Sentinel Five (The Redaction Chronicles Book 2)

by James Quinn

  Nora felt the cold tip of the blade brace itself against her neck, just behind her ear. Then she felt an explosion of light and pain as the blade was inserted quickly and violently, felt her body tense and then go limp and then she rolled onto her back and slipped away.

  * * *

  Trench stared down at the body.

  The mad cow, why was she smiling like that, he thought. Even in the throes of death, she still had that stupid grin on her face. Almost as if she knew something more – had he killed her too soon? He didn't know, didn't care really. He'd managed to get some useful information for his employers, well, with the help of Salamander, of course. Information that would see that little bastard Grant nailed to a tree and that fucker Masterman dead in a ditch somewhere. Masterman. Maybe he should pay his old boss a visit here in London, thought Trench. Visit him and finish what he'd started on the docks in Australia over a year ago.

  Trench looked at the body of the dead woman one last time. Something was not quite right. He reached down and ripped open her blouse, exposing her bra and then he gently scooped one perfect breast out and let it hang. Next he lifted up her skirt and pulled down her knickers. When the body was eventually found, the Police would think they were looking for a sex attacker, rather than it having anything to do with her job. A small detail, maybe, but it might just buy him some time.

  But still, that smile on her face… Yes, that smile worried him.

  Chapter Eight

  Five days after the killing of Nora Birch, Salamander and Trench met again, this time the venue was the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew. It was far enough out of mainstream London that they could consider themselves reasonably safe. It would also be the last time they would have contact. They walked side by side, Salamander tapping his tightly-bound umbrella on the stone pathway and Trench, with his hands pushed deep into his coat, walking in the Salamander's wake as they admired the fauna on the route

  “Did you get everything you needed from the woman?” asked the Salamander.

  Trench nodded. “It was perfect. She gave everything up without too much trouble. She was playing games she had no right to be meddling in.”

  Salamander grimaced. He'd seen the newspaper clippings regarding the discovery of the woman and read the press reports, revealing what Trench had done to her. Most distasteful, but necessary. “So what was it?”

  Trench shrugged. “It's a hit, what else could it be? They're nothing, if not predictable. They plan to take down the Raven. They evidently have a location and they think they're up to the challenge.”

  “Ambitious fellows, then,” Salamander remarked.

  “Indeed they are. Remember I used to work with these people, I know what they're capable of carrying out,” cautioned Trench.

  “So what will the Raven do? Fight or flight?”

  “Not my department, I'm afraid,” said Trench. “I just take care of the dirty work and pass the messages upstairs. But if I was in his shoes, knowing what we know now, I'd give them just enough rope to hang themselves. Draw them in and finish them off.”

  Salamander knew the Raven was a brilliant tactician. He would expect nothing less of his long-time friend and partner. God help Masterman, Grant and whoever else was engaged in this stupid operation. Which reminded him. “Here, have this,” he said to Trench, handing him a sealed envelope.

  Trench, confused, frowned. “I don't need your money. I'm well taken care of.”

  “No, you bloody fool, it's not a payment,” growled Salamander. Was this man stupid? “Call it an extra insurance policy, in case the worst happens to the Raven or to me. In that eventuality, you can personally strike back.”

  Trench ripped open the envelope and looked at the two addresses handwritten on a card inside it. He smiled, a sense of euphoria overcoming him. The first was the address in Chelsea of Mrs. Elsa Masterman, wife of the retired Colonel Stephen Masterman. The second was the address of a small house in Arisaig, Scotland which belonged to one Willie McHugh, local fisherman, and brother-in-law to Jack Grant.

  Chapter Nine

  Barney Upwright had once been one of the best Security Service surveillance watchers in the business. That had been in his heyday during the Second World War, looking out for enemy agents and Fifth Columnists, and then during the early days of the Cold War in London, trailing Soviet agents to and fro from meeting some source or other.

  Now he was a broken down private detective who occasionally did 'funny' jobs for those boys across the river in Lambeth and his old mob at the Security Service. Most of his day-to-day work was the mundane jobs; process serving court papers, following cheating spouses ('Matrimonials' they called it these days) and tracking down people that owed money. But occasionally, just every now and then, he'd get a call from his old firm or their sister service, asking if Barney Upwright wouldn't mind taking on the odd 'unofficial' and very discreet job.

  Take today's number for example. Barney had received a phone call in his dingy office above an Italian restaurant in Battersea. The caller was Colonel Stephen Masterman, recently retired SIS officer who was known to Barney from the old days. How did Barney fancy a three-day surveillance job? Expenses up front, low risk, easy, just a little snooping around to see where a particular 'gentleman' was going. Well, Barney fancied it very much thank you Colonel! The Colonel was always a charmer, a decent gent, and within the hour, Barney was planning out his newly acquired surveillance job for the next day.

  The following morning he'd loaded up his little Lambretta scooter with his kit for the job; map, binoculars, camera with detachable long range lenses, note pad and pencil.

  Barney looked like a librarian. Small, slender, neat, non-descript. He could get lost in a crowd of two, which was why he'd been one of the best surveillance watchers the Security Service had ever had, so he had no doubts he would blend into whatever environment the target was visiting. That first morning, he'd laid up along the street from the target's known address, an exclusive property in Mayfair. He'd watched as the target exited and made his way to his car, a Mercedes Coupe, and drove off. The description he'd been given was perfect; tall, patrician, confident, greying hair. Barney thought the target looked like a man in control of himself. He also thought that he looked like an operator. He would have to be cautious following this man.

  The first two days had been humdrum, with nothing out of the ordinary. The target was out of his house at 7.30am, into the car, and off to an anonymous building in Whitehall, a walk to a nearby restaurant at lunch time and then an hour later a walk back to the office. The working day finished for him at 6.30pm and then the target drove to his private club for, Barney assumed, a few drinks before heading home. Barney had hung around, but the target made no attempt to leave the property again. But it was on the third day when the target showed out and did something completely out of the ordinary. On that Wednesday morning, the target left his property slightly later, an hour later in fact, headed to his Mercedes and drove off with Barney on his little scooter in close, but discreet, pursuit. Things took a stranger turn when the Mercedes headed away from the usual Whitehall route and went in a westerly direction, leaving the urban sprawl of central London behind and heading out to suburbia.

  Barney's biggest concern was that the Mercedes would just floor it and leave his little scooter behind, but thankfully, his target seemed to be intent on taking a leisurely amble to wherever his destination turned out to be. This was both good and bad for the lone surveillance operator. Good, because at least he could keep a decent 'follow' on his target vehicle, but bad because it meant that Barney would have to be a bit canny, hanging back three vehicles behind, especially if he didn't want to be spotted.

  It was when they entered the Borough of Richmond and took a turning leading towards Kew that Barney started to think today was going to be interesting. The big Mercedes turned left down the main high street and headed toward Kew Botanical Gardens, all the while with Barney at full throttle, attempting to keep in sight. When he saw the car turn i
nto the car park, he slowed the scooter down and hung back, pulling over to the kerbside. He counted to fifty in his head then started the engine and set off towards the Botanic Gardens Lion Gate entrance.

  After parking the scooter in the small gravel car park, he set off in search of his quarry with camera in hand. To the casual observer he would look like just another horticulturalist, here to take a photographic record of his favourite bushes, shrubs and plants. Shouldn't be too hard to find, thought Barney. A tall, distinguished civil servant walking around the gardens mid-week couldn't be too hard to spot. Barney figured his target had a five-minute head start on him and somewhere within the maze of the gardens, he knew he would find him. The trick was, to avoid being spotted. It was as he approached the main grounds that he saw them, sitting next to each other on a bench, admiring the perennials and talking, clearly, but not looking directly at each other. Like a couple of bloody spies if ever I saw them, thought Barney. He moved backwards until he was concealed behind some kind of evergreen hedge and changed the standard lens on his camera to the long range one. The target and his pal were thirty feet away and with this lens at this range, he would be able to I.D. them in detail.

  Barney brought the camera up to his eye and clicked, heard the whir of the fast motor shutter as it peeled off a couple of shots. A good few snaps of both the targets together, the older one doing the talking and the slightly younger one nodding his head in understanding. Then the passing of some kind of an envelope from his main target to the younger man… snap… snap… snap… before he ripped it open and stared at the piece of paper inside. Snap… snap… snap… Barney clicked off a few more shots and watched as the two men went their separate ways, one to the north and one, his target, back the way he had originally come. Barney didn't know, could only guess, that this was exactly what the Colonel was after.

  Barney reckoned that those few photos had probably earned him a lovely bonus.

  * * *

  Less than twenty-four hours later, Masterman stared at the series of black and white surveillance photos. He knew both men. Trench, he certainly recognised, despite the longer hair and different style. But it was the other man. This was the confirmation of the Raven's traitor inside British Intelligence.

  Gorilla had managed to get word to one of their agents, a hooker by the name of Nancy Lo in Hong Kong, about what he'd discovered in Brazil from the chemist, Okawa Reizo. They had a name – the respected businessman, Yoshida Nakata. Penn had set the little dormouse to work, running a trace to see who Nakata had been affiliated with during the war. The day after Nora disappeared, Penn had emptied the dead letter box and read the intelligence hidden there. It was mind blowing, to say the least. The Sentinel team already had a 'possible' confirmation from the information Nora had traced about Yoshida Nakata, regarding who the spy was. But this… this surveillance photograph definitely confirmed it.

  “So that's him?” asked Penn.

  Masterman nodded. “Most definitely.”

  Penn ran a hand through his hair and whistled. “Bloody hell, boss… that's who we've been competing against all along and we have evidence of him consorting with a known enemy agent – bloody Trench! Well… what do we do now?”

  Masterman thought for a moment and then, as he'd done numerous times before in his life he made the right decision for the mission at hand. “We do nothing.”

  “Nothing! But he's there! We could do… something!”

  “And we will, in time. But for now, we keep the status quo. He may know bits about us, especially after what happened to Nora, but we know a hell of a lot more about him. We know who he is, who he's met and what he's involved in. What we don't know about him, yet, is just how far he's connected and who else is on his payroll. Going after him is a luxury at the moment; our main priority is getting the Sentinel team close to the Raven and destroying his chances of setting loose a bio-weapon of apocalyptic proportions. I think that's enough in anyone's book.”

  “And then later?” said Penn.

  Masterman smiled and crunched his walking stick down onto the floor. “Then we find him and squash the little bastard, like a bug.”

  Chapter Ten

  THE PAGODA – FEBRUARY 1968

  “We should execute him straight away,” said Toshi Goto. Goto was the Raven's top Shinobi assassin, a small, lithe man, and a personal student of the Oyabun himself. He longed for the honour of killing this infiltrator personally. There were murmurs of agreement around the circle they'd formed. The secret meeting of the Raven's master assassins took place in a darkened dojo, lit only by lanterns, on the third floor of the pagoda that was their sanctuary. Only the trusted Shinobi of the clan were allowed to be present and the doors were guarded by the apprentice shadow warriors. They would die defending the Oyaban and this meeting's security.

  “Oyaban, let me travel to dispatch this gaijin. His body will be sleeping at the bottom of the river that same day,” Toshi Goto continued, his head bowed low in honour of his superior.

  Hokku sat away from the barrage of anger, on the fringes, and let the Shinobi fight it out about who was going to be the one to complete the kill for the Oyaban. They would all battle it out for the honour, to see who would be chosen by the Karasu! The chosen assassin would be raised high in the pecking order. They'd received the word from Trench in England about the covert operation being planned against the Raven and his people. How deep they had been infiltrated by an enemy agent and what his true purpose was. Things were becoming complicated, mused Hokku.

  “And where would this killing lead us?” The voice that cut through the rabble of noise was that of the Raven. It stilled the atmosphere in the room Instantly. “It would lead us nowhere, a dead assassin, a dead spy. Then what? Why destroy one snake when we can take the whole nest of them? If we leave them alone, they will keep coming back again and again and again… but this way, if we draw them in, we can eliminate them all,” continued the Raven.

  The rest of the Shinobi all bowed their heads in shame. The Raven, ever the brilliant strategist, had shown them the true path of seeking out an enemy.

  “Where is he now, this … British gunman?” asked the Raven.

  “He is at a safe house in Hong Kong, Oyabun. Following the killings in Brazil, we have kept him under surveillance and containment. At least, until the murder investigation has blown over,” said Hokku.

  “Good. Then bring him to me. We will draw these killers out.”

  “Here to Japan?” asked Hokku.

  The Raven shook his head. “Not just to Japan, but here to the pagoda, to the sanctuary. Let him know that I will meet him here, in my most secret location. He will alert his fellow mercenaries… we open the gates, let them enter and then…

  “Then they never leave,” said Hokku, nodding.

  “Tell that gaijin Trench to find the controllers of this team. He will know what to do. They are his people, after all. We will pit Japanese steel and cunning against western firepower and base stupidity. We will send their heads back to the British. I laugh at their feeble attempts at assassination. They are dogs,” growled the Raven.

  “And then?” asked Hokku.

  The Raven fixed him with a glare, his milky white damaged eye staring straight ahead. When he spoke, it was with the conviction of a man who knows his years of planning are about to come to fruition. “And then, when the assassins have been killed, the British have paid and they have been thoroughly disgraced, we will release the Kyonshi onto the streets of Europe as a warning for those who might try to challenge me again.”

  Chapter Eleven

  VICTORIA PEAK, HONG KONG – FEBRUARY 1968

  Jack Grant lay back on the bed and stared vacantly at the cracks in the ceiling of his bedroom. He'd been that way for the best part of an hour, tracing the spider's web of broken plaster with his eyes. He was frustrated, angry and ready to punch someone's lights out.

  As soon as he'd stepped off the plane from Brazil, he'd been met by Trench and handed a bag full of cash an
d the keys to an apartment with a magnificent view of Victoria Peak. The bag had contained his first bonus payment of $5000 in cash. The apartment was clean and sparse: a bed, a sofa, a dining table, some books, some magazines and a radio, but nothing more. But it was the view out of the bedroom window which compensated for its emptiness.

  He was told by Trench to “Dig in and keep a low profile until Hokku and his people have declared you fit for work again,” which was Trench's way of saying he was to remain persona non grata operationally, until the heat had died down about the executions in Rio. So he did as he'd been told, staying close to the apartment, occasionally taking a taxi into town to get out and breathe some fresh air, have a meal, have a drink, go to a club. But he was always the lone man in the shadows at the far table, or at the dark booth in a bar. He stayed hidden. Occasionally, he would get a call from an anonymous male voice to see if he needed anything: booze, drugs… women? Mostly he'd tell the voice on the other end of the line to bugger off. Occasionally, he'd ask for a woman and a bottle of Black Label. The booze was usually of good quality and the girls were pretty and willing. So he did what he always did when he was bored; screwed and drank.

  It was at the end of the first day of confinement when he found the bug.

  He'd been pacing the apartment, bored, after spending the previous hour working out with some shadow boxing drills. He'd needed to burn off some energy, bleed off the anxiety of the previous few weeks. It was an old routine, one that he practised when he was locked in hotel rooms all over the world. An hour's worth of stretching, footwork, jabs, crosses and hooks on any number of imaginary opponents at least kept him in shape and helped sweat out the alcohol which had been burrowing into his body over the past week. With that out of his system, he'd done what all males do when effectively trapped inside a strange apartment – he'd searched and rummaged to see what he could discover. He'd started with the basics; the phone, the headboard in the bedroom, the light fittings, the usual places where the electronic eavesdropping people tended to fit their devices. He knew they were there somewhere and somebody was no doubt getting an earful of his snoring, pissing in the morning and the noises from the bedroom when the hookers came to visit him.