Zero Hour (2010) ns-13

by Andy McNab

  I headed back to the junction with my pockets full of aspirin. I’d get a whole lot more later on: I’d need a Bergenful to achieve what I had in mind.

  I crossed a bridge over the west-side canal. As I walked down it, I scanned the roads parallel to Westerstraat; they were narrow and one-way. I was coming into the Amsterdam I knew best, in Van der Valk country: canals, trams, cyclists weaving between pedestrians, cobbles, narrow one-way streets. Centuries-old houses leant out over the brick-paved streets. Bikes were parked everywhere. Pedestrians were segregated from cars by lines of bollards. The buildings were immaculately kept and predominantly residential. Even the houseboats looked expensive. A James Bond villain would have looked completely at home among their timber and glass.

  I remembered reading somewhere that a couple of hundred years ago these houses were taxed according to how much land they occupied. Surprise, surprise, the Dutch went narrow and high. There were at least four or five storeys to all these places, with big, warehouse-style winches sticking out of their attics so anything large and heavy could be hauled up to the higher floors.

  It was going to be a nightmare to recce in these narrow roads. There was no cover and no reason to be here. I couldn’t just stand in the middle of a lane and study my target. I’d be able to do one walk-past, maybe two at a push, as long as I came back in an hour or so from a different direction.

  There was the odd shop, and yet another pharmacy. I went in for more aspirin but also discovered something else I was after. Pure alcohol. Well, 95 per cent pure. It wasn’t for drinking, but the sort old people use as an antiseptic. I bought two 500ml plastic bottles of the stuff and crossed it off my mental shopping list.

  Eventually, I turned left onto Westerstraat. It seemed out of place somehow, an eighty-metre-wide boulevard among the lanes. There was even a central reservation big enough for two cars to park nose to nose.

  A lot of the expensive-looking seventies and eighties apartment blocks boasted shops on their ground floor. They were independents rather than chains: a bike shop, a couple of small supermarkets, an Internet cafe next to a mattress store, a newsagent.

  118 was down at the end of the street, as Bradley had promised. I saw a sign for an Internet cafe that turned out to be more of a 7/11. There were four or five banks of screens. You paid in a slot machine and could order food and drink, even buy music CDs.

  I logged on with five euros for thirty minutes, then hit Google Earth and Street View for my virtual tour of the target. I could see the striped canopy that ran outside the cafe. The target house’s pitched roof was immediately to its left. It was narrower than those on either side of it. It backed onto a square, with four similarly proportioned terraces lining each side. I clicked the arrows anti-clockwise along each of them, looking for a gap between the buildings. I finally found an archway. I could imagine a coach and horses rattling through to the stables after dumping the good burghers of Noordermarkt outside their front doors. The whole area had now been segmented, with fences and walls bordering private parking spaces and places to store industrial-sized wheelie bins.

  I soaked up the imagery. This was the only known location for the target, and not a bad one. At least it wasn’t exposed to the real world, unlike the cafe next door. Whatever went on inside was kept inside. For a while, anyway.

  I wanted to get into 118 later today, to work out the best access route when I came back later to finish the job. I needed to check out the alarm system, and might even be able to adjust a window or door lock to make re-entry a whole lot easier. Once I’d sorted the competition, I’d have bought myself the time to get everything in place to hit the silo. My number-one priority was still the girls, whatever Tresillian had in mind.

  I Googled Anne Frank’s house and a couple of galleries to mix the session up a bit, then deleted my history and closed down, making sure the log-off really did log off.

  20

  The white cafe with striped canopies and a blue door was open for business on the junction ahead. The canal was less than a hundred metres further on. White plastic sheeting protected a run of stalls in a small, brick-paved square between the two. There were no green Passats in sight.

  I crossed the road opposite 118 so I had the clearest possible view of its front elevation. A small glass porthole protected by a metal grid was set into the solid wood front door. The windows on all three floors were wooden-framed and double-glazed. I couldn’t see lights or movement behind any of them.

  I spotted two keyholes: Union cylinders, probably with night latches. They wouldn’t normally be a problem to defeat; I could just buy a couple of other Unions and doctor the keys. But the road was constantly busy, and I didn’t fancy fucking around with them in front of an audience: people were having a beer and a pizza just a couple of metres away. With any luck they’d have the same kit on the back door as well.

  The entry point into the square was about a hundred metres up Noordermarkt. The street was much narrower, with houses and shops on both sides. Most of them seemed to be selling candles, linen and anything else that was white. The good burghers’ coaches would have been rolling in and out of here pretty much all the time back in the eighteenth century, but these days they were a bit more reluctant to welcome uninvited visitors. A pair of wrought-iron gates now stood guard a few metres in. They were surrounded by vines and flowers, but weren’t just there for decoration.

  To the left of the archway, within arm’s reach of a driver, was a bank of buttons on a steel box and a numbered keypad. To the right of the main gates was a smaller one for pedestrians, with its own digital entry box mounted on a steel panel on the latticework frame. There are ten thousand possible combinations to a four-figure code. I’d be here all week trying to find the right one; that was the whole point of them. I needed a simpler solution: I needed to find out how the guys on the inside of the square - and their welcome guests - managed to get out.

  I pulled the map out of my pocket and gave my head a bit of a scratch as I pretended to get my bearings. The main exit would be triggered from the inside by a detector as a car approached the gate. But how did they open the pedestrian gate from the inside? It wouldn’t need a code: they’d have a simple push-button arrangement of some sort. Was the button on the back of the electric lock? Was it set back, on the wall? I couldn’t see much in the shadows. I gave the steel panel behind the entry keypad another look. It had to be there for a reason. It had to be there to stop anyone on my side of the fence getting access to the exit button.

  I couldn’t risk going any further in - I might just as well be wearing a striped T-shirt and a stocking over my head. I wandered back onto Noordermarkt and took the first left. I wanted to do a complete 360 of the square. There might be a less secure route in. I hung another left and was soon back on Westerstraat. I’d found nothing.

  I crossed the road and carried on back towards the target, keeping my eyes open for a newly parked Passat or any change on-target. Was an extractor flue knocking out steam perhaps, because somebody had come home and jumped in the shower?

  Nothing.

  It was only two o’clock and another three or four hours until last light.

  I carried on towards the canal, following signs that showed a little man walking towards Anne Frank’s house. Not that I was going to see it - not yet, anyway. I was heading for the centre, the area of town I knew well, the bit that was full of bars and whorehouses, backpackers and tourists. That was where I’d blend in best, and where I could buy what I needed to get this bit of business done without anyone remembering me.

  I crossed the canal and stopped at an ATM. I drew out three hundred euros on Nick Smith’s MasterCard, as you would do if you were bumbling about the city centre, planning a bit of souvenir shopping and maybe a mooch around the red-light district.

  I carried on to Damrak, the main drag from the central train station. It was a blur of trams and cars. Bells jangled. Cyclists wove between pedestrians. The place was packed, mainly with drug-dealers whisperin
g, ‘Weed? Cocaine?’ to anyone who came within reach.

  There were a couple of camping shops. A lot of the visitors here were backpackers. I went into the biggest, and therefore with luck the least friendly, and bought myself a black fifty-five-litre Bergen. Into it went a hard plastic knife-fork-spoon set any Scout would have been proud of and a Russian-doll type assortment of cheap aluminium cooking pans of the kind he’d make rehydrated stews in that nobody wanted to eat.

  I also bought a twenty-litre plastic water container, the sort that concertinas down to save space, and a roll of silver gaffer tape big enough to stick the world back together. The last bit of kit I bought from this place was a portable stove in a plastic briefcase, fuelled by aerosol cans rather than Camping Gaz canisters.

  At the checkout I paid with cash and picked up a novelty mosque-shaped dual-zone digital alarm clock that was on special offer. I only needed Dutch time, not Mecca’s, but it had a big speaker at the back of the green plastic casing. That meant it would have a decent battery pack to power it.

  I shouldered my Bergen and headed deeper into the city centre. I still had a lot of shopping to do. I needed two tool sets, rubber gloves, three thick 500ml drinks glasses, small halogen light bulbs, a couple of metres of tubing and a shedload of aspirin. I needed some bits and pieces from a hardware store too, and a roll of freezer bags - not the zip-tight ones, which still let in air, but ones I could twist shut and seal with a wire twist. They were the only kind that would stop air getting in and causing an explosion before I wanted one.

  21

  By the time I got back to Westerstraat my Bergen was filled with nearly everything I was going to need. It wasn’t dark enough yet for me to infiltrate the square and do my stuff. I might as well sit, look and listen. I made my way down to the cafe and took a table under the striped canopy. From here I could keep eyes on the target door. When the waitress arrived I ordered a pizza and a big bottle of water.

  There was still no sign of life on-target. No light, no movement. There was plenty happening outside it, though. Little kids skipped past, hand in hand with their parents. Some stopped at the cafe for juices and ice creams and all sorts of other stuff that had to be cleaned off their faces with a pressure washer. Then there were shop deliveries, people like me just mincing about, and others engrossed in phone conversations. I sat back and watched, taking in some more of this real-life shit while I waited for my Margherita to make an appearance.

  I glanced down at the Bergen. The business end of a red plastic G-clamp poked out of the side pocket. I’d bought it, along with a basket load of other stuff, in Amsterdam’s equivalent of a pound shop. I pulled the flap back over it - nothing to do with being covert; everything to do with neatness. Having things sticking out of a Bergen was a big no-no in the army. They could catch or get pulled out, and make all sorts of noise. ‘That’s what fucking flaps are for,’ our instructor had yelled at us zit-covered boy soldiers. ‘So fucking flap the fucking flaps over.’

  This was the second or third time recently that I’d found myself thinking about all the strange and funny stuff from way back. ‘What’s in the past belongs in the past’ had always been my mantra. What was happening to me? Was this part of the process when you knew you were about to die? Was I going to spend the next two months digging all this stuff up and reap-praising what I’d done and said? Or was the thing in my head growing and pressing the access buttons on Memory Central?

  I dug a hand into my jeans and dragged out four Union keys. I’d thrown away the locks themselves, in four separate bins. They weren’t the first four I’d picked up. I’d had to hunt for ones that didn’t have exaggerated variations in their peaks and valleys. These were as even along the teeth as I could find. I wanted to spend as little time as possible filing them down.

  The pizza arrived. I ripped off the crust and rolled up the rest. I’d never seen the point of cutting it up with a knife and fork or one of those little wheels that flick tomato sauce all over your shirt. This method was much more efficient.

  As it got darker, I pulled the plastic G-clamp from its pouch and unscrewed the adjuster until it came off completely. I was left with something more like a C than a G. I chucked the bit I didn’t need back into the Bergen.

  One last check of the target front door and windows. Still no lights. I paid my sixteen-euro bill with a twenty and slung the Bergen over one shoulder. I wandered around the corner, not looking too purposeful, and up between the candle and stationery shops on Noordermarkt.

  With the clamp in my hand, I pulled the second Bergen strap over my free shoulder and turned under the arch. This time I went straight up to the gate. You can’t hesitate. You have to look like you do this most days; you have a reason to be there, and it’s not just to make off with the good burghers’ flat-screen TVs. I stood in front of the lock so my body and the Bergen masked my activity, as you would if you were about to insert a key or tap in a few numbers you didn’t want anyone else to see.

  I focused on the steel plate behind the keypad and worked the open end of the clamp between the wrought ironwork so that the jaws of the C looked set to take a bite out of the panel. The top pad was now poised on the inside of the plate. I scanned the wall to check I hadn’t missed a button on my recce, then eased the clamp back towards me so that the pad could make contact with the electronic lock release. There was nothing I could do now but move it back and forth and hope to connect.

  I heard footsteps behind me, but passing by on the pavement, not turning in through the archway. Nobody paid me any attention. I manoeuvred the C clamp another five or six times and suddenly heard a gentle buzz. The gate was open. I pushed my way through and closed it behind me.

  Sure enough, the archway opened onto the square. I walked with purpose. I was a householder returning home. I always got a bit of a spring in my step after a successful infiltration, but this one felt particularly special. In all probability, I didn’t have many more of these to go.

  22

  I took cover behind a group of over-sized wheelie bins and got my bearings. The area had been carved up by a good few more low walls and fences since Google Earth had taken its snapshot.

  Lights shone at all different levels from the backs of some of the houses. Bodies moved around in one that looked like it had been converted into offices. There were no faces at any of the windows.

  I bent down and pulled a pair of dark blue washing-up gloves from a side pocket of the Bergen. I’d ripped them out of their packaging when I’d bought them and thrown it away. I pulled them on and felt around in the Bergen for the mini toolkit. China’s finest had set me back ten euros in a hardware store and came neatly packed in a black plastic box.

  The set consisted mainly of screwdrivers, but I’d been after the tiniest Leatherman rip-off on the planet. It contained every tool I needed, including a knife and a saw.

  ‘You’re only as sharp as your knife.’ Another instructor’s voice from way back, as clear as a bell.

  I shoved all the kit I needed into my jeans pockets, then took off the nylon jacket and left it on top of the Bergen. It could hang out behind the bins for a while instead of rustling on my body.

  I jumped up and down to make sure I hadn’t left any coins in my pockets, or anything that was going to rattle or fall out. I did one last check that all the other bits and pieces were good and secure in their pockets. I headed for the target, toolbox in my left hand.

  I ran through the what-ifs. What if the Passat came in as I was approaching the target? What if another vehicle did? Where would it look natural for me to move to? What if it came in while I was working on the door, and caught me in its headlights?

  I had no idea whether any of the doors ahead of me might suddenly fly open. There was a chance the cafe’s might. They were bound to have lads coming in and out with deliveries and bin bags. Fuck it, I didn’t really care. I was just going for it. If anything, I was upbeat. I was doing what I wanted to be doing. I got a kick out of covert entry and going in
and doing things when people didn’t know you were there. I always had.

  As a kid, I used to break into the local fruit and veg shop and hole up in a corner while I ate their bananas. I wasn’t hungry: it was all to do with the fact that I knew I was there and they didn’t. When I couldn’t sleep, I used to hide under the table in the kitchen. I sat listening as my mum and stepdad smoked themselves to death on Embassy Golds in front of the telly.

  The target’s parking space was separated from the cafe’s by a two-metre-high wall. It was empty. The cafe’s space was chock-a-block with wheelie bins and empty crates. Ahead of me were a couple of doors. A few lads were busy knocking up even more pizzas behind steamed-up windows.

  There was nothing on the ground floor of the target building except a door, and the same pattern of windows on the higher floors that I’d seen at the front. As I moved closer, I could see that the door was slightly raised. A short steel staircase led up to it. Closer still, and I saw a basement well, with maybe two metres of clearance between the house and the square. It would be my best bet for cover if I needed it.

  First things first. I nailed my mindset. Plenty of people would be walking up to doors in this square every day, and that was all I was doing. I looked for somewhere convenient to stash a spare key. There wasn’t anywhere, not even a plant pot or a flat stone. It looked like the area was swept and cleaned every day. Either it was a Dutch tidiness thing, or they were ultra-cautious about security.

  I checked the back-door lock. It was a Union pin tumbler, chrome, centre right, all very nice and shiny. Maybe they had one key for both front and back. I made my way very slowly down the steel steps into the basement well. I didn’t want my feet to jerk across a window. I didn’t know who or what was down there yet.

  As my eyes adjusted to the deeper darkness, I lowered myself slowly onto my knees. I put one eye against the sash window. The glass was clean. The paintwork was pristine. The frame was wood and the panes were double-glazed.