by Tom Field
“Of course, if you kept in touch and called in regularly then I would have told you this before,” Centrepoint added.
“I’ll call him later.”
“No need,” Centrepoint said, “I have already spoken to him. Knowing he never even seems to sleep he is probably outside your apartment right now keeping you safe as usual.”
Ward actually believed The Old Man when he said it.
“Mike Lawson is on his way over with the news crew,” he said.
“I know. They will be landing in three hours. His bosses have told him to contact you at eight in the morning, so you now have two people by your side.”
“OK,” Ward said, “One more thing, I need some money.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to call in Martin McDermott and his team to help me.”
Centrepoint knew Martin McDermott very well. He was an ex-Navy Seal, widely considered the best Navy Seal in a generation.
McDermott had left the service and set up as a mercenary over five years ago, and still helped his country by leading a team of six other incredibly skilled and talented Ex-Seals which included his own son, Paul, among them.
They had helped Ward on numerous occasions in the past and before Ward’s time; they had worked with three of the other ‘Deniables’.
They were the best.
Centrepoint never had any concerns or worries about his people using McDermott and his team, because he knew they understood how the whole thing worked.
If they got in trouble, they were on their own.
Nothing to do with the CIA whatsoever.
It grated him that McDermott charged half a million dollars a day and Centrepoint thought back to a seventeen day mission in Cuba a few years ago which turned out to be very expensive but amounted to nothing more than recon work.
But he trusted both Ward and McDermott.
“Of course you can,” he replied, as if he was agreeing to give Ward a sip of his drink rather than half a million dollars a day, “I’ll have it transferred into the account immediately.”
“Thank you.”
“Just try and keep me informed, OK?” Centrepoint asked.
“I will,” Ward said, and hung up the phone.
He felt a little better after speaking to The Old Man and the next call he made was to McDermott.
“Well, well, how have you been?” McDermott said as he answered the phone.
“Are you busy?” he asked.
“All a little quiet at the moment. Why?” McDermott asked.
“Where are you now?”
“In Washington, why?”
“Can you be in New York by 10:00am tomorrow?”
“For how long?”
“I’m hoping for just twenty four hours.”
“For what specifically?” McDermott asked.
“Firstly to find and eliminate whoever killed a good friend of mine,” he said.
“Who has been killed?”
“Gilligan, my CIA help in New York”
“The guy who looks like Marvin Haggler?”
“Yes.”
“I liked him; I met him a couple of times before. What’s the other reason?” McDermott asked.
“To help me stop a bomb from being detonated in New York.”
There was a pause on the phone for a few seconds and then McDermott said,
“We will be set up and ready for you at 10:00am tomorrow morning; we have a garage that acts as a base by Macomb’s Bridge. I will send you the address when you hang up.”
“Thank you Martin,” he said, “I will send you the information I have and a brief outline of what I want us to do, so you are part briefed by the time you get here, OK?”
“That’s fine,” McDermott replied.
“See you tomorrow.”
“One other thing,” McDermott said quickly, “You have our fee arranged?” he asked.
“Yes I do.”
“Keep it and give it to Gilligan’s wife.”
Ward hung up the phone.
His next call was to Nicole Louise and Tackler.
“Hello?” Tackler answered the phone sounding sleepy.
“I need to see you tomorrow morning at eight,” he said.
“About?” Tackler asked suspiciously.
“Have you found anything out about Martin Walker?”
“Not yet. What are you hoping to find?”
“Money, travel, phone records; anything that links him to Asif Fulken in any way, or to people who could be linked to him.”
“Not a lot to go on,” Tackler replied.
“I thought you liked a challenge?” he said, appealing to Tackler’s competitive nature.
“OK,” Tackler said with an air of urgency, “I’ll wake Nicole-Louise and see you here in the morning.”
“One more thing, do you have the video footage from the UKBC News teams of the explosions as they happened?”
“You know we do.”
“I want you to do something.”
“Such as?”
“I want you to edit the footage down to exactly one minute before the bombs go off and one minute after. Just two minutes of footage for each bomb,” he said.
“OK, we will. But what will that show you that you don’t already know?” Tackler asked.
Ward hung up the phone.
He felt a lot calmer and in control again now. He had planned his resources, he was gathering the data he would need to pull every last part of this together, and he was focused and determined to avenge Gilligan’s death.
Ryan Ward was once again everything that Asif Fulken should be very, very afraid of.
He turned off the lights in the living area and walked into his bedroom. He set the alarm on his phone for 06:30am and lay down on top of the bed. He closed his eyes and he felt a complete calm and belief that he had everything in order wash all over him.
Tomorrow it would end.
TWENTY SIX
He woke up feeling re-energised, invigorated and strong, and immediately went through his routine of five hundred sit ups, five hundred press ups and five hundred squat thrusts with such ease that he felt that he was cheating himself by the time he had finished.
He felt invincible and alert.
He had a shower and made some fresh coffee. By seven fifteen he was dressed and ready for the day ahead. He felt so ready in fact that he called Lawson.
“Hello?” Lawson answered.
“I’m waiting,” he said.
“I was told to call you at eight?” Lawson replied.
“Things have changed. I want you at my place at eight.”
“I’m still in bed.”
“Alone?” he asked, knowing it was a stupid question as he heard the words echo in his head.
“No.”
“Beglin?”
“Yes.”
“Well leave her there, get ready and be at mine at eight. I’ll send the address.”
“What for?” Lawson asked.
“I need a driver,” he said and hung up the phone.
He spent the next twenty minutes planning out the day’s events in his head.
He knew there was a high degree of searching still to be done, and that he was heavily reliant upon Nicole-Louise and Tackler to point him in the right direction, but he now had a clear plan in his head about how he was going to approach everything. His concentration was only broken when his phone rang.
The Optician’s name appeared on his screen.
“Are you watching over me?” he asked, deliberately sounding frightened.
“Yes I am. But you could make it a little easier and tell me where you are going so I don’t have to keep getting messages from the Old Man about where you are,” he replied, deliberately sounding bored.
“And where would all the fun in that be? The Old Man must employ someone to keep track of my cell every minute of the day so think of it as keeping somebody employed.”
“You are all heart.”
“It’s good to kno
w you have my back, knowing that will make today easier. I need you to do something for me.”
“What?” The Optician asked.
He then explained very clearly what he needed him to do and where he needed him to be.
“OK, but don’t let The Old Man know I am not watching your back,” The Optician replied and hung up the phone.
Ward looked at the clock. It was ten to eight.
He thought that he would walk down to the street and just take in the view of the bridge for a few minutes before Lawson arrived.
He locked his apartment and walked down the stairs rather than take the elevator. He walked out into the street, taking in the view of the bridge, letting the morning sun wash all over him.
He felt invincible and ready for anything.
He was thinking about Gilligan’s kids when a black sedan pulled up right next to him. He looked through the window and saw a beaming Lawson looking out at him. He opened the door and got into the car.
“Good to see you, Mike,” he said, “Nice car. Bit of a comedown from what you usually drive.”
“You too,” Lawson replied, “And the car was provided by our friendly opposites in the CIA who were instructed to push the boat out,” Lawson said sarcastically as he looked around the car interior.
“How was your night?”
“Energetic!” Lawson proclaimed.
“Could Beglin be the one after all these years?” he asked in all seriousness.
“Don’t be stupid,” Lawson said, “I’ll be bored of her by the end of the week!”
Ward rolled his eyes. He actually disliked guys who just used women for sex a great deal, but Lawson was just impossible not to like.
He had once told him that he has never slept with a woman and not remained great friends with her. He made a mental note to ask him one day just how many friends he had, but there were more important things to attend to at the moment.
“Where are we going?” Lawson asked.
“Park Avenue.”
“What for?”
“There are some very interesting people that I want you to meet. What did you get from Beglin?” Ward asked him.
“Well she doesn’t like Martin Walker one bit,” Lawson replied, “She finds him creepy.”
“He makes passes at her?”
“No, not creepy like that,” Lawson said, “More like a control freak.”
“In what way?”
“Like when they are on a news report, he dictates how it goes, what it says, how they set up, what they should be looking for and how long it should last.”
“Isn’t that his job as chief news editor?”
“No. It goes beyond that,” Lawson replied. “Like he’s obsessed with her and the other female reporters but he doesn’t even make it obvious that he finds her attractive.”
“Obsessed?”
“He has live links to them when they are out on the field telling them what they can and can’t do, and how it looks on the screen and so on.”
“And he relays this through to her directly?”
“No. To her producer.”
“Nigel Reid, the guy we met in London?”
“Not always. They change producer depending on what report they are filming. Her consistent team is the cameraman and the sound man.”
“Parker and Lewis?”
“Yes. And they both definitely have the hot’s for her.” Lawson said with a smile.
They arrived at Nicole-Louise’s and Tacklers at twenty past eight.
Nicole-Louise opened the door and she looked at Lawson with curiosity rather than awe. Something he wasn’t used to.
“Hello,” she said, “Come in please.”
Tackler was tapping way on his keyboard as usual and he didn’t even turn to acknowledge them.
“This is Mike Lawson,” he said to Nicole-Louise and the back of Tacklers head. Tackler raised his left hand above his shoulder to let them know he was pleased to meet Lawson but he was busy, “He’s from London and he’s here to help us.”
“I hope you bring more to the party than just good looks?” Nicole-Louise asked a bemused looking Lawson.
Tackler turned around to check out the new guy on the scene, and as soon as the magnitude of just how handsome Lawson was hit him, he was up on his feet, jockeying for position and importance.
“That stuff you gave us to check out,” he said to Ward, “It looks like MI6 are even more useless than we thought they were.”
Lawson raised an eyebrow.
“In what way?” Ward asked.
“Like the lazy way that the Brits tend to adopt as a normal approach to things,” Tackler replied, looking Lawson up and down with complete contempt as he said it, “The stuff you wanted me to find on this Walker guy, I found it. Lots of it.”
“I want you to tell me very clearly and very thoroughly what you have found,” Ward said.
“He has had over six million dollars move around a group of hidden accounts that belong to him in the past two months,” Tackler said.
“Where did the money originate from?”
“I’m still looking for that and I am hitting a lot of firewalls but I will get there, I’m not a Brit. I don’t take the easy option,” he replied and for a brief moment, Ward could have sworn that Tackler puffed out his chest and straightened his back to make himself look taller.
By now, Lawson looked totally confused, but quickly realised that there was some serious jealousy going on with Tackler and thought he would use that to their advantage.
“I’m pretty sure our men could get there before you,” he said to Tackler, “After all, we invented the internet,” he added.
“Yes, but we rule it,” Tackler said in a hostile tone before turning around and walking back to his workstation.
Lawson looked at Ward and smiled.
Nicole-Louise studied Tackler, smiled and then said,
“How sweet Tackler, you are jealous!”
Tackler pretended not to hear.
“Tackler is a lucky guy,” Lawson said to wind Tackler up even more.
“So, we have what you want on this Martin Walker guy so what else do you need?” she asked, ignoring Lawson’s flattery, another thing that he definitely wasn’t used to.
“You know about Gilligan?” Ward asked.
Tackler turned back and around and both he and Nicole-Louise nodded and looked at the floor.
“So you also know how important it is that we finish this for him?” he asked.
They both nodded again.
“How much money is in Walker’s accounts at the moment?”
“Two million dollars,” Tackler replied,
“So four million has been paid out? What do you make that, two million per bomb?” All three people in the room nodded and realised what Ward was saying.
“What would Walker gain from all of this?” Lawson asked.
“That’s the bit I’m struggling with,” Ward said. He looked at Tackler,
“Did you get that edited footage that I asked for?” he asked.
Tackler nodded.
“Put it on a memory stick for me please.”
Tackler turned around and started to prepare the footage for Ward.
“This money trail is so important, how long before you can break it?” he asked Tackler.
“Five hours tops,” Tackler replied, waiting for Wards standard reply that would indicate he had half of that amount of time.
“That’s fine,” he replied, much to Tackler’s surprise.
“I need you to do one thing for me Nicole-Louise,” Ward said.
“Of course,” she replied.
“Find out who the producer was on the footage that we have on the Westminster Abbey bombing and do it quickly please.”
“I’m on it now,” she replied and walked over to the bank of computers on the opposite side of the room to Tackler.
“We need to go now but as soon as you have anything call me straight away, either of you,” Ward said.
/> “OK,” they both replied without turning around.
“I don’t think he liked me,” Lawson said with a smile as they climbed into the car.
“He’s just jealous because you’re a threat,” Ward replied.
“Well, there was something quite alluring about her so I might have to work my magic on her next time we visit.”
“If you do that,” he said, “I will kill you myself.”
Lawson had no idea if Ward was joking or not so he let the subject drop immediately.
“Where do you want to go now?” Lawson asked.
“We are going to see McDermott.”
Lawson knew who McDermott was, he had seen his team at work in London two years ago when Ward called them in.
“Where is he?”
“Harlem River Drive under Macomb’s Dam Bridge.”
“Why do we need to see him?” Lawson asked.
“Because he is going to kidnap someone for me.”
McDermott’s garage was set back in a row of six units on a small industrial park.
They parked the car thirty yards away from the garage so that they could be seen approaching clearly. Walking up to a building full of ex-Navy SEALS without giving prior warning that you are there, would be the actions of a stupid guy.
The garage was much bigger once you got closer to it. The main roller shutter doors were big enough to fit a bus or large truck through them. They were originally a shiny grey colour, but years of grime had turned them into a lighter shade of black. There was a sign that was fitted above the roller shutter doors that said ‘L & B Auto Repairs’, with a phone number and website address below.
McDermott was thorough in everything he did and the website was fully functional and the number would be answered by one of his team giving the impression they were an employee of ‘L & B Auto Repairs’.
But the callers were always told they were fully booked and unable to take any new customers.
As they got to within ten feet of the building the roller shutter doors started to rise much quicker than they should have; the always thorough McDermott had fitted a bigger motor to the door drive to allow for quicker access and egress.
The door stopped once the opening had reached about five feet, and they ducked under and stepped into the garage.