Storm Crow

by Jeff Gulvin

  Wilson concentrated on the box then: two microswitch booby traps, the first a flat button placed behind the flap of the hasp on the front. From his tool case, he took a set of feeler gauges and selected the thinnest sliver of metal. He opened it, pressed the others against his palm and lay flat with his eye close to the hasp. The respirator was in the way, jutting out from his chin to butt against the wood. Johnson was through the skin of the box with the drill and selected the slim flexible tube with the camera built into the end. The monitor was set up next to them, battery-fed and with the screen open like a lap-top computer. He inserted the torch. Wilson waited, watching, feeler gauge in his rubbered palm, as Johnson fiddled with the probe.

  Down in the underpass, the rest of the explosives team, together with Webb and Cregan, waited.

  ‘Putting in the torch,’ Johnson’s hollow voice crackled over the radio. ‘Gently, gently.’ Talking to himself now. Then silence.

  Upstairs, Johnson stared wide-eyed at the monitor. ‘Jesus Christ, Tug. We’ve got eleven minutes.’

  ‘What?’ Wilson shifted himself round and peered hard through his goggles. Johnson had the probe over the top of one of the TPUs where the clock and mini-alarm setting were displayed. The time showed 6:49 in red digits, the ten-day decade switch was at zero and the alarm set to 7:00.

  In the underpass, Webb squirmed in his seat and lifted the radio from its housing. ‘Command Control from incident control point.’ Christine Harris patched him through.

  ‘Colson, Webb. What’s happening?’

  ‘Got a fibre-optic torch in the box, sir. There’s eleven minutes left on the timer.’

  ‘Jesus Christ. Is that all?’

  ‘That’s all. The lid’s not open yet and there’s two microswitches to get by.’

  Upstairs, Wilson had the feeler gauge and was feeding it behind the fixing hasp that kept the lid down. Johnson was totally impotent. He had secured the torch and watched as the minutes were ticking away from them. He flicked his gaze from Wilson’s hand to the monitor and back again. His body was soaking, the sweat dribbling off him, throat so dry he could barely swallow. All he wanted to do was rip off his face mask and drink.

  Wilson had the feeler gauge behind the hasp now and his tongue traced the line of his lips, as he manoeuvred the blade between the button microswitch and the slim piece of metal that held it. He made it, and pressed the switch harder against the plastic housing, keeping it down. Johnson moved now. From his pocket, he took a small pair of metal cutters and a roll of thin black DPM tape. He snipped the lock off and set the cutters on the floor, then gingerly lifted away the hasp. The hinges were stiff: he got it to a right angle and then changed position and lifted it till it was vertical. Wilson still kept the pressure on the feeler gauge, pressing the button in place. Johnson fiddled with the tape, unrolling a short stretch with difficulty—no dexterity in the cumbersome NBC gloves. He cut the strip and then placed it as tightly as he could across the metal gauge. Taking two shorter strips, he fixed those over the ends of the first piece.

  ‘OK?’ Wilson said.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You better be fucking sure.’

  Johnson fixed a fourth piece of tape and then two more. Then he took the metal cutters and snipped the gauge off at the stem. Wilson no longer had pressure on it. The tape held.

  ‘One,’ Wilson said. ‘How much time do we have?’

  ‘Nine minutes.’

  Now they had to deal with the other microswitch, which Boese had placed at the back. Wilson scanned the lid where it fitted to the rim of the box. Already, the release of the fixing hasp had allowed the tiniest of cracks to appear and weaken the pressure on the second micro-switch. He looked at the other side of the box then.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Johnson stared at him. ‘What, Tug? What?’

  ‘There’s a third microswitch. Bastard set a third. We missed it on the X-ray.’

  Johnson looked where his partner pointed and spied the final booby trap. ‘We can do it,’ he said. ‘Same thing.’

  ‘Feeler gauges won’t be heavy enough.’ Wilson took a deep breath. ‘Not enough vertical pressure.’ He glanced at his tool kit and the time fell away on the clock. ‘Metal rule,’ he said. ‘We need two of them.’

  ‘We’ll have to do it in unison, one either side of the box.’

  Wilson nodded, the collar of the NBC hood scratching at the skin of his neck. ‘What about when we get the lid open? We’ll both be holding rules. That’s if we can slide them in in the first place.’

  ‘We need a third body up here. Right now.’ Johnson spoke into the radio.

  ‘On my way.’ Hewitt’s voice in his ear.

  Swann was absolutely silent on the 6 a.m. flight from Orly to Southampton. He sat by the window, staring through the tiny porthole of glass at clouds that lay like rumpled smoke below them. Byrne shifted in the seat next to him. Swann was shell-shocked, the knot in his gut gnawing at him like stomach cramps. Pia was Joanne Taylor, and probably Brigitte Hammani. The irony was that it made a terrible sense. He now knew where the leak was in the Branch, the slippage of information that had bothered him right through this investigation; the loose tongue was his own.

  Two days before they hit Queen’s House Mews, he remembered, Pia had wanted to see him the following night and he said he was going to be busy.

  ‘IRA?’ she had asked.

  ‘No. Somebody else.’

  That was all she needed to know. Three words. He had let the odd thing slip during the investigation, you always did. Names weren’t mentioned, but if it wasn’t PIRA, then who was it? It didn’t take a genius from where she was sitting. No wonder Boese kept so well ahead of the game. And Jakob Salvesen, the billionaire psycho from America. He must be one of her clients. International private banker, the perfect, perfect cover. Byrne’s theory about the Storm Crow putting himself on the market, what better way to study it than with someone whose clients are the richest people in the world.

  Byrne touched him lightly on the shoulder. ‘How you doing, buddy?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Rough on you, huh.’

  Swann shook his head. ‘You know, I asked the girl to marry me the other day.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said that if she could marry anyone, it’d be me. But she couldn’t get married. Now I know why.’ He stared at the seatback in front of him and another thought struck him. ‘Nobody delivered that feather to my flat, Louis. It was there all the time.’

  Swann had phoned the command control unit from Orly Airport and spoken to DI Clements. Clements told him what was happening in the City.

  ‘Listen, Guv,’ Swann said. ‘Any chance of a chopper from Southampton? I’ve found Joanne Taylor.’

  ‘You’ve done what?’

  ‘I know who she is. I need to speak to Colson and Garrod as soon as I get back.’

  ‘I’ll sort something out for you, Jack.’

  The helicopter was waiting for them after they cleared customs. Forty-five minutes later, they landed on Shepherd’s Bush common and Swann took Byrne to one side. ‘Not a word, Louis—to anyone. Not till I’ve spoken to the senior officers.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Jack. This is your deal.’

  Garrod and Colson were listening to the reports coming back from the render safe team, when Swann and Byrne climbed the stairs to the operations room. Clements tapped Swann on the shoulder.

  ‘Old man’s free, Jack.’

  ‘You better hear this too, Guv.’

  The four of them sat down. Garrod pressed his glasses higher up the bridge of his nose and looked at him. ‘The DI says you’ve identified Joanne Taylor.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I have.’ He paused. ‘Byrne thinks she’s also Brigitte Hammani.’

  ‘So tell us, Jack. Who is she?’

  Swann let go a short breath and looked from one to the other of them. ‘There was a leak from the department, sir. Not intentional and it wa
s minor, but there was a leak.’

  Garrod frowned at him. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Me, sir.’

  ‘You?’ Clements stared at him. ‘What’re you on about, Jack?’

  ‘Joanne Taylor is Pia Grava, my girlfriend.’

  Garrod stared at him for a moment. ‘You better explain,’ he said.

  ‘The Sunday night before we raided Queen’s House Mews, she asked if she could see me the following night. I said, no, because we were going to be busy. She asked me if it was the IRA and I said, “No. Somebody else.” That’s all I told her, but it was all she needed to know. She’s seen me after SO19 raids before. She knows the drill, roughly the timing, etc. All she had to do was tip off Boese.’

  ‘What happened in Paris?’ Colson asked him.

  ‘I found out that Jake Salvesen had dinner with a girl with short dark hair. She’d had dinner with him before. The waiter from the restaurant gave an E-fit description to Yves Mercier’s man.’ He unfolded it and then took the photo of Pia he carried with him from his wallet, and laid them both on the desk.

  ‘I went back to the waiter, sir, and showed him this picture. He ID’d her straight away, and so did a cleaner from the hotel where Salvesen was staying. Pia and Salvesen spent the night together.’

  For a moment, nobody said anything. Swann looked at the floor between his feet. ‘But how the hell does she know Salvesen?’ Colson asked, staring at the pictures.

  ‘He’s her client. He must be. She’s an international private banker with Luxembourg Directe.’ Swann sat forward. ‘Think about it, sir. Louis Byrne told us the Storm Crow was in it for the money. He actively marketed himself. What better way to do it than have a private banker in your pocket. She’s got access to the richest individuals in the world.’ He made an open-handed gesture. ‘The rest of it fits—the way she looks, her age. So she wore a blonde wig and changed the colour of her eyes with contact lenses. She told me she was half Israeli and half Italian. Her parents are both dead, but she’s got good clients in Israel. Storm Crow plucked her out of that situation in Tel Aviv and has used her ever since.’

  He sat back then, falling silent. Three grave faces stared at him. ‘I knew there’d been a leak. I just didn’t think it was me.’

  ‘Forget about that, Jack,’ Colson told him. ‘What d’you want to do now?’

  ‘Do a covert on her office while the cordons are in. Check out her dealings with Salvesen. Everything in the UK has been paid for by international money order or cashing accounts at banks. I think by starting with Salvesen, I can trace it through one of the discretionary trusts she’ll run for him. That’s how she does her business, sir, acting for clients as a trustee through Bermuda or the Cayman Islands.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I know her mobile phone number. I want to get the subscriber info’ and see who she’s called.’

  ‘Cairns?’

  ‘And Ingram, maybe. If those numbers are there, then we’ve got her and both of them.’

  ‘OK, Jack. You’ll have to suit up.’

  ‘Where’s Webb?’

  ‘Still in the City with Phil Cregan and the ATOs. They wanted his input on the TPUs.’

  Swann stood up. ‘Can I take Tania Briggs? She’s as good a burglar as Webb.’

  ‘Take whoever you want.’

  Outside, Louis Byrne was waiting for him. He laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘I know you’re feeling like shit because you got fucked over, Jack. But don’t blame yourself for anything else.’

  Swann looked at him out of the corner of his eye. ‘I’m not.’

  Harrison was six hundred yards into the hill now, on the downward sweep of the Bloodline, Heckler & Koch MP5 slung over one shoulder. Way back up the drift, he could see the approach of flashlights. He had killed Wingo and he had killed Tyler Oldfield. It occurred to him then that if the tapes had worked, he didn’t need any of them alive. That both thrilled and chilled him in the same moment. To kill again in war; one on one, and down here under the earth, where last time he’d got it wrong. He could smell the dry heat of the tunnels, his own sweat and the stench of rotting rice.

  The flashlights came nearer and he squatted on the floor with his gun across his knees, his own flashlight extinguished and clipped on his belt. The mine was damp. He was lucky it wasn’t still frozen. Behind him was the shaft to the oldest, meanest tunnel under the mountain. Devil’s Breath, the very lowest drift where two stopes had been split by a pillar of rock. The stopes had hardly been worked because a combination of silicon dust and methane gas had forced the men out. Harrison was going to get at least one of them down there. That was his way out. At the back of the Devil’s Breath shaft was a patch of inky black water. Danny Dugger had shown him late last summer. There, the tunnel roof dipped to the surface, so the tunnel looked blocked. Danny had dived in, no warning, not removing his clothes—just upped and dove. Harrison had stared at the water, waiting for him to come up, but he didn’t. In the end, he panicked and went in after him. The water was freezing and so black you could see nothing. He had come up after a few frantic moments of searching and found Danny shining a light on his face. They were the other side of the rock wall. Heaven’s Gate, Danny told him; a natural rising shaft with a rope cable and a two-foot hole at the top of the mountain.

  Jesse’s men moved cautiously, given away by their flashlights. Harrison squatted cross-legged and waited like the VietCong he used to hunt, the damp running off the rib walls behind him. An entry team of three, that meant others to follow and guards placed at the portal. He could no longer hear them talking over the radio, so he discarded the headset. They moved in a line, one behind the other. He could not tell who was in front but the beams from their flashlights played over the walls and refracted in water that spilled down the sides. Harrison rose and went deeper.

  They still had not got as far as the Widow-maker shaft and Harrison was almost at the twin stopes on his right that contained the Doghouse, a sealed room where men went to protect themselves against sudden leakage of gas Or a roof fall. The lights moved again and they split up as he hoped they would. Star Raise climbed above their heads and the iron rung ladder was still good. Harrison could see one man make his way up by the bobbing of his flashlight. A second peeled off left into the forked drift which followed the adit vein, and that left just one in the Bloodline. Harrison knew that within a few paces he would come to the Widow-maker. He watched him from his hiding place close to the stope wall and saw the light disappear.

  At the ladder he shouldered his MP5. He didn’t use the flashlight, feeling his way to the rungs. Whoever was down there was using his light and Harrison would see him long before he was seen. He climbed down carefully, silently, with the stealth he had learned in Cu-Chi. He could hear nothing, see nothing. He climbed lower and lower and dropped off the last rung on to the tunnel floor. He could see the flashlight bobbing ahead of him now, and he started down the tunnel towards it. Closer and closer, soft-soled boots making no sound on the rock floor. The light bobbed again. He heard somebody cough and then the trickle of dust and rock from above. The light was turned on the ceiling and Harrison stopped. From somewhere high above them, he heard the dull boom of gunshot. Somebody up there was spooked.

  Now the light came back towards him much more quickly; whoever it was had also heard the shot and was heading for the raise. Harrison stood about ten paces outside the beam and pulled the pin from a stun grenade. The hairs lifted on the back of his neck and the smell of loose soil and human sweat stood out in his nostrils. He tossed the grenade up the tunnel.

  He heard the scream as it went off. Slusher. Nine explosions in about twelve seconds, none of them fatal, but smoke and fire and a noise that boomed and echoed in the enclosed space of the tunnel. Harrison watched as he hopped and jumped and bounced off the walls, the grenade spitting at his feet like a firecracker. Then Slusher realized he was all right and started firing indiscriminately. Harrison leaned against the shallow stope wall and lifted the MP5. He saw Jakob Salvesen’s face, hate in his
eyes and the thin set of his mouth. He saw the silent faces gathered in the mock courtroom and felt the anger rise in his chest. Slusher stopped firing and picked up his fallen flashlight.

  ‘Hey, Slusher,’ Harrison called. ‘Switch the damn light off.’

  The light died instantly. Harrison pressed the torch on the end of his gun barrel and Slusher was framed in its sights. He shot him three times.

  Wilson and Johnson squatted in their own sweat, either side of the wooden box that housed the four timing and power units. Major Hewitt was at that moment climbing the stairs to get to them and they had seven minutes on the clock. They worked simultaneously, so, so slowly. The lid had to remain pressed low enough to keep the micro-switches down. Wilson looked sideways at his partner, twisting his head so he could see him properly through the eyeholes in his respirator. ‘We’ve got to do this at exactly the same time, same speed, everything. If we don’t, it’s over.’

  ‘I know.’ Johnson was breathing hard. Wilson looked over his shoulder then, as Hewitt moved between them.

  ‘Microswitches.’ Wilson nodded to the drawings spread out on the floor. ‘Bastard placed a third one. Got the one on the hasp, these two we need to do at the same time. He’s set them right at the back. We’re going to slide metal rules under the rim of the box and over the switches to keep them down. Then you open the box. We can maybe secure the switches with tape, but it takes time.’ He glanced at the clock registering on the monitor. ‘And we don’t have much of that.’

  Hewitt nodded and watched as the two warrant officers slid the rules under the lid, one hand on the rule, free hands used to keep the lid steady. The slightest judder could bounce it just a fraction and a fraction was all the booby traps needed.

  ‘He is one nasty fucking bastard.’ Wilson felt the pain in his eyes and cursed the suit and the mask and this job all over again. He watched Johnson’s hands. Johnson watched his, as they worked the metal rules under the top of the box, like slicing open an envelope between them. Hewitt kept his hands off the lid, kneeling, breathing hard through the mask. He rested his hands on his thighs; tool kit by his side. Under six minutes now; he could feel the tension in his bowels.