by Andy McNab
Rio had other ideas. ‘Whoa, what about you and me, Nick, in the Beamer? I suit those fucking things. Those two smokers can kill themselves in the Jeep.’
‘No. We need to stop them killing themselves. Besides, I’ve had enough of living with you.’
Rio put his mug on the floor before collapsing on the sofa, and I was finally able to take a mouthful of tea. ‘Lads, one more thing. No contact with home until after the job. If you need to do anything now, do it on your own phones. We leave them here.’
I pointed at Gabe, who was already up and collecting cushions to get himself comfortable against the barn wall where the mobiles and wires now lay.
‘Then nothing but work on those. Okay. One final thing, clothes. Gabe, you’ve got kit. Jack, we’ll need a change of gear for me and Rio. You got anything other than jeans? We need to make sure we look different – have an appearance change, if needed. We’ll get more later but start prepared.’
Jack tapped away and the printer began to bounce up and down. So did the fat brown things at his feet. Jack was already taking off his leg. ‘What sizes are you?’
Rio couldn’t help himself: it was a gift. ‘We got no worries, mate. We’ll both get into one of your jumpers. How many fucking Mars bars you having a day?’
Jack didn’t dignify it with a response, just lay back on his mattress.
I turned for the door. ‘I suppose the dog cushion’s for me then?’ I picked up my mug and walked. I wanted to be with Jack – not to stop him smoking: that was bollocks. I didn’t care what he did with what was left of his body. I wanted to stay close and, I hoped, find out I was wrong about him being the snide.
26
Sainsbury’s superstore service station, Penzance
I hit the unleaded nozzle and watched the display spin at warp speed as I joined lunchtime shoppers filling up. We were on the outskirts of town, where all the normal big stores congregated to sell everything from DIY stuff to sofas and windscreen wipers, and it had taken for ever to get here. The motorway had run out over a hundred miles ago at Exeter and the roads after that seemed to get narrower and narrower. The main in Cornwall was just the A30 dual carriageway, which cut through the middle of the county before changing back into a normal road with little stalls either side selling flowers or eggs. Maybe the Poldark lot had done it on purpose to keep the rest of the United Kingdom at bay.
Most of the locals seemed to want independence from the UK. Just about every vehicle carried a white cross on a black background in a window or on its number plates. Many displayed the pirates’ skull and crossbones as well. I bet they were loving Brexit. All the fuel stations we’d stopped at had newspaper stands screaming front-page pictures of Boris or Cameron, depending on which way the paper leant. But these lads down here had only one view, judging by their window stickers, and that was Leave.
We’d taken the piss about the roads on the way down, but with just one fast escape route we could have problems. The A30 was the county’s only arterial route in and out so a natural channelling point. It would be easy for anyone from the police to the Owl to cut us off if the job went wrong.
Rio was the other side of the pump, doing the same with the Jeep, while Jack and Gabe were inside to buy them out of Ginsters sausage rolls and pay for the fuel. From this point on, whenever there was an opportunity to fill up, we would. The same went for the new mobiles, which always had to be on charge when they were in the car. There was no telling where we might be going in our pursuit of Yulia.
Sennen Cove was about nine miles west of us, almost at Land’s End. It had to be our starting point because it was Yulia’s only known location – or, at least, the only one the Owl had given us. We had to find her, and then we had to contain her. Once we’d done that, we had to work out the best way of lifting her without third-party awareness or involvement. The third party were real people, like the ones filling up here, or spending their Nectar points, or, like the old lady in the silver Nissan Micra in front of the Jeep, just staring at Rio in disapproval. Maybe she’d never seen dreads.
Real people couldn’t be part of anything we were about to do. They needed to be left alone to get on with their shopping and the rest of their lives so that they were never aware of what was going on around them. If they were, they’d do a number of things that could fuck us up. They could ignore what we were getting up to at the time, but later tell someone, who would tell someone else. Eventually it could lead to a series of events that would fuck us up at a later date. Or, if they were suspicious, they could do the good-citizen thing and call the police. Even worse than that, they could become a have-a-go hero.
One of the upsides of watching telly with Rio back in Tulse Hill was that he liked the occasional documentary. We’d watched one about the writer Paulo Coelho, which had included a great story about a young traveller in North Africa who’d received an offer of help from a Good Samaritan in a bar. The kind local was going to help him manoeuvre his way through the hustle and bustle of the souk, but the barman began shouting at the traveller in a language he didn’t understand. He was happy to depend on his new best mate, and ignored the barman’s warning that the man was dangerous. Obviously he got ripped off. It illustrated something I’d worked out for myself as a kid: the information the eyes and ears collect for the brain is one thing, but how the brain interprets it is another. People see the world in terms of what they’d like to see happen, not what actually does. They pull the wool over their own eyes about the world and the way it works. The traveller realized he should see the world as it was, rather than how he wanted it to be. It was the same with the third party seeing and hearing things that didn’t fit their normal experience, which they therefore couldn’t make sense of. That was why they had to be kept out of our world, and stay in the real one for everyone’s sake.
I put the nozzle back into the pump, and sat in the Beamer’s left-hand seat as Gabe and Jack came out with armfuls of drinks, sandwiches and, in Gabe’s case, something in shrink-wrapped plastic.
I caught Rio’s eye in the passenger seat of the Jeep and he gave me a smile and the middle finger. Was he the snide? Why would he need to betray us? As far as I knew, he was an open book: didn’t have much and didn’t want much, apart from his arm back to normal, I supposed, and that was never going to happen. Was it to do with his girls? That was the only vulnerability I could think of. Had the Owl made promises about them? Schooling, maybe, a bright future? Or had he just threatened to fuck them up if Rio didn’t do what he was told?
Gabe reached the Jeep and cut me away from my thoughts by tossing the package through the window at Rio. ‘You drive this time.’ He looked for support to Jack, who was climbing into the driver’s side of the Beamer. ‘He’s done fuck-all since we left.’
Jack was too busy dumping the supplies on my lap to comment. We’d shared the driving down and it was my turn to navigate.
I could see Rio using his teeth to rip the plastic off what turned out to be a suicide spinner, the knob truck drivers attached to the steering wheel to help when driving slowly and parking one-handed. It wasn’t a bad call of Gabe’s.
I fastened my seatbelt and shouted through the window at Rio, who was busy clamping the suicide spinner to the bottom of the steering wheel. ‘Ready?’
He powered up the Jeep, grabbed the wheel’s new handle and gave it a turn. ‘Got no choice now, have I? Never mind, my arse will find a way to pay him back.’
We headed out towards Sennen Cove. I wouldn’t have thought it possible but on the other side of Penzance the roads got even narrower. Navigation was easy, though: we just followed the signs to Land’s End.
Checking the Jeep was still behind us, I put in the earplugs I’d bought at CeX with the phones and dialled up Gabe.
He was his normal sociable self. ‘What?’
‘I know we’ve done it to death, but I’m going to run through our actions-on when we get to the cove, okay? When we turn off for the cove, you drive downhill to the beach. It’s the only w
ay into and out of the place. Then you turn right into the car park. We’re going to carry on along the main that parallels the beach, to the other side of the village and the harbour car park. What me and you do then is de-bus. We walk along the main and see what we can see. If we find her, I’ll sort out a trigger so we’ve got eyes on from then on. Remember, once we’re eyes on, we must keep them on. You got it?’
He obviously thought I was insulting his memory. ‘Course I got it.’
‘Good. We’re going to be turning off soon, so see you somewhere on the main.’
I closed down, and we turned right via a mini roundabout onto a steep downhill road, just a car wide. The beach and the sea spread out below us. I could see it wasn’t so much a main we were going to drive along as a track. The old fishing village had been given a new lease of life by the surf. If the news articles online were to be believed, this place had been ranked among the top ten places in the world to surf, alongside Bali, Hawaii and southern France, just not as exotic. Or as warm.
I could see bodies way out at sea, lying on their boards, waiting for the right wave. Some, closer in, were already going for it, then landing on the beach.
27
We got to the bottom of the road and hit the village. Google Maps showed only two ways to go from there: right, to a car park, or left, paralleling the beach and the row of buildings facing the sea, until another car park. It also showed the village had more parking spaces than houses.
We turned left and rolled past all the usual suspects on the left, a pub, a café, a fish-and-chip shop, surf outlets. Bodies wandered about with the tops of their wetsuits rolled down to their hips, and long-sleeve Tshirts or windproof jackets to keep out the cold. It might have been May, but the whitecaps on the water showed how windy it was out there. To round off the trendy surfer look, most heads were covered with woolly yeti hats, and the hair beneath them was universally blond. A lot of dye had been involved but it didn’t matter: they all looked as cool on the land as they did in the water.
It wasn’t just surfers who populated the village. Very smiley people who all seemed to be wearing baggy jumpers and multicoloured cheesecloth trousers sat along the sea wall, with signs telling everyone they’d braid your hair or teach you how to play a didgeridoo for a fiver.
We kept rolling slowly, playing the day tripper, eyes peeled for a Belarusian whose physique didn’t fit. Even the surf thing didn’t fit her. She came from a landlocked country that had been part of the Soviet Union until the nineties and they weren’t exactly big-time surfers themselves. Maybe Yulia collected old videos of Baywatch.
We came to the far end of the village, and now I saw what all the parking spaces were for. Each one was taken by a camper van, predominantly VWs, with surfboards on roof-racks or resting against them.
Jack nosy-parked in a disabled space and the mobile rang. It was Gabe. ‘We’ve parked up, and Rio’s tucked out of the way. He’s not the blondest, the twat.’
I could hear Rio laughing in the background, and a very bad Apocalypse Now accent. ‘Black men don’t surf.’
I hoped they were focused. Even if we didn’t see Yulia, we had to make sure she didn’t see us, which was hard when everything the others knew about counter-surveillance came from watching American cop shows.
‘Okay, we’re parking up too. I’m going foxtrot. That means walking, remember?’
Gabe shot back, ‘Shut the fuck up and get on with it. I’m going now. Going foxtrot.’ He closed down.
I got out and a gale hit me. I zipped up my jacket, plunged my hands into my pockets, and started walking back the way we’d just come. Jack and Rio stayed put. There always had to be someone in the cars, ready to move, ready to run attackers over if the follow went very wrong.
The wind was even stronger as I followed the low stone sea wall and the Atlantic got whipped up to my left. A row of commercial boats was parked up on wooden cradles, with lads in wellies and blue overalls scraping stuff off or painting stuff on. I joined the brave few checking out the shops or getting their hair braided. No one had taken up the didgeridoo offer. I peered inside each shop as well as the cafés, but there was no sign of the target, and it wasn’t long before I saw Gabe coming the other way, trying hard to disguise his limp.
We passed without acknowledging each other and I now rechecked his areas. Two sets of eyes were better than one. I also checked the bodies in the water as best I could, but the tide was out.
As I neared the other car park, I saw the Jeep first, then a clump of dreadlocks against the driver’s window. Normally, I would have wanted the cars parked nose-out so they could drive away quickly, but there were two reasons why I hadn’t wanted that to happen here. The first was that, under pressure, some drivers spend so much time backing in, or even trying to find a place to do so, that they end up compromising themselves. It wasn’t as if everyone was going to look at them and say, ‘Oh, look, there’s an undercover operator.’ But they might say, ‘What the fuck’s that twat doing?’ which meant the target might see the car and everyone in it. Some people found it hard to do two things at once – in this case, look at the target and behave naturally behind the wheel. Nosy-parking was the answer: it was what the real world did. Anyway, these two vehicles had an advantage when it came to finding a space. They both had blue disability badges.
The second reason for nosy-parking was that it hid the driver a bit more than if they were facing out. Rio was wrong – I’d seen plenty of black men surfing, although they certainly weren’t today – but those dreadlocks gave him a VDM, a visual distinguishing mark. I had enough of them in the team already.
This car park was about the same as ours, pretty much full, but there was one exception. It was dominated by a large, modern church building with a steel roof, very Norway-looking. At least, I thought it was a church: it had a new stained-glass window with the world’s biggest cross on it, but all around were adverts for surf shops and lessons. Maybe it really was a religion after all.
I turned and started the tourist circuit again, wondering how we were going to stake this place out until she eventually turned up. I passed Gabe once more as he came out of the pub at the end of the main. The Old Success Inn: that was something we weren’t having much of at the moment.
I approached the café and the crowd of half-wetsuited gods and goddesses having coffee outside, talking surf shit with their hands darting through pretend water. My phone vibrated. It was Rio. ‘I’ve got her. She’s in the car park. She’s just come out of the water.’
‘You sure it’s the target?’ If he wasn’t, I’d have to confirm it.
‘I’m telling you, it’s her.’
‘Okay, what’s she doing? She about to leave? Is she in a vehicle?’
‘No, mate. Just told you, coming out of the water. There’s about four – no, one minute, there’s five lads, big lads, older, with her. They’re all getting out of the wetsuits, putting them back in a van.’
‘What’s the vehicle?’
‘A blue VW camper. It’s got a roof rack for the boards – they’re strapping them down.’
‘Can you see the reg?’
‘No, the tailgate’s up. Listen, she’s got a big fuck-off tattoo on her neck. We ain’t going to lose her in a hurry.’
‘That’s good, mate. Stay there and keep the trigger on the van. If it leaves with the target on board before we’ve got a proper stakeout on it, leave Gabe and just follow it. We’ll pick him up, and then we’ll back you, okay? If the target goes foxtrot, just tell me what direction and I’ll take her. We’ll sort our shit out from there. We need eyes on her all the time.’
‘Got it.’ His voice had gone where I wanted it to be, which was serious.
We closed down and I called Gabe. ‘Mate, listen in. Rio’s got her. She’s got a neck full of tattoo and she’s at the blue VW camper van in your car park. There’s five lads with her. As you walk in, try to confirm that it’s her. And get a reg of the van if you can. Rio knows what to do if you don’t
get back in time and they move. If that happens, we’ll come and pick you up.’
‘Roger that.’
Great. Both of them were now in work mode. I closed down, got back to the Beamer and jumped in. ‘Think we got her. We’re waiting on Gabe.’
The phone vibrated and I put it on speaker. The wind battered the microphone as Gabe confirmed. ‘It’s definitely her and the tattoo covers all of her throat, not the neck. Those five lads, they’ve been hitting the weights, mate, and the tattoo parlours. If they’re the wolves we’re keeping from the door we need to get one fuck-off strong door.
‘All the gear is going in the van and on the roof rack. The reg – I can’t see much of it at the moment. All I’ve got is Whisky Kilo six four. Whisky Kilo six four.’
‘Mate, that’s excellent. Go back to the Jeep and keep the trigger on the van. If it goes mobile with the target, call me, and follow in slow time. They’ve only got one way out of here and just two ways to go at the top: left to Penzance, right to Land’s End.’
I heard the Jeep door close, and the roar of the wind disappeared. There was just the rustle of clothes as he sorted himself out. ‘I’ve got it. They’re almost packed up.’
‘Great, listen in. We’ll get a trigger on the junction at the top of the hill, so we can give direction and take ’em – you can come up the hill in slow time and back us. Make sense?’
Jack had already fired up the ignition and was reversing out.
Gabe was on it. ‘Yep, closing down now.’
As we drove out of the car park I looked at Jack. ‘As we go through here, keep your eyes open, just in case we fucked up and it isn’t Yulia. We’ll go up to the junction and find a place to stake it out.’
We reached the end of the shops, then the pub, and came to the steep road up to our right. Yulia’s car park was dead ahead. I tried to have a quick look. No luck. But we would at some stage today, or tomorrow if we screwed up today and lost her because this was the only known location we had for her.
The Beamer took the hill and the cove disappeared below us. I was concerned about the Wolves: it didn’t sound like they were the Belarus surf team here training for the season.