“Who wants it?”
“Hugh Cockburn,” Chloe answered
“Oh. Coming up in the world, are we?” He paused there but she didn’t rise to the bait so he continued, “Don’t wait. I’ll get onto it tomorrow.”
“Sorry. This is a grade one request,” she said firmly.
The man was in the middle of a dinner party and his wife was not going to be impressed when he made excuses and walked out.
“It always is,” he replied miserably and hung up.
*
Quayle crossed back to the listening device and bent down, lifting the headphones to his ears. He could hear television noise in the background and someone doing something in the small kitchen. Crossing back to the bedroom, he pulled on a dark blue track suit, running shoes and a wool balaclava, the face piece of which he rolled up over his eyebrows. He had no heavy knife, so made do with a small paring knife from the apartment’s kitchen. He didn’t need a weapon, but the psychological effect of its presence was crucial.
Pulling the apartment window open, he climbed out onto the balcony. The drop to the next floor was absolutely silent, and once there, he paused, listened and moved up to the window. It was open, draughts of warm air shifting the curtain in a soft wavy flow like seaweed. Swiftly, he moved along the balcony to the bedroom window. It too was open and he silently slid the window back and climbed in, the warm air stuffy and soporific after the freshness of the night outside.
In the living room, the television blared. From the hall, he could hear someone talking on the phone in angry fast French. Duboir, he thought. If your masters aren’t pleased, they’ll be even less so after tonight. He waited until the telephone was angrily slammed down, the tension and noise at their maximum. Then he stepped from the darkness of the bedroom.
The Frenchman looked, unable to believe what he was seeing. His consternation did not deter Quayle. He simply kept moving, his hand rising to strike low beneath the man’s left ear; then, catching the falling dead-weight, he lowered him silently onto the grey carpet. Then, listening for a second, he moved smiling into the living room like a welcome visitor.
“Hello,” he said. “It’s me!”
The Swiss man was faster, standing and reaching for something in his jacket pocket – but Quayle was already there, gripping the other man’s forearm with astonishing strength, the vicelike grip forcing him back down into the seat. The smile was still there, but Quayle’s eyes were hard like granite as he looked down and saw the square ring on the man’s finger.
He reached down into the man’s pocket and pulled a small automatic clear, throwing it across the room.
“Sorry,” he said in French. “Bedroom window was open! You really should be more careful. Never know who is about these days.”
The man looked up, his eyes betraying the pain in his arm. “Who are you?”
“Titus Quayle. The one you’re all looking for. Remember?” The man’s eyes widened at the sound of the name, but he covered it quickly. “It’s time we had a little talk, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m an engineer.”
“Engineers don’t have guns in their pockets. Engineers don’t follow people. Engineers don’t have cute little rings...” Quayle took the man’s hand and squeezed the fingers together, crushing them against the ring. “Your friend Duboir. He is out in the hall. Can’t tell me much for the moment, so you’ll have to. I will ask a question and you will answer. No more, no less. Understand?”
The man spat an oath.
Quayle squeezed harder. “We can do this as long as you like,” he said in a conversational tone. “What will happen is that you will have irreparable damage to the tendons in your fingers, and maybe break a bone or two.”
As the man gave a gasp of pain, Quayle leant forward and spoke in a comfortable whisper, almost like an old friend might. “Then we can progress to some other part of your body. Don’t get me wrong. I feel nothing. You’re not protected by the law, or by anyone else. You have no rights whatsoever. There is just me and you. I want information and I will do anything to get it. That makes me a particularly nasty proposition. Take the line of least resistance. Tell me what I want to know.”
“Fuck you,” the man sneered through the pain.
“Oh well,” Quayle said. “Into each life a little rain must fall.” He smiled like a madman and took the small knife from his pants. “Sabatier. French. Not very sharp, but the point is quite good. Look!” He stabbed the knife down into the man’s thigh, the point tearing through his trousers and entering the muscle with a meaty thump.
The man groaned, his breath exploding from his lips in a saurian hiss of pain.
“Oops! Sorry. I can be so careless sometimes.” Quayle smiled sweetly. Then he leant forward, his face inches from the other’s, his right hand still holding the Swiss’s left across his stomach. “Like I said. We can go on all night. You’re frightened of the people you work for. I can understand that. It is all very well them expecting your silence. But then they aren’t here and you are. You’re the one with a veggie knife four inches from your pecker. Who knows where it will go next? You’re the one who may be needing a blood transfusion before midnight because all yours is on the carpet, with your manhood. So, honour and all that aside –” He twisted the knife a sixteenth of an inch and the man snapped his head back, stifling a scream. “– who are you working for?”
“Schuter!” he gasped.
“Not good enough. He may be your boss, but who pays the money? Who calls the tune?”
“He does!”
“I’m not stupid.”
“You will die for this…” he hissed.
“Maybe.” Quayle shrugged, reaching for the knife handle. “But I don’t give a fuck.”
The Swiss man blanched.
“NO! Jesus no! I’m just a soldier! I don’t know anyone senior. People are coming up soon. Day after tomorrow to see Schuter…”
“Who?”
“I’m to pick them up at the airport. Sikon. An American, and a Chinese.”
“Coming from America?”
“From London.”
“What flight?”
The man remained silent, so Quayle reached for the knife handle again.
“British Airways! In at 8.30pm. The American, he will be wearing a black coat and a checked hat!”
“Why were you following the BND man?”
“We thought you might come to see him.”
“What have I got that your masters want?”
“We were to find you...”
“And?”
“Kill you. Nothing personal. I just follow orders.”
He was frightened now, all his bluster gone – but Quayle knew that he had heard all he was going to hear from the Swiss. Time, he decided, to put them on ice.
Walking to the phone, he dialled the number Kurt had given him for the clean up crew.
*
It was in the pitch black darkness just before the dawn when the two cars coasted silently round the hill, engines and lights off. As they reached the boundaries of the property they slowed to a halt and remained there, just off the road. There were seven men and, as they climbed clear of the doors, they carried with them light packs of equipment and webbing rather like a soldier might. All were heavily armed. As soon as they had disembarked, they moved off into the trees, one group to go into the house and the other to secure the grounds. They would need to move fast. It would be light in an hour and they wanted to be well away by then, the job done.
The first group arrived at the high barbed wire fence and the leader dropped to his knees, pulling out a small pair of insulated bolt cutters and a small meter. Lifting the small crocodile clips up to the wire, he tested each strand for current. Satisfied that he knew which were live, he began cutting through the remaining strands. Finally finished, he pulled a gas mask over his thick curly hair and, looking to make sure the others had followed suit, he crawled under the wire and moved for
ward, a small gun in his right hand and a canister in his left.
It was only a minute or two later that the first dog came upon them. The leader dropped to his knee again, fighting his fear as the huge animal bounded at him, silent and fast. Lifting the spray can, he pointed it at the animal. Then, as soon as it leapt, he pressed the nozzle, directing the fine mixed spray of cyanide and CS gas into the great slavering jaws and eyes.
The hundred-and-thirty pound weight of the dog hit him full in the chest, and they both hit the ground with a thump. But the dog was already blind and dying, its great lungs having drawn in a fatal dose of the spray. With legs scrabbling, it rolled off him, huge blind eyes streaming as it rolled in its death throes, trying to understand what had happened to its strength and balance.
The man watched, pleased for a second, and then moved forward, the rest of the team hard behind him, the last man walking past the still twitching corpse three seconds later.
Two more dogs died in the next four minutes, the last near enough to be touched by his handler – except that the man was dead too, killed by the same lethal mixture.
Carlo Benitez was twenty four years old that day and had spent the morning in the village with his brother, drinking coffee and watching the village girls, and just enjoying being of the estate. He liked the work. God knows, he thought, few men in Espania pay wages like the Italian – but it was nice to be off for a few hours. He worked his way round the wire in the dark, his shotgun over his shoulder, its sawn-off barrel stubby and menacing. He had developed a fondness for it in the army, where in the elite unit he was proud to be part of, they were encouraged to innovate and show individual style. They had even guarded King Juan Carlos one summer when the Basques had threatened the unbelievable, but the drugs scandal had put paid to that career. Seventeen of them had been thrown out for the crimes of three.
Afterwards, the Italian had been there – or his people had – with offers of employment for all. At first he refused, deciding to return to his home on Majorca – but he remembered the offer when times got hard. Now here he was with six months pay guaranteed for what could be a shorter job. He had two other men with him trailing behind and to the left. There was another group somewhere opposite. The system of challenges worked well enough. He moved at a steady pace looking for the turnaround point and almost fell over the body of the dog by the wire.
He didn’t pause for more than a second. Pulling the gun from his shoulder, he snapped a command at his men and began to run for the house, pumping a cartridge into the breach as he ran, feeling the adrenaline begin to course through his blood. The excitement was hot, like the matador in the ring before the horns of the bull. This was his honour and he was young and a man.
The guard at the heavy oak bodega doors saw the intruders seconds too late and took a full dose from the spray can in the face. He fell, a muffled rattle coming from his lips, his leg muscles beginning to convulse before he hit the ground. The intruders were pleased. They were at the doors and not a shot had been fired. Now there was time to take the locks the silent way. One of the group moved forward and pulled from his baggy pocket a set of master keys, keys that would open any lock made outside of the Iron Curtain. All had been purloined from their makers. The fifth key, a Chubb, turned the levers and they were in.
Confident that the other team would secure the grounds behind them, they broke into two pairs and began to move through the building, its circular shapes, turrets and solid walls unfamiliar, flashing powerful torches with hooded beams as they went. While the first pair moved all the way through to the kitchen, the second pushed through their third door and found Holly Morton curled up beneath a peasant quilt in bed. A powerful gloved hand covered her mouth and a dark shadow leant over her as she struggled.
“Come quietly puta, or you are dead like the rest!” one of them hissed. The accent was local, and thick with garlic. As the hand lifted up, a wide strip of white surgical tape was plastered across her mouth, and a second strip bound her hands. Then she was pulled from the bed with one mighty tug.
By now, the small procession was re-entering the living room, the man carrying the wide-eyed and terrified woman following the leader’s hooded torch beam. Moments later, Marco Gambini appeared at the top of the steep stone stairs, a gun in his hand.
The leader turned, dropping into a crouch, and snapped away two rounds from his silenced gun. Marco staggered and fell back onto the landing, and they moved on, the two from the kitchen waiting at the door.
All hell seemed to break loose.
One of the waiting men seemed to be lifted by a flash of blue orange flame, flung backwards into the stone walls as the second man, turning too late, took the second deafening blast from Carlos Benitez’s pump action shotgun at a range of three feet. The charge blew a great gaping hole the size of a bread plate out of his back, splattering gore on the carved doors and white painted walls.
The leader dropped to the floor and rolled behind one of the club chairs. While he scrabbled for safety, the man who was holding Holly dropped against the wall, reaching for his own gun.
As he did so, a vicious fire-fight developed out in the dark, the chattering slides of the silenced automatic weapons drowned out by the full throated roar of shotguns, and the berserker screams of bloodlust and pain. By now, the two groups were close enough to touch in the dark, close enough to be confused and die by a comrade’s hand. Blue yellow muzzle flashes illuminating the dark.
All in all, it lasted less than a minute.
After it was done, the leader moved carefully back. Then, hurrying through the kitchen door, he ran around the side of the building to view the scene from a safe vantage. Nothing moved except for a man, one of his by the look of the pack, who tried to crawl somewhere.
He moved forward, called out to his comrade, who lifted Holly back on to his shoulder and came out of the main doors.
The leader walked toward the wounded man, the one crawling and bent down.
“Sorry,” he said – and, putting the gun to his head, pulled the trigger. He did it for each of the three wounded, and the last, Carlos Benitez, proud and Latin to the end, spat in his face as he did so, the saliva laced with pink frothy blood.
Flies were buzzing and settling on something inside the wire and the Fairy, an experienced man in his forties, lifted the binoculars to his eyes to try and get a better look. It was mid-morning and he was sweating in his heavy tweed jacket. Sod these rush jobs, he thought. Going home for a pint at the local and suddenly we’re all on a bloody blue job special flight of to sunny Palma. Could have given us time to get a change of clobber at least. Focusing the lenses, he looked across the fence.
Oh fuck. Oh fuck. It’s on!
“Get Cockburn. Quick!” he snapped to his partner.
“What?”
“Dead dog. Rottweiler or something. This place has been hit. We’re going in…”
Bending down and speaking quickly into his radio, he scooped up his firearm from the seat of the car, slid over into the driver’s seat and started the engine.
Cockburn and Chloe Bowie sat with a Milburn driver in a maroon sedan a hundred yards up the road. A third car, this one with a team of three Fairies and a borrowed medic, had pulled in behind them.
Cockburn saw the man running back toward them and heard the crackle of the radio in the team vehicle at their rear, its wheels spinning as it tore around them, throwing gravel in the air.
“What’s happening?” he asked quickly
“Dunno. Frank’s called the troops. He’s going in. Do you want to follow?”
“Of course I bloody do!” Cockburn snapped as the runner arrived. “Well?”
“Dead guard dogs, sir. The governor reckons the place has been hit already.”
Oh Christ, not when we’re so close, please. If they tried to take him, there’ll be many dead around – and, if he survived, he’ll have gone back underground, deep underground.
“MOVE IT!” he thundered, and the runner bailed into t
he back seat with Chloe. Moments later, the driver gunned the engine and chased the other two cars down the long access road to the gates. Up ahead, the team leader hadn’t stopped; he’d driven straight through them, his bonnet buckled from the impact, and kept on going.
“One of ours, is it, sir?” the driver asked. They didn’t usually go in like the cavalry. Not damaging cars and things. That meant reports and claims and the admin men getting involved.
“I hope not. I hope he got away,” Cockburn replied. Flies rose from the body of the dog as they roared past. “But catch up if you can!” he shouted over the engine noise. “If he’s there, then he may think we’re trying to hit him.”
The big converted stone winery came up very quickly. As the driver pulled on the handbrake to slew the car sideways on the drive, blocking the road as he had been taught, Cockburn could see the two other team members running to a trellised rockery by the front doors, one stopping and the other going round the side of the house. As he threw open his door, he could hear them shouting Quayle’s name, calling out that they were friendlies.
“Over here Mr Cockburn!” one called from the rockery.
Cockburn ran over to him, certain already, from the man’s expression, what he’d found. Shouting for Chloe to stay where she was, he walked round the carnage.
“Any of these your man?”
“Jesus, what happened here?” he asked appalled.
The Fairy, a Falklands veteran shrugged. “Firefight. Two teams up close. The one lot locals by the look of the weaponry. They were probably guards. The others? Silenced Ingrams... Uniforms.”
The man who had run around the house appeared back again, shaking his head.
Shit, Cockburn thought. We’ve missed him.
He thought for a minute, then turned to the pair. “Any of these people killed by hand, up close?”
The Protector: A gripping, action-packed spy thriller Page 23