The Protector: A gripping, action-packed spy thriller

by Mike Lunnon-Wood

  He trailed Gabriella and her fan club for another three hours, the old woman calling on her brother at the University, and finally visiting a friend. Nightfall was rapidly approaching when she stepped back out of her friend’s door to begin what Quayle hoped was her way home. There were still four watchers in the other group and, since they hadn’t seen him by now, he was gaining confidence. The dark would be his ally. As she moved off up the street, he moved up closer, eventually overtaking on a parallel road to work from the front.

  They had moved only three hundred yards when Quayle, moving catlike through the trees just inside Stephens Green, noticed the change of pattern. There were now two watchers walking and, up ahead, a car began to move. He watched it pull over further up the road and the last man and the driver get out – supposedly to look under the bonnet. They were boxing her in, Quayle realised. They were going to snatch her.

  Gabriella had noticed it too, stiffening and slowing in her walk. She was onto them at last.

  Cross over, he willed her. Cross over the road, come to me Gabriella! In all her training sessions she had stressed the tried and tested method of breaking out of a box. Two front and two back, no flankers. Break to one side and see which group reacts first, see who leads them, see who hesitates. She turned ultra cool now, watched the traffic and stepped onto the road to cross over onto the park side. Good girl, he said softly, keep coming. You won’t want to because the park will make it easier for them.

  The watchers had looked up and the trailing pair hesitated for a second. Gabriella was half way over now and, as a big bus roared past behind her, Quayle called low but loud enough to be heard over the noise from the bus. “Keep moving Gabby, keep coming!”

  It was the name Teddy Morton had always used for her.

  He saw her look for a second, half fearful as she heard the call. Then resolution set in and she stepped onto the pavement. To her credit, not once did she look into the dark of the trees from where the voice had come from. Instead, she just walked purposefully about her business.

  The two tail watchers were only thirty feet behind her now, almost abreast of Quayle in the trees. One of the other pair had left the driver closing the car bonnet. Soon, he too had crossed – but was now directly to her left.

  Unless someone began to run, she had broken the box, moving two halves of the threat into one area, just like the lectures always said to do. But suddenly there were two new men further up. Jesus, Quayle thought, now six. They are serious.

  One of the tail men dropped his hand into his coat pocket and Quayle moved.

  He came out of the tree line onto the leafy pavement like a shadow, only feet behind the trailing pair, and took the man on the right first. Putting a full contact punch into the base of the man’s neck and as he began to fall, Quayle flicked his hand over sideways and followed the blow round onto the second walker, crashing into his collar bone. As he turned, his face creasing as the pain hit, Quayle’s second blow took him hard on the temple and he sank like a stone.

  He bundled both men into the bushes as a car’s headlights flashed over them, then ran back into the trees, moving parallel to the road at a steady pace. So far he hadn’t been seen by the front group – but he only had seconds remaining. He broke clear of the pools of darkness under the trees beside Gabriella, as the man who had left the car grabbed her arm. Her other hand was coming clear of the handbag. Quayle saw the small silver gun coming up in her hand and he swung his leg up, his foot flashing out. The man grunted and fell to his knees, his hand letting go of her arm. Quayle’s foot flashed up again smashing into his face with a solid meaty thump, the man dropping down onto the pavement, his kidneys ruptured and his jaw broken.

  Quayle grabbed her arm. “Quick, Gabby. The trees!”

  Propelling her towards the dark, he turned to the last of the watchers, the two in front. One had dropped into a marksman’s crouch, complete surprise on his face, a bulbous nosed gun coming clear of his coat.

  Quayle thought better of it and he too darted into the dark, pushing the old woman in front of him. Stumbling over a tree root, the string bag still in one hand, the little silver gun in the other, she plunged forward. Quayle scooped her up as the first shot was fired, a dull muffled thud through the silencer on the man’s gun. She tried to turn, her old face angry, to bring her gun to bear – but Quayle pushed it down.

  “No! Keep moving. Go, go!”

  “I’ve run enough, young Quayle!” she snapped her old voice furious. He didn’t ask how she knew it was him, just pushed her further into the tree line. She made to talk as they stopped, but he put a hand to his lips. “Shhhh!” Then he pushed her down onto the knees in the dark of a tree trunk.

  There were now three silhouettes moving slowly towards them, two in front and a third one further up the road. All had guns drawn. Where are the Garda when you need them? he thought. If they all have silencers, they can blast away all night and no-one will be the wiser.

  The third man dropped from view. Quayle knew where he was going. He was moving round the back. He didn’t like that at all. Standing silently, his back to the tree trunk, he watched them approach for a second, one leading the other, their heads turning as they swept the darkness with increasingly good night vision. He pirouetted silently, until at last he faced the broad trunk of the tree, and slid around its base to see if he could locate the third man. Nothing.

  Moving back around, he dropped into a crouch beside Gabriella.

  He moved until his lips were at her ear.

  “Stay very still,” he whispered. “I’ll draw them away.”

  Thirty yards away, he made his first deliberate noise – and earned the uneasy feeling of immediate success when a bullet thunked into a tree a few feet away, bits of bark flying off into the dark damp grass under his feet. He moved another twenty feet away – and there he dropped into in the darkness beneath a large shrub, saying his mantra over and over again, controlling his breathing for the attack.

  Come on, you bastard. Come into my bit of the darkness. I’ll be like your worst fucking nightmare come true.

  They were very close now, the pair of them moving at a quick pace, thinking that their quarry had kept moving. Soon they came abreast of the bush under which Quayle lay. In the same moment that they appeared, he launched up like a pouncing panther, absolutely silent, a black shape in a black night.

  One of the men was fast. Quayle felt the muzzle blast tug at his sleeve as his elbow snapped up beneath the man’s chin, the satisfying feeling of the strike masking the fear of the gun. Then he turned on one foot like a dancer, low and perfectly balanced, coming out of the move like a coiled snake, fluid and black and unbelievably fast. A second shot up very close – the silencer ineffective now after two rounds had gone through it – and the bone of the man’s cranium crunching under his fist.

  NO! There is another! his brain screamed at him. Not a silenced gun, but a small one, close, very close… and he rolled down as another shot snapped off, tugging at his jacket.

  A man began to scream in the dark of Stephens Green.

  “Quayle, hurry! We must go!”

  Rolling to his left, he spun around, looking for a silhouette. A trick. It had all been a trick. They knew it was me. Somewhere out here was another man with a big gun.

  The screaming went on. Knee or stomach wound, thought Quayle. Shit, where is he? Shot one of his own men. He’ll be angry now.

  “Quayle!” the voice called. “Don’t fight me. I am with you!”

  He took the man from behind, the neck hold millimetres from the pressure points.

  “Who are you, bastard?” Quayle’s voice rasped in his ear.

  “Kirov. Major. KGB,” came back the strangled reply. “Alexi Kirov. I’m with you...”

  “Bullshit!”

  “Black... medal…”

  Quayle released the pressure an iota. “What did you say?”

  “I gave Black... medal…”

  “What medal?”

  “Let m
e go first.”

  Kirov was getting tired of the pain in his neck and shoulders, so Quayle released more of the pressure.

  “What fucking medal?”

  “My father’s. A 1944 Hero,” the wiry little Russian replied.

  “Why?” Quayle snapped, letting go. The man’s gun lay on the ground.

  “Not now. The Garda will be coming. We must go!” He bent to pick up the gun, a big automatic, and brushed the damp grass of it, then holstered it in one fluid move.

  “They will now,” Quayle said acidly, pointing to the man who had stopped screaming and now just moaned and sobbed.

  “It’s noisy but effective,” Kirov replied. “Come on. Kreski is by the tree where you left her.”

  “I want the driver. I want to know who they are.”

  “That’s him.” Kirov pointed to the man on the ground. In the distance the sirens had started and were getting closer. “Come on!”

  Quayle crossed to the man and bent over. Something he had seen earlier in the day was worrying him. He grabbed the man’s right hand and lifted it.

  On the little finger was a ring.

  He pulled it off and rolled it in his hand.

  It was square.

  *

  Hugh Cockburn had spent two days reading the files in central registry and, now up to date, he was ready to begin.

  Throwing his coat on one of the hard steel chairs in the cheerless little room he’d been allotted, he took a look around. Except for the computer terminal, nothing had changed in here since the ‘60s; he half-expected to see a camp bed somewhere and a map on the wall with one lonely little pin where some man was trying to stay alive. John Le Carré, eat your heart out, he thought. There was a neat stack of jotter pads and six sharpened pencils lined up side by side on one desk and, on the other, an old black bakelite telephone sat in obsolete solitude. On the wall was a photocopied request from accounts to record the number and time duration of all international calls, and a notice about a change in the canteen hours. The small window was grimy and sad little trickles of rain obscured the street lights outside. He shook his head. Home again, home again, jiggedy jig. Fucking magic.

  The door burst back open – and there, solid like a rock, black face smiling cheerfully and a hot coffee steaming in her hand, was a person he hadn’t seen before.

  “Hi! You must be Mr Cockburn. Milk and no sugar. Right?”

  He looked at the cup in her hand.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m your dogsbody and bottle washer,” she said, holding out her other hand, “Chloe Bowie. Your assistant.”

  “Ah,” he said dryly. “I didn’t know I had an assistant.”

  “Well you have. Welcome back to Disneyland. I’m looking forward to working with you.”

  “Oh? Why?” Falling back into his chair, he crossed one leg over the other.

  “You have a bit of a reputation. Fun to work for, I suppose.”

  Cockburn smiled grimly. “Not on this job I won’t be.”

  In return, she smiled bravely at him. “It won’t be too bad. You know him well, don’t you? The elusive Mr Quayle. From what I’ve heard, I think I’d like him.”

  Cockburn threw back his head and laughed.

  “What’s funny?” Chloe asked.

  “It’s like liking a Spanish fighting bull. Admire them from a distance, preferably from behind a big concrete wall...” He paused. “No, I’m being unfair. Ti’s OK. His problem is he gets involved. Allows things to become a crusade. Good and evil, it’s all simple to him.”

  “And not to you?” she asked, intuitively.

  “No. Not to me,” he replied, sipping gingerly at the coffee.

  “And you don’t get involved. Become a crusader?”

  “Rule number one.”

  She studied him for a second. This was the other half of the reputation. Hugh Cockburn was the original ice-man on a job. As a controller he was flawless, his planning was immaculate – and, the worse it got, the cooler he became. Unflappable was the word used by one of the women up in travel.

  “I like crusaders,” she said.

  “You like the romance. Not the reality. They marched three thousand miles, some of them in bare feet, they starved, they perished from diseases – and, when they arrived in the Holy Land, two or three years later, they took their swords and slew the foe. Blood ran in the streets and the bodies piled up. They were driven by something deep inside them and men like that are dangerous. They don’t lie down and die, they don’t give up. They just keep going.”

  “Is Titus Quayle like that?” she asked.

  He nodded, sipping the coffee.

  “Do you like him?”

  He looked at her and smiled, “That’s the bugger of it. Yes, yes I do. Come on. I’ll buy you a drink.”

  *

  “How long had you been onto me?” Quayle demanded.

  They had gathered in a small rented cottage that Kirov had found two days before. The furniture was old but functional and a small coal fire burned in the hearth.

  “I was not onto you. I knew you would turn up sooner or later at Kreski’s. Once I knew where she was, it was easy. I was following the second group that had tagged her yesterday. Coming across you at the park was a stroke of luck. For them too. It was you they were after. They knew you would come.”

  “How did you know I saw Adrian Black?”“

  “Because I would have. We are not so different, you and I.”

  Quayle smiled at that. “You’re not the run of the mill Kilo man. Not at all.”

  “I joined late,” Kirov said, as if it explained everything.

  “Militia?”

  “Nyet. Army.”

  “If you wanted intelligence, why not GRU?”

  Kirov tapped his head with his finger, as if to say they were crazy.

  “Really? Or did you fail the selection?”

  Kirov gave a short dry laugh. “I was Spetznatz!”

  Quayle shrugged as if unimpressed, but viewing the little Russian with a new respect. A special forces officer who crossed over the great divide. Army to KGB. The antipathy was legendary and they spent as much time watching each other as they did genuine enemies of the state. That made him a real maverick.

  “OK,” Quayle said. “Start at the beginning. What’s the KGB interest in this shit fight?”

  “It began,” Kirov said, “with the killing at your safe house in Sussex of a man your people called Yuri Simonov and the team of people from MI6.”

  “What do you mean called?” Quayle asked.

  Kirov bent over the embers in the hearth and prodded them with a poker. “Its been going on a while now. Your Morton knew it, long before we did. Yuri Simonov was not a KGB analyst. KGB yes, but operations from Directorate Four. I never met him, but he was good. Hand picked for this job…”

  “What was the mission objective?”

  “He was to try and stir up your end. We were aware that Morton had done some work on a group he’d found. Extreme right wing, we think – but thinkers, conservatives, not neo-Nazis. We had people working also. Then we began hitting walls. Every time our people followed a channel, it was blocked for them. Our mistake was one of priorities. We didn’t put sufficient resources on the problem at the time. By the time we realised the importance of the issue it was too late. We needed to see if we could trigger a reaction from your people, and maybe move Long Knives up on your priorities. A case of: if they have, maybe we should have…”

  “There are other ways of getting other teams interested,” Quayle rebuffed. “Seems very convoluted.”

  “What is this word?”

  “Long and twisting.”

  “Ah yes, the feeling in Centre was one of... how should I say this?” He thought about it, then said, “Too little too late. It was playing an ace. We knew that, if your people thought they’d extracted something significant, it would be given the right treatment.”

  “It set off a witch-hunt,” Quayle said dryly.

&n
bsp; “We thought that, once they had the girl, the investigation would swing to the other factor. The file. Long Knives. Credibility feeds on itself, yes?”

  “So what is Long Knives?”

  Kirov squatted, staring into the embers, the soft warm light flickering of his face. He pondered his answer for a second or two, and at that moment Gabriella came in from the small kitchen with a tray of sandwiches.

  “Our name for a file. A group. Big. Powerful. Everywhere. Very wealthy, very influential. Extreme. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “It’s not much.”

  “It’s all we have.”

  “I thought you said that you had an investigation running?”

  “We did.”

  “And?”

  “We have a problem. The same as your people…”

  Quayle was getting irritated. “What are you saying, man?”

  “Both investigators died. Mysteriously. Our files have gone too.”

  “From Moscow Centre?” Quayle’s eyes opened fractionally wider. “Jesus! The place is supposedly impregnable!”

  “That’s what we thought. So... we were hoping Morton’s work was intact somewhere.”

  “It will be,” Gabriella said firmly. “It will be.” Settling into the armchair, she held out a plate, offering him a sandwich.

  “And they think I have it,” Quayle said, the words tinged with bitterness.

  “Or Holly,” Gabriella corrected.

  “Not Holly,” Quayle said firmly. “No way.”

  “She may know without realising it,” Kirov suggested

  “Unlikely. Teddy completely divorced his service life from his personal. Even more so with a thing like this. He would have known, back at the start, that he’d uncovered something very nasty. So you can go back and tell your masters that I don’t have the file and know nothing of it. Neither does Teddy Morton’s daughter.”