Greg had apparently been naughty as a boy and the strongest character of all the brothers. Paulette had once told Connor that, ‘Your Father was always the most wayward…a rascal! He was the leader of the brothers even then. He used to drive your poor old Grandfather around the bend!’ before she lowered her voice conspiratorially, ‘Was his favourite, mind’.
Frank took Greg to the local boxing gym for an outlet for his natural energy and aggression. Greg had his first boxing match at eleven years old and went on to accumulate an 89-7-2 amateur boxing record resulting in the light middleweight senior ABA title at nineteen. He was a charismatic, black-haired, self-assured man with bright grey eyes. Touted for big things in the professional ranks, the ABA final was Greg Ryder’s last competitive amateur boxing match.
A local gang of youths had entered a pub where Frank was drinking. Frank nearing fifty now was more affable and compromising than in his youth. The gregarious quartet had begun touching up the young girls, intimidating the boyfriends, refusing to pay for drinks and being outwardly threatening to everyone.
Frank confronted the unruly foursome asking them politely to calm down. Immediately set upon, after a short but furious fight, he found himself on the floor as boots and bottles rained.
He was taken to hospital with lacerations and bruising on his face, fractured ribs and skull. He was put into an induced coma as a precaution for the brain swelling he’d received.
Before this incident, the brothers were as law-abiding as the next man. This would change—and would lead to the incarceration of Connor’s father.
Damian Adamik kept a three-car distance between himself and the white transit van as it weaved through the traffic.
The Pole had been working for Makar a little over five years now. Being tall, heavyset and square-jawed with his brown hair in a crew cut, a lot of people mistook him for one of Makar’s henchmen. However, Adamik had been a six-year veteran of Poland’s GROM, the country’s premier Special Forces unit before leaving the military for pastures new. He had left GROM six years previously at the age of twenty-six, having run out of steam. He left the unit, planning a year to himself—to relax before deciding what to do with the rest of his life.
After a few months of not being disciplined by the military system, of being made responsible by the professionalism of the unit, Adamik’s drinking binges had got out of control.
One drunken night in Warsaw, Damian decided he hadn’t had his money’s worth from two whores he’d brought to his suite. He took his money back and turfed the pair out into the corridor.
“You make big mistack…you be fucked up!” screamed the voluptuous Pilipino in broken English.
“Yes, you have a big problem now,” said the calmer Ukrainian in better English.
He shut the door on the pair and face-planted onto his bed and drifted into an alcohol induced stupor.
His eyes cracked open with the gentle knocking at the door. He’d been unsure how long he’d been asleep for. When the knock got louder and more insistent, he flung the duvet off and moved bleary eyed to the door. Upon looking through the spy hole, he saw an unremarkable man in the hotel’s uniform.
“Hello Mr Adamik, I would like to speak to you please,” said the gentleman in Polish.
Instinct clicked in through the haze—the accent didn’t sound quite right. Damian used his right hand to push the door handle down with his left forearm braced as he unlatched the door. He pushed the handle down, and the door smashed through and knocked him back a step. He was still on his feet as his left arm had taken the brunt of the impact. Ramming a seventeen-stone shoulder into the door, rewarded him with a dull thud.
There was a grunt of pain as he pulled back the door to see one heavy set man reeling back. Two more burly men rushed to take his place to get at Damian. The pair slowed one another down in their lack of cohesion, and that was all Damian needed. He threw a ferocious left hook at the first assailant. The blow fractured the man’s cheekbone and smashed his head off the door frame. He was unconscious as he fell. The Pole crouched avoiding the punches from his left side, throwing himself at the assailant with his meaty left forearm up to protect his face.
Damian despatched him with a thudding elbow from underneath and a short chopping right to the temple. As the second assailant fell to his knees, Damian’s knee dished his face in. A right arm slid around his vast chest snaking for his neck. Damian clamped his hands on the man’s sleeve and plummeted onto his knees landing on the first assailant’s shins. The man looking for the strangle fell untidily in front of Damian. A huge wrecking ball punch crushed the man’s nose flat across his face. The head was pinned like a vice between the Pole’s knees as three punches landed like lamp posts being dropped from the sky. The man was comatose by the second blow.
Adamik stood catching his breath. He surveyed the scene of the three bloody and unconscious men. The adrenaline still flowed through his veins like bolting greyhounds. He began to take stock of the situation. He thought it unlikely the hotel would call the police. The man in the spy hole had been a member of staff confirming his suspicions the hotel had an arrangement with this vice network. Still, he didn’t think it prudent to stay much longer. He sped to the bathroom and grabbed his wash kit, stuffing it into his black rucksack. Although he used the hotel towel to wipe his finger prints off everything he might have touched, he knew this to be a redundant effort—they would find evidence of DNA somewhere in the suite.
He ran over the stirring bodies down the stairs and was away. He did not realise this incident would change the course of his life
.
17
“Hello, Detective Reed,” said the voice on the phone.
“Yes,” answered Connor.
“Hello, the gentlemen you…ahem… required is about to leave now.”
“Thank you for your assistance sir. It’s much appreciated.”
“Happy to help.”
It was now 10.36 A.M and Connor had been waiting in his car, a hundred yards away from the hotel, since around seven o’clock. He saw Nick leave by the front entrance, taking notice of Nick’s quick, subtle glances of his surroundings approaching the car. This was one of the most tension-filled moments of Connor’s life of which there had been many. What happened next would determine the rest of his career, and his life. Connor cracked a smile as relief coursed through him. Nick hadn’t checked the underside of the vehicle for trackers.
“He’s parked in an open entrance industrial building right on the corner of Southside Street by the north entrance. He’s closed the shutters. I can’t go in because it will arouse suspicion but there’s only one door on the side other than the shutters,” said Damian in excellent English.
“South Side Street, north entrance comrade?” relayed the digitally distorted voice. Even though it was distorted, Damian knew it was Makar. He’d used the word ‘comrade’ to identify himself.
“Yes,” he replied, and the phone went dead.
Connor shadowed the tracking device for twelve multi-cultural miles into Croydon. He kept out of sight of Nick but not too far away as to lose him. His cousin had sold him the tracking device and neither had asked the other undue questions.
The time when he would be most susceptible to losing Nick would be when he parked his vehicle before moving on foot. Connor would have to quickly locate a parking space and potentially run to catch up, which could look suspicious. Added to that was Nick knew what he looked like. Connor had thought about dying his hair black but, not trusting the results, opted for a baseball cap instead.
The tracking spot on the monitor began to flit on and off. He felt a spike of panic that was assuaged when he saw Nick pulling into a multi-storey car park. Another stroke of luck when Nick simply parked his car without implementing the basic security measure of driving to the very top before doubling back. Connor began to feel a pinch of paranoia.
He’d been taught during the agent-handling phase of his training how to park strategically. In this case
, Connor would have taken the last available space so that the occupant of any vehicle following could be ear marked and later spotted when travelling on foot. Not a fool-proof scheme but one that made life difficult for ‘shadows’.
Nick hadn’t done a quick loop around at the beginning of the journey as he would have done. For a vehicle to follow you back to your original starting point would be highly suspicious. That the operative hadn’t done any form of ‘cleaning run’ perturbed Connor.
Cleaning runs consisted of techniques to identify or prevent being followed: Cutting down a one-way street. Stalling at the lights and putting on the hazard lights and letting the traffic pass. Pulling into a cul-de-sac and seeing if another vehicle followed you. That an experienced agent didn’t employ any of these techniques seemed strange to Connor.
The best counter surveillance was always covert. It involved not letting the tracker know you were aware you’d been spotted or pinged as the Marines would say. It was a case of the better the devil you know instead of alerting the tail and it being replaced by another. Surely Nick would be doing his counter surveillance? Or maybe he was so good that he wanted to keep Connor in his sights until he ditched him?
Connor quickly put those thoughts from his mind—they weren’t going to help him. He picked Nick out on the bustling street and began to follow him.
Bruce sat outside a Café sipping black coffee. He spotted Nick walking down the street towards him. Both dressed casually; Bruce in a dark blue nylon jacket and jeans, and Nick in a brown leather jacket and a scarf.
Bruce carried out the usual drill of looking around for anything suspicious, specifically if Nick was being followed. He took note of Nick’s body language. They’d prearranged the signal of subtly rubbing one’s hands together if under duress or surveillance. He couldn’t see anything yet, which meant Nick had shaken Connor off as expected. That or the former marine had managed to transform into a ghost and keep Nick under surveillance.
The exercise was to enforce into Connor that following a lone target needed a lot of human resources, along with specialist equipment and adaptations to vehicles.
He was never meant to succeed.
McQuillan had decided after Connor’s Vale Tudo fight performance, he was going to employ him as an operative. And that he’d performed well during the assassination of the money launderer. He had performed almost too well, as Bruce recalled the moment he’d bound into the Abeeb Zahid’s room. Seeing the myriad of Abeeb’s disintegrated skull along with Connor’s blood splattered face. He clearly recollected the Yorkshire man’s laugh amid the carnage—not a hysterical giggle of adrenaline but a release of genuine pleasure.
Nick sidled up and took the seat. There was a feeling that stopped Bruce asking Nick the question of whether or not he’d spotted Connor. He was supposed to ask Nick the question before texting Connor to tell him to pull off task and await his decision. If Nick had seen him surely he would have told Bruce anyway. Nick reached out for the cup of tea already in front of him.
“Any dramas?” asked Bruce.
“Nah,” Nick said, “You know the address yet?”
This question caused another spike of unease in him. Nick had never asked him before.
“Not the building but it’s on South Side street, why?”
“Just making idle conversation I guess.”
After a few moments, Nick excused himself to use the café’s toilet. Not long after he returned, Bruce’s phone bleeped. He looked at the screen.
“That’s him. Let’s go.”
“Pull the schematics for South Side Street on my screen now and forward them to Damian,” said Makar to his bespectacled technician. They sat in a safe house office, twenty miles away. It took a few moments.
“Highlight the building 205, according to the council listings the room is without tenants. The sniper should have a clear view of the street.”
The technician sent Damian the highlights along with the information.
Makar remembered how he’d met the foreboding Pole. He’d been conducting business in Warsaw. The report got to him that this Polish character had put three of his lower level enforcers out of action. Makar had the bank card Damian used to pay for the hotel traced and ran him through a background check. He was impressed with what he had found, in addition to Adamik’s performance in dispatching the three single-handedly. He also knew that before he could employ Damian, a certain level of respect had to be gained.
It had taken two days to find the ex-GROM member and after another three of tracking him, Makar accosted Damian outside a bar. He had made sure it was on the way in and not out so there could be no ambiguity regarding the Pole’s state.
It had been necessary for what he’d planned.
“Damian,” he had said in Polish as the bear of a man had been about to enter the bar. The Pole had stopped and studied him for a moment or two.
“Yes?”
“I have a proposition for you,” Makar had said raising his wrist revealing a Hublot Big Bang Shiny watch. It had cost him £14,000. “If you can take this from me, you can have it…there will be no police charges, regardless of how you go about it.”
Damian seemed surprised, before he had smiled. “You can’t guarantee that…there may be witnesses when you die.”
Makar had returned the smile. “No doubt you believe that Damian Adamik. I am sure you received sound tutelage in unarmed combat in the Group Operational Manoeuvring Response Unit.”
Makar had watched Damian digest the fact that at least part of his background was known to Makar.
“Why do you want to fight me?” he had asked simply.
“You’ll find that out after you wake up.”
Connor had struggled to keep up with Nick through the busy commercial street. The throng of the crowd was pushing him back like waves. He resisted the urge to run and catch up. The surveillance experts said a ‘shadow’ should never run; that it would just mark the shadow out to any ‘dickers’ in the area.
Nick turned a corner into a side street, and Connor knew he’d lost him—by the time he would have caught up Nick would most likely have changed direction again.
He persevered anyway.
As he rounded the corner, he saw Nick picking up oranges that had scattered across the street. They’d fallen off a food van delivering to the back entrance of a local shop. The deliveryman lavished Nick with a series of ‘thank yous’ as Nick assisted him before smiling and continuing on his way.
Connor shook his head—what were the chances he thought as he carried on shadowing the target. Was there such a thing as fate or luck? He had a flashback back to when he was thirteen years old. He’d wait at the bottom of the street he lived on to get picked up to go to boxing eight miles away. The father of another boxer drove them both there, and Connor never missed going. Except for once.
Connor had been involved in a fight with a local heathen after school. The youth from another estate had came onto the school grounds looking to make a name for himself. He ‘side-winded’ Connor unrepentantly. Connor had immediately gone on the attack, punching the antagonist to the floor before gripping his ears and smashing his head on the concrete. It took his ex-prop forward headmaster to wrench him off the unconscious youth.
The lad came around eventually unbeknownst to Connor who spent the entire afternoon in the police station. He’d been genuinely concerned, but more for his liberty than the heathen’s health. His father came, picked him up and to his surprise, defended him in the face of his mother’s scorn.
The next day, Connor discovered the father and son who customarily gave him a lift had died in a road traffic accident—half a mile from the Boxing Club.
Damian sat in a Volvo—a work car—his phone screen displayed to the American assassin beside him. The screen showed the schematics of the building the American was to occupy, along with a more general overhead view of the area that he was to be ‘working’ in.
“Do you need these forwarding to your phone?” Dam
ian asked, with only a hint of an accent.
“No, thanks.”
As he watched the American get out of the vehicle, he made a quick text to Makar to confirm his entering the building.
Damian, though trusted, was still kept out of the details regarding the target and the implications. That was the way it was in the Russian Bratva; a need-to-know basis governed everything. However, he could sense it was important as Makar was handling the operation personally, which he almost never did. They’d also brought in an outsider—this American. Still, Makar knew what he was doing—he always did.
Damian remembered the proposition Makar had made to him outside the bar when they had first met. It had been that he could have his watch ‘without any legal repercussions’ if he could take it off him. He’d laughed to himself at the thought of tearing this businessman’s head off. This ceased when the Russian let it be known—in Polish—that he knew his name and aware of his former unit. The man’s demeanour was off-putting too. The stranger, a little shorter and around ten kilograms lighter, exuded an eerie calm.
Damian had took a short mental checklist and noted the bulbous knuckles and slight cauliflower ear. The sharp jaw signified a low body fat percentage despite the stockiness of his physique. Still, it was a fight and Damian had won countless of those and not lost since his school days. The watch must have been worth five figures alone. He knew about these things.
Damian had nodded his consent. His smirk now forced as the man led the way around the corner. They had walked around the corner down a small alcove where the deliveries were brought in. Makar took off his suit jacket, folding it neatly before laying it on the top of a bin. He had placed his watch upon it. Instinct had told Damian not to rush his opponent and they circled one another.
Damian threw out a double jab. He had been startled at the Russian’s speed, as he had slipped to the right and fired a left-handed blow into Damian’s mercifully tightened solar plexus. Damian had managed to pivot before the follow up. He feinted with a right and threw a jab. Makar ducked it but Damian had caught hold of the back of the head with his bear-like palm. He was astonished to find his thrusting knee was blocked by a stabbing elbow. His gripping hand was thrown off with the web of the man’s right hand.
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