by Blake Banner
* * *
I landed at Heathrow Airport ten days later at nine A.M., picked up my Aston Martin Volante from Hertz and enjoyed the drive up to Oxford, through an insane superabundance of green hills and green foliage that seemed to billow, like green smoke across the countryside, under heavy, gray skies.
I entered the city over the Magdalen Bridge and past Magdalen College, which for some reason the Brits call ‘Maudlin’ Bridge and ‘Maudlin’ College, and followed the High Street, among ancient, unpretentious buildings in white and ochre and salmon pink, that had seen the rise and fall of kingdoms and empires without undue concern; and great, sandstone colleges with tall, narrow leaded windows that were already ancient when Drake was giving Spain a hard time on the high seas. This was the city of the dreaming spires, that most ancient seat of learning, where streets get called things like Logic Street and nobody thinks it’s odd.
It’s a town I love.
Her apartment was the whole top floor of a block on the corner of the High Street and King Edward Street. King Edward Street was where the entrance was, through an anonymous blue door set between a tailor’s store and a stone arch with an iron gate. I parked at the back of the Christ Church Library and made my way to Marni’s old, yellow brick block. She buzzed me in and I climbed five flights of stairs to the top landing, where she was waiting for me with the door open and a smile on her face.
“You have some explaining to do, Skywalker.”
“I’m not calling you Leia anymore. Can I call you Chewie?”
We kissed and she stood back to let me in. The apartment was as big as it was old, with high ceilings, tall windows and a warren of corridors leading to bright, spacious rooms. She took me into a living room that overlooked the High Street. A light drizzle had started and I could hear the sigh of tires on wet asphalt outside. The room was furnished without taste or style. It was functional and comfortable, with mismatched sofa armchairs, lamps and a dining table that doubled as a desk up against one wall. There were no ornaments, no paintings, no posters. No photographs. But there were lots of books, and bookcases of all shapes and sizes against all the walls.
Next to the living room was the kitchen. I stood in the doorway and watched her make coffee. While it was brewing, she rested her ass on the low windowsill and crossed her arms.
“So you and Abi broke up. I thought you were both in it for the long haul.”
“Yeah, we broke up. She broke up with me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She was right. It had to happen. I should never have married her.”
She made a ‘what do I know’ face. “Life’s a bitch, then you die. All we can do is the best we can in the moment.”
“I guess.”
“But you’re not here on the rebound, Lacklan. We both know that. So why are you here?”
“They sent a team after us.”
She frowned, like what I was saying didn’t make sense.
“Not to my house, they followed us into the city and struck while we were at the Market. They weren’t shy.”
“You’re sure it’s Omega?”
“By a process of elimination, it has to be Omega Europe. How strong are they here?”
“In the U.K.? They’re in flux. It’s chaos here at the moment. Everybody is scrambling for power, but nobody seems to have enough to seize control. Are Abi and the kids OK?”
I nodded. I was about to tell her we were making it look acrimonious, but something stopped me. “She’s bitter. She thinks there’s something between you and me.”
“I figured.” She shrugged. “So, why are you here?”
“I’m going after the European cabal. I want to take one of them out: Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota or Kappa.”
Her brow creased. “Is that smart? They’re powerful in Europe. It maybe chaos here, but on the continent they are strong. They’ve consolidated their power there.”
I shrugged and smiled. “I have nothing better to do.”
She was quiet for a moment, then said, “I hear you.”
The coffee began to gurgle. She poured it into two mugs and led the way back to the living room. There she stretched out on the sofa, cradling the mug in both hands and watched me where I sat in an ancient armchair with a Moroccan throw over it.
I asked her, “Are you safe here?”
“Gibbons has his ways. I don’t know how he does it, but they don’t touch him. I think he’s in league with the Devil.”
“Is he going to show up and start lecturing me?”
“He’s in France, lecturing the French.”
“When’s he due back?”
“Tomorrow night.”
“How do you tolerate him?”
“He’s a pain in the ass, but he’s a good man, and he’s brilliant.”
“Are you in love with him?”
She threw back her head an laughed out loud, not to hide the truth, but because she found the idea hilarious. When she’d finished, she watched me a while, smiling. “Once is enough for me, Lacklan.”
I nodded. “Me too.”
“So, are you ever going to tell me why you’re here?”
“Like I said, I’m going to damage the European leadership. But I’m going to do more than that. I’m going to hit Omega so bad they will have to leave me alone.”
She frowned. “You scare me sometimes. How are you going to do that?”
I lied. “Only I know that. Not because I don’t trust you, but because the risk to you is too high.”
“This again?”
I stared awhile at the lazy drops on the window, feeling a hot twist of anxiety in my gut. “I don’t want you to get hurt, Marni. I’ve lost so much, I don’t want to lose you, too.”
“But it’s OK for me to lose you?”
“It’s just the way it is.”
She raised an eyebrow that said I was a misogynist asshole. I showed her eyebrow a face that said I didn’t care.
“What I need from you, Marni, is two things. First, any intelligence you can give me that will help with taking out my target.”
“How can I give you that if you won’t tell me who it is?”
“My target is Theta, Emanuel Van Zuydam.”
“Jesus, Lacklan! Are you out of your mind?”
“He won’t be the first president I’ve killed.”
“The security around that guy will be…”
“Leave that to me, Marni. I know what I’m doing and how to do it. What I need to know is…” I shook my head. “Stuff like what is their focus at the moment? Are they seeking to expand back to the U.S.A.? How are they responding to Britain pulling out of the EU? Is that hurting them? What kind of security have the top five got? Where do they spend their time…?”
She laughed without much humor. “Is that all? You don’t need me, you need MI6.” She sipped her coffee and was thoughtful for a while. “My impression, and Gibbons’ impression, is that they are focusing on consolidating their power in Europe, in creating a European army. They will disguise it as a need for a European NATO because Trump is playing hardball, demanding greater contributions from European allies. That’s BS because it will be a lot more expensive to set up an alternative NATO than to contribute more to the existing one. Besides, how much longer can Trump stay in power?” She shook her head. “No, there is a definite move by the EU to sever ties with the U.S.A., and that is driven by Omega; but the reason? I am not sure I can tell you why.”
I stood and went and gazed out of the tall window at the gray, damp street. “You remember Ben, back during the U.N. crisis? He had been intent on creating a war between Europe and the States…”[6]
“I remember. There is no clearly defined power base in Britain right now. Gibbons believes there could be a coup, or more than one. Omega could engineer a coup to bring the U.K. back into Europe, or the Army could stage a coup to restore order. Both are possible. As to the movements of the Cabal, I haven’t got that kind of information. Gibbons has.”
“I don’t wa
nt Gibbons to know about this operation, Marni.”
She sighed. “I wish you two would stop measuring dicks. He’s rude, boorish and arrogant, but you two are on the same side.”
“Tell him that. I don’t trust him. I know you like the guy, but I don’t trust him. He’s too much: too intense. He’s a fanatic. His ideas are more important than the people around him. When ideas become more important than people, thinkers becomes dangerous.”
She shook her head and looked unhappy. “He’s a good man, Lacklan, and he can help you. Don’t put me in this position.”
“All I’m asking, Marni, is that you don’t give him any details until after the operation is finished. Consider it a cell protocol, need to know. If I think he needs to know, I’ll tell him.”
She lifted her chin in half a nod that didn’t tell me anything. “How long will you be here?”
“Till tomorrow. I’m catching the ferry early tomorrow morning.”
“You got a hotel?”
“Not yet.”
“Stay here. I’ll cook a meal. You can do some rebounding.”
I smiled. She smiled too.
I said, “OK.”
SIX
Next day, I was up at five A.M. I left while she was still asleep and broke the speed limit all the way down to Dover. There, I handed back the Aston Martin and booked a ticket on the seven forty A.M. ferry to Calais. After that, I caught a cab to Dover Priory station, grabbed a coffee and a bun at the Pumpkin Café and bought a ticket, cash, to London Victoria.
I arrived in London at ten A.M. A steady drizzle had set in and the lights reflected like broken jell-O on the wet blacktop. I made the five hundred yard walk to the shopping mall on Victoria Street, hunched into my shoulders against the rain. There I found a public lavatory, locked myself into a cubicle and pasted a neat mustache onto my top lip. I put on a pair of clear, heavy-rimmed glasses and became Henry Winter. I put Henry Winter’s wallet and passport in my jacket pocket and stepped back onto Victoria Street to get a taxi to the City Airport.
At the airport, Henry Winter booked an air taxi to Brussels Airport and paid with his credit card. Anyone looking for Lacklan Walker would find he had intended to cross to Calais, but had not got off in France. All trace of him after that would vanish.
The flight to Belgium took a little less than half an hour and by three P.M., I was climbing out of a taxi on Albert Elisabethlaan, in the pleasant Merode district of Brussels. I paid the driver, watched him pull away and stood looking at the building. It was a five story red brick with exceptionally ugly balconies and windows in white plastic and aluminum. There was an ugly white door with five bells, too. I knew ours was the top one.
Next door, there was an attractive café called Soso. I didn’t think that was brilliant marketing, but maybe soso means something different in Belgium.
I stepped over to the door of the apartment block and pressed the bell. Nobody answered, but the lock buzzed And the door opened to admit me to a narrow, dark hallway that led to ten flights of narrow, dimly-lit, creaking stairs, and no elevator. The top floor had a small landing outside a plywood door that had once been painted white and was now molting with age and neglect. Njal opened the door with his right hand behind his back. He looked me over once, said, “OK…” like I’d just suggested pizza and a movie, and stepped back to let me in.
The apartment was large, but basic: there was a vinyl sofa in brown with two matching chairs set around an early 60’s pine and glass coffee table and a TV. On the floor, there was a carpet that was probably new when the Beatles released She Loves You, and against one wall there was a cheap dining table with four bentwood chairs. On it there was a computer and a sports bag.
Njal locked the door and shrugged as I took in the room. “Yuh, is OK. It’s only couple of days, right. I have taken this bedroom, overlooking Albert Elisabethlaan. There are two other rooms. You need to sleep?”
I shook my head.
The bedrooms were as basic as the living room, with steel beds and melamine wardrobes. I picked one with a view over the backyards, threw my bag on the bed and went to explore the fridge. It was no surprise that it was stocked with good Belgian beer and steak. I called, “You want a beer?”
He answered from the doorway, making me look up. “I have one.”
I pulled one out and cracked it. “How are you getting on?”
“Good. Timmerman is like a clock. He does not make surprises.”
I followed him into the living room. “You’ve only been watching him for a week.”
“Yuh, but we have contacts, Lacklan. Jim has been gathering information.”
“Who from?”
He dropped into an armchair and studied me a moment before taking a pull from his bottle. “Journalists, secretaries, cleaners. Don’t worry. They don’t know who they are giving the information to, or what for. They know only that they are paid.” He grinned. “You should take off your glasses and your mustache. You look stupid.”
I peeled off the mustache and put it on the table with the glasses. “So what’s his routine?”
“Every day, he is collected from his penthouse on Daalstraat in a black, bullet proof, bomb proof Audi 8…” He reached down beside him on the floor and picked up a map of Brussels and dropped it on the table. With a black felt tip he made a circle on the map. “There.”
I sat on the sofa and looked at the map. He went on talking.
“He is driven, by a different route every day, to his office at the Directorate General of the Commission for Development and Cooperation, on Weststraat. They are parking underground, in the parking garage, and he is not coming out until the evening, when he is coming out in the Audi which takes him to his apartment. Again, by different route every day. Here.” He drew another mark on the map. “Also, the car is going into the parking garage.
“So, security at the Directorate General building is like what you imagine: high tech, lots of guards and many guns. That is the worst place to take him. In between his apartment and his work, he is in his car. You need either an anti-tank RPG, or you need to get him out of the car somehow. Third option is at his apartment block, but security here also is very high because you have commissioners, MEPs, employees of the EU living here. You have high tech alarms connected direct to the police, and you have armed guards on site.” He laughed. “Not fat guys who never used a gun. They are for the banks. These guys are ex military. Then, he also has his personal bodyguards.”
“So far, it’s what I would have expected. So we need to draw him out of his routine.”
He shook his head. “That is maybe not necessary. Once a month, he is taking his family away to their country house for long weekend. He is nice father. He has two beautiful daughters, sixteen and eighteen, Katrina and Annabel, and an attractive wife, Muriel. On the last Friday of every month, they go to their country house in Normandy. It is four hundred miles, but they get there Friday night and they spend the weekend and return Monday night or Tuesday morning. This is their routine.”
I stared at the map awhile, running through the possibilities in my mind. After a moment, I said, “Why do I get the feeling their routine is being disrupted this month?”
His laugh was slow and guttural. “This month they are going to Normandy on Friday on their own, and he will join them on Saturday.”
“Why?”
“Because Europe is in crisis. The U.K. is leaving the European Union, the deadline for making some kind of agreement is November, and still there is no proposal on the table that they can begin to talk about. So it looks like in a few weeks, the U.K. is going to crash out of Europe, with no deal, no treaty, no agreement and this is going to hit everybody hard, but especially Europe. So all the departments of the Commission are like crazy having meetings, trying to sort something out before November.”
I leaned back on the sofa, pulled my Camels from my pocket and lit up.
“This shakes up his routine. He will be acting outside his normal patterns. That’s good
. We should find an opening here.”
He nodded. “His wife is taking the car on Friday. He has booked tickets for the train. Brussels to Paris, Paris to Rennes, and from there I am guessing by car to La Grandville.”
“How the hell did you get hold of that intel?”
He shook his head. “That is not for you to know, Lacklan. The bigger an organization is, the easier it is to collect information: cleaners, secretaries, office staff. You tell them it is for something harmless, like the tabloid paper, and you give them some money. People talk. We have our networks.”
“If this intel is accurate…”
“It is accurate. We have checked the bookings for the trains. He is booked with his two bodyguards. Saturday 22nd, eleven thirteen A.M., arrives Paris Gare du Nord at twelve thirty-five.”
“And he is traveling with just two bodyguards?”
“Sure, he doesn’t suspect any threats, and it is a break in his routine. He doesn’t think anybody knows about it.”
“What about the train to Rennes?”
“Gare Montparnasse, departs one twelve P.M.”
“So, our plan is we take him at Gare du Nord, or between Gare du Nord and Montparnasse.”
“OK, then what? You want to take him to Spain?”
I nodded. “So we need to get him to a car, or…” My mind was racing. I shook my head. “No. Cars can be easily identified, and if they start a hunt, a car is exactly what they’ll be hunting for. We’ll take him by train.”
He showed me a blank face that had all the effect of an arched eyebrow. “You wanna take a hostage from Paris to Madrid by train. A high-value hostage on one of the busiest train lines in the world.”
“Yes.”
“Because this will be safer than taking him by car.”
“What trains do we have departing for Madrid?”