by Karl Hill
Which is why I think you’re the only person who can see this to its rightful end.
Six months ago, my daughter was taken. She is five years old. Her name is Natalie. She was stolen from her bed during the night. It was planned. She was targeted. She hasn’t been found. The police believe she was abducted and murdered. They’ve given up on her. I think they’re wrong. I think she’s alive. My wife didn’t. She overdosed. She took her own life because she thought our little girl might be lonely in heaven. As I write this down, my heart is breaking.
I haven’t given up. I never will. But time’s running out. I’m being watched. I’m being followed. This is not paranoia. Hence this letter. Hence the will.
I’ve researched paedophiles, paedophile groups. Their patterns of behaviour, their characteristics, their modus operandi. I’ve trawled the dark web. I’ve borne witness to the most depraved things. Things that make the skin crawl, and the stomach heave. But I think I’m onto something massive. A ring of individuals deeply involved in child abuse. They’re secretive, they’re clever. And they’re very powerful.
I stumbled across a video of one of their “parties”. I think this video can help me find Natalie. I know there’s a connection.
But I’ve been careless. I’ve been asking too many questions, and been too open about it. I am under no illusion that my life is in danger. The fact you’re reading this bears out my prediction.
These people need to be destroyed. Like vermin. I can’t do it. I believe you can.
Following your career, having seen what you can do, I know something about you, that perhaps you don’t see yourself. You’re more than a soldier. Much more.
You are a man of war, Captain.
A warrior.
I need a warrior now. These children need a warrior. Kill these fuckers. Find my daughter.
Godspeed, Captain Black,
Gilbert Bartholomew
Black read the letter twice, then let it rest on his lap. There was a photo of a little girl stapled at the bottom. Tousled yellowy blonde hair, blue eyes, looking at the camera from under a Christmas tree, face alive with joy. He gazed out the window. The view was of a small back court with industrial-sized rubbish carts, and beyond, the brick gable end of a house. Black cast his gaze inward. To a desert scene fifteen years ago. In the Afghan badlands, where life was cheaper than a bullet. Another world, another time. Black remembered, memories caught in the smoke of the bomb, the hazy swirl of the desert sand, the smell of diesel…
The Snatch Land Rover turned a half somersault, only thirty yards from Black, who was driving the vehicle next in line. The explosion was short and powerful. Black felt the ground shake. Like a tremor. Then, a hail of bullets from a cluster of stones imbedded in the sand, fifty yards from the road. Perfect camouflage. Their target was the fallen Land Rover. Black saw the glint of weaponry. Looked like AK-47s. The Taliban’s rifle of choice. A legacy of the Russian invasion two decades before.
Normal protocol – stop the vehicle, get out, take cover, evaluate, respond. Fairly obvious. But the soldiers in the Snatch were under fire, and there was no time. If they weren’t dead already, they would be soon. Either by gunshot or exploding fuel tank.
Black hit the gas pedal. The Snatch Land Rover was built to be quick in rough terrain. He headed off-road, direct to where the Taliban had dug in. Suddenly, the direction of the fight changed. The windscreen exploded into a million pieces. The front chassis shuddered, absorbing round after round of Taliban bullets, the armour-plated shielding doing its job. Black kept on.
Five seconds later, screams of consternation as he drove the vehicle across the stones and on top of their heads. Maybe eight assailants. Four crushed on impact. Black leapt from the vehicle, already aiming, firing once, twice. Another two down. A man came from nowhere, leaping on his back, knife poised to slit his throat. Black hurled him over his shoulder, fired a bullet in his head, close range. A man scrambled across the sand to get away. Black calmly shot him in the back. Eight dead men.
He sprinted back to the flipped over Land Rover. Clock was ticking. The sounds of gunfire could attract a hundred more insurgents in minutes. Black reached in.
“Got to get you out of here and to a hospital.”
Black pulled the driver from the wreckage, delicately. His legs were twisted. Other men had now arrived to help.
The driver held Black’s hand for a second longer.
“Thank you.”
And that was the one and only conversation Black had with the man he would come to know as Gilbert Bartholomew.
20
Mr Lincoln was in Oxford when he was given the contract on Adam Black’s life. “The City of Dreaming Spires” as it is known, and how he preferred to call it.
He visited every year, at about the same time, for a week. He was a man of routine. This was, for him, a short holiday. He made it his business to visit the Bodleian Library. Books fascinated him. Literature. Poetry mesmerised him. He had acquired a collection of rare first editions, which he kept secure in his home in a little fishing village called Monnickendam, a fifteen-minute drive from Amsterdam, a place few people knew about.
He wasn’t Dutch. Far from it. He was American. The name he was using currently, and the name he liked his American friends to use, was Jonathan Lincoln. He worked under several assumed names, had several passports. He spoke without accent, always in a soft, well-modulated voice, which was rarely raised. He spoke several languages. Fluently. Self-taught. He kept supremely fit, running five miles every day. He was skilled in hand-to-hand combat, and competent with knife and sword. He was an expert marksman, particularly the pistol. He was patient and precise. He planned to the point of obsession. There was nothing in his demeanour to stand him out from the crowd, which suited him perfectly. Forgettable. Average height, lean, medium-length hair. A very slight scar above his left eyebrow. He dressed casually. Never formal, unless he had to. At first glance, he seemed like any other tourist, completely at ease in his surroundings. Which he was, when he visited Oxford.
Mr Lincoln. A one hundred per cent kill rate. Hitman for the super wealthy.
His holiday had been interrupted by the urgent email from Norman Sands. Normally, he would have ignored such an intrusion. But Sands represented people who paid generously.
When he got the details of the target, he knew, instinctively, the task would represent a challenge. More challenging than the average kill. Perhaps the most challenging he’d been asked to face. He could refuse. But the prospect intrigued him. Compelled him. And of course, there was the money.
He was sitting in the Bodleian Library, as he re-read the résumé of the man he was to kill. The résumé was thorough and meticulous, every aspect of his life captured and condensed. It seemed the man Captain Adam Black had led an interesting life.
Mr Lincoln had asked for double his usual fee, given the urgency, and got it instantly. Which told him they wanted him silenced very badly. It wouldn’t be easy. Far from it. The man had spent a good chunk of his adult life in Special Forces, had won the Military Cross. Plus, he was already aware he was being hunted, so the element of surprise was reduced. To complicate things, he had no family, so there was no leverage. He had already killed, possibly four people. He was not scared to spill blood. In fact, pondered Lincoln, he might enjoy it.
Lincoln deliberated, alone and in the tranquil ambience of the Bodleian, where silence was the absolute rule. He had an almost intuitive sense about his intended victims, piecing together the facts of their lives, creating a picture of their psyche, behaviour patterns, habits, determining what they would do, their next move, their fears, their desires. In Adam Black’s case, Lincoln saw something he had never seen, and thought he never would. He saw something of himself. A killer. A man used to death, who wasn’t scared of it.
He would catch a flight to Glasgow that evening, and book himself into a hotel. The instruction was clear. Black had to be expunged quickly. And discreetly. Lincoln already had a half-plan f
ormulated. Despite his apparent invulnerability, Lincoln saw an angle – the chink in Black’s armour.
For the first time for as long as he could remember, he felt his heart race with excitement. He would have taken on this job for nothing, for the sheer thrill of killing a man like Captain Adam Black.
A trophy kill.
21
The trick is to stay alive. How do you accomplish this? Simple. Kill every bastard in the room.
Advice given by Staff Sergeant to recruits of the 22nd Regiment of the Special Air Service
Black toyed with the memory stick. He had killed men, with guns, knives, his bare hands, had faced death many times. Yet now, at this moment, he was truly scared. The memory stick held material that might open a window to dark and terrible places. Places he definitely did not want to visit. He could turn back. It wasn’t too late. He could shut up shop, lose himself in another country, never be found. Eventually, his trail would run cold, and those hunting him would give up. Maybe.
But if he looked through that window, even a glimpse, to the dark beyond, then a line was crossed. Perhaps no going back. He studied the photograph of the laughing girl, Natalie. The essence of innocence. He read the letter again. He thought of the bastards who’d tried to kill him, the bastards who’d undoubtedly murdered Gilbert Bartholomew, who’d stabbed Fiona Jackson to death and left her naked in her flat to rot. This had to stop.
He had £300 cash in his pocket. Courtesy of one dead assassin lying in the bleak, windswept Highland moors. Black left his hotel bedroom, wandered into the town centre, found a computer repair shop, where he bought a second-hand laptop. He returned to his room. On the way back he’d bought a bottle of whisky – Glenfiddich. He suspected he might need it. He poured himself a large glass, neat, and took a hefty gulp.
He powered up the laptop, plugged in the memory stick.
Black gazed at the screen, watched the events unfold. Every second of a ten-minute video. He paused it halfway through, poured himself another large whisky, downed it in one, went through to the en-suite bathroom and retched. He returned, then stuck it to the end. He kept the volume low, but the screams of the little girl, and the laughter of the men, was a melody like no other, twisting into his brain like an infection.
The video finished. Black took a deep, faltering breath. He felt disgusted, sickened, appalled. Violated. A whole range of powerful emotions.
But despite the outrage, something he saw sparked a flicker of recognition. A tiny fragment. Another large swig of neat whisky. Black started again, from the beginning, taking more care to absorb the details. The quality was good, the images sharp, heightening the horror. This had been taken for subsequent viewing, he presumed.
The child was led into a large room, filled with chairs, divans, couches, positioned round a wide, impressive black marble hearth. A fire crackled. This was not a typical front living room. More like an upmarket hotel lounge, or the sumptuous smoking den of a private club. There was an intimacy about the place. It was opulent – plush red carpets, dark glossy oak-panelled walls. Heavy velvet curtains drawn shut. Large paintings in gold gilt-edged frames. On one wall, a tapestry, glinting gold and silver in the firelight. The illumination was soft, muted. Men sat, scattered about the room, in no particular order, maybe ten. All wearing identical dark robes, except one, whose robe was pale grey. Hoods drawn over their heads, each wearing a white face mask. They were naked underneath. Three men stood at a far wall, black suits. Also masked. Guards? Possibly.
She was no older than five, and terrified, squirming in the arms of two of the robed figures. Wearing a simple white dress. When she cried, the men laughed. When she screamed, the men screamed with her, imitating her, their voices shrill.
Behold the embodiment of true evil. A living, gasping nightmare. They passed her about, the little girl, one to another, like a sack of soft meat.
There! Black paused the video. A man had his hands on her shoulders. Black concentrated. He rewound, paused again. He was not mistaken. What he saw was distinctive. He had seen it before, twice in the last week. He watched again, to the finish, the video ending as her screams escalated to a heart-freezing pitch.
What happened afterwards, he did not wish to conjecture. But he did. More pain, maybe even death.
Black removed the memory stick from the laptop, snapped it in two. He wrapped the pieces in paper tissue and flushed it down the toilet. He put the laptop on the floor and smashed it with the heel of his shoe.
He poured another large whisky, and drank it in one, trying to contain the tremble in his hand.
He gazed out the window, at the unspectacular view of the back of a building.
He knew himself. He knew this was how it would be after watching the video. Pandora’s box was opened. People had tried to kill him. He had killed right back – a reflex, almost. Survival instinct.
This was way beyond that.
He turned away, opened the wardrobe door, stared at his reflection in a full-length mirror. The reflection staring back was a man moulded by others, their sole purpose to create a fighting machine capable of inflicting maximum damage. Who did that little girl have in her hour of need? She had screamed, desperate and terrified, and her screams had gone unheeded. He seethed with a dark, consuming rage – if his daughter were alive, she’d be about the same age.
Avenging angel. Warrior. Black thought hard on those words.
Time now for this killing machine to give a little back. He had nothing to lose, after all, except his life, which he would gladly give. The die was cast, a decision made.
He would do exactly as Gilbert Bartholomew requested. He would try to find his daughter, little Natalie.
And if need be, kill every last one of the fuckers involved.
With pleasure.
22
The ranch had been built initially as exactly that. A cluster of buildings, luxury living accommodation, barns, outbuildings. But as the years progressed, and Boyd Falconer’s business interests expanded, he adapted his home to accommodate his line of work. Very special adaptations, several million dollars’ worth of changes. Money, however, was not an obstacle.
Another level was created. A sub-level. The few that knew of its existence gave it a chilling nickname – the Dungeon. An area about quarter of an acre in dimension. Comprising one broad corridor, with rooms off either side. Each room was spacious, comfortable, with single beds, toilets, showers, no windows, for obvious reasons. The colours were bright, gaudy. Pink or blue wallpaper, spotted with yellow love hearts, glittering rainbows, smiling teddies. Coloured cushions on chairs, beanbags to sit on. Hanging from the corridor ceiling were large silver and gold rotating globes, which made the walls sparkle, as if gold dust was being sprinkled.
Each room was locked. Hidden video cameras monitored those inside.
At one end of the corridor was a room occupied by the individual responsible for those confined in the locked rooms. Stanley Lampton. He kept check. If need be, he was empowered to administer penalties, in case of disobedience. Sometimes he had to make an example of one, to create the desired subservience in the group. Though he was not allowed to maim or disfigure, or draw blood. Occasionally, if Falconer felt magnanimous, he granted him one as a gift, to do with as he pleased.
The man who lived in that room was feared by those in the dungeon. Like the sub-level he inhabited, he also had a nickname – the Dungeon Master. Lampton was a man with a past. He’d spent a good portion of his adult life in the state penitentiary for child molestation. Lampton had been an early starter. He’d raped his first minor when he was sixteen, and had never looked back. Those who had suffered at his hands would describe him as a monster. Lampton had many victims in many states.
Which was exactly the type of man Falconer needed to keep order in the dungeon. A man who enjoyed his work.
It was Lampton who had called the doctor about the measles, and it was Lampton who ensured a strict quarantine was in place.
“This had better be
under fucking control,” said Falconer. He and Sands were in Lampton’s room at the end of the hall. It was large, of regular dimensions, and scrupulously clean. It was devoid of anything personal. No pictures on the wall, no needless furniture, no ornaments or memorabilia. No family photographs – Stanley Lampton’s family had disowned him years ago. Lampton sat directly opposite the two men on a small leather swivel chair. He was spindle thin, his back rigid, his pale, long-fingered hands resting on his lap, like two monstrous albino spiders. He liked to dress in blue hospital scrubs, the type a surgeon might wear.
He regarded the two before him with dark eyes set deep in a skull face. Sharp cheekbones, narrow jaw. Lank black hair sat like a flat rag on his scalp, trailing over his ears. Sands was reminded of a moving cadaver when he had a conversation with Lampton. He liked to keep the meetings short. The man creeped him out.
“I couldn’t do anything about the measles,” replied Lampton, his voice soft, reasonable, respectful. “She’ll be fine. She’s in isolation. The doctor’s seen her.”
“I repeat…” said Falconer, “it had better be under fucking control. Do you know how much the doctor costs, just for one visit? Humour me, Lampton.”
“I imagine it’s expensive.”
“Imagine all you want. Let me tell you. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Do you know why it’s so expensive?”
Lampton remained expressionless.
“Because,” continued Falconer, “I have to buy the doctor’s silence. Every time someone here gets a cut or an infection, or a fucking summer cold, I pay a thousand times more than the going rate. Thus, for reasons of economy, I depend on you to keep these episodes to an absolute minimum.”