So far, so good, he thought.
Next, he logged into the share trading account he held with an online brokerage house in the UK. For years he had been picking up bonus share awards for high performance at the company. It was a feature of the organisation that they preferred to reward people with shares rather than cash. It was part of the ‘golden handcuffs’ policy to tie employees to the organisation and enhance its performance. Jonathan did not own very many shares, but sold under the right circumstances they would make a tidy profit. He put two orders into the trading system. The first order was to sell all his existing shares at the current market price. The second was to place an order to sell short all company stock available for short-selling.
‘It is done,’ Zlatan said from over Jonathan’s shoulder, looking at his computer screen. ‘The boss is having an eighty-nine-inch plasma screen wheeled onto the veranda to watch the cable news channels.’
‘Eighty-nine inches?’ Jonathan asked absently, still tapping away at the keyboard. ‘Didn’t know they made them that big.’
‘They do for him. He’ll only watch a television the size of his lucky number.’
Jonathan stopped tapping away at the keyboard only for a second. He shrugged his shoulders, then continued banging away at the keys.
‘What is this short-selling?’ Zlatan asked, reading the screen. ‘I am interested.’
‘It’s something you can do as an investor to make profit when you’re sure that the stock of a company is going to fall. I’m putting in a request to my broker to borrow shares in the company from other clients in his company. The broker promises those investors they’ll be returned at the same price. He will immediately sell all those shares on my behalf at the current market price. Then, if the shares dive downwards I’m “short” in the position against what the broker sold them for – I cover this by buying them back at the lower price once the stock has dived. So basically I buy the stock back and the broker returns them to the original owners, who were just holding the shares anyway whether they went up or down – so it makes no difference to them. I make a profit from the difference between the price at which the stock was sold and the cost to buy it back, minus commissions and expenses for borrowing the stock, which is the stockbroker’s profit. Understand?’
‘No. I think I’ll just stick to killing people for money.’
‘Whatever works for you,’ Jonathan said, as he kept hitting the set of black keys at a now near-blinding speed. His middle finger slammed on the ‘enter’ key to send through an order to short-sell every share the broker could lay his hands on.
Thirdly and finally, Jonathan sent his original hypothesis to the major news networks in the US and across Europe. Once one of the major Western media organisations picked it up and ran with it, every major foreign network would feed off them like a cloud of remora fish following big sharks. He copied his bumbling room-mate, Harry Shaftsbury, in on the email. That would put it into the intelligence networks while the media agencies were trying to verify it.
Contacts within the intelligence services could verify to the media that elements of the hypothesis were real, and that would give enough credibility for the media to start running the story. With a gleeful smile, Jonathan watched the little electronic envelopes being posted off into cyberspace.
‘Why you look so happy?’ Zlatan asked, still looking over his shoulder and seeing the smiling reflection in the computer screen.
‘Because,’ Jonathan replied, ‘by this time tomorrow, a plethora of oil company executives will either jump or be thrown from the top of their global headquarters – and every one of those sons of bitches who are involved will deserve every bit of airtime they get before they hit the pavement.’
‘Ah,’ Zlatan replied in a contemplative tone. ‘I see your time with us has changed something inside you. Tell me something,’ he asked, as Jonathan cleared the history files of the internet software, still sporting his evil smile. ‘Have you thought of going into the protection, assignment and waste removal business?’
Jonathan knew that ‘waste removal business’ was code for the business of assassination.
‘We’ll see. I’ll need a new career path after all this.’ He paused. ‘There’s still one more thing to do on this assignment before we’re finished.’
Avi, the Arab and Zlatan all huddled around him, after throwing final glowering looks at all the cowering patrons, which reduced them to stiff, forward-facing gargoyles.
‘I need you guys to get back to your employers and their networks. Find out where the CEO of my former company lives. I know it’s in Surrey somewhere. We go to England tonight!’
52
Surrey, England
At eight o’clock in the evening, Jonathan and his disparate crew of highly trained miscreants touched down at the private airfield of Biggin Hill in Kent. The Gulfstream V90 executive jet they were in was a private charter, hired outside Russia, which had picked them up in Moscow.
As they descended the steps of the jet, they were met by an airport official and a cadre of international courier companies. The couriers were all lined up and waiting for signatures on electronic clipboards, so that they could hand over the sealed boxes they were carrying. Avi and Zlatan split the couriers into two groups, with each of them signing away five couriers each.
Once the information came through about where Warren Tarrant lived, it was obvious that a home invasion was going to occur. Each party called ahead to have the requisite equipment sent to meet them at the airfield, which they felt they would need for the operation.
After lugging all the black bags into two unmarked waiting black Ford Mondeos, the party set off towards the M25 motorway encircling London. They would sweep westwards and leave the motorway to enter the leafy greenery of one of the wealthiest districts surrounding the capital of Britain, the county of Surrey.
Jonathan, Avi and Zlatan were in the lead car, discussing strategy. The Arab and the falcon were in the second car with most of the equipment and baggage.
Back in the lead car, Avi had powered up a laptop that had been sent to him. He started showing Jonathan and Zlatan the plans to Tarrant’s quasi-palatial home, which had already been downloaded onto the hard drive.
‘He has good security, this guy,’ Avi was explaining. ‘Not “paranoid” good, but “take enough precautions” good. Nice place too – even has a heated driveway.’
‘Sounds right for such a bastard,’ Jonathan said in disgust. ‘Can we get in?’
‘There isn’t a lock made that I can’t pick,’ Zlatan said with confidence as he cleaned under his nails with a small knife that had appeared in his hand as if from the air.
‘May not be any need. The security system is run through an electronic network on the estate. Again, it’s good, but no match for Israeli intelligence software. This laptop has a very powerful wireless transmitter. I should be able to hack in and disable the relevant areas so we can just walk in.’
Forty minutes later, the black Fords came softly to a halt outside eight-foot-high walls dusted in creamy Tuscan-affected paint tones.
Avi turned to the others in the car.
‘The other piece of good news is that there are apparently no armed guards or trained attack dogs roaming the property.’ He closed the plans on his laptop and started booting up various other kinds of software.
‘Not much call for that in Surrey,’ Jonathan said laconically, before shifting over to get closer to Avi and look at the laptop screen. ‘Come on Avi, work your magic!’
Jonathan followed, watching in fascination as Avi’s fingers conducted a cyber-symphony over the laptop. The software had located the electronic systems of Tarrant’s property and begun hacking into the system. Within a few minutes, Avi was in. The software he was using was still classified within the Israeli armed forces, and was so effective that the security company would never even detect that their system had been hacked. No blinking lights would go off, and no men in black would suddenly hove into vie
w on CCTV cameras. Avi finished with a flourish of his right hand and the large wrought-iron gates to the property began to majestically open, as though Moses himself had given them the royal wave.
‘Hah hah!’ Jonathan exclaimed. ‘You’re a genius.’
‘Well, that’s what happens when you travel with God’s chosen people,’ Avi replied modestly.
‘What about any servants we come across?’
‘I have ways to deal with them,’ Zlatan cut in, with a sinister glint in his voice as the knife appeared again by sleight of hand.
‘Without any killing,’ Jonathan said.
‘Ah.’ The knife magically vanished again. ‘Fine, I have prepared for that eventuality too. One of the bags in the trunk.’
They all exited the car. Zlatan opened the trunk, unzipped one of the duffel bags and began handing out strange-looking handguns.
‘I thought I said no killing,’ Jonathan asserted incredulously.
‘Not guns. Tranquilizer darts,’ Zlatan replied, looking past the cars at the large trees that bordered Tarrant’s property.
Without warning Zlatan’s arm shot upwards with one of the weapons, and he fired into the trees.
‘What’s the point of ...’ Jonathan began, cut off by Zlatan sharply raising a hand towards his face to command silence. Avi and Jonathan looked up to see a rustling in the trees. There was a flash of movement and a large grey squirrel hit the ground with a thump, not ten feet from them. The little grey body had a small winged dart sticking out of its leg.
Zlatan turned with a smile. ‘See, that tiny thing will sleep for long time and wake up fine.’
‘Unless the fall killed it,’ Jonathan said.
‘Or the dose that is meant to fell a human killed it,’ Avi said.
‘Whatever,’ Zlatan shot back with some irritation. ‘It’s fine for people! Shall we go and end this now?’ He motioned towards the open gates.
The other two nodded, and they turned towards the black hole that had been created by the opening of the gates.
‘Right,’ Jonathan said as he hefted his gun to get used to the weight. ‘As Sir Edmund Hillary, Knight of the Royal Garter, once said on Mount Everest: “Let’s knock the bastard off!”’
Avi waved for the Arab to come up out of the other car. The Arab was unpacking his curved scimitar sword from one of the courier boxes. He seemed particularly pleased to be re-united with it as he slid it through the red sash on his waist. Once this was done, he joined the rest of the group and they all started moving into the house.
‘No killing means no killing,’ Jonathan said under his breath as they walked.
The long drive snaked away from the floodlit gates into the darkness and up to the illuminated windows of the main house. All was quiet in the darkness of the gardens, and it seemed that the opening of the gates had not alerted anybody. It was the picture of normality for a country garden at night.
‘The motion detectors on his security system showed that there were five people on the property. Four in the main house and one in a garden out the back,’ Avi said quietly as they moved through the darkness, approaching the main building.
‘Come, we will split up here,’ Avi whispered, ‘Jonathan comes with me through the front door and through the house. You two each go around one side of the house. Unless we find him in the house, we will meet at the back to intercept the final person in the garden. Everyone clear?’
They all nodded in the dimness and slowly proceeded to branch away from each other as they drew closer to the main house. Avi continued to lead Jonathan towards the large, mahogany front door. Once at the door, Avi hunched down on his knees and poked his tranquilizer gun through the letter box while matching his eye height with the gap to take a look inside.
He adjusted the gun slightly and, to Jonathan’s surprise, fired.
Avi smiled as he stood up.
‘That’s one down,’ he said as he placed his hand on the ornate bronze door handle and pushed down to swing the large square of mahogany open. Jonathan had been expecting Avi to produce some tiny piece of electronica, never before seen by the public eye, that would crack the code of the door lock. ‘I opened it from the laptop outside. It is the great flaw of electronic systems if they come up against someone smarter than the original programmer. Let’s go.’ He motioned inside and they both slipped through the crack.
As their eyes adjusted to the bright light from the darkness outside, the first thing Jonathan noticed was the prostrate form of a butler in pinstriped trousers, snuggling up to the ornate mat in the hall.
He held the thumbs-up sign to Avi and put on his impressed face, before cocking his own weapon in James Bond fashion. In truth he was getting into this exploit, and really looking forward to shooting someone, albeit not dead. Compared to all the other risks he had faced in the past week, this should be a cakewalk by his reckoning. They were not expected in this place, and there were no assassins or secret agents lurking behind every pot plant.
Just low-paid house staff like the comatose Jeeves on the carpet, Jonathan thought, as he advanced down the hall, behind Avi. They reached the end of the hall and came into a reception room with a set of couches on either side. An ornate stairway led up to the second level in the middle of the room. Avi motioned for Jonathan to watch the left side of the room as they went up the stairs. Jonathan gave the thumbs-up sign again.
The stairs led onto a long first-floor corridor, from which the doors for many ornate bedrooms could be seen. According to the flashing dots on Avi’s laptop, there were two other people on this level. Jonathan felt he was close to the very villain himself who had begun the process of trying to extinguish his life. For Tarrant, it would have been like deleting a useless document on his computer.
A short, high-pitched shriek from the hall behind him made Jonathan spin suddenly into a crouch. A dark form crossed the threshold of the door at the other end of the hallway. Nerves jerked his finger, and he fired a dart towards the source of the shriek. The dart thudded into the wooden door.
‘It’s me,’ Avi said loudly. ‘Don’t shoot. I’m coming back into the hall.’ His large frame blotted out most of the light coming from the room, as he stood silhouetted in the frame.
‘What happened? Who was that?’ Jonathan asked, still crouching on the floor, his gun now lowered.
‘Gave his wife a hell of a surprise, as she looked up from her Barbara Taylor Bradford novel,’ the silhouette replied, then lifted the gun and aimed it at Jonathan’s head. Jonathan’s eyes widened in horror and he dropped flat on the floor as a dart flew two inches to the right of where his left arm had been. Jonathan quickly looked up and forward again, but was distracted by a large weight falling on his legs. He turned quickly to see a maid lying across his calves. She had been behind him, unseen by him but targeted by the ever-vigilant Avi.
‘Flaming heck!’ he exclaimed as he prodded the maid, who was out cold from the dart now embedded in her arm.
‘Where did she come from?’
‘Behind you,’ explained Avi, standing over Jonathan, having crossed the landing as if by magic. ‘She must have come out of another room when she heard the shriek of the lady of the house. Here, let me help you.’ A huge hand came down and took Jonathan’s. He was lifted back to his feet.
‘Suppose I should have really shot her,’ Jonathan said as he looked down at the lifeless form in maid’s uniform. ‘I got distracted by the yell of the wife.’
‘Don’t worry about it. That’s three down. You guard the stairs here in case anyone else comes up. I’ll go through and clear the rest of the rooms on this floor.’
Jonathan nodded. He knew it wasn’t a request. These men were highly trained, and probably saw Jonathan as putting them in danger of fouling things up. His wayward shot into the door would not have helped.
Avi disappeared into the room the maid had emerged from, and Jonathan dutifully turned his attention to waving his gun around in the general direction of the stairs.
Afte
r no time at all, the giant Israeli magically re-appeared behind the twitchy Englishman.
‘Clear,’ Avi said, before motioning to follow him back down the stairs.
He had not mentioned anyone else in the other rooms, so that still left possibly one person downstairs and one in the garden. Jonathan dutifully, and rather meekly, padded down the lushly carpeted stairwell after Avi.
Once at the bottom they made their way towards the heavy-set door at the other side of the room. As it glided open smoothly on its gold hinges, both men craned through the ever-widening gap to look for their quarry.
The room appeared empty.
Jonathan was hit by a strange surge of relief and anguish. They stepped softly into the room and saw they were in the vast main lounge. There were huge sofas clustered around an enormous plasma-screen television in one corner. There appeared to be some kind of ornate reading area taking up the other side of the room, with a door in the left wall. Pride of place in the reading area was given to a classic black chaise-longue surrounded by low book-cases. On the opposite side of the room, between the two areas, was a large set of French doors leading towards the outside patio.
As the two men reached the centre of the room, the door on the left banged open and another woman in maid’s uniform stumbled in with a wild-eyed, crazy look. She reached forward with both arms as if to offer the men salvation, or give them a great secret as the last of a dying race. Both men were momentarily taken aback before raising their weapons. But there was no need. After three steps, the woman fell forward and hit the carpeted floor. She was out cold, with a dart sticking out of her left buttock.
Both men looked up to see she had come from a kitchen area with a set of windows at the back. A gun had been shoved through one of the open windows.
Behind the window they saw the face of Zlatan, who gave a churlish smile and a little wave. Jonathan and Avi relaxed.
‘It looks like the big game is not in the house,’ Avi said, motioning to Zlatan through the window to keep going around to the back of the house.
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