He kept within a small cluster of people as he watched passengers disgorge from the compartments ahead of him. His window of opportunity wasn’t going to get any better than it was right now.
He flung his holdall onto the platform, and delved into his jacket pocket. What he wouldn’t give for his Magnum 44! His hand folded around a cigarette lighter, which he withdrew in a show of defiance. It was nothing more than a prop, but at a distance he might fool the bastards into believing it was something that carried a higher degree of lethality. It was now all about bluff and confidence.
He reached forward and threw his left arm around the neck of a young woman, holding her in a vice-like grip while he pressed the half-covered lighter into her right ear.
“Back off, back off!” he screamed.
One of the umpteen ways for things to go pear-shaped had just kicked in. Devon watched the scene unfold, but couldn’t make out the weapon held by Nightingale. It looked to be some sort of small, custom-made, single-shot device, the kind of porcelain mechanism that is often smuggled through security checkpoints. He just couldn’t be sure. For now, at least, Nightingale was calling the shots.
Devon glanced at Cheadle as pandemonium descended on platform five. BND officers shrugged off their various attempts at blending in and withdrew a succession of firearms. The familiar slide-racking of Heckler and Koch MP5s mixed with the screams of passengers, many of whom bolted from the scene to collide with the policemen who were trying to take up kneeling positions.
The small knot of people, who were immediately behind Nightingale when he first grabbed the woman, began to thin out, but Devon spotted a familiar face.
Bartran had held his position and was now inching forward towards the assassin. The slightest noise, or shadow passing behind, would alert Nightingale who would have no hesitation in gunning down any threat.
Devon did the only thing he could think of. He fired his Sig into the air and yelled. “Give it up, Nightingale. There’s no need for anyone to die here.” He then placed his gun on the ground, held up his arms in surrender, and walked forward.
“Don’t take a step closer,” Nightingale ordered.
Devon ignored him. “I’m surprised you don’t recognise me. I was one of the names on your list. Pity we didn’t get the chance to meet earlier, but being the cowardly rat you are, you chose an easy target at that deserted airfield in England.”
Recognition washed over Nightingale’s face. “You! Is this what this is all about? I can’t believe you chased me all this way because of a paper-pusher. Yeah, he was an easy mark, just like you’re going to be when……….”
The distraction provided by Devon had given Bartran the opening he needed. He had withdrawn a large penknife the moment Nightingale grabbed the woman, but was certain he could not close the gap before being discovered.
Staying on the assassin’s blind side, he shunted forward, thankful for the soft rubber soles of his Hush Puppy shoes. They were worn down so much they resembled discarded house slippers, the only footwear that seemed to give him relief these days from his fallen arches.
As he moved behind Nightingale, he judged the difference in height to be almost a foot. That suited Bartran fine. He stooped slightly to provide launch impetus and threw himself upwards, aiming the four-inch blade at a point in the nape of Nightingale’s neck.
He drove the blade into the cervical spine, pushing upwards into the brain. It was a copybook killing technique, one he had learned in hand-to-hand combat exercises, and had passed on to other raw recruits. Slicing the spinal cord away from its attachment to the brain was a guarantee of immediate paralysis and instant death, particularly effective for ensuring that fingers wrapped around a weapon would immediately open in the absence of a motor neuron signal to do otherwise.
Nightingale followed the training manual hypothesis. His arms flopped to the side of his body, which folded like a puppet that just had its strings sheared. He made no noise as he crumpled to the ground, dead before the head bounced off the concrete walkway.
The Chief Director of the BND couldn’t make his mind up about throwing Devon, Cheadle and Bartran in jail or tossing them the keys of the city of Frankfurt. As he paced up and down his office on the top floor of one of the organisation’s regional headquarters in Frankfurt’s Elbestrasse district he switched frequently from what was clearly an angry rant to a more conciliatory tone, which came complete with a smile.
He didn’t seem to notice that sometimes he spoke in English and at other times reverted to German. It was difficult for the three men to follow precisely what was being said, so they did the only thing they could. They sat back and listened and pretended to be engrossed in every word.
They caught snatches of a rant about being unprofessional and uncooperative. There was even mention of serious breaches of protocol. An official inquiry would have to be held, paperwork would grow into a mountain, and endless debriefings would have to take place over the course of the next few weeks.
All of which had the potential to tie Devon down at a time when he could least afford to be diverted.
If the Director persisted on going down this road Devon knew he would have to play some ace cards. He was not averse to coming up with a tirade of his own, maybe throw in the threat to Britain’s national security if he was not back on his plane within the next few hours. He could even threaten to have the Prime Minister speak directly with the German Chancellor. Such a move was highly unlikely in the absence of an input from General Sandford, but he was confident he could summon up enough bluster to convince the BDN man otherwise.
He was getting ready to launch his verbal onslaught when the Director suddenly stopped pacing and walked directly across the room to stand in front of Bartran. He stretched out his arm to offer a handshake. “Monsieur Bartran, you have my gratitude for your swift reactions. I cannot think of the consequences if this terrorist had used his hostage to earn a safe passage away from the train station, or worse still, if the hostage had been killed during any attempt to stop the man from leaving. We would have been highly embarrassed, not to mention being left facing some serious scrutiny of how we handled this situation. As it is, we have successfully saved an innocent woman and killed a man who could have been plotting a terrorist attack on our capital.”
Devon saw an opportunity to wrap things up. “Herr Director, might I suggest you use to your advantage the fact that Nightingale was a known international assassin, responsible for the deaths, among others, of high-ranking politicians. Who is to say he was not in the country to kill one of your Government ministers? We have a lengthy dossier on him and will be happy to message this to you as soon as we return to London. As far as anybody is concerned we were never here. This was a slick BND-only operation for which you are to be congratulated, and I will see to it that our people in Whitehall dispatch a message of thanks to your Chancellor.”
The BND man thought for a moment before reaching a decision. “Yes, I think it best if you leave now. What you suggest is a better way for dealing with the paperwork.”
Devon, Cheadle and Bartran stood on the pavement waiting for an official BND car to take them back to the airport. Bartran looked decidedly uneasy, shifting constantly from one foot to the other.
“Claude, what’s up?” Devon said.
“You are not angry with me for killing Nightingale? I know this was personal for you, perhaps even more than you let on.”
“No, my friend, I feel like a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I wanted to kill this man so badly it was all-consuming, but watching you plunge that knife into his brain was one of the most satisfying sights I have seen for a long time. I’m just glad I was there to witness it.”
Bartran smiled. “Then I too am happy.
The two men bumped shoulders in a gesture of celebration before Devon looked down quizzically at the little Frenchman. “By the way, where did the knife come from? I’ve never known you to use a blade.”
“I must confess I bough
t it only recently to help me eat my apples. I do not trust my new dentures, so I must cut things up into small pieces to help with my chewing.”
Devon burst out laughing. “Thank heavens for false teeth.”
Chapter 20
THE FLIGHT BACK to London proved to be a restless one for Devon. Despite needing some shuteye, he couldn’t make himself comfortable in the luxurious leather-upholstered armchair, constantly shifting his weight before giving up and rising to reach for a whiskey decanter nestled in a small shelf unit that masqueraded as a minibar. He poured generous three-finger measures into two crystal glasses and handed one to Cheadle, who seemed engrossed in some iPad war game, judging by the animated figures dancing across the screen.
Devon chucked down the contents of his glass in one swallow, and reached again for the decanter.
“What’s up, Boss?” Cheadle had been aware of Devon’s growing restlessness, but until now had pretended not to notice.
Devon slumped back into his seat, staring at his glass as if looking for answers. “Sorry, Alfie, but something’s screwy about what’s been happening over the past week. I know this sounds like an old record, but I can’t help feeling we’re being suckered into something that’s really got fuck all to do with a bunch of assassins.”
“If you ask me,” Cheadle responded, “I think we’re doing the right thing by putting everything on hold while we eliminate the threat to our personnel. We’ve already lost one good man and I know you’re not about to let that happen again. If I were you, Boss, I’d stick with the mission. Let’s wipe these bastards out before we even think about putting up the business-as-usual signs.”
“That’s it! Devon yelled.
Cheadle jumped in his seat. “What? What did I say?”
“I think you’ve just hit the nail on the head. How could I be so stupid? That’s what this is about. We’ve stopped doing our usual business, and that’s exactly what someone wants us to do.”
“I’m not following you,” Cheadle said.
“Think about it, Alfie. What do we normally do? We’re constantly surveilling and monitoring threats to national security. We’re like leaches sucking intelligence from just about every source that’s available and when we see something that doesn’t look right we chase it down. Our whole reason for existence is to kick down doors, bang heads together, and do what the mainstream security agencies can’t do. We’re not hamstrung by protocols, laws or procedures. We don’t go begging for warrants to tap phones, plant bugs, hack personal computers or corporate servers. We break into safes and bank vaults purely to satisfy ourselves that there’s a reason for every financial or trade transaction that might affect this country.”
Devon slammed his empty whiskey glass back on its shelf. “When we want answers we usually get them, if only because the people we interrogate know we won’t hesitate to pull the trigger of the gun aimed at their head. We’re good at what we do, mostly because we’re unrelenting. We don’t stop, we’re at it twenty-four seven. We pride ourselves on having more patience and stamina than the people we’re after and, thanks to the General, our resources continually grow to keep us ahead of the opposition.”
“Wow! Cheadle stared open-mouthed. That’s quite a speech. So, what’s changed? What am I missing here?”
“Don’t you see?” Devon replied with a touch of exasperation. “For people who don’t stop in pursuit of averting security threats, we’ve suddenly ground to a halt. We’ve put everything on hold to go chasing after a bunch of assassins. All our usual counter-intelligence surveillance work has been virtually switched off and redirected towards finding these targets, which I may add have been fairly easy to find, thanks to some inept exchanges of emails. Now, what does that tell you?”
Cheadle pursed his lips to make a soft whistle. “Are you saying that someone wanted us to switch off to deflect us from uncovering something else? Jeez, Mike, it would have to be something big to hire so many top guns just to act as a diversion.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Best-case scenario would have been the assassins wiping us out completely, but someone thought up a contingency plan to make sure of the next best thing, and that was us taking our eyes off the bigger picture. We’ve been chasing trees without realising we’ve become lost in a forest. Something’s going down and that something requires us to be well and truly out of the way. Christ, how have I been so stupid! It’s been bothering me that whoever hired these people knew who we were, almost as if they requested a print-out from the personnel department. So much for being a highly covert operation!”
“Are you saying we’ve got a mole?” Cheadle asked with some trepidation.
Devon shook his head. “No, I’d bet my life on everyone inside LonWash. The General’s vetting would have seen to that, but someone, somewhere got hold of the names of our operatives and we need to find whoever it is.”
“Where do we start?”
“We don’t need to worry ourselves on that score. There’s one more thing I’d bet my life on, and that’s the fact that the General will track him or her down as soon as he climbs out of that hospital bed.”
Cheadle laughed drily. “Yeah, I wouldn’t wanna be someone the General’s chasing after.”
Devon turned to look out the window at the familiar London landscape as the Dassault crossed the Thames on a south-east heading to the Trafalgar Flying Club’s main runway. It angered him that someone sold out his agency, but it bothered him more that whoever had bought the information seemed to know an awful lot about the importance of neutralising the agency. That kind of knowledge was available to only a select few involved in the intelligence field.
He decided to push the thought to the back of his mind. Right now all he wanted was some downtime with his family.
Chapter 21
CARL STRATTON never had a problem with leaving things behind. He didn’t attach sentimentality to anything, least of all to an apartment that had been his home for the past ten years. He pulled the door behind him for the last time and walked to a single elevator at the end of a short hallway. He didn’t look back. He never did with anything.
It was time to leave New York to start the final phase of his operation in London. A week from now he would fulfil a lifelong ambition. It mattered little that he would probably die doing it. He was prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice.
Stratton’s career was an odd mixture of experiences. Born in France to an English father and an Algerian mother he majored in politics at Cambridge University before being recruited to the British Intelligence Service, becoming one of the famed Licensed to Kill MI6 operatives, popularised by the keystrokes of James Bond author Ian Fleming. In truth, Fleming had only scratched the surface in revealing the murky depths to which men like Stratton sunk to carry out their duties on behalf of Queen and country.
Sure, there were lots of killings, most of which could be written off as little more than meeting fire with fire. There was something almost clean and wholesome about dispensing with threats to the nation by men, and women who didn’t deserve to live. Somehow, it was acceptable justification, all packaged up and tied in neat little ribbons and filed away on a top shelf somewhere in the cellars of Vauxhall Cross.
The reality was much different. The destabilising of national governments, support for genocidal factions in far-flung corners of the world, and the manipulation of stock markets, all went into the blender that became the world of Carl Stratton. Where a gun was not effective he used a bomb, and when more subtle methods were called for he had no hesitation in throwing a mark from the top of a twenty-storey building. Results were all that mattered.
To his employers, Stratton was almost indispensable. What they didn’t know was that his insatiable drive to succeed was fuelled by a dangerous passion.
Stratton was a radicalised Muslim. He got that from his mother who taught him everything about the one true religion. It began at an early age, without the knowledge of his father, and always with the aim of teaching him
how to live a double life. He began slowly to realise that he was being groomed for something important, something that would require a dedication and discipline few men possessed. He must never reveal his true calling. He must demonstrate extreme patience in the certainty that it would lead to an ultimate goal. He had a purpose in life – one that Allah would reveal to him when the time was right.
His mother, Almeira, was a remarkable woman. In her early days she was a member of a dedicated and active guerrilla fighter group operating out of the Béchar region of Algeria. She fought in the Algerian War of Independence in 1954, losing her left leg to a bomb that detonated prematurely outside a French army compound on the outskirts of Algiers. In a strange twist of fate, she was mistaken by the French for an innocent passer-by and airlifted for hospital treatment to Paris where she later met and married Stratton’s father.
She settled into a normal family life, but never forgot her roots. She continued secretly to promote her ideals among like-minded French citizens and helped raise funds for the Islamic Salvation Front during the 1991 Algerian Civil War. She died from a heart attack two days after her sixty-fifth birthday in 1999, an event that triggered her son’s determination to seek his true destiny.
A year after his mother’s death, Stratton turned forty, an age considered to the watershed for active MI6 operatives. He didn’t waste a second. He informed his boss he had no desire to take on lighter work, or to become involved as an instructor, and left the building with empty platitudes ringing in his ears.
Bolstered by a secret stash of funds left to him by his mother, he became involved in various lucrative business ventures, many of which were helped by the underhand lessons he had learned as a spymaster. He also used his mother’s old contact book to enlist the support of a number of Middle-Eastern oil tycoons, only too willing to help fund any campaign to establish the supremacy of the Muslim faith.
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