That’s interesting. I wonder if ... could be?
Mum?
And then Sam Green knew nothing.
‘Gunner! You’ve got that?’ Captain Vince Froud pulled the Blackhawk to the left. She was at 80 feet and hovering. They’d found the satellite control centre quicker than they thought they would - at the end of their first radial sweep from the village. His nav, who was equipped with Gen 3 night vision goggles, had picked up a series of unidentified bright sparks in the jungle 350 metres away. It had taken them fifteen seconds to acquire the target. The nav now had the underslung spot on; it was lighting up the dish - just like Times Square.
He reckoned they were out of mission-critical time. He’d set the digital stopwatch on his Bell & Ross chronograph from the squadron commander’s original orders. It was reading ‘minus 37 seconds’. They were late on target. Just.
‘Got it Captain. Hang on! There’s a body on the roof. Next to the dish.’ The gunner had a door-mounted, M242 Bushmaster 25mm chain gun locked and loaded with 1,000 rounds.
‘Dead or alive?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Avoid the body if you can. Fire now!’
The noise of a circular, rattling chain gun is one of the sweetest sounds known to any aviator. At a rate of 500 rounds per minute, a box is spent in 120 seconds. At the target end, you might as well stand up, get naked and enjoy an encore.
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
Click!
The click was the firing pin striking a non-existent round.
‘Rounds complete!’
Smoke and cordite filled the body of the helicopter.
‘Moving now!’ From Vince, over the intercom.
Vince did a shimmy with the stick and the Blackhawk moved forward 15 metres. The gun smoke cleared.
‘Damage report?’
‘The dish is down, Captain. It’s on the floor. Job done.’
Vince knew that the in-flight comms were being relayed directly to Langley and to MacDill Air Force Base. They’d pick up every word.
‘Charlie-one-three, this is Charlie-one. Orange seven, now. Over.’ Vince made the call to the second Blackhawk.
‘Roger that, Charlie-one. Going in.’
Epilogue
Krk Town, Krk, Croatia
Three days later
Freddie stepped off the bow of the Riva Aquarama 27 speedboat onto the beautiful, old quay at Krk. He was dressed in dark blue chinos, a crisp white double-cuff shirt with gold cufflinks, what his mother would call a ‘tank top’ - except she would never have seen one knitted from yellow merino wool, and a pair of blue leather, Sperry’s Top-Slider deck shoes. The sun was hidden by a thick blanket of cloud, but that didn’t stop him from adjusting his Wayfarers.
He felt like a million dollars. Which made sense. The 35-year-old Riva was worth almost half that. The boat’s driver had strict instructions as to where to drive it to next. Freddie knew of a reliable broker in Rijeka. He would get a good price for the boat. And Freddie had something in mind that would be a good replacement. More gin palace than wooden boating shrine, but it would do. There was a nearly-new Princess 95 at berth in Geneva. And that was close to his next stop.
Leaving aside the boat, he was worth fifty times a million dollars. Probably more. No wonder he afforded himself a swagger.
An elderly man dressed in a smart dark suit, white shirt and crimson red tie met him at the end of the quay. He relieved Freddie of his small leather case and led him to a pristine, silver-blue Bentley Mulsanne.
‘How’s everything going, Jim?’
‘All good, sir. And you?’
‘It’s been an interesting couple of days. I think a week or so in the mountains is in order. How long will it take us to get to Verbier?’
Jim opened the rear door of the Bentley and, as Freddie got in, he replied, ‘Eight hours, I reckon, sir. Maybe nine. Traffic-dependent.’ He closed the door gently and made his way to the boot - which opened automatically, the gas struts making easy work of the heavy lid. Freddie’s small case was lost in the cavern that was the back end of the Bentley.
Freddie had had enough of talking. Jim wouldn’t bother him again unless Freddie asked him a direct question. He knew the rules. Speak only when spoken to. Freddie would check a few things on his phone, issue a few diktats to a couple of minions and then get his head down. The Bentley’s leather had already engulfed him and was beckoning him to sleep.
An interesting couple of days.
That was an understatement. He had made it off the island with an hour to spare. His agent in the Croatian Security and Intelligence Agency had given him an eight-hour heads-up. That allowed him enough time to sort out a few loose ends before leaving the island to its fate. The debacle of the Mecca attack was very unfortunate - it would have delivered the perfect storm. The subsequent probes and enquiries by various security services across the world had surprised him. He thought The Church’s cellular structure was tight enough to survive a major breach. But, clearly not. There was a lesson there. It seemed unlikely that it would survive in its present form.
But, that wasn’t his problem. Nor was he interested. The monks on the island had all done the honourable thing after he’d warned them of the impending Croatian special forces assault. They wouldn’t be missed. There were other small groups of unwavering believers hidden away in a couple of countries. It would be up to them to look to the future. Good luck with that. They wouldn’t be hearing from him.
Having got the call from his agent, he’d needed Paul Mitchell to tie up some loose ends; money transfer and other immediate actions that required his computer expertise. Initially Mitchell hadn’t been keen to help. That may have had something to do with Freddie having shot his wife at point-blank range two days earlier. Having beaten the fucking Croat to death in his room, Freddie had found ‘the note’ by his bedside table. It was in Vicky’s handwriting. And he didn’t like that.
Therefore, she had to go.
He had taken some pleasure from killing Vicky. She’d been instrumental in writing the coding that had enabled The Church to hide its internal communications on the Dark Web. She’d done that well. But he’d never fully trusted her. Never.
After Vicky had fallen to the floor in the canteen, a trickle of blood leaving an artistic track from corner of her mouth onto the tiled floor, Paul had said nothing. He’d just stared at Vicky’s body. His mouth open - his hands outstretched.
‘Don’t be melodramatic, Paul. You didn’t love her. You were too busy screwing that waitress in Austria, last time I heard. She’s done her job. Let’s move on.’
Before Paul had had chance to reply, a couple of monks had jogged over and mopped up the corpse.
Paul had sulked for 48 hours. He was still sulking when Freddie had received the call from his pal in Zagreb. Which was frustrating as he had a lot to do, and not much time to do it.
‘Paul - we need to close this down. The island. The links. I need you to do that for me now.’
‘Do it yourself, you fucking psychopath.’
Freddie knew he was going to get short shrift from the man and he didn’t have time for an extended discussion. So, he took out his pistol and shot him in the calf.
Histrionics followed.
He didn’t allow Paul to make it to the sanatorium - there was too much to do. And Freddie didn’t care. Paul had fallen and was sitting on the floor, screaming for the medic. Freddie told him to ‘shut up’ a couple of times. When he didn’t, Paul got a boot in the face.
That got his attention.
‘You’ve got an hour. No more. Now get moving.’
‘An hour?’ It was a mumbled reply; Paul’s hand was in front of his mouth - blood seeping from between his fingers. ‘You’ve got to be kidding?’ Paul wasn’t happy. It was probably shock.
Freddie knew he’d be much less happy in an hour’s time. With a bullet in his head.
With a sigh and shake of his head, Freddie had raised his gun to Paul’s temple
.
That had provided the necessary focus.
‘All right, all right. I’m fucking going.’ And off he hobbled.
Then the monks; in the chapel. Plenty of pills.
Bless them. Freddie couldn’t watch. It wasn’t a stomach thing. He probably would have enjoyed it. It was that he had too much to do. Too much evidence to hide. His room needed sorting. Papers needed to be burned.
Three hours later the Riva was ready in the boat shed as he’d requested; his driver fully-briefed. It took them half an hour to make it round to Krk. A beautiful town nestling on the Adriatic side of the island. Yes, it was touristy - but it had kept its charm. There were plenty of decent restaurants and the locals didn’t ask complicated questions. It had been a perfect spot - the monastery, the monks, the solitude, the climate, and the local town. Just perfect.
But that was all over now.
He was sad that it was ending, but the place had served its purpose. Yes, he would have been ideally placed should the Christian versus Islam spat have kicked off in a major fashion. Most of his money was in defence stocks - and energy companies. He would have done well out of it.
Never mind. How much money is enough?
That was an interesting philosophical question. To which his answer had always been: you can never have enough.
And there would be plenty of other opportunities.
So that was the end of this particular chapter of his life. Turn the page and start writing the next. Should he disappear off into the sunset and live lavishly off his millions? Possibly.
Or …
He was rather interested in how the whole thing had become unpicked. Who had done that? Who was bright enough to piece the cell structure together - and then find the operations centre in Venezuela? Was it just the British SIS working at its best? He wasn’t convinced by that argument.
They had destroyed the German count’s home; he was in the thick of it. Apparently he was still alive - but not a pretty face. And not very mobile. Freddie would be surprised if he were ever able to tap out some code on his keyboard ever again.
What about the woman Green? She had got into the jungle - somehow. Had she made it out? Was it she who had discovered and then helped dismantle The Church’s structure? He wasn’t sure. She was certainly central to a lot of the mayhem that had undermined the project. Maybe, one day, he’d pay her a visit.
But, first, he’d look at a couple of projects where he could nefariously place some millions. Pull a few strings. Rattle some cages. Make some more dosh. And between then and now he’d put his feet up, drink some of his cellared Charles Heidsieck and read a good book or two.
Perfect.
As Freddie stewed over his immediate future, the Bentley pulled away from the quay and headed up the hillside.
Newhouse Farm Campsite, Northwest Bristol, UK
Six months later
Sam heard the hoot of the horn from Jane’s car. She was at the gate. Sam jumped out of Bertie’s sliding door and jogged over to the small campsite’s entrance. She undid the padlock, pulled back the metal, three-bar gate and let Jane in.
It was good to see her. The last time they had met was at Sam’s bedside in St Thomas’s hospital months earlier. Jane had been involved with Sam’s SIS debrief. As the doctors fiddled around with her insides, SIS messed about with her head. The whole process had been exhausting. The quacks had opened her up to sew up a split in her stomach wall the size of a postcard - caused by Bell’s beatings. They had also removed a 9mm slug that had lodged in her right fibula. That must have been from one of the shots fired by the man at the satellite control centre. One out of three. She took her hat off to him. Not bad at that range.
By sheer chance she hadn’t been hit by any of the 25mm rounds from the Delta Force Huey that had ripped through the dish and mounting box. God knew how many rounds - and none of them had hit her. She had been partially shielded by the dish as it fell off its mounting. But it was luck rather than judgement that had saved her.
The debrief had been severe. They wanted to know everything; in minute detail. Jane had told Sam that the US and all of the European security agencies were already working hard to dismantle The Church of the White Cross. They needed all she had. As always, her memory didn’t let her down. That is until the moment she got on the roof. At that point it was a haze.
‘What were you doing on the roof, Sam?’ Some young buck dressed very un-SIS-like in a suit, striped shirt and a spotted tie (stripes and spots - didn’t your mother tell you?) had asked.
That was a good question. She had tried to answer.
‘I think I was trying to break the dish - or something. I’m not sure.’
The buck had gone on to tell her that she was found with two pistols - and eight rounds. Both pistols had recently been fired.
‘That would seem to be it, then?’ Sam had surmised.
The word ‘probably’ should have been in the answer somewhere. She really had no idea.
When she had first woken in a Blackhawk flight somewhere mid-flight from the control centre to Caracas, what Sam had wanted to know more than anything else was whether Austin was alive. In the metaphorical hurricane that enveloped their extraction from Venezuela, into Colombia and out to the US, it had taken a good while to find an answer to that question. Everyone was trying to be polite, but the Delta Force ‘Night Stalkers’ were also incredibly busy - and trying very hard to be secretive. In the end she found the answer next to her on a gurney in a military hangar, hidden away at the far end of Bogotá airport. Austin was a passenger on the gurney. He was awake and had smiled, giving her the thumbs up.
Her second pressing question was whether Austin had indeed killed Bell. She really couldn’t trust her memory at that point - and wanted to be sure. Before she’d been wheeled onto the USAF C17 cargo plane at Bogotá, she’d asked to see him.
A colossus of a captain had assured her that the black man in the second building had been found dead. Definitely dead. And that, if she wanted to check, she could - once they were on US soil at Fort Campbell.
Once they’d landed she had, much to his amusement, insisted.
In the near-dark of early dawn, with Sam sitting up on her gurney, the captain had unzipped a dark-green body-bag and shown Sam Ralph Bell’s face. She had stared at him for over a minute. He didn’t move during that time. He was dead. That was clear.
Thank Christ for that.
Would her nightmares continue?
Yes, unfortunately.
But now Bell was scarier than ever. He was always a ghoul of some kind. A vampire. Or a zombie. And she hated anything like that. A cousin of hers had made her watch The Exorcist when she was the tender age of 12. The experience had completely unnerved her. Since that day, every time she looked at a crucifix her overactive brain painted a very clear picture of Regan MacNeil’s unmentionable actions.
Unfortunately, Bell was still an accompaniment to her dreams.
Maybe in time ...
Jane parked her car (Blue, Volvo V40, Kinematic) next to Bertie. She got out with a posy of yellow roses.
‘For you, Sam. The colour’s designed to match the van.’
Sam was momentarily overcome. She coughed to hide her embarrassment.
‘Nice car. I sort of saw you as a Volvo girl.’ Sam changed the subject.
‘I won’t take that as a compliment.’ They both laughed. ‘Can I come in?’ Jane pointed to the van’s sliding door, which was hiding under a short, roll-out awning.
Sam laughed again. Bertie’s door, that is her short-wheel-base VW T5 camper’s door, led to a space about as big as a standard, three-bed downstairs loo. There was a two-seater sofa facing the front passenger seat, which swivelled to give an extra chair. Between the two, on the van’s far wall under a small window, was a basic kitchen and some storage. It was hardly palatial. But Sam loved it. Every inch of it. Bertie was her baby.
Jane sat on the passenger seat, reached behind her and put the flowers on the dashboard.
Sam jumped in after her, fussed by making tea, and then took out a cake and biscuits that she’d bought from Aldi. It wasn’t much, but she was hardly flush with money.
As Sam arranged the chocolate fingers so that they were all soldier-like, side by side and in a straight line, the pair of them talked about this and that. Sam thought that Jane looked well - and told her. Jane told Sam that she looked tired and needed to heed the doctor’s advice about not doing too much too early.
‘I’m going up Pen-y-Fan tomorrow. That’s why I’m here in Bristol. Drive to Brecon tomorrow. I’ll be there before 10 am. Up and down. Back in Bertie in time for tea and medals.’ She knew she was speaking too quickly. And that her accompanying actions were too demonstrative.
‘Don’t you think climbing a Welsh mountain might be considered as “too much too early?”’
‘What - you don’t think I should then go on to Cadair Idris the day after, and Snowdon the day after that?’
Jane was wearing her ‘are you kidding me’ face.
Sam wasn’t kidding. She was deadly serious. Her brain had been in racing mode since she’d left Tommy’s. She couldn’t control it. It flitted here and there. She was quick to lose her temper - the smallest thing set her off; and she spent much of the day in tears. She had been through enough therapy in her life to heal herself. She knew the questions she should ask, and how to frame the answers so that they were succinct, but insightful. She knew she had to identify the drivers to her anxiety, then find a safe place to look them over - and then try to manage them. She knew of plenty of methodologies for dealing with outbreaks of her unnatural stress - and what strategies she should employ when faced with an overwhelming sense of despair. She had all of that. And she had tried to use them. And there had been some progress.
But most of the progress had come from being alone on a hillside somewhere. Exhausted - but almost complete.
It was, Sam knew, all about death.
She had killed a man. Shot him twice in the chest - in a cellar in Venezuela. She’d never killed anyone before. Yes, she had injured a few. And she’d been present when someone else had finished the job for her. Austin - with Bell. That sort of thing. But she’d never been totally responsible for someone else’s death before. And she was really struggling to cope with it. It frightened her - that she could do something so final to another human being.
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