“ ’Ere, ’ere,” shouted Graves, who had become very hard of hearing. “We can’t just let these greasy buggers slip through our ’ands.”
“May I speak, Mr. Chairman?” The more pallid and elongated of the two gray men looked up from behind rimless half spectacles and Bletchley mouthed an affirmative.
“The police commissioner, Sir Kenneth Newman, only last month gave official warning that he had instigated new moves to clamp down on what he called ‘private security organizations operating at the very frontiers of official tolerance.’ ”
“He was talking about the registered groups, not us,” Macpherson interrupted. “Our existence remains unknown to the commissioner.”
“Yes, but the burgeoning of semiclandestine security outfits is causing growing alarm to Special Branch. Blue-chip companies have begun to hire high-tech spies from these firms to check up on each other inside the UK. As the Cold War recedes, unethical home-based organizations will find themselves more and more under the official searchlight. Signs of this have already begun. The Home Office last year authorized significantly fewer phone taps and mail intercepts against left-wing subversive suspects and a correspondingly greater number against certain domestic elements worrisome to Special Branch.”
Mike Panny decided not to be outdone in the field of in-depth know-how. “I agree. These security mobs are now so numerous and their activities so questionable that a clampdown is inevitable. In London alone we now have the KMS ‘Keeny-Meenies,’ Alistair Morrison’s Defense Systems, Control Risks, Winguard, DSI, Saladin, Lawnwest, Cornhill Mangement, SCI, Paladin, Argen, Delta, and of course the grandmother of them all, active since 1967, Watchguard.” He waved an admonitory finger around the table. “Mark my words, although many of them take care to stay legit, not all can effectively leash their hounds. Scandals will result.”
Macpherson had recognized a growing tendency in some of the longer-serving committee members to fight shy of any course of action that might conceivably backfire on their personal reputations. This applied especially to Bletchley. Like Macpherson, he had become a senior player in the City with a string of prestigious nonexecutive directorships, various high-profile charity presidencies and, until he was recently curtailed by his strange indisposition, rode an exacting social merry-go-round with the highest in the land. It was apparent to Macpherson that Panny, the don, and Mantell were suffering on a lower plane from the same aversion to the sanctioning of any course of action by the Feather Men that carried a risk of publicity that might compromise their untarnished reputations. All had much to lose and little to gain, a very different situation from what had existed at the time of their induction to the committee all those years ago.
Only Spike, August and Jane remained largely unaltered by the passage of time, by changing circumstances and fashions, Macpherson thought. Maybe it was time for a spring cleaning. Even as the idea crossed his mind, it was discounted. The founder, a man of intense loyalty to old friends, would never sanction it. The founder was himself none too well these days, and Macpherson would not willingly approach him with contentious points unless there was no alternative.
The matter of Marman was thrashed out and put to the vote with an inconclusive result.
“On a decision which involves life or death, I exercise my right to request that we reconvene with the full committee tomorrow.” Macpherson made his move as soon as the tie vote was announced. He had been expecting it and had reluctantly made up his mind to bring out his only trump card.
The absent founder’s casting vote in favor of the Marman watch was implemented at the next meeting, a perfectly correct procedure, and the word went out immediately to John Smythe and five other Locals in the Southeast. Spike was taking no chances this time.
32
Meier’s technical brilliance was an undeniable money-earner for the Clinic. The agencies they used were aware, for instance, that he had designed a sleeper bomb of the type used to attack the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton in 1984. This he could preset to go off a year after he had planted it. With quartz chronometers, standard VCRs and long-delay batteries linked in tandem, he could place the bomb kit during the dismantlement by contractors of the grandstand of some annual royal event. Without any further action, he could be certain that the explosion would detonate a year later to within a minute of a preset time and date.
In Boston in 1974, Meier had spent three months planning a staged road accident by an ingenious “third-party” method that became known within the Clinic as the “Boston brakes” and which, after rehearsals had honed it to perfection, was aborted, much to Meier’s frustration. Now that he had the chance to resurrect the system, he was full of the joys of life.
“This is Jake, who has worked with Tadnams for four years. Though I say so myself, he is a genius with cars. He designs transmissions and is not put off by unethical improvisation. He is at home with what you”-Meier looked at de Villiers-“would describe as the Rube Goldberg factor, and our Welsh colleague might scornfully call Heath Robinson.”
Jake, a weedy fellow with etiolated complexion and bad teeth, played with his hands, twining the long and surprisingly powerful-looking fingers about one another as though embarrassed by praise from a maestro.
“Glad to have you with us,” said de Villiers. Then, changing the topic, “The video is fine. After some hours in the dubbing studio, we have it so the sheikh will suspect nothing. The film shows me accusing Marman of the killing at Zakhir and he denies it hotly. It looks real good. All we need now is to nail this guy in such a way that there is a 100 percent absence of suspicious circumstances.”
“Two hundred percent,” Meier retorted. “Let me take you step by step.”
“You normally do,” Davies said, slumping back in his chair with an exaggerated sigh.
Outside in Trebovir Road the street resounded to gunfire and Meier looked up, startled. Davies chuckled at his discomfiture. “Ever heard of Guy Fawkes? You should have… he was your alter ego but for the one-year fuse delay.”
“Mercedes,” Meier recited, “has a training workshop in Unterturkheim which, since 1916, has turned out apprentices that later advanced the world of engineering in many amazing ways. Jake here received three years’ training there and later achieved the diploma of master mechanic from the West German Chamber of Handicraft. He has studied my Boston system and is impressed. We will be working together until completion.”
Meier moved to the central table, on which he had laid out a road map of southern England. “First,” he said. “We have Davies’s report on the target. The man is macho cojones, a real swordsman or, as Davies puts it, very free with his whatsit. In practice this means he enjoys female company and is seldom alone. We are all agreed that the best scenario, to catch him alone, is out on the road.”
Jake put in his oar, his voice as cadaverous as his face. “We are lucky this man has a Citroen 2CV. Very feeble machine. Cracks easy like an eggshell. The driver has no untershied, no protection.”
Meier nodded at his acolyte. “This is correct, quite so, but to continue, having established that the action will be on the road, we ask ourselves: why no bomb? Why no sabotage? Why not make the brakes fail and hope for a fatal result?” He paused. “Because with all such events the police conduct an immediate forensic study and even I could not get away with a No Foul Play verdict.”
Davies coughed. “Get on with it.”
“Again, if we should have a Tadnams heavy in a reinforced car ram into the 2CV or drive Marman off the road, it will be obvious foul play. So what can we do? Of course, we need a random third party to collide head-on with his car at more than thirty miles an hour. This will certainly be fatal to Marman and the police will never even contemplate premeditation.” Meier beamed. “The Boston brakes will achieve all this for us.”
Davies cut in. “In principle maybe, but I don’t see your third-party random drivers rushing in to volunteer their services as guided missiles.”
Meier ignore
d him. “The theory is very simple. We find someone who we know will drive on the same road at the same time as Marman but in the opposite direction. I follow behind this chosen and doctored car with Jake driving me. You follow behind the 2CV and we keep in radio contact so that I know exactly when and where the cars will approach each other. Depending on the aggregate speeds, but at a likely distance of five hundred yards prior to the projected passing point, I take radio control of the random car and steer it to a head-on collision with Marman.”
“What if they happen to meet in a traffic jam, or at a roundabout, or on opposite sides of a steel crash barrier?” It was Davies again.
“Of course, that is possible. But with a country road like the A303, the odds against not meeting on the open road and at high speeds are greater than nine-to-one.”
“But still possible?” Davies persisted.
“Yes, and that is why our device will be detachable. We know from the diary that we have two other chances. Jake and I would simply transfer the device to another proxy car in readiness for another known Marman journey.”
“Okay, okay.” De Villiers was unconvinced. “But how the hell do you select a suitable proxy?”
“This we have already done.” Meier’s voice was sugary and conspiratorial. “Come, look at the map here.” He indicated the region between London and the south coast. Two red chinagraph marks indicated Marman’s Clapham house and the Wiltshire village of Steeple Langford.
“The target will lunch at the village here, departing at 3:15 p.m. in order to return to Clapham in time to make job-hunting phone calls. Then he goes round to his girlfriend, Julia, in Brook Green. We give him an average speed on a clear dual highway of fifty-five miles per hour and a simple mathematical process tells us he will at 3:45 p.m.-even allowing fifteen minutes and ten miles per hour overall differences to the planned parameters-be somewhere between Winterbourne Stoke and Popham on the A303, a stretch of over thirty miles of fast road. All we need now is to find a driver who is scheduled to be heading west in the opposite direction, along that same twenty-mile stretch at 3:45 p.m.”
“That,” said Davies, “is where you come unstuck.”
“Not at all,” Meier responded. “Look at the map here and you can clearly see that the A303 is a main arterial road between London and such towns as Exeter and Plymouth. What sort of person needs to drive that route frequently? A representative of a company with offices in both places. Naturally the city of Plymouth brought to my mind the hovercraft we used to such good effect last summer. That was a Slingsby SAH2200 model originating from a manufacturing group named ML Holdings with a subsidiary based in Plymouth. Tadnams quickly rustled up, from an acquisitions research company, the necessary background data on ML, Shorts of Belfast, and five other firms with London and Plymouth units.”
De Villiers was nodding quietly, with growing enthusiasm.
“What clinched the selection process was that ML Holdings are due to hold a Main Board meeting in Plymouth on the morning of November twelfth. Any London-based directors will need to be in Plymouth the preceding night, which, if they are to dine on expenses at a good Plymouth hotel, will mean their passing down the A303 mid-afternoon on the eleventh, D-Day.”
He paused to let the point sink in, then continued. “We forgot about the sales force at this point and concentrated on the senior staff and nonexecutive directors who would have to attend their board meeting. We are now in the process, with full support from Tadnams, of narrowing down a list of fourteen likely characters.”
“Narrowing down?” nudged de Villiers.
“Checking out which executives will be heading west at any point on our key stretch of the A303 at 3:45 p.m. in six days’ time. Meanwhile, Jake will have the equipment ready tomorrow evening and we will commence rehearsals with four stock cars at the Tadnams airstrip in Kent on the seventh. I will not have lost my touch with the control system but, as always, practice makes perfect.”
Davies studied the road map and avoided the smug, sideways glance of his technical colleague.
33
During the evening of Friday, November 7, Meier stopped the car at a garage in Stockbridge and asked the elderly attendant for the best route to Exeter.
“Well, my friend, I can tell you which way not to go, and that’s by the A30. It may look more direct, but what with its traffic problems and all, you’d be a fool to take it. Go along the A303 as far as you can, close to Honiton, then join the A30. That’s what the folks ’round here all do.”
Two miles south of Stockbridge, Meier and Jake left their car by the roadside on the outskirts of the village of Houghton. The previous night they had visited the houses of three ML executives on the short list. Men from Tadnams had broken into other offices and homes and now the process was being repeated for the last of the listed men. Afterward, Houghton, Meier and Jake had two further calls to complete, at the homes of ML executive Pollock and another nonexecutive director, Sebire.
There were two key items to find, and in the case of Sir Peter Horsley, the nonexecutive director of ML Holdings, both would have to be at his home in Houghton, a fine Victorian house called Park Court, since he worked from there and not in London. The only reason he had been included on the list was that he was as likely to use the A303 to go to Plymouth, as were his London-based colleagues. Tadnams had included a copy of the Who’s Who entry for Horsley, which indicated that he was a man of considerable distinction: “… 1940 Fighter Command… Commands No. 9 and No. 29 Squadrons… Equerry to Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh 1942-1952, Equerry to the Queen 1952-1953, Equerry to the Duke of Edinburgh 1953-1956… Deputy C-in-C Strike Command 1973-1975…” Numerous other achievements were also cataloged and Meier could only hope that, as a retired Air Marshal, Horsley did not warrant government security cover.
Leftover fireworks crackled and fizzed intermittently around the little village, and Horsley’s dogs, a Dalmatian and a large Munsterlander, were decidedly edgy.
Meier and Jake, with a duffel bag, skirted the front drive with its deep gravel noise-trap and, from the magnificent rear garden, spotted Sir Peter in the kitchen with his dogs. His wife was nowhere to be seen.
“Keeps the dogs in there all night,” whispered Meier. “Got their baskets, rugs and food bowls by the Aga and no dog-flaps. We’re in luck.”
Since Sir Peter’s diary was liable to be downstairs they decided to wait until he moved upstairs to bed. Meanwhile they moved to the spacious double garage, built as an attractive and entirely separate two-story unit, some distance from the main house.
The garage swing doors were up and open. One car space was empty. The other was occupied by a shiny BMW Series 7.
“Nip upstairs, Jake,” Meier ordered. “Check that there’s no one up there. I’ll get the machine’s vital statistics.”
Meier opened the duffel bag and slipped into a boiler suit. He disappeared between the front wheels of the BMW with the bag. In a short while he was interrupted by Jake.
“I think we have luck with this man.” He held out a black desk diary.
Meier took off his gloves and the light from his headband flashlight lit up the diary’s pages. “Where did you get this?”
Jake explained. He had mounted the stairs on the outside of the garage and, on the upper floor, entered an open-plan office by way of an unlocked door. There was obviously a noteworthy lack of crime in Houghton. Three large desks occupied the office above the garage, and Jake discovered that Sir Peter, his secretary and his wife all worked there. He could find no diary anywhere in or on the first two desks, but Lady Horsley kept hers open on her blotter, and Jake’s optimism was prompted by two of the entries, one for Monday, November 10: “Depart for Ma’s”; and one for Tuesday, November 11: “P. leaves at 3 p.m., Yelverton by 6 p.m.”
“Looking very good.” Meier nodded and laid a hand on Jake’s shoulder. “Well done indeed. Take a note of all the entries from today until November thirteenth, then replace the diary. I am nearly fini
shed.”
Meier noted that with the swing doors closed, and blackout cloth taped over the windows, the place would be light-proof. The walls were of solid brick but a sound baffle was needed to line the inside of the swing doors. He checked the power points and the BMW’s own jackset. They would need Tadnams men on outside watch and a mechanic to help with the work. He noted what he could see of the brake system, the Michelin XVS tires, 40,000 miles on the clock, registration 3545 PH, car type BMW 728i automatic.
Meier and Jake finished their further ML executive checkups at 5 a.m., and by noon on November 8, de Villiers was able to select the file on Sir Peter Horsley from thirteen others. He was by far the most suitable.
All equipment and tools were centralized at the Kent airstrip, a BMW 728i automatic with ABS braking system was purchased along with two “target practice” cars, and the fitting and control rehearsals began in earnest with two days in hand. Meier and Jake, seemingly tireless, were in their element.
Early on Sunday morning Spike received a routine call from John Smythe, who was controlling the three-man Marman watch. There had been no sign of the Welshman nor of any other outside interest in their charge. “Keep at it,” Spike had told him.
Smythe was a quiet, reliable sort and particularly appropriate for the work since he had followed the Welshman to London some nine years before. Still unmarried and self-employed, Smythe had become one of Spike’s key Locals in the Southeast, after moving to Reading in the early eighties.
Mike Marman, after a late night, following drinks with his friend Poppo Tomlinson, had intended to spend that morning doing nothing very much with Julia. He surprised them both with a last-minute decision to go to church because it was Remembrance Sunday. They drove the 2CV to the Guards Chapel in Whitehall and joined a full and enthusiastically lugubrious congregation.
Like many of his old Army friends, also at the service, Mike had pinned his three medals to his overcoat and wore them with pride. He should have had a fourth, the Distinguished Service Medal, but for the decidedly cold shoulder the authorities had shown him ever since his shooting up of the Midway officers’ mess in Dhofar. He chuckled to himself at the memory. Wall plaques, bottles and glasses had smashed into splinters. Officers and staff had jumped for their lives as Major Marman, with a wild yell, had sprayed the main bar with his Kalashnikov assault rifle set to fully automatic. A glorious memory. He had always hated overbearing senior officers, and that episode had given quite a few of them something to think about.
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