“Like what?”
“I have to finish it,” he said, looking away as he searched for the right words, wondering if he should tell her.
“I know,” she said.
No you don’t, he thought.
Two hours later, in the house overlooking the bright lights of Aberdeen Harbour, the men sat round the table in the kitchen.
“OK,” said Quayle. “You people head out to the airport. I’ll meet you there.”
Cockburn looked up. He had arranged for a helicopter to drop them on the air-side to avoid making targets of themselves on the trip out. “Where are you going?” he asked.
“I’ll see you there,” Quayle repeated, then turned to Kirov. “I’m going to leave Holly in your care, Alexi. Please…”
“Of course,” the Soviet interrupted, waving a hand like it was of no consequence.
Right now, Holly was with Chloe in one of the bedrooms of the safe-house, looking for something to wear. After she was bathed and ready, Quayle walked through to tell her he would see her later. She nodded, understanding.
As Quayle left the house, Kirov signalled to two of his men. Standing wordlessly, they followed him. At the window, she watched him leave. All she had seen of him recently and all Marco’s stories of his invincibility could not help her completely forget her fears, and she was pleased to see the pair of men follow.
*
The high white walls of the house stood back from the road and the main gates – wrought iron, heavy and gloss black in the moonlight – were recessed back a further ten feet. Quayle went over the top of the wall where the corners met, fifty yards from the gates and the security guard’s hut which seemed ominously quiet.
Stopping below the wall, he waited in the darkness, a half a smile on his lips.
Fifty seconds later, the two men thudded to the ground beside him and grinned ruefully, like two small boys caught out.
Quayle raised an eyebrow and one of them shrugged as if to say ‘Orders, what to do?’
Quayle shook his head. At least Kirov himself hadn’t followed. He was more use where he was now, looking after Holly. Indicating that they should follow, he set off across the silent lawns to the house, his new companions close behind.
The house was in darkness, all except for a dim light that crept from a curtained window further round. Quayle didn’t like that. The place ought to have been alive with servants and noises and the routines that households have. Turning to one of the Soviets as they arrived at the base of the wall, he pointed to the gates.
“It’s too quiet…” He spoke little Russian but knew that all Soviet special forces spoke good German and used that language. “Check the gates.”
The man nodded and, pulling an automatic from his pocket, disappeared into the night. Quayle and the other stood together and began to move round the wall to the service doors at the rear of the house.
One minute later, they were in. The back door to the kitchen was open. Moving into the house carefully, they checking room by room, moving methodically towards the room where the lights were on.
It turned out to be a small crowded bedroom, probably used by a servant. Someone had cleared out recently and quickly. There was still cigarette smoke on the air, and drawers had been hurriedly emptied as the occupant moved out. Satisfied that there was nothing more to see, they moved back into the main section of the house, down corridors kept dark by heavy drapes.
They first bodyguard was slumped back against a wall, dead. He had been killed with one shot. The second, who had suffered a similar fate, was sprawled face down on the hall carpet. Quayle’s Soviet ally picked up his firearm and sniffed the barrel, shaking his head. He hadn’t even got one shot away.
It was then the Spetznatz man heard it. A shuffle or a scrape on the carpet behind a door, followed by a liquidy moan.
Quayle moved up from the door he was at and listened. Then, taking the initiative, he pushed to door open, the Soviet, with his firearm drawn, moving close behind.
They heard it again. Quayle felt for the lights and, finding the switch, turned them on.
“Oh fuck,” the Soviet said in English.
There, tied in a chair in the middle of the room was a something – a person, still alive, blood everywhere on the cream thick shag pile carpet. Through the blood and the pain and the tortured features, Quayle recognised Fung Wa. His legs were spread and tied back to the chair legs and his groin was black with blood that had dried, its central area still bright red and fresh. His face was contorted in pain and his mouth seemed to be gagged.
As they moved closer. Quayle saw that the gag wasn’t cloth. Whoever had castrated him had taken the penis as well as his testicles, pushing the whole bloody piece of his manhood into his mouth.
The Soviet dropped to his knees and produced a battle medic pack from the voluminous pockets in his jacket, then swiftly produced an ampoule of morphine. He looked at Quayle who nodded.
“Keep him conscious,” he warned softly. “I want him to talk.”
The special forces man nodded and pushed the hypodermic straight into the Fung Wa’s thigh. Pressing the plunger, he forced the drug into his bloodstream. Then, taking a large battle dressing, he forced it over the gaping hole in Fung Wa’s trousers, his hand applying the necessary pressure to halt the blood flow, his other hand pulling out a mini disposable saline drip and tossing it to Quayle.
Quayle knew what to do. Stripping the paper off the needle, he pushed it through Fung Wa’s shirt sleeve into his arm. Then, draping the bag over the wounded man’s shoulder, he watched as gravity began to feed the solution into Fung Wa’s arm.
Soon, the morphine was taking effect. Fung Wa’s breathing turned from the ragged sharp shallow breaths of a man in extreme pain to a deeper, measured normality. Quayle reached up and gently pulled the bloody mass of gristle, skin and tissues from his mouth.
“Who did this?” he asked. “Beijing? Fung Wa, you’re dying. You’re going to meet you ancestors. They have killed you! You owe them nothing. Nothing!”
The Chinese eyes flickered open. The life force had gone. They were flat and glazed.
“Was this Beijing or Geneva? Was this Geneva?”
Fung Wa nodded, blood weakly dripping down his front.
Geneva. Jesus Christ! Two hours was all they had. They got in did the job and were gone. They’re close, thought Quayle. They are very close indeed.
“Who in Geneva?” Quayle demanded.
“Not... not…” The man’s voice was a rasping whisper, and Quayle lent forward to hear. “Not Geneva. Chamon… Chamon… Gira.”
“Chamongira. A name?”
“Name.. is.. Girad... French..” Each word was tortured, produced by the last reserves of Fung Wa’s strength.
“Girard?”
He nodded weakly. French, not Geneva. Quayle’s mind raced. Somewhere near Chamon?
“Chamonix?”
Fung Wa nodded again, his head dropping forward. Quayle pulled it up. Not fucking Geneva at all. Just the nearest airport and big city. Chamonix. He knew the valley. The Arve and above it Mont Blanc, the Aigulle Du Midi and the Brevent. He had climbed there years before. It was big. Too big to find one Frenchman called Girard.
“Where in Chamonix can I find him? I will kill him for you. I will spit in his face with your name on my lips, Fung Wa. Don’t die yet. Where? Tell me where!”
The thought of Quayle after them as he had been after him, seemed to give Fung Wa renewed strength.
“Albert... Albert Hotel…”
“They stay there?”
“No Chalet. Big Chalet. Guards good table at Albert.”
Quayle knew the Albert. The old hotel was the favourite of the visiting Americans and its food was good, rated in the Michelin guide.
Fung Wa’s head dropped forward again. Quayle looked at the Soviet – but he just shook his head and gestured at all the blood on the floor. In front of their eyes, Fung Wa began to shiver, and Quayle knew that this was the last stage of m
assive blood loss, the remaining blood unable to keep the body warm, the heart pumping still trying to keep blood going to the brain and vital organs. It was a cold and lonely way to die.
At that moment, the second soldier entered through the door. He didn’t seem surprised at what he saw.
“Guards dead,” he reported. “Two cars gone. No staff anywhere. No sign of the wife and kid.”
“Let’s go,” Quayle said. There was no saving the man in the chair and he gestured to the kneeling Soviet to administer the rest of the morphine. At least, that way, there would be no pain.
CHAPTER TWELVE
As soon as Quayle put in the call, Kurt Eicheman went to work. For this, there was only one man he would trust. In turn, he put in a call to his local network leader, in the south east of France, who dropped everything to run down the man called Girard in Chamonix.
Quayle, Holly and Eicheman, along with Kirov and his team, would be flying in directly while Cockburn had been recalled to London to re-brief Tansey-Williams. The plan was to enter through Frankfurt and then Geneva on four different flights, and soon all but Quayle and Kirov were fast asleep. It seemed days since they had last slept, and all except the pair had taken one of the sedatives offered by the Spetznatz medic.
Quayle stretched back in the aisle seat, Holly next to the window, and took the opportunity to think through the last twenty four hours. Kirov, the tireless wiry little KGB man, sat on the other side of the aisle, headphones on as he watched a movie. It was a period production set before the Great War, young men in baggy flannels watching a cricket match. The next shot showed a slow bowler pacing his run and the cheery youthful grin of the schoolboy batsman, tea and sandwiches being served at the pavilion somewhere behind.
Quayle watched the silent images through a wreath of his own cigarette smoke, his eyes occasionally flickering to look at Holly. Up on the screen, people clapped mutely and the batsman walked back to the pavilion, his disappointment hidden in a mask of good sportsmanship. Jolly good stuff, Quayle thought cynically. It’s not who wins that counts but the game and all that.
Stirring beside him, Holly looked at the screen and smiled. “Play up play up and play the game,” she said sleepily. And Quayle smiled back, thinking how like her father she was at times, quoting Newbolt.
As she snuggled down again, he thought about what she had said, and Henry Newbolt’s words flashed back to his mind.
‘There’s a breathless hush on the close tonight,
ten to make and the match to win,
a bumping pitch and a blinding light,
an hour to play and the last man in,
and it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat
or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,
but his captain’s hand on his shoulder smote,
Play up! Play up! and play the game!’
As he repeated the verse to himself, he thought about old Teddy Morton. The poem was a favourite of his and he could conjure vivid images as he read, the rich tones of his voice filling the room with Vitae Lampada. The glory of courage that only poets ever found.
‘ The sand of the desert is sodden red,
red with the wreck of a square that broke,
The Gatling’s jammed and the Colonel’s dead,
and the regiment blind with the dust and smoke,
the river of death has brimmed its banks,
and England’s far and honour a name,
but the voice of a schoolboy that rallies the ranks,
Play up! Play up! and play the game.’
Suddenly, there in the half dark, the movie flickering on the small screen and a hostess tucking in a sleeping passenger, his eyes narrowed. The sudden realisation was clear and strong. Teddy, you tricky, clever, wonderful old bugger. The pack was close. You knew where to put it so that only I would know. You knew, sooner or later, I would find it. Red with the wreck of a square that broke. Broken Square. You knew they would come for you. So you named the file as a clue, knowing that I and only I would find it…
The BND ground operator had been busy. By the time the team arrived in Chamonix, he had found a large well-equipped chalet for them to move into and also had news on the Frenchman. As people threw bags into the warm wood-panelled bedrooms, Quayle and Eicheman moved through into the dining area and pulled the concertina door across behind them. The central heating had kicked in, and outside the air had a crisp alpine sharpness. In the window, the massif of Mont Blanc rose above the trees, the slopes crisp and white and smooth like a wedding cake. The beauty was deceptive, the ice cliffs and avalanches, the sub zero temperatures and the sheer hostility muted by distance.
Nearer, and starkly more impressive, stood the Augille du Midi, a towering narrow spire at the crest of a ridge. It reached towards the heavens like the devil’s accusing finger, its last few hundred metres sheer walls of rock and blue ice. Atop the spire stood a cable car station and observation deck. A warm restaurant served coffees and chocolate and light meals, but outside the temperature, even in summer, was below zero, and the air at twelve-and-a-half-thousand feet thin.
Quayle looked up. He had been up the Augille many times, twice the hard way. With crampons and rope, up the great columns of rock and ice chutes with Pierre Lacoste, a respected guide in the valley.
“Your man, Girard,” the BND man began. “Your information was correct. He eats at the Albert three or four times some weeks. I saw him there last night. He leaves there and sometimes calls in at the Shuker bar, or the Blue Note. But he’s rarely alone. Usually he’s with two or three others. Same age. Mid thirties, early forties. He lives in a chalet complex up the road towards Argentierre. Three chalets set together in the trees. Security is very good. Fences. Patrols. I think he is not… how do you say? Top Dog?”
Quayle nodded and he continued.
“I watched him go into one of the smaller chalets. The larger is occupied by others. I spoke to a man in the village at Le Lavancher. He delivers things there. Has done for a few years. They climb every year here, this group.”
“It’s late for that,” Quayle said. The true climbing season ended in the Autumn. Light alpine climbing was a summer pastime, when the weather was more predictable.
“This year they climb ice,” the man replied, his gesture saying that he thought anyone who did such a thing was not all there in the head.
“Who’s in the big chalet?” Quayle asked.
The man flicked open a note book, rather like a country policeman. “A politician type from Paris, and an industrialist and his party. I think the industrialist owns the place, but I won’t know for a few days. Girard is apparently respectful of these two.”
Quayle thought for a second or two. Girard could be the front Man. The negotiator. What he wanted was to be able to run the names through the computers and see what was dredged up, but with the network they seemed to have in place they might well know they were being searched before it was even completed.
“Same people all the time?”
“No. The residents change. Usually all from Paris, but sometimes others. He said he doesn’t talk to them. Just sees them about.”
The location was ideal, Quayle thought. Remote and yet, with a constantly changing population, they could hide themselves up here in the valley and disappear into the hordes of visitors, winter or summer. Guests could come and go, meetings could be held, plans laid behind the veneer of the alpine resort’s attractions.
Quayle turned to Eicheman. “This is what I want to do. Let’s try and get a look inside the complex. I have a feeling this is the European headquarters of this thing. Nachwatch, Minutemen, whatever they call themselves in France. Fung Wa would have been dealing with the big boys and not just some cell. If that’s the case, then getting in will be tough and we risk not having enough time to see it done. It would be better to separate our targets. That may be easiest while they’re climbing.”
“The security is tight inside the complex. Why not outside too?” Eicheman asked sens
ibly.
“It may be, but this is home ground for them. People get over confident and sloppy this close to home. They might just take a few heavies and rely on the fact that, this late in the season, they’ll be the only party about.”
Eicheman shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I hate the mountains. Let’s do it at ground level anyway.”
Quayle smiled but shook his head. “Let’s have a look tonight. Plan A is the complex. Alexi can have a look with one of his people. If it’s a no go, then we see where they’re climbing and look at Plan B.”
“Ah,” the other BND man said, “I think I have something there. One of my sources is in the Bureau de Guide. These people don’t use the Bureau, you understand, but one of them was in there only yesterday asking about…” He pulled his notebook out. “...the Refuge de Leschaux.”
Quayle looked up. “You’re sure? Refuge de Leschaux?”
The man nodded.
“You know it?” Eicheman asked.
“I know it,” Quayle said. You proud, unforgiving, merciless bitch. You nearly killed me once before. This may be your chance again. “It’s the starting point for a number of climbs. A hut. But if these guys are serious and looking for ice and a challenging climb…” He pictured the steep flaky walls and chutes, the falling stones that could kill. “Grand Jorasses. They’ll try and climb the Grand Jorasses.” He thought further. “That’s the ice they want. It might just be cold enough to freeze the stones on the chute. But dangerous, very dangerous…”
“It is bad?” Eicheman asked, already hating this mountain more than the rest.
“The interesting bits of the north face, off the Walker Spur that is, were only really cracked in ‘76. Not as big or as demanding as the north face of the Eiger. It’s all loose stone and ice. Bonnington called it an elegant climb. And it is. On a good day, it’s a sheer delight. But on the bad days she is formidable. She has killed good men.” Quayle walked to the window and looked at the sky. The weather killed and injured as many as stonefall or a missed handhold. It might just be cold enough for them to try Macintyre and Colton’s ‘76 winter route.
The Protector: A gripping, action-packed spy thriller Page 31