by Andy Maslen
Reached up with his left hand and racked the slide.
Closed his left eye.
Moved the iron foresight until it lined up on the spot where he knew LA to be.
Then, smirking, he squeezed the trigger.
The bang was enormous and the room was instantly filled with the smell of burnt cordite, and threads of smoke.
The girl jolted awake with such suddenness that she fell out of bed, screaming as she regained consciousness, and landed in a tangle of slim, muscled limbs on the rug.
Flakes of paint and specks of plaster dust fluttered down onto them, covering Jardin and his naked companion in a fine rain of multi-coloured fragments of southwestern California.
Eyes wide, face drained of colour, the girl jumped back into the bed next to Jardin and curled herself around him like a frightened child, which, he supposed, she was, in a way.
“Père Christophe!” she gasped. “What was it? Are we called by Him? Is it the Second Order?”
He wrapped his arm around her, not bothering to hide the dark steel handgun that smoked in his other hand.
“No, Child. It was I, not Him. Back to sleep.”
He looked down at the top of her head. She had inserted a thumb into her mouth and now shivered faintly against his ribcage.
He began an old French lullaby, crooning the words as he stroked her hair with the Colt’s muzzle.
15
Deputised
GABRIEL WOKE, REFRESHED AND READY to go to work. The bed in the safe house was soft and dressed in cool, white linens that had lulled him to sleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow, despite the prime minister’s vengeful words spinning around in his head. No doubt the wine and the inch of brandy he’d swallowed before retiring had helped. James, who had acquired the English butler’s ability to disappear and appear just as he was needed without being either summoned or dismissed, certainly helped as well.
The two men sat at the kitchen table, munching bacon sandwiches and swigging from mugs of hot tea, chatting about places they’d been, things they’d done and seen.
“I was infantry before I landed this billet,” James said, wiping the last of his bread around the edge of his plate to soak up the bacon grease and drips of brown sauce clinging to the rim. “Instructor on war courses, unarmed combat, that type of thing.”
Gabriel grimaced, remembering some of the techniques he’d learned in his days serving in the Paras and then the Regiment. “You guys used to frighten the shit out of me,” he said. “All that business with pencils and coins, and taking people out with broken bottles. Used to make my blood run cold.”
“That was the general idea,” James said, leaning back in his chair. “Useful stuff though, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, without a doubt. More than once, I was glad of it. Listen, I have to be off and I need some new clothes. But thanks, you know, for looking after me yesterday. And this morning. Excellent breakfast.”
He stood, and James followed suit. They shook hands, two fighting men walking different but parallel paths, both under the watchful eye of Don Webster and his minimally supervised Department.
A couple of hours later, Gabriel was back at the safe house, changing out of the mufti provided by James and back into his working gear, as he thought of it: a three-piece Prince of Wales suit in a light grey wool; a white cotton button-down shirt with French cuffs fixed with simple silver links; sea-green silk tie and matching pocket square, and his own polished black brogues. He’d bought some more underwear, a pair of jeans and some T-shirts, a wash bag filled with toiletries and a new razor, plus a pair of tan Grenson Oxfords, gambling that it would be a while before he’d be seeing his cottage in rural Wiltshire again. He stuffed the spare clothes into a tobacco-brown leather holdall and set off for an office in Whitehall, from where Don had texted him to arrange a meeting.
Once the security preliminaries were out of the way, and his mugshot had been filed onto yet another government computer, he was ushered to a waiting area furnished with leather sofas. A low table was covered in copies of the Financial Times and official publications of such dryness they could have been used to mop up spills.
He didn’t have to wait long. After a couple of minutes, Don strode from the lifts, across the expanse of cream marble flooring, hand extended.
“Hello, Old Sport,” he said. “Right, busy day ahead of us. How was your night?”
“Fine, thanks. How was yours?”
“Oh, you know, midnight oil and all that. You OK with the safe house or do you want to find yourself a hotel?”
Gabriel pursed his lips and frowned. Comfort versus anonymity.
“I think I’ll find a hotel.”
“Perfectly fine with me. Keep all your receipts, and we’ll sort out the paperwork later. Now, come with me. There are a couple of people who want to see you.”
The journey up to the tenth floor passed in one of those awkward silences that afflict people of every strength of relationship and degree of talkativeness. The two men stared at their hands, the walls, the doors ahead of them as the stainless steel box ground its way up to the meeting rooms on the top floor of the building.
Once the robotic female voice had announced their arrival on the tenth floor, the doors hissed open, and they were out. A few minutes later, after collecting cups of coffee from a kitchen area, they were sitting at an oval table facing the two detectives Gabriel had met the day before. Also seated at the table was the anti-terror officer they’d met the day before with Barbara Sutherland: Gregor Standing.
Don took charge immediately. Clearly, he was the silverback in this particular group of law enforcement officers.
“Morning everyone, thanks for coming. Now, we’ve all met each other one way or another in the last twenty-four hours, but in a spirit of openness, and just in case yesterday’s shocking events have muddled anyone’s thinking,” he glanced fractionally in Gabriel’s direction, “why don’t we each give the briefest of introductions?”
“DCI Susannah Chambers,” Susannah said, seizing the initiative, no doubt keen to get in before her overboss at the Met. “I’m running the CID investigation of the Oxford Circus bus bombing.”
Following her Guvnor’s lead, Chelsea introduced herself next.
“DS Chelsea Jones. Coordinating everything on the ground and reporting to DCI Chambers.”
“Gabriel Wolfe. Managing Director, Wolfe and Cunningham. I’m working for Don Webster.”
“Gregor Standing. I run the Met’s Anti-Terrorism Division. Clearly we’re digging hard on this one. It’s our number-one priority.”
“And I,” the grey-haired ex-soldier at the head of the table said, “am Don Webster. I run The Department, which is going to eliminate the person or persons unknown who planned and carried out yesterday’s atrocity. Well, that’s the pleasantries out of the way. I’d like to begin by thanking our colleagues at the Met for accepting our suggestion that Gabriel should be accredited, temporarily, as a consultant on this operation.”
“If I may, sir,” Susannah said, looking him straight in the eye and brushing her auburn hair back from her face, “it’s not like we had a choice.”
Don smiled. “No, DCI Chambers, it isn’t. However, Gabriel’s an easy-going sort of chap, and I don’t suppose he sees his role as anything more than that of an observer. At best, a willing helper. But where I want him heading next, it’s going to help if he’s at your right hand as you get deeper into your investigation.”
The rest of the meeting was little more than a recapping of roles and responsibilities, and a securing of assurances that any and all intelligence would be shared with the entire operational team, no matter who originated it. As it drew to a close, Don clamped his hands together on the table in front of him and cleared his throat.
“There is one final bit of business I should like to have out in the open, ladies and gentlemen.”
The others straightened up in their chairs and looked across at him, recognising in his tone the impendi
ng arrival of something they would all do well to remember.
“You know I report directly to Barbara Sutherland. My team operates with her express approval and at her direct request. I am aware that our methods and code of conduct may not gibe with your conception of British justice.” Perhaps the police officers imagined that at this point, he was going to offer a sop to their sense of undermined authority, or their principles. If they were, what he said next dashed their hopes. “Which I understand. But it’s something you’re going to have to suck up and keep quiet about, I’m afraid. Everyone working on Operation Manticore has signed the Official Secrets Act. One whiff of The Department’s existence outside these four walls and the consequences will be bleak. Shall we say, for starters, no career, no pension, and quite possibly a substantial sojourn at Her Majesty’s pleasure, a lady, incidentally, who both knows of and underwrites my little group’s activities. If there’s nothing else?”
There was nothing else, though the thunderous looks on the faces of the two detectives spoke of much they wanted to say, if there’d been even the slimmest of chances it would make a difference.
Gabriel left the building in the company of Susannah and Chelsea, carrying his holdall to their unmarked silver BMW 5 Series saloon. Once it was secure in the boot, and they were on their way to the police station on Savile Row, he judged it safe to speak.
“I won’t get in your way, I promise. I had no idea Don was going to deputise me. Just tell me where you want me and what I can do to help.”
From the driver’s seat, Susannah answered.
“In the background. Help track the fuckers.”
16
Rescuing the Fallen
A BARROW OF SKINNED COW heads was being pushed across the road opposite Gabriel’s hotel. Through the open sash window, he watched the meat porter struggle with the awkward wood and steel contraption, bumping it up a ramp onto the pavement and almost losing part of his cargo. The burly man swore, loudly and inventively, grabbing the head and shoving it back into the pile, then wiping his hands on his bloody white apron.
Gabriel’s top-floor hotel room looked out over Smithfield, the Victorian meat-trading market in Farringdon, on the eastern fringes of central London. At this early hour, the place was alive with butchers, meat traders, restaurant and hotel chefs, truck drivers and the odd stockbroker, heading in to work to make a killing on the Asian exchanges before the day proper began. He inhaled deeply, drawing the smell of blood and flesh deep into his lungs.
It starts today.
Dressed in loose pyjama bottoms, he sat in the antique upholstered wing-chair beside the window and let his hands rest lightly in his lap. With his head dropped forward, partially constricting his airway, he closed his eyes and began a sequence of breaths—in for a count of four, hold for one, out for another count of four, hold for one—until he felt a particular sense of calm descend on him. The sounds outside—the diesel engines, the clattering of steel-banded barrow wheels on concrete, the shouts and banter of the meat men—were still present, but they took on the quality of background noise, as if they were coming from an audio feed with the volume lowered.
He visualised a vermilion circle, painting itself anti-clockwise in a swirl of messy orange drips, with a number ten inside it. He began breathing the word “nine” as the invisible artist swirled her brush inside his head. As she changed her hue for a startling acid green and her direction for clockwise, the number inside the circle ticked down to nine and he chanted “eight”. Gabriel’s brain, partly through long years of practice, and partly because the stimuli he was introducing were already starting to disrupt its logic circuits, adapted itself to the change in oxygen flow and distribution of electrical charge across its surface. Its slow-cycling alpha waves increased in intensity and Gabriel felt the world slipping away from him.
Now. Let’s go now.
The bullets were flying.
Crack. Thump.
Crack. Thump.
Crack. Thump.
The air was thick with the smell of cordite and hot brass.
His M16 was vibrating in his hands as it discharged magazine after magazine.
The rebels were screaming. Some because Gabriel and his patrol had sent 5.56mm rounds ripping and tumbling through their unprotected flesh. Some from drug-induced bloodlust.
They’d completed the first half of the mission. Abel N’Tolo, leader of the People’s Army for the Liberation of Mozambique, was dead. His plans, in a ridiculous silver attaché case, were in SAS Trooper Smudge Smith’s hand.
Then the Kalashnikov round hit Smudge in the back of the head.
Impervious to the bullets that fizzled through his body, ghost Gabriel walked towards his fallen comrade. Smudge was lying dead in the vegetation, the lower half of his face gone, his brown eyes staring up at Gabriel, seeing nothing.
He knelt, slid his hands under Smudge’s knees and armpits, and lifted the dead man from the blood-soaked ground.
“Come on, Smudge, let’s get you home to see Nathalie one last time.”
Smudge focused on Gabriel.
“You left me, boss.”
His voice was inside Gabriel’s skull, echoing around.
Gabriel’s heart-rate shot upwards, his palms were suddenly slick with sweat and his breathing accelerated into rapid shallow panting.
“I tried, Smudge. You know I tried.” Gabriel felt the tears coursing down his cheeks, running over the greasy camouflage staining his skin a nightmare mess of black and green.
“It’s time to leave me again. For good this time.”
Then the body began to shiver and shimmer, losing its solidity as the AK-47s and M16s sang their songs around them and the sun shone down through the trees.
Gabriel opened his eyes. His chest was wet with sweat.
Fuck. I need to get this sorted before it takes me down.
He pulled on shorts and a T-shirt and a pair of running shoes he’d bought the previous day and was out two minutes later, pounding around the huge enclosed market, dodging carts weighed down with sides of beef, striated with white ribs and red flesh.
The PM liked him. Don wanted him. The cops tolerated him. But the person he needed was a Muslim by faith and a psychiatrist by profession.
Back in his hotel room, he showered and shaved, and dressed in jeans, T-shirt and a navy windbreaker. One swift breakfast later, he was sitting at the desk calling Fariyah Crace.
“Gabriel. How are you?”
He scratched the back of his neck.
“I’m OK. Yes, not bad. But I think I should come and talk to you. Work’s about to kick off again so …”
“So you’re wondering whether I can fit you in this week?”
“I know, I know, you just sit around reading celebrity magazines waiting for me to call.”
She laughed, a generous, warm sound that made Gabriel feel good in his soul.
“Don’t forget the chocolates and champagne.”
“What, a good Muslim like you?”
“OK, rose water. That better? As it happens, one of my patients cancelled his five o’clock with me today. So if you’d like it?”
“Yes!” Gabriel almost shouted. “I mean, yes. Please. At the Ravenswood?”
“Yes. At five then?”
“At five.”
“I’ll let Valerie know. She can put you in my calendar. Though what she’ll make of her boss doing her own secretarial work, I don’t know.”
Half an hour later, Gabriel walked into Savile Row police station. After explaining to the civilian receptionist who he was and the nature of his business, he was directed through a security barrier towards the custody suite and the beginnings of the police machinery.
“Yes, sir,” the burly desk sergeant said, narrowing his eyes as he scrutinised the man who’d just walked into his domain.
“My Name’s Wolfe. I’m here to see DCI Chambers. I, um, I’ve been accredited. You should have some paperwork about me.”
“Accredited.” The sergeant
managed to pack enough contempt into those four syllables to make a man turn tail. But Gabriel simply stood there, returning his stare.
“It means …”
“Yes! Sir. I know what it means.” Now he bent to his task, riffling through a clipboard full of papers on the desk in front of him. “Wolfe. Wolfe. Wolfe. Yes, here we are, sir. Civilian consultant.” More contempt dripping onto the counter between them. “Right, look into this camera, please.” He angled a little webcam towards Gabriel, who composed his face into a bland, slack-muscled expression, eyes neither wide nor squinting, mouth a straight line.
There was a little business involving a transparent plastic badge holder, then whirring as a printer spat out his ID card. With the whole thing attached to a yellow lanyard, the sergeant pushed his clipboard towards Gabriel, tapping with a bitten fingernail against a blank space.
“Sign here, please, sir.” Gabriel did as he was told. “Thank you. Now, if you’d take a seat, I’ll find DCI Chambers for you.”
He pointed at a row of stained, cloth-upholstered seats, some with their cushions split and yellow foam protruding through the rips. Gabriel decided to assert a measure of control over his situation. He moved out of the way but remained standing, leaning against the wall beside the last of the chairs. The sergeant frowned, shook his head, then picked up a greasy plastic desk phone and punched a couple of buttons.
The double doors to the custody suite banged open, slamming back against the walls on either side of the doorway. In burst two uniformed police officers, one male, one female, holding between them a huge man who writhed and twisted in their grasp. The prisoner, his hands pinioned behind him with steel handcuffs, was six foot four or five. His head was shaved and his face was a twisted mask of hatred, thin lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl. Both arms were sleeved in tattoos, oddly beautiful koi carp and water lilies. A fan of the Yakuza, Gabriel thought as he began a quick combat appreciation. But somehow, I think your tats are all that’s Japanese gangster about you. You look pure home-grown thug to me.