Gil Haning was no longer an employed intelligence officer. When she was, she was a good one and certain parts of her training had stayed with her, like riding a bike stays with you all your life. It was with this training, somewhere deep in her subconscious, undercover, mind that she kept glancing at one particular car, three or four vehicles behind JJ’s Porsche. Cyrus was merrily unaware. Eyes closed, legs jiggling, curly mop bobbing from side to side. He was contentedly lost in his music.
Gil’s biological neurons were also bopping away but in her case it was because her internal network was on alert. At this point it was a lot closer to DEFCON 5 than DEFCON 1, but on alert it was. The car in question was a black Mercedes E-class with tinted windows. Gil remembered seeing it near the Harrodian. It had not really registered, there was always a good sprinkling of high quality cars in south west London. However, the Harrodian was at the tail end of a residential road, leading eventually to Hammersmith Bridge. This car had been parked in the road, maybe a hundred yards from the school’s gates. It was on its own. The other cars in the vicinity were parked either in the Harrodian’s car park or the individual driveways of the houses, near the school.
It was there, and now it’s here, three car lengths behind Gil and Cyrus, on Putney Bridge. Still not that unusual thought Gil. Lower Richmond Road, Putney Bridge, Fulham Road or King’s Road, that would be a fairly normal route to get from the outskirts of Barnes, Roehampton or Richmond into central London. Let’s see if the black Merc takes the Fulham Road route when we turn right into the New King’s Road, thought Gil. It didn’t. The traffic lights changed and Gil was on the New King’s Road. The black Merc was now two cars adrift as one of the other cars behind Gil and Cyrus had gone in the direction of Fulham Road. Gil still had not raised her DEFCON status. She couldn’t work it out precisely in her head, but there had to be forty to fifty right hand and left hand turns a given car could take between the beginning of the New King’s Road and Markham Square. The odds were that the black Merc would turn before they reached home. It didn’t.
As Gil drove into Markham Square she could see in her rear mirror that the black Merc drove by on the main King’s Road. The vast majority of the time that would be that. Maybe the Merc’s driver lived a few streets further on, maybe he was on his way to central London, maybe he was going to have tea with the bleedin’ Queen. While the sum of all those maybes added up to the most likely probability, it still left one maybe outside of that set. Maybe the driver of the Merc is a professional and he drove past to avoid arousing attention.
“Are we there yet?” asked Cyrus in a mock kiddie’s voice and wondering why Gil had not fully parked the car in the Square.
“We’re here Cyrus,” Gil replied. “I was just dawdling a bit and thinking about the best parking spot. Don’t want to kerb the wheels. Your dad would kill me!” she exclaimed. It made perfect sense too. While Markham Square was subject to resident parking permits, as was most of Chelsea, there always seemed to be more cars than houses. On top of that, certain parts of the Square had parking on both sides of the street so if two fat Chelsea tractors were directly opposite one another, then a third fat Chelsea tractor was going to struggle to navigate the Square without risking mirror bashing at best. Gil parked the car about two doors away from their house and tucked in the external mirrors.
“Cyrus, go into the house, stick the kettle on and let’s have some green tea and a snack before we train in an hour or so. I just need to pop into Boots to get some woman’s stuff,” said Gil, with no hint of alarm in her voice.
“Sure,” replied Cyrus, not wishing for any further detail. With that he extracted his tennis equipment from the back seats, closed his car door and skipped up the half a dozen or so stairs to his front door, all Chelsea blue and gleaming. Once inside, Cyrus dropped all of his kit just inside the front door. While he knew that Gil would return and yell ‘Cyrus you’re not six anymore, pick up your stuff slobboid’, he’d await his admonishment before tidying up. Anyway, he felt like a brew of green tea and a biscuit or six before the hard work of reposing on a mat began.
Gil locked the Porsche and walked casually down the east side of Markham Square. A right onto the King’s Road would take her to Boots the chemist in under one minute. She didn’t take the right, partly because she had told Cyrus a wee white lie. She didn’t need stuff from the chemist, woman’s or otherwise. Her neurons were still a-bobbing and she just wanted to take a look up and down the main road, while always maintaining eye contact with their front door. About five yards before the junction of Markham Square and the King’s Road, Gil stopped in her tracks. Directly opposite or, for the pedantic, almost opposite, was Smith Street.
There it was. Partially obscured by a few parked motorbikes and one of those electric cars; the black Merc. Gil turned tail and walked at her normal pace back up the Square. You didn’t need to be a maths genius to work out that the probability the Merc driver lived in Smith Street, or had decided on a swift impromptu shop near that section of the King’s Road, was very low indeed. The Merc had followed them all the way from Barnes. Turned left onto Putney Bridge when it was 50:50 to take a right or left turn at that point. Same again for the King’s Road versus Fulham Road. Then the forty to fifty left side and right side potential exits off the King’s Road before Markham Square, all with more or less equal probability. Already Gil’s computer brain had calculated that there was a less than 1% chance that such a car on the same journey as she and Cyrus would arrive at Markham Square within five car lengths of each other. Now multiply that by the probability that in the whole of posh London, the Merc driver would live in Smith Street. Not a snowball’s chance in the fiery furnace of hell, she concluded. She or Cyrus or both were under surveillance. In fact, a further moment’s thought led Gil to conclude that it was Cyrus who was the Merc’s person of interest. Gil had driven from Chelsea to the Harrodian with no tail. The Merc was already parked near the Harrodian when she arrived. It was Cyrus they were watching. She did not know who or why but logic deemed that it must have something to do with JJ. Time to get in touch with Daddio, Gil thought. Who knows whether or not surveillance was the end of the story.
Gil opened the front door, closed it behind her and double locked it. She turned round, tripped over Cyrus’s tennis kit, kicked it, muttered the f-word under her breath but was thinking too hard to assail Cyrus with her usual banter of admonishment.
“Cyrus, is the tea brewed?” she asked on entering the kitchen.
“Just about,” he replied noticing both that Gil had not chewed him out for his abandoned kit nor apparently had she returned with a Boots bag. “Unsuccessful chemist visit?”
“What?” said Gil, a wee bit more snappily than she would normally respond to Cyrus, but still distracted by the Merc.
“You went to Boots, but you’ve no bag with stuff in it,” he pointed out.
“Sorry, Cyrus, I was in a world of my own there. No, I mean yes, it was unsuccessful. Didn’t have what I wanted. No urgency. I can try tomorrow at a different chemist,” replied Gil.
Cyrus handed Gil her mug of green tea with two chocolate biscuits, took his mug with six non-chocolate biscuits and sat beside her on the sofa.
“What’s the plan for tonight, Gil?” the boy asked, hoping slightly that she would have forgotten about knife training and the like.
Gil took a few sips of her tea and a bite out of one of her favourite biscuits.
“Tonight, Cyrus Darke, we’re having our tea. Once fully digested we’re heading for the gym. The focus will be on two things, deflecting knife attacks, and extracting yourself from choke holds, mainly from behind. Tomorrow night we’re doing single strike training, aimed at disabling your attacker with one blow. We’ll order in tonight. I can’t be bothered cooking and I don’t need to go out,” listed Gil.
Cyrus was reluctantly content with tonight’s plan, he already knew what Gil’s training schedule was to be. He also fancied some Chinese food so ordering in was cool.
&nbs
p; “We don’t normally train two nights out of three, Gil.”
“No we don’t Cyrus, but you’re getting older and more adventurous, and the world is getting rougher and tougher, more dark, more menacing. Your skills need to be honed. The longer you live, the more assholes you come across. They want what you’ve got and they mean to take it by fair means or foul. You’re a good looking, smart, well-off boy. To the scum of this planet that’s three strikes against you. They want to mess with your face, mess with your head, mess with your money. They have no morals, no limits to their evil, no respect. They are the dregs of the earth and they want you to fail and suffer. They will not succeed. You will be mentally and physically stronger than them, more skilful, more deadly. You will learn to trade low blows if you need to. You will drop to their level, gouge their evil eyes out, rip their lying throats and break their brittle necks. Then you will rise back to the level of decency that your mother and father have taught you. You are superior to the scum, you have high moral standards, you care, you work hard, you are a fine young man. You will not be soft, not be weak, not acquiesce to threat or intimidation however fierce. You will triumph because you are Cyrus Darke, son of Eloise and John Jarvis Darke. A good and loving boy,” concluded Gil.
What the f is in this tea, thought Cyrus. He had never heard Gil like this before. She mentioned his dad’s full name, nobody ever does that! She even sounded a bit like dad when he went on some rant or other about the state of the world. Wow.
Neither Cyrus nor Gil had any more tea and biscuits that evening. Cosy time was nearly over. They sat close together, contemplating, the symbiosis growing and developing. They were a team, a worthy team.
* * *
Unfortunately for Joel Gordon, he had neither the proven skills of Gil Haning nor the potential ones of Cyrus Darke. After sending his fateful email to Craig Wilson, Joel headed home. He got off the tube at Upton Park and casually strolled to his apartment, a three bedroom flat in Oberon Court, not far from Katherine Road, E6. It was a decent area, sometimes overcrowded with noisy football fans, but generally OK. His apartment was modern, all pastel shades and cream and beige furniture. It was a bright second floor apartment, exposed to the sun in the late afternoon which gave the lounge a very pleasant glow at this time of day, especially in the summer.
As he strolled along, he was mulling over his decision to let Craig Wilson know that he wanted to talk to him as soon as he returned from his cycling holiday. Joel felt it was the right decision. It would have been what his grandfather advocated. ‘Tell the truth and be damned’ the old fellow used to say, though it might have made more sense if the saying was tell the truth and be saved, thought Joel. Indeed, his grandfather, Simeon, never really seemed to be stressed about anything, he went with the flow, chilled with a thrill, relaxed with a passion. Telling the truth clearly had advantages, or at least peace of mind.
Content with himself, Joel entered his flat, left his work stuff on the sofa and flopped down next to it. He wasn’t usually home this early so he was at a bit of a loss as to what to do. He decided to text Talisha, maybe she could leave work early as well and they could have a relaxing date night, watching a movie, or maybe be less relaxing with rampant sex on the floor. Wishful thinking rationalised Joel almost immediately. While Talisha was one great shag, she was somewhat partial as to where her bum lay. The floor, the kitchen table, pressed against a cold wall – these locations were off the map as far as sex was concerned. Talisha liked her bum to be comfy, all the time, and especially when she was being pounded by Joel’s manhood. The bed or the sofa were her bum supports of choice. Joel texted his bum-sumptuous girlfriend.
Hi Talisha. I’m home early. Can you leave work soon? We could watch a movie or whatever you feel like. Love J xxx.
A few minutes elapsed and Joel’s mobile rang. He had downloaded VS Schumacher’s Crazy Frog ringtone to signal that he had received a text message. Hearing it for the first two hundred times was great he thought but maybe he had better change it soon to something more credible, possibly Bob Marley or John Newman. It was Talisha.
Hi babe. I can leave in ten. Be at yours by 6.30pm. Movie sounds good. No dick flicks. Something funny. Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Chris Rock that sort of thing. Love you xx.
Joel replied and set about scouring his DVD collection, box office and on demand on his widescreen, flat, television. Zoolander was an old favourite, as was Meet the Parents, even Madagascar 3 was hilarious, if you were ten or had a ten year old’s sense of humour. Talisha and Joel had seen them all before. They had been dating for only ten months, so he didn’t want to reveal any lack of vision by suggesting they watch re-runs so early in their relationship. Eventually, he decided on Tower Heist. Neither Owen Wilson nor Chris Rock were in that but the reviews rated it highly and Ben Stiller was the lead. Joel knew that Talisha enjoyed this kind of light hearted caper and he was pretty sure that she had not seen it. Talisha lived about the same distance from Upton Park tube as Joel but in the opposite direction. Her flat was more expensive and luxurious than Joel’s, as befitted her private sector job compared with Joel’s government employment. However, Joel’s living room was more spacious and he had better gadgets, TV, laptops, internet and broadband connections. She didn’t mind spending some time there; relaxing with Joel and watching a movie appealed to her tonight.
As Talisha turned off Katherine Road towards Oberon Court, having walked from the tube station, she glanced at the Audi A6 parked about fifty yards from Oberon Court. Talisha wasn’t really into cars but the black paintwork on this one was gleaming and it had matching black-detailed five spoke alloy wheels and tinted glass all around. It would hardly have merited a second look in Central London or the King’s Road, but here in E6, it stood out a little. If she and Joel both got promoted soon, she might like to upgrade her car to an Audi, one like this would be nice, maybe a little smaller and absent the tinted glass.
Unbeknown to Talisha, Vasily Yugenov, comfortably ensconced in the Audi driver’s seat, was giving Talisha the visual once over. She was hot, thought the thug, though that J-Lo butt was a tad large for his normal Russian anorexic model taste. He watched Talisha go into Oberon Court, the same block of flats as his surveillance target, one Joel Gordon. Vasily wondered if they knew each other. After all, they were both black. Vasily was a more or less unreconstructed philistine. PC to him meant police constable or, at a stretch, personal computer. Politically correct didn’t really appear on his mental or verbal radar screen. Babikov paid him well, let him wear decent clothes and drive a quality car. Every now and then he had to torture some idiot debtor, but that was kind of fun. He didn’t like all the wailing, screaming, pleading and pant soiling that this often involved but once he’d broken a couple of fingers or pulled a few fingernails, the late payer usually pledged with sincerity that he’d promptly pay his debts.
Vasily was a 6ft 4in mountain of a man, weighing nearly 100kg, with cropped dark brown hair and muscles bulging from under his fitted, imitation designer suit. He was thirty-two years old and had arrived in London two years ago from Vladivostok. He didn’t really enjoy life in his home town. It had been designated a fortress in 1889 and all times since had seen a military presence grow in this eastern outpost of Mother Russia. It was a bleak desolate place and was dominated by the military and crime lords. Vasily made his living through the latter. His progression through the timeline of crime was fairly straightforward. As a young teenager he began with opportunistic burglaries, then proceeded to more organised ones. Getting tired of climbing in and out of people’s bedrooms, where often there was little of value to steal, he applied to be a bouncer at a local casino. He was proficient at chucking people out, stomping on their heads and generally doing wayward punters serious damage. One night in 2012, he went too far, breaking the neck of some poor unfortunate as he lay on the road. The unfortunate died on the spot. The casino’s owner was Vladimir Babikov’s cousin and between them they spirited the murderer out of Russia and into London. They supp
lied him with apparently legal immigrant papers, a job and a place to stay. Vasily was very grateful and he would not let Vladimir Babikov down.
His boss’s instructions today were to tail this Joel Gordon abbyssyana and report back. Vasily visually picked him up coming out of Upton Park tube, no mean feat given the hordes of multi-coloured commuters pouring out of the place, but he had a detailed itinerary of Gordon’s normal schedule, his address and several good quality photographs. He got a call to say Gordon would be early that day. So far, the job was a bit boring. The dude came out of the tube, walked home, was in his flat and now was probably being visited by a female abbyssyana. That wasn’t much to report, but that was what he had.
Vasily was reasonably well prepared for the stakeout. He had brought sandwiches, water and a decorative hip flask of vodka. He had a long-range camera, binoculars, pen and notepad, his mobile phone, his gun and a fibre wire, wooden-handled garrotte. The weakest link in any one man stakeout is the obvious need to pee at some point if you were in situ long enough. Vasily had been in situ long enough. This was awkward he thought. There were no public toilets, shops, bars, cafés or restaurants on this road, it was totally residential. He didn’t have a bottle or a can with him, and even if he did, pee stream accuracy from a sitting position behind the wheel of a car was notoriously random. He didn’t want to wet his pants, whether or not his willie would get some fresh air or air conditioned air to be precise, and he sure didn’t want to urinate on the Audi’s leather seats. Babikov would go ballistic. There was no choice. He was going to have to get out the car and have an open air pee. He couldn’t just do it in the street, there was the occasional passer-by and there were sure to be one or two curtain twitchers on this road. They might phone the cops. He could pop into someone’s back garden but he might get caught there too and he might lose contact with his stakeout target. Vasily needed to decide soon. The waterworks were becoming voluminous, building to near pain level, trapped inside his circumcised knob, desperate to explode outwards. Needs must came to mind. Vasily leapt out of his car, power walked to one of the side walls of Oberon Court, yanked his zip down, his willie out and proceeded to urinate all over the nicely painted white wall. Relief beyond belief and who cared if his £90 leather shoes were having an unexpected shower. This was a necessity.
Darke Mission Page 28