They had turned on to Avenue Gamel Abdel Nasser in the heart of the city. The target cars had pulled up in the forecourt of a hotel. She saw him climb out of the back door of the second vehicle. A different shirt, but the same jeans, and his bag was hooked on his shoulder. She saw all of his face as she peered between the driver’s and Jimmy’s heads. The boy, Natan, looked bowed, as if he was carrying a heavy weight.
The forecourt and its parking area were full but spaces had been reserved for the latest arrival. Nearest the door was the black Citroën limousine with the national flag on the bonnet, and behind were two motorcycle escorts, police. That made sense to Caro: she had seen the target, who was impressive and had stature: a meeting with a minister would have been scheduled. They would haggle over terms, then agree the transit of ‘goods’. Since she had returned from Constanta, she had gone to the Archive and had learned of the importance of the west African ports to the cocaine trade out of Latin America and into Europe. She knew that Dakar and Abidjan, in Ivory Coast, and Nigeria’s capital Lagos were policed by the Drug Enforcement Administration and that American bucks hit trading. The soft landing would be Nouakchott, which was safer and cheaper.
The driver opened the door for her. She stepped out, Barry behind her. David would stay in the car with the Six man.
The doors swung for her. A Branch people, surveillance, complained that they dressed in the morning, not knowing whether the target would start off in a decayed estate, where the clothing had to fit, and end up in a Holiday Inn or an Intercontinental where, again, the clothes must work. Of course, she would be seen, but she would not be noticed: dark grey skirt, flat black shoes, light grey blouse, no makeup, hair pulled behind her head, a canvas bag and a dog-eared Paris Match.
They were settling in low chairs around a table that backed on to the glass windows that overlooked the pool. Past them she could see leggy girls in bikinis. The target’s eyes drifted their way, and then his attention was on the man across the table from him. The waiter brought tiny coffee cups and glasses of juice. One of the minders was at the target’s side, the other next to Natan.
She thought the boy seemed irresolute.
She had taken a lounge chair in the middle of the lobby, where Natan could see her. He must lead and she would follow. The air-conditioning played on her. To Caro’s right was the hotel shop; to her left the toilets, a door going out into the gardens and the lifts.
There were two goons with the minister, and two minders with the man who liked to be called the Major. Natan fidgeted and their eyes caught. He looked away.
Five minutes passed.
Barry wandered away to pick up a hotel brochure but kept her in view. Every few seconds she eased her head a little higher to see above the magazine. He had to respond, had to move – but did not. After five more minutes she had done half the pages. The hotel was an oasis, corporate Europe on the edge of the great desert. More western faces appeared through the doors and headed for check-in.
He moved.
About damn time. He went towards the hotel shop: she was about to push herself up and do a relaxed stroll towards him when she saw that the shorter minder, Ruslan, had moved away, left Grigoriy at the Major’s back. Round the table they were hard in discussion and the kid must have thought the chance beckoned, but he was followed. The boy saw him and hesitated, then looked at her. She saw persecution in his face. She held the contact. In doing so she might have pushed back the boundaries of due care. Her obligation to him was nil. She had no call on him other than to extract a time for the crossing into Spain from Morocco, and a chosen method of transport there. Natan went into the shop, and the minder followed.
They had said on the courses at Lippitts Hill that an officer handling an agent should not rush him but should allow the contact point to stay sanitised and safe. When Natan came out of the shop he gazed at her. He was holding a packet of chewing gum. Ruslan had come out with nothing.
She settled in her chair as he drifted back to the meeting.
The Major broke from his calculations.
Behind him he heard the murmuring of his warrant officer and his master sergeant. He was distracted and looked up at them, away from the man of influence with whom he was bartering. He made a gesture to his host, excused himself, then leaned back as the warrant officer bent to speak in his ear.
There was a European woman in the centre of the lobby area, with a magazine – good legs, dark skirt, fair skin. She was watching them. The Major did not turn: he was skilled in counter-surveillance.
‘She was watching Gecko and looked like she was going to follow him.’
‘But she didn’t?’
‘She saw Ruslan.’
The Major made a gesture of apology to his host, and the talk resumed. More coffee and juice were brought, and they picked at some grilled lamb. They talked of the weight of shipments that could be brought into the docks or the Nouakchott wharf, the prices levied for the cargo, what security guaranteed and at what cost. Arrangements were put in place for the start of the cargo’s land journey north. He did not look again at the Gecko, but was confident his minders would.
Each time Natan looked up – chewing relentlessly – he saw her. He knew she had flicked through the magazine once, then read it more thoroughly. Now she had started again at the beginning. The man who had been near her had been replaced with another. He had a pad out and was taking notes, which the woman seemed to be dictating. They had a map unfolded before them.
The meeting was breaking up.
There were handshakes, then kisses. A good deal had been done, of advantage to both parties. Grigoriy was close to him.
‘Where do we go now?’
‘The docks, then into the desert – you need to know?’
‘Do we come back for the flight on?’
‘There are airfields in different places. Why?’
He shrugged. Played indifferent. His mind worked. No possibility of a meeting with the woman when they were inside a restricted area like a port. They had flown over the desert that morning – endless arid sand, featureless. There would not be another place.
They were standing around the table. The Major pushed paper into his pockets, and his pad went inside his coat. He smoothed his hair, and was ready for farewells. There would not be another chance.
He told Grigoriy he had to piss.
He broke clear and went towards the toilets on the far side of the lobby. He felt weak, and his resolution was draining. Suddenly it was hard to remember how they had slapped him when the whore’s earrings were missing. He could hardly recall how angry he had been at the embassy in Baku, or in the café behind Constanta Cathedral.
Natan walked fast, as if his bladder would burst.
He went into the men’s room and the door swung shut behind him. He was alone. He waited. The door clattered behind him.
Ruslan laughed. ‘A virus spreads. One goes down we all get it.’
He finished. He went to the basin. Ruslan was behind him. He left his hands wet and went out.
She was there with a man, who peeled away from her and went through the door to the men’s room. He must have swung it hard enough to catch Ruslan’s chest and face. The man, in French, was concerned that he had hurt Ruslan. He had not.
She asked, ‘When are you in Marbella with Ivanov?’
‘I don’t know. I know we go into the desert and—’
‘Shit. How will you go from north Africa to Spain? This plane, another one or by boat?’
‘I do not know. I have not been told.’
Behind him, apologies and protests that no harm was done. He blinked hard. Her eyes swept his face as if she were trying to register whether he had lied or told the truth. ‘Not how, not when?’
‘Not told.’
She went into the women’s room, and he was out in the lobby. Ruslan followed him, and they walked back to the group.
Neither would let go of it.
‘You don’t understand what will happen to the
m. I’ve said it three times and—’
‘Only three?’
‘Doesn’t matter how many times.’
Jonno reckoned Snapper was used to exercising control, expected to be heard through and then for his suggestions to be endorsed. Before the first coffee break, when Posie had gone down to boil the kettle, Snapper had been relaxed.
Jonno said, ‘If you had written permission to be here you’d have shown it. You’ve broken into Geoff and Fran’s home for your own purposes, and the end result is that you’re prepared to hazard their safety.’
‘And I’ve told you why.’
‘I’m not a complete idiot – I read newspapers – and I know that in any legal proceedings you have to give evidence of where you were, how you did what you did. That leads to here, and will throw a bright bloody light on the home of Geoff and Fran. Are they going to be able to live here without protection when their home has been integral to the capture of a Mafia leader? It’ll be splashed in the papers, on the radio and TV. They’ll be scuttling about like refugees. If it was in their interests you would have approached them. It’s not so you haven’t.’
Loy had gone to make the second coffee and they’d all taken various eyeline points to study. There was a framed photograph above the spare bed showing Geoff with a colourful line of medals on his chest at an Armistice Day service. On another wall there was one of those chocolate-box watercolours from the West Highlands with a stag sniffing at the air. The curtains were awful and his mother wouldn’t have allowed that wallpaper in the garden shed, but it was theirs. Their home. He could see them – maybe the old man on crutches or in a wheelchair – being taken down the drive with elderly friends trying to shift the cases. Their new home would be in one of those tower blocks he saw each time he and Posie had headed for the town, or in a terrace of boxes that looked out on to the next terrace. They would be out of their home, and the years left to them would have been disrupted by the intruders coming into their lives.
‘I’ve told you that we do our best to ensure that minimal information on observation points gets into the public domain. We take very seriously the safety of those who help us.’
‘And it’s a grown-up world, and bad things happen, and there are casualties – yes?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘The word you use is collateral, right?’
Sparky brought the third coffee. Jonno was having difficulty in controlling his temper, but Snapper was calm and smiling – which fuelled Jonno’s anger. Jonno thought he must have been on a course for call-centre staff who handled complaints: they never lost their cool and were always so bloody polite. It wouldn’t last much longer, him keeping his temper in check and Snapper being calm. Loy habitually nodded agreement with Snapper. Posie had not moved off the floor since she’d come back with the first coffees, and each time Jonno raised his voice she seemed to slump further. He thought she was near to tears. Jonno couldn’t read Sparky and sensed the man was detached from him but also from Snapper and Loy. He would have expected loyalty to drip off the man, but it didn’t.
‘I’m sorry you feel like that, Jonno, because it’s not justified. We have years of experience in this field, and I can pretty much guarantee that there will be no aftershocks for this home-owner.’
‘Which is worthless, because it’s not cast iron.’
‘We know what we’re doing.’
‘And they don’t matter.’
‘Easy, young man. Dramatic statements, not supported by fact, don’t help. Maybe it’s time for me to be full and frank—’
‘Spit it out,’ Jonno said.
‘Full and frank.’ The smile was that of a used-car salesman who had offloaded a vehicle and had had it brought back a week later with an estimate for mega-repairs. The eyes beaded on him. ‘We’re not moving. We’re here and we’re staying. I’m very sorry that our presence interferes with your holiday. Most of the places we work, trying to take drug importers, terrorists and big-time thieves off the streets, the householders recognise crime and help all they can to put bad men behind bars. They don’t bend the issues and pretend they’re God’s gift to the law-and-order debate. Got me? You are not our problem, and I won’t allow you to become our problem.’
An alarm sounded – not loud but persistent.
Jonno said, ‘It’s simple enough for me to realise you have no interest in the welfare of Geoff and Fran Walsh . . . and also for me to know that any police operation in Spain needs the co-operation and agreement of the local authorities. Where are they?’
He thought he’d played a trump – he saw Snapper blink. He supposed a boxer knew when he’d landed a good hit. The siren was still blaring and he’d lost his audience: Snapper stared out through the closed window and his eyeline was on the upper part of the garden. Loy was close to him, then pointed in the direction of the villa. Snapper ran his tongue, fast, across his lips, and Sparky frowned. None of them had heard his ‘trump’.
There was a gunshot.
A week before, Jonno would not have known the sound of a bullet being fired. Now he did. Posie was cowering, almost on the floor. He heard Snapper’s murmured oath.
The alarm cut.
Jonno went behind Snapper and would have leaned against his shoulder but Sparky gripped his arm and kept him back . . . It was the man who had fastened the jump leads from the Range Rover engine to the old Austin Maxi, Marko. He was near to the kitchen door and held an assault rifle in one hand, the barrel pointed high. The other man, Alex, who had told Jonno when to turn on the engine, walked out across the grass.
Snapper said, ‘A cat triggered an alarm system – not the half-starved bag of bones that lives here, but another must have broken a beam. Means that the garden can only be used when the system’s off. The cat’s dead – a round from an AK47 has that effect. The goon’ll be congratulating himself on his shot. Now then, young man, what were you saying?’
He saw the man pick up the cat by the tail and turned away from the window. He stumbled back, and Sparky caught him. He had nearly tripped over Posie.
Winnie had a view of the cemetery. It was the old one, and space there was at a premium. Stood to reason, with the shortage of ground available.
Kenny had said that the Rock of Gibraltar was four miles long and slightly more than a mile wide. The summit where the big communications antennae were anchored, was 1,300 feet above sea level. Most of the colony was either on reclaimed land or clung to steep slopes, the rest of the space taken up by the airport complex, the camp or the cemetery.
The office allocated to them was on the first floor of the block. Beyond it, three rooms had been converted temporarily to sleeping quarters. There was a bathroom, and a kitchenette. She assumed Six used the place . . . but would have needed time to work out why they were in Gibraltar. A typed note had been left on each unmade bed, on top of the pile of neatly folded blankets, sheets and pillows, stating that smoking was forbidden and cleaning was to be done by occupants. Dottie had papered the bare walls with the pictures and maps, fastened with Blu-tack. Pavel Ivanov, the Tractor, gazed down at them and Petar Alexander Borsanov, the Major. Winnie Monks always thought of Dottie as tough, bred rough on a housing estate in Newcastle, with no romance in her life to soften the edges. She’d done time as a clerical assistant, then been assigned to Winnie’s section. She had worked for Winnie at the expense of any social life. She had looked mutinous when the Graveyard Team was wound up and a new post found for her. The ‘portrait’ image of Damian Fenby, from the West Middlesex mortuary, was placed near to the Major’s.
Winnie Monks often remembered that homecoming. There had been none of the slow pageantry of Wootton Bassett for the casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan. They’d unloaded him at night, hustled through the paperwork, and brought him by closed van to the hospital. The parents had not been permitted to see him before he’d been tidied. Dottie had made the picture prominent.
Winnie had secure telephones, with scramble devices. Her computer would encrypt
any exchange she had with Caro Watson, in Africa, or Xavier, who was installed in a hotel with a view, no doubt, of the beach and also of the Rock. She had nothing to send and nothing came to her.
It was predictable.
Winnie said, ‘Baton passed. I can make little corrections, of course – and I have one window of possible intervention. Otherwise, I’m sat on my backside with a view of the boneyard and not a lot else.’
Neither Dottie nor Kenny answered her. Dottie went on with her decoration, and Kenny with drawing up his shopping list. Others now controlled the outcome, which lodged right up her nose.
Myrtle and Mikey had been two terriers with a rat.
Where they had come from, the old streets with the back entrances where the bins were kept, a terrier was worth its weight in gold: it did for the rodents in half a dozen yards better than any damn cat. The rat was the nephew. They had talked of nothing else.
Mikey had not been down to the bar and had not met Izzy Jacobs to share it, and Myrtle had not been down to the mini-mart to get fresh bread and a new carton of milk. They had not let go of it since the sun had woken them. She was harder, always had been. She was no beauty now, had been the best-looking teenage girl in the road and all the boys but had been, except Mikey, terrified to ask her out because of who her father was and her brothers’ reputation. Mikey had proved himself and won her – a bloody long time ago. He was angry that he’d had to stand up Izzy Jacobs and she was annoyed that she was going to miss an afternoon’s chat with other women in an ex-pat group – but the matter had to be settled.
As he usually did when his determination flagged, he threw it back at her. ‘What am I going to do?’
The Outsiders Page 18