by Dick Francis
‘Surely you’re not going to use that,’ Derek had said with his large brandy-filling eyes staring at the three-foot blade.
‘Not unless I have to,’ I had replied casually as I’d rubbed black boot polish onto the blade to reduce its shine. But I would use it, I thought, and without hesitation, if the need arose.
Killing the enemy had been my raison d’être for the past fifteen years, and I’d been good at it. The Values and Standards of the British Army demanded it. Paragraph ten states, ‘All soldiers must be prepared to use lethal force to fight: to take the lives of others, and knowingly to risk their own.’
But was I still a soldier? Was this a war? And was I knowingly risking my own life or that of my mother?
I wasn’t sure about the answers to any of those questions, but I knew one thing for certain. I felt alive again, whole and intact, and eager for the fray.
I scanned the buildings below me once more, using my mother’s binoculars, searching for a light or a movement, any sign that would give away the enemy’s position, but there was still nothing.
Was I wrong? Was this not the place they had meant?
I had skirted round the walls of Lambourn Hall on my way to this point, but it had been dark, locked and seemingly deserted.
They had to be here.
The moonlight was disappearing fast, and I would soon need to be on the move, down across the open ground between my current location and the rear of the stables. I took one last look through the binoculars and there it was, a movement, maybe only a stretching of a cramped leg or a warming rub of a freezing foot, but a tell-tale movement nevertheless. Someone was waiting for me in the line of trees just to the right of the house as I looked. From that position he would have commanded a fine view of the driveway and the road below.
But if he was looking down there, he was looking the wrong way.
I was behind him.
But where was his accomplice?
The moon finally dipped out of sight and the light rushed away with it. But I didn’t move immediately, not for a minute or two, not until I was sure my eyes had fully adjusted to the change. In truth, the night had not become totally black as there was still a slight glow from the stars, but it was no longer possible for me to see Greystone Stables from this position. Likewise, it would now be impossible for anyone down there to see me.
I checked once more that my mobile phone was switched off, stood up, and started forward across the grass.
19
I approached the stables in such a way as to take me past the muck heap near the back end of the passageway in which I had hidden the previous week.
I was ultra-careful not to trip over any unseen debris as I eased myself silently through the fence that separated the stable buildings from the paddock behind. How I longed to have a set of night-vision goggles, the magic piece of kit that enabled soldiers to see in the dark, albeit with a green hue. My only consolation was that it was most unlikely that my enemy had them either – we would be as blind as each other.
I stood up close against the stable wall at the back of the short passageway, closed my eyes tight, and listened. Nothing. No breath, no scraping of a foot, no cough. I went on listening for well over a minute, keeping my own breathing shallow and silent. Still nothing.
Confident that there was no one hiding in the passageway, I stepped forward. Here, under the roof, it was truly pitch black. I tried to recall an image in my head of the inside of the passageway from my time here last week. I remembered that I had used an empty blue plastic drum as a seat. That would be here somewhere in the darkness. I could also recall there were some wooden staves leaning against one of the walls.
I moved along the passage very slowly, feeling ahead into the darkness with my hands and my real foot. The canvas basketball boots were thin, in truth rather too thin for such a cold night, but they allowed me to sense the underfoot conditions much better than I could have in regulation-issue, thick-soled army boots.
My foot touched the plastic drum and I eased round it to the door. I pressed my face to it, looking through the gaps between the widely spaced wooden slats.
Compared to the total blackness of the passageway, the stable yard beyond seemed quite bright, but there was still not enough light to see into the shadows of the overhanging roof. I couldn’t see if any of the stable doors were open but, equally, that would mean that no one would be able to see me as I eased open the slatted door from the passageway and stepped out into the yard.
I slowly closed the spring-loaded door and then stood very still, listening again for anyone’s breathing, but there was no sound, not even the slight rustling of a breeze.
Provided he hadn’t changed his position, the man I had seen from the wood on the hillside, the man who had made a movement, would have been out of sight from where I was, even in bright sunshine, but I knew there had to be at least one other person around here somewhere. And, if Alex Reece had joined Warren and Garraway, there would be three of them to deal with. The quote from Sun Tzu in The Art of War about relative army sizes floated into my head once more.
If you are in equal number to your enemy, then fight if you are able to surprise. If you are fewer, then keep away.
I was one and they were two, maybe even three. Should I not just keep away?
Another of Sun Tzu’s pearls of wisdom drifted into my consciousness.
All warfare is based on deception. When we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.
I folded back the sleeve of my black roll-neck sweater and looked at the watch beneath. It was 4.47.
In eighteen minutes, at five minutes past five precisely, a car would drive through the gates at the bottom of the Greystone Stables driveway and stop. The driver would sound the car horn once, and the car would remain there with the headlights blazing and the engine running for exactly five minutes. Then it would reverse out again onto the road and drive away. At least, it would do all of those things if Ian Norland obeyed to the letter the instructions I had left him.
He hadn’t been very keen on the plan, and that was putting it mildly, but I’d promised him that he was in no danger provided he kept the car doors locked. It was yet another one of those dodgy promises of mine. But I didn’t actually believe that Jackson Warren and Peter Garraway would kill me there and then. Not before I’d returned the million dollars.
Warfare is based on deception. When we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away.
When I was in the stable yard searching for my mother, I’d make Warren and Garraway believe I was down near the gates.
Hold out baits to entice the enemy.
Make the car wait with its lights on to draw them down the hill away from the stables, and away from me.
Feign disorder, and crush him.
Only time would tell on that one.
I moved slowly and silently to my right, around the closed end of the quadrangle of stables, keeping in the darkest corners under the overhanging roof. Where would my mother be? I felt for all the bolts on the stable doors. They were all firmly closed. I decided, at this stage, not to try to open any as it would surely have made some noise.
Unsurprisingly, no one had mended the pane of glass in the tack-room window that I’d broken to get out. I leaned right in through the opening, closed my eyes tight, and listened.
I could hear someone whimpering. My mother was indeed here. The sound was slight, but unmistakable, and it came from my left. She was in one of the boxes on the same side of the stables as I had been.
I listened some more. Once or twice I heard her move but the sound was not close and, other than an occasional muffled cry, I could not hear her breathing. There were ten boxes down each of the long sides of the quadrangle and I reckoned she must be at least three away from the tack room, probably more. Maybe she was in the same box in which I had been imprisoned.
I looked again at my watch: 4.59.
Six minutes until the car arrived – I hoped.
I withdrew my head and shoulders through the broken window and moved very slowly along the line of stable boxes, counting the doors. I could remember clearly having to climb over five dividing walls to get to the tack room. I counted four stable doors then I stopped. The box I had been in was the next one along.
Would there be a sentry? Would anyone be on guard?
I stood very still and made my breathing as silent as I could. I dared not look again at my watch in case the luminosity of the face gave me away.
I waited in the dark, listening, and counting the seconds – Mississippi one, Mississippi two, Mississippi three, and so on. Just as I had done here before.
I waited and waited and I began to doubt that Ian was coming. I was well past Mississippi twenty in the third minute when I heard the car horn, a long two-second blast. Good boy.
There was immediate movement from the end of the row of stables not twenty yards from where I was standing. Someone had been sitting there in silence but now I clearly heard the person walk away, back towards the house, crunching across the gravel turning area. I heard him call out to someone else, asking what the noise was, and there was a murmured reply from further away that I couldn’t catch.
I went swiftly to the door of the box and eased back the bolts. They made a slight scraping but nothing that would be heard from round near the house. The door swung outwards.
‘Mum,’ I whispered into the darkness.
There was no reply.
I stood and listened, trying hard to control the thump-thump of the heart in my chest.
I heard her whimper again but it still came from some way to my left. She wasn’t in this box but in one a bit further along.
I recognized the need to be as fast as possible but, equally, I had to make my search undetected. I moved as quickly as I dared along the row of stables, carefully sliding back the bolt on the upper half of each door and calling into the space with a whisper.
She was in the second box from the end, close to where the man had been sitting on guard, and by the time I found her I was becoming desperate about the time it was taking.
I thought that Ian must surely be about to reverse the car to the road and depart. Five minutes would seem a very long time to someone simply sitting there afraid that something would happen, and hoping that it wouldn’t. Ian must have been so nervous inside the car, willing the hands of his watch to move round faster. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d decided to leave early.
When I’d opened the stable door and whispered, my mother had been unable to answer me properly, but she had managed to murmur loudly.
‘Shhh,’ I said going towards the sound and down onto my left knee. It was absolutely pitch black in the stable. I removed one of my black woollen gloves and ‘saw’ by feel, moving my left hand around until I found her.
She had tape stuck over her mouth and had been bound hand and foot with the same plastic garden ties as had been used to secure me. Thankfully, she hadn’t been left hanging from a ring in the wall, but was sitting on the hard floor close to the door with her back up against the wooden panelling.
I laid my sword down carefully so it didn’t clatter on the concrete, then I swung the rucksack off my back and opened the flap. Ian’s carving knife sliced easily through the plastic ties holding my mother’s ankles and wrists together.
‘Be very, very quiet,’ I whispered in her ear, leaning down. I decided it might be wise to leave the tape over her mouth until we were out of earshot. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
I helped her up to her feet and was about to bend down for the rucksack and the sword when she turned and hugged me. She held me so tightly that I could hardly breathe. And she was crying. I couldn’t tell whether it was from pain, from fear, or in joy, but I could feel her tears on my face.
‘Mum, let me go,’ I managed to whisper in her ear. ‘We have to get out of here.’
She eased the pressure but didn’t let go completely, hanging on to my left arm. I prised her away from me and swung the rucksack over my right shoulder. As I reached down again for my sword, she leaned heavily against me and I stumbled slightly, kicking the sword with my unfeeling, right foot. It scraped across the floor with a metallic rattle that sounded dreadfully loud in the confines of the box, but probably wouldn’t have been audible at more than ten paces outside.
But had there been anyone outside within ten paces to hear it?
I reached down, grabbed the sword, and led my mother to the door.
Ian must have completed his five-minute linger by now, and I hoped he had safely departed back to his flat to sit by the telephone, waiting for my call and ready to summon the cavalry if things went wrong. But where, I wondered, were my enemies? Were they still round at the driveway? Or had they come back?
My mother and I stepped through the stable door, out into the yard with her hanging on to my left arm as if she would never let it go again.
There were no shouts of discovery, no running feet, just the darkness, and the stillness of the night. But my enemies were out there somewhere, watching and waiting, and they outnumbered me. It was time to leave.
He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day.
But I never did get to run away.
My mother and I were halfway across the stable yard, taking the shortest route to the muck-heap passageway, when the headlights of a car parked close to the house suddenly came on, catching us full in their beams.
Whoever was in the car couldn’t help but see us.
‘Run,’ I shouted in my mother’s ear, but running wasn’t really in her repertoire, even when in mortal danger. It was only ten yards or so to the passageway door, but I wasn’t at all sure we would make it. I dragged her along as all hell broke loose behind me.
There were shouts and running footsteps on the gravel near the house.
Then there was a shot, and another.
Shotgun pellets peppered my back, stinging my neck and shoulders, but the rucksack took most of them. The shooter was too far away for the shot to inflict much damage, but he would get closer, especially as my dear mother was so slow.
We reached the passageway door and I swung it open, pushing her through it ahead of me, both of us nearly falling over the blue plastic drum.
‘Mum, please,’ I said loudly to her. ‘Go through the passage and out the back. Then hide.’
But she wouldn’t let go of my arm. She was simply too frightened to move. Conditioning young men not to freeze under fire was a common problem in the army, and one that wasn’t always solved, so I could hardly blame my mother for doing so now.
Another shot rang out and a piece of the wooden door splintered behind us. That was a bit closer, I thought – far too close, in fact. The shooter had now closed to within killing range and another shot tore into the wooden roof just above our heads sending splinters into our hair. Maybe I’d been wrong in thinking they’d try to keep me alive so that I could return the money.
‘Come on,’ I said to my mother as calmly as I could. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
I firmly removed her hand from my arm and then held it in mine as I almost dragged her down the passageway and out into the space behind. I could hear shouts from the stable yard as someone was directing his troops around the end of the building to find us. However, the man who was doing the shouting stayed where he was, in the yard. He obviously didn’t fancy walking into the dark passageway in case I was in there waiting for him.
I pulled my mother round behind the muck heap. There was a tall, narrow space between the rear retaining wall of the heap and a hay barn beyond.
‘Get in there,’ I said quietly in my best voice-of-command. ‘And lie face down.’
She didn’t like it, I could tell by the way she kicked at the wet ground, but she couldn’t protest as the tape was still over her mouth. She hesitated.
‘Mum,’ I said. ‘
Please. Otherwise we will die.’
There was just enough light from the stars for me to see the fear in her eyes. Still she clung to me, so I eased up the corner of the tape over her mouth and peeled it away.
‘Mum,’ I said again. ‘Please do it now.’ I kissed her softly on the forehead, but then I firmly pushed her away from me and into the gap.
‘Oh, God,’ she whispered in despair. ‘Help me.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said, trying to reassure her. ‘Just lie down here for a while and it will all be fine.’
She obviously didn’t really want to but she knelt down in the gap and then lay flat on her tummy, as I’d asked. I pulled some of the old straw down off the muck heap and covered her as best I could. It probably didn’t smell too good, but so what? Fear didn’t smell great, either.
I left her there and went back to the end of the passageway. Whoever had been shooting had still not come through but I could see that the car was being driven round the end of the stable buildings so that its lights were about to shine down the back, straight towards where I was standing.
I stepped again into the passageway.
The car headlights were both a help and a hindrance. They helped in showing me the position of at least one of my enemies but, at the same time, their brightness destroyed my night vision.
Consequently, the passageway appeared darker than ever but, from my previous visits, I could visualize the location of every obstruction on the floor and I easily stepped silently around them. I pressed my eye up against a gap between the door slats and looked out once more into the stable yard beyond.