by Andy Maslen
The car was parked between two panel vans, each vying with the Passat for the amount of grime a single vehicle could carry. One advertised the wares of a fruit and vegetable wholesaler – “Harris’s Market-Fresh Fruit and Veg” – the other was plain white under the dirt, although the slanting sun revealed the ghost of a Royal Mail logo, presumably from the vehicle’s previous life.
The light-industrial estate was sandwiched between the King’s Road and the river in a huge swathe of land untouched by public transport routes, tube stations, or anything that might tempt the casual shopper or tourist away from the boutiques and restaurants of Chelsea’s main thoroughfare.
Diagonally across from Sasha, the MI5 agent was sitting at an easel. The paper clipped to the top of the easel fluttered every few seconds as the breeze caught its lower edge. The image taking shape was of the warehouses disappearing to the vanishing point at the end of the long cobbled street that led to the Thames. Every now and then, for show, she’d dip and scribble a brush on one of the circles of watercolour pigment by her right knee then dab it onto the paper. But the painting in front of her didn’t change. It had been prepared in an office inside the MI5 headquarters building on Millbank the day before by an intelligence analyst with a sideline in watercolours.
Roughly three hundred yards down from the easel towards the river was a set of black-painted double doors with an inset wicket for pedestrians. The doors exhibited rather more elaborate security than the other premises along the strip, which, for the most part, housed small, light-industrial businesses, or the stock of market traders. These neighbours would have been surprised to learn that the nondescript frontage currently being watched by Britta Falskog concealed the UK headquarters of a people trafficking gang, presided over by an Armenian gangster named Dmitri Torossian.
Sasha put the camera into the passenger footwell, picked up a black ostrich-skin handbag from the seat beside her and opened it. The pistol inside came from her UK armoury. She maintained three separate caches of weapons, in three separate houses: one each in Connecticut, a forest in Bavaria and the north coast of Cornwall. That way, she could complete contracts without the bothersome business of shipping weapons by air.
The pistol was new. A SIG Sauer P938 Extreme Micro-Compact, chambered for 9mm rounds. She’d had it customised, as she did all her pistols, this time switching the black-and-grey, snakeskin pattern Piranha grips for the real thing, in python. A lot of her male counterparts went in for the bigger calibres, .45s and .50s being favourites among the Russians. Although she owned a couple of these hand cannons, for the most part, she tended to prefer weapons that didn’t dislocate your wrist every time you fired them. In any case, pistols were only good for close work, in which case a 9mm was perfect, and even a .22, such as the Smith & Wesson 2213 strapped to her right ankle, would get the job done if you stuck it in a person’s mouth, or ear, or shoved it tight against their chest. She racked the SIG’s slide, then replaced the pistol in the bag.
Sasha got out of the car. She pulled her trouser leg down over her boot, and the ankle holster just above it. Then, tilting her face up to catch the sun, she sauntered down the street towards Britta. Not feeling the need for camouflage, she’d dressed that morning in a canary-yellow trench coat over a silk blouse the colour of blued steel.
At the sound of Sasha’s heels clicking on the cobbles, Britta looked round. Sasha watched as the agent’s face composed itself into an open, friendly expression. Very good, darling. Almost perfect, in fact. But I caught that frown. Where’s your gun, then? In the art box?
“You’re very talented,” Sasha said, looking over Britta’s shoulder at the painting.
“Thank you. I like to find these forgotten parts of London. Trees and wildlife are so boring.”
“Hobby?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
A ringtone jangled loudly. A loud bell sound like an old-fashioned desk phone.
Sasha saw the woman’s eyes flick down to her art materials box and followed her gaze. Noticed the butt of a Beretta 92FS pistol poking out from the mess of half-squeezed tubes of paint, cleaning cloths and brushes.
“Answer it, please, I’m just a nosy tourist taking up your time.”
The woman shook her head. “It’s fine. If it’s urgent they can call again, can’t they?”
Sasha adjusted the bag on her shoulder and leaned closer, breathing in deeply through her nose as she did so.
“I love your perfume. What is it?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your perfume, darling. It’s exquisite.”
“It’s Rossy de Palma. Etat Libre d’Orange.”
“Well, I must look out for it next time I’m flying.”
She reached into her handbag, enjoying the taut-muscled expression on the other woman’s face. Closed her hand round the rectangular object and pulled it clear.
Causes of Death
SASHA squeezed hard on the side of the gold case, popping it open with a snap. Inside, twenty cigarettes were held in the highly polished interior by two scarlet elastic ribbons. She took one, then offered the case to Britta.
“Want one?” she asked.
“No thank you. They will kill you, you know.”
“I very much doubt it,” Sasha said, then laughed, and flicked her pony tail back behind her head. She withdrew a vintage, gold Dunhill lighter from her bag and thumbed the knurled wheel set into the long edge to produce a flame. Once she’d lit her cigarette, she blew out a cloud of smoke, away from Britta.
“I don’t want to be rude, but I came here to paint,” Britta said. “So, if you don’t mind …”
“Oh, God, I’m sorry. Here you are, indulging your,” she paused, “hobby, and I’m rabbiting away, distracting you.” She made to move away, then turned, as she heard a buzz from the phone in the art box. “Oh, one thing though, darling.”
“What’s that?”
“You’ll do much better if you use a brush that actually matches the strokes on the paper. That one’s three times too wide.”
Then she turned away and strolled back to her car.
She turned on the radio, found a channel playing classical and pulled away.
“There, now,” she said to herself, as the orchestra belted out Beethoven’s Fifth, “that’ll give your poor little boyfriend something to worry about.”
Britta pulled her phone from the art box the moment Sasha walked back to the scruffy grey car. She swiped the screen to call up the alerts: one missed call, one voicemail message, one text, from Gabriel. She tapped the text icon first.
Sasha Beck in UK. She killed Julia. Be careful. Call me.
She played the voicemail next, and heard Gabriel giving her the same information, only with a panicky tone in his voice she’d never heard before. She was about to call him back, when a loud slam from further up the street made her stop. She dropped the phone back into the box and resumed her act, dabbing away at the paper and noticing for herself the mismatch between the brush she was holding and the narrower strokes the intelligence analyst had already made. She switched brushes, not that she thought Torossian would be much of an art critic.
The double doors of Torossian’s unit swung back on themselves. A well-built man wearing a black, leather, bomber jacket secured them back against the wall with cabin hooks then beckoned to somebody inside. A white transit van reversed out of the unit and swung round so it was facing Britta. She bent her head to the easel, peering over the top of the frame. Bomber Jacket closed and locked the doors, climbed into the passenger seat of the van and slammed the door shut. The van roared up the street towards Britta, moving out just enough to avoid sending her into the wall of the unit beside her, though the slipstream almost pulled the painting free of its clips.
“Sorry, Gabriel. I’ll be as careful as I can, but I have work to do, too,” she said, before making a call on another phone and then strolling down towards the unit with the black doors.
Back at her hotel, Sasha called her client. Noo
n, UK time.
“It’s Sasha, darling,” she drawled as soon as Erin Ayers picked up.
“With good news, I hope. It’s a bit bloody early for chit chat.”
“Yes, thanks, I’m well. You?”
A sigh at the other end of the line, which crackled with transatlantic static.
“Fine, thank you, Sasha.”
“Good. Me, too. And yes, I have good news. You can put a line through item one.”
“And my message?”
Sasha smiled as she thought of the clever way she’d chosen to deliver it.
“Signed, sealed, delivered, as Stevie Wonder said.”
“Thank you. Keep me posted.”
“I will darling. Ciao, ciao.”
Gabriel hadn’t even put his phone down when it rang. The sound, loud in the quiet kitchen, made him jump, which was odd. Jumping at loud noises was not something Gabriel Wolfe normally did.
He’d squatted behind dusty mud-brick walls in Afghan villages while insurgents sent RPGs in from the surrounding hills. Didn’t jump.
He’d been woken at three forty-five in the morning at Sandhurst by a regimental sergeant major banging two saucepans together six inches above his head. Didn’t jump.
Wearing a traditional goatherd’s outfit in a market in Kosovo, he’d been chatting to a couple of local militiamen when a car bomb had gone off in the corner of the square. Didn’t jump.
There’d been a special screening of The Exorcist at a camp in the middle of the jungle in Borneo. While the rest of his troop were twitching, jumping, and in one case – which earned its owner months of pisstaking and a new nickname – screaming, Captain Wolfe had remained calm. He’d been too busy analysing the images on the gently undulating screen and trying to figure out the exact movements of the young actress that were causing all the trouble.
But he was jumpy now.
“Who is this?” he said, breathing shallowly.
“It’s me, Old Sport,” Don Webster said. “Would have thought you’d have the old puss winking at you from the screen, no?”
“Oh, sorry, Don. I do, but I’m a bit distracted right now.”
“Yes. And I know why.”
“What? How?”
“Well, you didn’t think this black-ops stuff was just about dressing up in combat gear and rushing around shooting bad guys, did you? I’ll let you in on a little secret. There’s a standing order, been in place for donkeys’ years. Anything iffy happens within a ten-mile radius of one of our operatives’ homes or places of business and the Director – that’s yours truly for now, as you know – gets a call.”
“You heard about Julia, then?”
“Yes, I did. And first of all, I’m genuinely sorry for your loss, Old Sport. It can be a lonely life, notwithstanding your newfound relationship with Milady Falskog, and one needs all the friends one can get.”
“It was Sasha Beck. The assassin I told you about in my debrief after the business in Mozambique. Last time I saw her was when I left her hogtied on the floor of a gambling club in HK.”
“Yes,” Don drawled. “Obviously managed to effect an escape. What can you tell me? I only have the bare bones from our police liaison.”
Gabriel filled his boss in on the details of the shooting. The shell casing, the sniper nest, the content and direction of the police interview. When he finished, Don paused before he spoke.
“Mm-hmm.” The characteristic sound of the older man’s breathing through his nose. “Look, you’re a grown up. I know you can take care of yourself. But I’m going to send someone down to give you a bit of support on this one, OK? Just until we can figure out what’s going on. And, by the way, if you see Beck you’re authorised to use deadly force.”
“Chance would be a fine thing. She’ll be long gone by now. Probably drinking champagne with some oligarch on a yacht in the Med.”
Wishing Gabriel well, Don ended the call.
A Cat May Look at a Queen
MANHATTAN
ERIN and Guy were talking. While his boss strutted up and down in front of the picture window, Guy contented himself with the view from his chair on the far side of the table. Trying to time his glances, he looked up from under his lowered brows, taking in the swell of her breasts beneath the white silk blouse. Every time she turned her back to stare down at Central Park, he relaxed, and allowed himself to gaze at her bottom, then slide down her thighs, her calves, her ankles to those beautiful feet, shod in the high heels he fantasised were digging into the flesh of his back
“Why don’t you let me help, boss?” he asked her. “It would be twice as quick with two of us working on it.”
“Like I said before, Guy, I’m not in a hurry. And I need you here. You’re my bodyguard, aren’t you? How are you going to guard my body if you’re in England?” She smiled at him then and came to sit opposite him, her back to the window
Was she taunting him? She’d positioned herself so the sun streaming in through the vast expanse of glass silhouetted her figure inside her blouse. He didn’t know. He didn’t care.
“I just thought, we could get through the early stages quicker so you could have more time with him.”
“Yes, well that’s very sweet of you, but I don’t pay you to think, do I? Now, go and get the car, would you? I fancy a drive upstate.”
In her room in a B&B in England’s New Forest, not ten miles from Gabriel’s cottage, Sasha Beck was preparing for the next item on her list. With loving care, she unwrapped the explosive .40 rounds from their tissue paper and loaded them into the magazine of her M&P Shield. The rounds were based on an American design: an aluminium tip sealed with lacquer, with a lead azide centre that would explode on impact. Although the originals had been heavily restricted since John Hinckley’s failed assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan in 1981, these particular rounds were still in production at the factory owned by Sasha’s sometime client, Timur Kamenko.
Hot Pursuit
SALISBURY
THE house felt too small, all of a sudden. Gabriel could feel a hard knot of tension balled up in his stomach. Normally he’d go for a run and blow it off that way, or meditate, slowing his breathing and his pulse as he systematically relaxed his mind and his muscles. But he was too on edge even for this.
He grabbed his car keys from a red lacquer dish on the hall table and headed round to the garage. While the plastic roller door creaked and twanged its way upwards, he reflected on the event that had led to his acquisition of the Maserati. Dad, lying in a coma on the deck of his boat. Mum out cold in the cabin, her brain so befuddled with gin that when she woke and discovered her husband’s body, she either fell or jumped overboard to drown. Life could be snatched away from you while you weren’t looking. He didn’t want that to happen to him.
With a decisive clack, the door settled into its mount bolted to the ceiling of the brick garage. He was lucky to have a place to keep his car. Most of the houses he could afford when he bought the cottage had nothing but a bit of the road outside the front door. He’d kept looking until the agent had called him about Pear Tree Cottage. Now, the Maserati glowered at him from the dark, the huge radiator grille like the mouth of a shark, ready to scoop him into its maw if he came too close.
He skirted its predatory front end and lowered himself into the driver’s seat. This was his favourite moment of any drive. His pulse ticked up a notch further as he inserted the key into the ignition. The red engine-start button seemed to glow under his thumb. With the smell of leather percolating into his brain, he pressed the button. The V8 fired up with an angry growl, then settled down to a smooth if snarly idle. He pulled on the right-hand gear-shift paddle mounted behind the steering wheel to select first and eased the big sports car out onto the drive. Blipping the garage door closer button on the keyring, he signalled right, a habit even though the road was quiet, and pulled away down the narrow lane that led to the edge of the village.
This was a familiar ritual for Gabriel, and he enjoyed trundling along past the
post office and village stores at a stately twenty-nine miles per hour. He buzzed the windows down, the better to enjoy the engine note. Ahead, past a row of neat brick and flint cottages, he picked out a small steel circle mounted on a pole. To most people, the diagonal black bar on the white disc indicated that it was permissible to take their speed up to sixty. To Gabriel, it was a challenge. It said, how fast can you go before you have to brake for the traffic lights on the main road away from Salisbury? Today, engine howling, exhausts bellowing, he managed 110. Not his fastest, but his head felt a little blurry after the events of the day. Around the oncoming bend, a set of traffic lights waited. He’d never found them on green, so he took his foot off the throttle and braked hard into the bend, dropping down through the gears and bringing the Maserati to a smooth standstill a couple of feet behind the white line.
Stage one completed.
Stage two, a fast hill-climb.
The lights turned to amber. He kept his foot on the brake.
Green.
He slipped his foot off the brake pedal and floored the throttle. With a protesting squeal from the rear tyres, he slewed the car round in a hard left turn for the hill, controlling the slide and powering out of it with just enough opposite lock on the steering wheel to keep the Maserati’s nose pointing roughly dead ahead.
Something flickered in the corner of his eye.
He checked his mirror.
Something low, black and fast was keeping pace with him, fifty or sixty yards behind the Maserati’s rear end. The car had the distinctive, wide-mouthed grille of an Aston Martin. He jammed his right foot down on the throttle, revelling in the howling engine note as the engine breathed freer, sucking huge gusts of fuel-air mixture into its eight cylinders.