by Andy Maslen
Eli hooked her right foot around Gaddesden’s left and delivered a lightning-fast, open-palm strike into Gaddesden’s solar plexus.
His breath left his lungs with a sharp “Oof!”
He flew backwards, over Eli’s foot, and landed on his arse in the dirt, then rolled onto his side, clutching his stomach and mewing as he fought for breath.
Gabriel found it interesting that Bennett, though obviously shocked, didn’t move to help the captain. Instead he drew Sam back a few paces, saying, “Better let this one play out.”
Eli turned to Gabriel.
“Everything OK?”
“With me? Fine. You?”
“Yep.”
Then she turned to Gaddesden, who’d got to his knees, and was panting with the effort of breathing as he staggered to his feet. He balled his fists and took an ill-advised swing at Eli’s head.
Which wasn’t there.
He’d telegraphed the punch so completely that before his fist had even started on its forwards run from his shoulder, she was sliding sideways and rotating her body out of the way.
As his fist passed harmlessly through the air a foot from the tip of her nose, she counterattacked.
A flurry of punches to his side put him on the ground, and this time Eli followed them in. She knelt on his chest, grabbed his right wrist and yanked his arm high into the air over his shoulder, before jabbing her straightened fingers into the soft place just beneath the angle of his jaw. Just when Gabriel thought she was going to kill Gaddesden, she stopped.
Gaddesden was almost weeping from fear and the battering he’d just taken. Eli leaned closer and whispered something into his ear. Then she stood, turned her back and stalked off, dusting her palms together.
She called over her shoulder. “I’ll see you later.”
Gabriel dearly hoped she meant the remark for him.
Bennett and Sam were helping the shaken Captain Gaddesden to his feet. His face was scarlet. Half embarrassment, half exertion was Gabriel’s estimate.
“See what I mean?” he asked the remaining three members of the recce group while holding his hands wide.
“What I see,” Bennett shot back, “is a somewhat arrogant, possibly anti-Semitic and definitely ill-informed army officer, who really ought to have learned better manners at Sandhurst, getting a pasting from a young lady he had gone out of his way to insult. She was using Krav Maga, by the way. If you don’t end up shitting your liver out tonight, it’s Eli’s restraint you’ll have to thank.”
The atmosphere having been irreparably damaged, they toured the mocked-up nuclear facility in more or less complete silence, Gabriel only breaking it to ask questions about access roads, the staff carpark and a few other details of the building’s layout.
After walking a final circuit round “Vareshabad,” Gabriel and Sam said goodbye to Bennett and Gaddesden and walked back to one of the two remaining Land Rovers. Gabriel gave Sam a lift back to Marlborough Lines, where she was to discuss equipment with him and Eli.
"Send the Missiles"
TEHRAN
Darbandi reviewed the latest data, poring over the green-and-white-ruled printer paper, analysing the test results one last time before making the call that would cement his place in history. Yes. Everything confirmed his initial thought. The warhead could work. The warhead would work. In perhaps as little as a week, it would be ready.
He pulled the yellow desk phone closer, lifted the receiver and dialled a number he had memorised long ago. The Minister of Defence and Armed Forces Logistics answered after three rings.
“Yes?”
“Minister, it’s Darbandi here. I have the latest test data in front of me. Melkh will work. Send the missiles, please.”
The Minister paused. Darbandi looked up and watched a fly buzzing in random geometric figures a few inches below the slowly revolving blades of the ceiling fan. I wish I could exterminate you as easily as the Jews , he thought.
“You are sure?” the Minister finally asked. “I have to report to the Supreme Leader every time there is a new development on Project Melkh . I would not like to raise false hope.”
Darbandi frowned. Just recently, he had begun to doubt the Minister’s commitment to Melkh . He was a careerist. Concerned more with his next political appointment than with his country’s destiny. But Darbandi was not to be thwarted by a mere office-holder. Melkh was his. And nothing must be allowed to stand in its way.
“Do you doubt me, Minister?” he asked, silkily. He knew the Minister was aware that Darbandi had been blessed personally by the Supreme Leader ten years earlier. To cross such a man as he would be unwise, not to say career-limiting.
“Of course not,” the Minister snapped. “But I need to be sure. As I said—”
“And as I said,” Darbandi interrupted, “send the missiles.” He paused for a moment. “Please.”
Fairbairn-Sykes
The Land Rover having been built for utility rather than speed or, indeed, refined road manners, Gabriel kept to a stately 50 mph as he drove back from the Plain to Marlborough Lines.
“That was quite a performance from young Ms Schochat,” Sam said after a couple of miles.
Gabriel turned to look at her for a second before returning his eyes to the road.
“He deserved it. Though I hope he doesn’t report it. If we end up in hot water with the brass for fighting during a mission briefing, it’ll put a kink in Don’s day. And I really don’t want that to happen.”
Sam smiled as she continued to look straight ahead.
“Oh, I shouldn’t worry. He brought it on himself. And there were three witnesses. If nothing else I suspect he’d be far too embarrassed to have to explain how he lost a scrap with a mere female.”
The irony dripping from the final two words made Gabriel smile.
“He did look a bit shocked, didn’t he?”
“You think? He looked like a schoolboy who’d kicked a cat and got a faceful of claws for his trouble.”
“So you think we’ll be OK?”
She laid a reassuring hand on his thigh for a second.
“Yes. Now tell me, what did you have in mind for the mission? And if you say ‘exploding fountain pen,’ I’ll tell the brass about your little escapade myself.”
Gabriel grinned. Resisting the temptation Sam had put in his way, he projected an array of edged weapons onto the road unwinding in front of him, much like the RS3’s head-up display. Then he scanned the knives and swords one by one until he located the precise weapon for the job.
In the closed world of Special Forces, two knives are known worldwide as killers’ weapons. One is the US Marine Corps’ KA-BAR. The other is the British Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife. Developed by two former members of the Shanghai Municipal Police, the Fairbairn-Sykes is what’s commonly known as a stiletto , equipped with a narrow, strong blade designing for stabbing rather than slashing. Gabriel had, from time to time, used one in the SAS, and he pictured one now. He imagined himself using the knife. He picked it up and hefted it in his right hand. Feinted left then thrust through the ribcage and into the heart.
Yes. The Fairbairn-Sykes would do it. And, crucially, its wound signature could easily be mistaken for that of a robber’s dagger. He’d take his man down, remove his watch and wallet and leave a crime scene that would suggest a vicious mugging gone wrong rather than an assassination by an operator working for a hostile foreign power.
“A Fairbairn-Sykes, please.”
“That’s it? You don’t want a pistol? A rifle? Plastique?”
He shook his head.
“Not for this one. We need to make it look like a mugging gone wrong.”
“I’ll get you a couple. One each, just in case. Hmm,” she said, tapping the tip of her nose.
“What is it?”
“You’re going to laugh.”
“I promise I won’t.”
“I just bought a couple of new toys to trial. But I think they’d be perfect for you and Eli. Especiall
y in your guise as publishers.”
Intrigued, Gabriel glanced at Sam.
“Go on.”
“Tungsten-alloy striker pens.”
An image flitted through Gabriel’s brain. A spam email he’d deleted, though not before reading all the way through to the end and clicking through to the landing page on the company’s website. The owners of ExecTactical, Inc. were promoting various ranges of survival and personal defence equipment suitable for office workers to carry about with them, open-carry firearms being frowned upon in the glitzy offices of merchant banks, lawyers and accountants. The email was offering something called an “Executive Tactical Striker,” a fully functioning ballpoint pen whose barrel and tip were machined from a single piece of tungsten-alloy. Under attack, the besuited owner had only to pull the implement from his or her pocket or purse and stab their assailant’s head, keeping their thumb over the non-business end for added power. “Drop a two-hundred-pound attacker like he was a sack of potatoes!!!” ran the company’s breathless headline.
Gabriel widened his eyes, took his right hand off the wheel and slapped his thigh.
“I knew it!” he cried. “You do have top-secret toys! Yes, please. We’ll take two.”
Then he burst out laughing. Fearing a slap, or worse, from the quartermaster, he was relieved when she joined in.
“OK, I deserved that,” she said, finally. “But it would make me feel a little more comfortable to know you and Eli at least had backup weapons. And, interestingly, the alternative name for Tungsten is Wolfram so it seems rather fitting.”
Back at Marlborough Lines, Gabriel parked the Land Rover in the motor pool and together, he and Sam walked across the base to the house in the married quarters.
Eli was in the kitchen making a pot of tea and from the smell of it, toast as well. She turned when Gabriel led Sam into the kitchen and smiled at them both.
“Hi. How did it go?”
“It was fine,” Gabriel said. “To be honest, as it was only the exterior, there wasn’t a massive amount of useful information. But it was good to see the place where Darbandi works in three dimensions.”
“Did that idiot say anything after I left?”
“Nothing you need to worry about. I think you bruised his pride as much as his kidneys.”
“Speaking of which,” Sam added, “you missed what Bennett said to him. I nearly died.”
Eli smiled.
“Go on then. Tell me.”
Sam roughened her voice in a passable imitation of Bennett’s gruffly posh tone.
“He said, ‘If you don’t end up shitting your liver out tonight, it’s Eli’s restraint you’ll have to thank.’ Classic!”
Eli inclined her head in acceptance of the praise. Bennett had been on the money, though. Unlike other forms of unarmed combat, Krav Maga was designed to disable, permanently injure or kill the opponent. The Marquess of Queensberry would have fainted at some of the moves Eli and her colleagues had practised.
“One thing, though,” Sam said. “What did you say to him when you put him on the ground for the second time?”
Eli caught a slice of toast as it popped up out of the toaster and spread some butter and jam on it before answering.
“I told him I was like my country. Loyal to my friends and ruthless with my enemies. He needed to decide which one he was.”
After Sam left to drive back to London, Gabriel called Don.
“What’s up, Old Sport?”
“We were wondering whether you’d made any progress identifying the mercs or their masters?”
“Afraid not. D’you remember that Scottish Detective Superintendent we met a few years back when we helped the Met clear up their little vigilante problem?”
Gabriel raised his eyes to the ceiling, searching his mental database of official and semi-official contacts. Found the Scot, with her efficient haircut and slash of red lipstick.
“Yes. What was her name? Caroline? Cassie?”
“Callie. McDonald. I reached out to her, in the modern parlance, sent her the evidence and asked for assistance. She’s looking into it, but to be honest, we don’t have time to wait for the cops. She told me what I already suspected, and I think you did, too. That they’re – or rather, were – mercenaries. One might have been Russian, but it’s not enough to go on. We need to keep the train rolling. You and Eli ship out tomorrow. Sam bring you your paperwork?”
“Yes, Boss.”
“Good. Listen, once you’re on that plane you’ll be on our radar but off the comms. Stay in character until you’re back home.”
With that, and a gruff “good luck,” Don ended the call.
That evening, after dinner, Eli brought the bottle of Chianti they’d shared into the sitting room. She poured them both another glass and sat on the sofa before beckoning Gabriel to join her. She’d folded her legs up under her and stretched her arm wide along the back of the cushions.
“Come on,” she said. “Tell me what’s going on. What you found out when you talked to Fariyah.”
Gabriel took the proffered glass, and a large mouthful, then sat next to Eli, leaning into her and relaxing as her hand began caressing the back of his neck. He explained how Fariyah had hypnotised him and he’d remembered that Michael had been all too eager to dive in to retrieve the ball. And how she’d uncovered the cavernous hole in the timeline Gabriel had constructed to explain away the presence of the mysterious third Wolfe sibling.
When he paused, she didn’t immediately jump in to fill the silence with explanations, reassurances or questions. He liked that about her. He waited, listening to her breathing, feeling her chest expand and contract against his own ribs.
“I was an only child,” she finally said.
“I didn’t know that.”
“Why would you? I never told you much about my family last time. But you weren’t, although you became one when you were, what, nine?”
“That’s right.”
“Why do you think your parents never told you about the middle child?”
Gabriel shrugged. He looked down and realised he’d placed his left hand on Eli’s thigh. It felt comfortable there. Not a sexual thing, just a companionable gesture. He left it in place.
“I don’t know. I suppose they didn’t want to upset me. He, or she, can’t have been more than a year or so old. Perhaps they thought it was for the best. Given my reaction when Michael died, that was a good call.”
“Why? What happened?”
Gabriel explained how he’d become almost catatonic for a fortnight, before waking with absolutely no memory of Michael’s ever having existed. The resulting stress had led directly to his parents sending him to live with Zhao Xi.
Eli sipped her wine. Then she placed the glass down and turned to kiss Gabriel gently on the lips before pulling away a little.
“You have to go back to Hong Kong. As soon as possible. Find the grave. Maybe there are people still living there who knew your parents. Friends of Zhao Xi’s. That lawyer you mentioned, for example.”
“I know. That’s where I’d got to as well. As soon as we’re done in Iran, that’s my plan. You could come. See the house. Maybe we could travel around a little?”
She smiled, and brushed a stray strand of her auburn hair out of her eye.
“I would love that. Really. As soon as we can, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Because I have a feeling we’re going to want a proper break after this business. And it all starts tomorrow. What time’s our flight?”
“Ten past nine in the evening.”
Gabriel took another mouthful of the Chianti. He felt that what he had with Eli might be important. As important – More, maybe , he thought – than what he’d had with Britta. More, anyway, than just the playful boyfriend-girlfriend thing they’d agreed on just a couple of days earlier. But that meant he needed to be honest with her. He’d discovered with Fariyah just how good he was at keeping secrets from himself. He didn’t want to start a new rela
tionship off by doing the same thing with his partner. He put his glass down and turned so he was facing Eli. He sighed, deeply.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” he said.
She matched his body posture, turning a little and readjusting her legs so she could sit facing him on the sofa.
“Oh my God, what? You’re not gay, are you? Or dying of cancer?”
She was trying to keep it light, he could see that, but he didn’t miss the micro-expression of real concern that flitted across her face.
“No and no. Listen, you know I’m seeing Fariyah. Well, how it started was, I was having these nightmares, flashbacks, suicidal thoughts, the works.”
“PTSD? I assumed that was it. I’m not stupid, you know.”
“I know you’re not. But the other thing that kept happening was, I kept seeing one of my men. Do you remember I told you that time at my place in Salisbury about how out of my patrol, there was just me left?”
“Yes. The others were Smudge, Dusty and, oh, I’m sorry, who was the fourth guy?”
“Damon. We used to call him Daisy because his surname was Cheaney.”
“Go on,” she said, putting a hand out to touch his knee.
Gabriel frowned and ran his hand over his hair, scratching at his scalp.
“A couple of years after I left The Regiment, I started doing this sort of work again, and I began seeing Smudge. We had to leave him behind on our final mission. We were in Mozambique. A search and destroy. But we were betrayed, and ambushed by a warlord’s men. My last sight of Smudge was his dead body crucified on a tree by machetes through his hands. After that, he started turning up. You know, in the street, in an art gallery once, all kinds of weird places. I used to talk to him and he used to help me. I thought I was going mad, Eli, I really did.”
Gabriel could feel tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. He sniffed loudly, and knuckled his eye sockets to stop them flowing, afraid that if they did, they might not stop for a very long time.