by Andy Maslen
“Oh, dear. How quaint,” he said, when the paroxysm had passed. “The Russians. No. I’m not working for them. Though a few of them work for me. The group of which I’m a member has what one might call transnational interests. We set the wheels in motion for globalisation decades ago. Trade deals, treaties, financial deregulation, loosened labour laws, free movement of people and capital. They were all our ideas.” The smile left his face. “Here’s the thing, Barbara. You don’t have any power. Not really. And you’ve become a liability. I’m tired of your whining. So I’m not going to do anything to help you.” He paused. “Actually, there is one thing I can suggest.”
“What?” she asked, leaning forward.
“Get yourself a decent pair of boots. The Peak District’s murder on high heels.”
*
Two days after calling Sutherland from the hotel in Hartington, Gabriel woke at four. He showered, shaved and dressed. Merino base layer, top and bottom, then black moleskin trousers, long-sleeved T-shirt and fleece, finally Gore-tex over-trousers and a Berghaus shell jacket. Lined gloves, a black fleece watch-cap, a tactical facemask and Italian walking boots completed the outfit. Into a black rucksack went a pair of night-vision goggles, a bottle of water and some energy bars . . . and something couriered to him by Britta the previous day. Something heavy.
He left the Maserati in the hotel’s car park and set off towards his rendezvous with Sutherland. The town was silent. A few flakes of snow drifted here and there but Hartington’s streets were clear, bathed in the pinkish-orange glow of streetlights.
There was an alley between two shopfronts – an optician’s and a pizza place. He turned down it, walked fast for a quarter of a mile, crossed a residential street at the far end and was climbing a stile into the beginnings of the National Park a few minutes later. The only part of him exposed to the air was a narrow strip of his face. The skin round his eyes puckered against the biting cold, he began the two-mile journey to the place where he would confront Sutherland. The moon provided enough light to see by, though he was careful picking his way through the bracken, gorse and heather as he navigated the terrain to the GPS reference. Twisting an ankle wasn’t part of the plan.
Arriving, he scanned the area. Perfect. Thank you Google Images. Flat. Featureless. The nearest peak was well over a mile away, out of range for even the best sniper. Even though kills at well over two-and-a-half-thousand yards had been recorded, Gabriel was counting on the conditions, and the lack of light, to make that an impossibility.
He raked up a nest of dry bracken and moss and dug himself in to wait.
It was the faint crack that alerted him. He had been huddled down, munching one of the energy bars and thinking about Britta, when the snap of a bracken stem brought him back to the present. They’re here!
He reached into the rucksack and withdrew Britta’s present. Black, dull surface, moulded plastic handgrip. The Glock 19 was loaded with fifteen 9 x 19 mm Parabellum rounds. Hollow-points like the ones he’d used to kill Robert Hamilton. Stuffing it down into the squashed bracken between his thighs to muffle the sound, he racked the slide to chamber one of the rounds, then pushed the safety off.
Next, he slid the power switch over on the night-vision goggles and, as the electronics came to life with a mosquito’s whine, pulled them down over his eyes.
The landscape in front of him swam into view: green and black but as clear as if it had been seven in the morning in June, not February. Three figures were stalking across the ground towards him, in a tight group. The figure in the centre of the group was shorter by a head than the other two. All were dressed in padded gear that bulked them out.
All three stopped, while one consulted a handheld device, a GPS presumably. The figure pointed in Gabriel’s direction, then made a hand signal: spread out.
Flattening himself into his squashed nest of vegetation, Gabriel observed as the figures drew pistols, increased the distance between them to fifteen yards, and began a crouching approach to his position.
He’d anticipated that Sutherland wouldn’t come alone. He wouldn’t, whatever he’d been instructed to do.
The question was what to do about the protection team. They didn’t look like they’d tagged along merely to stand guard. Their intent was clear.
But given the precariousness of Sutherland’s position, he doubted they’d be soldiers, or even armed police. Not MI5 or MI6, either. She couldn’t just order up a hit team and whisk them off to the middle of the Peak District on two days’ notice. There’d be too many questions. No. These would be private contractors. Probably working for some British equivalent of Gordian.
He scraped bracken back over the flattened basin where’d he’d been lying in wait and belly-crawled parallel to the advancing team. There was a shallow trench running through the bracken and the soil beneath it, some sort of natural formation where the rock under the moorland had shifted downwards, thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of years ago.
Gabriel slid down into the trench and continued his knee-and-elbow progress away from the armed bodyguards. The road lay ahead. It was the only road leading to this remote spot. It ended in a wide scrape of tarmac surrounded by wooden post-and-rail fence: a viewpoint, and a starting point for circular walks through this “area of outstanding natural beauty” as the tourist guides put it. Though what was about to happen was not, to Gabriel’s mind, in the slightest bit beautiful.
He reached the parking area while his opponents were still heading away towards the GPS reference. A solitary vehicle, a dark Land Rover Discovery, sat there, with the interior light on. And inside the solitary vehicle sat a solitary figure. A woman, wrapped up warm in a dark-coloured parka with a fur-lined hood pushed back from her face. A woman with a slash of red lipstick, despite the horrifically early hour she must have risen to be here at this time. She stared out through the passenger window, eyes wide, biting a fingernail. Hello, Prime Minister.
Gabriel crawled over the lip of the trench and crept up to the rear of the Discovery. Apt name, he thought as he kept low and made his way forward, along its near side. The engine was idling and the smell of unburnt diesel from the exhaust was pungent in the otherwise crisp, clean Derbyshire air.
As he reached the B-pillar, behind the window of the front passenger door, he straightened and tapped once on the glass with the muzzle of his pistol.
The effect was all he’d hoped for.
62
Nemesis
BARBARA Sutherland’s head snapped round and she jerked back in her seat, eyes wide, mouth frozen open.
He pulled the door open and said a single word.
“Out.”
She complied. What choice did she have?
“Where are you taking me?” she said in a shaking voice. “Who are you?”
“We have an appointment,” he said through the tactical mask, which muffled his voice, though he didn’t think it disguised it enough for her not to recognise it. “Move. Scream and I’ll shoot you.”
She stumbled ahead of him, zipping up the parka against the cold.
As they moved back towards the GPS reference, a shot rang out. Several bursts followed, four or five rounds at a time, two shooters overlapping their fire.
Sutherland stopped but Gabriel prodded her in the back with the pistol.
“No! They’re shooting,” she said.
“I know. Keep moving,” he said.
Now they could hear shouting. Two male voices. One deep, rough, East End of London. The other higher pitched. A Geordie.
“Luke?” the Geordie called.
“He’s down,” East End replied.
“Shit! Sniper?”
“Think so.”
“What do we do?”
“She said kill him.”
Gabriel tightened his jaw at this and had to will himself not to drop Sutherland on the spot.
“There’s nobody here.” Geordie again.
“Fuck!” This was East End.
There was a rustle
: squashed bracken springing back as a man lying on it stood up.
A split second later, another single gunshot rang out across the moorland.
Completing a triplet of sounds was the scrunch of dry vegetation as the man fell back to the ground.
“Johnno? Johnno?” East End called out. “Shit!”
By this time, Gabriel had manoeuvred Sutherland into position, just ten yards from the man’s back.
He pushed her to the ground, gripping the back of her neck and crouched beside her.
At the noise, East End whirled round, his ghostly, green form sharp in Gabriel’s night vision, his eyes pinpricks of white.
He brought his pistol up, a Beretta, Gabriel noted, and fired wildly, running through the remaining rounds in his magazine in a few seconds. He’d kept his arm straight out in front of him, firing at head-height.
Now Gabriel stood, and held his pistol out in front of him in a classic shooter’s stance, feet parallel, slight lean forward, barrel level with his eyes.
He shot the man where he stood. Five rounds centre-mass. A white spray behind him filled the viewfinder of the goggles. Then the man sank to his knees and fell forward onto his face. Gabriel closed the gap between them and put another two rounds into the back of the man’s head.
Turning, he was surprised to see Sutherland running off back towards the Discovery. He ran after her, taking high steps to avoid tripping, and caught her within thirty feet.
“No, Barbara. Not this time. Come with me.”
At his use of her first name she whirled round and peered into the goggles.
“Who the bloody hell are you?”
“Who am I? I’m your nemesis. I’m somebody you’ve tried to have killed over and over again. And yet here I am. Alive and well.”
Her eyes popped open as she processed this information.
“You can’t be. You’re dead.”
Gabriel removed his watch cap and tugged the goggles over his head. Then he lifted the front edge of the tactical mask away from his chin and pulled it up and over his forehead before stuffing it in his pocket.
“I’m afraid not.”
The dawn was late to arrive in this part of England’s green and pleasant land, but there was enough pale light seeping over the terrain from the east to light Gabriel’s features.
“Robert texted me. How did he not know?”
“Robert Hamilton killed himself three days ago. Apparently he couldn’t cope with the crushing sense of guilt he felt for fomenting civil war, for the creation of child soldiers, and for torture, just to line his own – and others’ – pockets.” Her eyes fell. “Or, at least, that’s what the note on his phone says.”
Three or four minutes elapsed during which they picked their way past the three bodies on the ground and found the precise spot indicated by the GPS reference he’d texted her. Gabriel said nothing. Nor did Sutherland.
They stood facing each other, she panting, he breathing steadily, slowly, dark eyes narrowed. Then she did speak.
“What do you want, Gabriel, love? I promise I can get it for you. Money? Name your price. You know I have the conflict diamonds. They’re untraceable. Take them to Amsterdam or New York or anywhere in Africa. You’ll get a good price. I can even introduce you to the right people.” He looked hard at her, but couldn’t trust himself to speak. Not yet. “Or a job? In Government. You could be a security czar. Or honours? How about that? A knighthood. It’s easy. The old bag will sign whatever I tell her to.”
Finally, Gabriel spoke. In a low voice he began.
“You bent and twisted the law, handed out defence contracts to evil men, all to line your pockets.”
She scowled. “Do you know what the world I move in is like?” she asked. “I’m a woman. They used to take the piss out of me. At every level. I had to be twice as tough as the men, had to jump just that extra bit higher. When Robert Hamilton approached me, he presented it as just a small favour. Building British defence industry competitiveness. The fee was hardly the stuff of Fleet Street exposés. But it got bigger. I came from nothing, Gabriel. Nothing! My dad was a farmer. We barely scraped by when I was growing up. Then Robert showed me what was possible. He said all my predecessors were at it, one way or another. The amounts weren’t even that big. Barely bigger than the wastage from the MoD in a single month. Surely you can see that?”
Gabriel’s right hand jerked out in front of him, finger tightening on the trigger. She gasped and drew back, flinching.
“If it was just the money, I’d walk away. You’re all bent, one way or another. Hamilton was right. But you traded military intelligence for money. You put your own soldiers’ lives in danger.”
“What are you talking about? I helped Robert with defence contracts and I brokered a few arms deals in Africa for him, that’s all.”
“Have you really forgotten, Barbara? When you were Defence Secretary? You diverted operational intelligence within 22 SAS to Hamilton to protect Abel N’Tolo. My men and I were caught up in that. I lost a good man that day. And another of my men lost his left arm. A little girl had to grow up without her dad, and his wife became a widow.”
“Gabriel, love, please. Kids are orphaned all the time. Women are widowed. That’s war. They all know that when they enlist.”
“Yes, they do know that. They know they could be maimed, or mutilated, or killed. By the enemy. But what they don’t know is that they’ll be ambushed because their own Government minister has betrayed them for a handful of blood diamonds and cheap African land.”
Something in Sutherland seemed to snap. Maybe she realised she wasn’t going to reason her way out of it.
“Fine. I traded military intel for blood diamonds and land. So what! Those idiots don’t know what to do with it, do they? We’ve been pouring aid into Africa since the seventies. And for what? Civil wars. Terrorism. Torture. Genocide. Corrupt leaders who use their national treasuries like other people use credit cards. It doesn’t matter, does it? So if you’re going to shoot me, let’s get it over with. But frankly, you’ve done so much talking, I don’t think you’ve got the balls. Otherwise, tell me how much you want to keep quiet and we can get out of this fucking cold.”
Gabriel extended his right arm and leaned forward, breath misting in the air between them, and pressed the muzzle of the pistol against her forehead until the skin dented. He enjoyed watching her stiffen and shrink from what was coming. Then he took it away and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.
“I want you to disappear. Completely. I want you to resign. From the Government. From Parliament. From your party. From politics. From public life altogether. Your last act as Prime Minister is to reinstate Don Webster, and me, and put The Department under direct control of the Privy Council.”
“I thought so. You realised what I already know. You can’t murder me. It would destabilise the country you love. It would push the economy into freefall. You need me alive. Well I’ve got news for you, love. The answer’s no.”
Gabriel smiled. Then he called out.
“Did you get all that?”
There was a rustling and a quiet clink about twenty yards to the west of the place they were standing. Sutherland turned to her left, Gabriel to his right.
Walking towards them was a shambling, shaggy form. Fronds of bracken, thorny branches of gorse and sprigs of purple heather hung from it in a swishing mass. The form was humanoid. Visible over its right shoulder was the long barrel of a rifle. It was a Finnish model: a Sako TRG-42. Gabriel knew this even though the barrel itself didn’t give enough away for him to make a visual ID. He knew because it was the shooter’s weapon of choice for sniping.
When the shooter arrived, looking more like a human-plant hybrid than a person, it stood still, reached up with a leafy, twiggy limb and removed its head.
Inside the monstrous mass of canvas, netting and vegetation was a smaller head: red hair tied back in a plait coiled and pinned to the nape of the neck, freckles decorating the face.
“Eve
ry word,” Britta said, holding up a small remote control and clicking the STOP button.
“You shit!” Sutherland spat. “This is blackmail. Not really the moral high ground you’ve been making such a fuss about, is it?”
Britta spun to her right and shoved Sutherland hard in the chest. Then she hit her. An open-handed blow to the left cheek.
“You bitch! You tried to have us killed. You’re a disgrace to democracy. One more word and I’ll shoot you myself.”
“She will, Barbara. I promise. We have a high quality recording of your confession. So here’s the deal. You keep quiet and so will we. You make any noise about this at all, or make trouble for us and this goes straight to the world’s media.”
Silenced by this outburst, Sutherland suddenly seemed to realise what had happened to her. Her shoulders sagged, her head dropped forward and she sighed deeply.
“Let’s go,” she said. “I’m tired.”
63
One Last Roll of the Dice
REACHING the Land Rover, Gabriel pulled open the rear door. Barbara Sutherland climbed back in. She hadn’t said a word on the walk back. The interior was still warm, and smelled of her perfume. Britta was just climbing in next to her, one boot inside the footwell, when the sound of a helicopter approaching made her stop.
“Who else did you tell?” she asked Sutherland.
“Nobody. I swear,” she said, her eyes wide, her brow deeply furrowed.
“Stay here with her,” Gabriel said, handing Britta his pistol. “If anybody approaches, give them one warning, then shoot. Let me have the Sako.”
Britta nodded, handing over the rifle. She turned to Sutherland. “Don’t think of shouting, or fighting me. I’ll shoot you, too.”
Gabriel turned and ran back towards the cover of the thick bracken. He slid to his knees and pulled more of the ragged brown stems over himself, then worked the smooth bolt of the Sako to chamber a round.
Fifty yards to the east of his position, a helicopter materialised out of the cloud, descended, and hovered a couple of feet above the ground. A single, black-clad figure jumped out, carrying a machinegun, a Heckler & Koch MG5. The belt-fed gun was a full-fat infantry weapon and could take out light aircraft. Somebody was playing for keeps.