by Andy Maslen
“I’ll take it!”
*
At three the following morning, Gabriel slid out of bed, dressed quietly, picked up the blonde wig, the SIG Sauer and the spare magazine and was out of the flat and behind the wheel of the Maserati in ten minutes. Britta didn’t stir, even when he caught one of the narrow iron legs of her bed between his toes and muffled a stream of Anglo Saxon.
Half an hour later, he parked on a meter on Tothill Street then made his way, hands deep in jacket pockets and hood up over his new pale yellow hair, to the corner where Whitehall met Birdcage Walk. He looked all around – nobody about. The building on the corner of Parliament Square was easy to scale thanks to the deep grooves cut between the blocks of stone, and in less than three minutes he was standing on the roof, the SIG Sauer a reassuringly uncomfortable presence in the back of his waistband.
The view was stunning. He looked south where the London Eye stared, unblinking, over the river Thames. North to the old Post Office Tower, a cylindrical sixties office building that looked like a science fiction author’s idea of ‘the skyscraper of tomorrow’. East towards the random assortment of flamboyant contemporary skyscrapers erected by developers and architects clearly compensating for something. And west, across parks and green spaces and the gradual lowering of the building heights, as hubris gave way to a more everyday vision of a city as somewhere to live and work. Maybe to get married and raise a family.
He was glad of the extra layers he’d put on. The wind was piercingly cold and driving rivulets of tears out of his eyes and across his numbing cheeks. Turning towards Trafalgar Square, he began to navigate the unfamiliar roofscape. His progress towards his destination was unhindered by any canyons created by side streets, and he was able to pick his way across one rooftop after another, skirting constructions housing lift gear, air conditioning units and other utilities necessary to keep a modern office building functioning for the safety and comfort of its inhabitants.
Nearing his objective, he was startled by a sudden explosion of noise and feathers, as a pair of peregrine falcons erupted from their nest. The birds wheeled over his head, keening their distress and annoyance. He avoided the nest altogether, not wanting to draw the parents’ wrath down upon his head. But he could still hear a demanding cheeping coming from the tidy bowl of twigs, scraps of plastic bags and fast food containers the raptors had fashioned into a home for their brood.
Then he saw it. The divide between one building and the next where Downing Street cut through the solid mass of architecture. Far too wide at the Whitehall end of the street to cross without descending to the heavily defended ground, it narrowed at its northern end to an eight-foot gap.
Gabriel got to his hands and knees and crawled right to the edge of the parapet to look over. The distance to the ground was fifty or sixty feet. Enough to ensure that a fall would be not just fatal but messy as well. As he moved away from the edge and stood again, he had a flashback. He was standing on a clifftop in the Outer Hebrides in January of 2005. A training exercise for a group of applicants to join the SAS, himself among them. The others were Morgan, Beaumont and Smith.
That last man was Smudge, whose bones still lay in that damned patch of land in Mozambique, unless hyenas, wild dogs and vultures had carried them away.
On that day, their task had been to jump across a five-foot gap between the island itself and Old Tom, a three-hundred-foot basalt column rising out of the North Atlantic. The exercise was a test of nerve rather than athletic ability. Even an averagely fit human being would have been able to clear the gap had it been, say, marked out with tape on the floor of a gym. But with a bitter wind swirling around their heads, and a platoon of armed soldiers at their backs, there was nothing simple about it.
Morgan, Beaumont and Gabriel himself had made the leap easily. But Smudge had messed up. He would have tumbled to his death had Gabriel not anticipated his shortfall and been ready to grab his flailing arm and pull him to safety.
Shaking his head to clear away the cloudy image of that make-or-break moment, Gabriel shoved the pistol an extra inch down the back of his waistband, then backed up twenty feet . . .
. . . crouched for a second . . .
. . . drew in a breath . . .
. . . and sprinted.
Arms outstretched as they had been all those years ago, Gabriel sailed out over the abyss and landed a foot inside the low retaining wall, his boots landing virtually silently on the roof of Number Ten Downing Street.
He looked at his watch. Four o’clock. Perfect. She’d either be deep underwater or in the early stages of sleep if she’d been up late working on papers. Either way, she’d be less than alert. Which would make what he had to do that much easier.
44
Within Striking Distance
AT ground level, Downing Street had the unobtrusive but effective security of a military base. Armed police. Narrow gates. Plus some hidden countermeasures the public would never find out about but which were more than capable of disabling all but the most determined of terrorists.
On the roof, it was a different story. It was almost as if the architect had decided to offer would-be intruders as wide a choice of entry points as possible. There were heating and air conditioning ducts, glass skylights and unprotected sash windows just a foot below the parapet. Gabriel ignored all of these. Instead, he simply stuck the blade of his knife into the space between the latch and frame of a maintenance door and cleared the tongue from the striker plate. With his other hand he pulled the steel-clad door towards him.
A set of narrow unpainted wooden stairs led down into the interior of the building.
Keeping his feet to the edges of the treads, where there would be less chance of ill-fitting joints betraying his presence, he descended to the top floor of the house.
At the bottom of the flight – just ten stairs in all – was another door. White-painted timber this time and with a simple spherical brass doorknob above a brass escutcheon screwed over the keyhole. The wig was making his scalp itch, but he kept it on. Anything that might disorientate Barbara Sutherland, even for a second, would be an advantage. And it would certainly help if he was observed leaving, whichever route he chose.
The lock took under thirty seconds to pick. Gabriel was breathing steadily, keeping his heart rate under control, but the flutter of excitement and anxiety in his gut was making it hard to do that and concentrate on his mission. He decided to let his heart do whatever it wanted, and his adrenal glands too. His focus was on reaching the target.
Gabriel pulled the door towards him, then twisted the knob. He thanked the handyman or woman who had kept the door and its hinges oiled – it opened without so much as a squeak. Once inside, he closed the door behind him, without letting it latch shut. Any sound his feet might have made was deadened by the thick, blood-red hallway carpet. He made his way to the flight of stairs.
At Britta’s flat, they’d sat, hip to hip, Googling ‘floor plan Ten Downing Street’. The master bedroom, labelled ‘Bedroom 1’ on the plan was on the northeast corner of the first floor. Now, he made his way down the stairs, pulse bumping in his throat, heading for a showdown with the woman who was either out to kill him, or who would want to shortly thereafter, but would probably settle for arrest and prosecution.
From a previous visit, confined to daylight hours and a ground floor sitting room, Gabriel had met the Prime Minister’s son, Tom. He’d been five or six then. So a bit older now. Please, God, don’t let the kid be a sleepwalker.
Reaching the first floor, which was as well-carpeted as the second, Gabriel paused for a couple of seconds to get his bearings. He looked over the bannisters to locate the front door. That’s west. So over there is northeast. On the balls of his feet, palms sweating, head itching furiously under the scratchy wig, he stepped as if on eggshells round the balconied hallway. Finally, he reached the door behind which, if he had calculated correctly, lay Barbara Sutherland.
Her husband was a serving RAF officer. Wheth
er he was serving a tour or at home on leave, Gabriel had no idea. It was the one part of the puzzle he’d been unable to pin down in advance. Even the web had its limits.
He stood for an eternity with his hand on the doorknob, breathing quietly but deeply. It all happens now, Old Sport, a voice said in the space inside his skull where all his disembodied advisers spoke from, whether alive or dead: Smudge; his long-dead brother, Michael; Britta; and, on this occasion, Don Webster.
Looking down, he watched his hand turn the knob. It was just as silent as the other door had been and he released it against the spring and opened the door by a few inches. He could hear snoring. Which had to be a good sign. If there were two people in there, then one was asleep. If it was just the Prime Minister, he had a sitting-duck target.
Brushing a stray blonde hair away from his mouth, he risked peering around the edge of the door.
45
Confrontation
SHE was sitting up in bed, in a low-cut, black silk nightgown. In front of her, spread out on her lap, were some sort of Government papers. The red box in which they had been sent lay near to the end of the bed. A pair of rectangular, black-framed reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. Beside her, a hump in the bed clothes revealed that the snorer was her husband. In the act of reseating the glasses on the bridge of her nose, she looked up and over at Gabriel. He was pointing the SIG at her.
She could have screamed. Woken her husband. Had Gabriel arrested and thrown in the Tower. She did none of these things. Instead, she stared at him for a time, then pointed at him and made a shooing gesture with the backs of her fingers. He withdrew, and waited just outside the door.
Moments later, pulling a white dressing gown around herself and tying the belt at her waist, Barbara Sutherland appeared. She closed the door behind her, taking exaggerated care to engage the latch without making a sound, then glared at him and hissed:
“You’ve got a bloody nerve. Follow me. And put that bloody gun away.”
She swept past him, down the hall and turned left into a room at the far end. Keeping within a single pace of her back, Gabriel tracked her along the softly carpeted hallway and into the room, which turned out to be another bedroom, furnished with a double bed and a couple of arm chairs.
Once inside with the door shut behind them, Sutherland spoke.
“Suppose you tell me what this is all about. It’s not the most usual way members of The Department present their reports to me.”
Gabriel decided to go along with the fiction that he was still a loyal, trusting and, above all, unsuspecting, member of the unofficial task force of spies and killers maintained by the Government to eliminate those on its ‘most wanted’ list.
“I went to Mozambique, crossed into Zimbabwe, killed Philip Agambe, returned, tried to reach the site where I suspected Smudge’ remains to be and was ambushed by a crew of ex-US Marine types. They failed. I pressed on and was then ambushed a second time by a gang of local, I don’t know, militia or something. They hit me in the leg and were about to execute me when I was pulled out by the Zambian air force with some help from the Americans.”
He paused to see whether Sutherland was reacting at all to any of this but her face was still. No expression to give her away. Inscrutable.
“Very impressive, I must say,”
“What was impressive?”
“Well,” she said, “fighting your way out of not one, but two, ambushes . . . all alone. Nobody to help you?”
Realising he’d been perilously close to giving away Britta’s presence, he tried to regroup.
“Like I said, the Zambians crossed into Mozambican airspace to pull me out of the second one and I just got lucky in the first. Some of the toys Don provided were brutally effective.”
“Then what?” she asked. “Did you go back for Trooper Smith’s remains?”
“I couldn’t. The Zambians took all my weapons and I didn’t judge it safe to try again, given how many people seemed to be out to get me.”
Now she did smile, ever so slightly. It was a fleeting expression but Gabriel picked up on it all the same.
“So then what?”
“So then I went back to see Philip Agambe’s widow.”
“That was an unusual decision. What did you say, ‘Hello, I just assassinated your terrorist-financing husband and now I want to pay my respects?’“
Gabriel took a breath. Reacting to her provocation now would undo all his work in getting here.
“I told her I was the man who’d killed her husband, yes. But I begged for her forgiveness and said I’d been set up. She had a dossier that she claimed proved that you, Prime Minister, were up to your elbows in blood diamonds, corrupt arms deals and land purchases in southern Africa.”
Sutherland’s lips compressed into a thin line. She appeared to be deciding on something.
“Claimed,” she said, finally.
“Pardon?”
“You said Marsha Agambe had a dossier that she ‘claimed’ showed I’d been involved in some sort of dodgy dealings. So you didn’t see it, then?”
“No. I was about to look at it when a sniper shot her. Her brother was working against her and he pulled a gun on me but the sniper got him, too.”
“So it’s entirely possible that the two of them were in cahoots with Philip Agambe, laying a false paper trail to incriminate me and camouflage their own actions?”
“It is. That’s why I’m here. I want to believe in you. I saved your life, remember? And now I’m working for you, even if it’s indirectly, against Britain’s enemies.”
Now, she smiled at him. Leaned towards him and laid a hand on his knee.
“Look, love. Don told me about your medical condition. The PTSD. I know the last few months have been tough on you. I understand, really I do. You’ve been under enormous strain. But you have to understand, breaking into Number Ten in the small hours of the bloody morning to interrogate me about supposed wrongdoings in Africa. Well, you can see how it looks from my side, can’t you?”
The earnestness of her tone disorientated Gabriel. What if she were telling the truth? What if she really was being set up by the Agambes? He had a foolproof way of finding out. Hypnosis. He altered his breathing pattern, and began a sequence of eye movements, locking onto hers and then leading her gaze in a pattern of left-right movements taught to him decades earlier by Zhao Xi.
“Of course I . . . can see . . . how it looks to . . . you . . . Barbara, but that’s why . . . I . . . had to some to . . . see –”
She interrupted him, shaking her head and blinking rapidly.
“What the bloody hell do you think you’re playing at? Are you trying to hypnotise me?”
She stood up, and placed her hands on the arms of his chair, effectively trapping him there unless he wanted to physically force his way past her. Glaring down at him, she spoke at a normal volume.
“You’re not right in the head, my love. You need help. Professional help. I know you’ve been under enormous strain, but really, don’t you think it’s time to sort yourself out?”
“You may well be right. But now isn’t the time. I’m going to make an educated guess that you don’t want to wake up the household – or get the police involved – any more than I do. So I’m going to leave now.”
She stood over him for a couple of seconds, breathing heavily, then stood back and to one side. As he pushed up from the chair she laid a hand on his arm, stopping him for a moment.
“I’m going to put this whole episode down to your mental health condition, my love. And you’re right, I don’t want to wake John or Tom and I certainly don’t want to call the police. For one thing, John sleeps with a gun in his bedside table – he’s not supposed to have it here, but what can I say, he’s overprotective. For another, I don’t think you’re in your right mind, so turning you over to the police wouldn’t be in your best interests. But I do want you gone from my house, right now. And I suggest you take some leave. Maybe a lot of leave. See a shrink o
r someone who can sort out your problems for you. Now get out. I need some sleep before I face that mob in the House tomorrow.”
She stood to one side and let Gabriel stand.
“Thank you,” was all he said. He looked at her. Her face wore an expression of sadness, eyes creased at their corners, forehead wrinkled, mouth pulled down. Without another look, he left the room, crept along the hallway, made his way upstairs to the second floor, and was out on the rooftop a few minutes later.
It was still dark when he climbed down onto the street fifteen minutes later.
It was still dark when he sat behind the wheel of the Maserati five minutes after that, put the car in gear and cruised away from Tothill Street.
It was still dark when he climbed into bed beside Britta at the end of a nerve-wracking thirty-minute drive to Chiswick, during which he must have checked his rearview mirror a couple of hundred times.
In truth, Gabriel Wolfe had never felt so much in the dark as he did at that precise moment.
Then he thought of somebody who might be able to shed a little light.
After a couple of hours’ fitful sleep, more dozing than anything else, he was up and dressed again, showered, shaved and on his way out of the door. Britta was still asleep, though she’d turned over when he’d got out of bed and mumbled something he couldn’t make out before rolling herself up in the duvet, leaving just a few strands of her long, copper-coloured hair showing.
At seven-fifteen, Gabriel pulled into a parking spot on Denman Road.
46
The Third Copy
GABRIEL walked up the path to Melody’s front door and stretched his fingertip towards the doorbell. Then hesitated. What am I going to say? Then he stopped hesitating. For God’s sake, the way things are going this can’t possibly make things worse. He pressed the bell push firmly, holding it down for a count of three before releasing the shiny porcelain dome. The ring was surprisingly loud, and made him jump.