Nom de Guerre

by Gulvin, Jeff

  Jack Swann was trawling through evidence at his desk on the fifteenth floor of Scotland Yard. He looked up at the clock and calendar on the wall, thought for some reason about the little ‘shrine’ that the Bomb Data Centre had on Carlos and wondered whether he or Boese was the worst. Bomb data had one of his guns, a bunch of notes, and some other stuff that they had exhibited after Carlos was sentenced to life imprisonment in Paris. It occurred to Swann that if the DST had caught him back in 1975, when he killed their agents in the Rue Toullier, he would have been guillotined years ago. He touched his throat briefly and went back to his notes. His heart was high in his chest this morning. He was not due in court for days yet, but he was anxious. Something about this one, something about Boese. This man had singled out his life for interruption.

  He went to get coffee from the vending machine and then wandered upstairs to where Campbell McCulloch was baseman again. A couple of guys from SB were milling around and Swann noticed two operatives from Box, one of whom worked closely with Julian Moore. ‘What’s happening with the Poles?’ Swann asked McCulloch.

  ‘Heard nothing. The plot rolled at three o’clock this morning. They’ll be almost in Liverpool by now.’

  Swann went to the window where the day was breaking over London. He looked at his watch: seven-fifteen. Boese’s trial began at ten, but he would have to be there for discussions with his QC at least an hour before. The special escort group would be on the move from Reading Prison about now.

  Webb yawned, smoothing the palms of his hands across the steering wheel. They were well north now, the van labouring along in the nearside lane, with a spotter ten cars back. ‘Wish we’d been able to get sound in that cab,’ he said to nobody in particular. ‘Film’s boring without the soundtrack.’ He glanced at the SFO team leader next to him and winked.

  They were north of Stoke-on-Trent and the van had not deviated from its course. Once they had crossed from the M40 to the M6 at Birmingham, they had trundled along at a steady fifty miles an hour—one hired van and thirty surveillance vehicles, including three motorcyclists braving the February chill in pursuit. The day was cold, with a sharpness to the air that kept the heater on in the car, but the sky was clear and the sun weak but full behind what little clouds there were. At junction eighteen of the motorway, the van suddenly turned off. Webb glanced behind at Harris as the word came in from the lead car. They followed it down through Middlewich and Kelsall, before it turned suddenly north for Ellesmere Port. Webb shook his head at himself in the mirror.

  The SEG convoy left Reading Prison in a shower of flashes from long-range press photographers. India 99, rotor blades whirring above them, kept the TV crews at a safe distance, and the motorcycle outriders moved up to block the first traffic junction. Nicholson had his MP5 between his knees, his Glock 17 handgun strapped against his hip, and was studying the map book closely. They wound their way down to the M4 intersection, motorcycles moving ahead. All the vehicles had sirens yowling and the blue strobe lights whirling on their rooftops. The lead car blocked the oncoming traffic on the roundabout that led them on to the M4 itself. The driver, with the window rolled down, had his arm extended to keep the traffic back. Nicholson was checking the convoy behind him—front car, then the truck, and behind that the Range Rover, out in the lane to stop anyone coming alongside. The bikes kept traffic well behind them. Police Convoy and Do Not Overtake signs flashed in the back of their vehicles. Nothing between the lead and front cars. The block was in and the engine idling. ‘Come to me. Come to me.’ Nicholson spoke to the drivers behind in his back-to-back headset.

  The lead bike was ahead of them at the top of the slip road. ‘Move up. Come to me.’ His voice crackled in Nicholson’s ear.

  Nicholson squinted at the map, then back to the convoy again. ‘Move up. Move up.’

  The driver nodded to the cars backed up round the roundabout, keeping his arm out, palm upraised, then slipped ahead of the front car, and they rolled up on to the motorway in convoy. The first bike became the last, as the traffic was blocked to let them on. All lanes were occupied, the vehicles shifting out at speed to overtake slower traffic in the nearside lane, bikes and cars bunching unwilling drivers all but on to the hard shoulder.

  Rafal Kestin drove five hundred pounds worth of battered Volvo on to the M4 at junction two, where the elevated section began, and checked his mirrors. Already the rush-hour traffic was gathering. Before him lay the business buildings that dominated this area of London, company head offices, many-storeyed buildings climbing in white and beige and brown, crowding the gunmetal grey of the carriageway. He took a cigarette from the packet on the passenger seat and popped it in his mouth, then pressed the lighter in on the dashboard. Amazingly, it worked. He lit the cigarette and drifted across the road. He was midway between junctions one and two now, and suddenly he hauled the wheel to the right and ploughed into the Audi next to him. The driver of the Audi fought with the wheel, but the car got away from him and hit the concrete barrier on the raised section of motorway. The two cars fishtailed together and came to a jagged halt, coupled into one another at the bumper. Kestin braced himself, but still shot forward against his seat belt as a car slammed into the back of him. His cigarette was still alight, still in his mouth even, and he sucked on it before tapping away the ash, then climbed out of the car. The Audi driver was staring at his front end, the colour in his cheeks beginning to burn crimson.

  ‘Oh, God. Look, I’m really sorry.’ Kestin stood with his hands on his hips, shaking his head at the Audi. Behind him, the third driver was climbing out of his car. Kestin watched him, then glanced back along the twin lanes of carriageway as the traffic began to back up. He reached into his car for his mobile. ‘I’ll call the AA,’ he said to the stricken driver.

  Tal-Salem took the call, seated as he was, knees hunched behind the wheel of the Range Rover, which was still parked behind the hoarding that faced on to Hanwell Broadway, between the clock tower and the lights at Church Road. He acknowledged it, pressed the red button on the phone, then dialled the watcher on Southall Lane Bridge. Beside him on the passenger seat, the collapsed stock of the Vikhr poked out from under his coat. The driver of the skip lorry was watching him through the window.

  ‘SEG from MP,’ Nicholson heard the traffic operator’s voice in his earpiece, talking to him from the central command complex at Scotland Yard. ‘Accident on raised section of the M4, between junctions two and one.’

  ‘Acknowledged, MP. Alternative route. A40 through Hangar Lane.’ He looked at the map in front of him. They could continue a good way along the motorway, taking advantage of the three lanes, before threading a path up to the A40. He had considered the A4, but that would already be getting choked up with people leaving the M4 at every available exit. He glanced at his driver and then passed on the change in plan to the rest of the convoy.

  Four men, in black leather, smoked cigarettes through the mouth-pieces of their silk ski masks, crash helmets set on the wall in the car park of the Viaduct pub, just on the Hanwell side of the River Brent. One of them had his leathers half undone and the butt of his 9mm Gyurza poked out. One of the others noticed it and nodded to him, indicating that he should push it out of sight. As he did so, a mobile phone rang and he answered it, spoke for a few minutes, then switched it off. ‘It’s on,’ he said quietly. ‘Stage one is complete.’

  A man with short-cut hair drove the three-and-a-half-ton flatbed truck along the A40, whistling to himself as he drew closer and closer to the underpass at Hangar Lane roundabout and the North Circular Road. He watched the traffic, heavy now, and thought how pissed off everyone was going to be. In his pocket he fingered the small pair of wire-cutters. He slowed the truck as he approached the downward slope into the underpass, then slowed it some more and flicked on his hazard warning lights, before bringing it to a stop right in the heart of the tunnel. He sat in the outside lane, having made no attempt to cross to the inside carriageway, and people were honking their horns behind him. He ju
mped out of the cab, waving to the irate drivers behind, then dropped to one knee. He half slid under the engine by the offside wheel and snipped the reservoir pipe, which kept the airbrakes off, close to one end. The brakes seized on with a hiss of escaping air. He smiled and shook his head. The police had a Land-Rover, which could pump up deflated airbrakes so a truck could be towed. They would have a problem with this one. Moving back to the solidifying traffic behind him, he lifted his hands in a hopeless gesture and unclipped the mobile phone from his belt.

  Webb smoothed the ends of his fingers over his moustache, as they followed the Luton van up through Ellesmere Port. The van passed a transport café on the right-hand side of the road, drove a bit further, then swung all the way round the roundabout before turning back into the car park of the café. Webb’s was the eyeball car and he drove on, ignoring the van-full of Poles, and crossed the roundabout before heading a few hundred yards up the road. He gave the location of the van to following cars and then pulled off a mile further on. They had a Transit van as part of the pursuit. The driver would pull into the café and go and get some breakfast. Webb yawned and leaned over the back of the seat. ‘I wish we had that sound, Chrissie,’ he said.

  The traffic operator at the Yard passed the information regarding Hangar Lane to Nicholson. ‘Fucking wouldn’t you know it,’ he said to his driver. He scratched his head then and glanced at the convoy behind him. They were travelling at seventy miles an hour, with the Range Rover in the middle lane, a car’s length back from the prison truck, ensuring that nobody could try to pass. Nicholson looked at the map again. ‘Keep close,’ he said, as the front car fell away a fraction. ‘Hangar Lane is closed. We’re going to take the Uxbridge Road. Come off at the Heston Services.’ He spoke ahead to the Yard, asking them to make sure that the M4 control point had the barrier lifted so they could get through.

  The press were gathered on the bridges above the motorway, filming the convoy as it passed. One man stood with a camera on North Hyde Lane where it crossed above the motorway, and watched the grouping pass beneath him. He had his mobile phone to his ear, the line already open to Tal-Salem in the Range Rover on Hanwell Broadway. ‘They’re leaving at Heston,’ he said. He moved then to the northern end of the bridge and watched to see what would happen.

  The convoy wound its way round the back of the services, lights flashing, and passed the M4 motorway control building and the red chequered barrier beyond the lorry park. The ground opened flat before them and the lead car raced up to the junction with North Hyde Lane. ‘Taking the offside,’ Nicholson told the others, as his driver blocked both lanes of traffic and allowed the convoy to filter out. ‘Come to me. Come to me.’ Nicholson was watching the road, residential here but quite wide. He wanted the shortest route he could get to Uxbridge Road. ‘Right on Fern,’ he said to the driver.

  From the bridge across the motorway, the man watched them turn right into Fern Lane. That road was traffic-calmed and he knew it would take them a while to get to the far end. He spoke to Tal-Salem once again.

  Tal-Salem drummed his fingers on the steering wheel of the Range Rover. They had taken the only sensible route they could. M4 gone. A4 gone. A40 gone. There was only the Uxbridge Road left. He stopped drumming and tightened his fingers a fraction round the wheel, and stared at the closed gate ahead of him—vertical wooden slats between the advertising hoardings. He looked to his left at the men in the skip lorry. One of them climbed out of the passenger seat and hoisted himself into the back, folding the tarpaulin over his head.

  A workman standing at the bus stop by the Hanwell Car Centre answered the call on his mobile phone. He wore grey overalls, one piece, and a bulky donkey jacket over the top. In his pocket he had a black ski mask, and he had been careful to ensure that no shop had street-surveillance CCTV before he took up his position. Hanging on its sling under his jacket was the 380-millimetre-long Vikhr submachine gun, the rounds of which would pass through body armour like a hot knife through butter. Across the road, his colleague nodded briefly, his back to the plywood door with 105A scrawled in red paint on it. Behind that door, two other ‘workmen’ checked the rounds in their clips, the three spares they each carried and the fragmentation grenades on their belts. The door led to an alley between the buildings. At the far end was the flat, but before that an archway covered two more doors on the right, leading to the garages at the back of the shops. The service road ran parallel behind the shops and came out on to Church Street. Four of the stolen bikes were parked there, helmets straddling the seats. At the far end of the alley, just before the Church of Christi St Mellis, another bike squatted, two men on it, rider and pillion. The pillion carefully worked the action on his Gyurza pistol, and then replaced it inside his leathers.

  The convoy bumped along Fern Lane, came through the narrowed section at the end and pulled out on to Norwood Road. Much wider here and they accelerated again. Then the outriders blocked the oncoming traffic and they crossed into Tentelow Lane. A man walked his dog on Norwood Green. As they passed, he lifted his mobile phone.

  Nicholson blocked the roundabout at Three Bridges and they filtered on to Windmill Lane, round the second roundabout then slowed for the right turn under Iron Bridge, which led them on to the Uxbridge Road. They had not stopped anywhere en route, not at a junction, or roundabout, passing straight through every set of red lights with the lead car blocking the oncoming traffic. The traffic controller at the Yard told them that Uxbridge Road was busy, but traffic was moving. All local units had been informed they were coming and traffic cars were in position to assist them should the need arise. Nicholson glanced in his rearview mirror as they blocked Uxbridge Road. ‘Come to me. Keep close,’ he said into his radio. They moved off again, the bikes opening the traffic ahead of them.

  In the prison truck, Ismael Boese sat on the plastic bench in the single locked cell and stared at the escape hatch, locked above his head.

  Webb listened to the radio. The Poles were out of the café, in the car park, smoking cigarettes and talking. Vaczka was looking at his watch and glancing up and down the road. The sun had gone in and the clouds were ice-grey, threatening snow rather than rain. Webb shifted in his seat. Next to him, the SFO team leader rubbed the barrel of his carbine with a cloth. The Transit driver had left the café and a motorcyclist had taken his place, the rider now sitting in the café drinking coffee, watching what was going on outside. The Poles were still talking, Stahl kicking at a battered Coca-Cola can mashed into the tarmac. A Renault van pulled off the road and parked next to theirs. The observer whispered into his radio. ‘Stand by. Stand by. Blue van. Renault. This could be it, boys.’

  Webb stared out of the windscreen. No booking to Dublin. Box had had no word of anyone over here from the other side, who they didn’t already know about. No activity, no movement from London or Manchester or Birmingham. The SFO commander spoke to his men; half the team had been deployed on standby, in cars fifty yards down from the car park. The other half were already moving up. Webb looked back at Christine Harris. ‘What d’you want to do?’ he asked her.

  The SEG convoy pulled on to Uxbridge Road and, as they did so, a man on a motorcycle watched them from McDonald’s car park on the other side of the bridge. He spoke into a mobile phone. In the car park behind the Viaduct pub, the pillions climbed behind the riders as two 900cc motorcycles were started and the engines revved gently. They moved to the lip of the turn behind the pub.

  Tal-Salem nodded to the driver of the skip lorry, who backed his truck down towards the west gate on Jessamine Road. Tal-Salem climbed out of the Range Rover and opened the north gates, swinging them back between the hoardings. A couple of people looked at him briefly from the pavement. He caught the eye of the man with the bulky workman’s jacket, at the bus stop by the car centre. Then he got back in the Range Rover and started the engine. The helicopter had already made a pass and was swinging away to the south of them. At the far end of the road, by the church, the other motorcyclist started his en
gine. Then rider and pillion pulled ski masks over their faces and strapped on their helmets.

  The traffic was bunched where the Uxbridge Road narrowed from two lanes to one each way. The convoy was already in the outside lane, passing the old St Bernard’s Mental Hospital, which was now some upmarket apartment building, and then the Ealing Hospital. After that was the narrowed road, then the bridge over the Brent and the hill up to the lights and Hanwell clock tower. ‘Take the offside.’ Nicholson moved the Glock where it was digging into his hip. The traffic was heavy here. The driver switched the siren from the yowl to the long drawn-out wail to shift the traffic.

  Up ahead, the helicopter had circled and was making a pass, fifteen hundred feet up, swinging back over the Broadway. The driver and passenger of the skip lorry were outside, checking the tarpaulin as it passed above their heads. Nicholson called the convoy on, taking the offside path after the outriders, pushing oncoming traffic to the side as they made their way across the river bridge and past the Viaduct pub. The lights at the clock tower intersection were red and an outrider blocked the lanes. The lead car pushed ahead. ‘Come to me,’ Nicholson said into his radio. ‘Come to me. Keep up.’

  Two motorcycles with pillions pulled out of the pub car park and ambled along the road, skirting the bunched traffic on the nearside lane. They followed the police Range Rover, at a distance of fifty yards. Ahead of them were the two rear outriders, still blocking the red lights.

  The lead car crossed the clock tower intersection; 150 yards now to the second set of lights. The gates to the vacant lot on the right-hand side were open, a maw between the hoardings. Halfway down the open concrete lot, the driver and passenger tensed in the skip lorry, engine running, gears engaged, the clutch beginning to burn. Tal-Salem held his phone to his ear, but he could see the workman at the nearside bus stop. The lead car passed, moving up on the wrong side of the road, the outriders already controlling the next intersection. Behind the lead car, the front car. The skip lorry began to lumber across the open concrete lot. Tal-Salem watched the man at the bus stop, now holding a crumpled ski mask in his left hand. The front car was at the gates, crossing in front of them.