She almost smiled. “Fuck off, soppy bastard.”
Dmitri led me to an upstairs room. There was a mangy pool-table, black-and-white prints of Hollywood legends on the walls. The place was even sadder than I felt. Dmitri opened a wall unit, full of boxed tablets and smartphones. Helping myself to an iPhone and an international sim card, I accessed my dead-letter drop email account. There was a new link to a shared draft email from Marcus (using the codename DEW CLAW). It was less than twenty minutes old. The draft had never been sent, so couldn’t be intercepted in transit. Oldest trick in the book. I tapped in a second password.
And discovered how Drexler had located Focus Projects.
Chapter eighteen
INTREP [C/N DEW CLAW] 16.47hrs ZULU.
De Soto Augur hard drive heavily encrypted. Fragments of data accessed. Headlines:
(1) DREXLER recruited 18 months ago by US-based EVOCATI Lois BAKER (deceased). DREXLER dismissed from US Dept. of Defence program OBSIDIAN FUTURES
(2) Owen MONTGOMERY (‘MONTY’) has been working directly to DREXLER for (at least) nine months. MONTGOMERY tasked non-Firm asset to conduct targeting surveillance on Firm’s ICEPICK operators
(3) These included Cal WINTER and (by association) Juliet EASTER. Monty (mistakenly) believed WINTER was reporting on The Firm to SIS via EASTER
(4) Surveillance on EASTER led asset to covert Focus Projects premises known as ‘The Harbour’ earlier this year, ergo Monty aware of location (COMMENT – we believe DREXLER ordered arson attack on The Harbour as direct retaliation for attack on De Soto Augur. Rapidity of attack demonstrates high level of operational capability)
(5) DEW CLAW requests WINTER investigates Monty’s asset to progress operation. Asset identified as Kenneth DUNCAN, a private investigator with no previous connections to The Firm
(6) HMG sceptical of intelligence concerning DREXLER’S (alleged) plan, US cousins deny any knowledge (COMMENT – am sceptical re. American denial)
Attached to the email was a link to a website: a company called Legion Investigations. It looked low-rent, geared up for matrimonial disputes and process-serving. “Dmitri, you do security work on The Blue,” I said. “Can you get this bloke checked out?”
“Let me see,” Dmitri replied, reaching for his mobile. He tapped in a number and spoke to someone in Serbo-Croat. He ended the call and made another, this time in Russian. A third was in pidgin Arabic and Chechen.
“Any luck?”
“Naturally. Every Slavic brother in London has moment to spare for Uncle Dmitri.”
I refilled our shot-glasses. “Payékhalee,” I said. Let’s get started.
Dmitri leant against the snooker table. “My dogs tell me Kenny Duncan is ex-Scotland Yard detective. Trickiest type of musor, one from the same streets as the blatnoy he arrests. Kenny has many mouths who speak to him and many eyes who watch.”
“Where does he live?” I said.
Dmitri handed me a scrap of paper. It was a betting slip. “Here. Real details, not bullshit from website.”
“Thanks,” I said, tipping vodka down my throat.
“Is there anything else?”
I nodded. “Clean clothes and a shower.”
“No problem,” he replied. “Your dress sense stinks, we improve it.”
By the time I’d showered, shaved and eaten, freshly shop-lifted clobber arrived. Covent Garden too, by the look of the price tags. I pulled on box-fresh Paul Smith – petrol-blue jeans, black wingtip brogues and a navy button-down shirt. The grey sports jacket was Armani. It covered my shoulder holster the way only Italian tailoring can.
Shona treated my bruises and scratches, finally splashing cologne on my face. The sting was refreshing. “That’ll do ya,” she smiled.
Dmitri put a hand on my shoulder. “Be careful with this Kenny Duncan - Ot volka bezhal, da na medvedya popal.” It was an old Russian saying - ‘I ran from the wolf, but straight into a bear.’
“Privychka — vtoraya natura,” I replied. It roughly translates into ‘old habits die hard.’”
Dmitri and Shona waved as I hit the street. Walking along Old Jamaica Road, I made a call.
“Legion Security.” London accent. Gravelly.
“I used to work for a bloke called Monty.”
“In which case, you ain’t really selling this conversation to me.”
“You’ve caught a cold, Kenny. Meet me in the hour, or I’ll burn your house down.”
Kenny chuckled. “I’m proper terrified.”
I read Kenny’s address aloud, in a leafier ‘burb on the border with Kent. “I’m not joking.”
“OK, let’s make an appointment,” he said, voice a low growl. “Meet me at…”
“…The Angel on Bermondsey Wall. One hour.”
The Angel was an old Victorian boozer overlooking the river. Smoke trailed from the Isle of Dogs, The Harbour still smouldering. I ordered a pint and sat in a corner, using a couple of old geezers for cover. They took in my black eye and looked away.
Kenny Duncan arrived half an hour later. He looked like a cop, scanning the room with a look combining suspicion with confidence. Fifty-something with a Marbella tan, he wore a lairy orange Lyle & Scott polo with the collar turned up. I reckoned he’d been handsome once. 1986, maybe. With him was an angry-looking lump in a black Stone Island jacket, the sort football hooligans wear to show they want to get punched.
The detective sat and studied his phone. Stone Island tried to pretended they weren’t together, taking a perch at the bar. It was amateur hour and I ignored them. Eventually, Kenny stood up, shook his head, and left the pub. Stone Island followed. I loitered in the pub doorway as they walked to a nearby Landcruiser. When they’d got in the car, I opened the rear door, jumped in and plugged my .45 into the back of Stone Island’s head.
“Kenny, you didn’t say nuffin’ abaht shooters,” said Stone Island, more irritated than scared.
“I didn’t fucking know, did I?” Kenny replied.
“Drive,” I said. “Your office.”
We drove in silence, stopping outside a row of houses on Maze Hill. The office was on the top floor of a converted terrace. Nothing special: cheap office furniture, threadbare carpets and a row of security cabinets. The vanity wall behind Kenny’s desk was covered with police commendations.
“Kenny, I bet you’ve got a pair of handcuffs lying about,” I said.
He nodded and slowly reached into his desk. My gun followed. He pulled out an old pair of chain-link Hyatts.
I pointed at Stone Island. “Cuff him, gag him and put him in that cupboard. I’m sure he doesn’t want to hear this conversation.”
“No, I really don’t,” said Stone Island wearily. “Kenny, find another minder.”
“Sorry, Keith,” Kenny shrugged, hand-cuffing his friend. The dingy cupboard ran off a corridor, full of cleaning products, stationery and other junk. No windows. Kenny reappeared and sat at his desk. “I knew Monty was a wrong ‘un.”
“But the money was good?”
The detective nodded. “Monty said he was in charge of due diligence for a hedge fund. We both knew that was bollocks, but he paid on time and in used twenties.”
“Let’s see the paperwork,” I said.
Kenny pulled a file from his desk drawer. “It’s all in there. Now put the bloody gun down. I hate guns.”
I flipped through the file: surveillance photos of me, Oz and other ICEPICKS. We were lying low in London. Then Juliet: leaving the Focus Projects office. Entering The Harbour…
“Why you were spying on us?”
“Look mate, it wasn’t an asking questions sort of job.”
I put the gun down in front of me with a metallic clunk. “Don’t mug me off, Kenny.”
“Okay, I reckoned Monty was a spook of some sort. I met spies now and then, when I was Old Bill. I know the type. I’ve never found ‘em to be particularly dangerous.”
“Monty used to be a spook,” I replied, “but he’s dangerous enough.”
I tapped the .45 with a quick-bitten finger. “She’s in hospital right now, Kenny. A good friend of mine.”
“Look, I’m sorry…”
“I’m sure you are,” I replied slowly, studying the commendations on the wall behind his head. Kenny had worked infamous murders, caught bank robbers. A photo showed him going across the pavement in a butch leather jacket, pistol in hand. A man in a stocking mask was trussed up on the deck. “Ex-Flying Squad, Kenny? You strike me as the type who’d run his own ‘due diligence’ on Monty.”
Kenny sat back in his chair, shoulders slumped. “Yeah, I put surveillance on him. My best people. He was wily, but we got him in the end.”
“Go on.”
Kenny walked across the office. He opened a fridge and pulled out a six-pack of beer. He pushed one towards me. “A couple of weeks ago we identified Monty’s boss.”
I thumbed through more grainy photos. The last was an old-fashioned photographic contact sheet. I raised an eyebrow. “Wet film, Kenny?”
“Your lot call it Tradecraft. Old-school,” he said. “You can’t hack a real photo.”
A photo showed Monty in a brasserie with Erik Drexler, sipping coffee. “What did you find out?” I asked.
“Not much, to be honest,” Kenny replied, sipping beer. “But the red-haired fella with the silly beard is a Yank. Monty worked for him, he was kissing serious arse. But the Yank was working for someone else. A French bloke.”
Had a seedy private eye identified Drexler and The Firm’s new patron, where MI6 had failed? “Go on…”
Kenny smiled proudly. “My surveillance footie sat right next to ‘em. Good girl, ex-C11. They were speaking French. They got sloppy, too bloody clever by half. Probably thought they were the only ones in the room who know the lingo. But Sheila speaks Frog. The Yank mentioned a place he was visiting to see ‘the patron.’ Nördhaus, he said, on the island.”
“Why’d you think that was significant?” I replied.
“According to Google,” Kenny replied, “Nördhaus is an island with a bloody great mansion on it. That’s the East Frisian Islands, belongs to a rich French bloke.”
All I knew about the Frisian Islands was they were off the north German coast. “What’s the Frenchman called?”
“Jacques Paradis,” Kenny replied. “He’s one of those minted political types, spends his life on committees being important. Don’t ask me what he actually does. Now fuck off out of my life. You’ll do us both a favour.”
“I don’t think so.”
The private eye pulled a face. “What?”
“You’re hired. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re a back street detective, Kenny. You’re perfect, flying well below the radar.”
Kenny’s face drained of colour. “I’m booked ‘til Christmas.”
“I’ve got an account at a Swiss Bank called Tete Noir. It’s got nearly a million quid in it. I’ll pay you half of that up front. When this job is done, there’s more. Just bill me twice the going rate. Take the piss as much as you like.”
Kenny thought about the offer for a millisecond. “Hmmm. I’ve got a gold medal in piss-taking.”
I prefer a man who’s coin-operated. You know where you stand. “D’you have access to a decent financial investigator? One who can get accounts checked out on the QT?”
Kenny shot me a sour look. “Of course I have.”
“The American in the photo is Erik Drexler. He’s linked to the lease on an office in The City, a company called De Soto Augur. Can you get it checked out?”
“Sure,” he sniffed, “but I can’t promise anything, seein’ as I’m just a back-street-fucking detective.”
“I’m sure you’ll pull a rabbit out of your hat,” I said, pointing at his commendations. I pulled a shrink-wrapped block of banknotes from my pack and tossed it on the desk. “Twenty grand for your trouble. Now start making stuff happen.”
Kenny started tearing the plastic from the banknotes, eyes gleaming. “So we’re like partners, right?”
“No, you’re my employee.”
“Whatever. Take my private mobile number,” the detective replied. He produced a fat leather wallet and fished out a business card. Another card, plastic-coated, fell on the desk. It was a picture of a wizened old fella with a beard, a holy flame burning above his head.
“A Saint?” I said.
Kenny made a faux-pious face. “O most holy apostle, Saint Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the Church honoureth and invoketh thee universally, as the patron of hopeless cases, and of things almost despaired of.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“I’m a good Catholic boy,” Kenny shrugged, “so was my DI at Carter Street nick, bloke called Paddy Flanagan. Paddy gave me that after I lost my first big court case in ‘87. Saint Jude is the patron saint of lost causes, my son. A lot of coppers prefer Saint Michael, but that’s where I buy my socks.”
“Lost causes? Sounds like my kind of saint,” I replied.
Kenny slid the card across the table towards me. “For half a million quid? It’s time to let Saint Jude go. You look like you could use him.”
Saint Jude gazed at me, eyes welling with pity. “That’s the nicest thing that’s happened to me all day,” I said. Which was true.
“No problem,” Kenny replied, grinning wolfishly. “Just remember The Saint Jude Rules.”
“What rules?”
Kenny smiled. “If you’re gonna fight a lost cause, always attack, especially when you’re winning. Play the man as much as the ball, get under the bastard’s skin. Sneaky? Yeah, be sneaky as fuck, do legs, and always punch under the belt. Then maybe, just maybe, you can come out on top. And if you don’t, take the other bloke down with you. I mean it - always take the other fucker down. Else he’ll just come back. Those are The Saint Jude Rules. Understand?”
“Understood,” I replied, tucking Saint Jude in my pocket.
Kenny reached for his phone with one hand and waved me away with the other, “fuck off then. Let’s see what a lowlife south-of-the-river ‘tec can do.”
I untied poor old Stone Island, shook his hand and left the office.
It was getting dark. I bought a bottle of Johnny Walker from a grubby off-licence and traipsed across Blackheath. Then I slumped on a bench in Greenwich Park, next to the statue of General Wolfe, mad conqueror of Quebec. I needed to think, make a plan. So I chugged whisky and thought ‘til my brain hurt. Drexler. Paradis… What was The Firm now?
Then darkness came. Absolute, a rolling wave of blackness, like someone just hit the world’s biggest ‘off’ switch. Kids in the park laughed in disbelief, the only source of illumination tiny smart phone screens. They’d be tweeting the news, until the phone networks crashed.
Pilbeam’s virus was live, Black Swans flocking to the end of Hoffman’s Curve.
Chapter nineteen
I called Dmitri and asked my biggest favour yet. Then I belled Oz.
“I’m here. Dungeness Engineering is buttoned-up tight,” he said. “Monty’s on-site.”
“Drexler?”
“Haven’t seen him,” he replied. “I count eight triggermen and Monty. I reckon the muscle comes from the Trieste Cell.”
“Roget that,” I said. “I’m on my way. And the other thing?”
“There’s a reply to the flash signal. We’re on,” said Oz finally. “No compromise reported.”
I felt a surge of relief. The bloody ace was still up our sleeve. Now was the time to play it.
Cop cars and ambulances howled through the darkness, towards central London. People scurrying home, fires already flickering in the inky distance. A pack of young men swaggered by, chugging beer and smoking spliff. One smashed a car window and laughed.
Dmitri
arrived shortly after, driving a super-pimped Mercedes G-Wagen. I climbed inside, the Russian passing me a holdall. His shoplifters had been busy: inside was a grey Arcteryx field suit, dirt-biking gloves and a pair of Merrell cross-terrain boots. I changed as we sped down the A2, listening to the radio news.
The Home Office denies cyber-attack rumours, despite power cuts crippling south-eastern England. Meanwhile, The London Stock Exchange Group is reporting ‘significant operating issues’ tonight due to power outages. There are doubts full trading will resume in the morning…
Two Americans died in a fire at the London offices of a private security company earlier today, one was named as Professor Bryan Hoffman…
The Russian defence ministry confirms naval deployments in the Baltic and Mediterranean seas are in progress, citing ‘unnecessarily provocative’ NATO military exercises…
I called Juliet on the satellite phone. “You OK?”
“Yes. I’m with Diana. Harry’s on his way to find you and Oz. He said he had an errand to run.”
“An errand?”
“Something to do with The Dutchman,” Juliet replied, voice croaky.
“Where are you now?”
“Putney, in one of Diana’s safe houses. I’m trying to call my brother’s nurse to check he’s okay, but the phone networks are all screwed.” Juliet’s brother Guy needed 24/7 medical attention and had a private nurse.
“Can you get someone down there?”
“I’m working on it.” Her voice was controlled. Icy. “Now, give me a SITREP.”
I told her about my conversation with Kenny. “Monty put you under surveillance. It’s how they discovered The Harbour. ”
“Ex-police surveillance? And I didn’t spot them?” Juliet sniffed.
“Well, they did. They followed Monty, too - that’s how Kenny thinks he identified Drexler’s boss.” I told her about the Frenchman, Paradis. “He lives on the Frisian Islands, a place called Nördhaus. I’ve recruited Kenny. He could come in handy.”
“Jacques Paradis is an ex-EU security apparatchik, ran a bevy of sub-committees dedicated to creating a pan-European intelligence capability. Okay, give me this creepy PI’s number,” said Juliet. “I’m waiting for Marcus, I trust he’ll bring news of something resembling a plan.”
The Saint Jude Rules (Cal Winter Book 3) Page 14