Whatever It Takes

by Andy McNab

  It didn’t sound convincing, even to me.

  ‘Richard, you need to help me here. We know you opened a new company just for the Sanctuary job. Why did you do that?’

  His eyes bounced between the three of us, wide as saucers and glistening in the red glow. ‘Please, I just did some work on a new-build. It’s what I do. Normal stuff. I want to help you but I don’t know what you want from me.’

  His hands came up to his face in despair. Egbers and the Brit burst into life. The Brit jumped aboard him and pinned him down; Egbers leant across the gap between them and pulled open the door. Noise and cold wind forced their way inside. Richard begged through screams and sobs. Soon that sound was lost because the headset was yanked off his head. I recoiled as far as I could into my corner.

  Richard had a strap, maybe a loose seatbelt, I couldn’t tell, wrapped around his chest before the winch clip was attached. Then they grabbed an arm each and pushed him out of the door.

  I yelled. ‘Stop! Don’t! Don’t! I need him to talk!’

  It was too late. The helicopter tilted to the right and the pilot corrected.

  Richard dangled from the winch. Below him were hundreds, maybe thousands, of feet to the sea.

  His arms and legs flailed as he tried to hook just one of them over the step. His screams were loud enough to penetrate my headphones.

  Once again I concentrated hard on the loose handles of the Pak’nSave carrier bags as they flapped in the gale.

  The helicopter slowed. The rotors changed pitch: they were doing a different job. The downdraught and his screams still dominated and the handles were in a frenzy. I stared at them even harder.

  The screams got louder, but only because Richard was being hauled in. Between him snatching drowning-man gulps of air and his head thrashing around like he was plugged into the mains, they had to work hard to control him. He’d totally lost it. I had no idea what words he was screaming, but until he was sane again it didn’t matter.

  His headphones got shoved onto his head but the mic wasn’t on his mouth properly. I heard parts of ‘Oh, my God, oh, my God – thank you, thank you.’ And as soon as the winch cable was taken from his chest, his hands shot down between his legs and gripped the seat for dear life.

  Egbers pulled the door shut and Richard’s head fell onto his chest. His grip on the seat got tighter. His sobs filled my headphones.

  Egbers took control again. ‘Richard.’

  There was no response so he leant forward and pulled his head up. ‘Richard. Do not lie to us again. Do you want to see your wife? Your family?’

  Richard’s eyes closed and he nodded. He battled to take in more air but his nostrils were blocked. Saliva drooled from his mouth. His face was a glistening mess.

  Egbers removed his hands from his chin and wiped them clean on Richard’s jeans before sitting back. ‘That’s very good, Richard. So, to achieve that, all you have to do is what I told you to do in the van. Answer the questions. Do you understand?’

  There was a slow nod of acceptance. His bottom lip quivered.

  ‘That’s good, Richard. Now clean up your face, take some deep breaths, and get your head straight.’

  The helicopter clawed through the darkness, the sound of the rotors now louder in my headphones than Richard’s raspy breaths. He coughed, trying to clear his throat. He would have been thinking of his wife. He wanted to go home.

  I stared out at the darkness as Richard tried to compose himself. If they’d only given me a couple more minutes I would have got him talking and we wouldn’t have had any of this shit. Pinpricks of light shone way below us, two or three in a cluster. Were we going out to the yacht?

  Egbers cut into my thoughts. ‘Richard, answer the questions. If you tell the truth, all will be good. You will go home.’

  Richard was in full begging mode, but some element of control returned. ‘I’m sorry, I want to – I will do. I’m sorry. I’m just scared – those people, they said they would make sure there were consequences if I ever told anyone what I did there. I knew what they meant.’

  Now was the time to jump in and get this all over and done with. ‘It’s okay, Richard. They will never know. And if you tell me what I need to know, these two guys will take you home so you can carry on with your life.’

  His head dropped again and the heavy breathing returned. I thought he was going to faint.

  Egbers looked at me and sat back.

  My turn.

  I didn’t bother looking at the Brit. He was number two. I was starting to understand the dynamics here.

  ‘Listen, Richard, just breathe, it’s okay. Not long now, and this will all be over.’

  He turned his mess of a face to me. ‘My wife. She’ll be … Oh, fuck. I just went for some fucking milk.’

  He started to cry.

  Egbers was getting impatient. ‘Richard, dry up, man. Your mobile and wallet are in your car. We stopped your life at the store. She will spend the rest of her life never knowing what happened to you. Killed? Or maybe you just deserted her? Maybe she’ll blame herself. So just get on with what you are here for and your world will be reset to normal.’

  I had seen his life – his beautiful house, his beautiful wife, his beautiful child and grandchildren, all the things and people he had worked so hard for all his life, supporting and nurturing. Success story – and now this. He wouldn’t have known what he was getting involved in. Sanctuary would just have been a job for one of those mad, publicity-shy foreigners who were pushing up the real-estate prices. It made sense to me, and it had clearly made sense to Richard. He didn’t deserve this but, at the same time, I wanted to know what was inside his head. Life is shit, isn’t it?

  ‘Richard, it’ll all be over soon, mate.’

  He looked up at me. At last he’d found a saviour.

  I unbuckled my seatbelt to get closer but Egbers stopped me with a hand. What did he think I was going to do – grab Richard and both of us jump out? I stayed where I was, but leant in, as if that would help me understand him better.

  ‘Richard, you opened up a new company just for the job, right? Just nod.’

  I got what I needed.

  ‘That’s good. So what I’m thinking is, you had only one part of the construction to do. They were using different firms for different parts of the build, right?’

  Another nod. His chest rose and fell more rhythmically as he got a decent reaction to his answers, and his hands came up to his face to clean up the mess.

  We were getting somewhere.

  26

  I hated to admit it, but the Templars had got him where I needed him, and they’d done it efficiently and quickly.

  ‘Okay, Richard – what is it that your firm built?’

  ‘We put up a building away from the main house, and a tunnel between the two of them.’

  He flinched, realizing he might have dropped himself in it, laid himself open to more pain. ‘I don’t know what for. We got the job done, and then left. Just a building and a tunnel, that’s all, I swear.’

  ‘It’s okay. Tell me about the build. Do you still have the as-builts?’

  He shook his head. ‘They took the drawings, they took everything. Look, I was given the job and I didn’t ask questions. They said all the planning was taken care of – but I knew it wasn’t. I knew because of the money they offered. They paid enough for me to get my kids houses, get my grandkids educated.’

  The thought of his family made his whole body shake. He was going to spiral, and I couldn’t let that happen. There was still a lot to talk about.

  ‘Richard, mate, it’s okay. Who wouldn’t have taken the money and run, right? It was just a job – I get it. What about you start with the building? Tell me all, and I’ll come in with questions now and again to help me understand or maybe jog your memory. Would that work for you?’

  We talked for about thirty minutes, starting with the outbuilding that had replaced the water feature. He told me about the tunnel’s construction and where it me
t the basement of Sanctuary. Richard had completed the final basement wall that the Filipino builders had left unconstructed. He had done a good camouflage job, constructing the tunnel even while inspections were being carried out on the main build. Planning inspectors came at different times to check different parts of the build, and while they were doing that, Richard was busy digging a tunnel right under their noses.

  A builder might have constructed a tunnel in the old-fashioned way, but Richard couldn’t dig a massive trench that all the world and his uncle could see, even on Google Earth, then crane in circular tunnel segments, joining them together and finally backfilling the trench. Instead, he dug underground from the water-feature excavation and installed interlinking trapezoidal and expanded segmental smoothbore tunnel linings a metre at a time until he finally had a concrete ring 2.44 metres in diameter all the way to the lookout – enough for most to walk along standing upright, even with a level board at the base. It was perfect. This was the same method used to build the London tube system, but the Victorian engineers did it so it didn’t disrupt the city above; for Richard it was to keep the project safe from third parties.

  The waste material was simply loaded onto trucks first thing each morning and was soon en route to being disposed of as normal construction waste. If an inspector had come early and spotted the piles of spoil, they would have said it was from the basement excavation.

  The outbuilding was constructed of concrete block and stonework, with a zinc roof, much the same as the house. Richard said he had built no internal walls. There was nothing inside, just one big void. There was a concrete base, and a stairwell that gave access down to the tunnel. He didn’t know what had been built since he’d left.

  That was disappointing. But it meant only one thing to me: that it had to be for one of these machines we were in. There was enough hard-standing outside for a helicopter to land before getting a tow past the shutters.

  I got so engrossed I had to kick myself to make sure I remembered where we were, why we were there, and why we were talking about Castro’s house. Parmesh and the ledger had dropped completely out of my head. It was as if I was in my old office talking to a colleague about a job, getting all the technical geeky details and the background before pitching in. I was disappointed in myself – but what was even more disappointing was what Richard then told me about the tunnel segment that joined to Sanctuary. Three rings back from the basement wall, he had set a 200-millimetre concrete bung to prevent any entry or exit. It was prefabricated by the same manufacturers as the tunnel lining so its spec could easily be found. There was then a section of just over two metres, two rings’ worth, of void. The outer basement wall of Sanctuary that he had built to complete the underground area was concrete block, and its internal side had been stud-walled and tiled.

  That was all he knew, and I believed him. ‘Thank you, Richard. You’ve helped me so much.’

  Egbers butted in. ‘You finished?’

  I nodded and he yanked the headphones off Richard. The Brit turned back to the pilot and once again gave her a tap on the shoulder and a twist of his forefinger in the air to get us back to Paraparaumu.

  The nose of the helicopter dipped as she tilted to the right and we started a slow turn. I leant back in my seat and Richard did the same in his, taking a deep breath of thank-fuck-for-that. He looked over at me and his face tried a smile. I nodded and gave him a full one back. He mouthed a thank-you.

  I tilted my head back, closed my eyes to try to digest what had been said, and as we continued a gentle turn right, the tension seemed to drain from my body.

  I jerked upright to the sound of Richard’s screams and the roar of wind and rotor noise.

  The door was open and the Brit was pushing him out.

  One second Richard was struggling to keep himself aboard, the next he was gone. He plummeted into the darkness.

  Egbers went to pull the door closed again, like all he’d done was let the cat out. But the Brit stopped him for a few seconds more as he fished in his jeans, pulled out a bunch of keys held together by a Lexus keyring, and threw them into the darkness to follow Richard.

  I lost it. ‘What the fuck are you doing? You said he was going home. There was no reason! What is wrong with you fucking things?’

  They looked at me, not a flicker of reaction in either pair of eyes. A terrible realization hit me.

  ‘The Filipino guy. He’s history, too?’

  There was no reaction physically, but at last Egbers communicated: ‘What we are doing is far greater than the sacrifice of just two lives. Both of them died to serve what you needed. Nothing more.’

  27

  Saturday, 1 December 2018

  For three hours there hadn’t been a word spoken between the three of us in the back, and the window was smeared with greasy skin marks where I’d been resting my head. Most of the flight, I had stared out at the rhythmical bursts of the navigation lights puncturing the darkness. I hadn’t noticed at the time, but now I realized they hadn’t been on before Richard was killed. Apart from the glow of the instrument panel, the only other light came from a small town or area of habitation way below.

  I was angry, and I was pissed off with myself. No matter how helpful the Filipino and Richard would or wouldn’t have been, they were never going to be left breathing. I should have known that.

  The rest of the time, I’d stared down at the floor and my shoes bathed in the red glow. The other two had opened the contents of Richard’s Pak’nSave bags, eaten the fruit and drunk the milk. They offered me an apple but taking it would have made me one of them. I had killed a couple of people and seen many more dead, but it was impossible to get the image of Richard’s terrified face out of my head. Maybe it was guilt, I just didn’t know. After all, I had tried to keep Richard away from these two, but failed. The guilt of failure?

  I tried to cut away from it by concentrating on the job. I had the Filipino’s information, and I had Richard’s, but it didn’t amount to much. It certainly wasn’t enough to act on. It wasn’t a big enough picture if I had to be in and out and leave no trace. Despite that, no way was I going to try to find out more from anyone else. I needed to know about intruder systems, for example, but that would come at too high a cost.

  The job was going to happen, no doubt of that. I had no choice. But what would happen after I’d found this ledger for them? Would I join Richard in the Pacific Ocean? No matter what Parmesh had promised about the good life, I had nothing that guaranteed it, no insurance. All I had were his words … but I had seen those two actions. The more I thought about it, the only way I could see of ensuring everyone’s long-term safety was to find out what was so important about those pages. Only then would I know why time, energy and lives had been taken to possess it – two already, and maybe more I didn’t know about. If I had a copy of what was in the ledger, would they risk it being exposed?

  Far below us, the ribbon of lights along the lake meant we were coming in over Queenstown. Another ten minutes and we would be on the ground at Frankton. It couldn’t come too soon: the pilot had put the heating on after we’d refuelled at Christchurch and the cabin was hot, claustrophobic, stifling, horrible. I wanted out.

  As we descended over the lake and made our approach, the first glow of dawn was pushing itself over the mountains. I could make out the town and the lake, a few boats bobbing on it, and as I looked across at the men opposite me the wheels gently nudged the concrete. The helicopter settled and the rotors slowed.

  I waited until they’d taken off their headphones. ‘I need to talk to Parmesh. I can do the job, but it’s complicated. He needs to understand. He needs to okay what I’m thinking.’

  The Brit wasn’t listening. He opened the door and jumped out, but Egbers stayed looking at me, curious. ‘What is that?’

  I hesitated a second, enough for Egbers maybe to think I was worried about how he was going to react, but he was wrong.

  ‘That’s for Parmesh.’

  28


  Same hotel, different room, whole new set of problems.

  The air-conditioning hummed gently above the desk near to where I was sitting, as the thrill-seekers whooped and screamed on the lake. In each corner of the room stood a small, tubular-shaped 3D camera on a tripod, all at different heights and angles, with microphones and speakers. My chair had been positioned by Egbers to face the end of the bed, about a metre away from it.

  Egbers stared at his watch. ‘Not long.’

  On my lap rested a set of HoloLenses. They were like a virtual-reality headset and, apparently, I was about to ‘holoport’ with Parmesh. It was a brand-new word to me, but not to Parmesh or the engineers in Cambridge who had developed the technology. Parmesh was out there somewhere in the world and, no matter what, he and Egbers always communicated in this way. Parmesh liked the human touch, which was strange considering his techie background. Egbers explained that he was a hands-on leader: he liked to be involved.

  The Brit had set up the cameras, three silver and one black, about ten minutes ago, then left. That was good. He made me feel uncomfortable, and I had asserted myself a bit, which made it worse. The fact that I wanted to speak to Parmesh and no one else didn’t mean I was in control of those two. Far from it: the looks on their faces when I told them in the helicopter were very clear.

  Egbers checked his watch again. ‘Stand by. Get the lenses on.’

  I did what he said. Everything looked exactly the same as before: as I turned my head, everything was where it should be, including Egbers sitting on the settee to one side of the bed. It was like they were just clear glasses. A lot heavier, but the view was the same.

  Parmesh’s voice then entered the room via the speakers. I moved my head around trying to look for him and he instantly appeared at the end of the bed, directly in front of me.

  ‘James, what’s up?’ He raised his hand in a high-five and I half got out of my chair to respond, but we missed. He laughed. ‘Oh, no, still not working. Early days, James. Early days. But really cool, don’t you think?’