Plenty of time.
Get set.
He started his routine.
Tense. Untense. Feet. Legs. Torso. Neck. And face.
Relax.
He looked over the top of the sight. The target was still standing.
Breathe in. Hold.
Breathe out. Hold.
He brought his eye to the back of the scope. He adjusted the crosshairs with a small movement of his right hand.
Dead centre.
Breathe in. Hold.
Breathe out. Hold.
Nothing had moved. Everything was as it was.
As always his right eye looked through the scope whilst his left relaxed and took in a much wider field of view. It was an art, using both eyes to get two different perspectives. Not many snipers could manage it. It was natural to him.
Breathe in.
Hold.
Breathe out.
Hold.
He concentrated on his heart beat. It was slowing down.
Breathe in.
Hold.
Breathe out.
Hold.
Look.
Nothing had changed.
What?
His left eye was now telling a different story.
The blinds are closing from the sides!
How long did he have?
His pulse rate had stopped slowing; it had started to rise.
Five seconds maybe.
Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. Hold.
This wasn’t going to plan.
Hold.
Crosshairs on.
Gently squeeze the trigger.
Never force the pull. Let the shot surprise you.
Hold.
No!
The target had moved. He had dropped his head and shoulders, looking to his right. His head no longer in the crosshairs.
What should …
The blinds answered the question for him. The target had disappeared behind them.
Epilogue
Anbu’s Convenience Store, Orpington, London, UK
Five weeks later
Frank checked the list pegged to the front of the shopping trolley.
Lettuce, cucumber and radishes.
They’d be … over there.
He wandered in the direction of the small fruit and vegetable stand. He looked at each item curiously before placing them in his basket. Next was …
Oily fish.
That’s something like mackerel. Pilchards?
He asked a woman who was on her knees packing shelves. She directed him a couple of aisles further down. On the way he spotted a bag of Brussel sprouts and some carrots. He’d have some of those.
Next: camomile tea. And sweeteners. Not ones with saccharin, which was linked to some cancers. Apparently.
Soya milk. Brown bread with lots of nuts and seeds. And oats for porridge.
It took Frank another 15 minutes to fill his trolley. He was beginning to get used to where these things were in the store. He’d have it under control in a week or so.
He paid the cashier, placed all his goods in his own ‘bag in a bag’ and headed out into the cold. It was cold. Bitterly so. He’d checked the weather before he’d left the office. The sun may have been out this afternoon and the temperature had nudged above zero but, as soon as it had disappeared behind Battersea Power Station the heat had chased after it. It was freezing now and the BBC reckoned it would touch minus three overnight. It would be another brisk walk and tube to work tomorrow, wrapped up well with many layers. He’d got his thermals out of the bottom drawer of his wardrobe last night. He couldn’t see them going back there anytime soon.
It was ten minutes to his house, a Victorian two-up, two-down with a single bay window and a navy blue door with brass accoutrements - surrounded by an ornate white frame. It was big for a small house: a sitting-dining front room - with a fireplace, and a kitchen at the back looking over a long, thin back garden. The two were joined by a hallway and a loo under the stairs. Two large bedrooms and a ‘family bathroom’ completed the living space. The attic was huge and could be converted - his neighbour had led the way, Velux windows and everything.
He was very proud of his home. And it was his. Actually, it was mostly the bank’s, but unless SIS cut posts willy-nilly he was well on top of the mortgage and he even managed some spare cash at the end of the month that made it into savings.
He crossed the street from between tightly parked cars. That was an issue in his street, but not for him. He didn’t need a car in London.
Home.
He pulled a glove off with his teeth, fumbled for his keys and opened the door. Warm air rushed out to heat the rest of Orpington. He was inside as fast as he could, pushing the door closed with his bum.
‘Ifs eee!’ His words made no sense because his tongue had been usurped by the suede of a glove. But it was obviously a friendly call. Not one from an intruder.
The hall led to the kitchen and he passed the closed lounge door on his left. He put the bag of food on the pine kitchen table, reached behind and found the light switch, disrobed and put the kettle on - all in some sort of efficient sequence.
Two mugs later, one camomile with a non-carcinogenic sweetener, the other builders’ - government standard - and he headed back into the hall. Before he opened the lounge door he turned on a small lamp that was on a hip-height table. The bulb lit a nicely-decorated space; the walls and cornices painted mute greens and greys. The black and reds of the polished diamond-tiled floor added depth and context. He’d recently bought a narrow green woollen runner from IKEA which kept delicate feet warm. He stopped and admired the view. Yes, he’d done a good job.
It was home. And he loved it.
He transferred a mug from one hand to another so he was carrying both in one hand. He squeezed and turned the round, brass handle with his free hand and the door into the sitting room opened.
It was semi-dark. The only light was from a distant, sharp-white streetlamp that apologetically slipped in through the bay window; although that was now mixed with the much warmer light from the hall.
He waited. And looked.
As far as he could tell nothing had changed. The cushions on the sofa and chair were unruffled and the TV’s standby light was off – no one had turned it on. And the curtains were still drawn.
And she was there. Sitting on the window’s bench seat. Knees to chest, her arms holding her legs tight, her mouth kissing the bottom of her thighs and her pointy nose resting on the patella of her left knee. She was staring out of the window – exactly as he’d left her this morning, her eyes fixed at some point in space.
‘Hi, Sam.’
She lifted her head and slowly turned it towards him.
Was that a smile? It was difficult to tell in the dark.
‘I got some oily fish. And the salad. We’ll use the dressing from last night?’
A nod. Almost imperceptible. But it was there.
‘How have you been?’
Another tiny smile. And then she turned her head back towards the street.
Avoiding the dark-wood coffee table, which was decorated with a small bunch of flowers in a simple glass vase, Frank turned on the modern, metal and glass standard lamp and then a Chinese-based lamp on a table in the far corner of the room.
Still carrying the two mugs he sat on the window seat next to Sam. He offered her her camomile tea. She took it and acknowledged the hot drink with another shallow smile. And then she refocused on whatever it was outside that had previously held her attention.
Frank studied her.
Had there been an improvement? Was she more communicative now than when she’d been released from hospital? He thought so. Yes, she still hadn’t uttered a word since she’d been found in the forest in Davos. And whilst she was able to function normally - eat, sleep, ablute - everything was carried out at the pace of a snail. She was as lifeless as a person could be, without being in a coma. But there had been an improvement?
The doctors
had given no prognosis. Violent shock on top of PTSD and an already overactive anxiety complex had taken Sam’s mind into unknown territory. The psychiatrists hadn’t added to Sam’s already ambitious portfolio of complex conditions, but they’d agreed she was no threat to herself, or anyone else. However, unless she had somewhere to go where she could be monitored and, ideally looked after, they strongly suggested she was either sectioned or taken into adult care somewhere.
Frank couldn’t accept either option. No way. He’d visited Sam every day in Tommie’s and was sort of acting as next of kin; technically Sam didn’t have one. Very quickly the doctors deferred to him as Sam had been unwilling to speak and very disinclined to communicate in any other way. The only instructions she’d given in four weeks in hospital were scribbled dietary ones. Early on, and when Frank was at her bedside, whenever the doctors or nurses had asked Sam a question, she looked to him with a blank expression. They’d followed her gaze and he’d answered on her behalf - initially hesitantly, and latterly with more confidence.
Much of the problem was the hospital staff didn’t know the half of it. Nor the psychiatrists. There was an SIS ‘red notice’ on the events in Switzerland and only an agreed, short paragraph for external consumption. All the hospital had been told was Sam had been beaten up abroad. She’d arrived with a broken jaw, a smashed talus and abrasions over her chest and hips. Before she’d got to Tommie’s the local medics had rescued her - again - from hypothermia. That was a footnote in the brief.
Frank had been the first Brit at the scene. He’d got the call from Carla who had been working the Swiss municipal police. With GCHQ help, she’d hacked into their radio frequency and had picked up that a woman - matching Sam’s description - and a man had been found in a forest on the edge of Davos. The man was dead - gunshot wound to the back of the head. The woman was ‘touch and go’, having been badly beaten and left to die in the cold.
Immediately before Carla’s call Frank had managed to get the blinds closed in the conference room. The police and the hotel staff were having none of it, no matter who he spoke to. Neither Carla nor the British Embassy had been able to force the issue via their external contacts. However, in a really decent hack, Carla had found the location of the control box for the blinds. It was in the conference room itself, to the right of the blinds. If all else failed …
Which they had.
Whilst keeping an eye on the Kongresszentrum Frank spotted one of Sam’s ‘shooter’s windows’ open. He immediately knew what was about to unfold.
He’d had no choice. If the Swiss weren’t prepared to save the Dalai Lama, then it was up to him.
He’d opened the conference room door and slipped in. The guest of honour was on his feet. He had started his speech and the room was a hush. Frank had a quick look at the picture windows, but couldn’t see much because of the reflection from within.
He’d then taken a deep breath … and with the confidence of ten men, which he didn’t feel, he’d walked slowly down the side of the room. One or two guests gave him funny looks. One had to push their chair closer to their table so he could squeeze past. He found the control box within seconds, had a quick scan of the buttons and pressed the one marked, ‘Schließen’ - another inspired pass from Carla.
To his surprise - and huge relief - the blinds whirred quietly towards the centre.
And then his phone rang.
Shit!
There was a murmur from the room. The Dalai Lama paused, looked across at Frank and smiled. Frank mouthed, ‘Sorry’. The guest of honour smiled back and carried on talking. Frank muted his phone and was out of the room a few seconds after that, his phone to his ear.
Carla gave him the news from the police radio. And some directions.
The dead man and the freezing woman were about a mile away.
Frank ran. And ran.
He got the directions slightly wrong, but was quickly able to relocate when he saw the flashing lights deeper into the forest. On his final, punishing couple of hundred metres he jogged passed a matt black Bentley which was parked incongruously on a muddy track.
Ten metres later he was at the scene.
And he immediately threw up.
Lit by the red and blue strobe of a police car were the remnants of a man whom he assumed was Freddie Forester; it was difficult to tell. He was dressed in a severely ripped and blooded evening dress, his black bow tie still round his neck, but pushed off to one side. And he was pinned to a tree by three bloodied metal stakes. One was through his throat, a second sticking out of his chest, and a third piercing his groin. His faceless head fell forward onto his previously white, golf-ball indented dress shirt. Red and brown and cream gunge dripped from what was left of his chin.
Frank threw up again. Whitey-grey snow by his feet turned pizza.
Sam?!
She was there. In the front seat of the police car. She had her eyes open; unblinking. Her face was a mess. She was staring through the same red, brown and cream mush that was falling from Forester’s face. Frank stepped forward to check on her, but an unseen policeman, the only one on the scene, intercepted him.
‘Wer bist du?!’ He shouted.
The policeman, who looked younger than Frank, was gaunt and frightened.
‘Friend. Freund.’ He pointed towards Sam. ‘Can I look at her?’
The policeman’s car radio burst into life. The German was lost on Frank. He wasn’t concentrating. He had to see Sam.
The policeman dithered, but the radio won. He left Frank and jogged round to the driver’s side of the car, creating an opening.
Frank stepped forward and then knelt beside her, ignoring the ground’s slushy mud. She was something from a horror story. Her face was covered in blood and goo, and she was shivering uncontrollably.
‘Are you OK?’
Her face was misshapen. He sensed there was some of her own blood in among the mess, which he guessed was from the corpse. And one shoulder was unnaturally higher than the other.
‘Get an ambulance!’ He shouted.
There was more German from the policeman, and more in return from the radio.
‘Are you OK, Sam?’
She continued to stare straight ahead. He followed her gaze.
She was looking at the dangling corpse. And her look was unwavering. Fixated.
Then, breaking his concentration, more lights flashed off to his left. Red and blue.
Hopefully it’s an ambulance.
He took Sam’s hands in his. Ice lollies into warm tea. She didn’t flinch.
Less than a minute later there were more green vests with drips and blankets than were probably necessary. As two gentle male nurses helped Sam into the back of the ambulance, Frank noticed she was wearing a winter coat he’d not seen before. It was fawn coloured. Wool? And it had brown leather buttons on its front and at the end of its sleeves. It looked expensive.
It hadn’t taken much to persuade the nurses to allow him to jump in the back of the ambulance. Twenty-five minutes later Sam was in the best possible hands, and a member of the British Embassy was en route from Bern.
A day later she was medevac-ed by the RAF to the UK, and blue-lighted into Tommie’s. Frank had stayed with her every step of the way.
Without Sam’s support - she remained insistently mute - it had taken him and Carla three days to piece together the story. Freddie Forester had caught Sam, taken her into the forest and, by the state of the marks on her hands and ankles, cable-tied her - and then beat her. Her body was badly lacerated and her cheek and an ankle bone were broken. The next assumption was that Freddie had put a gun to her head with the intent of murdering her. The police had found a pistol covered with Forester’s prints next to his feet.
However, Forester had been shot in the back of the head with a 9 millimetre round, possibly a Beretta. At that point Forester’s corpse had been nailed to a tree, and Sam wrapped in a Gino Valentino coat worth over 3,000 euros. A short time afterwards the Swiss municipal police had been
called. They’d arrived at the scene ten minutes later. Frank, five minutes after that.
It was a start. But there was a vital piece of the puzzle missing: who had killed Forester?
A day later Frank had found the first piece of evidence that started to unlock that question.
He’d been looking through Sam’s mobile’s call and message log. At the end of a late night visit to Tommies, he’d asked her if she minded; she’d nodded her head.
None of the very recent traffic surprised him as he’d been with her most of that time. But there was a very odd text message sent 36 hours before Davos that needed unpicking.
She’d sent it to a ‘G’. It read:
Tell your Dad that the smartly dressed Englishman at your wedding, Freddie Derwent, is going to rat on him and his Mafia pals. It’s the only way to make the money work. Please. Sam xxx
Frank had drunk a lot of tea and spent at least an hour in the mood room until he had it. ‘G’ was Giorgio. And the message to his Mafia dad was that Freddie Forester (or Derwent as he was described in the wedding list) was going to provide evidence to ‘the authorities’ that the 'Ndràngheta were the organisation behind the ‘neo-terrorism’ attacks. Once The Mafia had been blown apart the world would calm down and the markets could rise quickly with confidence. Millions would become billions. Billions would become many billions. The world would have its terrorists. Freddie, and his investors, their money.
Frank was sure the Mafia had killed Forester because of Sam’s text message.
But on its own the text message wasn’t enough. It was supposition. What he and Carla needed was something more.
And she’d found it.
Whilst the US attack on the 'Ndràngheta had been extremely successful, if slightly over the top, Andrea Placido had not been arrested; The Unit couldn’t find him. Nobody could. He wasn’t at his villa or at any other of the known 'Ndràngheta locations. And he was still at large, even now.
And that’s because when they had carried out their raids he was in a forest in Switzerland. With a 9mm Beretta.
Carla had become fixated with the coat Sam had been wearing when Frank had found her. As Frank had unpicked Sam’s text message, Carla had scoured the internet and discovered where the coat had been bought, and who the customers might have been. Unsurprisingly, on the back of the mass media attention of the dismantling of the 'Ndràngheta, the CEO of Gino Valentino had opened his books to the British Embassy in Rome without protest. Sure enough, just over three years ago in Salerno an Andrea Placido had bought a coat matching the one worn by Sam in the forest. To be certain, Carla had painstakingly looked through all of the intelligence on Andrea Placido and every piece of Calabrian media that had his name tagged to it.
On the Back Foot to Hell Page 44