by Chris Ryan
For ten minutes the former Guards officer quizzed Slater about his SAS activities. Slater's responses were neutral and in several instances he felt it prudent not to answer - the man was a civilian, after all.
'And I understand that you're a close friend of Tom Goss, is that right?'
'We were in Belize together, instructing on the jungle warfare course,' said Slater.
Duckworth nodded and helped himself to a biscuit from the tray at his side. 'Good. Lovely. Well, let me tell you a bit about what we do here . . .'
Duckworth spoke for twenty minutes. Slater guessed he had given the same talk, word for word, many times before. The company's clients, he explained, were people of wealth - he used the phrase as if it were a form of victimhood. Their lifestyles were not ordinary lifestyles, their needs were not ordinary needs, their behaviour was not ordinary behaviour. 'Nevertheless,' said Duckworth, 'you will behave at all times as if it was. You will not be petulant, and you will not stand upon your dignity. You will refuse a client's request
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Chris Ryan
if, in your judgement, to accept it would com Mnise that client's security. Do you understand?' 'Yes,' said Slater, deliberately withholding the 'sir' at years of non-commissioned service otherwise >ught automatically to his lips. 'Good,' said Duckworth with a quick smile. 'Very
1. I'm sure you'll ... fit in.' h,Tm sure I will,' Slater said.
P'Duckworth nodded. 'Just before I ask Josephine to : through the paperwork with you, Neil, I'd like to [ you a few lines of poetry. You may make of them it you will.'
Slater, who was studying a framed painting of an ab boy with a snake draped around his neck, tried to ak intelligent. Duckworth removed a book from a drawer in his sk.
'When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside, But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and �7 . . .'
|" Hesitating, Duckworth glanced at Slater. 'For the female of the species', Slater obliged him, 'is
deadly than the male.' 'You know it!' said Duckworth. | 'My father used to read me Kipling when I was a Id,' said Slater. 'He was a Royal Engineers RSM. iandalay and Gunga Din were the nearest I ever got to arsery rhymes.'
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The Hit List
And your mother?' Duckworth asked delicately. She was knocked down and killed by a police car m *lg Kong when I was six.' brought up by the army, then.' nretty much.'
fhere are worse parents, as any bodyguard will tell You;
Abandoning any pretence of interest in Slater's
Winnings, Duckworth shifted his attention to the
Screen of his computer. 'Are you free to work on
^dnesday? I've got a rather interesting one for
*�u.'
s he stepped out of the marble atrium into the street, o i r r *
l�*ter heard his name called. A smiling dark-haired 1Sure, tough-looking beneath the fashionably cut suit, ^^s waving and hurrying towards him. 'Andreas!'
'Neil! How are you, man?'
'I'm OK. Wow! It's good to see you. Are you here tci . . .' he nodded up at the building he had just left.
'That's right. I've just been on a job in Europe for tlem. You?'
Slater nodded, and looked the other man up and i a
a^>wn. Andreas van Rijn was recognisably the same Person that he had served with in the SAS. The same s*^uare features and amused brown eyes, the same svagger, the same air of being up for anything. But s^>mething had changed. Some subtle smoothmg-out Process had taken place.
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Chris Ryan
ktil his departure five years earlier, Andreas van been one of the Regiment's more colourful Cters. Good-humoured in the vilest of conditions I, supremely efficient soldier, he had always seemed ^ter to represent the best that the SAS stood for. /o men had been good friends, serving together >rthern Ireland, the Gulf, Libya and Sri Lanka. : had shared more hangovers than either of them [ to remember and probably, it occurred to Slater, girlfriend too. eas had left the Regiment after an Overthrust
|?erthrust was an inter-service cooperation ic between the special forces and MIS. Slater, van Rijn, Dave Constantine and a handful of ^NCOs had been sent to London, dressed in plain and placed alongside the Box agents (in circles MIS was known as 'Box' after their old 3x 500 address, just as MI6 were invariably 'the ). On balance, Slater reckoned, the soldiers had i up the spooks. Northern Ireland had sharpened and they were more aware of the consequences ?t doing the job properly. Dave Constantine claimed that he'd been on a surveillance detail forth London with a Box agent when his anion had glanced at his watch, said, 'Right, five ft that's me off home,' climbed out of the car, and ared. While Slater only half-believed the story, ad not particularly enjoyed the Millbank phere. For his money there were too many
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The Hit List
smart-arsed, number-crunching twenty-three-year olds about the place.
Andreas, on the other hand, had appeared impressed by the set-up, and the general assumption in Hereford had been that he had been cross-recruited.
'Listen,' he told Slater now, still smiling, 'are you free for lunch? Because if so give me half an hour
They arranged to meet in Harvey Nichols, at the fifth-floor restaurant. En route, Slater visited a shoe shop. He had a good suit, bought at Austin Reed out of his SAS clothing allowance, but if he was going to be pounding pavements he needed new shoes. He settled for Church's black Oxfords. The price made him wince but if there was one thing that Slater had learnt in his years of soldiering, it was that you had to look after your feet. In Harvey Nichols he added a couple of plain white shirts and a black, knitted silk tie to his shopping basket. You couldn't go wrong with black and white, he reasoned. It was discreet, as bodyguarding demanded, but it also had that sixties retro look he'd seen advertised in the magazines in the Minerva offices. Next time he came face to face with the delectable receptionist, he decided, he'd look the part.
At the table, Andreas immediately ordered them a glass of Champagne each. Slater eyed his narrow stemmed tulip-glass dubiously. The swanky restaurant and the Champagne obviously represented some sort of attempt to impress: in the old days they'd have made straight for a pub.
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Chris Ryan
Neil!' Andreas began. 'How have you been?' fell, I'm out of the Regiment,' Slater began. 'I left : before Kosovo. Since then I've been working at a
jl, coaching the rugby team.' ^And how was that?' asked Andreas. 'A bit low-gear : a man of your talents, I'd have said.' fWell, it didn't really work out in the end,' said r. How much did Andreas know? he wondered. If was working for Minerva, presumably he wasn't working for Box. If, indeed, he ever had worked g'Box.
For a time they talked of mutual friends and old s. Slater reminded Andreas of an incident that had seen them both RTUed, when an intelligence known as the Forces Research Unit had jvered that a Provo sniper unit was assembling at scation near the border and had tried to scramble SAS. To their fury and frustration the FRU were that the Lisburn duty officer could get no jonse from the unit. Little wonder -- the entire i, including Slater and Andreas, had been at a Def >pard concert in the Belfast city centre. If any of Cm had heard their pagers over the ear-numbing of sound it would have been little short of a racle.
'This is good,' said Slater, indicating the shining iche of swordfish on his plate.
'It's metropolitan food,' smiled Andreas. 'You've en on ration-packs and school cabbage for too long. low did you find Minerva?'
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The Hit List
'The money seems pretty good. And the work sounds pretty painless. How do you find it?'
'Well the fact is, Neil, I don't actually work for Minerva. I was looking for you.'
The? How did you know I was going to be there?' The moment he had spoken Slater realised how naive his words sounded.
'Everything connects, Neil. You know that. How about another glass of
Champagne?'
'I'd have preferred a beer, but yeah, OK.'
Andreas smiled, beckoned him closer and brought him up to date. After the Overthrust exercise he had -- as Slater had guessed -- crossed over. He'd been ready for a change of scene. Had had enough, frankly, of freezing his bollocks off in all weathers.
And he'd enjoyed what he'd found, he told Slater. Plenty of brain-work, plenty of weirdness, and a lot of autonomy. 'I plan my own operations,' he explained. 'Get the word from upstairs and set things up in my own way.'
To Slater the whole set-up sounded unappealingly corporate. 'I'm glad it suits you,' he said. 'Personally, I'm looking forward to the freelance life.'
'You've never done BGing, before, have you?' asked Andreas, indicating Slater's empty glass to the waiter.
'Not outside of the Regiment,' admitted Slater.
'It sounds good,' said Andreas. 'You turn up at some fabulous apartment, pick up the lady of the house, have lunch, perhaps do a little shopping . . . But the truth is,
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Chris Ryan
that a switched-on guy like you will go nuts in i'minutes. You realise that you're a nanny, that fre an arse-wiper, that you're a trolley-pusher - Uy that you're a servant. And a servant for the of people you wouldn't give the time of day to. apt businessmen. Spoilt rich kids. Vulgar, iucated women who haven't done a day's honest : in their lives.'
[ the more reason to take their money,' said Slater anably. 'At least I know that at the end of the day my own man. I can say no to anything I don't y.'
fou won't last long if you do say no,' Andreas ted. 'Close protection's a service industry. It's all nt saying yes. Did Duckworth read you the poem?' ater admitted that he had.
|'He does that with all the guys. Then when they plain that some arms-dealer's wife has given them time he can quote it back at them. In fact, like a of queers, Duckworth adores rich women. He linely thinks that--' |?Did you say queers?' asked Slater. |*Yes. Didn't you figure that out? Your antennae are
to have to sharpen up, my friend.' 1*1 guess they are.'
I'Andreas, his eyes shining, leaned forward con atorially. 'Neil, junk Minerva and come and work i us. It'd be like old times, but without the beasting the bollockings and the trenchfoot. We were a at team then, we can be a great team again.'
71
10'^
I skeo xx / jofcwiodng ^�*''couA *' slater Faced fjBdrea^t^-eas's end** he vW^ , f, his resc* ^en�^ering. AndwX ^Ul ^^ �, hen a s-t^ a great taa V Wa& g 'Doia^oing wfauetoh jV And(1
�stuniC"i^urinetotiKMtertota(''^TV--;
As U-a/V^s ^he coDliiorget ^ to do?
'Th^'T^That'swhatiyo^0^ �ecia^0^cial projeat. V^ V of a sort of mter-s^
half a pounds f a dozen i^^^ �^* ^^ aves I aaves j^. U.^^Vj^t we do is import^
have � a^ve been au.^to/e = C Vails * th&tag!; 'W^J 'Why me? ^e an approach to f
'B08' 'Because v�U[t*?'0� - expertaq^penenced l�^^ Because you
want ^,aPnt to gota.*^^ ^ F1re* .ome^m^ethmg.^^^C ^cgjmcnt you re
on. ^ .^. Someth^B4,�
sort * n^rt of life, rfbo^ < pounds though, of hving .
L J' 'Look, Ma,!^1^' ^^Y agf^ J
I ^-^ want i, eno^od/^ ^ in London a wedj
to k^ 0.0 keep rne^ ^ � ,V^ enough moncy-J
peo0o^eopleanddOBJ^^r^ to hang out ^
spor^ and r ^^^^gsj
an O a^n Open Unwif ^ c^er^. I na^ ^J opersqooperationsstnf V^6-T d�n f ' '& ButNd.4,.^^ ormal'!
^OW
^
72
72
Chris Ryan
jju call them, to go shopping with. You don't know ne to go to the rugby with, or to take to the lema. Look what happened last time you tried living the normal world -- there were corpses strewn over ree counties. The covert world is the normal world 5>r you.'
So, he knew about the school. 'We need you, Neil, and right now I think that you eed us.'
fci Join us, in other words, if you want Lark to get you it of the shit.
Looking back, Slater remembered that there had iways been this manipulative side to Andreas van jjn. He had always enjoyed power games - always ced trying to freak people out, to control them. The trouble was, although Slater was loth to admit , much of what Andreas said was true. He didn't eally know anyone outside the covert world. And acre was a side to it all - a sharp needle of excitement that he missed . . .
'I need to get on with my life, Andreas. That's all. I idsh you well, but I'm not going anywhere near your iepartment. I'm out of the system now.'
Andreas smiled. 'And you think the system's out of |you?'
He left the question hanging.
I Two days later Slater was standing on the steps of the I Hyde Park Hotel, waiting for the man he was to be -guarding for the day. In the morning, he had been
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The Hit List
told, the principal would be shopping for clothes in the SW1 area, and in the afternoon he would be watching a home game at Spurs' White Hart Lane football ground. At 7pm the principal would be attending a drinks party followed by dinner at a private house from where a car would be collecting him and driving him home.
At 10am precisely a dark green Rover swept to the kerbside and the principal climbed out. Slater recognised Salman Rushdie immediately from the many newspaper portraits that had been published over the years. Today, the novelist was swathed in a long belted overcoat and wearing a Parisian beret.
'Mr Rushdie, I'm Neil Slater.'
Was it Lord Rushdie? Had he read somewhere that the writer had been made a life peer? Had he made a fool of himself with his first word?
But Rushdie still seemed to be smiling his oblique smile. 'I think we might start with some coffee,' he said. 'Just to fortify ourselves.'
Slater looked around. No obvious assassin had presented himself. There were no cloaked anarchists carrying bombs, no wild-eyed sword-wielding dervishes. He led Rushdie up the hotel steps, into the large, ornate foyer, and thence to the dining room. Again, the place looked safe enough.
'Why don't you sit here?' said Rushdie, pointing Slater to a window seat facing the door.
Slater sat down. From the security viewpoint the position was a sensible one.
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Chris Ryan
[^occurred to me recently,' the novelist continued, : people were to stop reading my books, I could ito the bodyguarding business myself. I've ably as much experience as anyone.' . sorry it's been necessary,' said Slater, idie nodded. The too. Me too. Now, how do t take your coffee?'
sr had never guarded a celebrity before. With Regiment he'd been assigned occasional ;tion duties, but never of a recognisable figure. | he and Rushdie made their way through Harrods i minutes later he realised just how complex his task . to be. A lot of people recognised the novelist, and iy of them stared. Some manoeuvred themselves positions from where they could take a second jk. Whether any of this attention was hostile was lost impossible to determine. Rushdie had insisted r proceeding on foot -- he liked window-shopping, told Slater, and he liked to see the faces of strangers se up -- and the best that Slater could do was to erpose himself between Rushdie and anyone who
it conceivably be an Islamic militant. For more than a decade the novelist had been the ject of a fatwa issued by Iran's supreme leader, the ^atollah Khomeini. This edict urged that Rushdie be led because of supposed blasphemy in one of his ^vels. A year ago, however, a less puritan Iranian Ivernment had announced it intended no harm to shdie, and for a time it had seemed as if he might sume normal life. And then a report had appeared in
75
The Hit List
told, the principal would be shopping for clothes in the SW1 area, and in the afternoon he would be watching a home game at Spurs' White Hart Lane football ground. At 7pm the principal would be attending a drinks party followed by din
ner at a private house from where a car would be collecting him and driving him home.
At 10am precisely a dark green Rover swept to the kerbside and the principal climbed out. Slater recognised Salman Rushdie immediately from the many newspaper portraits that had been published over the years. Today, the novelist was swathed in a long belted overcoat and wearing a Parisian beret.
'Mr Rushdie, I'm Neil Slater.1
Was it Lord Rushdie? Had he read somewhere that the writer had been made a life peer? Had he made a fool of himself with his first word?
But Rushdie still seemed to be smiling his oblique smile. 'I think we might start with some coffee,' he said. 'Just to fortify ourselves.'
Slater looked around. No obvious assassin had presented himself. There were no cloaked anarchists carrying bombs, no wild-eyed sword-wielding dervishes. He led Rushdie up the hotel steps, into the large, ornate foyer, and thence to the dining room. Again, the place looked safe enough.
'Why don't you sit here?' said Rushdie, pointing Slater to a window seat facing the door.
Slater sat down. From the security viewpoint the position was a sensible one.
74
Chris Ryan
'Jit occurred to me recently,' the novelist continued, at if people were to stop reading my books, I could into the body guarding business myself. I've ably as much experience as anyone.' i*I'm sorry it's been necessary,' said Slater. BLushdie nodded. The too. Me too. Now, how do
take your coffee?' Slater had never guarded a celebrity before. With Regiment he'd been assigned occasional ction duties, but never of a recognisable figure. |!,Jie and Rushdie made their way through Harrods : minutes later he realised just how complex his task ', to be. A lot of people recognised the novelist, and of them stared. Some manoeuvred themselves positions from where they could take a second Whether any of this attention was hostile was st impossible to determine. Rushdie had insisted jceeding on foot -- he liked window-shopping, >ld Slater, and he liked to see the faces of strangers up -- and the best that Slater could do was to rose himself between Rushdie and anyone who conceivably be an Islamic militant, more than a decade the novelist had been the of a fatwa issued by Iran's supreme leader, the illah Khomeini. This edict urged that Rushdie be because of supposed blasphemy in one of his pis. A year ago, however, a less puritan Iranian iment had announced it intended no harm to ;, and for a time it had seemed as if he might le normal life. And then a report had appeared in