by P. S. Bridge
‘Yes Mr Green, what can I get you?’
‘Where are the best places to buy clothes when we land? I didn’t expect this weather!’ he said with a smile which caught her eye.
She wrote on a piece of paper a list of shops which were high quality and reasonable prices and he thanked her, putting the piece of paper in his pocket. She was sweet and attentive, he thought to himself as the plane touched down on the runway. It taxied to its terminal and the usual instructions came over the Tannoy before people stood ready to retrieve their hand luggage from the overhead storage areas. Mark waited and picked up a copy of World News Media’s latest magazine about luxury property developments for sale in Germany.
He also noted there was an article about yacht brokerage which he thought would be of use, considering his cover was a yacht broker. He read it and, as he had done many times, memorised every word to be used at a later date. After most of the passengers had disembarked, he retrieved his bag and made towards the exit, thanking the stewardess on his way out. He made his way out via Terminal 2 and quickly eyed up all the exits and potential escape routes, along with anyone who looked suspicious or that may follow him. He may have been relaxed about travelling to Germany but he hadn’t lost the notion that, a few months ago, his face was all over at least the national news due to the Azidi case. That seemed like a lifetime ago, he thought as he felt for the piece of paper the stewardess had given him. He located a coffee shop just inside the airport, Café Treff and ordered croissants and a large black coffee, paid and chose a seat at the back so that anyone wandering by wouldn’t notice him. He re-read the note and found, in German, more than merely a list of shops and some directions. He translated in his head and was shocked by what he read.
‘Sir, it is not my place but, I felt I should warn you. There is a man a few seats behind yours who has been making notes about you since we left London. Please do not be alarmed but I think he could be a reporter. Good luck with the shopping.’
Nina X
Instantly, Mark was on the defensive and hadn’t really noticed anyone sat behind him on the plane.
‘More to the point,’ Mark thought to himself, ‘who the hell would make notes about ME and follow me to Germany?’
He was so careful using aliases and untraceable phones and money, he couldn’t possibly think of a way in which anyone could have got a link to him. He was uncomfortable as he looked around at all the people filing past him. It could be any of them. As he got up to leave, he noticed the stewardess in blue, walking her small wheeled suitcase across the airport. She clocked him and smiled as she walked towards the public phone booths to the left of Café Treff. She nodded for him to follow and he did so, taking up the phone next to the booth she was in. She dialled the internal number of the phone next to hers and Mark picked up. She seemed concerned for his wellbeing.
‘Oh sir, thank goodness. You got my note?’ she panted, her eyes darting around her constantly.
‘Yes Nina, thank you,’ replied Mark in a hushed voice, ‘now, tell me everything you know.’
Nina settled down and explained what she had seen.
‘That passenger I warned you about is behind us, across the airport, just within sight.’
Mark casually turned around, acting out actions with his hands which were not relevant to their conversation so as not to arouse suspicion. He spotted a man in a brown suede jacket and grey chinos leaning up against the wall reading a paper.
‘Thank you sweetheart,’ he said, putting his hand on her shoulder. ‘Why did you notice it was me he was taking notes about?’ he asked.
She leaned in closer so as not to be overheard.
‘The notes mentioned your seat number, description and your name.’
‘Great!’ Mark said encouragingly. ‘What else did he write and what makes you think I am in danger?’
‘I would not speak to you but, Sir, I saw the word, how you say in English, a hit? Forgive me sir but I thought you may be the target of a mugging or kidnap?’
Mark reached for the piece of paper she gave him earlier and a pen and wrote a quick thank you.
‘Thank you Nina, you have been a darling,’ he said, holding her hand tightly in his.
She smiled tenderly at him. In any other circumstances, Mark would have made more of it as he had a feeling she liked him.
‘Stay on the phone and pretend a conversation is ongoing with your boyfriend. Keep it going until I’m out of sight!’ Mark explained.
She nodded and Mark thanked her over and over and then hung the phone up. Shouldering his bag and with the piece of paper in his hand, he walked ‘accidentally’ straight into her, sliding the paper into her jacket pocket, made his apologies and caught sight of the man in the brown jacket lifting his phone to his ear.
He was spotted so made a quick retreat as the man motioned quickly after him. Mark spied a door marked ‘Private’ and, purely out of curiosity, checked the handle. It opened, and he passed through quickly to cover himself. He was in a long white and grey corridor with a sign on the wall in German: ‘Gepäckabfertigung’ (Baggage Handling). Mark made his way towards the sign and turned a corner. He heard the door turn after him and suddenly came up on a door marked: ‘Flughafensicherheit’ (Airport Security).
Again he tried the handle, and the door swung open. He located the arms cabinet and picked the lock quickly before grabbing a handgun, silencer and a magazine of ammunition. He locked and loaded with lightning fast speed, just time to hear the door go. He rushed behind it and a hand came around the corner holding a silenced pistol. Mark allowed the man to walk into the room before putting the gun to his head and ordering him in German, ‘Drop the weapon.’ The man did so and Mark aimed a foot to the back of the man’s knee, causing him to drop to the ground. Mark went round him to face him. ‘Why are you following me?’
The man refused to answer so Mark hit him on the chin with the handle of the gun he obtained from the cabinet. Blood dripped to the ground, and the man pushed himself back upright again. Mark held the gun to his forehead and pulled back the hammer ready to fire. This changed the man’s mind.
‘I was hired by someone, I don’t know his name.’
Mark’s face turned serious; he was furious and close to kicking the man half to death.
‘Why?’ he shouted, his voice deepening, pushing the gun tighter to the man’s forehead. The man glared at Mark and through gritted teeth, explained.
‘To follow you because I know you are. You are Mark Lucas King, disgraced lawyer.’
Mark felt the anger build, but wanted to know exactly who was following him and why. The man loosened up and explained.
‘We had located you because of the alias you used, Russell Green, which was one of your old client’s names who was deceased.’
Mark was struggling to keep control of his temper. He held tightly on, thinking he needed this man alive, at least for now.
‘Go on,’ Mark demanded. The stranger continued.
‘You represented his estate during a fierce battle of inheritance.’
Mark cursed himself for being sloppy and said it was no surprise they had found him.
‘Who are you people, the people who murdered Marie?’
‘I know nothing about that,’ replied the stranger looking confused, ‘I was supposed to follow you and update my “client” on where you were going and what you were doing.’
The truth dawned on Mark at that point and he realised they knew he was there.
‘You take a message back to your “client”: if they continue to hunt me or my family, I will locate them and kill them all!’
The man hissed at Mark and nodded, before he knocked the man unconscious and wiped the gun clean. He put the gun in the man’s hand so that his fingerprints would be on it and located the security alarm. He punched it and waited until people were running down the corridor outside the security office. He had about one minute before the guards came to fetch their weapons and he timed it perfectly, slipping out of
the door and into the crowd, unnoticed, and out of the airport and into the street.
Chapter Twenty
Mark figured the best way to get to Holtenau from here was by car. He knew he could check into the hotel after midday but was still reeling from his encounter with the man in the brown jacket. He made his way towards the Europa Passage Shopping Mall in the centre of Hamburg. It had everything he needed there for clothing to ‘fit in’ around Germany. He found a small newsagent and stocked up on cigarettes; he bought sixty and a bottle of water. He took a packet and put the rest and the water in his bag as he lit up, feeling more at ease and satisfied. A thought had occurred to him that if they tracked his alias and alias passport, they probably knew he had a hotel reservation, so diverted hotels. After calling around a few in Holtenau and offering to pay cash, he used a name he made up on the spot so as not to make the same mistake again. He relaxed. OK, so they knew he was in Germany but they didn’t know why and they couldn’t trace him now. Mark entered the Europa Passage shopping centre and made straight for ‘Wormland Men’s Fashion’, purchasing a few pairs of trousers and jeans, some shirts and a few jackets. He worried that he wouldn’t take these with him when he returned to London, but money really wasn’t that much of a problem now. Next he needed a hire car and a rifle so looked up a military surplus supplies store between Hamburg and Holtenau and the nearest car hire firm. He found one quickly and paid cash for a week’s hire, knowing he probably wouldn’t need it. The dark grey Audi Quattro Q7 3.0 TDI four-by-four came with a full tank of diesel and it was only a one hour ten minute drive to Holtenau. He decided not to cancel his booking for the first hotel he booked and played along with the game, checking in and paying for his room. He left his bags in the car and walked to the room, made a coffee and headed out again to the hotel down the road where he checked in, paid in cash and headed up to the room. Now if they came looking for him, they would start in the wrong hotel, at least buying him time by creating a distraction.
Mark ran a bath in his new hotel room at the Maritim Hotel Bellevue and made a coffee; staring out of the window, he lit up a cigarette and researched the port of Kiel-Holtenau so he could get an idea of what he was up against. Opening his rented laptop, he typed in the search box the name of the port and got a satellite image of the place so he could pick out the best vantage points. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for other than the same container he encountered in London but there could be no guarantee it was still en route or whether it had been picked up, only that the ship would arrive in three days and he needed to use that time to find out who it belonged to and why it was being shipped. More to the point, HOW it was being shipped. During his bath he wondered if all of this was somehow connected to the Azidi trial. He went right back to the start and realised that it all started with Azidi and that THAT was the root cause of Mark’s involvement in this whole situation.
Mohammed Al Azidi stood on top of a container overlooking the vast Kiel-Holtenau Port whilst he surveyed the rows of storage units and felt the comfort of his AK-47 and his knife in its holster. He smiled, knowing soon he would be head of the most deadly and well-armed unit in Europe. His men were heavily vetted and all ‘brothers’ from the Middle East who were supportive of the cause. It wasn’t a jihad, far from it, but it was the start of something he totally believed in: the unconditional destruction of the western world. He didn’t like who he was working for as he was a westerner himself, but if the person he was working for should turn on his country of origin and go against his government, who was he to stop him? After all, as soon as he took power, he would have him killed anyway, so it really didn’t matter. Azidi waited for a call from his German contact to confirm whether it was Mark King, that bastard lawyer from Britain who tried to have him put away, who was coming to Germany but, as yet, no word had come. He was getting concerned but reminded himself that this contact had never let him down before so he was sure there was a perfectly good explanation for his delay in contacting him. He would leave it a few more hours before doing any investigations.
In the moonlight which cast eerie shadows over the surrounding buildings, Azidi finished his cigarette before calling it a night.
The thought of Mohammed Al Azidi being involved in this was a chilling prospect as Mark sat outside the café not far from his hotel and smoked a cigarette. He shouldn’t be surprised because it made so much sense now, but what he could do about it? There was no doubt in Mark’s mind; Mohammed Al Azidi HAD to be eliminated. But he was sure Azidi wasn’t the man at the top, he HAD to be getting his orders from someone else. It frustrated Mark that just when he thought he was in sight of the ultimate target, something else came along and shifted the balance. He was getting impatient, but he knew he couldn’t afford to make too many quick moves or it could all go horribly wrong and that would be the end of it. Mark took the last sip of his coffee but just as he did so, he glanced at the reflection in the café window and noticed a man sitting in a car opposite, intrigued by Mark, or at least, that’s the way it looked. Mark glanced left and right along the road until he spotted a coach, full of what looked like tourists, about to pass between the café and the car opposite. He saw his chance and, as the coach masked his movements, he vanished up the road, across the road and back down the other side, using an oncoming bus as cover.
The man in the car was worried; the coach had blocked his view, and he now had no clear line of sight to the café. When the coach moved, he couldn’t tell where his man had gone. He had to move and, as he fumbled around for his keys he felt cold, hard steel on the back of his neck and froze, rooted to the spot in fear. A voice came from behind him.
‘Turn around, slowly.’
Frans Luca froze and watched as the muzzle of the silenced pistol moved from his neck to his stomach to mask it from passers-by. He was staring at the face of the man he’d followed. The man who looked like a spy stood out somehow, but he smiled begrudgingly and resigned himself to defeat.
‘My name is Frans Luca,’ he said nervously, ‘I am a private detective. I have been following you.’
Frans Luca was definitely an eccentric and a local, however, one thing that Frans Luca wasn’t was brave when staring down the barrel of a silenced pistol. With his back against the wall, Frans Luca explained further.
‘There is a meeting of a powerful criminal gang in Germany tonight.’
Mark’s face drew in as he felt his blood boil and his heartbeat increase.
‘And why would I need YOU?’ Mark growled as he pulled the hammer back on the revolver. Frans burst out into a sweat and began to shake.
‘I know the location and the time?’ he answered quickly and in a panic. Mark raised his eyebrows at him.
‘How did you come across this information?’
Frans Luca trembled.
‘I cannot say. I will accompany you there.’
Mark put the hammer back up on the gun and lowered it, concealing it in his jacket. He wanted the major players.
‘I believe the head of this organisation is terrorist Mohammed Al Azidi.’
The name chilled Mark’s blood, and he agreed to gather intelligence on the meeting, thinking he may find out where this shipment of weapons was going. Mark trusted Frans Luca, as no man will lie with a gun pointed at his head
‘OK,’ Mark relinquished, ‘I am following a shipment of illegal weapons from London to Germany and I think Al Azidi is behind it.’
Frans nodded, and they discussed a plan together to get access to the meeting and gather information on who was who.
Mark’s Quattro pulled up outside the alleyway adjoining the location Frans Luca had described during his interrogation, clad in his usual steel combat gear and carrying a two-piece custom AMP DSR-One sniper rifle in a leather carry case and his favourite A CZ Kadet suppressed hand gun with silencer. He also carried various throwing knives and a US Army Special Forces Combat Knife which he ‘acquired’ through Frans’ various sources. He was ready and pulled a two way radio out of his s
ide leg pocket and radioed for Frans.
‘Hey buddy, you read me?’
There was no reply.
‘Hey, where are you?’
The radio crackled but still no response. Mark was getting concerned and irritated.
‘Hey! Where the hell are you!?’
After the third attempt, Frans replied which got Mark concerned but then, he was overweight and was probably rushing.
‘Here, sorry.’
Mark gave a sigh of relief.
‘Don’t go silent on me like that again!’ he scolded.
‘Cover the vehicle!’
Mark got out and manually locked the car to prevent the ‘bleep’ from drawing attention to them. He found a drainpipe and silently climbed to the third-storey window. Once there, he tied a length of military issue rope to a retractable harness around his waist and then to a spike he shot into the wall with his grappling hook. He tied the rope onto his retractable harness and leaned himself into the window, releasing the safety off his silenced Kadet pistol in case he should encounter any problems. They were just in time as there seemed to be a large crowd of people on the ground floor. They were gathered as if waiting for someone.
The voices quickly died down as a solemn hush came over them. A figure appeared from behind a lorry and stood up on its bonnet to address the crowd.
‘Azidi!’ Mark thought and thought it so hard he suspected for a second that everyone down there would have heard him.
Mark steadied his rope and lowered himself down further so he could hear what Azidi would say. Azidi addressed the crowd.
‘My brothers in arms, my loyal friends.’
Mark felt the grip on his ‘Kadet’ pistol tighten as he heard the evil monstrosity spout pure and unadulterated hatred but continued to listen.