“What! Are you mad? There’s no way I’m letting you tackle this guy on your own. I take it you read the same paperwork that I did? He’s a sixteen-stone six-footer who’s probably had combat training, which means he probably knows how to use his fists as well as a selection of guns and knives, and that makes him one extremely dangerous individual. And no probably about it.”
Horgan reached over to place her hand across the back of Doyle’s balled-up fist. “Look, I have done this before, you know. When it comes to training, I wasn’t exactly manicuring my nails for twelve intensive weeks at Maryland. His height won’t matter when he’s sitting cramped behind a fixed table, and as far as his bulk is concerned I intend to use it against him.”
Doyle let her hand stay where it was. It felt good. Was he letting his feelings for her cloud his judgement? He held eye contact for a few seconds before speaking. “Okay, tell me what you propose to do.”
Horgan stepped through the compartment door, pushing it shut as she pretended to stare ahead. Her peripheral vision picked up Greene exactly where Doyle said he would be, on her nine o’clock, three cubicles up the left hand side. He was facing her, his arms resting on an empty table. No laptop, no mobile, no newspaper, no distractions.
There were five other people in the carriage. Two on the left behind Greene, three on the right. Four men and one woman, all sitting at different tables, one sleeping and four staring out the windows. Bored commuters, doing what they could to pass the time.
Horgan started walking. Not too slow, not too fast. She paused at Greene’s table, mentally shifting her feet to where she wanted them to be. Not too close, not too far.
She switched on her best Texas drawl. “Scuse me, Sir, do y’all know what time the buffet car opens?”
Greene glanced up, looking totally disinterested, his eyebrows cinching in a clear signal that he didn’t welcome the interruption. “Don’t know anything about British Rail’s catering arrangements. Don’t know, and don’t care. I like to mind my own business.”
As a brush-off it was as good as she’d ever got. She pretended to not notice the rudeness, lifting her arm to point to the rear of the coach. “Does that sign say the buffet car is in the next compartment?”
Greene turned to follow her outstretched arm. His head almost completed a half-swivel before an alarm signal flared in his eyes. It was something he had been taught never to do. Disengage from the actions of others, ignore leading gestures, focus on facial expressions, watch for danger signals. He had just broken the rules, and now something inside was telling him he had been suckered.
An instinct for self-preservation forced him to turn back quickly, his right hand disappearing inside his jacket to fumble for the pistol grip jutting out from the shoulder holster. In any other circumstance it would have been an impressive blur of reflex speed.
But not this time.
Horgan had already shifted her weight to the right, her foot planted to provide the springboard she needed. She hoisted her left leg, bent at the knee, and snapped it forward in a vicious kick aimed directly at the side of Greene’s head. It connected with a satisfying crunch.
As the opening blow in a fight it was a pretty telling one. It wasn’t too shabby as a closing blow either.
Greene’s head was pushed violently sidewards by the impact and follow-through of Horgan’s size five boot. The hard bone just above his right ear made a sickening hollow sound as it bounced off the aluminium window guard. Greene’s eyes flared momentarily in shock before he slumped unconscious across the table.
The other passengers rose to their feet, fearful of the short-lived commotion, leaving one man still snoring gently in his seat, oblivious to the takedown of one of the world’s most dangerous assassins.
The door behind Horgan hissed open and she turned to watch Doyle sprint across to the table. “Are you alright?” He shouted into her ear, unaware he had grabbed her in a bearhug and was squeezing tightly.
“I will be, just as soon as you let me breathe.”
He let go and looked sheepishly at her. “Sorry. That was magnificent. Remind me not to get in a fight with you.”
She punched his arm playfully. “I’m not so sure. That was a pretty good grapple you had going there. Don’t think I’d mind doing nine or ten rounds with you.”
“Dammit, Chelsea,” Doyle said with a grin. He reached out both arms and pulled her towards him. And then he kissed her. Hard.
Devon was walking towards his car, preparing for a sombre drive back to London. He hated leaving Emma and Michael, but he needed to get his team back together again as quick as possible. The sound of his sat-phone stopped him just as he was climbing into the driver’s seat. He looked at the display and punched the receive button.
“Mike, it’s Alan. Thought you could do with a sit-rep.”
Devon’s mood lightened at the sound of his friend’s voice. “You do know that your name comes up on my screen before I answer?”
“With your fading eyesight I don’t like to take any chances.”
“Okay, wiseass, what’ve you got?”
Doyle told him of the capture of the assassin Martin Greene. “To be honest, we weren’t quite sure what to do with him afterwards. Chelsea wouldn’t let me put a bullet in his brain. Said it didn’t square with her about shooting an unconscious prisoner, so we used our security credentials at the train station and whistled up an ambulance. The local police even provided us with an escort to the nearest hospital.”
“So where are you now?”
“Here’s the rub. Our friend up and died on us before we reached our destination. Guess Chelsea’s Kung-Fu kick caused more internal damage than we thought. Good riddance I say. Anyway, we’ve checked into a small hotel for the night. Figured we’d travel back to London first thing in the morning.”
Devon burst out laughing. “Oh, you did, did you? Don’t think I didn’t notice the cosy Chelsea-this and Chelsea-that thing going on. You two seem to be hitting if off, but if you think we’re going to foot the bill for a night of hanky-panky you’ve got another think coming.”
“C’mon, Mike, it’s not like that. It’s just that we’ve been on the go all day and both of us are dog tired. Give a guy a break here.”
“Listen to me, Doyle. I’ve been round too many corners with you not to recognise feigned indignation when I hear it. The last thing on your mind is sleep, unless it happens to be in the arms of a pretty redheaded CIA agent. Sorry to do this on you, old buddy, but I need you back in London ASAP.”
Devon told him about the murder of Charles Nightingale before adding: “There’s something else I need to go over with the whole team. Even though this is a secure transmission I don’t want to go into it right now. Suffice to say, we need to take an urgent shift in direction.”
Doyle recognised the change of tone and his response to an emergency was typically brief. “I’m on my way.”
Chapter 24
WHEN IT COMES TO putting price tags on luxury properties no city does it better than London. Los Angeles has its Beverly Hills, Paris has its Avenue Montaigne, and Berlin boasts the Zehlendorf district, all of which lag some distance behind the clamour for the London hotspots of Mayfair or Belgravia, or for that matter anything with more than ten bedrooms and carrying a NW1 postcode. It was at the latter’s tree-lined area that Carl Stratton gazed as his chauffeur-driven Daimler hung a right into Prince Albert Road and slowed at the gated entrance of a mansion overlooking Regent’s Park.
It had been some years since he’d last visited. The property held no sentimental attachment for him. It was bought using one of his aliases as nothing more than a sound investment. There was also the bonus that it offered seclusion and anonymity less than an hour’s drive from Heathrow Airport, and would prove a useful bolthole that he figured might come in handy one day. This was a neighbourhood with no neighbours, just other residents, equally cocooned, minding their own businesses, oblivious and uncaring about whoever else happened to share this particular
few square miles of real estate.
The chauffeur pressed a remote control button on the dashboard and waited as a single iron-constructed gate retreated on its runners to disappear behind a ten-foot-high perimeter wall. By the time the Daimler reached the front porch of an imposing four-storey structure, the gate had returned to its locked position, to all intents and purposes sealing off the property from the outside world.
Manfred, the chauffeur, killed the engine, climbed out of the car, and hurried to the rear to retrieve a large suitcase from the spacious trunk. He didn’t bother with opening the door for his passenger. He wasn’t that kind of a chauffeur.
Stratton stood on the porch, stretched his back, and waited for Manfred to open the large mahogany door. He used the few seconds to take a cursory glance at the security systems, which included burglar-alarm wires neatly tacked against window frames, and four swivel-mounted CCTV cameras covering this side of the house. He knew there were twice as many covering the sides and rear of the building, plus at least a dozen under-soil pressure plates buried strategically around the gardens. He couldn’t conceive a situation that would require their use, but in his line of work he had always operated on the principle of leaving nothing to chance.
Both men entered the house, shutting the door firmly behind them, before reaching out and grasping each other in a warm embrace. “It has been too long, Manfred. It is good to see you looking so fit and well. I take it all the arrangements are in place?”
Manfred stood back from the embrace and burst out laughing. “Carl, I swear you are the only man I know who has so little time for chit-chat and so much time for business. In case you’re interested, I have fully recovered from my little heart scare, my arthritis is getting worse, and I think I’ve developed gout in my feet. The rest you know about.”
It was Stratton’s turn to laugh. “You know me too well, old friend. Now that I’ve got the health story I warn you not to start a conversation about the English weather. That would be too much. Come, show me what you’ve been up to.”
As they walked across a large foyer leading to a hallway that ran to the rear of the house, Stratton thought about the journey he had travelled with this man. Manfred Stelling was an East German border guard back in the day when The Wall played a large part in his life as a British Secret Service agent. He had managed to convince Stelling to take bribes in exchange for looking the other way at his sentry station in a remotely-wooded area on the edge of the city.
For more than a year Stratton had enlisted Manfred’s help to transfer important East German scientists to the West, always at great personal risk, and always with just the smallest window of opportunity, when vital seconds were all that stood between them and discovery by other guards.
Manfred was the only son of an elderly couple who had both perished attempting a crossing. Under pressure from an escape organisation, fearful that the infant boy would cry out at a crucial moment, they had left him with a family friend. He was brought up under a different name and the connection to his parents was never made. By the time he was fifteen he had already grown over six feet tall, and was earmarked for military service. When he learned about the fate of his parents from his surrogate mother he became determined to help others. His meeting with Stratton six years later provided the answer.
On a snowswept November night in 1985 Stratton was making his way towards Manfred’s lookout tower when he was bathed in light from a search beam operated by a two-man mobile patrol hidden in a small copse. Stratton, and a young woman he was guiding to safety, could do nothing but throw their hands in the air and await their fate. Out of nowhere, Manfred Stelling unleashed a burst from his Karabiner S semi-automatic carbine, killing the two sentries and shredding the searchlight. He had watched the commotion from his tower, threw down a rope ladder, and sprinted to help his benefactor.
There was nothing left to do but for Stelling to accompany Stratton and the woman back to the West. They climbed the ladder, hauled it up and threw it over the other side, just as two vehicles screeched to a halt beside the dead guards.
Stratton never told his bosses about Stelling. He established him in a safe house in West Berlin and provided him with funds until the chance arose to secure a false passport and transfer him to England. Soon afterwards, Manfred was ensconced in the house at Prince Regent Road, becoming its full-time caretaker. Over the years he carried out numerous other jobs for Stratton, jobs that were usually outside England, and which usually required the use of deadly force.
It was hard to believe, Stratton reflected, that they had been together for almost thirty years. He watched now as Manfred opened a door into a room that resembled a public library and was just as big. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases covered two walls and three two-seater settees were arranged around an open fireplace. In the corner farthest from the door sat a Victorian mahogany desk, positioned to catch the sunlight from the shuttered windows, but also close to a built-in bar area that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the best of hotels.
Stratton ignored the mustiness of the room and watched as Manfred walked behind the desk, stopping to touch a concealed switch. A portion of the tiled floor began to slide back in the centre of the room to reveal concrete steps leading to a basement area. Sensor lights kicked in as Stratton began a descent to a room that measured about the same size as a double garage.
Benches ran around the outer walls and a sturdy work table occupied the centre of the room. One wall was covered with an assortment of weaponry, hung neatly on nails, above an array of drawers that Stratton knew contained thousands of rounds of ammunition of varying calibres.
Three packages stood on the table. They were standard brown cardboard boxes, each measuring a foot square by nine inches deep. Pieces of coloured wires and scraps of duct tape were strewn around them, as were a variety of small hand tools, a set of work gloves and two overalls. On the bench immediately to the right of the table sat what looked like several uniforms, neatly folded into plastic wrappers, the top one clearly displaying the logo of a well-known parcel delivery service.
Stratton walked across to peer inside the open boxes. “You have done everything according to the instructions?”
“Yes,” Manfred replied. “Each battery pack has been wedged carefully into place using cotton wool strips, and the wiring was attached at the precise points indicated on your drawings. All that is required is for the wiring to be attached to the detonation units, which are still sealed and kept in a separate location.” He nodded at the bottom drawer in one of the units behind him.
Stratton slapped him on the back. “Excellent, Manfred! The detonators are uniquely-sophisticated miniature transceivers that operate by remote control. It will need nothing more than for me to hit pre-dial numbers on my cellphone to complete the circuit.”
Manfred looked puzzled. “Just one question. Why did you decide at the last minute to change the payload? Originally, your instructions were for each box to contain eight batteries, but now you have switched to ten units in two boxes and just four units in the other box.”
“I thought you would be curious about that,” Stratton told him. “I have decided to leave nothing to chance, so the small package will be for a diversionary target. I want to direct all attention away from our primary targets, which will receive the full brunt of our attack. With the beefed-up payloads the carnage will be incalculable. London, and the world, will never forget what we are about to inflict on them.”
He patted the top of one of the boxes. “Tell me about the other arrangements.”
Manfred cleared his throat as if to underline the importance of the report he was about to deliver. “We bought the Thames river cruise boat. The owner was at first reluctant to sell, but when we offered twice the value he quickly caved in. The boat was removed from service to carry out the alterations you requested, but it is now back to ferrying sightseers and partygoers four times a day.”
“No problems with the licence?”
“No, the rive
r authorities were happy to transfer this to the new owners, and they accepted our plans to remove it for a few days for an overhaul and safety checks. We rehired the boat skipper at twice his previous salary and things are business as usual.”
Stratton beamed. “Excellent! What about the other matter?”
“A parcel delivery van and a small Renault Clio back-up car have been obtained and are parked in a secure garage. They are brand-new vehicles, but every day I visit them to make sure they are starting and turning over properly. There is no risk of engine failure.”
“Smart work,” Stratton interrupted, “but there is no need to visit again until we are ready to go.”
“When will that be?”
“Three days from now. First, there are a few loose ends we must tie up”
Chapter 25
WHEN TWENTY PEOPLE occupy a room designed for less than half that number, a few basic chemical reactions will occur. Ambient temperature is forced up at a dramatic rate by the combined effects of body heat emissions, while oxygen levels will dip alarmingly, particularly where the room is located in the building’s innards, with no fresh air available through open windows. Mix in a factor for body odours, which help to further foul the atmosphere, and the chances of triggering nausea and unconsciousness increase exponentially.
Strangely, after more than thirty minutes, none of the room’s occupants looked uncomfortable, nor expressed any desire to leave.
It was not as if Mike Devon was any great shakes at oratory, although he was holding his audience spellbound by a passion and anger they had seldom seen before.
As his eyes darted around his agency’s full complement of field agents, computer whizkids, crime techies and support staff, Devon’s gaze seemed to emit a personal challenge to each of them.
He had spent those thirty minutes recapping his conversation with Cheadle and affirming his belief that the agency had been targeted by assassins in order to deflect them from mainstream operations. “Starting now,” he told them, “we go back to basics. We recalibrate all our surveillance systems to their usual settings. We start with the assumption that the country is facing a terror threat bigger and more frightening that anything we’ve yet encountered. We gather in and disseminate every scrap of information we can find, and we leave nothing – I mean nothing - to chance. Don’t overlook anything, assume that even the tiniest kink in behaviour might reveal something, and chase down the flimsiest of leads in the hope we get a handle on what is lurking out there.”
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