It had been a busy day at Madrid international airport. Many of the top operatives from the world’s most prominent espionage agencies, as well as some of the elite contracted assassins, passed through the arrivals hall.
All these people had been banging around in France to no avail and much frustration over the past week. Knowing it was pointless as all the trails had gone cold there, but having to play the waiting game.
That was over now.
The targets had popped up on the grid again.
A wire money transfer of fifty thousand euros had gone into the woman’s account this morning from a Swiss bank account. The money had gone out again almost immediately in the form of a cash withdrawal.
The targets would be long gone from the bank, but it meant they had probably stayed in a hotel in Madrid – it would be found. In this game, clues often led to other clues.
That the targets had popped up again was good news for all involved. That someone with a Swiss bank account was funding them was bad news. They did not give these accounts to average people who walked in off the street.
Neither the man nor the woman had the assets required to open one of these accounts. That meant someone with resources and influence was helping them. This was intriguing to those at MI6, CIA and Interpol. It was downright concerning to the employers of the privately hired hit men on their tail.
41
London
Darkness had fallen on London. A particular consultant, who worked in the Portfolio department, exited from the head office of the largest oil company in the world and strode into the muggy London night.
In his extreme fatigue, the consultant failed to see two dark figures detach themselves from the shadows of the building behind him and start trailing him as he walked.
The shadows were secret agents who were part of the larger operation to pick up and bring in this particular consultant, identified by Jorge Armando and his colleague earlier in the day.
It was the job of the two shadows to trail the consultant and confirm he had his laptop with him. One of the shadows had confirmed this as soon as the target was sighted.
The laptop was often the “smoking gun” in these affairs. If they could later coerce the consultant into co-operating, then a lot of the files they needed would already be on his machine, or sitting on a server which he could access remotely.
Often in cases involving multinationals the personnel were all very bright, but amazingly naive about personal and file security.
The shadows noted this about the current target from the way he moved. He thought he was just a consultant on a project in a big company – not really making the connection that what he worked on had global consequences for thousands of people. He was just sauntering down the street on a muggy night, carrying some dynamite information in his bag – but probably just thinking about getting laid.
The agents shadowed him into a tube station and on the journey into north London.
The consultant had no clue that he was being followed. Even if he had, there were people waiting at his house, so the shadows could simply vanish if they were spotted, and meet up again once he was picked up at his home.
‘Target entering apartment.’ The radio crackled in the lead agent’s ear. He made a hand signal, and he and his colleague melted into a wall as they watched the consultant they had been trailing from the company head office enter the front door of his brick terraced apartment. The lead agent lifted his wrist to his mouth to talk into his tiny microphone.
‘Hang back for ten. Let him settle. Three and four will go up. Five and six cover the front. Eight take the back.’
Further down the road, he watched three more shadows move closer into position as they readied themselves for the next order.
Exactly ten minutes later, the lead agent and his partner emerged from the shadows and walked down the road as though they were casually coming back from work.
They entered the door to the building with all the confidence of someone who lived there. It was a three-storey Victorian terrace where each floor had been converted into a two-bedroom apartment.
One of the men inserted what looked like a key into the door of the front entrance, and they were through. Up and down the rest of the street, it was an ordinary and uneventful night.
Once outside the consultant’s front door on the top floor of the building, the lead agent politely knocked three times. If questioned as to who they were, the men had local council badges and were enacting by-law 229 regarding inspection for adherence to ‘Transmissable Spongiform Encephalopathies Regulations’, which was one of just 266 ways local government officials were able to enter homes in England, with the resident having no power to stop them.
The agent was surprised, however, when he heard all the latches being undone in preparation for opening the door.
This was not a good sign, as it meant the consultant was expecting visitors.
The white door swung open with a creak and the agents were momentarily taken aback at the sight of a young Asian man wearing nothing but a fluffy blue towel wrapped around his waist. No one else had been seen entering or exiting the apartment since it had been placed under surveillance last night. The man must have been in the apartment the entire time.
‘Hi!’ the young man said eagerly. ‘You here for the gang bang?’
‘The ...’ Even with his years of training the lead agent was again taken aback.
‘Who the hell are you?’ the agent demanded, as he attempted to take control of the situation.
‘How rude!’ the young man in the towel said, as he moved to close the door. He was stopped short by a finger-point chop to the throat that he did not see coming.
The man staggered backwards clutching his windpipe. The two agents coolly walked in. One grabbed the man from behind to muffle his mouth with a handkerchief. The other pulled out a gun and headed for the bedroom. He burst in on the consultant – who was naked and midway through getting into some sort of hanging leather harness system that was bolted onto the ceiling. There were all sorts of sexual paraphernalia adorning the walls. The consultant screamed and recoiled in horror, retreating into the corner.
‘Always the ones you least suspect, eh, Mr Jilbani?’ the agent said as he aimed the gun. The agent pulled the trigger, and Lambdon Jilbani screamed as his leg exploded in pain.
The agent gave him hard stare. ‘Relax, it’s just a tranquilizer dart. We need you alive.’
That was the last thing Lambdon Jilbani heard before blacking out and collapsing in a heap of buckles and straps.
42
London
Lambdon Jilbani groggily wafted back into consciousness, becoming vaguely aware of his senses again. As his eyes unglued from chemical sleep and he tried to feel his hands, a wave of panic hit as, first, he remembered what had happened, and second, he found he was unable to move. He was strapped tightly into a chair.
As the mist cleared and his eyes focused again, he looked around wildly to see where he was. The room looked like it had stainless-steel walls on three sides, and the wall in front of him was not a wall at all, but a huge mirror.
It all came flooding back to him now.
He had been shot! Kidnapped! He was a captive of sick terrorists or the gay-hating religious far right!
It was all too much to bear. He started sweating profusely. He screamed while tilting and rocking the chair to left and right until it reached its tipping point. He went over to his right and hit the floor.
In the room behind the large mirror, the lead agent who had brought Lambdon in was standing with three colleagues, watching the event through the one-way glass.
The lead agent picked up the microphone in front of him to speak into it.
‘Mr Jilbani. We’re coming in to talk to you. Do not panic. I repeat, do not panic. We work for the government.’
Lambdon responded by panicking and screaming again.
‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ the agent said, as he put the microphone d
own. ‘This would have been so much easier if we’d found the laptop in the laptop bag, or the apartment. He probably left it in the office. Now we have to be all nice to him, and convince him to go back into the office and retrieve it.’ He snapped his fingers at the other agents. ‘You two, with me.’
A silver panel next to the large mirror opened, and three men in black suits stepped through the large black rectangle of the door frame.
Lambdon’s eyes bulged in horror. He screamed again, and fainted.
43
Corsica
Jonathan Marshall stepped out of the private Lear jet into blindingly brilliant sunshine. The sky was achingly blue, and there wasn’t a cloud in sight.
‘I could get quite used to this,’ he said as he descended the steps towards the black Mercedes waiting on the runway below.
Then he thought of Falcus Loader, and his mood became more sombre. He decided he would perhaps be better off getting used to a quiet place in the country, with Julie, cementing entente cordiale by creating a brood of Anglo-French kids. There had been plenty of time to think on the plane, and he had decided he was not cut out for all this modern swashbuckling – or whatever he had been plunged into.
He still didn’t know who was trying to kill him and who to entirely trust. What was the point of leading the high-life if your life could be ended by a high-velocity bullet from a sniper’s rifle as you stepped out of a plane …
The sun was so bright he could hardly see. He turned, squinting uncomfortably, to see his massive Israeli bodyguard descending the steps, closely followed by the Arab with the desert falcon on his arm.
‘Where the hell are we?’ Jonathan asked.
Avi made a gesture in front of his face that looked something like a question mark. ‘Ah, we are in a special place – Corsica.’
‘Corsica?’
‘Yes, to see a very special man – come,’ Avi said, motioning to the black Mercedes. ‘We cannot keep him waiting.’
Jonathan decided not to ask. If this man was anything on the same strange scale as The Dichotomy, then he was in for a special treat he did not particularly savour.
He got into the car, reflecting on the unbalanced nature of the people running the planet today.
44
London
Lambdon Jilbani stood in front of the sweeping headquarters of the largest oil company in the world.
Next to him stood the lead MI6 agent. The agent who had, in the last twenty-four hours, shot him, tied him to a chair, and threatened to end the world as he knew it, unless he helped to expose history’s potentially largest oligopoly in the making.
Lambdon had started to experience a slight panic attack as they approached the entrance. He had become a lot more co-operative with the agency when they had promised him amnesty for anything he had been willingly or unwittingly involved in. An amnesty including non-prosecution for any illicit files they might find on the hard drive of his laptop. All he had to do in return was lead the agent into the building and get his laptop with the project files on it.
After a few more deep breaths, and some elbow-leading by the agent, they started heading towards the door.
‘You’re sweating more than normal,’ The agent said in his controlled monotone. ‘You need to be relaxed here. Just another day in the office. Are we relaxed?’
Lambdon huffed and wiped his brow. ‘Relaxed, relaxed,’ he said.
‘Good.’
‘Hey,’ Lambdon said, ‘I don’t even know your name. What if I have to introduce you?’
‘My name’s Terry Kingsley,’ the agent said.
‘Is Terry Kingsley your real name?’
‘No. Keep walking.’
By this time they were at the reception desk, for Lambdon to sign the man in as a visitor. His hands were threatening to shake at any moment, as his entire nervous system screamed at an ever-increasing internal volume for him to run. The receptionist was looking at him, a cravat with the company colours cosseting her neck. ‘Are you all right, sir?’ she asked as her right eyebrow rose ever so slightly.
‘Um. Yes. Fine. Sorry. Big meeting today,’ Lambdon said.
‘Ah,’ was all she said as she looked at the visitor pass before sliding it across the desk.
Lambdon took it a little too quickly, and they turned together to head for the lifts. Once on the twelfth floor of the building, the rehearsed plan swung into action.
The agent hovered by the coffee machine in the hall, casually reading the Financial Times, giving Lambdon a chance to go and fetch his laptop.
The door to the Portfolio office had a different card-entry system from everywhere else in the building. Lambdon, as he did every morning, pulled out another magnetic identification card and held it up to the card reader embedded in the door. Every day when he did this the device dutifully beeped and let him in.
Today it did not.
It did nothing.
Lambdon’s body initiated a full-sweat response.
They’re onto me! his mind screamed. They’ve frozen me out of the office. The whole thing has been shut down. Run!
‘Scuse us, guv.’ A rough voice came from behind.
‘Eep!’ Lambdon gave a little jump and turned round quickly.
He was shocked to be standing toe-to-toe not with the Grim Reaper but apparently with a team of in-house East End removals men complete with requisite mixtures of tattoos, ponytails and shaved heads.
‘We need to get in there,’ one of the removals team said.
‘Uh, sure,’ Lambdon said, stepping aside.
The head removals man pushed past him to beep the door with a card and start filing his men into the office.
‘I, uh, need to get my laptop. What are you people doing here?’ Lambdon could see through the door that the office was a crazy mess. Half of the rubbish was strewn over the floor, and the other half was all boxed up.
‘Office move,’ came the reply. ‘We have to box all this stuff up and take it to the basement.’
‘Oh, okay.’ Lambdon continued to stand still by the doorway to discern what stage of removal the office was at, and whether his laptop would still even be in there. He could see that the removals men were just carting away all the cabinets wholesale, without emptying their contents.
Standard practice in these office moves was that the owner of each lockable cabinet, or shelf in each cabinet, removed all their belongings before it was taken away. It seemed they were in such a hurry to clear the office that everything was being removed exactly as it was. The shock of realizing that the office had apparently been shut down overnight had not yet registered with Lambdon. His future security lay only in securing his laptop and handing it over to the intelligence services. His high-profile project in the Portfolio department, his job in general – none of that mattered any more. It all paled into insignificance with the threat of interminable detention, and the ruin of his reputation among his extended family if the nature of his sexuality was publicized.
With this driving force limiting his vision, he strode into the office, regardless of his personal safety.
‘I need to get my laptop. I have the key to my locker here.’ He had anticipated the looks of the removal men.
‘Yeah, guv,’ replied a ponytailed man next to his cabinet, who was throwing paper into a wheeled bin.
The removal men did not care.
Lambdon thought that if they wanted to get all the sensitive information out of the room it would have made more sense to put someone on the door whose motivation went beyond earning minimum wage in the morning, aiming to spend it on beer in the afternoon.
Lambdon unlocked his cabinet, grabbed his laptop and walked out.
As he exited the doors of Portfolio, he heard a voice clearly directed at him from nearby: ‘Hey! What are you doing in there?’
Lambdon quickly turned to his right to see a man in a black suit striding towards him down the hall with a can of drink in his hand, reaching for a two-way radio on his belt. As the man unclippe
d the radio and brought it to his mouth he was moving past the ‘rest station’ where the coffee machine was housed. A hand shot out from this area to chop into the throat of the black-suited man. The two-way radio fell to the floor and the man’s face contorted as his air supply was cut off.
Just as his legs buckled the hidden MI6 agent responsible for the throat-chop appeared and supported the man at the shoulders while half forcing him to walk, half dragging him towards a nearby fire exit stairwell on the opposite side of the corridor. The agent pushed the fire door open with his shoulder and threw the man down the concrete stairs. The whole incident was over in a few seconds, and no one else had appeared in the corridor.
The agent coolly turned around and moved to grab Lambdon by the arm to start walking him out.
‘Relaxed,’ he said.
‘Uh, okay, Terry,’ Lambdon said.
They walked straight back out of the building using their passes and straight into an unmarked car parked outside.
‘Well done,’ the agent said to Lambdon, once they were underway.
‘You ever get excited or fazed by anything, Terry?’ Lambdon asked as he clutched his laptop to his chest.
‘Oh, I’m very excited,’ the agent replied. ‘I can’t wait to get this thing back to base – see what’s in Pandora’s box.’
Lambdon hung his head and whimpered softly.
45
Corsica
The brown hills of Corsica rolled luxuriously past Jonathan’s car window. He fell to contemplating what strange situation he would be walking into next, as well as the strong possibility that he might still die due to all this.
He had almost given up trying to pry out of Avi any details of the person they were going to meet. Avi always declined to let slip any information ‘until the time was right’. Given that they were now driving towards this person’s residence, Jonathan wondered when the ‘right time’ would be.
He hated being given information just before walking into a meeting. It happened quite often in the consulting world, particularly when consultants had been brought in purely to further the political ends of senior managers. This would typically manifest itself with the businessman telling the consultant, as they were going into the meeting, something to the effect that ‘The board will never agree to this anyway. The whole project was done just to discredit X.’
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