“The SSG-69 is sufficiently long, but it will restrict you to a hardened, cold-forged 13-inch barrel. On a rifle like this, it’s a perfectly adequate length.”
Mack nodded, understanding the language.
“I do have two of those rifles here, and I could probably begin work immediately. Let me measure you right now.” He handed the former SEAL a black rod.
Mack took up his shooting stance, right hand on the spot where the trigger ought to be. The gunsmith measured him down his left arm length, and then measured the distance between his right shoulder and his trigger finger, across the hypotenuse formed by Mack’s elbow and forearm.
“Yes, that ought not to be too much trouble,” he said. “The stock on these rifles is made from some form of cycolac, which I will cut out and remove. That will leave you with an aluminum stock, formed by two struts with a wide, fitted shoulder rest. I presume you favor your left eye?”
“Correct.”
“Well, Mr. McArdle. You may leave the rest to me. I am presuming you will want high-velocity bullets that explode on impact – chrome, slim entry point? Are you intending a head shot?”
“Possibly two, if the rifle’s sufficiently quiet.”
“Your toolbox has ample room. I think we can oblige you in every respect. There will, of course, be no serial numbers on the rifle, which is illegal, but it is the way things like this are done. No one will ever know where you got the rifle, or who made it. Mr. Liam O’Brien liked that very much.”
“And the price?”
“Depends on how soon you want it, whether I need to drop everything for this one job.”
“It’s Monday today. How about Saturday?”
“Saturday! That would be a very great rush. If you want it then, it will cost you 30,000 pounds. If you will give me another, it will be 14,000. Either way, it will be half down now, and the balance when you collect the rifle.”
“Saturday. I will pay you 15,000 pounds right now.”
Mr. Kumar looked suitably impressed but not amazed. “You will not regret this, Mr. McArdle. This is a superb sniper rifle and, in the right hands, cannot miss. Also, I will engineer it to screw together very quickly with no room for error.”
“Will it come apart just as easily?”
“No problem. A matter of seconds.”
Mack turned away and dug into his bag, searching for his bundles of English cash. He found them quickly and produced five stacks of fifty-pound notes, neatly bound, sixty in each. He handed them over, and then he made two more requests of Mr. Kumar.
“Could you get me a Draeger rebreathing apparatus?”
“Of course. Direct from Germany. How far do you intend to travel under the water?”
“Maybe a long way. Two hours.”
“Then you’ll need the Delphin I. It’s their best, state of the art, standard issue, US Navy.”
“Oh, really?” said Mack. “That good?”
“The best. They’ll ship to me FedEx. Be here in two days. But it’s not cheap. Do you want it to be filled and ready to go?”
“Of course.”
“I only ask because some people are nervous walking around with a small tank of compressed oxygen. You’re not going to take it through an airport, are you?”
“Christ, no!” said Mack.
Mr. Kumar smiled. “I will get it for you, and I charge a 20 per cent commission on the retail price.”
“It’s a deal.”
“Pay me when you pick up the rifle on Saturday.”
The two men walked back to the staircase and made their way to the front door.
“Are you from India, originally?” asked Mack.
“Oh, yes, but I hardly remember it. My family is from a small town on the north bank of the River Ganges up near the Bangladesh border. Place called Manihari.”
“West Bengal?”
“How could you possibly know that?” replied Mr. Kumar, smiling.
Mack, who like many naval officers had an encyclopedic memory for geographic facts, told him, “Well, I don’t know the exact town, but I know that West Bengal hugs the frontier with Bangladesh, and I know the Ganges floods into the Bay of Bengal.”
“Ha, ha, ha. You’re like Sahib Sherlock of Baker Street. Very good detective.”
Mack wasn’t too sure about Sahib Sherlock, but he found himself chuckling with the tall Bengali.
“And how did you get here?” he asked.
“Oh, my father emigrated here when I was only four. He was a mechanic in the army, and then he started a garage here in Southall. He still has it, and he does not approve of my business. But he drives a small Ford. I have a very large BMW. Big difference. Ha, ha, ha!”
Mack shook the hand of the Indian gunsmith. “There’s usually bigger money for men who take bigger risks. But be careful. What time on Saturday?”
“Come at noon. Ha, ha.”
* * *
Raul Declerc sat in his Marseille headquarters, still depressed about the way he’d had the big fish on his line, and then failed to land it. Damn Morrison.
It was the second time in his life that greed had been the downfall of Raul Declerc. The first had caused him to run for his life from the watchdogs of MI-6, who were wondering where the hell their two million pounds had gone. The former Col. Reggie Fortescue had thus been obliged to race from London to Dover and board a cross-Channel ferry to flee the country. He had left with a few hundred thousand pounds, but he was only forty years old, and now lived with the fact that he had brought disgrace upon himself, his family, and his regiment.
He would never return to his native Scotland, and in the intervening three years he had spent his time looking for another big hit to make him a million. The mysterious Morrison had appeared to be that opportunity. And now Morrison had vanished, leaving Colonel Reggie to rue the day he had asked for another million.
He knew it, and Morrison plainly knew it. Greed had yet again been Reggie’s downfall. And now, with his new French identity and his fourth cup of Turkish coffee of the morning, he racked his brain to come up with a salvage plan.
There was only one. He had information, and, in a sense, it was priceless information. At any rate, it was to one person in all of France. He told the secretary to find him a number for the Gaullist Campaign Office in Rennes, Brittany, and then to connect him.
It took five minutes, but the connection was made, and an automatic recorded voice came on his line saying, “Vote for Henri Foche, pour Bretagne, pour la France.” Almost immediately another voice, human, female, came on, and confirmed this was indeed Henri Foche’s campaign headquarters, and what could she do to help?
Raul spoke carefully, asking to be put through to Henri Foche. He was told that Monsieur Foche would not be in the office for another hour, but could she tell him what the call was about?
Thus suitably screened, Raul said quietly, “I have some very valuable information for him. And it is of a highly dangerous nature. It is important that I speak to him in person. I will call back in one hour.” Before M. Foche’s assistant had time to ask him for his name and number, Raul rang off.
He called back in one hour and spoke to the same woman, who asked him to hold the line. Two minutes later a voice said, “This is Henri Foche.”
Raul, giving himself his old title from the days when he was respectable, replied, “My name is Col. Raul Declerc, and I am the managing director of a French security corporation in Marseille. I am calling to inform you that we have reason to believe there will be an attempt on your life sometime in the very near future.”
Henri Foche was silent for a moment. And then he said, with the practiced realism of a man not entirely unfamiliar with the dark side of life, “Are you selling, or are you merely a good Gaullist with genuine concerns for my future?”
“I’m selling.”
“I see. Is this because you feel you might be able to prevent this from happening? Or are you just trying to make a fast buck?”
“Monsieur Foche, we have been offered two million
US dollars to carry out the killing. And of course we turned it down. I am calling partly out of a sense of decency, and partly because this kind of knowledge is hard-won. We occasionally receive such information, which in this case was costly to us. And we always charge for our services.”
“I see. And why should I believe what you tell me is true? How can I be sure you are not simply making something up? Just a pack of lies designed to defraud me of money?”
“Very well, Monsieur Foche. I’m sorry to have bothered you. Good afternoon to you.”
Raul put down the phone, having deliberately taken no precautions to hide his identity, or that of the phone from which he was calling, a landline on the main Marseille exchange.
Four minutes later his phone rang. He picked it up before the answering machine intervened and said, “Yes, Colonel Declerc speaking.” “Colonel, did you just call me? This is Henri Foche.”
Raul knew precisely who it was. And he understood the value of the thunderbolt he had just delivered to the Gaullist front runner: that someone with a very great deal of money was out to assassinate him. He knew Henri Foche could not let that one go by, because this was plainly not a nutcase. This was almost certainly a state-sponsored intention.
“Obviously,” said the politician, “I need to know everything you can tell me.”
“Only if you intend to remain alive,” replied Raul. It was an answer that owed more to the droll, understated men who walk the sinister corridors of his late employers, MI-6, than to the French killers on his payroll.
“Tell me your price.”
“I have two requests, if I am to give you all of my information. First, the sum of 100,000 euros. Second, that if there is an attempt on your life, as I believe there will be, you will hire either me or my people to protect you until the threat is removed.”
“I do not have a problem with either of those conditions,” said Henri Foche. “I will either send you a check or wire the money, whichever is the faster. I assume you will not part with information until the money is secure in your account?”
“Not so, Monsieur Foche. Unless I am wrong, we have a deal. We may even have a long-term partnership. And I believe there is a certain urgency to this matter. I fully intend to tell you everything I know right now. Because I believe you are a man of your word. I am happy to take your check. It is in both of our interests to move swiftly.”
“I appreciate that. Please proceed.”
“I received the first call a couple of weeks ago. Character called Morrison, said he was calling from London, but he spoke with an American accent. At first he offered a million dollars for a straightforward assassination, and I kept him on the line while we tried to trace the call. In the end he agreed to two million. He wanted immediate research on you and your movements. He lodged 50,000 US dollars in cash for expenses with a lawyer in Geneva. We were to collect it.”
“And did you?”
“Er… yes. We did. It was supposed to be for research, and I told him some totally innocuous facts – you live in Rennes and have interests in shipyards – nothing he could not have ascertained from any newspaper or magazine. Monsieur Foche, I want you to be in no doubt. This character was not joking.”
“You are certain he was not in France?”
“Yes, I am. We arranged a time for his calls. And he once said something about the time difference, you know, from him to me. He was abroad, very definitely. And he did tell me he was in London. So, if we were undertaking your protection, we would assume the threat would emanate from Great Britain.”
“But he was not British? And you could not trace the call?”
“No, we could not. I’m assuming he was American. But I believe he was calling from London.”
“Any idea how he found you?”
“Yes. He reached us through our office in Central Africa, Kinshasa, in the Congo. He may have had military connections. The only good news was he did not appear to have a shred of information about France. No local knowledge. However, I am afraid the most you can do at this moment is to step up your personal security, and keep us posted if there are any developments. And I must warn you, this Morrison wanted us to move on this right now – you should take immense care not to place yourself in harm’s way.”
“But what can I do?”
“Vary your routes to and from the office. Do not walk alone from your front door to the car. Keep an armed guard in the campaign office all night just in case someone wants to plant an IED in there. Put your present bodyguards on high alert. I am assuming you have ample security in place when you make public appearances?”
“I do. But I would like to place you on standby to move in if there is a definite threat.”
“Always at your service,” replied Raul Declerc. “For Brittany and for France.”
The irony was lost on Monsieur Henri Foche.
* * *
Mack Bedford was more or less confined to barracks. For hours on end he waited alone in his hotel room, planning, going over his strategy, reading the newspapers, studying maps and charts, sleeping, doing one hundred push-ups on the floor every four hours. He was always wearing his Jeffery Simpson disguise – the Jeffery Simpson who was still in Ireland, that is.
He used only room service for meals, and was always in the bathroom when the waiter came in and placed the dishes on the table. Mack went to no public places in the hotel, he made no phone calls, and he never asked the doorman to fetch the Ford Fiesta from the parking garage.
The days passed with agonizing monotony, and Saturday, when it came, was gloomy and overcast. He ordered a power breakfast – scrambled eggs, bacon, a couple of sausages, mushrooms, and toast – because he was uncertain when he would eat again.
He packed his bag, and at eleven thirty in the morning went down to settle his hotel bill. There were room service charges but little else. Mack handed over another sixty pounds and asked the doorman to bring the car to the front entrance.
He took a quick look at his map, and memorized the route to Southall. He did not return to the M4 motorway but drove a half mile south and picked up the old A4, a busy two-lane road that skirts London Airport. Ten minutes later he was in Prenjit Kumar’s drive. It was raining steadily.
The same Indian showed him down to the basement workrooms where the gunsmith awaited him. And there, laid out on the dark-red baize of the first workstation, glinting in the bright overhead light, was the SSG-69. Mr. Kumar was looking at the spot where the telescopic sight fits. He had a jeweler’s glass in his right eye, like a monocle, and he was using a tiny file, applying a finishing touch. He stood up to greet his client, and said deferentially, “Welcome to my humble workshop. I have built you the most superb sniper rifle, pure precision, and as accurate as any rifle you will ever own.”
Mack replied, “And I have brought you another 15,000 pounds, plus cash for the Draeger. Has it arrived?”
“Of course it has, Mr. McArdle. In my trade we don’t make empty promises. I’ve had it since Wednesday. And I tested it for you. One of the valves was very stiff, and I fixed it. I also constructed a place in the bottom of the toolbox for the Draeger to fit. No problem.”
“Is the rifle ready to test?”
“Of course. And that we will do first. Then, if you are happy, we will take it apart a few times just to get familiar with the procedure.”
He handed Mack the rifle, which was light and beautifully balanced. The stock looked strange, like a skeleton with its two struts and angled shoulder rest. The former SEAL took up his firing stance, and the rifle felt like a part of his right arm, comfortable, secure, made-to-measure.
They walked into a different room, and there before them was a long, well-lit tunnel about forty yards from end to end. There was a regular target about eighteen inches square in the distance and a high wooden bench to lean on in the firing area.
Mr. Kumar told Mack there was a bullet in the breech plus five more in the magazine. But he could already see he was selling the rifle to an expert.
Mack prepared to fire, leaned forward, and stared through the telescopic sight, until the crosshairs dissected the bull’s-eye. He was motionless as he squeezed the trigger, and there was the faintest dull pop as the silenced SSG-69 sent the practice bullet away at a speed of a half mile per second.
Mack pulled back the bolt, loaded the breech, and fired again. And again. Then he straightened up and said, “Better take a look at the grouping.”
Mr. Kumar wound in the target on rope pulleys, and handed it to Mack. There was only one hole, right in the center of the bull’s-eye.
“Very nice, Mr. McArdle, very nice indeed,” said the gunsmith, smiling. “Perhaps you have used such a rifle before.”
“Perhaps I have,” said Mack. “But I’ve never used a better one than this.”
“You would like to take three more shots?”
“I will. But I’d find it tough to improve on the first three.”
Again he fired, a little quicker this time, and when the new target was pulled in there was the slightest variation on the right side of the hole in the bull’s-eye.
“I wouldn’t say you’d lost your touch,” grinned Mr. Kumar. “That’s very fine shooting.”
“I varied the second bullet just slightly right, only a fraction just to see the margin of error. It’s a superb job, Mr. Kumar. Outstanding.”
They spent the next hour testing the assembly of the rifle. Taking it apart and then putting it together, screwing the wide chrome bolt of the aluminum stock into the area behind the trigger, then sliding the telescopic sights, Russian made, into the tight metallic grooves Prenjit Kumar had engineered. The screw-in barrel, cut down to thirteen inches, had an attachment for the silencer, and when dismantled, the rifle could be placed easily in the toolbox on specially built velvet-covered racks with safety clips to stop it from moving. Precious jewels have been transported with less delicacy, and Mack stared down at the stored sections of the weapon, snug in the very fine toolbox, bright against the black velvet, above the Draeger. In a separate section, the six chrome bullets were set in a line, each one capable of blasting a hole the size of a melon in Henri Foche’s head.
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