by A P Bateman
King eyed the man. He was over six feet tall, wiry and fit looking. His hair was dark and swept back, a ponytail wrapped up high in a man bun. He had a neatly trimmed beard too. His forearms were tattooed. King noted several gold rings. They were chunky, would double as knuckle dusters. The man looked back at King, held his stare for a moment, then looked away. King didn’t push it. He could see the man looking back at him, but King was already using his peripheral vision as he apparently watched the countryside return, leaving Basingstoke far behind them.
King took out his mobile phone. He dialled a number from memory, pressed nine and started to type out a concise message and sent it. He watched the phone indicate that the message had left. His phone was still connected through the first call and this made the message secure. The first number was a scrambling function through GCHQ’s ECHELON system. A piggyback line through which a conversation could be had, or a text sent with zero chance of interception through scanners or hard-wire technology. If the people King found himself up against had the resources, then his phone could easily have been tapped. In fact, he’d bet everything he owned that it already had been. But no matter who they were, they wouldn’t be able to bypass the systems at GCHQ. He put the phone back in his pocket. The man was still watching him. A woman across the aisle from him got up and stepped out of the carriage, opening the door to the lavatory.
King got up and walked down the aisle towards the man. He watched the man’s expression, enjoyed his discomfort even, as he drew near, but walked on past and stood at the door to the lavatory. He glanced back down the aisle. There were fewer than ten people back there, all engrossed on their phones. A few read magazines or books, but nobody so much as looked up. The lavatory was occupied, but King already knew it was. And so would the man.
The toilet flushed, water ran for a moment and the door lock clicked backwards a touch and slid open into the recess of the lavatory pod’s wall. King would have his answer in a moment. It didn’t get better than this for a would-be assassin. A target with their back turned, a train barely occupied and a vacant lavatory. Christmas was coming in the shape of Woking Station. A nice, convenient exit. If the man was working surveillance, then he would stay put. If he had darker motives, than he would make his move now. The variables when King disembarked were too great compared to a gift like this.
The door opened, and King stepped aside for the woman, who nodded a polite thank you and walked back into the carriage. King raised his left arm, let the crystal of his Rolex’s face catch the light, and saw the man approaching behind him as he made out to check the time. Quality crystal and a shiny black watch face. King had used his watch as a mirror many times before. The man moved in, King spun around clockwise and the man’s outstretched arm, the black tactical knife held firmly in his hand, lunged forwards into thin air. King caught the man’s wrist with his right hand and punched him in the back of the neck with his left. He used the man’s momentum to bundle him into the lavatory, wrenched his arm backwards until he dropped the knife, then punched him twice more. He turned and fumbled for the door to close. The man was dazed, but he suddenly seemed to snap to and as the door slid closed, he was back up and swinging punches for his life.
King took a moment to adjust to the change of pace, but he blocked hard, striking the man’s forearms with his own. King was stronger, his forearms meaty and veined from years of doing multiple sets of press ups every day and working through blocking and striking routines on a heavy punchbag. His forearms were weapons and each block threatened to snap the man’s bones. The man recoiled, wincing as his pummelling was countered. He punched out, catching King on the chin. The impact of the punch had been helped by the chunky gold ring on the man’s middle finger. King felt the lights dim, ducked low, knowing another punch could well knock him out, and when he came back up, he did so hard and with the thrust of a power lifter, and with the man’s scrotum in his clasp. The man’s eyes were about as wide open as was humanly possible, and they made a good enough target, so King jabbed two outstretched fingers deep into the man’s eye sockets. The man screamed and recoiled, but lost his footing and fell. The side of his head hit the toilet with a sickening thud and the man went still.
King stepped back, but there was barely enough room in the confines of the lavatory and he felt the door give a little under his weight. He looked down at the man, but recognised the twitching right foot as his nervous system shutting down. The man was already dead. King cursed under his breath. He had wanted to question him.
King bent down and pulled the man up by his jacket’s lapels. He dropped him down onto the toilet and pressed him back against the wall to steady him. He checked through his pockets and found a basic phone and a money clip with a few hundred pounds in it. He pocketed both. He then took out the tracking device and dropped it into the man’s shirt pocket. He picked up the knife, folded it and kept it also. Then he looked thoughtfully back at the body. He pulled out a long length of toilet paper, opened the knife and caught hold of the man’s right hand. He worked quickly, using the joint rather than breaking the bone and removed the man’s index finger. He wrapped it up in the toilet paper and put the bundle in his jacket pocket. He then used some more toilet paper to wipe the handle of the knife clean of his own fingerprints and dropped it into the man’s shirt pocket. He washed his hands, checked himself in the mirror and cautiously opened the door. There was nobody waiting. King shut the door, then turned his back on the carriage and worked his own knife blade into the lock. He used it like a screwdriver and removed the locking nut. The door was now jammed closed. It would only take someone using a knife or screwdriver to get in, but most people would simply complain and use another lavatory. In King’s experience, people seldom worked the problem themselves. He checked his watch as he returned to his seat and picked up his bag. The train was already slowing for the station and passengers started to gather their coats and laptop bags, shut down their laptops and pocket their mobile phones.
King was first out of the carriage and as he walked across the quiet platform he saw Simon Mereweather waiting for him. The man was impeccably dressed in a fashionably cut suit, but to King it looked two sizes too small, and he wore the shiniest pair of brown Oxfords King had ever seen. They looked like they had a clear coat of lacquer applied. The man looked like a Hugo Boss model.
“Got your text,” said Mereweather. “Where’s your guest?”
“Change of plan,” King replied. “Take me somewhere with a fingerprint database. Preferably one with Russian or East European links.”
37
“Have you spoken with Caroline?”
“No.”
“It’s not against the rules.”
“We have our own set of rules,” King said. He was looking out of the passenger window of the Jaguar. He wasn’t sure if it was a company car or Mereweather’s own. Charles Forester, the previous deputy director of MI5 used a Jaguar, but after he had died, the bean counters had taken hold of the Security Service and fiscal streamlining had pared the intelligence service to the bone. Simon Mereweather was from a family of money, he could probably find MI5’s annual budget in a savings account he’d forgotten about.
“She made it safe and sound out of South Africa. She’s in the air now.”
King nodded. “She was lucky.” He wouldn’t have shown it, but he felt a rush of euphoria. His heart raced, and he felt he could start to relax.
“She shot her way out of there like one of our boys from Hereford would have. Or indeed, yourself,” Mereweather paused. “It’s a shame about the South African Secret Service agent and the prisoner. I guess we’ll have to see how much he told her before it all kicked off and we lost our only witness.”
“What do you mean?” King asked. “Caroline was abducted. What’s this about an intelligence agent? And what happened to the prisoner? She said she was alone in the bush when she called for assistance.”
Mereweather smirked. “You two really are pros,” he said. “I thought she
would have spoken to you about it.”
“We have our own rules, like I said. We don’t trouble each other when we’re on a task,” King paused. He was becoming increasingly aggravated by Mereweather’s apparent delight at knowing more about her situation than King did. He didn’t have the MI5 man down as the type. He had noticed Mereweather around Caroline, the man seemed to show an interest in her, but King discounted it. He trusted Caroline, had no reason to be jealous. He wondered if the separate tasks they had been carrying out these past few months was down to Mereweather. He hoped not, for his sake. He turned to the man and said coldly. “Don’t piss me about, Simon. Tell me what you know, now.”
“Thank you, agent…”
“Don’t pull rank on me,” King interrupted. He didn’t shout or raise his voice in any way. He simply spoke quietly, slowly. His gravelly voice low and level. “Don’t think you, or anyone you know can say or do a damned thing that has me worried about authority. Don’t make that mistake with me, Simon. Now, what happened?”
Simon Mereweather swallowed, checked his mirrors and changed lane. “Alright, Alex. Look, it’s just the two of you are under the microscope. The top tier does not like relationships between field operatives. Any employees, really. Not since that pair Annie Machon and David Shayler did their whistle blower, lecturing circuit and publishing routine,” he paused, apparently unnerved. He fidgeted with the steering wheel and adjusted his collar and tie. “Look, I was just interested to see that you two really can operate neutrally,” he said. “Caroline went with an agent from South African intelligence to see the potential witness. The man who Interpol believe met the man most likely to be our mystery sniper.”
“I know all this, I was in the briefing. Vigus Badenhorst, serving his sentence in Pollsmoor prison. I said I should go.”
“You were of more use looking at the scene of Sir Ian Snell’s murder. We wanted a sniper’s perspective on it. Someone who could observe the killing ground and work the scenarios.”
“I still think I would have been better deployed meeting the prisoner. There were questions I wanted answered on this sniper suspect.”
“But you briefed Caroline,” Mereweather said.
King shrugged. “Talk goes in different directions. I could have learned something, noticed something pertinent, then asked something else. It’s a specialist subject. And besides, prison is a tough place to be, prisoners need to be handled differently.”
“And you know this from personal experience. That was a long time ago, Alex.”
And sealed information… thought King. In MI6 recruitment files, not MI5’s.
He felt uneasy. How did MI5 have that information? Charles Forester had found King and brought him in, made him an official agent with MI5 after he had left MI6 and gone to ground. He had devised a back story of him being a long term black ops agent for the Security Service in deniable operations. Forester had known about the nature of King’s work for MI6, that was the reason he had approached him. Forester wouldn’t have told anyone, he was sure of that. But how much did Mereweather know? There were things he had done, back when he was a ‘Contract Man’, that could catch up with King, make it impossible for him to live a life any other way but on the run.
“Pollsmoor Prison is a tough place,” said King.
“And Caroline would see that,” replied Mereweather. “She would use carrot to your stick. I thought she would have the witness eating out of her hand, and it would appear she did. She arranged a release and deal through Interpol. She’s a force to be reckoned with, because we are still waiting for a reply from the Foreign Office and Whitehall. And we’d be waiting for weeks.”
“Get on with it,” King said tersely.
Mereweather shrugged. “Okay… They were hit leaving the prison. About five miles out. Two armed men. One rammed their vehicle, the other blocked their route. They fired on them, Caroline and the SASS agent fired back. Caroline got away.”
“And she’s in the air?”
“Yes.”
“And how did she get out?”
“Of the wreck?”
“The country. I take it she didn’t just catch a cab to the airport?”
“The MI6 chap that helped her earlier. She called me. I figured their chap would still be in the area, told them… or pleaded, rather… to get someone on the scene and said to use their asset who would be close. He must have smoothed things over with the police and local intelligence, because she’s been in the air for an hour and will arrive at Heathrow Airport tomorrow morning.”
King nodded. He knew that the SIS, or MI6 as it was more widely known, would be calling in a great many favours from its sister service. He knew the top tier would be less than enthusiastic about that. Through no fault of Caroline’s, she would be black marked. The thought made King believe that maybe it was time to go. For them both. Hang up the knives and guns and stop looking behind them. They both had savings, property to sell. They had talked briefly about buying a yacht. Of sailing the Greek islands, the Caribbean even. Or maybe Asia. It was only a pipe dream, neither even knew how to sail. Caroline had pointed the fact out, King had shrugged and said he’d give it a go. Maybe a lesson or two first.
“So, the train,” Mereweather ventured. “What fall out am I to expect?”
“Someone has been tracking me. I found the first tracker which had been secreted into the satnav that came with my hire car. There was no way it had been tampered with before, or at the time of hire. I kept it in play, thought I’d draw them out.”
“And you did?”
“I was rammed, or at least, they tried to ram me on the drive up here,” he paused. “On the A303 near Salisbury. The car’s wrecked, sorry. The Security Service won’t be getting their deposit back. I ditched the tracker, but realised when they picked me up at Winchester train station that I had to be carrying something else.”
“And you were? How?”
“The lining of my travel bag.”
“Same kind of device?”
“Identical.”
“And how do you think they accessed your bag?”
“It would have to be when I left my bag at the hotel reception and drove with the pathologist to Snell’s property. That’s when the satnav would have been tampered with. Not that difficult for someone who knows how to break in.”
Mereweather nodded thoughtfully. “So, what about this man? You said in your text to expect a prisoner.”
“He put up a fight.”
“And you killed him?”
“No. He slipped and hit his head.”
“Well, that’s something at least,” Mereweather looked relieved. “If it looks like an accident, we can distance ourselves. No problem. Thank goodness for that.”
King took out the bundle of tissue. It was bloody and had started to unravel in his pocket. He placed it on the centre console. “It’s not as simple as that. I wanted to ID him. Fingerprints, DNA.”
Simon Mereweather glanced down. “What on earth is that?”
“His finger,” said King. “I don’t think there’s much chance of it looking like an accident now.”
38
“Best we can do, I’m afraid.”
“I thought it would be quicker,” King said. He looked at Mereweather. “Is there anywhere else?”
“Don’t mind me,” the technician commented dryly.
“This is as good as it gets,” replied Mereweather. “And we can’t go to the yard and work with Special Branch, for obvious reasons.”
Normally MI5 would work with Special Branch for something like this, but as King had pointed out, if the man on the train was a known terrorist or had links to terrorism, then sooner or later a body without a finger was going to be flagged on the system. The fact that two MI5 operatives had recently requested prints and DNA from a severed finger was not going to go unmissed.
MI5 did not have a dedicated forensics facility, using Home Office facilities instead, or on occasion, facilities like the one the two men were sta
nding in now. A private company owned and run by ex-Home Office forensic experts who knew how to secure those all-important government contracts. This facility had dealt with some of MI5’s lesser known investigations, especially matters which were unrecorded for public record. Fishing with dynamite, as it was often referred to. Harvesting evidence and replanting it to seal an investigation. The smoking gun, the extra rope for terrorists to hang themselves, metaphorically speaking. Such practice was unthinkable in a Home Office laboratory. The British judicial system was the fairest in the world, but the enemy had changed, and the fight was just that little more delicate, the stakes higher than they had ever been.
“So, are we doing this?” the technician asked impatiently. It was past office hours now. The man had dinner plans and a boxset to catch up on. He looked at King and Mereweather in turn. “Where is the subject? I’ll need to take DNA swabs first, then run finger prints. That can take hours if they’re on East European databases. Russia’s are tediously slow.”
King took the bundle out of his pocket and tossed it over to the technician. The man stared at the bloodstained tissue, looked back up at King.
“What is this?”
“That’s the subject,” he said. “Or at least, his finger. DNA shouldn’t be a problem, but you’ll only have the one print to work from.”
39
King had woken at six. He had checked his phone, seen the texts and replied. The first he replied to had been Caroline’s. Her plane had touched down and she was headed towards diplomatic arrivals. She had sent back a text and told King not to bother picking her up. Simon Mereweather was putting on a car and she would meet King back at the flat. She had signed off with three kisses. All was well.
Mereweather’s text had been short and sweet – Meeting. Nine sharp. Top tier. King had texted back – Make it ten. He knew Mereweather would be livid, but he felt a little petulant today. Caroline had been away, gone through so much, King was damned if he was going to rush away with her so close.