Trigger Point (The Gabriel Wolfe Thrillers Book 1)

by Andy Maslen

  “So is that why you’re standing for Parliament?”

  “Oh, please, let’s not be naïve shall we? We both know constituency MPs are just lobby-fodder. There to pay lip-service to democracy while another piece of our heritage is flushed away to keep the human rights brigade happy, or the environmentalists.”

  “What, then?”

  Maitland looked Gabriel straight in the eye for a long time, appearing to calculate something. Then he spoke, emphasising every word.

  “I intend to assume power as great leaders have always assumed power. Napoleon, Franco, Pinochet, Amin, Zia: they took what they needed by force. It’s the only way when great and lasting change is needed. People will accept a strong leader who looks after them. I intend to be that leader. And, Gabriel, I want you to help me. I want you at my side as we take control. Of course, needless to say, if you feel I am wrong, I will simply deny this conversation ever took place. Nobody will believe you and I shall find another lieutenant.”

  “You’re going to stage a coup? In Britain?” Gabriel said, trying to sound less shocked political aide and more world-weary, disaffected ex-soldier. “I’d like to see you try.”

  “And you shall, Gabriel. You shall. Just say the word and you’ll have a place at my right-hand side.”

  Gabriel had to look away while he got his thoughts in order. His answer had to be pitched just right. Too eager and Maitland would probably be able to tell that something was off. Too reluctant and he might suspect his loyalty and boot him off the job. What would Britta say? Be as calm as a cucumber, probably.

  He decided to take a risk. He swallowed and answered.

  “When I was serving, if a man had just told me what you have, I would have had him arrested by the military police. I believed in the rule of law. Nation-building. Democracy. But now? I’ve seen too many examples of what happens when we leave countries to elect their politicians. The corruption, the cronyism, the sheer waste of resources and talent. Sometimes, I think a country needs a corrective. We’ve gone soft, Toby. And I would be honoured to serve you. It’s time this country had a man in charge who wasn’t afraid of making the really tough decisions. I know you are that man.”

  Was it too much? Had he blown too much smoke? No. The man sitting next to him was lapping it up. Plainly, towering egotism and a borderline personality disorder also went hand in hand with a disabled bullshit detector. Maitland leaned back – he was almost purring.

  “So, Gabriel, let me explain what’s going to happen next.”

  As they rolled north, Maitland filled Gabriel in on the outline of “the programme”, as he termed it.

  “Standing for Parliament is my cover,” Maitland said. “I’ll be portrayed as a believer in democracy, forced to take decisive action in the face of a national crisis. My allies in MI5 and the Army’s General Staff will offer their backing. It has been done before, in many countries, at many different times.”

  “What about the rest of the world?” Gabriel asked. “What about the British people?”

  “A sovereign state with nuclear weapons can do whatever it likes”, Maitland patiently explained. “Plus, I intend to ally myself solidly with the US. I’ll promise military and political assistance for its global ambitions. Nobody will stop me. Nobody will want to stop me. The Americans only get agitated by Communists.” Maitland’s eyes were gleaming as he spoke.

  “Russia?” Gabriel asked.

  Maitland merely shook his head. “Who do you think bankrolled Putin in his early days?”

  So the cards were dealt. Or most of them. But there was still a gaping hole in Maitland’s plan. Gabriel pushed him on it.

  “Britain is a functioning democracy with armed forces loyal to the Prime Minister. How will you handle them?”

  “You used to be a soldier,” Maitland said. “Your job was to follow orders. Nothing will change. There will continue to be orders. And, before too long, a new King sitting tight on the throne he’s coveted since he was a boy.”

  Against his better judgement, Gabriel had to admit the plan was impressive. Except for one thing. How, precisely, was Maitland going to stage the coup itself? You couldn’t just march into Westminster at the head of a ragtag army of a couple of dozen skinheads and expect to assume power. He had to ask.

  “One question. How?”

  “How?”

  “Are you going to do it? The coup, I mean.”

  “All in good time, Gabriel. All in good time. For now, we have a D-Type to buy.”

  Gabriel was still struggling to reconcile the sober outward appearance of the man sitting beside him with the crazy ambitions he held inside. Then the Navigator braked sharply and swung off the freeway onto a slip road.

  Chapter 16

  They drove down the county road for a couple of miles and then turned right into an approach road to some sort of gated community. Beyond the steel gates, Gabriel saw huge houses – mansions, really – built in a variety of styles as if the developers had wanted to reassure the purchasers they’d bought a “bespoke home”. Each dwelling stood in a couple of acres of grounds, some considerably more. There was a security guard sitting in a twee little brick-built gatehouse on the right of the gates. As they pulled up, he levered himself out of his chair and strolled over to meet them. His gut stretched the khaki shirt tight and smooth. He rested his right hand ostentatiously on the butt of his pistol and motioned for Shaun to roll down his window, using the out-dated but still universal finger-twirling gesture. A bored man in love with the little bit of power and glamour his contract provided was Gabriel’s assessment.

  “How you folks doin’ in there?”

  Shaun answered.

  “Here to see Ash Taylor.”

  “You want to switch off? Might take a while to reach Mr Taylor. Our residents don’t like pollution coming over.”

  Entitlement, thought Gabriel. Not only did they have a gate across the road, they wanted to shield themselves even from airborne pollutants. Well, good luck with that.

  Shaun put the window back up to preserve the cooled air inside the cabin. They waited, observing rent-a-cop amble back to his mini-house, presumably to call Ash Taylor and verify that he was expecting visitors. He nodded vigorously a couple of times then replaced the handset and walked back over, a little more smartly than he had the first time. Shaun lowered the window again.

  The guard said, “OK, Mr Taylor says to go right on in. You know the way?”

  “No.”

  Evidently the guard wasn’t used to taciturn visitors and grew flustered.

  “Oh. OK. Well, you, er, you just follow the road round to your left, then, ah, take a left onto Faulkner Avenue, down there a couple of hundred yards then take a right onto Hawthorne Lane –”

  He stopped as Maitland barked out a short laugh.

  “Oh that is priceless,” Maitland said. “A developer with a taste for American literature. What next, turn right onto Fitzgerald Crescent? Second left into Steinbeck Street?”

  “Er, OK. So, you drive to the end of Hawthorne and Mr Taylor’s place is the big Victorian at the end: you can’t miss it.”

  “I’ll bet,” crowed Maitland from the back. “What’s it called, Thoreau Villa?”

  “The Gables,” said the guard, hand back on the pistol butt as if to regain his authority, which had trickled away like water into dry sand.

  Maitland brayed with laughter and sat back in his seat.

  “Oh, this is too much. Just let’s get there, Shaun. Drive on.”

  As the guard stepped back, a scowl darkening his features, the Lincoln surged forward.

  Maitland was still mocking the residents’ pretentions as they approached another set of gates. Ornate this time, in keeping with the overwrought mock-Victorian architecture of the house beyond, its two storeys festooned with railings, porticoes, carved soffit boards and other ornamentation that would have a Miami modernist retching. Shaun pushed the dull silver button on the intercom box and waited.

  “That you, Toby?
” a tinny, raspy voice asked.

  “Shaun, Sir. Driver. Sir Toby’s in the back.”

  “Well, come on in.”

  The latch buzzed, a harsh metallic sound, and the gates folded back on themselves, infuriatingly slowly. As soon as there was room to squeeze through, Shaun eased the big car forward. They crawled up to the house along a short curving drive and parked directly outside the front door, a studded wooden portal that no doubt the developer had described as ‘oaken’ on the brochure.

  “There he is,” said Maitland. “My, he looks casual.”

  The man walking up to the car was dressed in a crimson silk dressing gown and black velvet slippers with gold dragons embroidered on the insteps. Beneath the gown they could see black silk pyjamas. He looked to be about sixty, although among the American rich you could never be entirely sure. Thick, dyed-ginger hair crowned his head, swept back in a crest like a breaking wave. Matching tufts were curling up from his chest. He was thickset, but not fat – muscular, like an ex-boxer. Plenty of gold jewellery too: a heavy chain at his throat, a few rings on each hand, and an identity bracelet on his right wrist.

  They got out to meet him. Maitland strode over, right hand extended, Gabriel and Shaun hung back.

  “Ash, Ash, good to see you again. It’s been a long time. Pebble Beach, wasn’t it, five years ago?”

  “Seven,” Taylor said, shaking Maitland’s hand and covering it with his left. Gabriel noticed the smile: small, fake. The eyes never lied.

  “Yes, yes, of course. Seven. I beat you to that lovely little Bugatti in the auction, didn’t I?” Maitland chuckled at the memory of the famous classic car event, as if daring the other man to join him. Taylor’s face remained stony, impassive. No love lost between these two then, despite the bonhomie. Introductions completed they went inside.

  “Make yourselves at home while I get dressed,” Taylor said.

  It was 11.30 in the morning. They followed his pointing hand into a vast kitchen where a pot of coffee steamed on a marble countertop. Gabriel tried for a conversation with Shaun while Maitland sat at the table and brought out his phone.

  “So you were Delta, then? I was SAS. Maybe we saw some of the same places.”

  “Yeah, I was Delta. Till some West Point lieutenant had a problem with our unit’s tactics in Colombia. Then we were given a general discharge. Not honourable. You know what that means?”

  He was referring to the cloud that hung over you – almost a stench – if you didn’t have the word “honourable” on your discharge papers. It translated as, “served his country well, but not someone we’d care to re-recruit”. Usually it signalled problems in the soldier’s conduct and the soldier had to sign a document acknowledging he – or occasionally she – could encounter “substantial prejudice in civilian life”.

  “Yes. I know what that means. Is that why you’re working for Sir Toby?”

  “Some. You have to do something, right? He pays very well and when things change, he’s promised me a high-ranking job, so maybe I’m better off here anyway. How about you? How come you’re over here with him?”

  “Good question. I think we’re on a first date. I reckon he wants to get to know me.”

  “You nearly killed his wife is what I heard. He forgave you for that?”

  Gabriel paused. He’d not expected Maitland to broadcast the news of the crash that had almost snuffed out Vix’s life. Maybe it was another member of Maitland’s growing domestic and military staff.

  “He did, as a matter of fact. I think if it’d been Lizzie I’d be in a deep hole somewhere.”

  “I met that chick once. As I remember, she came on to me. Started whispering in my ear all kinds of stuff she said she wanted to do together.”

  As they were talking, Ash Taylor appeared in the kitchen doorway. He now looked even more like the wealthy ex-TV show presenter he was: powder blue trousers, soft tan boat shoes and a pale lemon cashmere sweater. The kind of clothes that whisper “money” very loudly.

  “OK, you guys. Let’s go and see the car.”

  Taylor’s downturned mouth revealed his feelings about the transaction he was about to complete. He led the others across a huge rectangular lawn mown in precise stripes, the lighter green almost silver as the glittering sunlight bounced off the short, rolled blades. The drive emerged from the far side of the house and led to a brick-built, single-storey building about one hundred feet wide by forty deep. Its roof was tiled with slates and topped by a square, white carved-wood turret; the architect had crowned it with a verdigris weathercock, the greened copper dull despite the sun. Along the front, black roller shutters punctuated the brick, each one maybe eight feet wide. Taylor led them round to the left-hand side of the building and a regular door protected by a keypad with seven rows of two buttons, labelled with numbers from one through nine plus zero, then X, Y, Z, and C.

  “Would you mind?”

  The other three turned away while he punched in the access code. Gabriel counted nine clicks. These things normally just used four and weren’t as difficult to crack as their owners chose to believe. But nine was good. Nine said, don’t waste your time.

  “OK,” Taylor said. “Let’s go inside.”

  He hit a switch in the wall, one of an identical bank of six. All the roller shutters jerked in their mountings and rose together, letting sunlight flood into the giant space. It was like Maitland’s garage, just on a much bigger scale. Instead of a dozen or so vehicles, there were thirty or forty. Gabriel whistled, but Shaun remained impassive. Maybe he wasn’t a car guy, Gabriel thought.

  Any one of the cars on display would have made Gabriel extremely happy if they had been his. And this man had collected them all. Sitting right at the centre of the front row, among the usual poster fodder – the Lamborghinis and Ferraris, the Bugattis and the Mercedes – was a low, sinuous shape, its forest green paint twinkling where the sunlight hit it. A Jaguar D-Type. THE Jaguar D-Type. As owned by Mr Cool himself. Gabriel knew Jaguar called it an XKSS – the road-going version of the D-Type racer – with a few more creature comforts and some legal requirements like indicators. But McQueen had raced it anyway.

  Maitland wandered over to the car, pulled open the driver’s door and slid down into the leather seat. He grasped the wooden steering wheel, as if to assert his ownership. He let his hand drop to the gear shift as he looked around the car’s interior. Then he looked up at Taylor.

  “You must be bleeding inside to let this one go, Ash?”

  The older man shrugged.

  “I got the IRS on my ass. I need to raise serious money fast. No car’s worth a jail term and she’s the fastest way I got to stuff Uncle Sam’s mouth with dollar bills. So do we have a deal or what?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Maitland. “We do indeed have a deal. We do indeed.”

  Back in the house and drinking more of Taylor’s excellent coffee, Gabriel and Shaun swapped stories while Maitland and Taylor arranged financial matters in another room.

  Shaun said, “You kill many people?”

  “Enough. Try not to think about it if I can.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. I tell you what, though. Nothing beats that feeling of getting up close and personal. Taking the other guy out before he does it to you?”

  “I know the feeling. I just prefer to forget all that.”

  “You’re not one of those vets who gets all ‘stop the war’ are you?” Shaun’s expression changed, the slow-burning intimations of friendship snuffed out like candles between a thumb and forefinger.

  “Not at all. But that was then, you know?”

  “All right. Sorry. I guess you’re OK. We ran some ops with you guys from Hereford.” He made the SAS training base sound like ‘Herry-Ford’, giving each syllable equal stress. “Good men to have your back in a firefight.”

  Just then, Maitland and Taylor emerged from the next room, their deal evidently completed, the former grinning, the latter frowning.

  “Shaun, Gabriel, time to be going,” Ma
itland said.

  He turned to Taylor, gripping his hand and pumping it vigorously up and down.

  “Ash. A pleasure doing business with you. I’ll have a transporter pick the car up in a few days. We’re shipping it from O’Hare and there’s a little bit of paperwork to complete.”

  “Whatever. Maybe I’ll see you at Monterey this year. Outbid you on something you have your eye on. Old chap.”

  They left after the pleasantries had run their course, which didn’t take long. Back on the road, Gabriel turned in his seat to talk to Maitland.

  “So you have the car, which is very nice by the way. Where now?”

  When Maitland answered, Gabriel could barely stop his mouth dropping open at the audacity of the man’s operation. He said, “We’re going to do what?”

  “Meet some gentlemen from the Hells Angels at their club house near Flint, Michigan. They need cocaine, we need untraceable cash. All mine’s far too digital to be of any use. The boot’s got a Samsonite packed with the stuff. You make the exchange, then we head on up towards Roscommon. There, we meet a very well-connected, ex-South African Army chap called Bart Venter. He has the items we’re really here for.”

  “And the D-Type?”

  “Just cover. I suspect any customs officers will be far more interested in Steve McQueen’s old racing car than the rest of our cargo.”

  “Which is?”

  “Two Browning .50 calibre heavy machine guns. Plus tripods,” said Maitland, his face impassive. Unlike Gabriel’s.

  “You have to be joking! M2s? They’re military only. How has he got hold of two?”

  “I don’t think we need to worry about that. It is his profession, after all. We’ll have some fun testing them then we need to get some specialist engineering work done prior to shipping them back to the UK.”

  “Engineering work?”

  “Well, you don’t think we’re going to wander through O’Hare Airport toting a couple of heavy machine guns over our shoulders do you? No. I have made arrangements to collect a potato harvester at the same time. They use them in Idaho on those massive farms out there. We’ll disassemble the Brownings and bolt them into the harvester. I’ve been assured once they’re in bits it’s very hard to detect them among other mechanical parts. The story for customs, if they ask, is that we’re importing it for our model farm at Rokeby Manor.”