by A P Bateman
Chapter Forty-Nine
London
Whether it was because he had experienced such a brutally cold climate, or whether it was because spring had finally sprung in London, he did not know. But it was evident that the sun was bright and hot on his face and the breeze blowing up the Thames was warm and smelled of the distant estuary and sea. The azure sky had given the river a mirror-like sheen and the buildings on the South Bank reflected clearly on the river’s surface. The people of London were not generally known to be a friendly bunch, but today, as joggers, dogwalkers, and mothers pushing prams met head-on with commuters jostling their way to work at the tail end of the rush hour, there seemed a little more tolerance in the air than perhaps there would have been if the wind had blown cold and the clear sky above had scudded with dark rainclouds and the Thames had flowed brown and choppy and slick.
King knew that events were not going to run smoothly. Simon Mereweather had declined an office meeting. From his experience, a ‘meeting without coffee’ was one thing, but to be denied access to the entire building was quite another. The survival instinct in King had kicked in and he had procured a small automatic with a suppressor from his usual contact. He’d wanted a quick service and had received it. A text and a reply, a dead drop for the cash and another dead drop for the package to be retrieved. As usual, the weapon was clean – meaning no crimes had been committed with it – and King would have no doubts about its reliability.
The time and place had been arranged, but King had arrived an hour and a half early and before the rush hour had begun. He had used the time and the cover of people and traffic to survey the area. He hadn’t spotted anybody, but that wasn’t to mean he was in the clear. As he had recently started to do, he checked regularly for common drones – simple toy and craft shop models could now perform surveillance beyond MI5’s wildest dreams ten years ago. Capable of hovering perfectly and film from a great distance in full HD, they were difficult to spot and practically impossible to destroy.
King had watched Simon Mereweather take a seat on a park bench opposite a statue of a lion. King had only recently discovered that London had ten thousand of them. Some on bridges, some on pavements, but many secreted around the city in the most unlikely of places. Many were in long-forgotten walled gardens. Sometimes King felt like one of those lions – caged and under constraint. Soon to be forgotten.
A woman in activewear stopped and placed her foot on the other side of the bench and fastened her trainer. She jogged on the spot while she checked her messages on her phone or changed her playlist. She turned and jogged away, and Mereweather never looked up from his paper.
King walked a lazy circle around the area, then zoned in on the bench and sat down.
“You’re late,” Mereweather said without looking up. “Happy I’m alone?”
“I don’t mess about, Simon. There’s a crosshair on you,” he lied. “So, this had better be a friendly meeting…”
Mereweather folded his paper and placed it between them. His expression made it clear that he wasn’t sure if King was bluffing, and to confirm this, he glanced around wondering where the best place for a sniper to view him from would be. “I sent you up there to destroy a British submarine,” he said uneasily. “You failed. The submarine will now almost certainly be raised and handed over to the Royal Navy at the Faroe Islands. What terrible secrets are on that vessel will soon be discovered. We are in talks with the Admiralty to cobble together a story about a leak in the nuclear reactor. Under those circumstances, Aurora will likely back off and the Royal Navy can assume control, even within a UNESCO World Heritage area.”
“Good,” replied King curtly. “The families may never be reunited with their loved ones remains, but at least they’ll have a story with an ending and a memorial.”
“We are struggling for the general public’s support of nuclear-powered submarines and the huge cost implications maintaining and developing them. Now we have been placed in a position where we will be forced to fake their unreliability. The public’s support for an expensive nuclear weapons program has waned, too. Which brings me on to my next point…”
“I’ll save you the trouble,” King interrupted. “If you want me gone, then I’m gone. But that sub shouldn’t have been carrying nuclear warheads. And we shouldn’t have done half the things that we have over the years. So that’s the pieces on the board, and it’s a stalemate. Make your move Simon, but be prepared to be taken…”
Mereweather smiled. “I admire you, King. You have no limits, no boundaries you won’t cross.”
“For the right reasons,” King said sharply. “I’ve done everything within my power to win the fight for this country.”
“It’s more than that,” Mereweather replied. “You can’t lose. Or at least, you don’t know how to. You must walk into a situation with great confidence, which I suppose has come from winning at what you do.” He paused and reached into his inside pocket but froze when he saw the muzzle of the suppressor poking out from King’s worn leather jacket. “Jesus…”
“Nice and slowly now, Simon.”
Mereweather breathed out a deep sigh and chuckled. “You make me nervous.” He pulled out his hand, which was holding a dark blue velvet coated box. “You saved the day by destroying that Iranian submarine. I can’t emphasise enough how those warheads in the wrong hands would have been a catastrophe beyond the worst recesses of our imagination. If Iran and the DPRK got their hands on those, then all bets would be off.”
“They will get them eventually.”
“No doubt.”
“But not today.”
“No.” Mereweather paused. “In the report that you emailed from Spitsbergen, you mentioned an American agent. What became of him?” He absentmindedly thumbed the soft velvet covering the box, grateful for the tactile distraction.
King shrugged. “When we returned to his boat, he wasn’t there.”
“You said he was, in your opinion, the man who killed Cole last year. And by that token, he killed the Secret Service agent Rachel Beam as well.”
“I reckon.”
“So, the CIA sent a man, but he simply disappeared?”
“Into thin air.”
“Right…” Mereweather said dubiously. “I suppose he could have met with another US submarine in the area?”
“That would be my bet.”
“Did you kill him, King?”
“No.”
“But he simply disappeared…”
“Trust me, we’ll cross paths with that man again,” King replied.
Mereweather nodded, finally accepting King’s version of events. “The world’s media has gone crazy over the story of two duelling submarines under the ice. Washington will be bolstered for years from the way that worked out for them.” He opened the velvet case and showed King the medal inside. It was a cross with a medallion in the centre and bore the inscription For Gallantry around it. It shone brightly and had been crafted from highly polished silver and attached with a dark blue ribbon. “It’s registered as an operative of the Security Service, awarded in a secret ceremony.”
King frowned. “I thought I was getting fired…”
“No. Far from it. When the PM heard what had happened, or at least the salient facts, he insisted on awarding you the George Cross. It’s the highest order for bravery in the British Isles and awarded to both civilian and military personnel alike. That said, I do want you to lie low for a while. There’s an external review imminently on behalf of the Joint Intelligence Services and Whitehall and it would be better all-round if…”
“If all the loose cannons were off deck?” King interjected.
“Indeed.”
“I could do with a rest,” said King. “And I want to spend time helping Caroline to rehabilitate. She will have been lost without me recently.”
Mereweather cleared his throat nervously and looked away momentarily. “You haven’t spoken to her?”
“We don’t when the other is operational
. I’m driving back down to Dorset when we’re done here.”
Mereweather sighed. “We’ve let her go, Alex.”
“What? You fire her before giving her the chance to rehabilitate fully?” He snapped the medal box shut, shaking his head.
“It’s not like that.” Mereweather paused. “While you have been away Caroline has been assisting with a mission. Giuseppe Fortez put out a contract on you. Interpol intercepted it and brought it to us, Ramsay put together a team and when he informed Caroline of the threat, for her own security, she insisted on accompanying them.”
“So why did you let her go?”
“Because she was insistent.”
“I mean, why did you fire her?”
“She killed him.”
“What?”
“She used the team as a stalking horse to get near Fortez and then she killed him. Ended the threat to your life right there and then. She escaped in a helicopter that she hired privately in Switzerland.” Mereweather paused. “We think Dave Lomu was in on it, but he’s disappeared. A shame really, because we really would like to talk to him about brokering the deal which saw Fortez put a million euros in Caroline’s bank account before the meeting. One of those half-now, and half when the job is done arrangements. That’s the bloody gem right there. The rest of the team were not present when that happened. We’re not even sure if the broker, a man called Milo Noventa was forced to put the money into her account by Big Dave, before he allegedly came at him with a knife and was killed in the ensuing struggle. It’s a mess.”
King shrugged. “This is all news to me.”
“Quite.”
“Sounds like you need a talk with Big Dave.”
“I will. Soon enough.”
“Who else knows about the money?”
“Dave Lomu and Caroline for sure. Ramsay, because he’s accountable.”
“And does Fortez want it back?”
“In case you weren’t listening, the man’s dead.”
“Then, I fail to see the problem.”
“The problem is Caroline went rogue.”
“You said that about me, not so long ago…”
“There seems to be a pattern emerging,” Mereweather sneered. “And Leroy Wilkinson, AKA Flymo seems the most likely contender as her private pilot, as the company which hired the helicopter didn’t supply a pilot and will not divulge any further information without just about every official channel being taken and without every requisition document known to man being double-stamped.”
“That’s the Swiss for you…”
“That’s it? You hear that your fiancée killed a man, hasn’t declared a million euros that was used to entrap a man searching for a contract killer and that’s all you’ve got?”
“She loves me. I’d do the same for her and already have done.” King shrugged. “Fortez was a bad man in a dangerous game. If you want to dance, you’ve got to pay the band…”
“We’ll need the million back.”
King shrugged. “I don’t see how you think it was yours in the first place.”
“King…”
“I’m quite sure it’s illegal to run an entrapment operation in the way it seems to have been done. Neil Ramsay should have known better than that. And what about the top detective, Sally-Anne Thorpe? She knows the laws regarding entrapment.” King paused. “And it sounds as if Caroline was fired from a job she loves, right in the middle of her rehabilitation on sick leave. Surely you wouldn’t have allowed her on an operation in her condition?”
Mereweather stared at him, waiting for the punchline but it never came. He shook his head indignantly and said, “I didn’t want to fire Caroline, but she gave me no choice.”
“And how did she take it?”
Mereweather laughed. “Well, that’s Caroline for you. She said, Well, a bullet only does the job it was intended for after it’s been fired, maybe it will be the same for me…”
King smiled and stood up. “You know, Simon, I think she’s probably right on that count…” He left Mereweather sitting in the shade, the early morning sun warming his face with golden light as he started across Westminster Bridge. In his right pocket the small automatic pistol weighed down his jacket and when he was clear of the couple who were walking towards him, he tossed it over the side and into the muddy depths of the Thames. He took the case out from his other pocket and opened it, the medal glinting up at him. For Gallantry… King thought of the things he had done, the terrible things he had been asked to do and the lives he had taken for his country. The image of the floating lifejackets paused in front of him a moment too long, and he tossed the open box into the water. He watched for a moment as the box floated and the medal glistened in the sunlight, before the box slowly filled with water and started to swirl in the current, and then it was gone. On its way into the murky depths. Another secret lost forever.
*Authors Note
Hi – thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading the story as much as I enjoyed writing it!
Did you know you can sign up to my mailing lists for news of promotions, giveaways, and new releases? Head to www.apbateman.com to find out more.
I will undoubtedly be hard at work on another thriller as you read this and appreciate your support. If you have time to leave a short review or rating on Amazon, that would be great!
I hope to entertain you again soon!
A P Bateman
Acknowledgments
This novel required some technical data outside my ‘wheelhouse’, to use a common naval expression. Weapons, tactics, food, drink, vehicles and gruesome fights have never been a problem for my imagination, but the inner workings of submarines, communications and general naval procedures was something quite new for this author.
For their help with US Navy terminology and submarine protocols I would like to thank Richard Ashmore, Rick Nigh and John Bickford.
For her wealth of Royal Navy knowledge from submarines, navigation and communications, ops room knowledge and proof-reading skills, a special mention goes to Jacqueline Beard without whom certain segments of this story would not have seemed so real.
Any mistakes are my own.
The Alex King Series
The Contract Man
Lies and Retribution
Shadows of Good Friday
The Five
Reaper
Stormbound
Breakout
From the Shadows
Rogue
The Asset
Last Man Standing
Hunter Killer
The Rob Stone Series
The Ares Virus
The Town
The Island
Standalone Novels
Hell’s Mouth
Unforgotten
Novellas
The Perfect Murder?
Atonement
(an Alex King short story)
Further details of these titles can be found at
www.apbateman.com
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty - One
Chapter Twenty - Two
Chapter Twenty - Three
Chapter Twenty - Four
Chapter Twenty - Five
Chapter Twenty - Six
Chapter Twenty - Seven
Chapter Twenty - Eight
Chapter Twenty - Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty - One
Chapter Thirty -
Two
Chapter Thirty - Three
Chapter Thirty - Five
Chapter Thirty - Six
Chapter Thirty - Seven
Chapter Thirty - Eight
Chapter Thirty - Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty - One
Chapter Forty - Two
Chapter Forty - Three
Chapter Forty - Four
Chapter Forty - Five
Chapter Forty - Six
Chapter Forty - Seven
Chapter Forty - Eight
Chapter Forty - Nine
* Authors Note
Acknowledgments