by Ted Denton
We were trained like athletes and disciplined like prisoners. Put through hours of intense physical endurance and multi-form combat training every day. Hand took us to the very edge of anatomical limitation. My mate Steve, a tough kid from a council estate in Bolton, also hand-picked to be in our elite team, was running next to me on an ultra-marathon across the moors one night when his ankle just snapped. Nothing touched him. He didn’t trip. The bone had simply been put under so much pressure that it had nothing left. Steve was stretchered away and we never heard of him again. He was presumably kicked out of the mob on the basis of previous misdemeanours. I don’t get the psychology behind it but somehow I responded to Hand. I thrived in that challenging environment.
Over time, I grew up. Learned respect and I learned discipline. I learned how to fight. And I learned that killing came naturally to me. Unnervingly so.
And I was promoted. I was trusted and given my own tactical team to lead. I saw so much torture and death. Tasted betrayal. And it was only the start.
I felt replenished from the long sleep, waking only when the plane bumped to its final halt on the hot Spanish tarmac. I always travelled as light as I could. Usually just the clothes on my back, cash, and a phone. Weapons would be collected from Mickey once we got into theatre and the job was primed. Fresh clothing could be picked up if needed as we rolled. I headed out into the terminal, flashing a cheeky grin at a couple of simpering stewardesses on my way past. I’d have to remind myself to bang one of those if I ever came back this way.
The task at hand now was simple: familiarise myself with the mission brief and background. Set up the rendezvous with Mickey who had no doubt already arrived from London a few hours before me and had begun to put things in motion. From there it was going to be a long drive to the golf course and I was impatient to get going. With time to kill, I ordered a double espresso from a quaint independent coffee shop inside the terminal building. It was good to see the little guy holding their position against the mighty Starbucks and rebuffing their indefatigable quest for global domination. Better coffee too. And that was something I knew a bit about. I’d have myself hooked up to an intravenous drip of the stuff if I could.
I pulled out my phone, opened the application, and punched in an access code to download the case files. As analytical and micro-detailed as she was, Ella Philips, our administrative manager and expert researcher, was also a fun, quirky individual. It was no secret that I would have liked to get to know her a little better, in more senses than just one. The pressure of the jobs and a few different time zones hadn’t seemed to allow for that. Yet. It felt like she was the human glue that held the guys together in the Unit. She was always fussing over us, especially me. But I suppose someone had to. It really wouldn’t have surprised me to find a packed lunch or some little note or other in my assault kit after it was assembled at base—although so far it hadn’t got that bad. The Hand of God had found a real gem with Ella, that’s for sure. A valuable resource, she had gotten me out of some tight scrapes in theatre through providing live intel on a Target or serving up some GPS co-ordinates to deliver an innovative escape route right on time. I smiled at the computer screen as I was reminded of another of her traits. The woman had a PhD in military history. That, coupled with an irreverent sense of humour and spookily poignant timing, inspired her to surprise us with resonant historical quotations throughout a job. As the data file loaded before me, a quote in italics swirled across my screen:
There are four columns marching on Madrid and yet a fifth within.
I recognised the quote as one from the fascist General Franco. It was both a reference to the origin of this job in Spain and a warning of the insidious nature of war, often enemies or allies may not be as easily identifiable as they would first appear. The demarcations of allegiance can sometimes be blurred. Duly noted Ella, I thought and then busied myself with digesting her report and the background to the job which included a detailed set of mug shots and personal profiles highlighting the individuals I may need to recognise and interrogate on the European Golf Tour. I also committed to memory the coordinates of where I’d meet Mickey in a couple of hours, a little outside the city.
I sucked the final dark coffee grounds into my mouth, running the grit between my teeth. Ordered a second double espresso with a nod of the head. My mind drifted back to previous visits to Spain. Vacations. A typical story of a bunch of twenty-something year old British lads letting their hair down. In our case we were probably worse than anything the tabloids might have conjured.
Try imagining a gang of highly revved up squaddies who had deliberately been kept away from women and alcohol for months at a time while training intensely. Those few breaks we got to decompress were pretty messy affairs as you may imagine: lots of drinking, lots of fighting, lots of fucking, and a few instances that seemed to involve the lot together. On one of those rare occasions when we’d hired a car instead of motorbikes, we decided to save money and opt for the cheapest box with four wheels that we could fit our gear into. I remember the tiny Ford Fiesta with an engine so small it could barely make it up the hills in second gear. I can still hear the sound of my crew, squeezed into the back, howling and crying with laughter like braying donkeys as I bounced on my arse behind the steering wheel as if bucking a set of reins. It was a comic sight, the jolting and overloaded motor struggling to make it up the incline as local families stared and pointed in disbelief from the sidewalk.
I wouldn’t be hampered for speed like that this time round. With the clock ticking, I approached the car rental desk, deciding on a top of the line Range Rover, with all mod-cons.
Cost no issue this time, I thought as I handed over the Unit’s credit card. The transport is a gift straight from the Hand of God.
Chapter 7
SPAIN. EUROPEAN TOUR. DAY ONE. EVENING.
Admiring himself in the full length mirror of his fifth floor hotel room, Daniel nodded. He’d showered and shaved carefully. He wore a black short-sleeved shirt with blood red trim, dark blue jeans set off with a stylish black leather belt. Boots which sported a slight Cuban heel added further to his natural height of just over six foot. He’d caught some colour in his face from today’s sun and could see his wavy blond hair even picking up some lighter streaks already. He smiled. Back in Sheffield with his mates, he’d definitely be heading out on the pull tonight.
The room that Crown Sports had arranged for him was beautiful. The bed was vast with a solid wooden frame and carved head board. Everything seemed to be operated by a chunky remote control that opened and closed the window blinds and patio doors, operated the massive wall-mounted plasma TV screen and changed the lighting and air conditioning with so many permutations that it would be a challenge to set it the same way twice. The bathroom was done out in marble with a large corner bath punctured with Jacuzzi jet holes and a walk-in shower so big it even had lighting controls, music speakers, and a seat. The balcony was decked out with a simple white wooden table and chairs. It overlooked one of the hotel’s pristine swimming pools. Inviting blue water surrounded with greenery and palm trees. Daniel sat out on the balcony dripping wet after his shower, drinking a cold beer from the mini bar, an act in itself that would have induced a minor aneurism in his father. Just think of the mark-up they put on those drinks boy, it’s criminal in itself. He cast his mind over the day, the amazing hotel, the new way of life, the vibrant characters and nationalities he had met already and yes, of course, Matilda. He closed his eyes and hoped that she might be there tonight.
When he arrived at the bar just after eight o’clock the party was in full swing. The place was heaving. Squeezing his way through the throng of bodies, Daniel scanned the bar for recognisable faces. He waited an eternity as a succession of animated and attractive girls got served before him. With beer duly secured at last he pushed back through the chaos into an outdoor area at the back. It was cooler outside but poorly lit.
A pretty girl in a red T-shirt and sarong that barely covered her
ample bottom was dancing on a table, waving a bottle of tequila. People were standing around talking and laughing and some were jumping up and down in unison to the raucous beat of the music. Daniel caught sight of Andy waving from a table at the back and threaded through a group of lobster pink sunburnt tourists clinking beer bottles and passing around a jug of sangria. There were twelve guys sitting together. Aside from Andy, Daniel recognised four others from the earlier card game behind the equipment trucks and the belligerent fat Liverpudlian from the locker room. It was he who greeted Daniel first, clearly the worse for wear.
‘Hey sunbeam, come over here and give Billy Boy a kiss,’ he cooed, crashing his massive elbow into the ribs of the guy sitting next to him and laughing.
‘Settle down, Billy,’ said Andy whilst deftly pulling an empty chair from under the table of the couple behind him without asking and swinging it in one motion beside him. Daniel sat and Andy, nattily dressed in white linen, complemented him on his clothing, watch, and choice of beer in turn, before the introductions. They were all caddies except for one who represented the bottled water company, responsible for keeping the fridges on the range and the tournament tee-off areas replenished. Daniel forgot the names almost as soon as they had been spoken.
The night wore on and the table heaved under the increasing weight of empty glasses and discarded bottles. The jokes and banter seemed to grow in proportional volume. Daniel got into the swing of things. He held his own both in rapid consumption of alcohol and the quick-fire conversation, ensuring of course he was careful to avoid any strong opinions on the game of golf itself. Sean, a twenty-three year old ginger skin-head from Glasgow, was lining up a long row of grubby looking shot glasses and loosely pouring a stream of some indeterminable liquid into them from a bottle held unsteadily a foot or so above. And he was making a total mess of it too. Daniel was relaxed. He was coming to equate these guys more with the earthy Sheffield blue collar workers he’d known so well, as opposed to the polished perma-tanned multi-millionaire golf professionals you watched being interviewed on TV. Despite his new found pretentions of grandeur, the reality was that this was probably more his speed.
Despite regular replenishment of his glass from a personal bottle of expensive looking vodka, fetched discreetly from an inside jacket pocket, the only person keeping any semblance of sobriety and control around the table was Andy Sharples. As Billy Boy returned to the subject of his ‘miserable bitch-of-an-ex-wife’, pounding the table repeatedly with a meaty fist, spilling drinks asunder while bemoaning the fact she keeps screwing him over for more alimony, Andy pulled Daniel to one side and enquired, with a single arched eyebrow, if there was anything the new boy needed to know about life on Tour.
‘You guys do this all the time?’ Daniel questioned.
‘What’s that bullshit expression?’ Andy pondered, lighting one of his long slender cigarettes. ‘Ah yes. Work hard, play hard! Well as you can see, Danny, you could say out here that life’s a ball—a golf ball!’
‘But don’t you have to get up early to be on the course and play in the morning?’ Daniel asked earnestly.
‘Don’t be soft. It’s Aaron and the rest of the pros who have to be sharp tomorrow. The guys you see here have all done the hard work earlier in the week.’ He waved his hand around him towards the table. ‘We’ve walked the course, we’ve studied the yardages. Our hard work’s done. If your man makes the weekend it’s quids-in and we’re laughing. If he misses the cut, then we don’t get a bonus but we still get our wages so who cares? We usually hit a strip-club or tap up some whores depending on the city and where we have to be next week.’ One of the group howled and began to simulate sex with the table.
‘Don’t some of the guys bring their wives on the Tour though?’ asked Daniel, intrigued. He noticed that, like the others, he too was becoming increasingly intoxicated as time wore on.
‘Schoolboy error if you ask me Danny. Besides, it’s easy to spot the players who got married before they made it on Tour from those who got hitched afterwards. Right lads?’ Sniggers from the table.
‘Yeah,’ chimed in the cheeky mixed-race cockney, referred to by everyone simply as Razor presumably because he was not the sharpest, ‘their missus is about three shades blonder and a double-D cup,’ followed by a hyena-like cackle at his own joke.
Flushed with the apparent success of his wise-crack and now seriously slurring his words he continued, ‘Tell him Andy. He’ll find out soon enough. It’s the caddies who pull the strings out here. We’re the ones who really run the show. Right boys?’
From out of nowhere, Andy suddenly lurched to his left, grabbed Razor by his throat and flung him backwards off his chair and onto the ground behind him. ‘When are you going to learn, you dumb fucking mongrel? You keep your mouth shut until I tell you otherwise. Do you fucking understand?’ Andy leered down at his prey as he pinned Razor to the floor by his neck. The rapid sudden violence of movement stunned Daniel and by the time he had recovered and considered whether he should perhaps intervene or move somewhere safer himself, Sean was helping Razor to his feet, Andy was back in his chair smoking, looking completely unruffled and the party had picked back up again. And then Billy Boy was standing on his chair clapping and conducting a choir of drunken Danish guys in football shirts and Sean was leading Daniel over to take his turn on the row of shots and the whole incident blurred into the long tapestry of the evening.
Chapter 8
ENGLAND. LONDON. ST. JAMES SQUARE. EAST INDIA CLUB. 15.50 HRS.
At ten to four in the afternoon, the gleaming black Mercedes pulled smoothly to a stop in front of the alabaster pillars of a St. James’s Square Gentleman’s Club. Rain splattered the windscreen of the car, drumming an erratic, hypnotic rhythm. Derek sighed and stuffed the manila folder deep into his suit jacket to protect it from the wet. A portly, heavily-jowled man in the standard Club uniform of long black overcoat, replete with black felt bowler hat, stepped forward and opened the passenger side door, offering the protection of a vast umbrella as he did. Hemmings trotted up the steps and sidled inside into the warm and familiar surroundings of The East India Devonshire Sports and Public Schools Club. He nodded at the wiry Italian butler, thinning hair scraped back over his forehead. The greeting in response was warm. ‘It’s a pleasure to see you again, Mr Hemmings. If you please, sir, your guest is waiting for you in the Ladies’ Drawing Room.’
Derek grimaced. The irony of holding a meeting with this dirty Russian gangster within the refined, elegant surroundings of the Ladies’ Drawing Room was not lost on him. Being a privately owned, members-only club the establishment retained strict rules on the entry of and usage by ladies. It may be unfashionable and antiquated in this day and age but Derek respected the traditions and felt they represented a sanctuary of order in this hectic, all-access, politically-correct world. Ladies weren’t permitted in the bars, the Library, Smoking Room (the lighting of cigars in the club was now sadly no longer permitted but the name of the room endured in glorious defiance) or even the Dining Room at lunchtime. To enjoy lunch at the club a lady must be accompanied as guest of a gentleman member in the Luncheon Room only. The Ladies’ Drawing Room represented a refined environment in which to entertain female guests away from the main rooms, so as not to impinge on the relaxation or important matters of discussion and debate among the other members. It was the very room where, on 21 June 1815, The Prince Regent (later George IV) first heard the news of the English army’s victory at Waterloo. Major Henry Percy, aide-de-camp to the triumphant Duke of Wellington, interrupted the dinner party to present four captured French eagles and the Duke’s victory dispatch. Today it lay empty, reserved exclusively for Derek’s important meeting.
Hemmings trudged up the stairs with heavy feet, stopping outside a set of tall delicately hand painted wooden doors. He knocked hesitantly, at once annoyed with himself for already ceding the psychological advantage of the meeting. This was his Club: he the member, Golich the guest. He had no need to knock. If th
ere was knocking to be done it should be Golich who should be doing the bloody knocking. ‘Useless, Hemmings. Simply useless,’ he murmured beneath his breath.
Entering the room in a fluster, folder clasped deep within sweaty palm, Derek was halted as he stepped over the threshold by a huge hand attached to a huge man, muscles straining inside a shiny, jet black suit. Further ignominy was suffered through the intimate patting down of his bony, sixty-four year old body in the thorough search for a weapon. The very notion of which was, of course, quite preposterous. Derek stood there limply with his arms outstretched, blushing and assiduously trying to avoid any eye contact whatsoever.
The large room was empty, save for one small round tea table at which sat a stocky man whose age Derek could only place somewhere between his mid forties and early fifties. His face was round. Cold grey unblinking eyes were framed with thick black eyebrows. The eyes of a hardened criminal, Derek mused to himself disdainfully. He studied the man at the table as he sipped mint tea from a delicate china teacup, fat fingers struggling to hold it with any sense of refinement. Derek wondered if the cup might fall as it wobbled its way to fleshy lips. It struck him, on examination, that Boris Golich had a perfectly wrinkle-free and lineless face. A baby face. It was bizarre. His smooth features were accented by a short cropped black beard flecked with grey. Hair was of exactly equal length and colour. An oversized diamond earring twinkled from his left ear. Derek was heartened at least that the man had made an effort to respect the opulent surroundings and rules of the club. He wore a light grey suit, stitched of the finest cloth, with neat, precise creases. It was set off by a black shirt and surprisingly tasteful tie of deep purple interwoven with fine gold thread. Much to his annoyance, the whole outfit came together rather well, emanating an impression of wealth and elegance. Well what had he really expected? Trainers and a denim jacket? Perhaps Disney characters on the socks and tie?
