Red Strike

by Chris Ryan

  ‘The Jansen thing has bought us some time. But the net’s closing. Now that those two bodyguards are talking, the police are going to start looking into who staged the attack and why. It won’t take a fucking genius for them to work out that someone knocked them on the head so that we could get on the team. When that happens, they’re gonna take a long, hard look at us.’

  Porter nodded slowly, his mind scrolling through the scenario. ‘How long do you think we’ve got?’

  ‘A few days,’ Bald guessed. ‘Maybe longer, if Six does something about that investigation.’

  ‘And if they don’t?’

  ‘Then we’d better hope that Strickland wasn’t bullshitting us about that heli waiting on standby across the border,’ said Bald. ‘Because we’re going to need it soon enough.’

  Porter rubbed his jaw and said, ‘We’ve got bigger problems than the bodyguards, Jock.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Getting a bug into that gathering is going to be fucking tricky. Whatever we plant on Lansbury is gonna get picked up by that detector.’

  ‘How the fuck are we supposed to smuggle a device in, then?’

  ‘We’re going to need a new plan,’ said Porter. His lips widened into a grin. ‘And I’ve got just the idea.’

  ‘You?’ Bald chuckled. ‘No offence, mate, but you’re not exactly the king of crafty plans. That’s my bag.’

  Porter glared at him. ‘You want to hear it, or not?’

  ‘Go on, then,’ Bald said, spreading his hands. ‘Let’s hear it. I could do with a good laugh . . .’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The afternoon passed slowly. There was nothing else for Bald and Porter to do except carry out their duties and keep a close eye on Lansbury until they left for the conference. Lansbury spent most of the time in his room, talking on his phone or sending messages. From outside the suite they couldn’t hear his conversations, but everything he said was picked up by the bugs they had planted earlier on, transmitted and stored on the portable hard drive in Bald and Porter’s room. There was a brief trip to an upmarket restaurant across the street for a late lunch. Which involved Bald calling the manager in advance, letting them know that a VIP was on their way and that his team would need three tables, next to one another, preferably at the back of the restaurant, away from the other diners and close to a fire exit. Bald and Porter ordered in advance, finished their scoff and passed the time with small talk while Lansbury worked his way through a plate of pan-roasted sea bass, potatoes and asparagus, washed down with a glass of Argentinian red wine. Then back to the hotel and another hour waiting outside Lansbury’s suite. Bald was reminded of how much he hated close-protection jobs. The long periods sitting on his arse and doing nothing, taking shit from the principal. He bit back on his frustration, focused on the big prize waiting for him at the end of the op.

  The steady corporate job. Minimum hassle, six-figure salary. Company benefits. Generous pension. Nigeria or Iceland or Alaska, he didn’t give a toss.

  He’d spent ten years on the Circuit. Had spent almost as long working for Vauxhall, doing their dirty work. Bald had paid his dues. Now he was ready for Easy Street.

  At three-thirty in the afternoon, Lansbury beckoned Bald and Porter into his suite. ‘Call the chauffeur,’ he ordered. ‘Tell him we’re leaving for the conference shortly. Half an hour. He’ll know where Koman Castle is.’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  Bald didn’t have the number for the chauffeur, so he jogged down to the lobby and got the concierge to call him. Bald gave the driver the address and pickup time and instructed him to bring the S-Class round to the front of the hotel. Then he sent a message to Strickland.

  Leaving for meeting at 16.00 hours. Address is Koman Castle. ETA 17.00.

  She responded after the usual delay. Understood. We heard new developments re bodyguard attack.

  Bald wrote, Orders?

  Continue as planned for now. Will alert you if situation changes.

  Bald read the reply, then typed a follow-up message. Who is Vitaly Butko?

  Which prompted a longer delay from Strickland. He had to wait two whole minutes before she got back to him.

  Russian gold-mining magnate and art collector. Very close to the Kremlin and the FSB. Suspected Kremlin agent and Russia’s unofficial man in Budapest. Why?

  Bald replied, Butko is hosting the conference, according to BROKEN RECORD.

  Which prompted another reply from Strickland. An empty message with a picture attached to it. Bald opened it. A slender, grey-haired figure dressed in a white dinner jacket and bow tie filled the screen. Vitaly Butko looked to be in his late fifties, with a large forehead and small round eyes, like holes in a block of marble. He had thin lips that curled up at the corners, as if he was smiling to himself at some private joke.

  Bald didn’t reply to the message. No need. He de-encrypted his iPhone, made his way back upstairs and took up his spot outside Lansbury’s suite. Twenty-seven minutes later, Lansbury emerged from his room.

  Bald accompanied him downstairs while Porter rushed ahead to bring the Volvo up from the underground car park. They had agreed that Bald would ride up top in the S-Class with Lansbury, with Porter following close behind. If they ran into trouble, they would abandon the lead vehicle and make their escape in the Volvo. Lansbury seemed impressed by their attention to detail. He made a big deal out of it, praising their efforts and berating the lack of professionalism he felt had been shown by his previous BG team. He told Bald and Porter how wonderful it was to have a pair of ex-SAS heroes watching over him. How he’d thought of joining the Regiment himself once, as a teenager.

  Two minutes later, they left the hotel.

  Dusk was beginning to gather as the S-Class pulled away from the Royal Duna Hotel. Lansbury spread himself out on the back seat and concentrated on a hefty pile of papers on his lap. Speeches or policy documents, Bald assumed. He crossed out words, rehearsing phrases as he scribbled notes in the margins.

  Bald rode up front with the chauffeur. The same bloke who had picked them up from the airport the previous evening. Tibor, the guy with the buzz cut and eyes that were too close together. Porter followed them in the Volvo, sticking to the S-Class like a limpet. Bald kept a close eye on their surroundings. Twenty years of training, hardwired into his brain. Eyes scanning for potential threats, scoping out nearby vehicles. He made sure the driver stayed back from the car in front whenever they hit a red light. Routine stuff. It was unlikely that Lansbury would be targeted without Vauxhall knowing about it first, but Bald didn’t want to take any chances. Not when they were so close to nailing him.

  The lights along the length of the Chain Bridge glowed like Christmas tree decorations as they headed west across the river. The driver took a circuitous route out of the city, navigating one-way streets and avoiding the big thoroughfares. After three miles they joined the motorway heading south. They bowled past warehouses and car dealerships, fast-food chains and petrol stations. Concrete tower blocks loomed on the horizon, black against the apricot glow of the fast-approaching night. Tibor was a careful driver. He stuck religiously to the national speed limit. The needle never climbed past the seventy mark.

  As they continued south Bald kept one eye on the car’s built-in navigation system. There was a bright red arrow indicating their current position. A winding blue line showed the route to their final destination, eighty miles south of Budapest. The journey would take them fifty-nine minutes, according to the satnav. Which meant that they would arrive at Koman Castle at around five o’clock in the evening. Half an hour before the big meeting.

  He glanced at Lansbury in the rear-view mirror. The guy had stopped scribbling notes. He stared out of the window as the landscape scrolled past, brow wrinkled in thought.

  ‘What’s the craic with this meeting, sir?’ asked Bald. ‘Some big announcement, is it?’

  ‘Just boring policy stuff,’ Lansbury replied airily. ‘Nothing that concerns you. Not unless you’ve devel
oped a sudden fascination for the intricacies of right-wing politics. Is that the case?’

  ‘No, sir. Not me. Couldn’t be dealing with all that stuff.’

  ‘Then stop asking me questions and focus on your job.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Bald paused, gauging how far he could push it with Lansbury. ‘Just got me thinking, sir. What you said earlier, about the liberal elites wrecking society.’

  ‘What about it?’ Lansbury asked distractedly.

  ‘There’s a lot of lads in the SAS who feel the same way, sir.’

  ‘Really?’ Lansbury looked away from the window, stared curiously at Bald. ‘How so?’

  ‘I shouldn’t go on, sir. It’s not my place to speak my mind.’

  ‘No, no, please continue. I hear stories from the generals often enough, but not from the fellows on the frontline, as it were. I’d like to hear what the men defending our country really think.’

  Bald smiled inwardly. He had the principal’s full attention now.

  ‘It’s the suited-and-booted brigade in Westminster, sir. They’re ruining the Regiment. Take Selection,’ Bald said. ‘The SAS has the toughest recruitment process in the world, right? Everyone has to be held to the same high standard. You either pass or fail, that’s it. But now we’ve got those politically correct types telling us that they’re going to let women take Selection. And that’s only the start of it. Next they’ll be telling us that Selection is too hard and we’ve got to make it easier for them.’

  ‘Scandalous!’ Lansbury exclaimed.

  ‘Then you’ve got the MoD spending millions on ad campaigns, promoting diversity and telling people it’s okay to be emotional, and meanwhile our lads are having to make do with out-of-date or substandard kit. You’ve got a defence secretary who spends more time on Twitter than he does making sure that the other nations in NATO are pulling their weight. It’s just a load of Establishment bollocks. They claim to support the armed forces, but they don’t really give a toss about blokes like me. All they care about is making a name for themselves, sir. In my opinion.’

  Lansbury inclined his head at Bald, as if seeing him for the first time. ‘I didn’t know you felt so strongly about such things.’

  Bald didn’t. He didn’t give a shit about inclusivity or women taking part in Selection. He was an equal opportunities man, when it came to violence and the application of it. The Brecon Beacons didn’t care whether you were black, white or purple. All that mattered was whether you had what it took to become a Blade.

  ‘Totally, sir,’ Bald lied. ‘All this diversity crap is going to run the Regiment into the fucking ground. Pardon my French.’

  Lansbury leaned forward, slapped a hand against his thigh. ‘You see, that’s exactly what I’ve been saying! You’ve hit the nail on the head. Couldn’t have put it better myself.’

  ‘Just telling you what the lads at Hereford are thinking, sir.’

  ‘What you’ve just described is precisely what is wrong with our country these days. With everywhere in Europe, in fact.’

  ‘What’s that, sir?’

  ‘We’ve allowed ourselves to be governed by a global metropolitan elite,’ Lansbury said, warming to his theme. ‘A snobbish Islington set that looks down their noses at ordinary men and women such as yourself, telling you that you’re wrong and that they know best, and if you argue otherwise then you’re branded as a bigot. If you wave an England flag or say you’re proud to be British, then you’re an uncivilised racist. I actually think those people secretly hate the country they live in.’

  ‘Bunch of virtue-signalling twats if you ask me,’ Bald said. ‘We should stick the lot of ’em in a Taliban stronghold. See what they think about inclusivity then.’

  ‘Well put!’ Lansbury smiled at Bald in the rear-view mirror. ‘It’s John, isn’t it?’

  ‘Aye, sir. But everyone calls me Jock.’

  ‘Not many Scots in the SAS, I imagine.’

  ‘There’s more of us than you’d think, sir. They still raise us hard, north of the border.’

  ‘I’m sure they do.’ Lansbury grinned. ‘You’re an interesting fellow, Jock. It seems I underestimated you.’

  ‘How’s that, sir?’

  ‘Most of the chaps on my security detail couldn’t express a political opinion if their lives depended on it. They’re more interested in steroids and pornography than speaking their minds. I’d simply assumed you were the same.’

  ‘Not your fault, sir. Like you say, I’m just a bodyguard.’

  ‘But you’re right. We shouldn’t be sabotaging the proud traditions of the SAS. It’s supposed to be about being the best of the best, isn’t it? Quite frankly if you’re not up to scratch then you shouldn’t get in. End of.’

  ‘Glad to hear someone’s on our side, sir. Just a pity the rest of those arseholes in government don’t think the same way.’

  ‘Quite.’

  Bald glanced up at the rear-view mirror. Saw Lansbury giving him a big matey smile. His new best friend.

  Lansbury eased back into his seat, crossed his legs and turned his attention back to the gloomy landscape. Bald glanced at the clock on the satnav.

  Four-thirty.

  Half an hour to go.

  TWENTY-SIX

  They continued south on the motorway. A long, winding stretch of freshly laid blacktop that roughly followed the course of the Danube as it snaked down from Budapest towards the Great Plain. Darkness was beginning to settle like ash across the landscape, blackening the shapes of distant factories and townships. After twenty miles they skirted around the edge of a place called Dunaújváros and crossed a bridge to the eastern side of the river. The landscape became flat and barren. Bald saw ploughed fields and bare trees in every direction, pockmarked by the occasional farm or cottage. Ramshackle homesteads with shuttered windows and tiles missing from the rooftops and rusted Trabants parked outside. But mostly it was an endless sprawl of farmland. Lansbury sat in silence in the back seat, becoming noticeably more anxious as they neared their destination, glancing repeatedly at his watch or checking his phone. Tibor continued to say nothing. Bald was beginning to think that the chauffeur might be mute.

  They stuck to the main country road for another twelve miles before they hit a crossroads. Tibor made a left, taking them down a potholed one-lane road, hemmed in on both sides by rows of stark trees and tangled forest. They carried on for three miles, Porter still following close behind in the Volvo. Bald saw no cars or buildings or people. For a while he wondered if the driver had accidentally punched in the wrong destination. Then the road suddenly opened up and Lansbury shot forward in his seat, pointing ahead of them.

  ‘There! That’s the place.’

  Bald peered through the windscreen, straining his eyes in the encroaching dusk. Two hundred metres ahead of them stood a large country pile, set a hundred metres back from the road and enclosed behind a metre-high solid masonry wall. Lanterns were mounted atop posts along the wall, burning brightly in the fading light. There was an ornate iron gate at the front of the property with a small lodge to the left.

  The mansion itself was huge. The size of an imperial palace. It was three storeys tall, with a steeply gabled roof and a medieval turret jutting out of one corner of the main building. Behind the mansion stood a wide parcel of land dotted with patches of dense, gloomy forest.

  ‘Nice pad, sir,’ Bald said. ‘Your mate’s done well for himself.’

  Lansbury laughed. ‘This isn’t Butko’s primary residence. More of a private retreat he uses from time to time. Somewhere he can meet with his associates without any prying eyes.’

  ‘Got some good connections, has he?’

  Lansbury chuckled. ‘That’s putting it mildly. Butko is friends with some powerful men.’

  The guy was in his element now, bragging openly in front of his bodyguard. Tibor pulled up in front of the gate, stopped and waited while a pair of shaven-headed toughs emerged from the lodge. They were both clad in black trousers and matching dark jackets, lik
e models for a Tall & Mighty catalogue. The new collection, as modelled by steroid-jacked neo-Nazis.

  The bigger of the two guys was equipped with a tan-coloured compact rifle. Shorter than a regular assault rifle, with a folded-up buttstock and a Picatinny rail. The guy had it slung across his burly shoulder with a nylon strap. Bald recognised it as a Kalashnikov MA compact rifle. One of the newer Russian weapon systems. Chambered for the 5.45 x 39mm round. Thirty-round magazine. Serious firepower. Not the kind of thing a private security guard would carry, ordinarily.

  Bald wondered again about the gathering. He thought about the secrecy. The heavy security presence. The involvement of the Russian FSB.

  The mystery guest speaker.

  What the fuck is going on here?

  The guy with the Kalashnikov hung back while his mate approached the S-Class. He was the smaller of the two toughs, but only just. Compared to Bald, he was still a giant. Six-four, perhaps two hundred and twenty pounds, with hands the size of pork knuckles. His eyes were like bullet holes fired into a paper target. His skin was pale and glistening, chemically mutated from years of steroid abuse. He was clutching an iPad in his right hand, Bald saw. Lansbury buzzed down his window, exchanged a few words with the heavy. The guy with the bullet-hole eyes checked something on his iPad, stepped back and signalled to his buddy. The bigger guy with the Kalashnikov. He stalked back into the gatehouse, pressed a button. A moment later there was a loud whirring sound as the gate yawned open and the S-Class slithered through the entrance, Porter following in the Volvo.

  The two vehicles motored down a flagstone driveway lined with soft spotlights. It ran on for a hundred metres to the front of the mansion, where it opened out into a carriage circle. Vehicles were parked up around the edge of the circle, like dials on a clock. Bald saw Range Rovers and Bentleys, Mercedes-Benzes and Chevrolet Suburban SUVs. A couple of Lincoln Town Cars. He counted a total of twenty-one vehicles. Which meant that many of the guests had already arrived. Some would be VIPs, travelling in two-car arrangements like Lansbury. The less high-profile guests would have made their own way there.