the route.’

  Harry said quickly, ‘We could make it all right. A lot of Hercs make it. Right down the coast of Africa and slide in low over Mozambique. It’s only two hundred miles. They’ve got no radar, no air force, except for a handful of MIG trainers that they can’t fly. It’s a milk run. It happens all the time.’

  ‘That’s what Murphy said in Brussels,’ said Sorrel.

  ‘Did he?’ said Martin. ‘Your boss doesn’t have to fly that garbage can out there. He also appears to have failed to take into account the fact that Rhodesia is dominated by a white minority and that Harry is a black man. He might have some sensitivity in that direction.’

  ‘Murphy thought on that, too,’ said the girl. She reached into her document bag. ‘I’m authorised to pay you off, Harry. Ten thousand dollars in cash.’

  ‘And who will co-pilot — even if Harry did take the money?’ said Martin harshly.

  ‘Surely there are plenty of out-of-work flyers around here,’ said Sorrel.

  ‘I suppose that’s what Murphy said.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Christ, the man’s a shit. Of course we can’t get anyone else. We’re under-crewed as it is.’

  Harry said quite briskly, ‘Listen, I don’t mind going to Rhodesia or anywhere else if the money’s good. I’m no black lover.’

  Martin looked hard at Sorrel. ‘All right then,’ he said. ‘Supposing Stubbles here agrees to declare the aircraft safe to Rhodesia and supposing I agree to fly it. How sure can we be of the money? It’s a shaky, altogether hairy kind of proposition that Mr Murphy’s making. How sure can we be of getting paid?’